Saint George and Alchemical Union

23rd April. Today is a day for lovers, for the lovers within ourselves, as our masculine parts descend and our feminine parts rise to join in amorous harmony. The union of the heart and brain. 

Edward Burne Jones dipiction of George

The prince of the skies, Saint George came down from the air. He fell from paradise, from the place of union of light, flew down through intuition and found himself confronted by his own earthly reality.  Suddenly he is no longer the prince of the skies but now a (half) human (half) being. Woaah! What is that dragon?

They say that we are born on earth impure. The Catalans would say malparits, which is literally born badly, figuratively translated as “in a sorry state”. We come out a little monstrous, not quite as perfect as our minds would like. We are our own Frankensteins. We are not in harmony with the universe (One- version) but we pipe our own out-of-unison song. The cosmos flows around in orderly lines, like a ploughed field, in harmonic unison with each other, like an orchestra with each musician playing as one creating a beautiful uplifting piece of music. And then we are born and get out those party horn things. And blow it. But it's not exactly Mozart.

The dragon is a representation of this rather uncoordinated clumsiness. We are all made up of the four elements, everything is. In an enlightened state, the four elements are equally balanced and working together: Air (intuition), Water (emotions), Fire (thinking) and Earth (sensations). We need to balance our four elements. Ether (the belonging to a whole greater than the sum of its parts) is impotent without the others in balance. It is the secret of physical and psychological health. None of us, as far as I can see, are enlightened: we've got work to do! We’ve got our dragons to face.

 

Aristotle's elemental qualities

The dragon is a representation of the four elements, he blows fire angrily out from his mouth, his wings allow him to fly clumsily in the air, his claws grip into the earth and he cries big baby crocodile tears. But his elements are all badly born. Clumsy and angry, his elements are all at odds with each other, like trying to light a fire in the rain or flying through tarmac...

So, Saint George finds himself in a predicament coming up against this dragon (inside of himself) as he heroically admits to discovering his instincts. And as all cavaliers, to save his good name, he is faced with one option:

Slowly, calmly, he gets out his sword and shield. 

He fights nobly from the top of his white horse of the mind, just like all of our fantasy heros do, and with his sophisticated sword work he manages to slice through the reality of himself (like Shiva´s sword) getting a little closer to the truth to give him a little more strength to dominate his dragon. Some stories just go right ahead and kill the dragon off, but how can instincts be killed? It is impossible. Some Granddad got carried away retelling the story…so in the mystic story, the dragon is dominated. Saint George is able to dominate with his mind the impulses of his instincts. Dominating the dragon he has aligned his four elements to be more in harmony. They do not fight so much anymore, the dragon is a little more docile. Ether is given a chance.

Saint George finds himself in a more balanced state, and as a result, from the mouth of the cave, steps a beautiful maiden now that the dragon is not ferociously guarding the entrance. 

Jung's dipiction from his Red Book

Saint George is rewarded by glimpsing his soul. His Anima, the feminine within, influences his interactions with the world giving them more meaning. Allowing him to begin to conceive of himself in the Uni-verse. It could be considered the path to our creative gifts. From floating in the mind, suddenly Saint George is using his heart, and if expressed in a harmonious way, while the dragon is comfortable domesticated, it is beauty and truth and purity and wonderfully creative expression. It is being fully and ecstatically alive.

We can have as much information in our brains as we can fill, but until we have understood our knowledge through love, it cannot be comprehended. Those moments of eureka when suddenly you ‘see’, when you ‘click’ into what you you know is true because you remember somewhere knowing it once. You feel it's truth, because it is so obvious, so simple. It is like peeling away an onion skin, or taking off a veil (revelation). Normally we are left with something so beautifully simple that we secretly wonder if actually we knew it all along and had just somehow forgotten.

If we only understand our world with our brains, it is dry and unconnected. Comprehension is with our hearts and we connect with our profound memories, with our entire being. This connection of knowledge and heart is represented by the union of Saint George with the beautiful maiden, and how lovely she is! She allows us to leave the dark depths of the cave and resurface to fresh air where we can wake up and smell the roses.  (The Rose is the western equivalent of the eastern Lotus flower). 

The masculine and feminine come together once more, the sky and the earth rejoin... They have sex (alchemically speaking of course...)

The Alchemical union of the King and Queen

The union of Saint George with his maiden creates a third, a rebirth. This time the birth is a little better. They are transformed into the new castle and live happily ever after according to Walt D (....No!!! Don't believe it!!) The castle with its slightly better squared four walls is a representation of the four elements in slightly better harmony.

