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tangyabominySometimes, when fiction moves me, I feel something change within me, briefly transport me to another state of thinking; like being intoxicated, like meditation, but not a slow process, sudden, emotion-triggered yet ultimately calm.
Sometimes I notice it as an afterthought, but usually I don't catch it while it's occuring; that shift in vision, sensation, in the depth of internal processing. Gears turn within, on a lower level than the norm; lower not as in muladhara-svadhisthana-manipura, not as in base biology versus higher spiritual planes*, but low as in deep, still, ancient, normally silent until on rare occasions those leviathan-figures rise up, magnificent, from the deep. Or we sink down to them; our sense of understanding moves one level deeper, down to that basement-world where more nebulous things are processed. That was what it felt like to observe it, this time; like an elevator going down, to some eldritch warehouse where wonders are churned over in the great fathoms where conscious awareness meets a vastness we can barely comprehend.
*There's something here that it feels like I want to get at. As someone who feels the alchemists of old knew a whole lot about the fundamental structure of our universe, I can grok the chakra model as illustrating a vertical movement between the Above and the Below, with the Above being the high spiritual planes of wonder and the Below being the here and now, the body, the flesh that we must empower and divinify** by that energy, and ultimately bring up to meet the Above. And yet, when I start thinking in terms of that sweet rich deep that feels "dark" and "below"-- yet not in an evil way; merely in that it holds many secrets, and is home to great beasts, though those beasts are in fact wonders-- it seems like that model isn't enough to explain it, because that kind of "below" isn't about the flesh, or animal instincts. It's another kind of spiritual realm.
It's almost like the diagram needs to be three-dimensional; you've got the chakras going from top to bottom, bottom to top, and then you've got the depth of understanding at each level, or something, the passage into that less obvious realm. But then going up is moving towards a less obvious, more subtle realm, too. Maybe they're just two different ways of conceptualising it. Which would mean that light and dark are ultimately one: no real difference, just varying levels of intensity. Which in science is true, but in our mythology is not. Perhaps our mythology is too superstitious, too fearful. Perhaps those deep sweet spiritual things which read to us as "light" and those which read to us as "dark" are the same deep sweet things; for I don't believe in demons, and it only makes sense to me that they're all good, so why should there be two different realms for them...?
**Not a word, I know.
Sometimes I notice it as an afterthought, but usually I don't catch it while it's occuring; that shift in vision, sensation, in the depth of internal processing. Gears turn within, on a lower level than the norm; lower not as in muladhara-svadhisthana-manipura, not as in base biology versus higher spiritual planes*, but low as in deep, still, ancient, normally silent until on rare occasions those leviathan-figures rise up, magnificent, from the deep. Or we sink down to them; our sense of understanding moves one level deeper, down to that basement-world where more nebulous things are processed. That was what it felt like to observe it, this time; like an elevator going down, to some eldritch warehouse where wonders are churned over in the great fathoms where conscious awareness meets a vastness we can barely comprehend.
*There's something here that it feels like I want to get at. As someone who feels the alchemists of old knew a whole lot about the fundamental structure of our universe, I can grok the chakra model as illustrating a vertical movement between the Above and the Below, with the Above being the high spiritual planes of wonder and the Below being the here and now, the body, the flesh that we must empower and divinify** by that energy, and ultimately bring up to meet the Above. And yet, when I start thinking in terms of that sweet rich deep that feels "dark" and "below"-- yet not in an evil way; merely in that it holds many secrets, and is home to great beasts, though those beasts are in fact wonders-- it seems like that model isn't enough to explain it, because that kind of "below" isn't about the flesh, or animal instincts. It's another kind of spiritual realm.
It's almost like the diagram needs to be three-dimensional; you've got the chakras going from top to bottom, bottom to top, and then you've got the depth of understanding at each level, or something, the passage into that less obvious realm. But then going up is moving towards a less obvious, more subtle realm, too. Maybe they're just two different ways of conceptualising it. Which would mean that light and dark are ultimately one: no real difference, just varying levels of intensity. Which in science is true, but in our mythology is not. Perhaps our mythology is too superstitious, too fearful. Perhaps those deep sweet spiritual things which read to us as "light" and those which read to us as "dark" are the same deep sweet things; for I don't believe in demons, and it only makes sense to me that they're all good, so why should there be two different realms for them...?
**Not a word, I know.