Enchantment and Sadness
I suppose we each have our own particular sadness. We came to this world, an ongoing party that we did not design, to find so many things already in place. The 40 hour work week, the government of our particular country, the state of the natural world and the history of how we have related to it as a species over the eons. My own love for fireflies and frogs and deep, dark starry nights sometimes leads me to grief. Younger generations won’t know what nature was like in my childhood when the population of humankind was half of what it is today. Nor will I ever see the vistas of newly discovered continents and the natural life that lived in them.
Nevertheless, there are enchantments, plenty. My new kitten, an indulgence no doubt, but a joy, drags his toys across the living room floor and then leaps over disgruntled Circe. She is a Void cat, dark and ominous, but easily tamed with a treat or admiration, which she surely understands even when it is merely of the verbal kind.
I have taken a break from painting for the last few weeks. Something stirs within and needs time to grow. Richard Wilhelm, a student of Carl Jung’s, translated The Secret of the Golden Flower, and published it in 1931. It’s an ancient Chinese text. In it is a description of the circulation of the light; the task of the spiritual student. When something deep inside is taking form, it is necessary to circulate the light through out the inner body until the insight forms and can, eventually, be shared. Patience is required, and solitude-because only in the spiritual womb can insight be birthed.
I circulate the light. There is a mixture of joy and sadness; contemplation and inquiry. I await the birth of the new. There is a stillness that has come over me and I sense the need to honor it. It seems undifferentiated from the cool rainy spring that has made my garden lush but kept me inside. I have a sensation of waiting, and although I don’t approve of waiting, one can’t move forward when the goal of the movement is as yet unformed. Quiet and rain-like I allow the circulation to continue.
There is something I can do. Deepen the stillness. Drop any resistance to it. Seek out and let go assumptions that color it. Let the stillness become transparent, uncolored by mind as much as possible. Wait there until even waiting drops.
Namaste,
Leslie
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Thank you for this beautifully quiet meditation/contemplation.