And the cycle comes to a close, but not an end. Like any spiral, Saint George is back where he began, at the same point but not the same man. Now he has aligned himself a smidgen more to the UniVersal, he has dominated his dragon for a while, and he has incorporated the Beauty of the glimpse of Truth into his self thanks to his inner maiden emerging from the cave of matter.

But too much of a good thing is never good…Saint George soon falls back down through the clouds, motivated by the image of a greater world…to go delve in the realms of his dragon land. Saint George is in constant movement, never getting stale, constantly birthing in another weird but wonderful way as he and his inner maiden evolve in greater and purer love.

Happy Saint George's day!

Carpaggio's dipiction of Saint George

We can all be heroes of our own lives!

It a funny thing being afraid of shadows.  The one that follows you around, scaring you at corners, sneaking up behind your back, is erm, well, just your own.  Funny we should be so afraid of it…its just us, but with much longer legs as the sun sinks in the sky.  The shadow is our parts we don´t seem to control so well, the one that has the tantrums or leaves the house messy, or suddenly breaks down over nothing apparently at all, and also contains our hidden talents.  But we can´t get away from it; it is still us.  

The Camino de Santiago 2007

As we yearn to be our true selves, we live in dread of our shadow rising up to the surface, creating mayhem.  As we fling our arms about in frustration and cry out, all it is trying to say is “Please listen to me”.  In a psychic jail our bad bits are doomed to non-expression, and they often have valid things to tell us, not only about our weaknesses but also about our unheeded strengths.  As we break down once again, it is normally not for the reasons we think.  What has been going on (behind our backs) that we have simply not attended to?

We find our shadows rubbing us up and down in an irritating ways and quite rightly we become irritable.  Take for example seeing an exhibition in an art gallery. Someone always seems to mutter to themselves that “I” (chest puffs out) “could have done THAT!”…in a snort of disgust.  Take Miró´s work.  He is a genius!  And we wonder what would happen if we were to throw paint tins around.  So imagine the private comments outside art exhibitions of local civic centres, you know the ones…

And yes, we can scoff…but really, maybe it is more that we are irritated because we know that we ourselves could have given it a go, and if we´d have kept at it, maybe we could have had the satisfaction of showing our creativity too…but the question is:  Did we?  Did we even try?

Cos it isn´t really the result that matters at the end of the day, but the process.

And I would like to declare my pleasure to the world, that I am pleased with myself.  I have gone out there and somehow, squeezing around the voice of my shadow self, I have managed to put myself out there even though I was sure they would think I was a weirdo!  I have started to do sessions with people with Active Imagination and to my surprise, people actually, really like it.

Of course they do.  Why not?

There is nothing to be afraid of in the world.  Nothing at all to be afraid of.  If we are being motivated to do good, for our will be the will of His will (His being any superior consciousness that you dare to believe in)…then that consciousness (if we have faith in ourselves to be able to relax enough to connect to it) will guide us.  First.  And if we don´t flow, if we really put our feet in where our noses would prefer to ignore, if we come out looking like prize donkeys…then tell this to your shadow: you will not be made fun of at all (or whatever it is we are petrified of).  People really do see how much effort is put in daring to do something, how brave it is to express to others.  Perhaps even it will be a relief for them to see that exposing oneself is not necessarily a perfect show, motivating them to have the confidence to express their own creativity.  For we all have creativity, something that we do well that creates with the material of the world…organising, listening, painting, reading, writing, cooking, understanding, climbing mountains, playing tennis.

But the journey through the shadow to be able to express myself, my beliefs, in public was not plain sailing:  I SHAT myself.  I had pre-session anxiety.  By pre-session I don´t mean the hour before, but the week previous full of short breath, mild panic at seeing time advance towards the date and yet despair as time did not advance fast enough to deliver me from this state of general fear, panic and a deep desire to fly away and live on another planet; or die. 

Many of us have read “The Secret” or seen “What the @#*€ do you know?” or have come into contact with the idea of manifesting reality.  So why would we create such disastrous images in our heads, of the things that really matter to us going absolutely haywire?  We go over and over imagines of being made a laughing stock, of it all going wrong, of our deepest fears? We do this to our OWN mind images!!

