More Fractals, Lynn Ungar Poem

I'm liking that Lynn Unger poem that's making its way around:
Only by getting more comfortable and patient in the cloud of stillness, can we begin to see what 's emerging and not just mourn for what's missing.

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

–Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

Playbooks, Maps, Trail Blazes to the Creative Unconscious

Here are several versions of the Casual Alchemist material.
Ugh, this seems jumbled in a small phone format. Try a notebook
and this link
Browse through what might suit you today:

Core Concepts   (17pp Nov 2019)

Fast Start!   (7pp. Aug 2019)

Befriending the Creative Unconscious (27pp Omega 2018). 
Creative Aging  (Jan 2020)

Your Book of Shadows (5pp, Jan 2020)

Household Spirits

Little Tiny Elf

I've been working with two young researchers, ages 6 and 3½, on these cascading changes taking place.  They confirmed my speculation that because we are spending so much more time in our homes, there are indeed more opportunities to encounter spirits of the household. The older colleague described, at great length,  her encounters with "Penny" or Penelope,  the ghost of the woman who lived in the house in the mid and late 20th century.  Penny was generally a good ghost because she had been a human; there are others who are not so kind to humans because they are and have always been pure spirits. She confirmed that they do indeed hide things and knock things over in the home.
The younger team member seems to specialize in Central European Household Deities.  Yesterday she encountered a "tiny little elf", who stayed visible long enough for her to make this record.

I am not as facile with field work as my colleagues and I have spent my time researching their finds. It sent me to the work of Professor Claude Lecouteux, and his many books on just this subject. I'm just starting to go through a few of them.
There's quite a rich developed body of knowledge on Slavic Household Deities.  Here's a place to start.  There are many more to find.  See if any are familiar.
These spirits are definitely a force to reckon with and I, as a public responsibility, have been collecting information on ways to stay a safe as possible now that we are more likely to encounter them.
And you?  What experiences have you been having in this cracked open world?
I'll let you know how our project develops.

Thursday, April 23
I've come upon the work of Brad Wigger, and his research into children and their imaginary friends.
Let's allow "imaginary" to include quite real experiences of presences and energies that others, (adults?),  have likely lost the ability to perceive.

the invention of invisible friends can be seen as an exercise in the understanding of others’ points of view, imagination used in the service of social maturing. “Appreciating the knowledge, desires, intentions, or perspectives of another is ultimately an act of the imagination,” Wigger points out. “By playing with mind, by imaginatively representing other minds—even when invisible—children are fine-tuning their ability to understand others” (p. 107).

I've always liked Brian Froud's work in this world:

Wanderings, Fractals of time in quarantine

Kaleidoscopic
With this loss of routine and structure, there's a flutter.  I find myself, more than usual, not talking or writing in full sentences. Lots of bits and pieces, rising to the surface and disappearing down. Like April weather. Old leaves blowing around. Some are real-time-in-nature activities; some are memories, others are internet explorations.   A few from the last few days:

"Holzwege" popped up.. From German writer Martin Heidegger meaning broadly "Wood Ways".  The Woods (Nature) has its Ways. You can strive to control them or dance with them.   More Here

Jessica Davidson's Blog: The fearsome astrology behind COVID

I thought of The Sorcerers Apprentice

James Hillman's 1992 book The Dream and the Underworld made it off the shelf.  A few underlined thoughts:
Epistrophe: a reversion, recall, a return to multiple possibilities.   No longer does just ONE system hold, or things just having opposites.  It's the emergence of multi-faceted reality.  (p.4)
Heraclitus: "Nature loves to hide".   "Invisible connection is stronger than visible"  Our task is to penetrate down, to be brave, to discover, encounter, be with the less visible and the invisible. (p26)

That book sent me to the Blog of Robert Sardello

Still coming to appreciate the Changes that are revealing themselves:
The power of The Organic.  That word used to be a marketing device for expensive food.
Now it's the power to look out for.  It's sidelined our technology, our illusion of control.
It's mocked the tidiness of our capitalistic ways.
It's worth collecting Organic Words, and concepts, as pathmarkers to help us find our ways.
I'll start with a few gerunds: emerging, composting, grazing,
And Organic models of time and space: Tidal, Seasonal, 

A call for Covid Haiku.  Response to what's happening in 17 syllables.
Here's mine:

some ways are not done

forsythia blooms, birds nest

flies die on the sill

Again, and again, I'm struck by the Shifts in Time.  Things have gotten shorter, and longer.  Not the same.  Haiku-thinking helps get right to the core.  Things do make sense in bits, bites, as bait.

The longer part  actually has to do with slowness. I've been meaning to get gas for the last four days.  There's a loss of urgency that used to be so present. 

