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Mar. 15th, 2011
From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
Symbols are living mirrors of the deepest understandings that have no words... We ask the smallest items of everyday life to carry unbearable meaning for us, and the dearest ones work like Aladdin's lamp. All we have to do is rub them slowly, and feelings and times long gone come and live again, or basic truths hard to keep in view return... This is the proper use of symbols, not to coldly represent ideas, but to call into being all that lives in us and about us. They help us bear witness to the painful mystery of living, and whether a crucifix, a small weeping Buddha, or a broke shell from a long-forgotten sea, they help us bear the days.
I carry memories, like a trinket box in my mind - a jumble of fragments, a thought - a word - a feeling... so much inside that often the feelings of them all are so overwhelming it's hard to reach any of them. For me it's access. They're all there, rattling round just waiting for my 'hand' to dip inside, take them up, and hold them for a while in my palm... remember.
I have, however, surprising few symbols like the ones mentioned in the text... rings, a bracelet, a toothbrush and a big rock.
My rings: Firstly my engagement ring, rose gold with an amethyst stone. I wear it all the time of course, except when I'm washing dishes, or doing something where I worry for the stone. It carries the memories, physical and emotional of a hallway meeting, and of a day a christmas where the question was asked... in the hallway. If I focus I can still smell the hallway, feel the way the air felt, (on both occasions), the feel the emotions again, and see the expressions, nervous, then happy - shared, on Mir's face. My Wedding ring of course - still so new. Yet so, so full of many wonderful feelings and memories and everything so close in my heart. Everyone remembers their wedding day, right? So it's the obvious one to choose as a 'symbol' but there's so much more in it than just that... there's the before - and the after... like today's 'writer's block' question, the winding road that brought me to where I am... it's all there in this ring. It the COMPLETION - a heart made whole... and to understand that you must understand the way that other rings that have touched that hand, have proven false.
The bracelet goes along with the other two... a symbol that still gathering many happy meanings and memories. Brought to me on our wedding day by Mir's best man. The Amethyst stones in it are almost a perfect match to the engagement ring, as is the gold, and it just brings another strong memory of being in my mum's hotel room, getting ready, and Georg and everyone bringing it... just such a warmth and an outpouring of love - and more recently, a walk down Franklin street, a wonderful meal, and sinking into the grass of the arbouretum on a warm pre-valentine's day.
The toothbrush - and Mir will tell you that I'm always telling her this - I keep in my pencil case. It used to be the brush I used on my boy Flash. He loved to be scritched and brushed with it. It made him calm and happy. I miss my boy, I always will I think in spite of having other boys since him, but when I hold the brush, I remember him, all of him... the calm, the mad moments when he would turn around and lash out with no warning or reason - cranky rat - and the way he held on... waiting for me to come home before passing on to his next rattie life.
And a big rock... this one is meant as a kind of symbol to my spiritual centre - a piece of english granite and flint about the size of a rockery stone. When I used to work and meditate, it sat in front of me, to remember and represent my connection to my spiritual centre. I still have it on my windowledge, though I haven't used it in a long while.
If you truly hold a stone,
you can feel the mountain it came from.
Symbols are living mirrors of the deepest understandings that have no words... We ask the smallest items of everyday life to carry unbearable meaning for us, and the dearest ones work like Aladdin's lamp. All we have to do is rub them slowly, and feelings and times long gone come and live again, or basic truths hard to keep in view return... This is the proper use of symbols, not to coldly represent ideas, but to call into being all that lives in us and about us. They help us bear witness to the painful mystery of living, and whether a crucifix, a small weeping Buddha, or a broke shell from a long-forgotten sea, they help us bear the days.
I carry memories, like a trinket box in my mind - a jumble of fragments, a thought - a word - a feeling... so much inside that often the feelings of them all are so overwhelming it's hard to reach any of them. For me it's access. They're all there, rattling round just waiting for my 'hand' to dip inside, take them up, and hold them for a while in my palm... remember.
I have, however, surprising few symbols like the ones mentioned in the text... rings, a bracelet, a toothbrush and a big rock.
My rings: Firstly my engagement ring, rose gold with an amethyst stone. I wear it all the time of course, except when I'm washing dishes, or doing something where I worry for the stone. It carries the memories, physical and emotional of a hallway meeting, and of a day a christmas where the question was asked... in the hallway. If I focus I can still smell the hallway, feel the way the air felt, (on both occasions), the feel the emotions again, and see the expressions, nervous, then happy - shared, on Mir's face. My Wedding ring of course - still so new. Yet so, so full of many wonderful feelings and memories and everything so close in my heart. Everyone remembers their wedding day, right? So it's the obvious one to choose as a 'symbol' but there's so much more in it than just that... there's the before - and the after... like today's 'writer's block' question, the winding road that brought me to where I am... it's all there in this ring. It the COMPLETION - a heart made whole... and to understand that you must understand the way that other rings that have touched that hand, have proven false.
The bracelet goes along with the other two... a symbol that still gathering many happy meanings and memories. Brought to me on our wedding day by Mir's best man. The Amethyst stones in it are almost a perfect match to the engagement ring, as is the gold, and it just brings another strong memory of being in my mum's hotel room, getting ready, and Georg and everyone bringing it... just such a warmth and an outpouring of love - and more recently, a walk down Franklin street, a wonderful meal, and sinking into the grass of the arbouretum on a warm pre-valentine's day.
The toothbrush - and Mir will tell you that I'm always telling her this - I keep in my pencil case. It used to be the brush I used on my boy Flash. He loved to be scritched and brushed with it. It made him calm and happy. I miss my boy, I always will I think in spite of having other boys since him, but when I hold the brush, I remember him, all of him... the calm, the mad moments when he would turn around and lash out with no warning or reason - cranky rat - and the way he held on... waiting for me to come home before passing on to his next rattie life.
And a big rock... this one is meant as a kind of symbol to my spiritual centre - a piece of english granite and flint about the size of a rockery stone. When I used to work and meditate, it sat in front of me, to remember and represent my connection to my spiritual centre. I still have it on my windowledge, though I haven't used it in a long while.
