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Thursday 9 September 2010

Walking Naked

Not really what my friend meant by walk naked, but you know... it´s like truths on different levels.



“Learn to walk naked in life” said a little old man who I suddenly found myself talking to after somehow finding myself in a choir concert in the University Cloister. I had followed my nose with the lingering notes. He was not a dirty old man…it was all in context. To be honest I had egged him on by letting loose and telling him about my views for 2012 and the cosmic morning. He was really interested, I could tell cos he kept twitching his left eye.

I declared as if I were some insider, the imminent collapse of the church, and all external authority structures and then he said his line. Afterwards as we were walking like old friends down the impressive sweeping stone steps of the University posh bit, he said quietly, looking around to make sure that nobody could hear such indecency, that he had been a priest. He had been used to being on the opposite side of the confessional box…he left because it had become too difficult, he said, to hear confessions of “sins” that he did not consider sins, such as being gay, of enjoying sex, of non catholic ideas, developing unique ideas, etc.

We had made friends because in the middle of one of the choir pieces my telephone decided to join in. God damn! They are hard buggers to shut up surrounded by so much public, big clumsy hands groping around in a cosmic black hole that is normally my bag. He smiled encouragement and at the end of the piece, my face fading from burning scarlet, he explained the poem that had been sung, had been written by Antonio Machado. The verses are from "Proverbios y Cantares" in Campos de Castilla.

Caminante, son tus huellas     Wanderer, your footsteps are
el camino y nada más;           the road and nothing more;
Caminante, no hay camino,   Wanderer, there is no path,
se hace camino al andar.       The path is made by walking.
Al andar se hace el camino,  By walking one makes the path
y al volver la vista atrás        and turning to look back
se ve la senda que nunca      a path is seen that never
se ha de volver a pisar.        one should re-tread.
Caminante no hay camino    Wanderer, there is no path,
sino estelas en la mar.          Only wakes upon the sea.

I am sure that most of you will have heard me rumbling on about the theory where I suddenly become an expert on astrology because I know two things…and they are:  Every 2150 years the earth comes under the influence of a new sign…and that soonish a new one is coming.

Around 4000 years ago as Aries (the Ram) came in, coincidentally (some would say coincidences don´t exist) Moses came into our history. He was said to have horns coming out of his head, and now to honour Moses, Jews blow a ram´s horn. The shofar was used to bring down the walls of Jericho and may symbolise the waking of the soul (once we have broken down our inner walls) and to repent (I guess from our instinctual behaviour). Don´t take my word for it, I am being imaginative. This is my made up theory, keep your right to make up your own!

Then 2000 years ago, when our time system began, Taurus moved into Pisces, and Jesus also coincidentally appeared in the lime light, represented also by two fish flowing in different directions. Which to resume super fast (from my vast no-ledge) represents the first fish swimming in a smooth path and the second in a problematic path, of which we are coming to the end…(and helps explain things like our consummate interest in absolute trash, the present state of the world etc).

With my breadth of knowledge of astrology I can say with the minimum of authority that Pisces, the fish, the Age of Jesus, is an age of external Authority…when we need-needed external direction to understand who we are, where we are going, what we are. We needed and had priests to tell us what to believe, doctors to tell us how to communicate with our bodies, schools to tell us what to learn, legal systems to tell us what is fair, politicians to tell us…whatever it was they used to do…we were not ready to think, feel, act for ourselves. Just as a child needs her father.
The disciples preparing the last supper (Jesus dies 3 days after) are directed by Jesus, “Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in.” Luke 22:10.

It´s all very tenuous. Around now Aquarius may be in the side lines muttering his lines, ready to come on to stage, but no body knows really for sure. The Mayan Long Count Calendar has an end-date of December 21, 2012 and is associated, my friend wikipedia tells me, with the precession of the equinoxes and therefore can provide an important demarcation for the Age of Aquarius. Though astrologers can´t agree and vary wildly in their time estimates, now-ish could be the time that Pisces goes into Aquarius. So why don´t we have a look around for some of that water? It will do us no harm.

