Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning

"Old loaves, old insults, old wrongs, old hates,
old prides,old contempts, old horrows, old taboos, old totems...... [C]an I shed these
worm-skins of remembrance?"
    ____John Cowper Powys, "Obstinate Cymric"


   At this season, we are often driven into a bout of spring cleaning, throwing out the unwanted and bringing new order to our household. But what of the deeper hurts, the old anguish, the festering wrongs, and the immovable obstinacies of our very being?
    Select one such m,malingering obstruction to be removed from your mental attic by asking and answering the following questions:
* What past wrong or hurt embitters you the most?
* What past relationship still lingers painfully?
* What childhood horror shadows you?
* What traditional prejudice still clouds your horizon?
* To what or whom are you still shackled by hate?
* What long-dead voice of authority still have you leaping?
* What old story against yourself still rankles?

Now take a walk in nature, meditating upon the issue at hand. Let your eye fall upon that seem to speak to you about your own case: these might be fallen leaves, pieces of rubbish blowing about, feathers, berries, bark, mushrooms, flowers, and so on. Without damaging the landscape and its inhabitants, collect some of these things and assemble them into an emblem of your issue. These collected items can be tied together with string or woven together with grasses. Create something really beautiful. When it is complete make a small fire outside. Relinquish your issue to the cleansing flames and burn the emblem you have made, visualizing its influence passing away from you. Stay and watch the emblem turn to ash and be borne away.

"Make an emblem and burn it, as suggested above."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Meme Warfare:

Memes are ideas that travel. Memes spread and infect us - trends, logos, slogans, tunes, cultural norms, ideas about race and sex, domination and entitlement. In this culture, 3000 marketing messages are rammed into your neocortex every day. It's one-way nonconsensualo and violet. Potent memes can change minds, alter behaviors, and transform cultures. In an authentic culture, memes ooze down from the top, and the most repeated ideas win. We live inside this culture-manufacturing machine.

Global capitalism is in its cancer stage, and metastaizing to kill its host, our only planet. We're the first generation to get ournsense of the world mostly through one screen or another. Our 'truths' come from our machines, not from contact with the world, or each other. Abstractions seem more real than reality; logos, movie stars, the Dow Jones are more real than trees, starving children or climate change. We are fighting not just the destruction of nature, but the destruction of meaning. How can we win?

Not by technology, and not by force. Only by imagination: the ability to tell ourselves different stories. There's more to life than being rich, fast, young, thin, beautiful and technologically advanced. We need new ideas, new meaning, new memes. Social change agents spreading our ideas throughout the culture will create maps for getting to there from here. This is the literal battle for the hearts, minds, and attention spans of an ever more anestheized society. We can consciously, deliberately, and fundamentally redirect the trajectory of history.

What are the memes that clearly communicate Life - inter-connectedness, democracy, biocentrism, renewable energy, freedom? Think about it. Pass it on.
[From "We'Moon 2011" page 63]

Refusing Evil

Refusing Evil

"And Balor begged Lugh, shortly before his beheading: 'Set my head on your own handsome head and so earn my blessing. The triumph and terror that the men of Inis Fail recognised me: I would they might be recognised within my daughter's son."
___ Dunaire Finn (trans. CM)


    The primordial god Balor (BAY'lor) had only one eye, but it could sear and shrivel all that it looked upon so that few could overcome him. His grandson, Lugh (LOO'kh), was destined to overcome Balor and his magic. But even at the point of death, Balor attempted to subvert his bright grandson. Threatened with beheading, he saw a way in which his stolen power could live on: he bade Lugh place his grandfather's head upon his own in order that the young man might inherit Balor's deadly powers. In a dialogue reminiscent of that between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, Lugh does not submit himself to 'the darkening of the force'; he resolutely beheads Balor and casts his head into the deep waters of the western ocean.
   The ability to refuse evil and not be swayed by its persuasions is not strong in us if we are not in the habit of attending to the integrity and virtue of our soul. Evil does not always have a baleful eye, greedy teeth, and a dark cloak; it can appear in attractive forms that sway our opinion before we have given it heed. To work against the purposes of our soul, against the harmony of the universe, is to place ourselves in league with those who serve only themselves, who are interested not in preserving the web of life but in making life serve them. Evil can be increased if we give power to it; its diminishment lies in our refusal to serve it.

"Where has evil touched your life recently? Meditate upon how its power steals the power of the universe. Ask your spiritual allies to show you what protects you from evil."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

In Our End is Our Beginning

In Our is Our Beginning

"Our final bliss, perfectly passionate, perfectly kind:
It is our first love, long since left behind."
   ___Ruth Pitter, "Good Enthroned"

    The surprise, delight or astonishment that passes over the face of the dying as they glimpse what lies beyond is frequently remarked upon by those who attend a deathbed. Those who have kept vigil feel a sense of shared privilege when they observe this, a feeling of exaltation that rises up above sorrow, weariness, and bereavement. What has happened here?  At the very verge of consciousness, the dying see briefly beyond the horizon that lies between life and death. What they recognize there is not a barrenness or an absence of everything, rather, it is more life, a recognition of whatever they once thought lost to them forever. That which they relinquished or neglected in years past, as well as the very potential of the soul, is rediscovered in an instant.
   The wise treat death as a friend who will restore them, not only in body, but also in spirit, to everyone and everything they have ever loved. Living with death as a friend, as a daily companion, is not a morbid practice. It helps to reconnect us with our beginnings, when our hopes and potential were still strongly flowing; it casts aside fear and strengthens the life that we still enjoy. If we substitute the image of our soul's beloved for the popular image of death, we will immeasurably help ourselves. Death is the soul's friend, the turner of the key, who liberates us to inhabit new freedoms and who reintroduces us to old loves so that we can find our way back to the primal beginnings our soul's story.

