Carola Rackete, captain of the ship "Sea Watch," arrested last Saturday in Italy when she docked her ship after spending two weeks in international waters with dozens of rescued African migrants on-board.
Now the flames they followed joan of arc
As she came riding through the dark;
No moon to keep her armour bright,
No man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, I'm tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
A wedding dress or something white
To wear upon my swollen appetite.
Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way,
You know I've watched you riding every day
And something in me yearns to win
Such a cold and lonesome heroine.
And who are you? she sternly spoke
To the one beneath the smoke.
Why, I'm fire, he replied,
And I love your solitude, I love your pride.
Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,
Saying this she climbed inside
To be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of joan of arc,
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.
It was deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of joan of arc,
And then she clearly understood
If he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
But must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?
Song by Leonard Cohen
Only in Oceania can you go to prison for an act of loving kindness. Beautiful song and tribute to a very brave lady Carola Rackete. A woman who embodies the symbol of the heroïne of ancient mythologie.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a message with your Cassandra blog in mind. But I think your Chimera blog is a more appropriate place. In your words "the Chimera is a reflection of ancient stories and carries strong symbols that act on the human mind”
I do not believe it is true that myths are the fairy tales ancient peoples used to explain the world because they lacked scientific knowledge as seems the common believe today. Our present view of the world it a myth too. The Universe is Mental, things do not exist. Our world is a Chimera, not in the sense of metaphor, but in reality.
After listening to Cassandra, what do you do? If you do not want to fall into despair you can opt for the Stoic view on life, sure.
But before we decide do that; can we consider the discovery of quantum science that the Universe is Mental and imagine what it may imply for the current paradigm we use to shape our world?
Todays developments in society and the collapse of the bio-sphere are very desturbing. How come humanity has ended up in this inferno? Can we escape from the self-created floods and fires that are now devouring us?
In tracing back the origin of the pollution that poisons earth, water and air and threatens our health, I ended up in the human mind and the way in which it relates to its world. We have locked ourselves up into a matrix created by our minds and it is on fire! Where do we go from here?
By some miraculous act of grace science discovers that the world is not material, as we have imagined it to be.
According to Prof. Richard Conn Henry from Johns Hopkins University quantum science discovered that The Universe is Mental. Things do not exist, only observations and observations are not-things.
We are in an existential need of a paradigm which enables us to view who we are and how we relate to our world in a fundamentally different way.
Quantum science is presenting such a paradigm to us now. A paradigm in which the Universe is Mental, not material. This is good news because it may enable us to change our outworn material paradigm into a mental/imaginal paradigm. The mental realm of the universe may offer many possibilities for imaginative discoveries about our true nature.
Where do we find the inspiration to guide us in shaping this mental/imaginal paradigm with our imaginal observations? Do we dare to take the leap out of the prevailing matrix, open our minds to ancient myths and the various mystical traditions known to humanity and study their stories and discoveries of the mental/imaginal realm? According to the Persian mystics we can come to see the world in very different ways.
The current paradigm (chimera?) of materialism has blown-up the Western mind and now we find ourselves in a collective state of anger and despair. Our leaders are contemplating the destruction of one of humanities oldest civilizations and in the process risk to erase the mystical knowledge of an ancient spiritual tradition that may hold valuable clues for the design of a new imaginal paradigm for society.
Whom do we see when we see our chosen leaders, listen to their speeches and read their tweets? Are those spiritual beings or monsters from the underworld? Did our collective materialistic paradigm/chimera give rise to these dark minds and their for-ever wars?
The bleuprint of the Material Universe did not work out very well and by now we know all about collapse and extinction.
Not only myths and mystics refer to chimera’s, quantum science does so too. Maybe we can learn from them something that could be of value to our lives. Could we imagine a Chimera wherein the saving of migrants from drowning is considered an act of kindness instead of a trepassing of the law? Did we not promise ourselves something like that after WWII? If no-thing is, why do we remain stuck in the notion that our present Chimera is the only valid one?
Thanks for your message, Heleen. That the universe is nothing real is not new. I don't think we need quantum mechanics to know that. There comes to my mind the poet Issa, who said "This world of dew is a world of dew, and yet, and yet" And, I would add, the world is dew until you need a dentist. A little prosaic, but so is life!
DeleteYou are right, there is no point in arguing about the sensations of a toothache.
ReplyDeleteInstead I would like to express my appreciation for your two blogs. I do enjoy reading your posts! They trigger my imagination in unexpected ways. And isn’t that what a Chimera is all about? A symbol for a no-thing, in no-space, in no-time. Standing at the edge of the Seneca cliff in this heat-wave made me thirsty for some other reality.
I have to say that I like "Chimeras" more than "Cassandra" -- the latter has become a little technical, at least I see that more technical posts have more readers. Chimeras is a little vague and "dreamy", the problem is that posts here have at most a few hundred clicks, against the few thousands of clicks on Cassandra. But so is life and I like to think that the people who click here enjoy what I write.
DeleteBTW, did we interact somewhere else? I can't remember for sure.
I do not think we met before. I do like the Cassandra blog as well as the Chimera blog. Indeed they are two different worlds. I am looking for a way to bridge the gap between these worlds by means of some dialectic effort and a leap into another paradigm. It worked for me when I used as a premise the Universe is Mental and re-oriented the meaning of words with the help of symbols. By means of the symbol of the Chimera I could avoid making the paradigm another ‘reality'. And upon reaching the emptiness of emptiness there was nothing more to say.
