Copyright ©
2006 by William Mistele. All rights reserved.
Problems in the Study of
Magic, Part III—
The Magnetic
Fluid
Note 1: Some parts of this
essay are taken from my other articles.
See also yet to be published book Undines.
Note 2: This essay is a
response to a woman’s question to me: Can you tell me how women might become
more feminine by working with the magnetic fluid? The following topics amount
to a first draft. I will continue adding
to it from time to time.
Note 3: This article can also
be construed as the curriculum for a seminar at the
Topics:
Introduction: The Electric
and Magnetic Fluids
The Electric and Magnetic
Fluids in Magic
Two Problems (includes
beginning exercise)
Warm Up Exercise
Profile of an Undine’s
Personality
Profiles of Magnetic Women
Exercises Using Water Imagery
A
The Ocean: from the undine Istiphul
Iceberg: from the undine Amue
Ocean Trench
Lunar Gravity
A Thunderstorm
A River
Water as Omnipresence
From Pop Quiz for Magicians:
Distinguishing
a Real Undine from an Imagined One
The
Rules in Communicating with Nature Spirits
Nature
Spirits Don’t Follow the Same Rules
Peace,
Contentment, Rapture: Self-Evaluation
Tone
Magic
Journal of Meditations on the
cosmic letter M
Becoming a Whale: an exercise
in mental projection
Several Poems Relating to
Water
An Essay on How to Write a
Poem: the Focusing Method
A Field Trip: One Minute
Seminar on Relationships
Final Summary
Introduction: The Electric
and Magnetic Fluids
From a magical point of view,
two of the most dynamic energies of transformation in the universe are the
electric and the magnetic fluids. These
are not the same as the electricity and magnetism in nature but are roughly
analogous to them.
These fluids arise out of the four elements,
earth, water, air, and fire. These
elements and fluids are equally active within the human body and particularly
in sexuality and attraction between the genders. They can be pursued on physical, emotional,
mental, and spiritual levels.
The Cultural and Spiritual
Problem
To
put it briefly, there is a profound conflict and imbalance in the soul of
humanity. In terms of the two fluids,
the electric is far more developed and pronounced than the magnetic. It is a kind of global, social,
psychological, cultural, spiritual, and archetypal imbalance.
The electric is seen our war machines, our
military industrial complexes, our science, our applied technologies, our
research and development. We understand
well about having dominion over the earth—hard work, ordering, producing,
taking, using, and building. There is a
mastery that comes from assuming power, being in charge, organizing,
systematizing, standardizing, planning, commanding, and taking control.
The opposite, however, seen in the
magnetic fluid is not so developed. If
it were we would know what it means to feel a “peace that flows like a stream
from the dawn of time to the ends of eternity.”
We would know what it is to feel one with the universe. We would know what it is like to cease
thinking for hours on end, to be as calm and still as a mountain lake that
reflects in its depths the stars, the night, the moonlight, and the treasures
of spirit hidden within us.
We would be able to flow into and unite
with, to share heart to heart with anyone else on earth. Empathy—sensing what others’ feel,
experiencing what they experience, perceiving the world through their five
senses—this ability would be as advanced and as powerful as our knowledge and
application of nuclear physics.
You see, the magnetic fluid is so
astonishingly beautiful and overwhelmingly ecstatic that prior to this time we
may not have been ready to work with it.
We would have risked destroying human history as we know it had we focused
our attention in another direction, one that would have strayed from our
appointed course of development. Our
greatest scholars, teachers, and leaders just might have been inspired to put
their best efforts into unlocking the feminine mysteries rather than the more
extroverted masculine powers.
But now the time is right. What has been previously hidden should not be
held back. The powers, the treasures,
the wonders of the undines and the magic of water should be familiar to all who
desire them.
The Electric and Magnetic Fluids in
Magic
(From Four Archetypes of the Feminine)
The Electric Fluid
In brief, the electric fluid
is hot, burning, expansive, dynamic, intense, powerful, and explosive in
sensation. It has the capacity to
produce great light. In psychological
terms, it is commanding, full of faith and conviction. It reaches for sovereign power seeking
absolute control. It annihilates and
destroys obstacles that stand in its way.
In more spiritual terms, it seeks to
manifest its vision using all the previous qualities—with certainty, with
dynamic will and expansive power, with implacable dedication and electrifying
conviction. An example in the earthzone is the spirit referred to as Anamil
in Aries or for that matter the archangel Michael. For both of these spirits, there are no
problems that exist on earth that can not be solved.
You could say that independence, strength,
courage, conviction, faith, will, determination, dedication, self-reliance,
self-mastery, uprightness, clarity, order, adaptability, practicality,
planning, productivity, excitement, exhilaration, creativity, and vision are
qualities that are present when the electrical fluid is operating successfully.
In my other essay, Christianity and Judaism, I give the example of the “dark vision”
that came to Abraham about his descendents suffering in
Had these individuals possessed sufficient
will and conviction they might very well have done whatever was necessary to
avoid the destruction they intuited. But
they did not. Their electric fluid,
their faith and conviction, their will and decisiveness lacked both strength
and quality necessary to prevent the disasters that followed their inaction.
Obviously, the electric fluid can be done
in a positive or negative way. In the I-Ching, the great yang is describe
as the most creative of all things. The
prefect expression of its nature is the easy that it might overcome the
difficult. In other words, you take a
great task, project, or purpose and break it down into its steps and parts and
master them one by one.
A great father systematically and
persistently teaches his children in a simple but continuous manner so that
when they are older they are fully equipped and prepared to face the challenges
of life. He foresees the ends and
objectives in advance, makes plans, and persists in carrying through with them
so that the most difficult of problems can be solved. A father’s great accomplishment is in
preparing his children to undergo the great transitions of life in a smooth and
harmonious manner.
Once the decision is made to build a
What you do want is a commander in chief
(Eisenhower) who knows that he is completely responsible for the outcome, who is
willing to assume great risk, to act decisively, and yet who is willing to
resign his commission should the invasion fail.
The electric fluid can be very destructive
as well. As such, it’s burning and
consuming power acts to dominate the wills of others. It tortures and torments, hazes and
subjugates. It absorbs others’ wills
into itself. It utilizes every means
possible to corrupt, divide, undermine, and enslave others to its
purposes.
An example of the electric fluid operating
in a negative patriarchy is when the man in charge hazes those under him. One way he does this is to ask that they do
something completely absurd that they know he knows is absurd. Doing this task degrades them but nonetheless
doing it with full devotion is a test of their complete loyalty and
obedience.
In
For the negative electrical fluid, the
light is there but it lacks purity and clarity--the vision is distorted and
twisted. The faith and conviction are
there but are often expressed in a degraded form such as through arrogance and
self-righteousness.
The positive electrical (or patriarchal
for that matter) is seen in George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Gandhi—all
acting to revolutionize society in a more just and inclusive manner. The negative is seen in Napoleon, Stalin, and
bin Laden—all grasping after power in a regressive and exclusive manner. But in either the positive or negative forms,
the electric fluid is willing to put itself at complete risk to accomplish its
mission and manifest its vision.
The Magnetic Fluid
The magnetic fluid, by
contrast, is cool, soothing, contracting, and attractive. It is nurturing, and supportive. It contains within itself so as to shelter
and protect. Instead of intense and
explosive, it is rhythmic, receptive, and gentle.
In psychological terms, it is empathic,
sensitive and responsive. It draws
together, bonds, joins, and unites. It
accepts and affirms.
On the mental plane, the magnetic fluid
calms the mind exchanging the process of thinking for an expansion of sensory
perception. It amplifies awareness so that water becomes part of one’s nervous
system. You become aware of vast
distances and the subtle nuances of physical and emotional vibration.
In spiritual terms, it reaches toward all
embracing, all-encompassing love. It
presents us with astonishing states of awareness that transcend individual
identity. Such states involve wonder,
ecstasy and beauty.
Again, in the I-Ching
the great Yin is the most receptive of all things. The perfect expression of its nature is the
simple that it might overcome what obstructs.
The yin in this case is known for its devotion. It is the mother whose love is always there,
whose support is always felt and present.
There is no end to its nurturing capacity physically, emotionally,
mentally, and spiritually.
The Great Yin conveys an inner feeling of
affirmation, of support and love. This
devotion or conveyance of love serves to unite the individual from within no
matter how dissecting and dividing, conflicting and stressful the circumstances
of the individual’s path in life. This
is a feminine, a mother’s set of qualities and powers describe by King Wu in
ancient times in
We could say that peace,
repose, calmness, happiness, contentment, serenity, tranquility, well-being,
delight, kindness, gentleness, affection, empathy, tenderness, sensuality,
pleasure, bliss, ecstasy, compassion, and love are qualities that are present
when the magnetic fluid is operating successfully. Whether positive or negative, whether life
giving or life destroying, the magnetic fluid is the
guardian that reveals the deepest feelings and the mysteries at the core of the
self.
Two Problems
First Problem
The problems in working both
with the water element and with undines probably reduce to two things. The first involves learning to focus
completely on direct sensory perceptions and impressions. It is necessary to hold, gaze upon, enter,
immerse yourself within, taste, touch, listen to, explore, survey, and record
your full spectrum of your feelings and emotions.
To work with the magnetic fluid an
individual needs a personal inventory, a mental repertoire, and memory data
base to draw upon to compare and contrast so as to interpret new and unusual
experiences. When dealing with the
unknown, it helps to be very clear about what you already know. Your body and your feelings are your primary
reference books in exploring the magnetism within water.
Magical and Non Magical
Methods in Working with Water
To be brief, we can recall
and to some extent relive our past experiences with water. We can also interact with water through our
imaginations. This can be carried out in
a casual manner such as is done in daydreaming.
We can also extend our imagination a little further by imagining we are
inside of a dream. This method is
sometimes referred to as pathworking—you go on a little mental excursion
following a certain theme.
We can be playful—I imagine or recall
being on a beach. I feel the spray on my
face from waves breaking. I smell the
air. I hear the roar from the
waves. I watch the wind as its gusts
play upon the surface of the lake or sea.
This is all perfectly normal and within everyday modes of brain
activity. There is nothing magical about
this at all.
But what if I extend the
process. What if I focus on one
detail for a minute or more. I imagine I am floating in my favorite tide
pool by Makapu’u on
And I continue now within a waking
dream. The water in this dream responds
to me. It is ready to show me new
sensations and feelings I have never felt before. A shiver of bliss curls down my nerves as if
my nerves are the strings of a harp and the winds of my desires and longings
begin to play music upon them. Except
for this: the notes and melodies are not my own; the musician doing the playing
follows themes that use the sensations and feelings of water.
I breathe deep. My chest rises slightly in the water and then
sinks slightly again as I exhale. The
edges of my body fade. My nervous system
feels like it extends though the pool and then just as easily through the
surrounding ocean without limitation.
The sensation of water in nature and the internal feeling of being
accepted and at peace become interchangeable.
It helps of course that I am fairly well
acquainted with being able to stop my mind from thinking. I am here without thoughts occurring. I am focused on the physical sensations and
receptive to the faintest nuances of feeling without distractions arising. That
comes from training.
It helps also that I do not worry as the
definition of my body or ego identity dissolves into nothing. I am not afraid of becoming nothing or a
mirror that is empty and clear so that its nature is pure receptivity.
I linger here. Time—the part of my brain that tracks a
sequence of moments unfolding as a linear activity—it disengages. The clock in my brain has lost reference to
seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, eons and ages. I could just as easily be dreaming with the
sea of that moment when life first took birth and began its journey. I could just as easily be in that place when
the seas shall wash the shores of this planet and mankind shall be no
more.
I linger here as the sensations and
feelings within my brain conjure images of places familiar like moments of
intimacy with women I have known. And
just as easily images appear of worlds so far away they have been created by my
imagination as a tribute to what I long for.
A therapist might call this free
association. A clairvoyant might call it
divination. I call it another way of
being—it is passing through the gates of dream and imagination to taste the
powers of the magnetic fluid and the treasures of spirit hidden within water.
Have I started doing magic yet? It is a tough call. Technically speaking according to one
definition, magic occurs when you use your psychic powers.
A sense utilizing tactile sensation or
visual perception is cancelled. The
energy within the sensory system of touch or the eye’s receptivity to external
light is suspended. The physical sense of the skin or eye is then turned within and free to
be utilized by the brain which perceives now through the eyes of imagination,
dream, or the astral plane.
This action subtracts an amount of
physical vitality from your body. It
puts a tax on your nervous system and it submits a charge to be paid at a later
date from the integrity of your personality.
Magic is very, very expensive.
You have to pay back what has been taken
away during your imaginary or psychic journey if you want to return fully to
the light of day—if you want to be, feel, and act
normal again in this world shared in common with other human beings. A lot of people never make the transition
back.
This is where practicing a rigorous system
that trains the mind and concentration pays off. You are able to balance the accounts—the
debits and credits, the interest and taxes, the fees and assessments—so that
things remain harmonious when your payments come due.
And now you return from these magnetic
dreams that feed on divine passions. You
have your cup of coffee with sugar and cream or your green tea and you notice
right away the subtle tensions in your nervous system that remain. With a breath or a minor mental adjustment
you focus and they begin to drain away.
The blood vessels dilate and the warmth and
circulation return to the parts of your body that experienced a very minor form
of hibernation as you focused your attention on another world. And you make a few mental notes on what to do
during the day or week that will keep your body and mind healthy. You want to be extremely careful to avoid any
residual strain or anything that might distract from your everyday
activities.
And then the real test for both those who
use magic and those who use ordinary methods of reflection appears. The question then is, What
part of your experience with watery magnetism can you apply in a way that
enriches your life and your world? Does
the feeling of peace carry over to your personality so you appear calm, serene,
and clear? Or are you still caught in an
otherworldly dream like waking up in the morning after some profound dream that
you just can’t quite recall?
When you dealing with someone in a moment
of conflict, can you look into the other’s eyes and easily imagine where they
are coming from and what is driving them?
Can you project (or spontaneously flow) something of your peace toward
them so that somehow they feel good amid the interaction? In this case, your empathy expands so as to
increase your knowledge of your fellow human beings.
Or does your heightened sense of empathy make
your vulnerable? You want to give and to
heal but the application and the situation never quite match or express your
intentions? For an undine, there is a wild serenity, an engaging
peace, and an enticing stillness that reign supreme within any situation. Some of the undines are fabulous
magicians. But once we start talking
about dialoguing with undines we are now operating within a magical universe or
so it would seem.
Note: There are times when concentrating on nature
images actually produces a charge of energy inside your body. For example, it is possible to accumulate an
extra amount of watery energy within oneself.
This can have a healthy, balancing effect. It can produce disharmony the
way attending a basketball game can be draining if you remain in a heightened
state of excitement after the game or if upon getting up in the morning you
remain in a semi state of sleep. In the
case of having a surcharge of watery energy inside of you, the remedy is to
imagine it draining away. You can
“breathe” the water element out of your body through your breath or body pours
or you can imagine it slipping out your feet or hands.
First
Step
A first step, then, a
beginning exercise is imaginatively recall the highlights of your experience
with water in nature—being out in the rain, swimming in a lake or river,
watching the waves break on the shore, the fog drift over the water, the smell
of the ocean, drinking water from a well, sailing in a boat with the spray of
the waves on your face, a picturesque lake you camped near, being out on the
high sea, ice, snow, seeing the fog in your breath when it is cold, etc. And then there are the images we get through
movies, magazines, and TV—icebergs, the artic poles, streams within caves, huge
waves, water spouts, etc.
Here are few more descriptions from my
dialogues with undines:
Water
is the sparkling white drops in a waterfall, the color in the rainbow, the
spray in the wave breaking on the beach, in the white cap, and in the water
splashing your face. It is soft, foamy
bubbles slipping around your ankles as you walk in the surf and the drops of
water thrown into the air as the water in a stream slaps against a rock. It is the water dropping down, sprinkling, or
drizzling as you walk beneath the leaves of trees still wet from the rain. It is the smell of salty, moist air when you
are near the sea and the cool, moist scent when you approach a desert stream.
And
while sitting on a rock in a stream with an undine next to me I become acutely aware
of tiny currents crisscrossing at the edges of the mirror like surface just
where water begins to fold around a rock.
As the water dips and turns around my ankle, I sense how the stream's
bubbling ripples are like the hands of a dancer telling a story as they turn in
countless swirls and curves. The streams
across these islands seem suddenly near.
Their sounds breathe and sigh, caressed by air, hiding in sand, seeping
beneath rocks, falling in space, and circling in mountain pools. Drifting downstream to the sea, these waters
laugh like young girls carrying baskets of fresh fruit to a celebration.
These are part of my personal
experiences that make up a repertoire of my memories with water. Some of our memories will be highly emotional
and others will be playful and innocent.
It is important to note the temperature of the water, the currents,
waves, tides, and all the sounds, smells, feelings and sensations that are
especially vivid in our memories. We
will need a crystal clear set of images and sensations in order to proceed.
In so many ways it is not
difficult to open to the astral realm—when your body sensations and perceptions
are completely immersed in the touch and embrace of water in nature. There can be a pleasant memory of water. Something enjoyable to
recall. A time
when you had fun. A time when you forgot yourself. Something thrilling occurred. Something joyful and
playful and full of delight.
This is normal stuff. But there is a moment if you pause and let go
just a little more than usual. You make
that small shift into your feelings. And
then touching water, even placing your hands in a bowl of water and your
emotional receptivity opens to a far larger expanse of the magnetic field that
is water’s vibration in nature.
Then it is possible to feel water in a way
that is giving, receiving, embracing, flowing, letting go, yielding purifying,
renewing, with depths and breath, currents, tides, and streams. This water encircles the earth, extending
without center on and on full of life, dreams, and songs.
The vibratory field of watery magnetism is
such that every desire can be satisfied here, every dream experienced in its
fulfillment, every vision purified, every craving and hunger released so as to
know the wonder hidden within them, and every love tasted, touched, and felt to
the that end that human beings are destined to achieve.
And then again the trick is coming back to
the normal mode of perception and the familiar range of feelings you left
behind. If you overdose on watery
magnetism you are not really here but still wandering around out there. And that can be a nightmare—being haunted by
what you can not express or share.
And if you come back too quick or without
artistic sentiment, the wonder and beauty, the harmony and all-embracing love
you felt and touched gets left behind.
If you are not careful, it gets erased from your mind. The brain can not retain a consciousness so
far away from the ordinary. Then again
it is like a dream from which you awake having forgotten even the taste.
Second Problem
And so the second problem is
with letting go of and then returning to one’s personal identity. I do not think I could get the famous depth
psychologist, Carl Jung, to let go of his identity sufficiently to work with
water. I think he was probably too
caught up in identifying with his mental activity. I do not think I could have gotten the poets
T.S. Elliot or W.B. Yeats to work successfully with water. And I know that Tolkein,
C.S. Lewis, and Rowling would be incapable of this quest.
On the other hand, the
poet Theodore Roethke yes. He would have in an instant embraced without
hesitation or a second thought the undines’ domains had he known about
them. And if I had showed the poet Dylan
Thomas a meditation for undines, an undine personality profile, and a few
stories as well he would have gone so deep I don’t know if he would have found
his way back.
