This is a response from Erica M Cornelius to the last post. Erica is a writer and editor among other things. She helped produce the recent book, Crossing the Abyss, written by her husband Jerry Cornelius.
Oz 93
I love what Jodorowsky had to say and I love your post.
In confronting death on the horizontal plane right now, we are collectively invited to learn the lesson of Death. "Death" is the ongoing culmination of the alchemical Quest. That full engagement of the great Quest is called the reddening (rubedo).
As I see it, that lesson for each one of us is to realize our authentic, individual form as the Holy Grail, as the Form of all form, Prakriti. Each one of us is already eternal – in our specificity as well as in our universal essence! – if only it is realized.
How do we realize what seems to be our separateness and our vulnerability as the Holy Grail itself? There's no easy answer, but there is a simple one. Each one of us must Balance the prevailing attention toward the multiplicity outward with a corresponding and equal attention to the unity within. That solution includes knowing Self, and it is a lifelong quest. The present pandemic poses an invitation to deepen that balancing act, or to get started.
As I'm guessing you already know, Death is the name of the Tarot path corresponding to the Hebrew letter Nun 50. Nun connects Netzach-Venus—Love—with Tiphareth-Sun-Beauty. Death is intimately connected to the Heart.
Love in Venus is Bhakti. It is the fervent dedication of all one is to the Whole.
Beauty in the Sun is Harmony‚—the balanced engagement of all of the various components of one's incarnation this time around.
Nun-Death is the path of the Woman in alchemy. Females approach it differently than males, but, regardless, to tread it requires that we embrace our physical and psychological embodiment, our separateness. To embrace it requires courage. I'm glad you used that word.
Why courage? Because it is not enough anymore to wallow in our egoic pursuits. Also because it is not enough anymore to run away from our animal form and from our supposed imperfections toward the admittedly glorious Christ aspect. The feminine (specific form) can no longer remain regarded as evil and pestilent. Balance is now required between the form and the essence below the Abyss even as IT is unified eternally Above.
So on the one hand the pandemic invites us to face our egoic illusions and phantoms—our Bullshit—when it comes to every last thing we ever felt, thought or done. If we were to die today, those illusions would be shown to us as empty fantasies. If you've ever been with someone who is dying, you know this.
Yet on the other hand, the pandemic also calls us to loosen our egoic attachment to what we really are! It invites us to see who and what we are for its crystalline structure, for its potential. It invites us to live who we really are and who we must be for the sake of All Beings Everywhere. Our curse is our gift if we courageously live it as such.
We need courage because we must not be afraid to die. To be afraid to die is to cling to our illusions, when in fact what is real about us can never die. Death is only a change of form. The Source of Form and the Source of Life are eternally unified in a state of pure potential. Manifestations change to protect the innocent as well as to satisfy those who know.
Death requires the magical link to be made securely. To die properly, one must have rapture, and that rapture must be devoted exclusively to one's own Divinity. A great deal of rubbish clearing has to happen in order to have the courage to "follow one's bliss" to quote Joseph Campbell. This pandemic invites us to see what automatically stokes our passion and to follow it.
This pandemic invites us to appreciate the impermanence and rarity of any given form. Cherish it. Cherish it.
It says, "Be who you are. Make the most of your life. You shall never pass this way again.
93 93/93 Erica M. Cornelius
No comments:
Post a Comment