Why do conflicts sometimes stick in our minds but good times often get taken for granted? Why does time fly when you are having fun but drag on when impatiently waiting? Let me suggest a song to listen to while you read...
The human mind can be awful funny about time. That means your mind, my mind. Religions of past and present, East and West, often get into concepts of Eternity and Time. Is Eternity coming up after your death, or is your mind interfering with the now?
Joseph Campbell:
It's almost as though the future life that you're going to have with that person has already told you, This is the one whom you will have that life with. ... It's almost as though you were reacting to the future. It's talking to you from what is to be. This has to do with the mystery of time and the transcendence of time. But I think we're touching a very deep mystery here.
Joseph Campbell:
transcendent means to "transcend," to go past duality. Everything in the field of time and space is dual. The incarnation appears either as male or as female, and each of us is the incarnation of God. You're born in only one aspect of your actual metaphysical duality, you might say. This is represented in the mystery religions, where an individual goes through a series of initiations opening him out inside into a deeper and deeper depth of himself, and there comes a moment when he realizes that he is both mortal and immortal, both male and female.Joseph Campbell:
The Garden of Eden is a metaphor for that innocence that is innocent of time, innocent of opposites, and that is the prime center out of which consciousness then becomes aware of the changes.Joseph Campbell:
I think what we are looking for is a way of experiencing the world that will open to us the transcendent that informs it, and at the same time forms ourselves within it. That is what people want. That is what the soul asks for. ... Not only to find it but to find it actually in our environment, in our world -- to recognize it. To have some kind of instruction that will enable us to experience the divine presence. In India there is a beautiful greeting, in which the palms are placed together, and you bow to the other person. ... The position of the palms together -- this we use when we pray, do we not? That is a greeting which says that the god that is in you recognizes the god in the other. These people are aware of the divine presence in all things. When you enter an Indian home as a guest, you are greeted as a visiting deity.
I suggest... when you are in conflict, you are in conflict with yourself. Both your left and right hands must let go, the conflict ends with a mutual release. If someone or something has conflicted a dozen times in the past, do you really let that determine your future? Who exactly is in charge of compromise? Who determines when you are tired but the other is wired? Consider that, in a few special circumstances, 1+1=2.5 or even somesum greater. A relationship is all in your head, isn't it? That there is something bigger than you at play, regardless of the metaphor your mind associates it with. Please to you and me: do not let what we call "transcendence" or "god" keep you and I apart... let it bind us together.
Ahhh, you know that excites me......don't you? Quoting Joseph Campbell and then adding some tidbit of your own. It pleases me that in which you write and I find truth in each word especially in connection with all the others.
ReplyDeleteI believe that each one has his own truth but that another can share that truth and this is what I am feeling with you. You so eloquently couch your words as I could not but such in a way that my heart fully understands. And my mind does make sense of it as well.
The final sentence rings so true, no matter if I use the word "God" or my preferred word "Deity" it is all the same. Let it bind us together....I do hope this to be the case!
Warm Hugs, Lora :)