Aquarius

As we go into the cosmic morning (I pause here as if I know a lot more…) we are ready to take responsibility that in Pisces was too much for us. Aquarius is an age when we come into our own. Wikipedia has a whole section describing the qualities of the age of Aquarius, which I have super ultra reduced and chosen the ones I most like (meaning it is totally warped to my ideas - there were a couple of totally negative war mongering, capital controlling, nightmare visions that I would prefer, thank you very muchy, to simply ignore):

Qualities of Aquarius:

Revelation of truth and increased consciousness (Vera Reid)
Fellowship of Humankind (David Williams)
People becoming more impersonal (detached), yet more altruistic and humane (Marcia Moore and Mark Douglas)
Inventions, machines, worldwide organizations, international collaboration, and the fellowship of humankind. Culture, civilization, and intelligence. (Louis MacNeice)

(Cut and pasted) Ray Grasse believes the transition is like travelling into a foreign land, and suggests that if you want help navigating through the Aquarian Age, you should leave room for silence in your life; create a centre in your life (preferably involving a connection to the Absolute); resist the deadening of your world, so instead of filling up your life with manufactured goods or artificiality, bring living organic things into your life. He also says we need to maintain a compassionate heart; be involved in a network or group; become more self-reliant; avoid being hypnotized by the "group trance"; and take control of our everyday attitudes so not to be dependant upon external events for inner fulfilment.

Kant, the Philosopher (1724 – 1804), argued that evolution will occur when we take the responsibility for ourselves from the outside, from authority, as we internalise it. We make our own decisions. This is really not easy, especially in an age where morality is confused with almost non existent ethics. It is almost like learning our own language and having no one to talk to in it. But with time we will learn others lexicons, we will learn to listen.

I have been a walking bundle of questions this summer. Trying to work out who I am, what I am, what I want. It is not easy. And I have come to no conclusions. Like that lovely quote (again) of Rainer Maria Rilke “Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or like books written in a remote foreign language. Do not search now for answers that cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And every thing has to be lived. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually live your way, without noticing, into the answer some day.”

Living the questions is changing my perspectives, of myself. I have done it on my own, without an authoritative help. Like a child learning to play their own game. My internal image of myself is changing, secretly on my inside, I am discovering a new me. And it is somewhat different to who I thought I was, what I thought I wanted. It is actually quite difficult to accept, but also quite liberating. I have no idea where I am going, who I am, what I am, want I want…but….like the quote from Sacha Guitry (a French film director, writer, actor):

“Wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from foolishness”

I am becoming more confident in my foolishness, rather than being foolishly confident. I am learning that we do not need to know everything, we do not need the security of an authority structure stuck in a single truth based on a time that has now changed…It is like saying someone on the Camino de Santiago is closer to “enlightenment” at Pamplona that someone starting at Roncesvalles. There is no path, we make it by walking.

All wisemen say something like, whoever thinks they know all, knows nothing. We are specks in the universe. We as a summation of millions of human minds know only 5% of the universe…all we can do is walk our walk into the unknown, into ourselves.

Only we can discover who we are, by our ourselves, on our own. And as we do, ironically we become more universal.

We are moving away from the old energy, of everyone being the same and following authority (even if it is the inner authority figure sat on a throne of judgement) and moving towards something more sensitive, more flexible to the constantly changing, dancing life…as everything arises and passes away…

Instead of putting ourselves or others on a pedestal, I would like to think that we as a whole, are beginning to learn to accept ourselves as unique in all our differences, in our merits and difficulties, our light side and dark, knowing that they change, evolve, as we are moving towards our inner core…and learning that what someone called Ralph Waldo Emerson (Philosopher, Poet, Lecturer who also led the Transcendental movement of mid 19th century) said much better than I could express "What lies behind us, and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."

Guitry being foolish with his wife

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