ReplyDeleteSymbols are indeed a powerful means to re-shape ‘reality’, and with the symbol of the Chimera you can avoid turning the new paradigm into ’truth’. Our minds are trained to use words and concepts to shape reality. To discover the power of symbols to shape reality is quite nice actually.
It seems there is no need to try and explain them at length. They have some magical power of their own and seem to operate on a different level of the mind.
Message to Earth from Major Tom:
If you are sounding the alarm on the collapse of The Empire and the collapse of the Bio-sphere, please don’t forget to put out signs for the emergency exit. Dreams of windmills and climate engineering may keep you trapped, don’t let them block the escape hatch.
Dear Dr. Bardi, it may be coincidence or I crossed some mind patterns in the Mental Universe during deep sleep. Either way some of the information I am looking for appeared on my e-doorstep this afternoon.
ReplyDeleteThe work of two of my countrymen: Klaas van Egmond https://www.klaasvanegmond.nl/english/
and Herbert van Erkelens, theoretical physicist, with an interest in symbolism. He published an e-book on Wolfgang Pauli and the alchemical symbolism in Pauli's dreams (in Dutch). I will try to figure out the symbolism of the Chimera in more detail. The piercing of the Chimera with an arrow covered with lead is facinating. Why lead? For scientists Pandora's box is an interesting symbolic story too.
That's an interesting link, thank you. About lead, it is because it was the second lowest melting point metal known in antiquity, the other was mercury. So, it made sense to choke the chimera with a lump of molten lead.
DeleteBTW, you are Dutch? Where do you live?
You are looking at this from within a scientific paradigm/matrix. I tried to look at it from within a mental/imaginal paradigm. I used the imaginal thinking of alchemical ‘science’, I believe it originated in the early Renaissance period, to find an answer to my question. Lead is a poisonous metal. How could one interpret the myth? A chimera arises in times of collapse (war, natural disasters, personal crisis) it is made out of dark thoughts and negative emotions (despair). To kill the chimera of dark thoughts and negative emotions you use the lead of positive thoughts and uplifting emotions (lead is the only means by which the hero on the white horse can kill the chimera). From the point of view of the prevailing paradigm of our age this is nonsense (it is a myth). The chimera attacks the threatening world it perceives outside of itself because it believes thoughts and emotions are ‘real’ things, caused by ‘real’ stuff happening out there. But now, instead of comfortably holding onto fixed beliefs, you start to question these beliefs. Am I right? Is this the ’truth’ of the observations I make? Could it be that inside and outside are happening within the chimera that I think into existence? Your ratio tells you this can’t be true because ‘reality’ is showing you that you are right. But you don't like the reality you see and you fall into despair. This is where the leap of faith enters the stage. To leap out of the chimera you need courage to venture into the unknown and faith that it will lead to a positive outcome. Rational thinking cannot do this for you.
DeleteLook at the news and what does one see? A huge collective chimera. How to kill it seems quite obvious now. But you will have a hard time explaining it to parties fighting each other. However, if you are able to get the fighting parties around the same table, and take them on a trip of imaginal thinking, they may recognize their thinking is a chimera. That recognition could be the uncovering of the common ground. Which in essence is no-ground. A chimera is born out of fear. Fear of collapse of one’s ‘reality’. Fear of losing ground.
If you would like to explore imaginal thinking as a means of discovering new ways of thinking outside prevailing paradigms please visit this blog:
http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2019/01/we-live-in-rainbow-of-chaos.html
http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2013/11/okar-research-index.html
In case you would like to contact Okar: okarresearch@gmail.com
Thank you for reading my chimera.
Much Ado about No-thing
ReplyDeleteYes, I am Dutch, at present I live in France. In a region with many pre-historic caves and cave paintings. Looking at the paintings makes you wonder about the mental world of the people who painted them. They were great artists, these paintings have perspective. Imagine walking through a pitch black cave in the dark with a torch and what you see on the walls by the light of the torch as you walk is a motion picture in 3D. That is not a minor achievement of pre-historic cave dwellers 15.000 years ago.
I glimpsed at the blog of Okar to check out some imaginal thinking. This is wonderful stuff:
http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2015/11/malahim-armageddon-mappo-cycle.html
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-1-10.htm
Whether you conceptualize a world by means of scienific measurments or by means of imaginal thinking, it will collapse.
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/07/alaska-on-fire.html
Even people with a clear mind must remain attentive. Mind is a great magician, demons may rush in at any time:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150115214456/http://www.inquiringmind.com/Articles/WarAndPeace.htm
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/gettingmessage.html
My personal universe shows me there are cobwebs in the room, I am going to fetch a broom to clear them away. Which broom shall I use today? https://dailystoic.com/seneca/
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/fuang/itself.pdf
This will be my last comment. My field of interest is not collapse but mind and how beliefs shape our world. My comments are an invitation to consider the possibility of a Mental Universe and how this way of understanding could change our experience of the world. If he is fire, she must be wood Tibetan style:
ReplyDeleteThe Prayer of Kuntuzangpo (Subtitled) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSbldGbH3Ok
This is an imaginal Tibetan Buddhist description of a Mental Universe. It explains, by means of symbols, how the world arises in our individual minds and what happens if we understand the world to be dual. Unveil the symbols and have fun on your trip through the mental universe of Tibetan Buddhism.