And if the photographer Ansel
Adams and I had gone hiking together and I had explained to him about the
energies underlying nature, he would have added nude women to his spectacular
photography. I am sure of that. I also think the German poets Holderlein, Trakl, Schiller, and Rilke could have handled undines with their imaginations and
their hearts. These poets were hard core
mystics. They knew how to surrender
their egos and identities for the sake of their art.
But I am not so sure about the English
Romantic poets. They knew how to take a
perception, a feeling, or a sensation and explore it endlessly in their
poetry. But to be honest with you I
think they would have been scared shitless of a real queen of undines had they
run into one or two. It is one thing to
write about a fairy queen when you know you are the artist and you are in
control of the words, the rhythm, and the intonation of the poetry that comes
through.
It is altogether a different thing when
the touch of a queen of undine’s hand on your skin takes you into a dream in
which you feel simultaneously the waves breaking on all the beaches of the
world. No, I don’t think they would have
been ready, even though they were poetic revolutionaries, to embrace a beauty
that would have annihilated their concepts of nature as being passive and
pretty.
It is not that I am asking more than what
most artists would be willing to give or to attempt. It is more like this: you have to be able to
say “here is everything I am, know about myself, and have experienced in this
life; and now I am putting that off to the side for a little while (I’ll be
back shortly and it will be waiting for me)—I am putting off all that I am so I
can do something completely different.
“I am going to enter a waking dream and a
realm of the imagination so deep and vast that it overlaps with the energies
underlying nature. And in this realm I
am going to learn to perceive and feel like an undine as if this is my home and
no longer that tiny zone of consciousness we call humanity.”
It does not really matter if you believe
in undines or not. That is quite
irrelevant. What is at stake is another
mode of perception that takes place outside of the normal range of human
consciousness.
Am I suggesting that it is inexcusable for
mankind to have missed such astonishing beauty, to have been so blind to the
all-embracing love that vibrates all around us in every ocean, lake, and
stream, to have failed to explore the bliss and ecstasy so intense they destroy
human conceptions and philosophy?
It is inexcusable. It is absolutely inexcusable. It is also completely understandable. You think other things have not been hidden
or held back? How about this? “Say Moses, in regard to the Arc of the
Covenant, it is known to be made of gold and to generate like an electrical
condenser a whole lot of electricity.
Could you give us the schematics and electrical circuitry for the design
along with an explanations and suggestions for applied technology?”
“And Jesus, could you tell us about what
went on during all those years of your life for which there is no record? What was your process of self-discovery? And could you tell me in detail what it is
like to be joined to God and how exactly and to what extent you expect or
anticipate that others will join with you in accomplishing this? In other words, could you give us some tips
on the nature of this romance that had made the two of you one? I am only asking because I sense that the
entire history of Christianity has been blind to the reality.”
“And
“Oh yes, and Buddha, could you transmit to
me, well, at least to those who were a part of your history a direct taste, a
direct transference of your state of bliss and enlightenment? I know you can do this. It would have revolutionized Buddhism and put
enlightenment into the curriculum of every university. But I guess someone just didn’t ask you so
this treasure was lost forever.”
After all, Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching
just as be was about to disappear forever from history because the guard at the
outpost gate asked him to share his wisdom.
If you don’t ask or, like Jacob with an angel, strive or wrestle with
the Mysteries they are quite content to return to the Silence from which they
arose without a word of farewell, without a regret, or the postscript—“transmission
lost.”
You see, from my perspective, history has
been full of all sorts of spiritual blunders.
We have these windows of opportunity for seizing what might otherwise
vanish. We are surrounded by so
much. I don’t imagine that
astrophysicists anytime soon are going to give up trying to discover the 95% of
matter in the universe that is missing from their observations, the stuff they
call dark matter and dark energy. As
with them, it is about making it a habit of looking very carefully until you
find what you are after.
The only
advantage I have when it comes to entering and seizing the treasures hidden
within the unknown is that my curiosity is insatiable—searching very carefully
has been a life long habit. I possess
more than a little determination. But for
some strange reason Divine Providence has become my patron. You could say I am under orders to find a way
to express the beauty of the universe such as this one: the magnetism and
all-embracing love hidden within the element of water.
Personality Profile of an
Undine
A
while back I worked my way through a college textbook in personality
theories. It was pretty neat
actually. I mean these psychologists put
a lot of work into developing their various theories.
They did not do as much as I would have
liked in terms of field work and research.
They did not conduct enough first hand interviews; primary data was
lacking and certainly they were not very good at ethnography, at understanding
family history and oral traditions. And
obvious they never talked to my father or mother and they sure do not know much
about politics or politicians. But then
again I did not think they would.
It was very funny, though, because they
also did not seem to read much of each other’s work. Kind of like the heads of the various
religions on earth. Sometimes you
suspect they deliberately brainwash themselves into pretending that other
religions do not exist. And if other
religions do exist, well, it is like something the dog dragged back during the
night and left for you to find on the front steps.
The hermetic saying is “as above so below,”
in other words, your spirit and your personality (or personal identity) reflect
each other in beauty, power, and harmony.
Personality is very important. It
is not your spirit that does the juggling in terms of balancing all your
activities and interests.
Your spirit does not write the checks to
pay your bills or figure out how to please or not please someone with whom you
are intimate. No, this is your
domain—you as a person. And your
personality is the style, the manner, the mode of operation, and center of
accumulated experience through which you act.
OK?
We are going to talk about the personality of undines. Take a moment, as in five seconds, and
imagine an undine. Take five more
seconds and imagine the personality of a great queen of undines who knows the
magic of water beyond the knowledge of the human race.
In the following I am going to describe
briefly the personality profile of an undine.
Consider it in these terms. Our
To get a good grade in their classes—that
is, between the first day of class and the time of the final exam—you have to
be able to pass yourself off as an undine, a mermaid,
or a merman. You see, magic is
technically not about being academic. It
is a way of being and experiencing that is first hand involving field research,
original sources, and careful observation--perception is always the primary
mode of verification.
So you have to put on their personality,
acquire their kind of awareness, enter their dreams, allow their deepest
passions to flow through your soul, and perform their magic. This is not about shape changing. It is about extending one’s imagination and
feeling and opening our hearts, not just to theirs, but to the dreams hidden
deep within us.
How to describe the
personality of an undine? Well, how do
we describe the personality of a woman?
As a point of reference--and we are going to need one--notice the
language used in describing women according to the twelve signs of the zodiac:
She likes to be in charge. She is good at solving problems. You do not want to mess with her. (Aries). She is down
to earth, grounded, practical, sensual, loving, and hard working. (Taurus). She is
sharp, no-nonsense, witty, communicates well, and has
a variety of interests. (Gemini).
She is nurturing, sweet, takes care of
herself, cautious yet also she gets what she wants. (Cancer). She is attractive, romantic, inspiring,
enjoys parties especially when she is the host and the center of
attention. (Leo). She is analytic, astute, works together well
with others though she equally enjoys solitude. (Virgo).
She thrives in loving another though the
relationship has to be balanced and harmonious.
She is very attractive and adept at understanding others. (Libra). She is intense, passionate, and knows how to
express her will from a gut level. (Scorpio). She loves quests and seeking out new
experiences. She is high minded and does
best when her life is guided by an ideal. (Sagittarius).
She is ambitious, determined, realistic,
and practical. She will work as hard as
she needs to in order to arrive at her goal. (Capricorn). She is spacey, dreamy, visionary, and when
she gets it right she sees the bigger picture. (Aquarius). She is giving—she has to give. And in giving too much she has to retreat
from others in order to recharge. She is
intuitive and receptive. (Pisces). That is the personality of women in terms of
the zodiac.
Of course, I am not about to describe the
personality of just any undine. I am
going for the equivalent of one of the most glamorous, a supermodel, you might
say or a
Michelle Pfeiffer has unusual capacities
for receptivity and for getting into her role without letting a hint of her
stardom interfere. Angelina Jolie has a larger than life personality. She is extraordinarily articulate and able to
live out the intensity of what she feels within. Catherine Zeta Jones has an overpowering
level of vitality. She is in fabulous
physical shape and she can sure dance and sing.
And Meryl Streep,
winner of a life time achievement award, takes the heart of the person she is
playing and lives it as if it is her own.
Her empathy is extraordinary.
David Letterman, the evening talk show
host, once said to another actress, Sandra Bullock, “You could do anything on
the screen, cook noodles for example, and I would enjoy watching.” Such women at the minimum possess a quiet
charisma and a subliminal way of capturing your attention.
Now then, consider the personality of a great queen of
the undines. The undine Istiphul has a
resemblance to women in the signs of Libra and Taurus that are governed by the
sign of Venus. Imagine the beauty and
love of Venus falling into the sea and giving birth to the soul of a woman.
And then imagine that this woman has her
own professional skills and subliminal arts—she can extend her consciousness
through all the oceans of the earth, the dark depths of the ocean trench, the
currents, the tides, the wind blown foam from the white caps across a thousand
miles, the icy poles, the iceberg and the freezing wintry darkness, and yes the
lightning storm raging with electrical bursts.
In other words, her heart embodies the
femininity and love hidden within flowing water that yields, receives, absorbs,
purifies, renews, and gives birth to and sustains all life on earth. These qualities summarize to a small degree
the personality of Istiphul.
Istiphul certainly is sweet, kind, and
tender. Is Scorpio passionate and
erotic? Is Libra beautiful? Istiphul is perhaps the most beautiful
creature on earth and no other being can match her erotic skills.
Is Istiphul romantic? When you enter her presence she automatically
is aware of your deepest desires, longings, and dreams. And not only that. She is aware of those desires and longings
that are hidden in the depths of your self.
It is her nature to alter her own qualities
and powers so as to fulfill the deepest cravings in your soul. But this is not a trick or a subterfuge. Her magical knowledge includes creating a
space of wonder and receptivity in which two separate souls can join as one in
an ecstasy that only the mystery of the seas unfolds.
Is Istiphul sensual? When Istiphul touches you arm, you can feel waves breaking on
beaches all over the world. With a note
sung from her lips, she can call the flowing essence of the entire sea--all
that languid and tranquil receptivity and nourishing presence--to caress her
shoulders, to shine from her breasts, or to shimmer in the soft curves of her
hips.
A description of an undine’s personality
is not exactly an academic activity. By
necessity, it involves your imagination.
Therefore, imagine taking all the sensations, feelings, and moods that
the seas create; imagine binding that
beauty and wild passion into one light, one dream, or one vision of
completion--and then to be able to transmit this to another through your eyes,
a touch, or a kiss. This is precisely
the natural and normal mode of interaction that you experience when you are in
Istiphul’s presence. Now that is quiet
charisma and subliminal attraction!
Does Istiphul have an agenda? Does she conspire to undermine your
personality or subvert your will to comply with her purposes? Does she give to you in order to get what she
wants in return?
Does the sea absorb the heat of the sun
and return that heat so as to cool the equator and to warm the colder northern
regions? Does water purify, renew,
restore, and give birth? And do our
feelings not reach out through our desires, our dreams, and our longings to see
and to believe in what we are meant to be?
Istiphul is a force of nature and an intelligence
within the element of water, yet her most unique abilities are found within the
art of uniting with another.
The personality of an undine is, like the
sea, ancient and primordial. And like
water an undine’s affection is as intimate as water that is in our blood, flows
through our breath, and quenches our thirst.
An undine can interact exactly like a human woman who flirts, teases,
laughs, cries, listens, shares, and gives of herself.
But when an undine like Istiphul relaxes,
her aura is nearly indistinguishable from a vast expanse of open
ocean. To be with her is to be
aware only of the sounds, scents, and sensations of waves stretching from
horizon to horizon.
If Istiphul wishes to share anything it is
that we as human beings learn to perceive and extend our awareness as she does:
to let go and sensually flow with a billion waves dancing to a thousand
separate winds; to sink down into our inner bring and to know what it is to be
whole and complete and to become one with another as she is one with the sea.
Do the queen of
undines have will like an Aries or a Leo?
Let me put it this way. From what
I can tell their magic is such that they can conjure up an entire thunderstorm
by charging the magnetism of the ocean.
They can contain any will within the depths of their love and then
purify, refine, and redirect it to attain a higher vision.
Are they practical and down to earth like a
Taurus or ambitious like a Capricorn?
Try as sharp as a diamond and as clear because their feelings are that
pure. They sense intuitively the
possibilities contained in any moment.
The peace within the depths of the seas and the vision arising from the
distilled essence of the stars—this is within their dreams.
The undines wish to share with mankind
the wonder, beauty, peace, serenity, bliss, and ecstasy of the water element on
earth. And there is one thing more which
our religions on earth have done nothing to prepare us for—the seas are alive
and possess an ancient dream to love and to be loved in return. And I suspect that sooner rather than later
the undines shall accomplish their mission of transferring their vision to human
women.
There you have it,
the personality profile in brief of an undine.
Of course, other undines have different qualities. Isaphil is under the influence of the moon
especially since she is custodian of treasures of spirit hidden within
serenity. She possesses an ancient gift
that mankind has not yet received. Amue
is nurturing like a woman with the sign of Cancer. And Osipeh? Maybe she is a Scorpio with some Libra and
Gemini thrown in—passionate with art and a knack for communication.
If this were the first day in a college class on undines, think about
how you might be different once you have completed the curriculum. Or imagine someone else you know and think
about what he or she might be like having worked through all the exercises, home
work assignments, group projects, and field research that the class
entails.
What? Joe, you have a question
from the back row? Does the University
offer a correspondence class on undines?
Well, I think some of you might consider writing up your class notes,
experiences, and designing a group project that would present the curriculum
for a correspondence class. How about
that?
Personality Profiles of Magnetic Women
Katie?
Katie you seem to have that look on your face I know all too well. What is it that you think I am not
explaining?
Katie: You have given us a profile of an
undine’s personality. And you compared
her personality to human women. Could
you just briefly say something about what a human woman might be like if she
were to study and develop the magnetic fluid within her self so as to increase
her femininity?
You sure go for the heart of the matter,
don’t you? Thank you for asking. I always love a good question. OK.
Let’s give it a shot.
Take you for example. Consider that time I had you imagine a sea of
water around yourself. And then that
this sea was love. And then I had you
flow that watery ocean of love through other people, down through their head,
through every part of their bodies, and then out their feet. That worked remarkably well on people who
were in no way psychic and who didn’t even believe in this stuff. But I knew from your aura that you had a gift
in this area.
Other examples. Of
course there are cases where the woman acts like a medium to channel an
undine. But in these cases the women
often do not recall the words they speak or the life energy that moves through
them.
Of course, there are those rare moments when I have talked to women and
they have been totally accepting.
Listening, giving, receptive to every feeling I was feeling. Their hearts so open it was as if I were
alive within them and a part of them.
How can you put a value on that or try to explain it to someone who has
never experienced it?
So yes there are women who know how to love so that you are one with
their heart. It is a lost art. Everything another person is you embrace within a sacred space of your soul and spirit. You wish for them the best. You hope for them. You feel their pain and suffering, their inspiration
and dreams, and you seek to hold and heal them with the strength that is within
your self.
It is not all that rare for lovers to be in constant psychic connection
to each other. Some sense how their
partners are doing during the day. They
can feel the other’s ups and downs and if there is distress, hunger, or
elation. Their connection is that
profound. I meet couples like that. I just can’t get them to keep notes of their
experiences with their lovers in a journal.
They feel embarrassed as if writing it down would make them appear
weird.
I knew a woman who learned a Taoist meditation for integrating and
rejuvenating her own vitality. The thing
was she could also do the exact same meditation within anyone else no matter
where they were. Focusing her attention
to transform vitality was just as easy when she did it within another person as
it was doing it within herself. This
made her a psychic healer. That kind of
activity would be completely natural for any undine.
I could mention my still incomplete Travel Guide to Life. In it I describe the astral plane of the
ten sephira each of which I have observed being
active in actual women. We start with
well-being and peace. Around a woman
like that you experience timelessness.
You are a part of a boundless time frame in which you sense that all
that you seek will come to you naturally in due season. I have only met three women who have that quality
of water so strong that being around them is like being in a dream.
The image here of water involves to some
extent all the other images of water also.
But it perhaps is seen in a huge lake beneath a mountain. The water is still without a ripple and as
you float in it you find yourself also on top of the highest mountain. It is as if you can see to the ends of the
earth—you are both in the water and full of vision in the same moment as if
time and space were suspended.
Then there is Yesod,
the sphere of the moon. Here there are
women who embody happiness, serenity, and contentment—qualities extremely rare
in women these days. The undine Isaphil
is an absolute master of this domain.
Still, I have met women at whose touch you can let go and experience the
pure of flow of water.
They possess a divine sensuality in which every desire enters the house
of satisfaction, every dream experiences the
completion of its vision. This kind of
contentment and happiness gets inside yourself and makes you into a new
person. This feeling of inner life keeps
renewing itself like water overflowing from an Artesian well. It is easy to miss because it is so
gentle. And the affection is so
natural.
In Hod woman are
vivacious and spontaneous. They bring
out the best in others by living on the edge of the moment. They have a way of being fully engaged and
taking delight in whatever is going on.
It is like seeing the light sparkling in drops of water falling into a
mountain pool. Its
constantly new.
This magnetic quality of feeling animates people because it interacts on
so many different levels at the same time—the physical body language, the
emotional language, the verbal play and mental focus are all active. It is like the woman is using subliminal
sonar—she is bouncing off the other person a variety of responses in order to
discover what will maximize the participation.
Associated with Hod is the Greek god Mercury
who was known for his persuasion. He
could persuade Demeter to abandon her depression and to return to participating
in life. And he could tell a story that
would cause Argus to fall asleep and close a thousand eyes.
The equivalent in terms of magnetism is that the woman uses an
incredibly range. She is relentless in
seeking a fair exchange, a vitalizing give and take that creates the feeling of
being fully alive. To summarize, she is
animating, scintillating, vivacious, sparkling, and captivating.
In Netzach,
women have that deep, empathic magnetic embracing love. They take you into themselves so as to make
two into one through art, through beauty of expression, or through the
mysteries of intimacy. These women are masters of “a secret sharing heart to heart” that occurs
when two people are in love. They have a
passion that possesses courage and determination.
To be precise, they are aware of and have a
great appreciation for the way people are attracted to each other. They know how to modulate and to enhance that
attraction so that it goes deeper and also reaches new heights.
This is actually not a romantic thing they are doing. It is more subtle and internal. It is less about falling in love and far more
about the process of discovering who both people really are. They treat intimacy as if it is a sacred
ritual of the heart. The image is that
of a holy well or a still pool of water beneath a mountain that is luminous
with its own inner light. (See my poem, The Feeling of a Woman)
In Tipareth, the
empathy is more universal. In the
woman’s heartfelt embrace you are joined to the depths of life. Her compassion, empathy, and love are so
bright and dynamic they unite you to the inspiration within you. Some of the undines are like this: they
simply will not be satisfied until they discover the deepest source of life
within you. To do this they make
themselves perfectly clear like the purest mirror and in a state of complete
stillness they allow your inner spirit to appear. Some cultures treat sacred lakes like this or
for me it is the tide pool at Makapu’u.
I
know several human women are just like that.
If I touch them I am immediately transported into the presence of my
Guardian Angel or into the sphere of the sun and the presence of some high
spirit who in his innermost being is united to God. But these human women for the most part are
acting as mediums.
They are neither aware of the gifts they possess nor are they willing to
learn to consciously take hold of and use them.