So this time I tried to control my own images and I stayed strong enough to imagine supportive images for myself.  First time!  Works a treat.  I imagined that people were happy and pleased and were patting me on the back after the session.  In moments of panic, I tried eventually to remember to come back to my breath, to come back to this moment, and realise that all is ok, I am still alive.  It didn´t work half an hour before while doing a trotting dash to the toilet.  But I handled that as well.  After the session, surprisingly enough, those supportive images came through true.

You see I can only talk for myself, but these sensations, created by fear, by lack, by lack of self belief, of self confidence, are what have been stopping me in my steps (and I suppose continue to stop me).  Fear of unpleasant sensations have acted like brake-blocks on my path, for sooooooo long.  What will they think?  Can also be translated to what will they make me think about myself?

When I was in the Manoush Jazz Group in L´Hospitalet I realised the power of sensations. It´s all in our head!  I was the worst in the group, and apart from being the only one apart from a flute player who didn´t have strings, and it being in a foreign language, and the only one not tuned to C, I have to admit I couldn´t understand a thing.  I had no idea what I had to do, so when it came to my chance to solo, I generally made a right mess of it, often giving up in the middle to stop my and the others´ ears from bleeding.  I would get SO angry, embarrassed, I would feel my face go bright, bright red, and I would hardly be able to play through the rest of the class.  But one day I had a break through…I did the same as I do in meditation.  Observe sensations.  And I realised that this red-faced discomfort only really lasted a couple of minutes, and then it was over.  It was only me keeping me in the discomfort after that!  And the others, who knew my talent better than I did, had long ago accepted (as no big deal) that I was as I was.  It was just me getting red faced angry over the chasm between what I want to be and what I am.

And there we have it.  This fear of acting in life.  This week I heard about a German scientist who has revolutionary ideas about cancer.  My hat off to him, first for exposing himself so bravely in front of a rather disbelieving and scared world of public, and secondly for doing it so well.  Cos, for one, I believe him.  He says, paraphrasing, that the brain connects the mind and the body.  Often there is a conflict between the mind and the body, the brain sends illness to help reduce the conflict, so that the mind may become conscious of the body and communication may begin.  And one of the things that he said made for good health, was having the balls to act. 

What is it that keeps us in our straight jackets?  What is it about our feelings of lack that make us stay in our safety zones with our slippers on, with our laptops at arms´ reach, or a constant fear of the bank balance…?  What is covering over our creativity?

And I think we´ll find it is ourselves.

If we act from the heart there is nothing to fear.

At all.

Not even with that shadow lurking around!  

Our shadow is not just where our fears lie, but our gifts as well.  So let us go beyond the limits of our possibilities and become heroes of our own lives!!

rough diamond

The Manual of Ourself.

One of the concepts C G Jung wrote about was the path of individuation.  The idea is, I believe, that with time, we peel off the layers of the onion skinned protection from around our soul, to find out what it is we like, what it is we naturally do, and who we really are deep down there.   

I guess a first step on the path could run around the question:  Do we enjoy life?  Are we darting around here and there, completing obligations that we don´t really want to do so that people will not reject us; compared to, possibly doing the same things, but putting our heart into it, because we like putting our heart into it, because it is what makes us feel alive, while hoping others will also be benefited.  In the latter it is when we feel realised.  We feel real.  "Doing" transforms into "becoming"; and somewhere near to the end of the path we experience our pure being.  As we step along our individual life we become more conscious of choosing to do this or that, because it is what we do, we have discovered (etymology: to free from under cover) our own personal gifts. And when we share them and we find peace and joy and more life.  For what is a performer without an audience?

Now, since this talk is of the union spirit and soul, and hearing talk of graceful loving and peaceful enjoyment of life, many I presume, like me, rush blindly ahead crashing into an imagine of ourselves levitating in the Himalayas; realise this may not happen; become aware of the massive gap between the Buddha image and our own present self image as we rush off to the next appointment, behind time, not bloody omm-ing but swearing under our breath.

But this is an error.  For Buddha was Buddha, and that is just right for him.  But not necessarily for you or for me.  The idea of the path of individuation is that we find our own one and stop doing stuff that is not on our path that we do because we think we should.  Of course we all have obligations that we have to do on our paths: paying the rent, caring for children, or standing in line to get some bloody paperwork stamped.  The question is where is it leading us?  If we are honest with ourselves we may find quite a lot of stuff is unnecessary in our lives leading us in fashionable circles; and vice versa: stuff we don´t do, for fear of being a weirdo.   

