Expectation and Remembrance

Expectation and Remembrance

"Still thou art blest, campar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But, och! I backward cast mty ee [eye],
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!"
   ___ Robert Burns, "To a Mouse"


   It is only humans who fetter themselves with the chains of past and future, animals experience a continual present. That they do not inhabit their memories or expectations is a blessed condition for them that we cannot share. We do not know at what point early hominids evolved from this blessed condition, although many of the world's creation myths speak about the fall from that state. Remembrance of the past and expectation of the future have proved a dangerous knowledge. The past has been used to dictate the false paradigms of history to terrible ends:  the victim's justifications for terrorism; the bully's justifications for conquest, suppression and genocide. The future has thrown back its shadow in no less starling ways: the utopian idealist's program of eugenics; the defensive group's overmilitarization. It would seem that when we call upon past and future out of fear, we betray our animal origins again and again.
   Expectation and remembrance can be balanced by the eternal now. By respecting the ancestors and the descendants equally, we can always find resourceful solutions to present difficulties, especially if we access the daring and courage within us without fear. A further evolution of human from animal origins will arrive when we can achieve the balance of remembrance and expectation with the now that is happening, now...and now....and now.

"Attend to the eternal present for an hour, an afternoon, or a whole day, without conscious recourse to remembrance or expectation."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Authority and Authenticity

Authority and Authenticity

"Our deeds remain single till they wed perseverance."
     ___ Welsh proverb (trans CM)


Many people seek validation for their spiritual pathway. Because we may have garnered the components of our spiritual search from many different places and traditions, we often have a feeling of fraudulence or lack of authenticity. Our efforts to make sense of these components, to make a living habitation or pathway from them, are haunted by fear of authority. We feel that if we change the received pattern, if we deviate from the spiritual tradition into which we were born, we will be punished or shunned. This has certainly been the message given by organized religion to those on a spiritual search: authority is withheld from those who heretically deviate in our society; authenticity can derive only from the centrally authorized mandate.
   No human being shares the exact same spiritual path as another. Each person constellates various elements of spirituality that speak to him, borrowing from old traditions and new perspectives. Finding authority for what we do, who we are, cannot come solely from the human world: authenticity arrives when we have begun to move from the known into the unknown through the unique thresholds that life opens to us. Perseverance is the key.

Answer these questions to get a sense of your own search for authority and authenticity:
* Whose approval am I seeking?
* Who encourages me?
*How do I gain vitality? What drains my vitality?
*Who/what do I need to control?
To whom/what do I consistently relinquish power?
*What do I need for self-nurture?"
*Which old repeating patterns prevent me living in balance?"

[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Uninvited Guests

Uninvited Guests

"Three things that come without asking: fear, jealousy,
and love."     ____ Scots Gaelic triad


   When fear grips us, our ability to act quickly or think clearly evaporates; we may become completely petrified and powerless. Fear often skims along just below the surface of perception, ready to appear when given  opportunity. Its appeasing can lead to avoidance: we can be thrown out of the house of our soul by extreme fear. Fear cannot be evicted or overcome as such, though it can be transformed. Fear holds the key to lock away our abilities. It gain access to them again, we have to grasp the key and transform fear into power, recognizing that one becomes the other, just as water becomes ice.
    Jealousy brings with it a fierce twisting of our perceptions so that everything concerning the object of our jealousy is distorted. When Cuchulainn fell in love with another woman, his wife Emer, was consumed by a terrible jealousy that changed her perceptions utterly: "What's red is beautiful, what's new is bright, what's tall is fair, what's familiar is stale. The unknown is honored, the known is neglected."  The only cure for Cuchulainn's enchantment and Emer's jealousy was for the God of the Otherworld, Manannan, to shake his cloak between them to bring them both forgetfulness. By all account, this is the only socially acceptable antidote to this particular guest.
    Love is not altogether a welcome guest either. Its coming is often accompanied by disorientation and upheaval.  It is frequently confounded with illness, as when King Ailell took to his bed with an unspecified disorder: his doctors finally proclaimed that he was suffering from "the two deadly pangs which no doctor can cure: love and jealousy."  The only remedy for love is reciprocated love; this and nothing else can ease the pangs.

"Which was the last of these uninvited guests to visit you? How did you cope? What did you learn from its visit?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Sleep an the Soul

Sleep And the Soul

"In sleep what are you, in sleep,
in the ebb of the tide:
a body dormant, a thing breathing,
or a soul afloat?
What are you in sleep
in the small watch of the night
but a ray of life gathering forces,
the secret retreat of light."
   ___Ross Nichols, "The Cosmic Shape"


   While we may not have a strong sense of what our soul does in its mysterious circuit of the night, most of us value the coming of darkness as a time of quiet, of winding down from the day's activities, of restoring ourselves in the cavern of sleep. For those who remember some of their dreams, there is the added pleasure of sharing in the adventures of the soul. Sometimes these are only a recapitulation of the day's activities; other times they are strange revelation whose meanings we can only guess at. And very occasionally, we find a treasury of meaning so overwhelming as to make us conscious of the soul's capacity.
    The circuits of the soul during sleep enter into a timelessness in which our past and future are inextricably mixed, in which we meet the dead, encounter the expected, and fly and dance and swim through the elements that we normally do not move within. Whether or not the daytime consciousness has a spiritual framework or dedication, the night wandering soul encounters spiritual allies and experiences inspirational truths. Within the compass of sleep and night, the soul explores the unseen universe with skillful knowledge, leaving the body as a secret retreat of the light that will emerge at dawning. But it is in the night that the light shines brightest and can be perceived.

