I must be doin' something...
I must be doing something right by Mind Electric featuring Kylie Auldist embraces the acknowledgment of duality. There's a confession that she is not good at things typically assigned to gender-normative roles for women, cooking and sewing specifically, and YET she knows that she still must be doing something right. Auldist sings the lyrics unapologetically as I think we all should. There's power and sovereignty in witnessing ourselves as we truly are - we are perfectly imperfect and if we stay true to ourselves, our North Star, then we are doing something right despite what the opinion of others may be.
In the stillness of both the 4 of Cups and the 8 of Swords - the practitioner is listening and integrating. I find it interesting that both of those figures can dance - to move in recognition and gratitude for their ancestors, spirit guides, where they are in this moment of their journey, and just how far they've come. That brings up an interesting realization - Odin hung and eventually speared to Yggdrasil - with an inability to move without excruciating agony and left to die. The High Priestess in her initiation of the 8 of Swords is most certainly not in this position - she can dance, sing, hum, and even perhaps snap her fingers to a beat of her own making. This begs the question then - how long would her journey in the center of the swords potentially take? She has the power to come and go as she pleases really should she so choose - this presents questions - Isn't there the possibility that her journey has the potential to last decades? Is she free to move until her initiation is complete?
I've been meditating quite a bit on that - questions and answers, riddles and solutions. I offer this in ponderance, what if you are both the question and the answer? In the final scene of Ford vs. Ferrari we hear Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby eloquently describes existence at 7,000 rpm and the dissolution with nothing remaining but a question "who are you?" Thomas Ellison has a brilliant description of Dissolution, the second stage of seven in spiritual alchemy - the moment the ego dissolves. Isn't this the process Shelby movingly describes at moving through space and time at 7,000 rpm? 7000 RPM often signifies operating in a zone that is engineered to unleash significant power. Dissolution is symbolized by water, an element that too can unleash significant power at a tremendous rate. I am reminded of the most resilient being on this planet and the living definition of alchemy - the butterfly. During the pupal stage, the monarch does not turn into liquid, but rather, the body is broken down and completely remade in its new form. All of these processes require some action to be taken by the initiate to undergo alchemic transformation, there's consent and then there's complete surrender.
But what does it mean to be both the question and the answer? Perhaps the riddle of the Sphinx was such that the riddle could not be asked until the initiate surrendered into the realm of chaos. Entropy, the measure of disorder - chaos. The Inequality of Clasius tells us that the entropy of a system always increases during spontaneous (irreversible) process. Isn't this our isolated High Priestess surrounded by the 8 swords? The High Priestess enters the crucible of chaos, the center of the swords, to proceed through the stages of spiritual alchemy which is an irreversible process as we see with the butterfly - it is an entirely new being.
To be sure, ego deaths are dramatic and painful and a necessary process for the practitioner. Not everyone is on the practitioner path - I had an interesting conversation today where we discussed where individuals believe they can self-initiate into particular practices and traditions that are most definitely closed. I must ask "Why would you take that stance when you now become someone, something else's question versus your own?" Without elders, proper spiritual cultivation, and guidance you are entering an unknown you will regret - "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Scholars have argued what Hamlet may have meant - but in the context of this babbling piece, the initiate must understand that there are things in heaven and earth that are beyond the capacities of their understanding. Thus why guidance and preparation are paramount for those entering into the circle of 8 I will call it from now on.
"So what does it all mean, to be both the question and the answer?!" It is to recognize your own duality and that you have the power, the sovereignty to solve this. You are the riddle and the solution to it - that's why when everything falls away at 7,000 rpm, you can ask "Who am I?" and discover the answer was inside you all along.
Thanks for reading the babbling brook presented here, and I leave you with Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The Sphinx is drowsy,
The wings are furled;
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?--
I awaited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept;--
"The fate of the man-child;
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?
"Erect as a sunbeam,
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert,
Your silence he sings.
"The waves, unashamed,
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.
"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred,--
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning,
The vapor the hill.
"The babe by its mother
Lies bathed in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted,--
The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.
"But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.
"Outspoke the great mother,
Beholding his fear;--
At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere:--
'Who has drugged my boy's cup?
Who has mixed my boy's bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
Has turned the man-child's head?'"
I heard a poet answer,
Aloud and cheerfully,
"Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time;
They fad in the light of
Their meaning sublime.
"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of nature
Can't trace him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.
"Profounder, profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,--for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
"Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?--
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
"Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flied;
And under pain, pleasure,--
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.
"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits!
Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx--
Her muddy eyes to clear!"--
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,--
Said, "Who taught thee me to name?
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
"Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see they proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply."
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud,
She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave;
She stood Monadnoc's head.
Through a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame:
"Who telleth one of my meanings,
Is master of all I am."
