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angels in the abstract, invoking the muse, The magic of keeping going, the…
angels in the abstract
Just as Resistance can be thought of as personal (I've said Resistance "loves" such-and-such or "hates" such-and-such), it can also be viewed as a force of nature as impersonal as entropy or molecular decay
for the thesis I'm seeking to put forward, is
that there are forces we can call our allies.
As Resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels.
when we sit down day after day and keep
grinding, something mysterious starts to happen
A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid.
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This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don't. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us.
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invoking the muse
But if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.
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To make them approachable, they gave
them human faces.
They called them Zeus, Apollo,
Aphrodite
American Indians felt the same mystery but rendered it in animistic forms—Bear Teacher, Hawk Messenger, Coyote Trickster.
Our ancestors were keenly cognizant of forces and energies whose seat was not in this material sphere but in a loftier, more mysterious one.
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The gods, though not unlike humans, are infinitely more powerful. To defy their will is futile. To act toward heaven with pride is to call down calamity.
Time and space display an altered existence in this higher dimension. The gods travel "swift as thought."
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Experiencing the self
Have you ever wondered why the slang terms for intoxication are so demolition-oriented? Stoned, smashed, hammered. It's because they're talking about the Ego.
The margins of the Self touch upon the Divine Ground. Meaning the Mystery, the Void, the source of Infinite Wisdom and Consciousness.
The Ego hates the Self because when we seat our consciousness in the Self, we put the ego out of business.
The Ego doesn't want us to evolve. The Ego runs the show right now. It likes things just the way they are.
The instinct that pulls us toward art is the impulse to evolve, to learn, to heighten and elevate our consciousness
The Ego hates this. Because the more awake we become, the less we need the Ego.
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The Ego hates it because it knows that these souls are awakening to a call, and that that call comes from a plane nobler than the material one and from a source deeper and more powerful than the physical.
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invoking the muse
There is magic to effacing our human arrogance and humbly entreating help from a source we cannot see, hear, touch, or smell
Not only are we invoking divine intercession, but intercession on the highest level, just one remove from the top.
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That about covers it. From The Brothers Karama^ov to your new venture in the plumbing-supply business
It's Joseph Campbell's hero's journey in a nutshell, as concise a synopsis of the story of Everyman as it gets
There's the initial crime (which we all inevitably commit), which ejects the hero from his homebound complacency and propels him upon his wanderings, the yearning for redemption, the untiring campaign to get "home, " meaning back to God's grace , back to himself.
I admire particularly the warning against the second crime, to destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun.
That's the felony that calls down soul-destruction: the employment of the sacred for profane means. Prostitution. Selling out.
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the ego and the self
The Self wishes to create, to evolve. The Ego likes things just the way they are
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The Ego's job is to take care of business in the real world. It's an important job. We couldn't last a day without it. But there are worlds other than the real world, and this is where the Ego runs into trouble.
Death is real. The Ego believes that our existence is defined by our physical flesh. When the body dies, we die. There is no life beyond life.
Time and space are real. The Ego is analog. It believes that to get from A to Z we have to pass through B, C, and D. To get from breakfast to supper we have to live the whole day
Every individual is different and separate from every other. The Ego believes that I am distinct from you. The twain cannot meet. I can hurt you and it won't hurt me.
The predominant impulse of life is self-preservation. Because our existence is physical and thus vulnerable to innumerable evils, we live and act out of fear in all we do
There is no God. No sphere exists except the physical and no rules apply except those of the material world.
A[[roaching the mystery
Just as Resistance has its seat in hell, so Creation has its home in heaven. And it's not just a witness, but an eager and active ally
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the celebrated warrior and historian proffers instruction to those young gentlemen who aspired to be officers of the Athenian equestrian corps. He declares that the commander's first duty, before he mucks out a stable or seeks funding from the Defens e Review Board, is to sacrifice to the gods and invoke their aid.
I didn't know what Resistance was then. No one had schooled me in the concept. I felt it though, big-time. I experienced it as a compulsion to self-destruct
But that moment when I first hit the keys to spell out TH E EN D was epochal I remember rolling the last page out.
I felt like a dragon I'd been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath.
invoking the muse
the celebrated warrior and historian proffers instruction to those young gentlemen who aspired to be officers of the Athenian equestrian corps.
He declares that the commander's first duty, before he mucks out a stable or seeks funding from the Defens e Review Board, is to sacrifice to the gods and invoke their aid
By that time I had blown up a marriage to a girl I loved with all my heart, screwed up two careers, blah blah, etc.,
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I started each day over co Paul. He turned me on to all kinds of authors I had neverffee with heard of, lectured me on self-discipline, dedication, the evils of the marketplace
Nobody cared. But I knew. I felt like a dragon I'd been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath.
Life and death
Remember the movie Billy Jack starring Tom Laughlin? The film and its sequels have long since decamped to cable, but Tom Laughlin is still very much around
In addition to his movie work, he's a lecturer and author and a Jungian-schooled psychologist whose specialty is working with people who have been diagnosed with cancer
The moment a person learns he's got terminal cancer, aprofound shift takes place in his psyche.
The Ego, Jung tells us, is that part of the psyche that we think of as "I. " Our conscious intelligence. Our everyday brain that thinks, plans, and runs the show of our day-to-day life.
The world is entirely new, viewed from the Self. At once we discern what's really important. Superficial concerns fall away, replaced by a deeper, more profoundly grounded perspective
He counsels his clients not just to make that shift mentally but to live it out in their lives. He supports the housewife in resuming her career in social work, urges the businessman to return to the violin, assists the Vietnam vet to write his novel.
self believes
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Time and space are illusions. Time and space operate only in the physical sphere, and even here, don't apply to dreams, visions, transports. In other dimensions we move "swift as thought" and inhabit multiple planes simultaneously.
All beings are one. If I hurt you, I hurt myself.
The supreme emotion is love. Union and mutual assistance are the imperatives of life. We are all in this together
God is all there is. Everything that is, is God in one formor another. God, the divine ground, is that in which we live and move and have our being. Infinite planes of reality exist, all created by, sustained by and infused by the spirit of God.
Testament of a visionary
The visionary poet William Blake was, so I understand, one of those half-mad avatars who appear in flesh from time to time-savants capable of ascending for brief periods to loftier planes and returning to share the wonders they have seen.
If beings inhabit this plane, I take Blake to mean that they are incorporeal.
The y don't have bodies. But they have a connection to the sphere of time, the one we live in. These gods or spirits participate in this dimension. The ytake an interest in it.
It needed a corporeal being, a human,an artist (or more precisely a genius, in the Latin sense of "soul" or "animating spirit") to bring it into being on this material plane. So the Muse whispered in Beethoven's ear.