Just Down the Hill
posted by jm at 4:56 AM
Thursday, November 08, 2007
About Me
- Name: jm
I am a brilliant creation of the universe formed from the cosmic protoplasm sailing into eternity. I have two hands, two feet, a couple of great ears, and I'm clipping through life at a moderate pace; minding my p*s and q*s, crossing my t*s, dotting every i.
Links
Previous Posts
- It's Weird
- I was thinking ....
- Our Future
- I'm dusting today.
- Relaxation
- A Taste to Ease the Tension
- Ladies and Gentlemen,
- The South Node
- An Observation and a Question
- Which Way to Go
8 Comments:
Dear JM, I was terribly glad to hear about your tree's powers of recuperation. My grandmother just weathered a health crisis in which we were honestly convinced she was going to die. But somehow, she's still with us. And she's been incapacitated for the past 5 years with a stroke, so that's some power of resurgence!
Perhaps these are signs of hope to folks like me, who are struggling with the idea that our planet is geopolitically, economically, and ecologically heading for The End of Life as We Know It. Perhaps, despite the enormous dangers and challenges to the wellbeing of humankind and its much-beleaguered planet, there is hope. Hope that enough people will wake up and make a difference with their government's political and economical choices. Hope that there is a point to living life however best we can, despite the seeming catastrophe round the corner.
I guess, at the end of the day, if there is hope that something beautiful and precious like your tree can heal itself, there can be hope for us and the earth too. I pray so.
We Saturn in Cancers are a rather timorous lot. Especially when Saturn is squared by Pluto in the natal chart.
Thanks again for the post.
Ninth, what amazing timing. I had a major experience last night which I'm trying to process now and your comment is in the groove exactly. I'm almost mute at this point with the onslaught of sensory input mixed with a new perception and the overview you mention.
Hope that there is a point to living life however best we can, despite the seeming catastrophe round the corner.
The catastrophe is always there and we live next to it, sometimes it touches us. It's just magnified in collective behavior. I just revisited Hermann Hesse's novel, Steppenwolf, and I am overwhelmed with the realization of how much the individual destiny is the path to follow. The world has always been violent and full of agony, but it all is part of the whole and has a right to exist. There's sound reason for it. My inability to affect it is clear now along with a renewed desire to leave it be and let it all do what it does. The moralizing is especially useless since we all share the immorality and have to deal with it in our own ways. I think this is the greatest lesson for me. I've always known about this fatal flaw but now I want to accept it and excuse myself from the moral/immoral competition. If people want to brutalize one another, so be it. The weather will do it if they don't. And recovery always goes on concurrently. At the same time I want to let people be themselves without engaging or judging their actions. It's not my job. If there's any judgement, it should be of my own actions, and even there I see the need for a lot of give. This human thing is something we all struggle to cope with and figure out. And the spiritual talent is always there alongside the baser components.
Hope that enough people will wake up and make a difference with their government's political and economical choices.
The governments are not separate from us. The collective factor makes it seem worse, but they will change as each individual in humankind evolves and not a second sooner.
I've stopped talking, started reworking, and will now see where the road goes. Your comment made me want to speak again. We're wired for this catastrophe and there's not much we can do at this point in evolution. Not running from our own is a relief. Obedience to our own destructive forces is the one to watch.
This dying thing is hard to fathom. I have an old old aunt who had the same experience .. a stroke and more living.
It's been several years and this year the tree looks especially vibrant. It's coming back entirely prepared for many more years of life.
And thank you, 9th, for your honest comment. Very very refreshing. My silence is bringing reward. Cause for hope with this one.
We Saturn in Cancers are a rather timorous lot. Especially when Saturn is squared by Pluto in the natal chart.
Not to forget transiting Mars in the vicinity. Also the mutual reception: Saturn in Cancer, Moon in Capricorn. 29. Much emotional wisdom. I think when we really feel it is when we know it.
And an excellent comment it is, from out of your alchemical silence.
I have to smile when you say what I don't say. I don't have to say it because I know that you know.
"The moralizing is especially useless since we all share the immorality and have to deal with it in our own ways. I think this is the greatest lesson for me. I've always known about this fatal flaw but now I want to accept it and excuse myself from the moral/immoral competition."
I was tempted to read the above as "immortality and have to deal with it". ;-)
I was dreaming this morning about trees and big lizards. Very ancient energies coming up.
I dreamed that I was looking at illustrations of trees and dense vegetation, and I thought, "Good god, we drew a lot of trees! I didn't realize how many."
I think that the world is older than we know. Civilizations have come and gone, their leavings vanished. The trees will resurge. They stabilize things for us, and we will not let these most ancient symbols of continuity and renewal go.
I read a fun image yesterday in an article about plasticity in adult brains revealed by time-lapse movies of living axons: "Like a growing tree, these axons have a primary trunk that runs upward and several smaller branches that sprout out to the sides. But while the main trunk was firmly connected to other target neurons in the cerebellum, stationary as adult axons are generally thought to be, 'the side branches swayed like kite tails in the wind.' Over the course of a few hours, individual side branches would elongate, retract and morph in a highly dynamic fashion. Why the brain would want such motile, non-connected branches is the next mystery to tackle."
If there were no trees, we would have to invent them, haha!
"'The ability to make time-lapse movies of axons in the living brain gives us a powerful tool to explore axon regeneration that underlies neural recovery following stroke or other brain trauma,' Linden says."
Always the seed of renewal in cycles of coming and going, a very old pattern in which we move.
I'd excerpt your entire post in italics JM it's that good. I love Hesse. The first novel I read was Narcissus and Goldmund. Shortly after I turned 18, I read every novel he wrote I could get my hands on. I haven't revisited Hesse in a long while. Maybe it's time to delve again since I'm sure the books will hold so many levels I didn't access back then.
Oh am I ever relieved. Fulfilling conversation. I dipped into some dense contemplation and really don't want to return to the nervous chatter as it was. Back to zero and forward again. Zero is such an interesting place. I can go further away from where I was, or back through in a different way. We shall see. Like the chess player said in Steppenwolf when delivering instructions in building up the personality, "Your soul has fallen to bits and pieces. Good. Rearrange them to suit yourself."
Always the seed of renewal in cycles of coming and going, a very old pattern in which we move.
There is some secret in the axon that I sense and have been seeking for as long as I can remember. The synapse, too, as you well know. I think the answer to my puzzle is there.
Why the brain would want such motile, non-connected branches is the next mystery to tackle.
Reach. Truly beyond what was.
I feel it's time to commit myself fully to the philo-psycho-spiritual search I've always been on. How others fit in will be the next great puzzle.
The film version of Steppenwolf is out on DVD and it's a trip. I picked up two Hesse novels, Knulp and Journey to the East. Oddly enough, Journey is about a secret society that includes Paul Klee. Should be interesting and maybe some pointers about group association.
I'm sure the books will hold so many levels I didn't access back then.
Time is our ally.
The trees will resurge. They stabilize things for us, and we will not let these most ancient symbols of continuity and renewal go.
Or they won't let us go. I agree about the stability and the knowledge.
<< Home