The Terrain of Turning Over a New Leaf

The Way of Return

In the place of immense torment, Eros makes no sense because its light radiates up not down. There is a depth to existence that no light can penetrate. The human tragedy is the place where the world has thrown away what really matters in the core, its nature. And that place of the heart is down, it is below the kneck. However sometimes in that place of contention in the heart - a clashing of forces, guidance is needed to understand the push and pull of fighting and not giving up. But there are pre-tastes of the future Eros that could ‘become’ humanity's default way of living but it is not so at the moment.

Lowen said in his book [Betrayal of the Body], ‘The Road to Heaven Passes Through Hell’.

In a similar vein Tomas Hardy said ‘If a better place there be, it exacts a full look at the worst’.

This means that the ‘promised land’ has yet to arrive. And up until now, it is largely misunderstood as to where or what the ‘promised land’ is. But the way of Eros is not to be undermined or undervalued, otherwise as Moran states ‘If it is all bad then what are we fighting for?’ There must be something inherently ‘good’ – worthy and worthwhile about the human venture and existence.

Who you are is deeper than the biological family born into.

It is like trying to draw blood from a stone. Is it possible? the short answer is no. Yet God says yes, but it is possible. What does this tell us? about the heart of stone and the heart of flesh? Are they heads and tails of the same coin? Is it two [countless] hearts or is there one [singular] heart? does one need the other? Can one eradicate the other? Is one a necessity for the other's growth?

Lucifer was God's highest-ranked angel. It is said that Lucifer was the most beautiful and wisest of all. However, how did a divine creature so wise fall? In a strange way, it subtly illustrates that ‘failure’ was always there right from the very beginning. Freedom [To choose, pick up or throw away] was always there, this is free will. Was it always going to happen? And if something which was apparently so divinely ’perfect’ [whatever perfection is] able to fall, then what chance did humanity ever have? Was humanity always destined to fall? Was it meant to be this way? Was humanity set up from the very beginning?

In the thick of being checked, we lose God. We cry as Christ did on the cross, sometimes explicitly, sometimes the cry is within.

The hole in the heart may feel like a curse and yet in time and inner processing may come to feel like a blessing, as these hardships have contributed to and shaped the person we become. This is a paradox of God's left hand. God also takes lives; does this make him a murderer? This cry is about us, in that we feel abandoned by God. Fatherless. To some extent this is true, we are. 1] It would have to be, otherwise, we would not be left to our own devices in order to choose. What are we choosing from/between? 2] Christ would not have cried this while being crucified. Only after passing through with some healing do we realise that God was always there, also in the thick of it however absent God feels, that is the paradox. Christ on the cross is the divine coming down and joining the human condition and the human joining the divine. Only now can a mature relationship manifest between God and humanity, for humanity tastes first-hand the potent mysterious power where life was hanging over the abyss by a thread. We realise that previous ideas of God were immature, too one-sided and too idealistic. God is not Santa Clause. We see that our lives were and will always be hanging by a thread. Is it too late?

If a dynamic of love is, what happens to you, happens to me, then if the world ultimately and permanently falls into the hands of the prince of this world, this implies God is also in big trouble. God is taking a huge risk with humanity, himself and all of creation.

God is not residing in a 'higher' place, detached glaring down, and safe. Nor is the devil in some ‘lower’ place detached staring up and safe. God's residing place is everywhere, yet nowhere. God has direct access to our hearts. We feel God's absence partially because we are absent. God also feels abandoned by humanity, and for this, God also grieves. We chose this and God respects this. We would much rather do without the intensity. However, some of this longing [absence] is done by God to provoke and encourage us to search him out. Where can he be found? What are we searching for?

The devils residing place is the earth, hence Lucifer’s [false light] fall to the earth ‘becomes’ Satan [hinderer]. However, he also has direct access to our hearts. The abyss= hole in the heart. God is in the abyss and Satan is in the abyss.

'The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man' [Dostoevsky, The Brothers of Karamazov.]

The Way of Dark is entirely God's doing, as The Book of Job makes abundantly clear. Everyone is called, and death spares nobody and nothing. The dark affects everyone. Yet not everyone is this evoked to the surface. We all bear it in our own ‘smallness’ or ‘greatness’. Few are chosen to carry this weight. This is not an ego boost, everybody's spiritual path is called to different paths.

The Daemonic = The Way of Dark = the spirit that inspired Socrates.

If the earth is the mother then the daemonic is the father. If the earth is the water of purification then the daemonic is the holy fire of redemption. If the earth is 'stability' that cleanses us in space and through cycles [seasons], then the daemonic is the unpredictable groundlessness 'process' of redemption through and for all time.

Nothing survives this power intact, some do not survive at all. The daemonic is the power of the earth opening beneath your feet only to reveal the abyss that was masked by the ‘ground’ stood on, ‘concrete’, 'safe' and ‘fixed’. The lightning strikes through the night sky, instilling shock and horror. All hope is lost. We do not know who or what is attacking us. Is it God or the devil? Caught in the struggle, while burning to ashes, this is unanswerable. Everything we have ever done, everything is being dug up, against our will. Christ cried in the Garden of Gethsemane because he knew that by entering Jerusalem as the King of the Jews his fate was fast approaching.

There are two fundamental ways to fight this power.