Nonetheless, if they did utilize their gifts consciously then they would
certainly be equal in magical quality to the queen of the undines. I can not deny this.
In Gevurah a
woman has that age old and well-known ability to spur men onto action. Or, then again, maybe she is not interested
in men. But here too she has that
primary quality of water that is called daring. Her feelings automatically tell her what is
possible and she will hold nothing back in her pursuit of her course of
action. It is being possessed by
fearlessness.
I know women like that. They
could get Rommel, Patton, and general
Eisenhower to get off their butts and strive to fulfill their missions with
greater precision. You could say they
are not a cheerleader or a quarterback who calls the plays but rather an angel
who inspires the craving for accomplishment.
The magnetic fluid in this case, like the cosmic letter N, generates an
ecstasy that originates in the moment of action. It is an internal thing—a feeling of the
energies of the universe flowing through you as you strive for self-mastery. The feeling is that of water possessing the
momentum of a flash flood.
In Chesed, the
woman’s magnetism inspires universal visions.
She is the love that makes a community work. When we all feel a part of each other—this is
her doing. She is the motivator, the
unifier, the one who gets us to sense directly that all our hearts beat with
the same blood. To care for another is
to care for your self.
Do I know women like this, who make serving mankind feel like your best
course of action? I have met a few. They are reformers. They carry the ideals on their shoulders—they
tell us in spite of the opposition to get rid of anti personal weapons; they
say something should be done about the millions who die each year from
starvation and disease.
If there is someone out there who is striving to turn a ghetto into a
community—it might be their voices you hear; it can be as simple as someone
noticing you when your life is utterly lost: her hand is on your shoulder and
she says in effect “Come on back. I miss
you and like having you around.”
I know women like that—they keep track of you and you feel as a result
that you are part of the circulation of life within them. Something of them is always flowing through
you. They never forget you. You remain alive because you are a part of
their heart. How can you put a price on that?
A lunar spirit once said to me, “The greatest treasure in all the world is a woman who loves a man with all of her
heart.” Think about the internal resources of soul and spirit, of empathy,
love, and compassion that a woman would need to possess in order to accomplish
that—to be able to extend her self freely so that she is one with your
spirit. Such treasures exist precisely
when and where the magnetic fluid is in full effect.
The sphere of Chesed is not about romantic
love. It is not about sex though those
who dwell here are often the best. And
so in my screenplay, The Fall of Atlantis,
there is an age old order of women who pass down their lineage from mother to
daughter.
And in their tradition they act as others’ guardian angels. They love them in a way that imitates the
divine. They are pure inspiration and
they are as much a part of another’s life as it is possible to be. And all of this they do from a distance only
occasionally revealing who they are to their targets.
A woman once said to me quite spontaneously, “You are my guardian
angel.” The Hopi Indians have what they
call a “spiritual uncle” or “spiritual aunt.”
The person watches over you your whole life. It’s a minor vocation. There is an inner connection. It is completely altruistic.
You practice it because to some degree we are all spiritual beings. And when you taste in full measure the
magnetic fluid then it becomes the most natural of things. The image is like a sacred cup of inspiration
that is treasured and passed around a community to accentuate those moments
that mark life’s great transitions. I
knew a community that used an actual chalice in that way. The physical symbol evoked the feeling of
sharing with everyone.
Next is Binah and the sphere of Saturn. The prime feeling that goes here is joyful
reunion. The depth of feeling is so
great it turns life into a celebration.
When you embrace a woman who has this feeling (and by embrace I mean you
share a heart to heart space), you are again experiencing a suspension of
time. The connection is internal and it
underlies all the seasons of life. It
reunites everything that is separate.
At my last high school class reunion, some of the women danced with a
wildness and an abandon that just might have shocked the most wild of
teenagers. They forgot about their age
and how they looked and where they had put on wrinkles and pounds. They forgot that some of them were now grandmothers
and they just gave themselves to the dance.
And this was just an ordinary high school class reunion.
A woman mentioned to me the Burning Man get together out in the
But what was most interesting was that she broke down and cried the
entire time she was describing it to me.
She was longing to return to the next get together and she missed the
full impact of that boundless and free community of sharing. This is a magical kind of feeling underlying
a community—like I say it takes you outside of time and into a mythical
place. Here we can experience others in
both a wonderful, mysterious, and also very tangible way.
Now in all honesty you can lose your personality and not just in a
positive way in this kind of magnetic embrace.
Take Islam which was handed down to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel,
archangel of the lunar sphere. I am told
that in Islam each year in the
It is a kind of get together and reunion that dramatically states that
we are all one with each other without separation of class, position,
occupation, language, or race. The down
side to a religion that is locked into a lunar magnetism is that it never
embraced the full force of its opposite—the electrical fluid.
The dream of unity and of a golden age of peace and
prosperity in which all of those who believe are under one caliph—it is too
hard to return from a ceremony like that to a world in which all those things
that separate are still in full force.
Corruption is thrown in and other religions run the world from things
like the UN and the World Bank.
Rather than embrace the future there is a return to tradition in a way
that demonstrates a lack of precisely those electrical qualities involved in
faith and conviction. These are not
about beliefs. They are the dynamic will
that takes hold of what is and makes a difference. It is to move into the future with clarity
that seizes opportunities that manifest in a real and concrete manner an original vision—these are sadly missing.
So naturally they want to blow themselves or others up. They can not handle the tension between the
dream and the reality, between the inner feelings of the ceremonies and the
knowledge required to effect beneficial and enduring change. But then again, they are not learning about
the magic of water.
I have been inside the mind of bin Laden and I have written about my
experiences with Gabriel. If you have a
great tradition then it is worth the effort to upgrade and do maintenance on
it. The pyramids and the Parthenon need
maintenance. So do religions. You just have to get out there and do your
homework so the cultural tension dissolves into something creative.
Well, that is the magnetic fluid and feeling of Binah. The woman I knew who went down to
If she had she would have found a way to reach the CEOs and chairman of
the boards of the oil corporations who were playing the paramilitary against
the guerillas. She would have found a
way to inspire those corporate giants to improve their public image by sponsoring
improvement in the Indian reservations. Maybe a casino with a landing strip and a luxury resort. I don’t know.
But as the saying goes, “The dead have no rank”--she forfeited her part
in the show.
A woman with the magnetic feeling of Binah acts
to preserve the life of a community. And
negotiating with time in order to survive is part of her art. On the Isle of Iona off the West coast of
Scotland there is a pool near the top of Dun-I.
It is called The Well of
Immortality. You have to get there
while it is still dark, right before the sun in the morning touches the
water. It is a nice image for water in Binah which reminds me of my essay on Eros and Psyche.
In the ancient Greek mythological story, Psyche is given impossible
tests by Aphrodite as the only means to win the god Eros as her lover. The story reaches it climax when Psyche
undertakes her last quest. She is to
enter the land of the dead and there to secure from Persephone an elixir that
the goddess possesses. Psyche is to return
with the elixir back to the world of the living.
“The elixir of eternal beauty,” Persephone
warns Psyche, “Only death knows the secret to eternal beauty and the elixir I
have placed in this box carries that mystery.” It is the life animating the
form of all things fused into an essence that is beyond all form. It is the perfection of nature’s energies—the
entire mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms refined, combined, fused, and
united.
To work this process within yourself, you
must first embrace and penetrate and then let go of the outer world so that an
inner union and unity can be created. If
you want to unite with Eros, to wed and become one with him (Eros--the essence
of masculine eroticism, vitality, and exhilaration), then you must first become
nothingness—a receptivity so great it can contain his fiery power over all the
gods and goddesses without denying who he is and at the same time without
annihilating yourself.
“Tell me young woman, what
do you really want?” Zeus asks of Psyche.
Zeus asks this in his role as king of the gods who has a celestial
kingdom to maintain, boundaries to defend, laws and order to uphold, and rules
of engagement to supervise and referee.
But he also asks as one whose passions and desires war within himself.
And Psyche replies, “I have
made love with a god. I have felt him
within my body. And I love him with all
of my heart, more than life itself ….I want the union of mortal with immortal,
of heaven with earth, of a beauty so deep and rich it transcends both life and
death. I want to be able to look at a
man and feel that his innermost desires I understand—so that what he is is also part of my self.
I want a union not just of body and social role. I want a union that is heart to heart.”
Zeus: “And why do you want to do this Psyche?
Psyche: “To make the world new.”
And then Zeus thought to
himself, “Beauty such as this until this moment did not exist. What being, mortal or divine, could have imagined
or wished that Life contain such a gift?”
In this story a young woman
changes the entire constellation of heaven through her love. The innermost interplay of the greatest
instincts, drives, and motivations within us are fundamentally altered by her
action. In this case, the magnetic fluid
holds power over the electric and transforms it from within.
I love this story—a woman who loves with a
nearly incomprehensible passion. But
then again only love can penetrate mysteries this deep. The story speaks of one who brought this love
into existence through a conscious choice.
Such is the magnetism in Binah. Its passion embraces the great opposites of
life and its union with another is both a human and a divine celebration.
In Chockmah, the
feminine feeling is one of sensing the future.
The feeling in Binah unites the best of the
past. Here is its complement—to flow
guided by a vision into the unknown future.
There we will want to find the best that can manifest.
If you want to make the most of the future, then as George Washington
stated in my debate—“A man with a plan of action is worth far more than a man
with no plan at all.” The difference is that here with are dealing with feeling
and not with thinking that lays out a series of step by step actions.
I can enter this state when I mediate with Isaphil—that mediation about
being full of lunar light, still and clear like a pure mountain lake that
embraces in depths the night, the moon, the stars, and the Milky Way. From that space I often find myself peering
into an unborn future where images come to me of what shall be and the part I
can play in the unfolding.
It is not the same as the woman in Gevurah who
is fearless and full of passion. When
you are around a woman with Chockmah magnetism you
feel new and better things are going to happen.
She is like an agent for the future, a representative of what shall be
and she take your hands and guides you almost
effortlessly to that place where you are meant to be.
I know women like that. They say
to you, and it is often nonverbally or though a look in their eyes or the trust
they extend to you, “Don’t hold back.
This is why you have entered the world.
Now seize your destiny.”
And a few years later everything is different. It is like you are living inside of a dream
or a vision. Somehow you made the
transition. In this case, what happened
was not something you could predict or think about. It was a pure feeling in play—if nothing
else, it was a blessing of divine grace that flowed through her heart and gave
you the inspiration you needed to follow the right course of action.
I actually get a lot of complaints about this feeling and
magnetism. A lot of people don’t want to
go into the future. They want to be like
everybody else. Deep down, they want to
feel, act, and think like other people so as to conform to the norm. They want to fit in and think that this will
make their lives simpler and easier to live.
They are tired of this ambiguity and uncertainty about not knowing how
the future will turn out.
But this feeling is just the opposite.
If you sink into it you come to realize that the future is a sacred
space. And the best way to approach it
is to unite with something greater than your self. As Loa Tzu the professor of the way of water
stated it, “The highest of men and the humblest also are a valley of the
world. And being a valley of the world
they continuously endlessly conduct the one source from which vessels may be
usefully filled.”
The magnetism of Chockmah is a vessel so empty
and open and ready to receive the inspiration of the sacred that it quite
willing to change itself and the world.
It is unafraid of new and unknown modes of transformation.
It is feeling of being within the best of the future and also within the
present so that each can freely pass through the other. It requires a selflessness that is willing
and excited about uniting with the divine.
It is the touch of water that renews, rejuvenates, and recreates your
self.
So the image is perhaps like a crystal ball, the bowl of water Nostradomas used, or the dream that takes you into the
future.
And this takes us of course to the sphere
of Kether, the crown of creation so to speak. In Kether, magnetic
feeling is a sense of the one matrix that embraces all of life. When the undines sense all the water of the
earth and the waves breaking on every beach, they are right within this sphere. Their magnetic reach extends through
everything.
When the goddess of the sea tells me that “When I
dream I become a silver chalice that receives the distilled essence of all the
stars. And in my dream that I
dream I feel I have become one with the universe.” She is speaking from within this
magnetism. The higher magic within water
is this all-embracing, all-encompassing, omnipresent love. These are a few of its images.
When theologians talk about omnipresence, forget it. This is something you experience. It is a bliss and ecstasy that runs right
through your nervous system. It
influences your perception. And it is a
heart to heart communication with everything that exists.
Nature is the training ground where the paths of spirit are found. To approach God or the Goddess, work with the
element of water. It is one of the four
divine gates. It is the perfection of
love’s embrace.
Do I know women like this? A
woman like this could slip her soul inside you and unite you in the same moment
with the universe. To answer the
question I know a woman exactly like this who possesses precisely this
quality. But it is a latent gift,
something she is only faintly aware of.
In other words, I can use her energy to unite her, myself, and the
universe as one. And though she is
willing, her senses, soul, and mind are not refined
enough to understand what is occurring.
In a former life time she was a high priestess or a magician. In this life, she has other concerns.
As with so many of these qualities and powers within water, the women
have no framework or concept, purpose or motivation to lay hold of their gifts
and work with them. The gifts they
possess as part of their souls have no practical application within our
society.
They have not been told that the magnetic feminine is sacred and divine
in its essence equal in majesty and power to anything that is masculine. And they do not seem to know about these
things intuitively. So naturally they do
not pursue them or seek to make them their own.
There is another aspect to the Kether magnetic
feeling I should mention. It oversees
all other feelings. So if something is
weak, it focuses its life and inspiration on just that one area so that the feeling of any of the other nine sephira
are strengthened.
The heart in Tipareth
does the circulation. Kether focuses the circulation on specific areas of
need. It reaches out and completes so
that the quality of the whole is maintained.
So the really great thing I know about the magnetic fluid, a treasure of
great wonder, is that a woman who possesses the feeling of Kether
in its full power will find you wherever you are. And she will heal you of your pain and take
away everything bad that has a hold of you.
The nature of this specific magnetism is that it has supremacy over all
other powers. It will overcome time and
space and every obstacle life puts in your way. It will restore you and allow you to start
over. It will grant you new life and a
path of wonder to follow.
This is the nature of divine femininity.
Like the emptiness of space, it contains the entire universe within
itself. It can embrace anyone and
reunite them to the divine that is their source. To drink from this cup is to walk with the divine
and to play a part in the Celebration for which the universe was created.
Warm-up
Exercise, from the undine Isaphil
As a
token tribute to the mystery we would enter and join, let us connect to water in
some way physically, a simple gesture to honor its power and its depths. For example, put your hands in a large bowl,
a sink of cold water, a stream, or a pool.
Feel the cool water on your skin.
Gently move your hands and feel the water
flow over your fingers and palms. Now
extend your mind into the water. Make
that small shift--carefully, very carefully, let your awareness become the
water that holds your hands. And
finally, let your mind be both your hands and the water. There, now we are ready to begin.
Exercises Using Water Imagery
The
following five meditations are drawn from the world of nature and the imagery
of the seas. Each represents a slightly
different aspect of the magnetic fluid.
Some of these meditations I have taken from my book on four undines I
work with from the Bardon system. Again,
we can explore these images using our sensual and emotional imaginations. And we can do so either in a non magical or magical
manner depending on the extent to which we engage our concentration.
A
Think of a lake you would
find enjoyable and satisfying to be sitting in front of. Perhaps a mountain lake surrounded by
mountains running up to twenty thousand feet and snow capped. Perhaps a small lake with
lots of green trees and warm in temperature. Perhaps a lake set among desert dunes. Whatever appeals to you.
The undine Isaphil uses a lake as a way to become
very still, clear, pure, calm, and peaceful so that your soul is like a perfect
mirror capable of reflecting the night sky, the oceans, the moon and its light
(shining down upon the whole earth), the stars and their light, and the entire
Milky Way.
Start, then, by sitting at the edge of the
lake created by your imagination and enjoy the feelings and sensations it
represents. And then you make the shift
and become the lake in your consciousness—that entire body of water with its
depths and extended magnetic field and its still, mirror like surface.
Isaphil has her own comments to this
effect:
So open yourself
and be a stillness so pure and clear that the circling
of the moon and the singing in the sea can appear clearly within you. This is the master key I give to you, to
relax, to be calm, to open from within, to be so still, you reflect easily within
yourself the being and the life of all that exists.
Feel from the depths of your self a love that flows like the
moon’s light shining during the night.
Open your heart and let shine through you
the beauty of the universe.
To put it simply,
there is a peace in the soul as deep as the ocean, as flowing as water, as
still and clear as a mirror, and as vast as the starry night.
Isaphil
goes on.
When the water in a lake is as clear as a mirror, just so let
your mind rest. As human beings, you
have a predilection to weigh and to measure, to analyze and test, to work and
to shape, to see and to control each and every thing. Yet know also that your mind is this
mirror--a power reflecting the world through the eyes of serenity.
In this place of the
mind, there are no shores for waves to wash upon, no place where the rhythms of
life can break. Truly, the Word is
spoken here, but the ‘label’ that names can never appear.
As in all things, let your love
be as the sea that enfolds and embraces.
Let it be as the river which flows to the sea and as the rain that
renews the earth. Let it be as the pool,
so calm and clear, it yields to you its sweet waters to drink. Only in love as pure as this can you ever see
the world as it really is.
Feel the moonlight on your
hands and on your face. Reflect the
world around you in this way. Softly, gently, graciously, become a space of
pure lunar light--your mind the ocean that has no shores.
OK. We are taking a moment here to check this
out. A few deep
breaths. Relaxing
the body. Mind is now calm. Astral body is now becoming still, serene,
luminous and soft like moonlight streaming down from the night sky shining upon
the whole earth.
Relaxing more. Another deep breath. Opening my heart. Looks and feels a lot like a trance—we have a
report of a temporary spontaneous Samadhi occurring here. Ah, here is the earth, the moon, the sun, our
solar system, the oceans of the earth, all water on earth, the biosphere, the
winds in the sky, the clouds, and deep within my soul now is a place of
stillness which precisely like the sea at night receives into itself the
distilled essence of all the stars. And
there is the feeling of being one with the ocean of the sky, the vast expanse
of the universe, a oneness arising from a dream of
serenity, an inner peace with the universe.
Within this moment I am within the realms
of the undines. They are all around me.
It just happened. Contacting
undines was not meant to be part of this essay but then again I won’t shut them
out if they show up spontaneously.
It is not that in this moment I am no
longer a human being. No, it is not
that. It is that I within the dream of a
queen of the undines. I am within the
open space at the center of her heart.
This is who she is and this is the treasure of spirit she wishes to
impart to the human race, which, due to some strange fate, the human race never
embraced this part of the great Mystery.
Yes, I have heard the sky at night filled
with heavenly choirs singing precisely the way they once did to “shepherds
tending their flocks at night.” But I
will tell you, and this is my report, that from within Isaphil’s heart the sun
and the stars—their lights are songs—the entire night sky is on fire with songs
of ecstasy and delight.
Does it take a poor poet such as me to
deliver such an obvious message?
From the undines—to humanity:
The universe is on fire with
wonder, beauty, and ecstasy.
The
Ocean
A
Meditation on the Sea (from the undine Istiphul)
Follow
Istiphul and me in our joining of minds as we sit on the sand with our feet in
the water: Imagine the sea--blue-green waves stretching from continental shores
to continental shores. Look at the waves
in front of you. Look at the waves as
they spread out to the horizon and envision the vast expanse beyond as they
circle the earth. Consider the winds
that drive them and the tides rising and falling.