Words, Ideas I want to learn more about:
Indira's Net

Life as Kaliedoscopic; same pieces jumbled and reordered.

Fly's Eye View of the World
More, More

The Tidal Hudson River:  I collected beach brick pieces near Newburgh and have been
carving them--intuitively- seeing what emerges. Lots of swirls, spirals

It's Happening

It’s Happening! 
An Alchemical Approach to COVID   

Alchemy = balanced use of head, hand and heart; 
It keeps changing!
Re-balancing Body, Mind, Spirit.

Crack! Different energies released, 
swirling, spiraling  
Membrane thinned out, 
passage open in both, many directions    

gods re emerging: Pan, Lethe, daimones, fairies                         

House-Bound gods, Household Deities: 
there are many

Loss of Control: Not in Charge in the same ways

Change in our  PUBLIC presences: 
What’s Lost? Gained?

More Vulnerable Open, Prey 
to emotional, unpredictable weather fronts

Challenge to develop a patient, compassionate relationship with yourself.      
                           

Experience the Indifferent, Amoral quality of Nature. Where’s Mother?

.

How are you Coping?  with Distress /CRACK     Aware and wary?

Magical thinking, flee, numbing, soothing activities, night vision, denying? 

How are you en-trancing, soothing yourself?         

How else might you react?   Less news, less talk, More Making

1. Notice/Make Note of En-Trancing, Coping Activities

    And encounters w Non-Human, Feral  via Glimpse, chance,

    The Fleeting, accident, casual, transient, fugitive Ambiguity,

    Everchanging, Dreams, find Clan, The Deferred

2. Allow/Invite/Develop Encounters w small gods,

    EMERGING archetypes             The Numinous,         The Sacred               

    Versions in, per,extro, intro          What Stories are Appearing

    Events/Practices of Order/Disorder, short/small , The BackSeat   

                            

3. Be Alert/Brave to inevitable Political/Personal FX/Reactions

    New Ways to See and Sort Stuff. There's a re-prioritizing. 
    A different "mesh" presents for  filtering what's "important."        

4 Seek Ways Review/Update, ReInvest Energies  

 

5. Find Appropriate Activities, Practices, Tools, Lenses 

   Here are some. Details at The Casual Alchemist

   Can be done alone + with others

A. Be as Present and Aware  as possible.

   Create a Thumbnail/Snapshot  of NOW Make notes about your changing  interests, disinterests,

   Daily routine?  What’s persisting, what’s withering, Acts of ORDER?

B. Play     Look up that list of Surrealist Games 

C. Start a Deck of Homemade Cards SMOKEY LIFE/SHADOW           
    your Other times/ways

    SUITS/foci: birth, family       NEEDS awe, play, stories, shadow

    Shapes, Colors, Textures         BODY scars,  risk, habits 

   What you do ALONE              Deceits,   Reactions to Tarot, others   

  

D.Make Objects

E. Gift and Share Things   Find your ways            Share Pictures of What You are Making

Cosmic Artist in times of Pandemic

Roles for Cosmic Artists in times of Pandemic

Sharing what we know about how to do, see, be

1. Describe what’s happening from the energy workers point-of-view:

Using our practiced ‘other’ sensibility, (Imagination) to help us understand and

describe Life before, after, during, instead of and beyond The Facts       

There’s been a Flutter between figure and ground,

It’s an unexpected gift/shift in time/space. Jumbled Order/Disorder 

“The Center does not hold”    It’s Interstitial!

It feels like a Kaleidoscope, a Mandala, a snow globe

Oh, The Ambiguity of it all!   

           

2. Work on your Book of Shadows, that record of encounters with Life Force    

Welcome Emerging Archetypes; Thank the Receding Ones   

Speak to/Listen/Watch your feral/liminal mind. It’s raw, vital, maybe perverse.  

Honor The Ambiguous, that which is many-at-once

Practice and explore what it means to be “Pro-Passive” ie knowing when and how to Wait.

also called “non-doing”

3. Model/Practice/Teach skills/attitudes of Solace, comfort, beauty, solitude,

Community, ritual, surprise, delight, gifting, updating,

Offer help making Creative Distractions, holy amusements, profound Play

Using Loose Parts as empowerment

4. Make Public Altars, in unexpected places, to the emerging small gods and household deities;
Invite others to add or take. Always looking for ways to surprise, delight, involve, Share           

5. Empower Others, (not just jonesing for recognition, catharsis or money)  

Encourage them to explore how they are taking care of their Big Four Needs: for Awe and Wonder, for Story and Community, for Contact with Nature and the Feral and The need to Make (and unmake)

Encourage them to consider all their “Versions” There are at least 18:  How are you: extroverted?, introverted?, perverted?, What’s your relationship to subversion?, etc

Another Form of This