Echoes of Reality

'Narcissistic' is one of those myth-derived adjectives which has passed into our language. But who was Narcissus? We meet Narcissus in the myths of Ancient Greece, a handsome and vain youth whose self-absorption prevented him from truly loving anyone but himself. Alas for the beautiful nymph Echo, as the myth relates:

Echo had her own character fault: she was always chattering. Hera, the consort of haughty Zeus, tired of Echo's busy tongue, cursed the incessantly-chattering young girl: from that time on, her first and only words were to be the last words somebody else had spoken. People began to shun Echo, for no one likes to be parroted. They treated her unkindly and her friends did not want to be with her any longer. Lonely and bewildered, Echo fled into the forests. 


But then Narcissus appeared on the scene while out on a hunting party with his friends. As soon as Echo saw him, she lost her lonely heart and began to follow him. 

With the unfortunate Echo in mind Sappho, the 7th-century BCE Greek poet from Lesbos, writes:

Foolish child
why do you try
to touch a heart of stone?

Narcissus did indeed have a heart of stone, breaking many hearts of young women and men. Worshipped like a god for his looks, he only took, but never gave. Echo was just one of his many victims. When at last she plucked up enough courage to approach the handsome youth, Narcissus shunned her, angrily telling her to get out of his sight with as much revulsion as if she had been a venomous snake. Deeply hurt, Echo sought shelter far away from people, and found a remote cave in the high mountains where she gradually pined away until her voice was all that remained.  


Nemesis, the goddess of vengeful fate, took mercy upon the girl and decided in turn to punish Narcissus for his grotesque insensitivity and scornful manner. She knew that when he stared into the water of a brook pond, he would see only his own reflection. 

And so it was that he fell madly in love with himself. Countless times he tried to kiss himself, countless times he plunged his arms despairingly into the water seeking to embrace his own mirrored reflection. Then one day he found a deep pool, nearby the cave where Echo's voice still lived,  and stared into its silent depths in heartbreaking yearning for his beloved in the water.

"Why do you keep so utterly beyond reach, my love? Come, my beloved!"
And the voice of Echo repeated: "my beloved... my beloved."

Little by little, like water over a stone, love wore him away until Echo's voice repeated his last sigh: "Love..." and at last, he died. 

Waterhouse

Falling in love with an image of oneself, or one's god(dess) often turns out to be a disastrous projection, for the reality is often quite different from the image of it. The reality is the initiation; the image, at best, is only the yearning for it. Narcissus literally drowned in his own image, driven by the desperate yearning to be united with it. For vain Narcissus, it was too late for him to understand that we mirror ourselves best, not in our own image, but in that of another.

Poet Song

Deep down inside of me

forces are rising up,

but like the waves 

high and sighing in the distance,

always they must surrender to the strand.

I laugh at my creations through a veil of tears

and feel in my beginning that I have yet to begin -

each time my thinking dives away,

stays with itself, alone -

as vowed to silence.

Inside me poems lie on undiscovered shores

waiting for my silent landfall

waiting for my crossing of those inner oceans

filled with shoals and sirens' calls

for I am heavy with more than I give birth to,

my heart knows songs that I will never sing.

I am music of which I do not know the chords,

I am a pause repeatedly disturbing itself.

I am more than I am.

I cannot release myself.

A paradise lost lies inside me.

"Poet, do you keep on weighing sounds,

intangible as mirrors without smile or line?

Contemplate no more,

be warrior instead.

Rise up and stop this singing,

for the Spirit needs the silent ones.

Would She not otherwise have led the song?"

Vintage Photograph by Clarence Hudson White

Perfectly Imperfect

Perfectly imperfect


No sound at all
it is darker here
and chill is holding me in its grasp
almost never to let go of me.

Where am I?
And where is that place
where I once was
somewhere between then and now?
How will I know?

I am frightened
I did not know that I could feel this way,
but when I see now
how my wings are broken... 

Was I not perfect then
in my eternal longing
to become
what I perhaps can never be?

Utter loneliness is overtaking me
still no sound is heard
only my heart beating.

I feel my spirit leaving me
that immaculate reflection of you,
while whispering my sacred vow.

My form is dissolving
in this dark sanctuary around me,
but then I can hear your voice - at last...


"Even angels have to run their course,
for sacredness is in your wings
but your essential flight
is the solitary one."

Keeper

Broad and immaculate

I rest here

with my whole body,

my woman's body

moulded from labour pains,

warm primal clay,

a keeper kiln-fired

in the furnace of my existence.

