neptunesdolphins: dolphins leaping (Default)
In “Healing Power of Pleasure,” Julia Hollenbery claims that modernity has turned ordinary people into horrible messes. People now have a gnawing sense of lack, and blame others for it. Since people are under constant stress to improve themselves. the quality of life has been degraded.
 
Because modern life is decidedly unmagical, the Gods (and Nature) have been banished to the nether regions. Meanwhile, magic itself has been devalued. But magic connects people to the invisible world. As real as the material world, this other world is inhabited by Ancestors, Gods, and Other Beings. Without this connection, people are lonely and miserable.
 
Hollenbery notes that people are connected to the sky and rooted to the earth. Whether they recognize it or not, humans do live in the ebb and flow of nature. Once people allow themselves to feel this, they will be in alignment with all the worlds. For she notes that the “soul exists in the deep, in the space behind, around and within our physical body. We are informed by information coming through us from beyond us: our Ancestors” (and other Beings).
 
Trauma shuts people off from their bodies. Furthermore, it comes between people and their relations with the Cosmos. Since people have become frozen and hopeless, they are disassociated from themselves and Nature. Hollenbery suggests that people look at the Elements to learn how to embody their bodies.
 
The Elements can be a guide to healing trauma. Air is clear thinking. For that, a person needs clean living spaces. Fire notices how “yes” and “no” feel in the body. Learn to say both clearly. Water allows the emotions to flow. It also shows where a person is stuck. Earth provides each person with what they need. Earth nourishes the body.
 
To be re-enchanted, a person must have the courage to embrace pleasure. To reclaim magic, they must allow themselves to sit with the unknown. A person needs to hold a space where something can unfold. Then, they can enter the mysteries of life and allow themselves to be surprised.
 
To reclaim magic, Hollenbery lists “medicines” to take, and their results. She urges to people to gently explore each to reclaim their magic. The end result is a shift towards pleasure and wonder.
 
Medicines:
 
Slow: the Medicine of Slowing: Sensitivity
Body: the Medicine of Embodying: Embodiment
Depth: the Medicine of Deepening: Presence
Relationship: the Medicine of Relations: Nourishment
Pleasure: the Medicine of Sensing: Fulfilment
Power: the Medicine of Empowering: Powerfulness
Potency: the Medicine of Aliveness: Potential
Hollenbery gives “technologies” to use to “enter the realm of potency and pleasure in the Universe of Deliciousness.” These practices will integrate the person. She writes “Synthesizing their (the person’s) polarities, they will establish for the person the neutral middle path of Truth.”
 
Technologies:
 
Imagination: The muscle of the soul. Free it.
Attention: Here is now. Be in the moment. Cultivate attention.
Receptivity: Receive the aliveness of the Universe. Be receptive.
Acceptance: Include of who we are. Be whole. Allow yourself to experience it all.
Appreciation: Fuel. Open up to the bounty of life. Be appreciative.
Creative active participation: Take responsibility for the self. Participate actively in the world.
Breathing: Contact with the body, and integrate the soul, mind, and body. Breathe.
Christian Valters Paintner in “Earth: Our Original Monastery” suggests for keeping wonder alive, the daily practice of the Examen (Note 1). Ask yourself two questions at the end of the day. “What has been the most life giving? What has been the most life draining? Where were the moments you felt arid and dry? Where did you feel the fullness of greening.” This keeps wonder alive.
 
Valters Paintner’s focus is what St. Hildegard called “viriditas” – the greening power of nature for spiritual growth. People engage with this living force to be close to the Gods (God). Being connected to the greenest of Life integrates a person to be a part of the Ecology of the Cosmos. (Note 2.)
 
Notes:
Note 1. Examen, developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, is a Catholic practice. For the Polytheist, it can be used for self-reflection of their daily life. Express gratitude for the day, celebrate victories and understand failures. Then anticipate the next day, asking yourself how to honor the Gifts from the Gods.
 
This can be thought of as the PAR Method. Prepare intentionally for your day. Act by living through action in the present moment. Reflect and grow in awareness and insight. (from the Monk Manual planning system by Steven Lawson.)
 
Note 2. “Ariditas” according to St. Hildegard is separation from God.
neptunesdolphins: dolphins leaping (Default)
 n the “Soul’s Slow-Ripening,” Christine Valters Paintner stresses that wandering in the landscape is a way to reclaim wonder. She writes, “the practice of peregrination (Note 1.) is an invitation to let go of our own agendas.” We leave behind what is familiar and safe to explore the unknown. Busy cities offer interesting insights as do sun-swept meadows. What is important is to move out of linear time and thinking.
 
