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" Friendship is a sheltering tree "

Coleridge

The Task

January 29th, 2012

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

– Rumi



9 Responses to “The Task”

  1. I just wrote this to a dream group. Your quote from Rumi connected so with the wasp dream then the fusion of hearts that here it is.

    I think how we imagine is probably critical. I don’t like to think that because I like to believe everything is equally infinite. Let’s say a small, low, wormy story has as much or possibly more to say to humans about all things universal than tales of gods and angels. But. Two events from last night’s dreams. It’s written in The Gem, for scholars of that epic story. I’m not making this up. Me aged four or five, mother cuts open a potato, black stuff inside, I ask what is, she says “spiders”. Only as an adult I think it can’t have been. What a weird thing to say. Aged 26, epic vision or super-lucid dream of God I call The Vision of the Carrot Man because I refuse to believe I’ve ‘seen God’. Last room before ‘God’ appeared. Total darkness. As I have been walking back into my head I’ve been asking “What is here?” “and what is here?” Arrive at total black room, answer “Spiders”, repeated twice, one by me. Last night i woke up and put those two incidents together for the first time in my life. At this point in the original event a dark woman grips my elbow and says “In fact I can imitate you a life if you want it.” This is coming to mean a huge lot in the emerging novel.
    Incident 2. I’m in a room with two women. Perhaps ten or twelve wasps flying around. The number of wasps grows and they are increasingly focussed on me until I want to get out of the room. Right at the end there are hundreds. I think of lifting my short collar to get a tiny bit of protection although I feel this will in some way insult the women. The feeling is I should stand there and take my medicine. I wake feeling utterly oppressed by this cloud of hundreds of wasps who are now really focussed on me. As I wake I relate this straight back to being stung by hornets aged three having been introduced to them accidentally by my mother. The emotional and physical pain I believe was driven beyond consciousness. So its return at the point where I’m writing this in a minefield book is significant.
    Throughout the day I’ve experience a union of my heart with another’s, the result being a tremendous sense of heart energy – love. It started as a fictional encounter between two characters but took off into reality. Real manifestations occurred the first time I wrote this story. Throughout the day I’ve been thinking the wasps are energy. Primal energy distorted by pain and emotional confusion. I’ve been realising there must be a best way for the energy to be. That wonderful open union of the hearts rather than the tiny, oppressed space under the wasp cloud. Somehow i have to clear, straighten, whatever, these crippled energies.

    So, that’s the so, Joy, at least for me. It may be obvious to people who do straight spirituality as a norm but it’s never been for me. Last PDC was probably typical. I’m surrounded by people doing their angels – for me a waspy kind of oppression – and I’m doing my cosmic via worm. Nothing wrong with that. I thought it was a good demonstration of ‘multi-tasking’. The wasp dream was small, oppressed and narrowly fix. If a universe is trying to get through a gap that small the result must be pretty dreadful. The heart event, within an hour, said there is a much more open state of energy.

    I think these structures of process between the small and the larger are the very exact work we have to do. Maybe some of us can be liberated by the grace of the guru or Christ or It or Love but if it removes our process I’m not sure how real it is. Creative writing works for me, bringing into awareness energies normally in the shadows. So – I think our work is more important than we tend to imagine. Our thoughts may seem to be locked in our heads but I think we are co-creators of the cosmos in ways that we simply don’t imagine. I wonder if we ever will.

    Tony

    Further memory of wasp dream. Trying to heal something behind me. Possible association with hospital, though I don’t think I was ever in hospital for hornets but saw doctor and had big white tablets.

    Falling asleep. Hope this makes sense.

  2. Your comment struck a chord with me Tony…”maybe some of us can be liberated by the grace of the guru or Christ or love, but if it removes our process I’m not sure how real it is.”