Behind closed eyes

I see them come and go again

the women, the children,

and the lost

those who would nestle

between my breasts,

drown themselves in my flesh,

or shed their tears

in the bowl of my lap.

Men, boys, young gods

small of hip

or rough-hewn as I am

though hewn from granite

all the same.

Where is the one

who is without sorrow?

 This is why I console all those

who seek my consolation.

Kahlil Gibran on Talking

Kahlil Gibran ~ Self-portret

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;

And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.

The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.

And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.

In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.

When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.

Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;

For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered

When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.

Unicorn

Unicorn

I am my secret self
I am the secret wood
I am the seen and the unseen things
the heard and the never heard.

If you wish to conquer me
(and I know you do)
four trials you must go through:
the quest, the chase, the capture,
and the taming too.

You, my questing knight
with your helmet and lance
glorious deeds will not win me
you have not a chance.

You, my eager hunter
following my trail
your arrows will fall from the air
you will not prevail.

I am a legend
I am a fable
I am your unrequited longing
for the sweet impossible.

For no impossibility
is sweeter than mine
excepting but one
that is the sweet divine.

Only pure love will win me
for only pure love is in me.

Dear lady, most chaste of womankind
I lay my tamed head upon your seated skirt
with all the love within me.

Tapestry The Lady and the Unicorn, 15th century, Musée du Moyen-Age, Cluny, Paris, 

Dear Child

Dear Child

Even before you
Could behold the light of Earth
Your mother and you were one
Invisible and inseparable
Enfolded in the Infinite


Breathless
She awaited the tender weavings
Of the threads of life
Till once in the light of day
Your soul awakened, and one became two


Patiently
Time, like a spider, weaves
Its web of silver pathways
Upon which we are borne along
Alone, and yet together


The light of love
Weaves inner threads
That bind us on the journey
Becoming, one by one
In the Infinite, once more... ONE

*

For Marthe
our newly born granddaughter
in gratitude

Art by Iris Sullivan

"The Piece of Heaven Outside My Window"

I have hesitated a long time before deciding to write about the woman who has been an inspiration to me for over three decades: a woman who found God by looking deep into herself. This statement could so easily sound like an evangelical calling, but such an association could not be further from the essence of the person to whom I am referring. For whatever she might have discovered, it was not religion in the context that most of us would recognise it. For her, religion merely meant one's own personal relationship with God, and seeing that God in everyone. The woman was Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman who, in the heart of the Holocaust, manifested a world of beauty and reverence. 


'Become who you are', was the lesson received by Etty Hillesum from her spiritual teacher, the palmist Julius Spier. And during the extreme conditions of the Second World War, that is what she strived to do. She remained true to herself, and through her example she has become a guiding light for many to this day. Her diary and letters bear witness to her spiritual awakening. She gradually learned to recognise a certainty in herself, a specific something that could never be taken away from her, a something that in a way made her invulnerable. In that part of her soul she recognised God.

The writing of her diary had a meditative effect upon her spirit. She ventured ever deeper into herself, eventually to discover God in the depths of her soul: "..and here is perhaps the most perfect expression of my life's feeling: I rest in myself. And that 'myself', that deepest and richest part of me in which I rest, I call 'God'."

On the day that Julius Spier died, on the very day that the Gestapo would come to take him away, Etty wrote: "You have allowed me to speak the name of God. You have been the intermediary between God and myself, and now you, my teacher, are gone, and with you my direct path to God. It is good that this happens, that is what I feel."


Etty believed that many people do not handle suffering in the way in which they perhaps need to. "People draw back from feeling suffering, and therefore become further entangled in fear and self-pity: suffering is not beneath human dignity. One can suffer either with or without dignity. What I mean is: most Westerners don't understand the art of suffering, and in its place put a thousand fears. This is no longer living, what most people do: fear, resignation, bitterness, hate, despair. My God, it is all so easily understood. But when this life is taken from them, then not so much is taken away from them? One accepts death as a part of life, including the worst form of death. And do we not live a whole life each day, and does it really make a difference if we live one day shorter or longer? I am with the hungry, with the mistreated, with the dying, every day, but I am also with the jasmin and with the piece of heaven outside my window. There is a place for everything in life. For a belief in God and for a terrible destruction."