"Live the next twenty-four hours with awareness of the interconnectedness of night and day, soul and body."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Boasting

Boasting

"As blackbirds are to swans, as ounces to hundredweights,
As shapes of peasant-women are to noble queens....
As drones are to great music, as rushlights are to candles,
So is any sword to my own sword."
    ___ Saying of Cokman mac Leinin (trans CM)


   Most accounts of the early Celts note that boastfulness was virtually an art form among them, often leading to factionalism and argumentative competitiveness. Theses factors were instrumental time after time in the downfall of sovereign Celtic nations, an inability to combine forces proving disastrous when organized foreign armies came against them.
   When boasting is lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek, when everyone else is in on the joke, it can be a pleasant after-supper pastime. Such boasting was often the custom during and after feasts: heroes would boast their deeds and possessions in a way that now reminds us of the bluster of world-class wrestlers. But when boasting becomes seriously competitive, there can be problems.
    If we boast in the spirit of competition - whether we stretch the truth broadly or just embellish it - sooner or later we will be asked to run the race. One thoughtless boast can outrun our ability to perform it very easily; a lifetime habit of boasting can swathe the boaster in a garment of illusion that will eventually be seen through.

"Check up on your own boast factor and ensure that it will not disturb the peace. Remember times when boasting caused you trouble."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Triskele of Energy

The Triskele of Energy

"Energy is eternal delight."
    ___William Blake, "Energy is Eternal Delight"


   The Celtic peoples had a sacred symbol that embodied the energy of the three-legged cross - we see this spiraling movement of life. Is perpetual motion, turning its three legs ever sunwise, is the very turas of delight. The three-legged whirligig of the triskele appears in Celtic art from the fifth century B.C. on, adorning many articles as the central design feature. It is a sign of good fortune, all things moving sunwise in the centrifugal dance of life. The triskele preserves the wearer from scathe and gives him a long life.
   The triskele spins like a whirlpool or propeller blade, lending its threefold motion to the wheel of life. Stasis is not in its nature. The innate triplicity of the cosmos underscores the whole of Celtic culture, providing a sacred impetus for all action. Each leg of the triskele is one limb of the sacred spirit of all life; all three legs together imbue the universe with the energy to activate the body, heart, and mind of all beings with physical vitality, emotional responsiveness and mental agility, unlocking the wealth of our potential from sheer inertia, emotional stasis, and mental laziness. The energy of the threefold triskele runs through every part of the universe and is available to us all. By drawing consciously upon its qualities, we can grace our lives with an ever-living energy that encompasses the beginning, middle, and end of everything we undertake.

"If there is any leg of the triskele to which you are unresponsive, look to the appropriate areas in your own life to see what fear, doubt or uncertainty is keeping you static and unmoving in your development."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Land of Women

The Land of Women

"Do not fall on a bed of sloth,
Let not your intoxication overcome you,
Begin a voyage across the clear sea,
If you would reach the Land of Women."
   ___"Voyage of Bran mac Febal," early Irish text
    (trans CM)


   These words are addressed to the Irish hero Bran mac Febal by an otherworldly woman who summons him to set forth on his quest to the Land of Women - a place that in early Celtic tradition was considered to be the abode of bliss, satisfaction and achievement. She urges him to clear his sights, attend to the task in hand, conjure a vision of beauty and delight, and set off toward it. Regions of the Celtic otherworld can be reached by the voyage of the soul across the severing waters of the west, containing a series of islands that must be encountered in sequence before the traveler comes to the innermost Land (or Island ) of Women. The wisdom-keepers of the soul-voyage reveal themselves as a sisterhood of women who guard the mysteries of life. In Britain there is the myth of Avalon being guarded by Morgen and her eight sisters; in Gaul, there are reports of sisterhoods dedicated to teaching, fostering, prophecy, healing, crafts, shape-shifting and weather magick.
   While we may not be summoned so dramatic a way as Bran, we each have a quest to which we are called. This quest concerns the fulfillment of our life's purpose and is about using our innate gifts in the widest possible way. The inhabitants of the Land of Women have no patience with sloth. They are the energizers, keepers and empowerers who maintain the dynamo of the world. To do this work, they need our assistance and application. If we make our voyage toward them, we will indeed find our way to the goal of desires.

"What gifts have your faery godmothers given you? How are you using them to further your quest?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]