To the north, feel the icy pole of the
world. Consider the wilderness where
snow falls for a half of a year in darkness.
Gaze upon white cliffs of ice and the icebergs to which they give
birth. See and feel them drift to the
south. And, toward the equator, feel the
warmth of the moist trade winds.
Visualize the archipelagoes and the island chains. Sense the ease with which clouds form from
the seas and the hurricanes are fashioned from the warm air rising.
Visualize also the shores of islands as
they gradually or rapidly drop down to the ocean floor. Send your mind into these depths. Among the deepest trenches of the sea are
lost ships, volcanoes, and darkness, but you are able to walk here without
difficulty.
The trick in a meditation such as this is
to become what you are contemplating.
Become the primordial sea. This
is the first step--feel the sea’s heartbeat, its breath, its currents, its
tides, and the myriad forms of life dwelling within it. There is no need to hesitate--the sea is
already within you. The waters of the
oceans flow through you salt rich.
Though you live in air, there is also air within the sea. The ice in your drink--it is not so different
from the iceberg floating free from the glacier’s grip.
The ocean, though vast and mysterious, is also the dream of
being accepted--of being able to relax, to let go, and to flow in a place too
great for the mind to imagine. Wave
after wave of sensual caresses, with rhythm and passion, renew, heal, and yield
to us the taste of beauty and freedom.
Istiphul has something to add. She says, “Place your hand in water and feel
the water connecting you to all the seas of the earth. Become a billion waves dancing to a thousand
separate winds. To know me is to learn
to perceive as I do. For a moment let go
and be as me--the soul of the sea.”
From
the undine Osipeh
My
meditation with Osipeh: As I imagine myself immersed within an endless space of
blue-green water, a series of images flow through my mind. They are the feelings of being a mother--of attracting,
receiving, giving birth, and nurturing as pure acts of love. These images encompass both the experiences
of women as well as those forces which give birth to and nurture all life on
our planet.
Meditating
with her at
The female form embodies a way of thinking men can not
imagine. It is receptive, open,
nurturing, offering and giving of itself.
Affection extends everywhere and into everything.
If your mind can not become like this then all my gifts to you
will mean nothing. The effects will be
temporary and they will leave you feeling empty. Though you can create an undine’s love and
healing touch with your magic, it will never be natural or come from your heart
until you embrace the feminine spirit.
From the undine Istiphul
This is a charm every woman possesses and
that she can find in herself if she opens her soul to the sea: the raw power of
magnetism which can receive, embrace, hold, and give birth to the soul in any
man.
For
every aspect of fiery will, water offers a cool tranquility of equal power so
that the rhythms and cycles of nature are preserved. In this way, the active principles within the
universe are able to join with--arise from and return to--a place of peace and
rest. These are water’s depths.
The magnetic fluid has this receptivity,
sensitivity, and encompassing power. It
reaches into inner recesses of your soul, the secret chambers of your heart,
and extends further through space and time.
It embraces all visions that life is meant to fulfill.
It is bliss, wonder, ecstasy, love,
rapture, pleasure, enchantment, dream, vision,
mysterious, vast, and utterly gratifying.
We might describe the magnetic fluid as having a wild serenity, an
engaging peace, and an enticing stillness.
As you identify
with the magnetic energy, you can sense something numinous, wonderful, and
awesome--the water element on our planet is a reflection of omnipresent,
all-encompassing love.
A
Second Mediation on the Sea
What is
the magic in Istiphul’s touch? Let us
pursue this theme for a moment to see if we can find it within ourselves? Remaining alert, relax as if you are within a
dream. Then contemplate the oceans. Note and memorize the sounds and smells, the
waves and winds, and the tides rising and falling.
Concentrate on the sensations of water and
spray. Feel the force of water in
currents. Feel the waves swirling and
splashing around you as you swim among them.
Become the sea as the crab knows it, the fish, the fisherman, the bird,
the sailor, and the one who lives at the edge of a bay.
This is not so difficult. Gather all your memories of the sea. Open yourself to them in a place of stillness
within your heart where thoughts are unnecessary. Feel their life.
Now, draw these memories and feelings
together distilling their essence.
Translate this watery life, this beauty and receptivity, into one
sensation you can hold in the palms of your hands. If you caress and embrace another with this
love from the depths of your heart, a heart which holds the sea within it, then
this is Istiphul’s touch.
Note: I sometime ask receptive women to try
this exercise as I guide them through it.
In my limited experience with three or four women, they can quite easily
reflect the undine Istiphul’s sensual awareness though their bodies. The quality of the magnetic fluid is
there.
But so far none of the women are actually
aware of the heightened sensory and sensual perception their bodies briefly
possess. It is like it briefly flashes through
their awareness—I mean, they actually do sense it—but then as quickly the
memory is gone and they forget where they were or what they had. The exceptions are several women psychic
partners. With these women I wrote up
the experience as poems about water or of an undine speaking to me through
them.
From the undine Isaphil
Isaphil:
“You yourself once spoke to the Lady of the ocean. Come. Ask her your question.”
I stand now with Isaphil on the
Her feet glowing with shining light as she
walks on a moonlit path across the waves, she comes close to the shore. Her body and garments are dark blue, regal,
and majestic. But her eyes are
blue-green, youthful, and vibrant.
I say to her: “Share with us your dreams.”
The
Voice of the Ocean
At night I dream that I have become a silver chalice. And within this chalice is gathered the
purest essence of all the stars. When I
dream this dream, though I am but the sea, I feel I have become one with the
universe.
In a sense, all these
different meditations flow through each other.
They are all one. Though I wrote
the above paragraph ten years ago, only recently have I begun practicing it
regularly. And yet it weaves together
with the image of a lake and those that follow as well. The images begin with water but they soon
pass into an awareness of the magnetic fluid that in the same moment joins
nature, human, and divine.
An
Iceberg
Pathworking. I decide to do a
pathworking on the icy meditation suggested to me by the undine Amue. A pathworking gives me a chance to relate my
experiences with Amue to my own life. As
a magician, it is not difficult to imagine just about anything. But when I put aside my magical
concentration, I also want to understand what these energies mean for me
personally.
Pathworking is a relaxed exploration of
feelings. It uses free association,
imagery, and contemplation. It creates a
continuum between normal consciousness and altered states of mind. It is a way of insuring that all the rungs
are on the ladder that stretches between the physical and the spiritual worlds.
I relax and focus on my room. Amue is sitting here next to me. Being near her, I can feel waves washing over
me and I feel the sea extending in all directions. I take a few moments and consider how I feel
about the aura of some people I have known.
I once worked with Art Linkletter
who had a TV show. Around him, you can
sense studios, audiences, producers, and so forth. I met the vice president of Ford Motors. In his aura, it is easy to visualize
automotive factories, production lines, and a board of director’s meeting. One day I had breakfast with Captain Fuchida, the Japanese commander who lead
the attack on
Similarly, sitting with Amue I feel and
see the sea as a space that nurtures and gives birth to life. The sea is her area of expertise. But why concentrate on water in its frozen
form? Amue seems to love tropical
waters, reefs, and schools of fish breeding near the surface.
I understand the magical significance of
concentrating on cold, watery sensations.
It is a way of creating a magnetic field of energy. But meditating with Amue in a frozen wintry
darkness opens the depths of the unconscious.
Perhaps an Inuit shaman would think
nothing of picturing himself inside of a huge chunk of ice during an arctic
night. He might even say when asked
about it, “This is as easy for me to do as it is for you to turn on the
television and watch the news.”
I ask Amue, “What is the arctic circle for
you with its vast fields of ice and glaciers?”
She replies, “It is like a playground.
The sounds moving within miles of ice are pure delight. The tones of ice cracking are tantalizing. They send shivers through my body. Like the voice of the wind singing its soul
into a stone, carving it with wind-driven sand, ice flows like waves of a sea
where the motion is slowed. When a wave
breaks on a beach, the release is free and easy as the spray dances in the air
and falls on the sand. But in ice the
release ripples, swells, and rolls for ages.
Time holds its breath for eons and then lets
go.
“When it rains at the equator, you see
rainbows. When it rains at the North and
South Poles, you only see snow--cold, crystalline, and drifting even after it
touches the ground. There are not many
undines who dwell in deserts, maybe one or two here or there at an oasis or by
pools of water underground. But at the
poles, you can find undines. Cold is not
a problem. Wearing clothes for warmth is
a human invention.”
I say to Amue, “Still, ice has a sense of
isolation. When the sun is distant, the
light dim, and warmth a rare commodity, the senses turn within. Animals hibernate until the seasons are more friendly. And
mystics renounce the world in search of an inner sun.”
Amue replies, “Your body needs warmth to
remain alive. But the mind is not so
restricted. Here, visualize your body as
an ice sculpture which is perfectly clear.”
I take a moment concentrating on my body
as being made out of ice. Amue says,
“When you are as solid as ice, still and cold, anything you wish to know about
the sea is reflected in your soul. Your
body becomes a magic mirror and a crystal ball.”
It is easy enough to see what she
means. As I think about whales,
dolphins, or manta rays, I can see them swimming in the ocean and reflected in
my body as if I am the ocean in which they are swimming. For Amue, water has mystical qualities and
amplifies psychic perception. “But what about the astral plane?” I ask Amue. “What is the equivalent of ice and freezing
cold in your own domain?”
Amue replies, “It is not so different.
Concentrate on your astral body being one hundred degrees below zero.” I do this.
She says, “What do you feel?”
I reply, “To be honest, I feel like I
have turned my back on humanity, that I am no longer a human being. In this place of dreams, I no longer care
what happens in the physical world, only that love and beauty are
preserved. I feel more undine than
human.”
Amue says, “You have discovered one of our
secrets. Water is essential for life but
it is also a spiritual presence. We
sense this presence as a song which resounds through all the waters of the
earth. In its essence, water nurtures,
preserves, and gives birth. It is
all-encompassing. And there is no selfishness,
greed, or separation within it.
“To understand the beauty of the world,
humanity must put aside its fear, insecurity, and desire to control. We can not be overly friendly to those who
depart from the rhythm of life. When
your astral body is this cold, you taste our inner essence--a love that flows
without ever being lost and gives all of itself in every moment.”
As I look in Amue’s eyes, I see her beauty
and understand what she is trying to show me.
She is telling me it is not so difficult to be happy, content, and
satisfied. It is not so difficult to
feel whole and complete and full of life.
It is a matter of letting go and feeling a sea of love flowing through
your soul. I feel like I have known Amue
for years. She is so natural and
vibrant. I only need to look into her
eyes and I feel a calm, soothing, and serene beauty
washing over me.
In this meditation, you image you are
meditating inside of an iceberg. You
want to experience the energy underlying water in a solid form. For me, there is a sense of suspending time.
You no longer relate to the external world.
Rather, you are within a protective space of magnetic energy.
This energy is pure. In it you can find those feelings which you
need to become whole and to grow. In
other words, the magnetic fluid specific to an iceberg has a psychological or
psychic magic within it. It implies
finding and internalizing the feelings of love you need to become
transformed.
Occasionally, we run into individuals
who embody something this purity and giving in their astral bodies. These
individuals are genuine and wholehearted.
You can tell when you meet such individuals because you feel emotionally
refreshed, revitalized, and more alive being with them.
Some individuals also embody in their auras
extremely cold and intense magnetic energies.
In other words, their magnetism has a power outside the range of what we
usually encounter. Others might sense in
these individuals something strangely fierce, detached, and cold.
Sometimes we need this kind of icy,
magnetic detachment in order to accomplish certain missions in life. It enables you to remain focused on your task
when no one else understands you or offers you support. You need the power of the feminine to contain,
shelter, and nurture with love.
A mother, lover, or energy field such as
this then gives the precise support you need to sustain the power of your
will. Without it, you compromise or
abandon your goals because your goals have no meaning to the people who are
part of your everyday life. When nothing
reflects your spirit, you have to become the womb which gives birth to what
shall be.
As I place my mind inside of an iceberg—for
example, an iceberg
frozen solid in an arctic bay for the winter--my mind stops thinking. After a few
moments, it seems I can taste the ice. I
can feel the strength of water in its solid form. I can feel the temperature of this iceberg,
its weight, and I feel the way it floats.
There is this wintry darkness inside of me.
Even so, emotions are content and
undisturbed. The body feels frozen as if
there is nothing else you need to do than be here in
this moment. This is a way to calm down
and be still. It embodies the undine’s
perspective which it would not hurt us to understand--it is a wild delight in
purity, a ravenous hunger for serenity, and a peace which is underneath all the
seasons of life.
Ocean Trench
Drop
your mind down into an ocean trench. Here
you feel undisturbed by the surface of the ocean or, for that matter, by
the outer world. You attain a profound sense of peace which is
ancient, wise, and which comprehends the mysteries of the deep.
This is where you learn to perceive and
think from the point of view of the planet rather than from the viewpoint of a
member of a particular race of beings living on the earth. In other words, the magnetic fluid attunes us
not just to the feminine aspects of the human soul but also to the soul of the
earth.
The sea holds a peace in its silent
depths. Entering this place with an
open, calm, and relaxed mind, you feel this peace not as something that is
impersonal and distant. Rather, it is
more like a lover—it is gentle, friendly, and intimate.
Lunar
Gravity
Would
you believe it? Until Sir Isaac Newton,
apparently no one had explained why and how the tides rise and fall as they
do. Gravity and the laws governing
bodies in motion—why just about any undine could have told you about the sun,
the moon, and the tides and this without reference to mathematics, physics, or
school experience.
Well, here is an exercise you will not
find on an exam in any high school on earth.
You imagine you can sense the gravitational force causing the tides to
rise and fall. You sense the influence
of the sun and moon on the oceans of the earth.
For example, you visualize the moon drawing
the oceans on opposite sides of the earth to rise due to the moon's stronger
gravitational pull on one side of the earth and weaker pull on the opposite
side. You eventually get a feeling for this magnetic or gravitational influence
on water and you identity with it.
This gives a feeling for the deepest flows
of magnetism in nature and also for the bio rhythms that are active within our
own bodies. In this way, we gain a
sensory understanding of the rhythmic cycles of the moon and its cycles moving
with and in opposition to the sun.
Through awareness of this magnetism, or if you like gravity, we gain a
sense of the way these outer worlds move and feels from within water as well as
within us.
A
Thunderstorm
Osipeh:
“Do not hold back. Come into my home. In my kingdom, sunlight plays with the waves
in a thousand ways. I will teach you
what it feels like to fall asleep and sink miles deep,
to dream you are caressed by the breath of moonlight until all you feel is
peace. And then you shall awake as a
song singing in a curling wave ready to break, ready to dance in a wild splash
of foam and spray laughing, the tension in the surface of an entire ocean
letting go in a sigh and roar of relief.
“Come away with me and be free of
need. I am the waves of the sea
rolling. I am the song of the sea
unfolding. I am the rise and fall of
tides in rhythmic motion resonating to the call of love.
“The touch of your hand on my skin is like
a lightning storm over the horizon.
Silent explosions light up the dark, empty places within your heart. Can you feel what I feel in this moment? Love is a pilgrim journeying through a land
of ancient shame, unbearable pain, and yet never ending wonder because it will
never be satisfied until it is one with another.”
Watery
magnetism brings us to the topic of lightning and what it means within the
soul. Undines know about such things
because it is the polarity within the magnetic fields from which lightning
springs.
Lightning
and Istiphul
Istiphul
takes my hands. As some women I have met
can also do, Istiphul passes into my body--her very soul is within me.
And now I have visions of electrical
storms. That is to say, my feelings and
physical sensations spontaneously transmute into visual images of a
thunderstorm at sea: explosive volts leap into the indigo darkness of a moist
sky. Electricity accumulates around my
body and then flows back around hers.
Between us, we are condenser, amplifier,
and generator as the spark arcs between our separate hearts. Within my body lightning reaches down from
violent clouds to strike the ocean and to explode in a touch or a kiss. And also, ball lightening forms and flows
from my shoulders down my arms, reaching for her and caressing her body with a
furious dance.
St. Elmos
fire too encompasses us and its sound is here--the hiss and jzzzzz
that hums with prayers of eerie solemnity.
In the distant sky I see the Northern Lights both marvelous and
ominous--the Earth’s own veils being lifted by solar radiance--a banshee’s
hopeless songs of loss turning into a frenzied dance of bliss.
As Istiphul’s feminine essence enters my
spine and ascends, I enter the dreams of gods and goddesses calling out to
their consorts through all of space and time.
Though a man has the power to penetrate, to enter, and to share the light
of the sun, the woman is a circle of ecstasy, a ring imploding upon
itself. She is the pulsating waves
gyrating in the circling flashes of a cyclotron down a tunnel, down into the
depths of her being, down into the depths of the ocean and the earth.
I open my eyes not realizing they were
closed. Istiphul’s body floats in the
air next to me. The waves crashing and
diving about her seem but gentle ripples and drops of water flowing through her
hair and down her breasts.
My eyes blur for a moment. I no longer see waves of water dancing and
raging about us. Time slows. The ocean changes into its opposite: I see sand
dunes with air flowing over their crests, carving an ocean of shapes and tender
memories as they yield themselves to the hungry hands of the wind.
What can I say? The undine Istiphul is a master of the
polarity within water and electrifyingly intense emotions are the nature of the
encounter.
The
following poem relates to a salamander named Itumo, a
being of fire. As I mentioned, undine
work it from the other side: setting up the magnetic polarities that cause
lightning to strike. So a thunderstorm
over the open ocean you could say is also part of their domain.
Itumo, you could say, uses a
hard sell. Undines are masters of the
soft sell. It is up to you to decide which is more effective. Itumo is a salamander who specializes in
lightening. He is a rather dynamic and mysterious being. I am very
fond of him. One day he said to me, I know more about what is going on
inside you than anyone else on earth. I wrote this poem after I had
joined my mind to his.
Itumo
Do you know what its like when lightning strikes?
In an instant the earth and the sky unite:
The tree, the flowing stream, the hilltop, the rock
Their hearts burst so that the thirst of the cloud for
the earth
Might be satisfied.
Do you know what it is like inside a thunderstorm?
A sea of rain, froth of mist, and vapors churning
Electricity building
Passions locked in a frenzy,
intensifying,
Power exalting in strength and beauty
Uncoiling within itself
Until, unable to be contained,
Ecstasy takes flight upon the wings of freedom.
Do you know what it is like to explode
From the core of your being
To be a flame of white light
Reaching down from the sky
And up from the earth
And to celebrate this art within your heart?
I will tell you:
It is bliss unafraid of emptiness
It is love unafraid of loss
It is desire burning so hot
It annihilates the shadows within the lover’s heart.
Wherever there is an abyss, a chasm, or a gulf
Within nature, between one heart and another,
Or separating mankind from the divine
My joy and delight will suffice
To pierce and shatter the darkness of any night
So you may find the path across.
And so our mediation on these images? Become the open ocean and also the sky filled
with clouds. Sense
water in its liquid and gaseous forms one above and one below separated by air
and wind. And then the opposite
polarities oppose—one negative and the other positive.
Can you feel this in your soul—the calm
peacefulness of the sea and the open expanse of the sky? And then in a still, clear place within your
mind, an electricity flies as lightning and thunder to quench an elemental
hunger for balance and harmony.