Westerbork

The further the diary progresses, the more Etty's life is coloured by the resolution to place herself in the service of others. During the course of the diary she prepares herself more and more to go to the Westerbork concentration camp when her summons arrives, rather than choosing to go into hiding. In the first instance she did not seek to evade what she considered to be her fate and the collective fate of her people;  secondly she wanted to go with the others to be a support for them. The last words in her diary underscore this: "One would wish to be a bandage on many wounds." 


Etty Hillesum wrote her diary during a time of a great explosion of hatred and aggression, and in just such a time, as her only weapon, she chose love: "All catastrophes emanate from ourselves. In our inner selves we must free ourselves from everything, from every immutable possibility. From every cliché, from every tie that binds, we must have the courage to let everything go, every norm and every foothold. We must dare to make the great spring into the cosmos, dare to risk, and then, then, is life so endlessly rich and overflowing, even in its deepest suffering."


Survivors from the Westerbork camp confirm that for many in those dark days Etty was both a support and a mental shield, a shining example through the light of her personality.

On 7 September 1943 Etty Hillesum, together with her entire family, was set upon a train to Poland. A Red Cross notice reported that she had died on 30 November of that same year in Auschwitz, age 29.

You are welcome to read my second post about Etty Hillesum's life and insights here:
God will Nevertheless be Safe with Us

Our Undivided Selves: Message from the Magdalene

Today is the saints day of Mary Magdalene. But which Mary Magdalene? Surely not the redeemed woman of ill repute, who is the version popularised and perpetuated by the church. Beyond this orthodox version is another, and it is this Mary - the Mary of our secret and spiritual selves, the wise Mary - whom I honour today.

This fresco shows Adam seeking his true source. Separated from this source in himself after the Fall, he will have to work hard to recover what has been lost. But there is hope! His garment of watery blue wavelets reminds him of the nature of the source, and the source itself, flowing forth from the feminine forms, is close beside him. Fresco from a monastery in Cantauque, Provence

In his article: "The woman in Gnosticism' , Gilles Quispel writes: "In the Nirvana of the original paradise the division of the human condition is transcended. The original human, Adam, was man and woman united in one before Eve was taken out of his side. When the sleep of unconsciousness overcame him - the actual Fall - the unity was lost, and the battle of the sexes became a fact. He, the Son of God, was himself an androgyne, both man and woman. Man must follow his example and also create from both man and woman a unity within himself." (G. Quispel, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica).


The relationship of Mary Magdalene towards Jesus was often described in Gnosticism as a relationship of spiritual love. In the preserved text of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Mary says: "He has printed his seal within me. I have become what I originally was. I was born. I was in conflict. But I am become as one."


When Mary says that through her birth she was 'in conflict', she means that her entry into the material world precipitated tension and struggle in conflict with her spiritual longing.
Gnosis recognises the idea that nothing is individual. Everything is in division. But individuals are in the true sense of the word 'in-dividual': undivided. They are restored in their completeness and are no longer in conflict.
Jesus guided Mary in these mysteries whereby she once more became one. Which is to say: fully reunited with her spiritual being.


So our own contemporary use of the term 'individual', and its even being described as the cult of the individual, with all its emphasis on individuality and the personal ego, is actually a far cry from the word's original intended meaning: that of the undivided self. The Magdalene's words point us back to the true meaning, to the 'mother city', and away from the Roman stance of Peter, with its emphasis on the unyielding masculine rocks of the mountains.

Walking Toward the Mystery

I am walking toward the mystery

And I am walking slowly

I am in no hurry anymore

For I see both the known

And the unknown

My judgment is sound

And my aims are true

I feel my feet

When I am walking the silent watch

But if you need to cross a river

And it seems too hard to do

Then call on me

And I'll gather my strength

We’ll find a way

Let me tell you something

For I see doubt in your eyes

believe me, my dear child

That now I am old,

I finally see that

Mine is the dark night

And also the moon

And when glimmering pathways

Appear on the river

My boat just follows

Life is that simple

Now I am walking toward the mystery

And I am walking slowly.

Art: "Annual Rings of Life" by Cheng Lian

She Wanders the Shore

She wanders the shore

Listening to the waves’ rise and fall

And the sounds of stories

That wash onto this beach

Where she stands

From far lands they have

Ridden the waves

To be with her

Gratefully she stoops

To gather them

Where they lie

Among the shells

And the foams' whiteness

Soon her baskets will be full

She wanders the shore

Listening to the murmurs

And the secret whispers:

All the tales of the world

That drift in with the tide

From the great and giving ocean of stories.

Photo Princess Angeline (Duwamish) in 1896 by Edward S. Curtis