"Consider what hopes you have for your own death, even though hopes is not a word you would normally apply to dying. If you have a strong fear of death, ask help of your soul's beloved - your deepest spiritual source of assistance and support - in redefining your view and creating a more confident attitude."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Horizons New

Horizons New

"Look, a mirage, like a round rim, a strange
Wizard's masterpiece about us;
An old line that's not there,
A boundary that never ends."
  ____ David Emrys James, "Horizon"

   Just as physical horizons lie just out of reach of our observation, so spiritual horizons stretch beyond our imagination vision. The new navigators and explorers of our times are those who wish to map the territory that lies beyond spiritual horizons. The next compartmentalization of the study of human consciousness into psychological and spiritual disciplines has brought us awareness of the paucity of our knowledge of those domains. Investigators who use the criteria of the physical world to investigate the spiritual world are somehow deflected from the evidence of unseen reality that people experience, claiming that those evidences are not objective or finite enough. It is obvious that such explorers will never travel beyond the narrow horizons of the physical world.
   The mapping of spiritual territory can never be a scientific colonist's task; it must pass into the care of navigators who use their own experience of the shimmering horizons to draw personal conclusions. When hundreds of such experiences are collated, certain understandings begin to form - understandings that may not lead to finite physical maps but will aid us in finding our way through lands that still bear the legend "Here be dragons" in our imaginations.

"What shimmers on the horizon between the worlds when you meditate?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Empowerment

Empowerment

"Power of sea be yours,
Power of land be yours,
Power of heaven."
   ___West Highland blessing

    When the life-force of the universe and the vigor that runs through our bodies are aligned with our spiritual core, then we experience our true power and live with it.  The difference between living with power and simply behaving powerfully lies in one thing: those who inhabit their power by aligning with the universe freely let power pass through them, whereas those who behave powerfully hold onto power like a commodity. When the power of the cosmos is restrained, unable to come and go like a tidal current or a mighty wind, it merely inflates the holder, it does not empower her. And when it is hoarded to aggrandize the holder, she risks disease, want, misery and a host of ills.
    We all have times when we feel powerless and insignificant, but the theft of power from another person or place cannot ultimately assist us. We may have a temporary sense of strength, but it does not last. It is only when we relinquish our fearful grip on our own power comes back to our core, empowering us again. Learning how to live with our power invokes living close to the truth that is within us and not deviating; it involves periodically checking out how we are behaving, how we are giving power away to things that do not need or deserve our intervention or assistance, how we are restraining or stealing power to create a cocoon of protection.
   Power cannot be owned; it is only on loan to us all.

"Check your own use of power in your life. What element of power that you have does not rightfully belong to you?  Give back the power that you have held onto so that the tides can flow again."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Seanchai's Art

The Seanchai's Art

"Lest he should lose command over the tales he loved, he used to repeat them aloud when he thought no one was near, using the gesticulations and the emphasis... as if he were once again the centre of a fireside story-telling."
    ___Alwyn and Brinley Rees, "Celtic Heritage"


    The Irish traditional storyteller Sean O'Conaill, a farmer and fisherman in County Kerry who died in the 1920's was a repository of ancient lore and story, an acknowledged seanchai (SHAN'a-ky) whose memory held a fund of delightful tales. These would have been recited in the evenings after work, or at special occasions and gatherings, but especially in the dark days of winter.  People have attested to listening to the same storyteller nearly every winter's night for fifteen years and hardly ever hearing the same story twice.
   The memory remains a formidable tool for the transmission of teaching and stories; however, it needs not only to memorize but also an audience or pupil to hear and receive the story. This second component alone gives life to what is memorized, which is why Sean O,Conaill needed to tell his stories to someone, even if it was only to the back of his old gray mare. Today many people are returning to storytelling and learning its skills in story groups or within their communities. Love of story is something that does not die. Perhaps as storylines and scripts in film and television become ever more mediocre and disenchanting, we will return once more to an appreciation of the seanchai's art.

"Memorize a story that you love well. After you have learned it, be aware of the nuances of voice and gesture that spontaneously accompany your recitation. Notice how your recitation alters among different audiences. What new meanings has an audience helped constellate for you?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

The Threefold

The Threefold

"The Sacred Three
My fortress be,
Encircling me.
Come and be round
My hearth, my home."
   ___Alistair MacLean, "Hebridean Altars"


    The reverence for the threefold is deeply ingrained in Celtic culture. This threefold conjunction is implicit within the creative process of beginning, middle, and end; in the three sacred seeds of wisdom that flash out of the cauldron of knowledge as primal sparks of inspiration; in the human family as mother, father , and child; in the apparent world as sea, land, and sky. Each of these threefolds offers an essential understanding of the nature of life itself and is recognized and revered as one of the supreme supports of the cosmos.
    Ancient Celts wisdom was encapsulated in triads, tersely gnomic renditions of precedents, proverbs, historical incidents and knowledge that could be remembered by everyone.  Triple-headed gods and threefold coteries of goddesses are also common in Celtic religion: a triplicity that is reflected in the Trinity - a concept thought by some scholars to have been developed by the Celtic St. Hilary of Tours in the fourth century.
   Today the ancient respect for three has become part of our concept of luck: "The third time's lucky." we say. Or if we have had two unfortunate happenings, we may wonder what the third misfortune is likely to be. Three is the number that comprises creation, destruction and maintenance of life. For all these reasons, the Celts could not revere a greater or more encompassing number than three.

"What are the three sources of supports of your life - those people, thing, or places without which it would have no meaning?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]