taking a short break from drilling out process for work, and a friend’s email sent me an interesting bit of insight. i always find it comforting and rather curious when things that i think i’ve created turn out to be ancient bits of thought. i find it an experiential confirmation of connectedness. i mean, seriously, can you run into this kind of thing regularly and maintain doubt? i can’t.
for the great majority of my life, i’ve had something of an obsessive affinity with a weave of related symbols that share a base in the element of fire. i have not gone out of my way looking for them, i swear it. but they consistently arrive and as they do, i research and incorporate them, and figure out the places where seemingly diverse things share roots and my smile grows wider and wider for a growing realization that there really is no difference whatever between them, me, you, us, all. at core, we are the same and stand for the same things.
a friend sends me more information on the japanese version of the patronus animus, FengHuang.
most often, one sees this phoenix in the presence of the dragon. they are often merged as a symbol. it’s what their merging points to that i find interesting, curious, and relevant.
“… the merged symbol represents the paradoxical wholeness that results when harmony and conflict are both present.”
apparently, there are layers within layers as well. hardly surprising, and ultimately just as much a comfort, since it seems it’s all rather fractal — there’s always another level when you’re ready for it. heh.
Feng represents male, yang, solar / Huang represents female, yin, lunar.
FengHuang are usually represented as one when in presence of Dragon, and as two when the meaning is more the contrast/contradiction of their genders.
FengHuang and Dragon, when presented together, are presented either as mortal enemies or as blissful lovers. (Harmony/Conflict, Love/Hate, Yin/Yang, etc.)
recognize the theme yet? it underpins everything, it seems. Heraclitus had the right of it, i suspect. labels create division, one extreme creates its other, opposites are unified in their upholding of being, and paradox remains the herald of truth.
the reason i find so much of this relevant rests in the increasingly pointed realization that my life (our lives?) are, for all their differences, startlingly similar in their arc and unfolding. not only this, the degree to which one can perceive interconnectedness seems to be inversely proportional to the degree to which one holds onto the “I”.
it occurs to me that for all i am lonely for presence and proximity (body), i am never lonely in the mind or spirit. i think for most of the world, it is the opposite. “I” would be screaming to the stars were “I” not cushioned and comforted by the connections that hum so obviously around me/us in this world.
the lesson, of course, is that it’s all the same.
my goofy insistence upon nourishing this sense of loneliness is a refusal to accept that which i so easily and readily accept mentally and spiritually.
sadly, that which is eeyore, the pit, and without thought is not as easily comforted. silly, screaming id… it wants what it wants, damn it. (chuckle) i don’t think it ever really grows up, this part. from the time we’re born until the time we die, there’s that of us which is eyes closed, arms flailing, legs kicking, red with need, screaming, “I want, I want, I want, I want….”
actually, when i look at it that way, it becomes rather easy to be kind to myself. you don’t punish a baby for crying when it’s hungry, do you?
suchness. heh.
i find myself playing with the analogy and wondering what manner of bottle will content this fitful baby. actually, i have at least one to offer it…. on occasion, thanks to a tender friend. it makes me smile. i don’t think they really see it that way most times. but i know they read here. i smile for that as well.