And one further question most
significant—can you sense an undine’s capacity to penetrate into another
person’s depths and there release a secret desire turning it into bliss? And all of this without the undine ever
losing her sense of serenity or wavering in her striving for intimacy? I tell you thunderstorms are images within
nature that capture in small measure the mystery of love as a primordial and
all-consuming power.
A
River
“A peace that flows like a river from the dawn
of time to the ends of eternity.” (from the story of the wizard Ahmed and the undine Istiphul)
In
some cultures, there are sacred rivers.
And if you bathe in them, you are freed of your sins. It is not just the nature religions and
Hindus who like rivers.
“And he showed me a pure river of water
of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the
Lamb. In the middle of its street, and
on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits,
each tree yielding its fruit every month.
The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
Or how about, “Out of their bellies shall
flow streams of living water.” In magic
or simply good meditation, we take an image in nature and become one with it. We then feel it inside of ourselves. The river in this case as an image of water
is something that flows through our souls.
A magician or mystic is not so spiritually
impoverished as to have to wait for the making of a new heaven and a new earth
before tasting and experiencing these things.
Rather, again, nature, human, and divine intermingle and join within our
hearts.
The river is an elemental, sensory
experience with water. It is a feeling
of flowing and yielding, of letting go and relaxing, of becoming pure and
living at peace with nature.
It is also at the same time an experience
with the divine if we can find within that watery magnetism a love that joins
with and unites all aspects of ourselves; it makes us whole and transforms us
from the depths of our souls.
And
if we understand that water is itself a sacrament, a sensation, feeling, and
symbol given to us that bears witness to omnipresent love, then we shall know
“a peace that flows like a river from the dawn of time to the ends of
eternity.”
As a meditation, then, imagine sitting in
front of a river. Use all your
senses. Relax. And then in whatever way works for you enter
and become the river. Float down
it. Swim in it. Become a fish. Become the waves, the currents, the eddies, and ripples on the surface--until at some point
you can feel a sensation of water flowing through you body that is relaxing and
peaceful and life renewing.
Water
as Omnipresence
There
is a magical aspect of water relating to omnipresence and akasha. You imagine you are within the ocean but you
concentrate on the way in which water suspends distance. You sense and then study how water enables
you to feel an immediate contact with any other creature or place within the
sea.
Some of the undines have this perceptual
ability to sense waves breaking on any shore of the earth. In their own consciousness, they feel as if
their senses can perceive anything anywhere within the ocean. The water serves as a medium for amplifying
impressions and conveying physical sensations of objects no matter how
distant.
This meditation on water leads to the
clairsentient ability to suspend distance so you can connect to anyone as if
you are there with them. In this case,
the ocean is used as a symbol of the astral plane where we are able to move in
our astral body anywhere we wish in an instant by focusing our mind there.
Also, undines such as Amue and Istiphul
feel as if another being or creature's aura is a part of their own aura. This arises because they automatically circulate
energy between themselves and anything else which makes contact with them. This heightens their abilities to heal and to
love. They do not feel separate because
the other's space is also their own space in that they sense every subtle
vibration within another.
From Pop Quiz For
Magicians
Note: These are questions in which you
decide for yourself as to which one is best.
What is
the difference between an imagined nature spirit and the real being? Which of the
following might work for you to determine the difference between a real and an
imagined undine?
It
depends on your level of imagination.
Countless times I have tried to determine if I was awake or asleep and
dreaming. So far I have not been able to
tell if I was asleep or not until the moment in which I woke up from the
dream. I guess you could say I have an
active imagination. My imagination has
an internal program that runs its own tests on the reality of me.
Similarly, if you enter into a conscious
dream state as is done in lucid dreaming, the images produced by your
imagination can be as real as the experiences that occur within a dream. The
question of whether life is a dream does not interest me. (Although I love the movie Thirteen Floor which is about an entire
city that is a computer simulation with the people thinking they are all real.)
The
undine you imagine responds to you in every conceivable way just like a real
woman except that the imaginary undine also possesses the magic of water. Depending on the connection between your
conscious mind and the collective unconscious, your image can become a powerful
evocation at least in terms of energy and sensations.
No, if
you imagine an undine long enough and with enough concentration you run the
risk of connecting to a real undine through this powerful image. You might also create an elemental, a
magically charged image with consciousness.
In psychology they might call such a creation an imaginary friend if you
are dealing with a child or some form of self-hypnosis or delusion if you are
dealing with an adult.
Let us presume for a moment that magicians
are trained sufficiently that self-deception and mental disturbances are rare
occurrences. In which case, we can
remain focused on our topic of what precisely is the outcome and result of this
kind of experiment.
In the case of a created thought form, a
powerfully charged image acquires its own instinct for survival and its
intelligence and responsiveness become independent of your mind. Such an entity can serve to entice you to
offer it more attention or, if you do it correctly, it can inspire you like a
guide to the inner planes. (Didn’t we do
an experiment earlier on “spirit guides?” Why we did, didn’t we?) But because of the chance for mistakes in
this area, Tibetans for example almost always insist on dissolving the energy
in their thought creations immediately after each practice session.
Let’s
proceed then with the possibility that we can create an undine (at least what
is called an “elemental”) from out of your own imagination. It starts as a mental conception or
image. It takes on feeling and astral
energy and then eventually it gains the etheric vitality and vibration of water
as well. Tibetans and others also like
to shift their consciousness into these constructed images or yidams. Your
imaginary creation becomes an idealized image of a being or a symbol of a state
of awareness that embodies all that you seek to learn.
To do this, shift your mind into the form
of an undine or merman if you like. We
have already been exploring the water element.
This practice has useful applications. It makes it a little easier to
sense and interact with an undine should you be near one (since you have
already figured out how to create one).
On the
other hand, magicians typically create an energy field that is inviting and in
which a real undine would feel at ease in entering. To do this, you imagine water in and around
yourself and also refine this vibration by some contemplation--you review
water's nature and attune your mind to water's beauty and essence. In other words, by imaginatively creating a
field of cold water energy around you, you offer the undine a space in which to
appear.
Have we
answered the question yet about the difference between an imagined undine and a
real one? Not really. Consider: If you apply Steven Spielberg's
power of visualization as a movie director to psychic imagery, you can create a
picture that puts you directly in touch with the archetypal energies of the
collective unconscious and also with the astral plane of the undines. The undine you imagine becomes a vehicle for
channeling etheric and astral watery sensations and feelings.
If, for example, I imagine an undine in front
of me and ask her, "Tell me something about the water element I don't
already know?" The creature I
visualize replies immediately and with power in a challenging manner. She is ready to take me one step further
beyond my own experience with water.
What
does my visualized undine say? She says,
"What you don't know about water is how to let go. You don't know how to become the waves of an
ocean that encircles the globe by both day and by night. You don't know how to become the cold current
that circulates down into the depths from the poles to rise at the
equator. You don't know that
journey. You don't offer that renewing
power to others."
This
image I have created in my imagination of an undine can speak freely from the
depths of my self and also it takes me more deeply into nature. Imagination is itself a magical power. On the other hand, if I call the undine
Isaphil to come here into my room, I notice the difference right away.
Ok. This is Magic 101. Why not?
I call the undine Isaphil. She is
here now. Isaphil is like an ancient
power of the earth whose beauty makes her forever young and full of new
life. I could try to say that she is
part of my self, but the power in her etheric and astral bodies goes way off
the spectrum of anything I can imagine.
Through imagination and meditation, we can
find and create sacred energies. There
is no doubt about this. But Isaphil is a
divinely appointed guardian of the water element on earth. She is able to bestow treasures the human
race has not yet discovered. Of course,
I could imagine an undine having all these qualities as well. But I
could not do it with this degree of force, this amount of beauty, or this depth
of presence.
Let me just mention the method I am using
in these meditations as I interact with the elementals in nature. I ask Isaphil to circulate energy between the
two of us in a way which does not accumulate energy and which is completely
relaxed. In this way, there is no
excessive tension typical of evocation and there is no accumulation of energy
to dissolve afterwards. However, Isaphil
still has a medium of watery energy to manifest through because I also evoke
the image of an ocean which I have practiced doing for many years.
The circulation of energy between us
starts immediately. This is a psychic
connection but it is analogous to everyday experience. You can hold another individual's hands and
share caring and empathy. You can
breathe together holding hands--as one inhales, the other exhales. This may strengthen your connection by
emphasizing the polarity of your auras.
You can circulate the vitality in your
meridians through each other's bodies.
You can join your hearts or link your minds telepathically. You can open yourself so you feel each
other's feelings and think each other's thoughts. All of these things are implied and occur on
some level and to some extent when I ask Isaphil to form a circulation of
energy between us.
Here are some of the differences between working
with Isaphil as compared to working with an undine I have conjured up purely
through imagination. First of all, there
is an energy exchange occurring without any effort on my part. For example, there is a soft, caressing flow
of watery sensations all over my body.
These sensations are relaxing, soothing, and releasing. There is also a cleansing, cooling sensation
I can feel inside my body as well.
As the energy reaches my heart, I can
almost hear a voice singing, "Awake, awake. Feel the thrill--a thousand
sensations you have never felt, a thousand dreams human beings have never
dreamed: to kiss with the passion of the sea, to give and to receive without
limitations, without hesitation."
I also feel myself pulled into the astral
domain of Isaphil. I am within the ocean
but I am sharing some of Isaphil's modes of perception. I can look over and see an iceberg in the
distance but now I feel the iceberg's energy within my own body as I look. I feel the frozen, fresh water of the ice caressed
by salt water the way one person's body presses against another.
I pull myself out of the water and sit on
a piece of flat ice in an arctic bay.
The open water is still like a mirror.
The sun is dim and distant in the sky.
There is no discomfort, no need for a sweat suit to feel at ease.
An undine can be thrilled and have fun
even when nothing is happening. Human
conception has no part to play. My body
becomes the arctic bay. The ice and the
water are full of exciting and enchanting feelings: they join together wild
laughter and solemn, majestic meditations as the stars circle and dance in the
sky through the night.
Still
having trouble distinguishing imagination from actual contact? Perhaps it would help to first lay a better
foundation for the connection through better immersion in the water element.
Try getting inside water--visualizing, sensing, tasting, feeling, hearing, and
experiencing the following:
Water is the sparkling white drops in a
waterfall, the color in the rainbow, the spray in the wave breaking on the
beach, in the white cap, and in the water splashing your face. It is soft, foamy bubbles slipping around
your ankles as you walk in the surf and the drops of water thrown into the air
as the water in a stream slaps against a rock.
It is the water dropping down, sprinkling, or drizzling as you walk
beneath the leaves of trees still wet from the rain. It is the smell of salty, moist air when you
are near the sea and the cool, moist scent when you approach a desert stream.
If you really put yourself into the above
paragraph, your consciousness is within the vibratory range where you can meet
a real undine. But is the one you meet
real or imagined?
An analogy? I can imagine a friend and then compare my
imagination of my friend being here to memories of actual interactions. The most obvious difference is that my real
friend has lots of her own memories I still don’t know. And the way her mind and emotions work is
beyond much of what I can imagine. There
is more to her than what I imagine.
But most of all, the real person has a
real etheric and physical body. The
physical carries a dense vibration that is composed of real life force and
vitality. The physical is very hard to
capture with imagination.
Then again, I have met people for the
first time in dreams which we shared in common.
And then later on in real life I met the same person and we compared our
memories regarding what occurred within the dream. Sometimes the dream image or imagination has
a strong connection to the real thing.
Each is reflected through the other.
The bottom line? I would suggest building up a repertoire of
memorized experiences which you might use for yourself. These we compare and contrast the way your
specific imagination works with the way you observe things in real life. Then you keep refining your
observations.
A trained magician’s imagination has the
specific attribute that what he imagines he also has (to some extent) the power
to make real. That is why you never want
to downplay the importance of finding your own solution to this particular
problem.
OK? Let’s run it by again. A real
undine often has a power and a magical resourcefulness that are far beyond the
reach of imagination or normal contemplative exercises. The primary difference between a real undine
and an imagined one is that the real undine will always increase your
understanding and feeling for the ocean.
The undine, after all, is an aspect of the natural world and reveals the
secrets of nature. An imagined undine
will tend to specialize in your subconscious wishes, hopes, fears, and remain
within the boundaries of your imagination.
IN COMMUNICATING WITH NATURE
SPIRITS, WHAT ARE THE RULES?
Never make the first move—always
let them speak first to you. Otherwise,
according to the rules of astral plane covered in Who Gets to Possess Who? section 14b, they
can declare you a “lost soul” thereby gaining salvage rights to your soul.
No matter how loving or
friendly, all nature spirits and elemental beings are programmed to follow the
rule that governs all magical realms--the strong rule over the weak. That is, while you are seeking to master them
they are seeking to master you.
If they give you a gift, such
a gnome offering the Red Lion or Philosopher’s stone, it is only because they
wish to possess your soul.
No, if a high ranking
elemental being offers you a gift the gift acts as an entrance pass that
enhances your ability to enter their elemental realm. Just make sure you bring your own exit pass
or else have a quick escape route in view.
The undines/mermaids are not
trying to seduce you and then take possession of your soul. It is just the nature of the magnetic fluid
they embody—it automatically acts to magnetize your aura so you come to feel
the way they do. (Although there may be
a few bets on the side over who can seduce you the quickest).
You do not need magic to
commune with nature spirits. You only
need to do one of the following:
1. Really love nature and
then nature spirits will really love you.
2. Keep a diary in which you imagine you
understand their dreams and schemes.
Make an entry each day in which you imagine yourself doing whatever it
is nature spirits do. Magic can not
compete with empathy like that.
3. Feel the blood flowing
through your veins and imagine you are rivers and the sea. Feel the air in your breath and chest and
imagine you are the winds, the biosphere, and the dream of being free. Feel the weight of your body, the bones, and
especially the legs and feet and imagine you are solid and enduring like the
mountains, the earth, and the trees.
Feel the heat of your body, your desire and need and imagine you are the
fire that consumes and also the fire that needs no fuel to create light to
see. I think that should do it: nature
spirits will then welcome you as an honored guest among them.
Even if you follow the
correct rules, what might happen with nature spirits?
They show up unexpectedly,
obtrusively, and without being called.
Maybe they like hanging out with you.
You notice they do not speak
in any human language. Their
communication is directly body to body, feelings to feelings, and mental
imagery to mental imagery. Kind of intimate and at times absolutely overpowering.
When something interesting
happens, it occurs to you that what you just experienced is not described
anywhere in human literature by any human mystic, poet, or philosopher.
You find yourself dealing
with forms of psychology that the human race will not discover for hundreds of
years.
You notice that as you begin
to see as they see, feel as they feel, and interact with the elements as they
interact that your psychic powers are vastly enhanced. But what you are perceiving
is no longer the perceptions of a human beings.
Duh.
That unless you write down
what you were doing for the last three hours you spent hanging out in the ocean
with an undine, drifting though the sky with a sylph, walking beneath a
mountain with a gnome, or discussing questions about the nature of fire with a
salamander, everything that happened vanishes from your mind within five
minutes of time. (Why? You have two hundred thousand years of
neurological programming that makes you a human being. They have millions of years of uniting with
nature while remaining unseen. Putting
the two together in one state of consciousness is not as easy as it may seem.)
Peace, Contentment, Rapture, and
Omnipresence—A Pop Quiz Self-Evaluation Process. Consider the following review. Which one is easiest for you to sink down
inside of, to become one with, so that you feel, at least for a few moments, it
is totally real and that you a part of it?
There is a place of enfolding depths, a
place to drift and float free like the feeling of well-being that flows like a
stream from the dawn of time to the ends of eternity. (from the story, Istiphul)
There
is a peace in the soul as deep as the ocean, as flowing as water, as still and
clear as a mirror, and as vast as the starry night. (from
the story, Isaphil)
At night I dream that I have become a silver chalice. And within this chalice is gathered the
purest essence of all the stars. When I
dream this dream, though I am but the sea, I feel I have become one with the universe.
(The goddess of the sea from the story, Isaphil)
I close
my eyes. My only awareness is now my
breath. My breath becomes the breath
animating all life on earth. My breath
is in every living being, in every tree.
My breath is throughout the sky and the depths of the sea.
Everywhere there is air, I am there. I flow without ceasing. Through the pulsing heart of Life on earth, I
glide. I follow the movement of Her thoughts and I am one with Her Love. (from
the story, Isaphil, spoken by the
lord of the winds)
Imagine
for a moment what this would be like: imagine taking all the sensations,
feelings, and moods that the seas create;
imagine binding that beauty and wild passion into one light, one dream,
or one vision of completion--and then to be able to transmit this to another
through your eyes, a touch, or a kiss. (from the
undine Istiphul)
“Place your hand in water and feel the water
connecting you to all the seas of the earth.
Become a billion waves dancing to a thousand separate winds. To know me is to learn to perceive as I
do. For a moment let go and be as
me--the soul of the sea.” (from the undine Istiphul)
. “As in all things, let your love be as the
sea that enfolds and embraces. Let it be
as the river which flows to the sea and as the rain that renews the earth. Let it be as the pool, so calm and clear, it
yields to you its sweet waters to drink.
Only in love as pure as this can you ever see the world as it really is.
“Feel the moonlight on your hands and on
your face. Reflect the world around you
in this way. Softly, gently, graciously, become a space of pure lunar
light--your mind the ocean that has no shores.”
Tone
Magic—There does not seem to be a lot whole written on this
topic. Maybe there are some mystical
musicians or composers out there who have a feel for this form of magic. Here are a few excerpts drawn from my work on
undines which are suggestive regarding the relation between a tone in music and
an act of magic. Can you hear what I
hear when these sounds appear?
Note:
Below are brief summaries of the cosmic letters E and M. Together they compose the E-M formula that
can be used for facilitating a connection with undines. The E is concentrated on the mental plane and
the M on the astral plane.
The
Cosmic Letter E
Sitting
here on a rock as water flows around me, I blow on a small panpipe, playing a
soft, hollow, echoing sound. I then hum
the note of “D.” I concentrate on a
mental level where thoughts are born and images transmitted from mind to mind.
And with this note I envision a world
where the inner essence of each individual and creature circulates with all
others--as the wind we breathe, as water rising from the seas falls again as
rain finding its way into our blood and into our tears. And there is a color I also visualize: the
color of dark ultraviolet. This color
oscillation in this instance is like a stillness heightening our sensitivity so
we can hear another’s thoughts or feel their heart’s desires within our own
heart.
I
concentrate also on a sensation of penetration, of being everywhere and nowhere
all at once in a place of perfect peace.
In such a space there is nothing we can ever lose. This is a place where the heart is so open it
can embrace another without desiring anything in return to balance the
relationship.
The
Cosmic Letter M
And
again I hold the panpipe to my lips and blow another note of D. This one, however, has a soft, gentle sound
imitating the ocean’s own breath, flow, and being. I sing now within the astral plane--and in
this sound is the sea in its depths, the sea in its currents, and the sea in
waves crashing down on bare shores. And
the color of this sound is blue-green--the very essence out of which the
Creators did create all oceans on all worlds throughout the universe.
I also concentrate on the water element
that is cold and chill. That is, I
envision an immense field of magnetic energy.
This fluid is the inner essence of the feminine mystery--in truth, there are places in nature where men may not go
without an invitation. And though bardic magicians respect such boundaries, our voice and
breath speak on behalf of the realm of spirit which has no gender limitations.
