Today, this evening I cried. I cried for all the visions of good people that remain visions; visions that will never walk for lack of feet.
But why would it hurt me so much that I cry? Is it because of all the visions I’ve had, that – on becoming true – didn’t really change anything for anybody? Or is it forf all the visions that haven’t yet come true, and might never become true, and therefor standing in the way of appreciating the complicated and ordinary, not so very visionary life that we all have?
This morning I stayed in bed for a while contemplating the Gods I truly care for. Quite e few times I’ve been almost evangelizing polytheism on this blog, but in truth, there ain’t many images in my mind. So here I am, contemplating how the world and everyone and everything flows forth from the unknowable Gods (some say God). Some, or even many of my friends still maintain it was a kind of Big Bang. Everything exploding out of nothing – creatio ex nihilo (I like to throw some authoritative Latin terms at you; you’ll take what I have to say so much more serious that way).  I prefer creatio ex mysterium and think that creation out of nothing is so unimaginative!
So, back on track: Contemplating how everything flowed forward into timed existence because – being caused – by the Gods. For all I know it could be some kind of coincidence, everything co-incides into existence in some kind of beginning, maybe a continual beginning that hasn’t finished yet. Â And contemplating that I realize that my contemplations consist of images, some real forms and flows. So truly, whatever comes to exist for me, comes into being as an image, a form, a flow with recognizable and sometimes mysterious shape, gestalt, form. The mystery always staying just that: mysterious, unfathomable, unknowable ins essence and everything else as well.
That, to me, is the true abode of the Gods: the mystery. Nevertheless, they issue forth in forms and images. Maybe it is they that truly imagine the world: et voilá, here it is. Whatever may be the case, I cannot relate to the unknowable – I only relate to beings and things that have some kind of form, gestalt, shape. Can be a flow that is recognizable, that does manifest a pattern. So lying there I contemplate that out of mystery comes forms and flows, sent, as it were, into being by the Gods, who, in essence are truly mysterious and unfathomable but when the take form, and take form they must for me to relate with them, what exactly is that form for me.
And then I thought tahat maybe that is what we can give to the Gods: form. Maybe that’s why the Gods have created reality as we experience it in  the first place. So that there would be beings, definitely beings with their own imagination and psyche and spirit and more, an imagination that would allow them to give back form to the Gods who gave them existence.  And maybe some of these Gods, at least those that are involved in creating reality and beings within it, actually desire having form – because that way they could actually intimately relate to beings like us.
So for a moment it was as if I saw with the eyes of one of the Gods, and He (sorry girls, but I’m a guy) felt this deep, deep desire to also have a form. Hanging out in formlessness essentially is great but existentially – it’s boring. No restrictions, no creativity, no time, no heart or feeling, just plain pure transcendence and existence, “Iamness” – blissful, sure, and really, “So what?” Anyway, after an eternal eternity or two a desire wells up for “other”, for relating, for surprise, for creativity and that’s what got it all started. At least in my contemplation this morning – which is still much convincing this evening!
So as vague as it still is this morning I’ve started to answer to this Divine Desire to Be by imagining some kind of form to some of the Gods I personally want to relate to. So far there is one Goddess. Sitting on a chair or block she’s having a child on her lap. I think she’s black – most likely influenced by the Black Marias and her worship I’ve been looking into recently. On her lap a small child. A blessing for the world. Innocent, pure, clear, protected, creative. Around her some male Gods. One standing strong, on her right side. A Guardian, a warrior maybe.  On her left a wise old man, Saturn-like, but with some more humor, leaning towards the Jester, the Fool, the Chaotic Support of all that’s creative in this world. I see behind her some more strong forces, but I’ve not been able to identify/create any of them yet.
So how to relate to Gods?
With the knowledge that they love to be given form and then appear as the polymorphic Pantheon that humanity worships – to each as she is capable of co-creating. And then, relating from the heart, from our core-being which was given to us. Relating contemplatively when we call upon the images we have, and opening up through them to the mysterious essence of them, opening up to the breath, their inspiration.
They give us existence to play around with. We give them heartfelt attention and a form – and so we can realte to them and they can exist in our essence which is not different from their essence.
A calm day starting out beautifully. And the interesting fact that, if a day starts like this it’s hard to focus on the more challenging feelings. So I took that as an invitation to explore – with my imagination, a major tool if used with care and not to avoid this, that or the other – my family feelings which I hardly have. That’s not a surprise, I guess, for people who have been following this experiment from the start, and it’s natural to me. I hardly remember my father’s birthday or my mother’s. I need to make a mental note of the birthday of my girlfriend and her daughter, and I actually don’t know the one of my grandchild.
Actually one of the fascinating discoveries in between the high waves of strong feelings that are so common these days is what I’ve come to call feeling-field. It seems to me that with/through this field we are much more connected to life than through our intelligence and even our consciousness.
Descartes’ saying, that we have to torture nature so that it will reveal its secrets, might be regarded as extreme in our day and age but we’re still acting accordingly. In physics the Holy Grail (the myth of the Unified Theory which, supposedly would explain everything physical by reducing it to extremely tiny billiard balls governed by unbreakable rules that are thought to explain everything) is now closer, the conviction goes, because we have just finished for 10 billion or so the biggest machine of all times that smashes particles into each other. Dissect, smash, separate, analyze, torture, freeze, kill, these activities are supposed to reveal reality. Yes, indeed, we live in a civilized world! Feeling is a subjective luxury that governs economy by herd mentality on Wall Street and all the other stock exchanges all over the world – who, by the way through the mechanisms of extreme greed brought us to the brink of systemic change where everybody can now see that “the emperor wears no clothes”, as Andersen’s fairy tale goes.
This is a depressing perspective, one that might depressurize you enough to stop for a moment and maybe decide to reclaim the primacy of your own experience, the nobility of your own soul’s judgment, the deep breath of your openness – for we are super-social animals that, through ages of suffering and hard learning and a century of wide spread richness (at least in the West, and in many other parts of this world as well) and individualism have the unique chance to truly develop further.