    We all unique, we have gifts and talents, I’m sure if we were to be unquestioning clones following the teachings of so called religious authorities on the ability of Christ to liberate us from “Evil Spirits”, ie anger, greed, hate ….as I have seen recently espoused by..the male dominated religious, there would be no need for birth, life or the recognition of any individuality.
    You say “creative writing works for me, bringing into awareness energies normally in the shadows” Exactly we all have free will and the freedom to follow our own inner promptings, and ways in which we express ourselves. That could be creative writing, painting, cooking, public speaking and so on.. you could say our God given gifts.

    And then “So I think our work is more important than we tend to imagine” I think so too, the written word carries great power, power to transmit an array of thoughts and ideas to a vast array of people. I read again somewhere that, it has got to be the established religious again, sorry. That Christ never wrote anything down, painted, wrote poetry or espoused any kind of philosophy but other great minds have been inspired by his teachings throughout the ages to do such things. So you have to ask how were they inspired by a long dead man? Through the wrtings of the Gospels of course, the thoughts and feelings of other individuals who were apparently inspired to record events and protray them to the best of their ability. So again mind to hand, pen to paper, or quill to parchment has been in existence to impart thoughts and feelings, and attempted expressions of the sublime for centuries. And no-one knows for sure if Christ expressed any creative skills whilst incarnate, if you take his existence as an historic fact. So that argument is nil and void to my mind.

    And finally “Our thoughts may seem locked in our heads but I think we are co-creators of the cosmos in ways that we simply don’t imagine.”

    Thank you Tony, you have really inspired me today!

    • Well Angie, glad the words were of some use. It was very much an impulse post full of feelings from another context, sent before the critical faculties supertanker could mow me down.
      The Jesus/woman taken in adultery story. Could you imagine it happening nowadays when hypocrisy and politics seem to enjoy a perfect marriage. To me evil done in the name of religion seems to be the darkest act of all. As a child this seemed to be a story of long ago. Now it’s still current and growing with no chance whatever of a similar outcome.
      I don’t know what to make of this.
      Could it be true that everywhere the worst are taking over?
      Tell me a story about religion and I usually end up feeling ill.
      Sorry.

      Tony

  3. Just a side note concerning Christ and writing:

    John 8:5
    In law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?

    John 8:6
    But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground.

    John 8:8
    Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

    John 8:10
    Jesus straightened up and asked her “Woman where are they? Has no-one condemned you?”

    No-one knows what Jesus wrote on the ground may be he wrote something along the lines of Rumi as Philip posted above.

    Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

    Or maybe he wrote something along your lines Tony.
    “Our thoughts may seem locked in our heads but I think we are co-creators of the cosmos in ways that we simply don’t imagine.”

    Or maybe he wrote “Why do you ask me when all the answers are within yourself”
    Who knows what he wrote but there must be a reason for someone to record it in The Gospels. And that’s the Gospel Truth of course.

  4. No need to bloomin apologise Tony, I can’t comment on childhood experiences of religion because I didn’t have any.I came to religion late in life with an open mind and an accepting nature, but as it is, people will be people and people in safe havens with safe leaders seem to follow the crowd.There is no thinking outside the box, now there is a yuppy with it phrase, all follow, all fit the mould, all go to work, all clean the car on Sundays, before sunday lunch, all go to mass on Sundays. All stab each other in the back and everyone else who doesn’t fit into this very narrow world view on Mondays.
    But then Christianity, and spiritualty seem to be dominated by women. The fickle bitchy creatures, so again we have to ask why, why the imbalance? The pagan/Druid communities appear to have more open, questioning, sensitive men, as opposed to an unnatural celibate enforced priesthood of males, which has nothing to do with Christianity whatsover. An enforced papal doctrine some centuries ago to stop the families of priests inheriting any land or wealth, so that the church recieved all.So why follow that teaching if you know the roots of it? You either agree with Papal authority or you disagree. I disagree. Therefore I am a heretic, and thank God for that, so shall it be.

  5. “The fickle bitchy creatures.”

    WTF? You meet very different women than the ones I meet in all areas of my life! Perhaps it’s a matter of what you expect, you receive?

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