And so with these two sounds I create a place
not to trap but to so sweetly call Istiphul that, to put it simply, at this
moment there is nowhere else she would rather be than here within this magic
space that I have just now sung into being.
Undine Sounds
As I
enter Osipeh’s domain, I hear a woman singing the note of F--the F on the top
bar of the middle C scale. This note
expresses the astral energy and atmosphere of Osipeh’s domain. Multiple sensations of love merge and emerge
from each other--the sensation of being caressed, stoked, and hugged; there is
a slippery wetness of bliss surging down the nerves; there is intimacy and
sweet kisses; there is the feeling of
floating suspended in water and also the feeling of having your head resting on
curvaceous thighs.
There are deep desires releasing and old
tensions letting go. There is a feeling
of drifting on a raft down a river beneath the moon and of being held
also. There is the distinct sensation of
a wave breaking on a beach, a river reaching the sea, a cloud beginning to
rain, moisture rising from a leaf, and fog forming on a lake. The sound of the note of F and all these
feeling are interchangeable. Osipeh has
the most remarkable sense of feeling alive, of being renewed, and of giving
herself to you.
Osipeh’s
Inner Aura. I sense a magic of
tones. I hear an oboe or perhaps a
bassoon playing. I can hear a male voice
singing a note which is like the cold white of winter’s snow and ice and yet it
is fresh and inviting. It calls you to
rise up and feel water splashing, exploding, and dancing in great waves
colliding against the shore and then rolling back and forth and smashing
against each other some more. It is a
cauldron of foamy white spray racing every which way, bubbling up, and washing
over you with happiness and satisfaction.
I
invite Amue to follow me back to my location in the physical world. Amue is now present here in my room. She begins singing to me. She spends a few moments on each musical
note. The notes evoke memories of
childhood--of being held, embraced, and feeling happy, content, and at
peace.
Amue captures in her singing various
themes from the different ethnic groups which are part of my heritage. There are songs of heroes who believe
passionately in their ideals and in what they seek. There are songs of love: Amue’s songs move
imperceptibly between the comfort a mother gives her
infant and the song of a lover who gives all of her heart to another with
absolute trust. There are songs of
longing and desire, of the sun radiant and dazzling in its light as it sparkles
and burns within ice. Amue now sings in
quarter notes and half tones expressing solitary quests and then the tension
resolves with a note evoking transcendent vision and accomplishment.
As she repeats and then varies her melody,
I imagine myself sitting in an ancient Taoist monastery. Late at night I sit meditating before an
altar burning a few sticks of incense. A
gong sounds on the hour. There is a
profound satisfaction and a peace within and around me. As Amue sings, I have no doubt I could
continue within this dream for the whole night if I wished. The chanting is familiar and the setting is
part of the landscape of my soul.
Istiphul
Istiphul
emits a loud cry--the note of a soprano, but this sustained note is like an
entire song. The sound of it carries far
out into the surrounding ocean. At the
same time, this sound gathers and draws back to her the spiritual force within
water which animates it and bestows beauty upon it.
I realize what this is--I am witness to
the magic of tones which some undines possess.
Istiphul sends part of her being outward. The sound ricochets back and forth in each
drop of water. As a soprano can break a
glass with her voice, this note Istiphul sings can turn water to ice or steam. Instead, a power lying dormant and asleep
within the ocean uncoils itself in response--
There is a pulsing and a shivering--the
muscles in the body shaking and quivering.
The body spasms but not from pain or tension. This is an ecstasy of pure delight. Her sound penetrates and encircles at the
same time.
And the song within this note, how can I
express it? Words woven out of wind and
water, out of sea and sky, living water, a wilderness of delights, they fall
now as passion--a bite, a yearning touch, a tender kiss. Then they become a waterfall surging and
splashing and falling further down into the arms of love’s embrace.
It is a haunting sound, curtains of
starlight falling down caught in a pool where the ocean dreams. It is urgent--at first buoyant and then
sinking, it dissolves into a magnetic expanse where all thoughts go to lie down
having finally exhausted their explorations of how things are different.
As Istiphul sings I become one with the
sea--pure bliss, pure ecstasy adrift within sweet serenity’s lap. I float.
I am suspended. And again I blend
with the body of the ocean.
If in part the purpose of a spiritual
quest is to find and unite with our divine parents, with the source of our
inspiration, then this sound would be the wine used to celebrate reunion with
the divine mother. Whichever one you
seek--Gaia, Dana, Shekinah, Vishvamata,
Prajnaparamita, Shakti, Kundalini, Rudha, Sophia, Venus,
Diana, Demeter, and Kwan Yin.
With this note ringing within my ears, it
is easy to forget who I am. A few
seconds pass, perhaps a few minutes--suddenly I am no longer sure if these few
moments were actually two or three years.
Did I trade my body for that of a dolphin, frolicking and playing near
reefs and further out at sea? Just now I
say to myself, “Ah, I remember. I am
actually a human being!”
Nerve ends are soothed even as they are
sharpened. As I have said before, this
is the undine’s magic of tones: the creation of a place of soul where two separate
hearts from two separate worlds may join as one. Melting together, the deepest desire in one
is fused to the deepest desire within another.
A Few Examples of Meditating on the Cosmic
letter M
#1
Imagining blue-green
and water around and in me. The most obvious result immediately is that I
cease to think. My brain cools down
dramatically since there is far less electrical activity.
Second, I do not identify with my
personality. I become the watery and
magnetic expanse without form identification or need for self-imagery. There is
nothing to reinforce, validate, or assert.
At this point, it is fairly easy to focus on
any specific feeling associated with the magnetic fluid and to feel it
entirely. Contentment? I am absolute contentment. Peace?
I feel the peace of the stars within a sea of cosmic love and
ecstasy. Serenity? I become a stillness
so pure, open, and vast that all visions can easily pass through its heart
becoming transformed so they are more radiant, more perceptive, and more
capable of manifesting according to wisdom and love.
How about pleasure and bliss? There is physical release. There is happiness, satisfaction, and
gratification--the gratification of two uniting, every instinct in their being tasting the full cup of craving and then finding at last
within those desires the final end that is sought.
OK.
Let’s do love. What I have is
that love is becoming so one with another that all separation is overcome. This is seeing through the eyes of the
Mystery, seeing life as it is meant to be lived, felt, experienced, and
embraced. It is
forever possessing the power to transform the other and oneself in and
through that embrace. In this
meditation, this love I have become.
I know even now and here amid the flow that
this is a temporary state, a kind of artistic self-hypnosis or momentary
trance. But I wonder if there might not
be a way to make it more permanent. To
make this expanse of light and sensory bliss a part of my personality so that
the attraction, embracing love, and satisfaction are a way I express
myself.
And so I sense that I can sit here for
as long as I want within this state. And
if I can do that then I know I can call it back at will perhaps whenever I want
in any situation. Underneath life as we
know it is another presence—the magnetic fluid as part of nature, within our
bodies, and part of a spirituality that awaits us to claim it.
I conclude that one of the tricks with the
cosmic letters is to build up enough personal experience with their imagery,
sensations, and feelings that they naturally become a part of one self. In this way, the power of concentration that
can be used to evoke their qualities and energies is no longer necessary. They can be experienced and explored as
easily as entering a waking dream, a kind of extended daydream, or undertaking
an imaginary journey.
#2 I notice by spending time
entering again a number of sensory experiences with water I naturally without
effort generate a powerful magnetic field around myself. If I think a specific vibration of an emotion
or feeling, the magnetism amplifies it so I experience in a very rich and deep
manner. If I add the color of blue green
and water extending out around myself in all directions, it becomes even stronger.
For example, I visited
Also occurring were spontaneous awareness of
the other cosmic letters involving water.
And a sense of being one with the universe in the Isaphil cup or a lake
capturing the distilled starlight and the feeling that generates.
But most of all this time just working with
the images of water and being in these images I got a very strong sense of
generating a powerful magnetic field. I
could have made it much stronger but I keep within a natural flow in this
meditation.
#3: 1/7/06/ I did a lot of watery memory recollections
and then the icy cold blue green out in all directions. But I just got this
time the very strong contracting quality of the magnetism. No feeling particularly even though I kept
trying. No other specific thing coming
through either. Tempted to call an
undine but I wanted to explore this on my own.
I also did the four planes but not much
other than above. Maybe it needs the E-M
formula or the note of “D.” I think it
was the degree of intensity or density of the water and magnetism that
interfered with the ability to get specific feelings. Like running a race, the intensity of the
activity precludes any kind of sensitivity.
#4:
So then I worked on love. I had first the
Chinese yin yang symbol which is great but I want the sensation not the
symbol. So I got the electric and
magnetic in a male and female making love—the hot, burning, intense, craving
electric being soothed, cooled, yielding within, and released with the magnetic.
And then I moved further to “oneness.” This then became a hundred per cent of the
female joined with a 100 per cent of the male.
A complete oneness with each other.
The electric and magnetic in this case
seemed completely transformed. You could
call this divine sexuality. Everything is
different. Like the divine union of all
opposites in the cosmic letter J, it reveals the true and original and highest
purpose behind everything.
I can consider situations of conflict and
see why people act the way they do—because they exist within an overpowering
state of separation. I am stating the
obvious here—they would not do the things they do if they knew how to become
one with each other.
They would possess divine intuition and
exercise divine creativity fulfilling original purposes arising from the depths
of their hearts joined to divinity.
How do you express this sort of thing in
human relationships? It is that kind of
Goddess command: Create a religion without priests, temples, or rituals in
which love, power, wisdom, and justice are equally honored and pursued. And how precisely do you do that?
You make a kind of inner plane temple which
is not a temple but a space of the heart.
And then two individuals who fully appreciate the sacred art enter this
space with their hearts and there they simply practice the Letter M in this
way—joining every part of one with every part of the other. It is both something you can do with yourself
(joining the opposite electric and magnetic in your body and soul) and it is
something you can do with another.
In my screenplay, The Fall of Atlantis, two characters are fighting back to back
against an overwhelming number of enemies.
The one character says to the other, “Tell me something about women that
I don’t know.” “Do we have to have this
conversation now?” “We may not have
another change.” “You have to love the
woman inside you before you can love the woman outside of you.” “Is that all?
I thought you were going to say a beautiful woman is a mirror that
reveals to you the one thing you can otherwise never discover about
yourself.” “That’s true too.”
There is a real art in balancing the
opposite polarities of the electric and magnetic fluids within ourselves. It is also a great art to bring these
opposites together with another person so they are joined harmoniously and with
great power. But underneath this action
is a great amplification of awareness, sensory bliss, and experience. The levels of consciousness that result are
up there with the divine. Those spirits
who are masters of life are all accomplished in this art and form of divine
perception.
You are not going to learn about this sort
of thing neither in Sunday School nor from Howard
Stern’s talk radio. Hugh Heffner and his
opposite--equally Billy Graham--know nothing about it. But whatever our state of desire, interest,
motivation, or intentions, the entire concept of joining opposites is worthless
unless we can capture in our awareness the magnetic fluid.
#5:
This is a really fascinating aspect of
magnetism since it produces psychic visions.
It is not my familiar mode of meditating so it may take some practice to
stay with the single vibration of stillness that suspends time.
(from Basic Practices)
Sea Life
Before proceeding to review the exercise
on transferring consciousness into animals, I
would like to make a
few comments.
The idea of adopting the form and consciousness of
an animal is rather fascinating. Animals are totem spirits for
different Indian clans. They are at the heart of shamanic practices
and they can act as familiars. Animals have acute perception and
remarkable adaptation to specific
environments. They possess a
high level of instinctual intelligence.
For some American Indian tribes, the totem
animal of a clan
represents a specific way for members of that clan
to sharpen their
perceptions of the natural world. If you can identify in your
consciousness with a specific animal,
then you can extend your
range of perceptions and feelings. You gain contact with a kind of
power and instinct for survival which is normally
outside a human
being's awareness.
Furthermore, if a group of individuals
works with a specific
animal over a long period of time, you gain more than
the instinctual
energy and intelligence of the animal. The animal takes on
archetypal qualities. It becomes numinous and a symbol of divine
consciousness as well. Thus, it is not only American Indians who
utilize animal imagery. The prophets of
attempts to use images or forms to represent God,
still saw in their
visions a consciousness uniting man, eagle, ox,
and lion.
The
Humpback Whale
Humpback
whales often swim off a beach a little over a mile from my house.
They
sometimes come within a few hundred feet of the shore.
Let me begin by quoting a few paragraphs
from a web site on
the internet.
The site below, for example, gives song files, pictures,
migration routes, and other information:
http://www.discovery.com/exp/humpbacks/hear.html
"The
humpback whale is named for the way its back arches out of
the water when it starts a deep dive. Its scientific
name, Megaptera,
means "large-winged" and refers to its
long, white wing-like flippers.
Humpbacks
are very dark colored whales, except for the flippers,
parts of the chest and belly, and the underside of
the tail flukes....
"Northern
hemisphere humpbacks reach an average length of 45-52
feet, and southern humpbacks reach 60 feet. The
average weight for
a mature adult is 35-40 tons.
"Humpbacks
are found in all oceans to the edges of polar ice, and
follow definite migration paths from their summer
feeding grounds
to warmer waters in the winter. There seem to be
three distinct,
isolated populations: North Pacific, North
Atlantic, and Southern
Hemisphere.
"An
acrobatic whale, humpbacks regularly breach (jump out of the
water), stroke each other, and slap the water with
their flippers and
flukes.... Humpbacks swim in groups or pods of up to a
dozen at
calving grounds, and in smaller groups of three
to four during
migration. They can often be seen feeding
together.
"Humpbacks
are baleen whales that have 14-35 long throat pleats
that expand when the whale takes in water while
feeding. They use
baleen plates to strain krill, herring, other small
fish, and plankton
out of the water....
"Humpbacks
are best known for their haunting vocalizations or
"singing." They have a rich repertoire that covers many
octaves and
includes frequencies beyond the threshold of
human hearing. These
songs, apparently sung by males, last as long as 20
minutes, after
which they are repeated, often with slight changes.
When a whale is
singing, it floats suspended in the water, head
down and relatively
motionless...."
I
project my mind into a humpback whale.
Almost immediately I
notice an extraordinary sense of peace and
well-being. The entire
ocean feels like home. There is an incredible relaxation combined
with rhythmic movement. The ocean provides food. Your mates
find you when you need them. Even when you swim alone, you are
not really alone.
The other whales of your pod are in the same
ocean.
The
mental body of this whale is incredibly interesting also.
There
is a way in which space and time are partially suspended as it
views its environment. When you are in the tropics, your body is
sustained by the food you have eaten in the
arctic. And when you
are in the arctic, the warmth and community of the
tropics remains
fresh and vivid in your mind. The migrating between the two is not
so much a journey or quest for survival as much as
a satisfying form
of exercise like going on a hike through the
mountains.
I realize scientists are put off by
popular attempts which
anthropomorphize whales. By contrast, scientists are busy doing the
important work of making observations and
collecting data. But
there is also a telepathic rapport that is essential
to communication
between the species. Part of telepathy is taking another's
experiences and translating them into images and
feelings from your
own experience.
The difference between being sloppy and being
proficient is a matter of how receptive you are and
how much you
can put aside your own assumptions.
The whale's mental vibration is a lot more
open than my own. I
tend to differentiate between the present moment and
environment
in which I exist and the memories I have of past
experiences and
also my thoughts about future plans and
expectations. The whale is
obviously aware of its present environment. But it also retains a
strong awareness of its entire annual cycle of
movement and
activities.
Individuals who have near death experiences
often tell about
seeing their whole life as if in a few moments. The whale seems to
retain an awareness of its entire life cycle in each
moment. The
route of migration from pole to equator takes place
within the same
ocean. The movement
is guided by temperature and light similar to
the movement between the surface which is bright
and the depths
which are dark.
The changes of life and all that we experience
surrounds us wherever we are and in every
moment. Whales seem
to know this better than us.
And so I seem now to stray into the
archetypal dimension in
which the image of the whale carries power, beauty,
and revelation.
Certainly
the songs of the humpback whale express something of
this mystery.
You see, whatever the scientific explanation for the
whales singing and its functions, there is something
else present.
It is as if the ocean has raised and bred
a creature which sings
some of its songs.
These songs belong not just to those who sing
but also to those who listen. Sailors do not know of this. They
have too much fear in their hearts and are much to
greedy and
impatient to listen. Scientists know nothing of this. Their patience
is great and their tenacity relentless when it
comes to making
observations and testing their
theories. But they too fail to listen.
They
do not empty their minds and become one with what they are
observing.
What I can say about the archetypal domain
of the whale is that
when I open myself to it, I feel the ocean flowing
my body. I feel
the currents and magnetic fields which flow between
the poles. I
feel the ocean with its power to sustain and nourish
life. But there is
more.
If there were a tarot deck of animals and
the whale was one of
the cards, this whale card would also have a
spiritual meaning. Its
meaning would be the discovery of a place of the
soul and heart
where healing and renewal are without limitation or
restriction. I
feel this now.
I find it to be awesome and wonderfully beautiful.
Common Difficulties.
1. Shape Shifting. Some individuals will have difficulty
changing
their consciousness from the form of the human body
to some other
shape. Bardon
has students practice holding visual images in their
minds for five minutes without any disturbances. This preliminary
exercise is invaluable.
If you can picture your body as a hologram
or like a hollow
statute,
you can slowly move your consciousness downward from
your head to your toes or into any part of your
body. This is a
matter of holding an image steady and then altering
your location
within it.
Similarly, if you now picture an animal,
you can move your mind
around within it, from the tip of its head to the end
of its tail. You
can visualize your hand turning into a paw, a claw,
hoof, a wing,
etc. This
too is simply a matter of making a picture and then
imagining that you are responsible for changes in
that picture the
way you are responsible for moving your own
fingers. Bardon likes
to emphasize visual concentration and obviously
the visual sense is
very important in one kind of transference.
Another way is just to picture the animal
doing all the things the
animal does.
You watch the animal and you get a feel for it. You
then identify with or internalize that feeling. You can imitate the
animal's behavior in your mind or go over it
again and again until
you get a feel for the instinctual life and
perceptual mode of the
animal. In Kung
Fu and other martial arts, the students imitate
animal movements in their practices. The idea is not just to master
the strikes and parries, but the spirit of the
animal as well.
Other individuals will get all sorts of
impressions, feelings, and
intuitions and basically find it easy to feel they
have shape shifted
into an animal.
Their problem is not changing into the animal.
Instead,
their difficulty is in being out of control.
Their experience
is more like a vivid dream full of random
impressions rather than a
concentration exercise.
Psychic perception has the capacity to
identify with something,
observe all its connections to its world, and at
the same time to
remain completely detached. Again, one of Bardon's basic practices
is to maintain an empty mind free of any thoughts
or disturbances.
If
you can do this, you can focus on those sensations and feelings
which you are interested in.
If you want the animal's sense of smell,
you focus on its nose. If
you want its hearing, you focus on its ears. You eliminate other
distractions so that gradually you
examine the perceptual and
instinctual system of the animal. Though sometimes the instinctual
desires of animals can become overpowering
during this exercise,
the idea is never to lose your sense of clarity.
2. Getting out of your body. Actually, Bardon presents mental and
astral projection exercises in chapters eight and nine
of Initiation into
Hermetics. But it is clear that this is also what we are
doing here to
some extent.