It is easy to see those who "do" because they love, compared those who "do" out of obligation: a restuarant regardless of food or price makes you feel good or not, a person regardless of the amount of trendy self development workshops every weekend makes us feel one way or the other.  I believe this attitude is one of the factors that marks the difference between a feel good to self/others/exterior and an uncomfortable empty feel.  

Becoming ourselves is the awakening of the soul, the awakening of sleeping beauty who discovers her own gifts that the fairies have given her.  What do we enjoy doing that makes our sensation of time disappear?  What gives us satisfaction?  How can we feel open enough, secure enough, to let ourselves simply go with the flow?  How do we feel our heart beating with love of being?  Where do we enjoy (being) ourselves? 

Ohh!!  It´s a biggie…we all want to know, now now, NOW!!!…we want a tarot card to tell us, a horoscope, or a stray gypsy…but we all know where the answer lies.  There are no free tickets along the path.  The thing is I wonder if sometimes, we confuse our ideal image with the image of having to be super brilliant - nothing short of a genius - that we set our sights on BIG things, where people will have to notice and applaud us (as we silently pretend humility) instead of recognising the little things that give us and our lives more worth (etymology: come to be, become, take place).  

And talking of geniuses, such as Jung, hats off to them for finding what they are brilliant at.  It would seem that they could have stridden some distance along that spiny, difficult, narrow path of finding and becoming oneself: but surely it doesn´t automatically mean to say they have.  Not those geniuses who shout at least.  Being brilliant at something outside doesn´t necessarily make you more you inside.  Could it be that a good indicator is the ability to connect with love?  (Especially if we are to believe we are essentially an expression of love.)  The answer to where each is at on their path, is within. We will never know reading Jung where he was with respect to his individuation.  We can only try to know about ourselves.

So, I dedicate this blog to Adrian Crescini´s Uncle.  When I was in Mendoza he was our mechanic.  You could tell he loved being in his workshop.  If you had seen the cars that we were driving, it´s a good indicator to how often I was there: a lot.  He never charged us as much as he should, in fact he seemed happy to see the cars again, pleased to be able to tinker with them, as if he had a personal relationship with each car that came into his engine nest.  

This was the street where we lived, when I arrived it was dirt, but they surfaced it.  It is a complimentary photo of all three - me, Adrián and the Chevi.  The back was a bit more battered up.

I would go to his workshop, and we´d eat snails that he had fed himself for days on some special food so they would taste special.  He cooked them there on a mechanic´s sort of gas burner: they were de-li-cious!!! – they tasted of his enjoyment of them.  He would do little tricks that I loved and made me laugh.  We would share maté together and try and catch each other out pretending to drop the maté gourd as we passed it to one another.   

And at the end of the day, he´d shut up shop and go home.  

He wasn´t addicted to being there, he didn´t need to be there for his self esteem, he just liked it.  He wasn´t always happy, lets not get back into the levitating image again - he had bad days - but most days he was a high energy repeater station of peaceful happiness, sat on the driveway in his deckchair, or coming out from under some old banger on a slidey back rest, with a beamer of a smile, teeth all the more white for the black oil on his cheek.  He treated me like a human being instead of gringa-got-lost and was one of the few who make the effort to hear through my impossibly thick accent.  I was almost glad when my dear little dark blue Fiat 600 broke down, because I had an excuse to go and see him.  I would come out with not only the car fixed, but me fixed.

 And that, I think, is the path of individuation.  Finding what makes us tick.  But don´t go thinking of setting up your own little mechanic workshop in Mendoza where the wine grapes grow plump.  I, for one, would go crazy in his shoes.  I don´t like getting my hands dirty.

I loved my Fiat 600 so much I painted it.

We all must find what we like, and move towards it with grace.  It is not easy.  Discovering our talents is impossible to do without discovering those things about ourselves that we would prefer to stay ignorant of.  Digging into us, brings out fear, guilt, and all sorts of complexes about being free, about being our true selves.  We must be brave enough to accept both sides of the story.

My mate Anna said to me, “If I played the trumpet, I would go down to the sea and play it there on the end of a pier, looking out over the sea.”  Crikey! I suddenly realised how uncreative I was being playing into my open wardrobe to amortize the sound…and maybe, if I have a good day, I may get up the courage to do it: just for me, because I want to, because it makes me feel realised, real.  Alive.   

For I believe we can all find, in our own individual manner, our wonderful ways to drink from the source, creating a connection with that energy giving substance that we call life.