Tag Archives: mind

Alchemical Importance of Empathy

Empathy has many vital effects. It is a basis for compassion. It is critical for forgiveness and healing. This post focuses on the importance of empathy in alchemical works, in the context of a metaphysics of panpsychism and panentheism.

Solve et coagula.
I am an individual, separate and isolated in my perception from other minds.
I am part of a whole, minds intertwined such that my experience is a particle that emerges from and toward a woven collective (not only of humanity, of All) consciousness.

In separating, empathy is import for individuation. Especially in these days of information overload, interconnectivity, and FOMO, the ability to empathize with one another enables oneself to better delineate one’s own self-actualization. Bombarded with information I may want to go this way or that way; with the ability to empathize with those who go this way or that way, I can better navigate those branches of reality and recognize ‘my way’ efficiently.

In coagulating, empathy is important for wholiness.

. . . work in progress . . .

Point Pros of Animism

  • Poetry and singing prayer and blessing for food and all other things to be thankful for. May it be healthy, come from good health, and go forward in good health. May it be for the best, may it be of minimal suffering.
  • Ancient and prevalent tradition of theurgy, as in Greek cults bringing statues to life with spirits of the gods, or Jewish Kabbalists trying to repair the world by awareness of the oneness of the spheres of the Tree of Life. Visualizing the color of an object as blue red and white is one simple theurgic exercise, serving as a means of conveying blessing to minerals, plants, animals, and humans (practice patiently in that order). Imagine practices along those lines and Greek mystics animating statues, or mystic Christians seeking connection with their higher self in All.
  • Connection to place, relationship with being. Even the ________ (e.g. toaster oven), what is one’s relationship with it? What is its Source? What are its connections? In oneness one recognizes the valuable ripple effects of mutual benefit.
  • Focused gratitude and well-wishing for the well-being of an entity. As in the exercise of imagining the highest and best potential for ___________ (e.g. land as in ecological restoration), casting blessings from an animistic awareness can help bring about a better world.
  • Lessons from ecosystem restoration: “Connection to place”, “Love”

Twilight Shine Light: On The Occult

In twilight at times it’s hard to see what’s there. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you might not notice there’s anything to be seen. Things can be recognized, discovered like an epiphany, yet hard to point out to another. You can try to show someone the thing in the twilight, but unless they make their own effort to look and pierce the veil of uncertainty, they may miss it completely as it blends into the chaos. This is even more true in the dark of night. Yet what’s in the day is plain to sight.

So goes the occult. The word that means unseen, concealed. Not secret teachings, but teachings about the secret. Secret in being unseen, hidden. Revelation, mystical experience to reveal that which cannot be taught or pointed out. Concealed not by any one’s secrecy but by the inherent secrecy of The One.

And it need not be supernatural: from Nature’s complexities emerge profound connections, often occult (unseen) but available in sparks to the bits of Mind distributed in life systems. While science dis-covers much, much more is left out of touch, parsed only in glimpses (if at all) most commonly via intuition of the subconscious Mind.

Explained via the Jewish tradition:

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Not a secret teaching, the teaching of a secret

Kabbalah is not a secret teaching. It is the teaching of a secret.
“The secret teaching” means that we are trying to hide something from you.

“The teaching of the secret” means that we are trying to teach something to you, to open up and reveal something hidden.

Now, you might point out, if the secret is taught, it is no longer a secret. A revealed secret, it would seem, is an oxymoron.

That would be so if we were discussing an artificial secret, one that is secret only because it is shrouded in secrecy, because others don’t want you to find out. True secrets, even once taught, explained, illustrated, analyzed and integrated into your consciousness, remain just as mysterious as before. No—vastly more mysterious, for as the island of knowledge expands, so too its beach upon the infinite sea of the unknowable.

Life teems with such mysteries: What is love? What is mind? What is life? What is existence? How do they come to be? From where do they emerge? What is your soul, the person within your body? You experience all these at every moment. They are you. And yet, the more you gaze upon the depths of their mysteries, the deeper their waters become.

The deepest of all secrets are those best known to all, that which we learn as small children, take for granted the rest of our lives, live with daily—and yet never manage to unravel or grasp with our cognitive mind.

There is. Things are. I exist. I am alive. Life is not death. Darkness is not light. There is that which is bigger than me.

Kabbalah plunges into these secrets and pulls their depths into the open. It provides metaphor, parable, understanding. It shines light and opens our eyes. It inspires and guides us to use this wisdom for healing and growth in everyday life. That is why the experience of learning Kabbalah is one of “Yes! I knew that truth all along! My heart knew, but my mouth was unable to speak it!” The truths of the Kabbalah belong to every sentient being.

Yet, most of all, Kabbalah provides a sense of the beyond; the knowledge of that which cannot be known, the wisdom of mystery, the understanding that we do not understand. Kabbalah is the knowledge of wonder.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Artwork – Ryan J Flynn
via https://www.facebook.com/lightsofkabbalah/photos/a.319056761576811/1416967365119073/?type=3&theater

Immensely Rooted Webs of Wisdom

Love the way a forest floor is rich with roots. On a lawn or garden the roots you find are mostly of the plants proximate to them. In the woods, the soil is a fluff of organic matter and roots with nonspecific sources, almost impenetrable within its tightly woven softness. Roots everywhere, fibrous strands making up for lack of girth with their ubiquity.

I imagine this is akin to wizards (wise peoples): even if there is no apparent shoot (above ground plant), there’s likely a foundation full of fibrous roots. The source of those roots is effectively known yet ineffible: it’s from the trees! Sure, which one? It could hardly be said, and to declare it would neglect the interconnectedness of the root zone.

That said, is the wizard akin to a tree in that sense or to a forest? And how about the wizards woven through the world? An unseen sangha. שׁלום