Bardon says, for example, that "Adepts who have
been practicing this exercise, for years, are
capable to understand
any animal, and handle it by their will
power." Controlling an
animal obviously involves more than just imagining you
are an
animal in your head.
In the beginning, however, it seems to
make little difference if
you imagine an image of your cat, for example, and
then imagine
you are inside of this mental image. You develop the same empathy
and strengthen the same mental concentrations
whether you are
actually in the cat or think yourself to be
so.
The way to get a sense of being outside of
your body and inside
something else is just to practice the
exercise. Some people can do
this effortlessly.
For others, it is like learning a new sport--there are
all sorts of new rules to learn, muscles to exercise,
and tricks to
acquire.
Again, if you have done the concentration exercises in the
first three chapters, then if you imagine yourself to
be in a certain
location, part of your mind is indeed in that
location.
It seems to me there is something to be
said for transference of
consciousness. You can use it in positive or negative ways
but as Bardon
says, consciousness knows neither space nor time
limitations. Whether you
actually are convinced or not that you are inside
of something else, the
exercise of transferring your mind into another
person, for example, is a
fabulous means for developing sympathy for the
feelings and understanding
for the thoughts of the other person. Certainly, students will want to
experiment with transference of consciousness in a
variety of ways until
they feel they have made the technique their own.
Poems on Water
Too Much to Ask
(edited version)
I watch the clouds pass over the Koolau's
With moist hands, fingers pressing into the trees
Their tongues dip into the leaves
As their soft lips whisper, quivering
Like a drop of water
Delicately poised, balanced, shivering
Before running wild down the bark,
I listen to the wind at Sandy Beach
As it speaks of the sea
Of the wave's crest
Rising higher
Foamy white it hurls itself
Without thought, hesitation, or regret
As thin mist into the sky
As the diamond sun
Sings with enchanting eyes
Of dawn and twilight
Where two hearts unite
Day and night melting into a greater love,
I watch the stream in
Drifting and turning
Curling around every rock
Letting go as it flows
As in a dream
Releasing itself
With sighs and gentle cries
Willingly it yields
Into the arms of the valley below
So naturally I think:
Love is not so distant
In every smell, taste, and touch
Its fingers play upon my nerves
Ravishing my senses
As it searches for my heart ….
Psalm for the Sea 7
The blue-green purity of an arctic sea
Mirror like
A faint mist drifting upon its surface
The blue-white glacier
Clinging to the mountain slopes
Or resting within the valley
It is winter when the herbs are bitter
And the sun dim and distant
There is a time
To retreat and to sleep
To withdraw from the outer world
In the arms of love
Is soothing release
In its embrace
The cold of the world
Leaves no trace
Yet the ice, the frost, the snow
Are not indifferent
They are not without love
In the winter of the soul
Is the greatest vision
Of the Beloved’s face,
A sojourner once said to a woman,
I love you so much
If you held me within your heart
Winter would no longer be cold
And ice and snow
Would be warm to the touch.
The woman replied,
I am afraid the silence of snowy fields
The icicles chill
And the touch of frostbite
Can offer more love than I
But if you see the beauty within my soul
And can celebrate it
Even when it flows bitter and cold
Even during the dark of winter when no light shines
Then I will give you my love.
From the poles to the black volcanic beach
To the white sands of the
The oceans enfold the world in their embrace
They absorb the heat of the sun
Cooling the earth by day
Warming the earth by night
In loves embrace
Is the preservation of light on earth
Whose heart is as deep and vast as the seas?
Who heart nourishes all life on earth?
Whose heart can greet the winds passionate kiss
With waves running wild and free
And yet absorb the light of the stars by night
In a place mirror like and at peace?
The man replied to the woman,
“I shall be a mirror so empty and clear
Your beauty shall finally shine
In all its radiance
I shall give you a cup to drink
Filled with the wine of the sun
Which persuades winter to let go its grip
So spring is free to come
And when we are separate
Neither the depths of the sea
Winters cold
Nor even the dark ocean where the stars shine
Shall diminish our love
Our hearts will be forever one.
Who are you? she asked,
He replied,
I am the voice of love
The one you have called
From the depths of your heart
And I have come to celebrate with you
The love that renews the world.
The Feeling of a Woman
Does the moon shed no light for me tonight?
Does love neither seek me nor
reach for me
When I would share my heart?
Ah fool, I tell myself,
Nearly half a century is gone
Yet the passions of youth burn ever strong.
I remember the girl whose love broke me in two
Her affection was soft and sweet as the moon
Her smile, her heartbeat, her eyes
Were greater than any tide
Like this night, she left me
Abandoned, without light.
The feeling of a woman
Is like a pool flowing beneath a mountain:
No sun dawns
No moon rises
Yet the water is luminous,
Cool, soft, soothing
Amid transparent light, silence dancing:
The taste of love a secret sharing heart to heart.
Some will die without having felt this touch
Some hearts will harden, turning bitter, dry, and cold
Because the memory has grown old.
But I remember her smile, her heartbeat, her eyes
Though no moon shines this night
Though no hand reaches for mine
The waters of my heart
Flow cool, soft, and full of luminous dreams
Dancing with the silence of this night
Overflowing with love.
Women and the Sea
Why has it taken me so long to grasp
This most basic of facts:
Women are like the sea
In her arms
Warm and gentle
I lie on a tropical beach
The sun lazy and sweet
The moon spilling over with enchanting dreams,
I set my sails
By the winds of her smile
Her eyes shine with ecstasies
I have yet to find
As she says:
“Take me, ravish me
Search out all my secrets
Impress me with your abilities
I am yours to possess
If you can discover my bliss.
Her waves are round and soft
Splashing with laughter
My craft surges and rides,
Her moist, wet kiss
A thin mist upon my cheeks
The land vanishes from the horizon
Yet she remains by my side.
Off the coast of
Through a mountain pass
The winds blow fierce
Catching your sails
They drive you West
With huge waves and gusts
Sailing down wind
You try to ride the storm out
Until on the third day
The crest of a thirty foot wave
Breaks over the deck
The boat hidden beneath a foamy, white crest
But now the storm is past
I know women like that:
With the hunger of the wind
They will devour you or empower you
It makes no difference to them.
The helmsman of a forty foot catamaran
Who sails from
Says he prefers to have sailors on board
From the
Local sailors, he complains, are accustomed
To predictable trade winds
And so their eyes do not study the horizon
Nor do they smell the air
Searching for any indication
Of the mood swings of the sea
But on
A lion squall can smash down on you in less than
twenty minutes
Gusts of a hundred miles an hour
The waves blown flat without white caps
Horizontal rain flailing your face
And then in a few moments it is passed
I know women like that:
In their eyes, unprovoked,
A ferocity
rises up, ready to attack
To smash you flat
Before falling back
Denying its own presence
Behind a wall of vulnerability and sensitivity.
Once I flew a spinnaker
Two thousand square feet of sail
Round, soft as silk,
Floating in the air off the bow
With lines, winches, and pole
I kept the sail on the edge of a luff
Barely fluttering, quivering,
Hypersensitive to each nuance of wind shift
The sailboat gliding over the waves
The stays taut, the mast tense
The helm guided by a firm hand,
After three hours of unbroken concentration
My body and mind joined to the wind
I said to another sailor,
I wish making love could be like this
The body and breath one,
Adrenaline and endorphins running this thick
In the bloodstream.
But he did not understand what I meant
In a society where women are not fully aroused
The men are materialists
Their eyes are blind
Their hearts are closed
Having never tasted the feminine essence
They do not see
The inner light shining in all things
Through the translucent waves
Whispering in the wind
Calling to them in their dreams
The sea says, Come and dance with me,
But they do not understand,
Such men fail to attain to their destiny
Light does not illuminate their visions.
You may think I exaggerate to make my point
But I tell you
Once when a bank of gray clouds
Closed in with thunder
And ribbons of lightning glancing down
As twilight faded into darkness
The mast and sails began to glow
With a purple, greenish light
And a humming sound
Like listening with your ear against a bee hive
Saturated the air
And the hairs on our arms stood up
Excited by the touch
Of St. Elmos fire
I know women like that:
They have passions and moods
Which men have never seen
Electric, their desires flair up
They touch you in the dark
And then, without a second thought,
Without a care, they depart.
One night, alone in a small craft,
The sky was overcast
I could hear the waves breaking not far off
Against a rocky shore hidden in darkness
But I could not turn out to sea
The waves were too great
When the waves crest broke
Over the stern I took on water
And so sailing only by sound
I listened to the waves
Bearing off when the breaking crest
Was too near
Until two hours later
I sailed past the tip of the island
I know women like that:
Shoals hidden in darkness
Uncharted, unmapped,
Places where dreams are shattered
Lives are shipwrecked
And to survive them
You must make darkness your friend.
And even when you are ashore,
When you think you are safe and sound
Where your feet are really on solid ground
It is still like visiting
I have floated naked in that mountain pool
At dawn as the suns golden, molten breath
Caressed the rocky heights
The water so cold yet inviting
So exciting, yielding all of its being to my touch
Like lips which finally surrender a kiss
But then later on when I had left
Falling rocks kill others right where I had stood
That place, though sacred, is also a trap
I know women like that
They can be incredibly sweet and kind
And then turn and stone you to death
Like their worst enemy from another lifetime.
But then again
The sea never did promise me
She would be an easy conquest
To state my case
Concerning women and the sea:
If you look carefully enough
Into the eyes of any woman on earth
Hidden in the depths
You will find a quiet dignity
And if you meditate on what you find
You will hear her say:
I am waiting for a lover
Who is wise, strong, and tender
To discover my secrets
To taste my bliss
To ravish my heart
And yet who lets me be
As wild and free as the sea.
For Karen Matheson
Does the mountain stream cry
Its pools almost dry
As its source--the clouds—
Drift off into other skies?
Do the remaining falls weep in sorrow and loss?
Do the ripples circling silently between the rocks
Dream of endless loneliness before flowing on?
If my answer is "No,”
Can I persuade my heart otherwise?
Your voice walks beside me
Through these mountains, deserts, and forests
Where, though breathing, seeing, and dreaming,
I feel I have died
Because love has left my life behind.
But your voice reshapes my life
In your song I hear you say,
“This pool you see
It dreams of clouds and seas
But its still waters reflect more—
The stars dwelling in the vast expanse of space
Their songs of Joy take eons of time
Each others’ hearts of find
And yet they are all joined as one
As your heart and mine
Within this moment
Within this poem
Flow as one stream of love.
The child understands not the words
Understands not the reasons for its suffering
But the mother is there to comfort
She holds him within her arms
In my waters cool and deep
Rest and sleep
Let go
Be released
And yet expand also—”
Dissolving
Sinking down into your heart, your love
I am now the underground stream
Gently weaving through the caverns beneath the ground
I am curtains of rain sailing upon the wind
I am the sea and the iceberg drifting
The whale’s song echoes
through my body
As other whales listen a thousand miles distant
I am the mist embracing the forest with her arms
I am the grape on the vine
As it ripens
As it ferments into wine
Capturing the lightning with its song
Joining earth and sky
The taste of the grape
Sings of the treasure I have found within your heart:
In the coldest, darkest place of emptiness
Though invisible and unknown
A fiery light still shines
A heart still celebrates the Love Binding the universe
with its might—
From your heart to mine
In this moment
This flame is passed,
And so I have come to see
The stream, the falls, the pool and its dreams
Fear neither loss nor emptiness
Nor the loneliness where the soul dissolves
But flow as part of a Sea Whose Song is Infinite Love.
The following essay on how to
write a poem reviews a method called focusing which relates to empathy. The poem itself pursues images from the water
element. The essay also illustrates
heart to heat communication.
An Essay--How to Write a
Poem
The poetry I write is more a direct description of my experience in meditating
than it is anything else.
Some have asked me to explain what it is I do. One method I use in
writing my poems derives from
Eugene Gendlin's method called
"focusing." (See Eugene T. Gendlin's book Focusing
published by
Bantam Books, 1962).
There are six steps
in Gendlin's method. 1. Put everything off to
the side so you can focus on one
feeling or question. 2. Get a direct feeling from your body, an
impression you can perceive in a concrete
manner, which accompanies your feeling or question. 3. Express this
feeling specifically in an image, a
phrase, even as a geometric configuration of where the sensations or feelings
are in your body.
4. Go back and forth
between steps 2 and 3, that is, check and increase the accuracy of the image or
phrase so that there is a close correlation or "fit" between your
body and your conscious representation of
where the sensations or feelings are in your body. 5. Allow now your
entire body and soul to open to
what it is you have identified as "stuck" energy
or feelings which are not flowing freely within yourself.
For example, ask, "What is behind this or
underneath it?" This allows what is stuck finally to be
accepted and embraced by all that you are. 6. Give yourself a
chance to process what you have
experienced. Let it become in some way a part of your life.
In so far as
psychologists are occupied with the needs of the personality, Gendlin,
typically, has an
individual ask, "What is keeping me from being happy right
now?" There are a vast array of definitions
for what it is to be happy. Certainly, it is up to each of us to find for
ourselves our own answers. There
is, however, a strong connection between our body and our feelings. When
we feel full of energy, clear,
and open to what is happening within us, we are on the path of happiness.
The body and feelings have an
immense advantage over the mind when it comes to discovering happiness.
Let us explore an example of
a focusing session.
An
individual might focus and notice a constriction or pain within his or her
heart. Focusing further
to increase the accuracy, the shape and intensity of this feeling becomes more
clear--it is then
characterized as a throbbing, even a burning sensation which carries within it
a feeling of loss. The
sensation and the feeling of loss become, then, a "handle" one uses
to open up the entire body and soul to
experience this stuck energy. Total, undivided attention is present along
with the empathy which is willing
to enter into and feel all that is there. And the whole body stands ready
to embrace and accept whatever
is discovered.
Asking, "What
is this?" or "What is beneath this?" allows us to enter
into an inner psychic space in
which we are purely attentive and receptive. New and original perceptions
rather than old thoughts and
reactions can then be found. Empathy, love, and concentration are all present
at once. The energy the
psyche has put forth to hold, contain, and to bury these feelings is now no
longer needed. The rigid
barriers within the body are free to dissolve and the energy is free to move,
to shape shift and be
transformed--to be integrated into the rest of our psyche rather than being
separate and alone.
In this moment,
however, we do not identify with our personality or familiar identity.
No. If we want
integration, to be more open and clear, we need to identify consciously with
the totality of who we are.
To do this, we must be willing to enter the unknown--to embrace that space at
the center of our heart
where love encompasses all. It is from this place that the stuck and
trapped energies and tensions within
our selves dissolve and are then free to flow and move unobstructed.
Opening to our
sensations and feelings, the loss is then discovered, in this case, to be
rejection: the
withdrawal of love by others, the lack of acceptance, the way
others have attacked rather than tried to
understand who we are. The inner tension around the heart is then
perceived as arising from an attempt
to guard against others' hostility and lack of acceptance. In this
"discovery" or insight, there is no longer a
need to defend oneself. The acceptance felt
toward oneself in this case reaches out to others as well.
The body through opening and flowing with the movement of energy has found
another way of relating to
the world.
The energy, then, “shifts” because the barriers holding it in place are no
longer needed. The greater
resources belonging to the entire psyche are drawn upon. With this
shift and change comes new insight.
And the tense, burning sensation with its feeling of loss is now gone.
There is in its place a feeling of
delight, a sensation like water flowing down a stream.
Our task in the
final step is to allow this insight to become a part of our life. Without
receiving this
insight, it is easy for our more familiar but less dynamic routines, thoughts,
and reactions to reassert
themselves. In this case, receiving this insight becomes a matter of
holding the others in our hearts with
the same love and acceptance we have discovered we can offer to our self.
The most significant
difference between what I do and what Gendlin does is that in step 5, in
opening
to the energy or feeling, I use and flow into the energies of nature as the
images in my poems testify. I
also, as a spheric magician, draw freely from the
vast array of spirits Franz Bardon mentions in his book,
The Practice of Magical Evocation. This helps amplify my ability to explore and
animate my
impressions. And it enables tensions within me which are much more
collective, universal, or cosmic than
personal to be released and transformed.
As a psychologist, Gendlin's prime directive is to help others to adapt and to
be successful in the social
world as it already exists. His emphasis is on the happiness and integration of
the personality. A bardic
magician like myself has a different objective--it is
to discover spiritual treasures and bear them back to
our world, in other words, to capture in poems the beauty of the universe.
My intent is not to
adapt to but to comprehend and then to transform the world according to a
vision.
Though I use Gendlin's method, I have modified it so
that it is now a wand in the hands of a magician. I
chart, then, not just the integration of the personality, but the integration
of the collective, global, and
cosmic psyche in my meditations.
The image or phrase
I use as a "handle" on the energy I am experiencing within my body
turns into
part of the poem I write. In the poem, I pass into a void. I move
beyond the boundaries of the world in
quest of the harmony and beauty I seek. The entire poem, then, is a
record of this journey I have
followed on paths of soul and spirit.
To avoid excessive
explanations, I will begin writing a poem and talk about it as it
unfolds. I am
listening to a song by Karen Matheson from the soundtrack of the movie Rob Roy. The song is Ailein
Duinn. This song is in another language and
though I do not have a translation, I notice there is
something in Karen's voice which I wish to explore--Karen sings from her heart
and in her heart there is a
love which encompasses vast distances and places of isolation. She
accomplishes something as she sings
which I have not learned to do within my self—to unite
sorrow, loss, and loneliness with beauty.
The heart has this
power--to hold all of our experiences in life within a place where stillness
and love
are joined. I want to enter this place, to join with this source, that
this light might shine within myself as
well. This will not be easy for me. One of the qualities of love is that
it seeks to flow through the very
core of another's being. The oneness offered is immense.
But this flow is not
without a price. In its quest for intimacy and oneness, this love
inevitably enters
every sealed room where frightening secrets have been hidden away, every
chamber where horrors and
terrors have been bound and stowed--the flow of love breaks all barriers
down. Love creates a magical
circle. It weaves together all that is within the life and experience of
both individuals. For this love
(which I perceive as I listen to Karen's voice) to flow within myself, I must
pass through the darkness that
exists within me.
Listening to Karen's
singing, I open myself completely as a bardic magician.
I become the silence
which carries the notes of her voice. I become the darkness willing to
allow the light and all the images
within her mind to shine forth. I bear the tension her heart
embraces. I am the willingness that feels what
she is feelings. I am the stillness so complete
her entire being--without diminishing, without a trace of my
desires and needs—is allowed to appear here. I am the mirror
willing to reflect without distortion her soul
and her spirit within myself.
And yet, though the
mirror is empty, it also seeks to hear what her voice has to say to me
personally.
The tradition of the troubadour asserts that union with God or Goddess can not
be attained, can not be
experienced in full, until it is first seen and experienced through the heart
of another. There is a path of
transformation her voice leads me upon. This path leads both through her
and through myself. Upon this
path we are not separate. This is a path of love
and upon it there are moments when all that exists is
union, oneness, and bliss.
This is not a wish
or a fabrication, for love in its essence contains this mystery--only in love
can we
undergo transformation without knowing where were are going or who it is we are
becoming. Love offers
us this union that we might find and enter the sacred gate leading to the
enlightenment of the world.