1] Is a paradox, the fight is in surrender that allows the ‘process’ of undoing to happen. This is by no means passive or easy. To stay put here requires to ‘actively stay put’ while our world and insides are being turned inside out and upside down. This is a time of walking the earth with holes and torn clothing. How big is the ego? This is a place of profound questioning and profound change. However, nothing is comfortable, predictable, neat or safe about this place. This is a slow painful and contentious journey because there is so much waste to burn. It is here we learn the meaning of what Isreal means. The ‘aim’ here is to bring us literally on our knees. In falling to our knees, we realise all our ‘Superman’ attempts were futile and possibly for the first time in our life we know we need help, but we don’t know where. The last place we thought to be looking is on our knees crying ‘It’s too much’. But this is the cry of no sound, it is a no-words song. The inexplicable pain produces no sound, it pushes us beyond sound where when crying we can not make a sound. There may be tears, there maybe not. It is like being put on mute. The existential scream is close to this. Manuel Torre [gitano singer] said 'All black sounds has Duende'. I think it was Lorca who first rightly identified that the ‘spirit’ of flamenco, Duende, is Daemonic. The soundless cry characterised in flamenco cante [singing] Ay! ay! ay! ay! is the 'sound' of the daemonic. Underneath this is really asking, yearning for Gods heart and seeking help = Yahweh where are you?

2] To fight it as it fights you. This only cripples us, there is no ‘winning’ here, or coming out on ‘top’. In short, fighting this way is really about blocking this power from having its way with us. Sometimes though for some reason, the daemonic does acknowledge and backs off reluctantly. But once horns have been locked there is no escaping, it is always there, preparing when to fire up the heat again. More often than not once the storm starts there is no stopping it. It may appear that we are making it easier for ourselves but in truth we are only delaying and making our ‘process’ of redemption harder and longer, thickening our ‘impenetrable’ shield. However, if our shell is impenetrable then why are we trying to ‘protect’ ourselves? Because we are afraid of this power and we find it immensely difficult to trust it. Either until our stance is inherently changed or we did not survive will there be any ‘let-up’. The only thing we can change is the way we relate to it and the way we allow it to relate to us. Moran stated in 'The Room of No Exit' that our 'freedom [destiny] consists in how we face up to and deal with our fate. But there is no exit.' This process of the heart being dug up is a savage battle. The heart needs to be dug up because it has been lost, thrown away but called and initiated to fulfil a very deep and yet paradoxically beautiful purpose. Those called on this path will eventually realise that the 'happy beginning was never meant for them.' The 'what could have been' has to be grieved and let go of because it was never meant to be. The initial call to this road sometimes begins very early in life. We must forgive ourselves, forgive others, and ultimately forgive the divine. Moran 'It is the God who hears our cry who we can finally forgive.'

This is a double edge sword because it is this very same power that restores the human from its superficiality but more to the point it rekindles a fire that has been extinguished a long time ago. That is not to say that there is nothing else to do ‘Job done, case closed and let’s go home’. The truth is the show has just started. Your deep song begins. Finally, we have discovered what we were searching for, so the next thing we are questioned with; what are you going to do with this? Suddenly down from the slums, new energy is experienced. Bolts of lightning shoot from beneath the earth up through the soles of your feet and up your spine. You are standing again. For some reason, we cannot work out or understand why we have not given up, how or why we are even still alive. We find ourselves climbing back to our feet fueled and ignited by the same power that almost destroyed us.

So for a time, this fire burns us until we are able to 'stand the heat.' No longer does the fire consume, now it fuels us. Now we are ‘powered’ by the daemonic. Never is it ‘our’ power. Any false movements or betrayal of or using this power and the daemonic fire turns back on us recognising there is more waste to burn in us. This calls for remaining humble and not prideful.

But we still have to do a lot for our own healing, in many ways are still injured, wounded, broken and confused. But the daemonic does send cues on which directions to go, ‘people to meet along the way’ and ‘places to see’. We have to hear its voice and respond to its call. Intuition is one of the ‘messengers’ or ‘channels’ of communication. However, our ‘basic’ stance is radically changed from within, we have been radically re-forged, and now we live in a new place, and so we will die in a new place. Does this not mean then that God's primary concern is our hearts? God wants our hearts.

Redemption and salvation are radically different. It’s like they are two polar opposites of the spectrum. Yes, in some ways there is an overlap, but the overlap/confusion is that both are ‘Ways’ the divine reaches out and touches the human being. Salvation raises us up ‘Out of the storm’, into ‘space,' like offering a hand to a drowning person. But the storm is still alive ‘doing its thing’. ‘It’ does not go anywhere. The evil [enemy] here is our self as Buddhism, as well as all the other Eastern practices, have rightly identified. But redemption is different, suddenly time matters, and to come through which we are against is time, the evil [enemy] is genuinely ‘other’ to us. As we become more spiritual, it becomes clearer to discern the many faces of spiritual evil.

Salvation is a path to restore the soul. While redemption is the path to restoring the human heart to the divine heart and the divine heart to the human heart. So that the human becomes a vehicle for the heart of the divine to enter this world.

That today there are more people without fathers than compared to yesterday is one of many signs that the daemonic ‘heat’ is increasing.

The daemonic is returning.

One of the daemonics greatest teachings is that there is only one true father.

This blog theme originates and is inspired by Jamie Moran