Listening to
Karen's voice, my body is now gone. The surrounding world is no longer
here. I would
listen in this moment so completely that my mind is like the sky, my feelings
the sea, and my body as
quiet and patient as the mountain.
My listening becomes
the mirror so clear that her love, heart, and soul can appear within it not
just as
an image or representation seen at a distance. I allow the magic in her
voice and song to create in me the
very source of life inspiring her. The feelings and energy within her song now
begin to appear within me.
They are able to move freely drawing upon all that I am and all that I have
ever experienced.
In this listening
space, her heart is now free to speak directly to my own. This is
communication from
one heart to another heart. This is a dialogue between two souls
involving our entire being.
In her voice I
find a love so pure I can feel it now flowing around my fingertips--a cool wind
flows in
the evening before the moon rises. The air is liquid. It brushes through
my hair. Standing behind me, I
feel her hands on my shoulders. I am protected by her love,
sheltered by her heart. She offers me her
own heart and soul that I might know my own better--again, this is not my wish
or hope. This power to
join and offer support is precisely the essence of her own soul which she is
sharing in her song.
The wounds within
myself, the pain and anguish, they are strings upon a lute and she reaches to
touch
them with hands of compassion and healing. Her song and her heart from
which it arises walk with me
right now by my side through the darkest places of my lie--places I can see, I can visit easily, but which I
have not been able to share with anyone else. I feel her love as an
actual energy moving through me.
As I listen to her
voice I sense the reason that this healing power is within her is that she is
willing to
become the Earth. Within her eyes, within her heart, she too would bear,
endure, and nourish all so they
may come forth in their own time, in their own way, and be reborn, transforming
and attaining all that
they were ever meant to be. I feel that grace, that acceptance,
that love within her heart as her voice
speaks to me.
With Karen's
presence and heart clearly here with me, as liquid energy streaming through my
body, I
visit again those places in my life where I was indeed lost and lonely--so
lonely I felt I had died, or that
awakening within a dream, I turned and looked around myself and saw a million
broken hearts silent and
unable to speak. But Karen remains by my side as I enter this dark place.
Still, this is not
easy to do. In this moment, as I hold a cassette player in my hand, my
thumb hesitates
to push the play button and again listen to her song. The pain is
overwhelming. It washes through my
body like an undertow striving to tear apart my identity and carry it
off. The pain is so total it feels that in
entering it there is no way out. The pain weighs me down.
There is a place of lostness within me so vast it is like a dream from which
part of myself has never
awakened. I hesitate to enter lest even more be taken away from me than
before. But tracing the images
I am actually seeing in this moment, I write these words to the poem having
spent many years walking
alone through deserts, forests, and mountainsides:
Does the mountain stream cry
Its pools almost dry
As its source--the clouds—
Drift off into other skies?
Do the remaining falls weep in sorrow and loss?
Do the ripples circling silently between the rocks
Dream of endless loneliness before flowing on?
If my answer is "No,”
Can I persuade my heart otherwise?
Your voice walks beside me
Through these mountains, deserts, and forests
Where, though breathing, seeing, and dreaming,
I feel I have died
Because love has left my life behind.
Clearly, I can enter, as in a walking dream, these
moments of immense tension which I have experienced
before. I am there now. I have invaded the past. I am who I
once was. But to be here is to experience
a numbness which can not feel, a sorrow which does not release.
But Karen's voice is
here with me also. She says to me, "You can feel. It does
release. I am able to
experience here and now all that you are going through. You are within my
heart and my love flows
through your soul."
I feel the
mountain pools and the streams again. I am one with them. And I
feel the clouds moving
on just as love having propelled me forward on my path of life then turned away
from me and left me
alone. But she is within the pools and the streams as well. Karen's
voice, like a magician's, evokes within
me the love which exists within this very moment within her heart.
And so in my body
where I feel the tension, the numbness, the pain, I feel her energy flowing
also
through me. Her energy has become my own. I could sit here for
years by myself doing focusing and
still this energy would never release. But in listening carefully I have
allowed the heart of another to
infuse my own heart with new life even amid this wilderness. And so I
write:
But your voice reshapes my life
In your song I hear you say,
“This pool you see
It dreams of clouds and seas
But its still waters reflect more—
The stars dwelling in the vast expanse of space
Their songs of Joy take eons of time
Each others’ hearts of find
And yet they are all joined as one
As your heart and mine
Within this moment
Within this poem
Flow as one stream of love.
The child understands not the words
Understands not the reasons for its suffering
But the mother is there to comfort
She holds him within her arms
In my waters cool and deep
Rest and sleep
Let go
Be released
And yet expand also—
"There are places within us which are so
vast, so empty of human companionship, that to enter them is to
risk losing our understanding of who we are. But these places as well are
part of an even richer and more
wonderful world--they are a part of the Soul of the Earth. Here are found
all the treasures of spirit the
human race has ever known and will ever discover.
Karen, with her
heart of gold, leads me on paths through this wilderness of the soul. I
am no longer
within what is called the collective unconscious. I am not supported by
the wisdom of any culture on
earth. I have entered the domain of what is better called the global or
cosmic unconscious. Here water
itself testifies to that aspect of Divinity which it embodies--universal and
comic love. Because the
magnetic powers within Karen's heart reflect and carry the Soul of the Earth
itself, I am safe traveling
here. The desolation I once faced but could not bear, she has transformed
through the willingness of her
heart to flow through my own with her love. She has given voice to the
Life which infuses us all.
There are places of
the spirit we may not enter without another by our side. There are
transformations we can not undergo unless another is there to guide us. I
assert that the feminine soul has
the power within it to bear and give birth to any destiny human or
divine. This is my experience as a
bard. This is why I am so attentive to the treasures found within the
hearts of women. To the treasures
within the heart of this women I yield: I flow and let
go and, entering into the mysteries of water itself and
the heart of nature, I write:
Dissolving
Sinking down into your heart, your love
I am now the underground stream
Gently weaving through the caverns beneath the ground
And I am curtains of rain sailing upon the wind
I am the sea and the iceberg drifting
The whale’s song echoes
through my body
As other whales listen a thousand miles distant
I am the mist embracing the forest with her arms
I am the grape on the vine
As it ripens
As it ferments into wine
Capturing the lightning with its song
Joining earth and sky
The taste of the grape
Sings of the treasure I have found within your heart:
In the coldest, darkest place of emptiness
Though invisible and unknown
A fiery light still shines
A heart still celebrates the Love Binding the universe
with its might—
From your heart to mine
In this moment
This flame is passed,
And so I have come to see
The stream, the falls, the pool and its dreams
Fear neither loss nor emptiness
Nor the loneliness where the soul dissolves
But flow as part of a Sea Whose Song is Infinite Love.
It is neither caprice nor exaggeration when I
write the words, "Infinite Love." Karen's heart reflects the
Beauty of the universe even as the Soul of the Earth reflects within
itself the spirit of the sun, moon, and
stars. I am now in the center of Karen's heart. I am one with the
Source inspiring her. I move as spirit
and the spirit indwelling her fills me with its love.
This joining of
spirits, this sharing from heart to heart, is not a method unknown to our world
or in any
way inappropriate. It is not just troubadours and bards who imagine such
things. In any serious spiritual
anthropology, shaktipat, guru yoga, and the
transference of power from heart to heart, are the essence of
the teachings made real. Part of Tibetan Buddhism, e.g., in its method of
initiation, is to enter and
experience the heart of the Dalai Lama. This is done in fact as part of
the visualizations which are used
with a guru in many tantras.
Just for a moment,
if you feel free, come with me. Visualize the Dalai Lama standing in
front of you.
See his smile. Look into his eyes. This is not so difficult. You
can imagine a friend you are close to. If
you visualize him or her right now in front of you and listen to words he or
she might speak, you may be
able to "feel" something of the other's presence entering you,
flowing through your body. This is the
same thing.
For a moment, become
a dot of white light and flow into the heart of the Dalai Lama. Let the
entire
universe for a moment be precisely what you feel and
sense within his heart. Here is this moment is a sea
of compassion which is infinite. His heart contains worlds upon worlds
all enfolded by the light of the
enlightened mind which he shares freely with others.
This field of energy
of his heart is also like wind and water when they are gentle and kind and
nourishing. It is an open expanse which is inexhaustible. It is a
sea of time where the mind discovers
itself to be a mirror clear, open, and luminous, a mirror whose very nature is
compassion.
It is no wonder, then,
that this same man repeats again and again, "As long as suffering remains
to
sentient beings, I will remain to serve," or, "My only religion is
kindness." These words epitomize the
essence of a sea of energy which his heart embraces. These words are
spoken by one who would lay the
ground work for establishing on earth a genuine cosmic religion.
Karen's heart also
touches on the universal and cosmic. Her magnetism is that of Venus:
the
willingness to combine and join what is separate so that healing and beauty may
be found, so that love
may be fulfilled. Listening to her voice singing Aileen Duinn, becoming the space where the light of her
soul can shine, I have entered a sea whose essence is Infinite Love.
In summary, when I
listen to another or to a spirit for that matter, I listen with my entire
being. When
I follow a feeling, like Orion in the sky, I am the eternal hunter. I
move across all boundaries. I
overcome all barriers. Like others before me, I am a servant who is guided
by the One Light which holds
the universe within its heart.
But put more simply,
I enter a waking dream. In this dream, I taste, feel, perceive, hear, and
touch
the energies which arise within the stillness of my heart. I allow them
to appear, to use all of my life as
the strings of a lute which they are free to take and play any song upon of
their own choosing.
Willing to be the
earth and the sky, the seas, the volcano and the lightning, I become the source
which
inspires the other's being so that I too might become transformed, so that the
paths of the spirit might be
opened and shared with others.
Again, this is what bardic magicians do: we find treasures of soul and
spirit and share them with the
world. Our meditation is the open space of the heart which we never cease
exploring. Our poem or song
is a record of our journey, of what we have been permitted to bring back and
share with the world. But
the poem is more than this. As is my experience when I listen to Karen singing,
the poem/song is a
magical gate. The poem is a sigil drawn not with lines but with metaphors
which evoke a spiritual
presence.
The poem is the
blood of Divinity called forth by the bard's voice and carried by the wings of
spirit. It
is the flame moving free and without obstruction from one heart to another
heart. The poem is a joining,
a oneness of love creating that moment in which God and Goddess reach for and
touch each other within
our hearts.
Field
Trip and Three Day Seminar in One Minute (on relationships)
Time to get away from the
classroom. Here we are folks at
the world famous Bayview Yacht Club in
Me: “Excuse me ladies. Can you tell me why you consider yourselves a
group of cheerleaders for Brad?”
Susan: “I think we feel we are out of the
running or never qualified for the running.
But we still feel we have a vested interest in the outcome.”
Me: “Ah yes. I think I kind of understand. But why this bachelor? What makes him so special?”
Linda:
“He’s handsome, successful, wealthy, a great sailor, has a beautiful
sailboat, great to crew for, and has hundreds of friends. It makes a woman feel
good just to be around him.”
Me: “Really? So what’s the cheerleader squad discussing
tonight?”
Jennifer: “We’re questioning Brad’s
attitude toward women. He says he is not
really serious when he dates but come on.
I think he is naïve about women if he thinks those he is dating aren’t
really serious about him.”
Susan: “Look. I run my own bar and I have
seen a lot of dating going on. And
unless a guy is intimate with a woman he owes her exactly nothing.”
Me: “So you are saying on the one hand
that Brad is misleading women and yet technically it’s the women who are
misleading themselves. Is that a fair
summary?”
Jennifer: “Yah. Judging from his track record, he usually
takes about seven years to decide to marry a woman ….because he doesn’t want to
go through the trauma of breaking up.
Not being serious is his way of being cautious. I mean, look at the way he hangs out with a woman--his
arm around the girl he is dating and how he kisses her. When I see that there is no way the woman
isn’t going to get involved.”
Me: “So has this been a problem with his
latest date?”
Susan: “He’s a man. He thinks of a woman in terms of whether 1. she has ‘excess baggage,’ 2. she is
‘damaged goods,’ and 3. whether or not she is ‘high
maintenance.’”
Me: “So he is kind of picky.”
Linda: “His real problem is not the women
he will finally marry. The problem is
that after two years the woman will finally catch on to what Brad is really
about.”
Me: “And what is that?”
Linda: “For Brad, the first thing in his
life is business. The second is his
social life. The third thing is his
sailing and hanging out down here at Bayview. At best, his wife will only be fourth on his
list of priorities.”
Me: “That could be a problem, huh? But why should we speculate? Let’s ask Brad
for an opinion.”
Me: “Say Brad. I have been talking to your
cheerleaders here and they are questioning your interpersonal skills. They
suspect they may not be sufficient to keep a woman happy once you marry here.”
Brad: “Its
true. In my past marriages, my wives
left me. Got any ideas?”
Me: “Ladies?
No thoughts? We’ll, have you
heard about the three day seminar on relationships taught in one minute?”
Brad: “Well, I have a minute. Let’s do it.”
Me: “There are three components. First, once a week sit down and listen to a
woman for fifteen minutes. During this
time, utilize only active listening.
That is, on occasion paraphrase what she is saying and also suggest what
you sense she is feeling as she talks.
For example, Susan here says flat out that a woman has no claim on you
unless you are intimate with her. And I
suspect she feels that the only important thing you should be concerned about
in dating is finding the right woman.
Susan is concerned about what is best for you. This is active listening:
capture both thoughts and feelings.”
Susan: “You got that right.”
Me: “The second component is that after
fifteen minutes you place your mind inside of the other person. Just to make it challenging, I will pick
James here since I know nothing about him and have never heard him say
anything. To do this, just image you are
the other person—you have the other person’s body, feelings, mind, gestures,
body posture, vocal intonations, word choices, etc. Get right inside the other so you are
one.
“Ok, here I am imagining I am inside of
James. And this brings
us to the third component—wait inside the other until you get a distinct
body sensation. This sensation is a gut
level connection to the other person.
“With James the sensation I now have is
that he is a very relaxed person, ready to let go and let his life completely
unfold in any way it wants. But if you
look at James sitting here on that bar stool, his posture and facial expression
suggest he is tense, uptight, and worrying about something. How am I doing, James?”
James: “You are absolutely right. People keep thinking I am an uptight kind of
guy. But I have all the clients I need
and I am actually cutting back in my business.
I am looking forward to retiring and I completely happy with my
life.”
Me:
“Do you feel we know each James?”
James: “You seem to know me better than my
best friends.”
Linda:
“What if Brad doesn’t do this once a week once he
marries a woman?”
Me: “Then his wife can actually do it on
Brad. Intimacy that is magical like this
can be established unilaterally. And as
a matter of fact lovers in this life rarely worry about how their inner
connection came to be. They just know
when it is there and when it is not. If
they have it, all the other difficulties and worries that accompany the
relationship remain secondary.”
(If
you have “won” someone, you might like to do a little relationship maintenance;
kind of like making deposits to a pension fund.
Obviously two making deposits is better than one.)
Well,
that “three day seminar in one minute” actually took less than one minute
according to my watch. What follows is a
kind of expansion of the one minute seminar into other areas.
Projection:
Psychological and Magical
As
far as projecting inside of another person, I mentioned elsewhere I knew a
Carmelite Priest who was a therapist. When he couldn’t figure out how to work
with a client he would project himself inside of the client.
Technically speaking this method is
psychological and not magical. It
becomes magical as you add concentration, heightened perception, and a touch of
telepathy to it. You remember that Grindler and Bandler NLP
stuff? They have some anecdotes.
Sitting in a classroom, one guy hums
silently a popular song. Soon the guy
sitting next to him begins quietly humming the same song aloud. The breathing pattern, transferred on a nonverbal level,
sparked the other’s subconscious into action.
Similarly, there was comatose patient who
seemed totally unaware of the world around him.
One of our two NLP men sat down in a chair next to the patient. Over the next half hour he first matched his breathing
to the patient. Next the therapist began
varying his breathing slightly noticing that the patient was now following the
therapist.
Then suddenly the therapist turns to the
comatose patient and says, “Hey, you got a cigarette?” The patient responds, “Don’t do that.” What?
Comatose patients by definition are not supposed to respond. The implication is that we can link to others’
brains on a nonverbal level in ways that the conscious part of the other
person’s brain may not perceive.
So far we are still completely within the
realm of psychology. Follow me one step
further (“one small step for a man”) across the boundary separating the known
and unknown worlds. So I am in a Tai Chi
Chuan class with a Chinese speaking master.
There are fifty students practicing Tai Chi around me and the master is
on the other side of the hall.
I imagine myself briefly inside of the
master while I continue doing my Tai Chi.
Within a minute, the master comes all the way across the hall and begins
correcting my movements as he speaks in Chinese. Of course I haven’t a clue as to what he is
saying. Seven years later he will get a
great interpreter and also learn to speak English with a little more ease. But you get the idea.
And I am in a Zen temple practicing the
Saturday evening no mind meditation for forty-five minutes. One of the disciples taps a small bell with a
tiny hammer—“ding.” But
just before I had projected my mind inside of the Zen master.
I noticed his aura tends to vanish completely
when he meditates. And unlike those
Vipassana salesmen I spoke of elsewhere, this master never once said anything
to me about Buddhism. If you are sitting
there next to him meditating you are already on the ship “crossing over” to the
land of enlightenment.
Now unlike other times, this time after
the meditation he does begin talking. He
starts insisting that he and I should give seminars together.
Technically, it is also fair to say that my
“projecting” into the Tai Chi master and the Zen master was easily enough
detected. The Tai Chi master walks
around carefully observing the students movements. It would easy enough for him to notice when a
student had suddenly acquired an internal flow of energy similar to his
own. He notices things like that. He tells me he can tell who has practiced on
their own during the week.
And the Zen master? You are sitting in the same room about seven
feet apart. Projecting inside of him
changes the electro-magnetic configuration of my aura to match his own. He too could feel something like that even
with his eyes closed. Perhaps it is like
some women who have said they can feel whether their boyfriend is content or
mad even in a dark room just by the heat being radiated.
We each are distinct and have our own
histories, personalities, qualities, and powers. But for myself I conclude that on some level
we are all one with each other in a way that does not harm or interfere with
our individuality and freedom.
Summary
Well, there you have it—an
essay in response to the question, How can women become more feminine by
working with the magnetic fluid? We have
traveled together a ways through quite a few different domains.
We have immersed ourselves in pure
physical sensations. We have used our
imaginations to explore dreams, images, and inner landscapes full of
visions. We have worked with our
feelings both personal and universal, feelings that are evoked through our
experiences with nature and feelings that arise from the depths of our
souls. I personally have a long way to
go.
Nonetheless, I would maintain that
anything that is electric such as the dominant accomplishments of Western
civilization can be contained by the magnetic fluid. All those military industrial war machines,
all those technologies, all those global trade and international economies,
political establishments and nationalities—it all can be embraced, purified,
made new, and inspired from the depths of the hearts of those who are
responsible in running the world as we know it.
The magnetic fluid starts with learning to
let go. But as it grows it flows from
the depths of life with a peace as deep as the sky at night, as wondrous as
sun, moon, and star light, and with satisfactions and fulfillments as rich as
anything the human spirit is meant to envision or to grasp.
Love like that which is able to become
one with anything will always have the advantage in shaping the direction of
history. But for divinity, the electric
and the magnetic fluids are not two separate paths but rather they are forever
joined as one in the unfolding of Creation.