Nothing is lost but stored in the memory of the earth. Wendell Berry, the American poet, wrote, “The earth under the grass dreams of a young forest, and under the pavement, the earth dreams of grass.” In wandering, people move into spiral time (and experience) and then into deep time. (Note 2.) Valters Paintner writes, “we allow ourselves to arrive fully in a sacred place both body and soul, and ask permission to be and receive the gifts offered.”
 
Fabiana Fondevila in “Where Wonder Lives” lays out a mythical landscape with landmarks for people to wander in. She plots a route for a journey from “The Jungle” to “The Ocean,” recapturing an element of wonder at each stop. Each place has a theme to focus on. Following her route will aid a person to let go of their rational mind and embrace wonder.
 
The Route and Focus:
 
The Jungle: Re-wild Yourself
The Garden: Awaken Your Senses
The River: Let Your Imagination Flow
The Mountain Top: Tell a New Story
The Swamp: Embrace Your Shadow
The Village: Deepen Your Relationships
The Fire: Reclaim Your Rites
The Lighthouse: Focus Your Mind
The Ocean: Open Your Heart
Wandering in this mythic landscape will restore a person’s place in the Spiritual Ecosystem. (Note 3.) At The Jungle, you go outside into nature to experience it in its fulness. While there, learn the names of birds, clouds, and trees. At The Garden, among the flourishing flowers and vegetables, you safely experience Nature with all of your senses. The Jungian psychologist James Hillman noted “we have lost the heart’s response to what the senses bring to us.” The Gardens is where you find it again.
 
At The River, you free your artistic impulses and create. The Mountain Top is where the ancient myths come alive. Embracing the mythic vision, you find your own story. The Swamp is a necessary step because your shadow lives there. The Swamp may be dank and dark but it is fertile and life creating.
 
After reuniting with your shadow, you enter The Village. Now, your whole self can be a part of the Web of Life. At The Village, you form relationships with others. Outside The Village, lies The Fire where you enter sacred time and space to meet the Gods.
 
The Lighthouse governs the mind. Fondevila writes, ‘the guiding light of consciousness returns you to the only that is truly safe: the present moment, in which life happens.” At The Ocean, you become anchored in “the deep and abiding power of love.” Arriving at journey’s end, you start over with a renewed sense of wonder.
 
At this moment, Valters Paintner suggests “statio,” “the practice of stopping one thing before beginning another. It is the acknowledgement that in the space of transition and the threshold is a sacred dimension, a holy pause full of possibility.” Prepared, we then can enter into what comes next.
 
Notes:
Note 1. Peregrinatio (peregrination) is the “leaving of one’s homeland behind and wandering for the love of God.” First practiced by St. Augustine of Hippo, it later became a part of Celtic Christianity. By wandering the landscape, the person returns home changed, and connected deeper to God. For Polytheists, it can be a practice to deepen their relations with the Gods.
 
Note 2. Deep time is the unfathomable immensity of the past and future, as defined by Valters Paintner. I experienced deep time at Great Falls Park, Maryland where the Potomac (an ancient river) speeds over the narrow Mather Gorge. The roaring sounds of the river over the falls put me into a trance where I viewed a scene from the Cretaceous Period.
 
Note 3. The Spiritual Ecosystem consists of the interactions and exchanges between of the Gods, Ancestors, Humans, Other Beings (Lars, etc.), Plants and Animals. It includes the visible and invisible worlds.
neptunesdolphins: dolphins leaping (Default)
 
In “Birthing the Holy,” Christian Valters Paintner shows how a person can have a sacred retreat in their daily lives. To engage the Holy, a person needs to have two main elements – time and space. Emphasizing this, she writes in her on-line “Monk Manifesto:” “I commit to find moments each for silence and solitude to make space for another Voice to be heard.”
 
Paintner says that people hold inner multitudes. According to her, inner conflict arises when people refuse to make space for the multiplicity that they contain. Referring to this multiplicity as archetypes, she matches them to the various Titles of Mary, the Mother of God. (Note 1) For Paintner, each of the names of Mary is something for a person to encounter and experience. (The Names of Mary Mother of God: https://neptunesdolphins.wordpress.com/2022/08/10/the-names-of-mary-mother-of-god-a-polytheistic-view/)
 
My Polytheistic antennae perked up. Then I realized that the Gods match the inner multitude of myself during my encounters with Them. For that to happen, I prepare for my journey to Them by retreating to the quiet of my in-between place. There, my multiplicity reaches out to Them.
 
Before starting a sacred journey, I ask for support. I call upon my Ancestors and Holy Beings that I feel close to. For me, it is the Squirrels, Who are more than squirrels. Since Paintner is Roman Catholic, she says to call upon the “Communion of Saints and Cloud of Witnesses.” (Note 2) She also suggests saying the many names of Mary, the Mother of Christ. As a Polytheist, I ask the Ancestors of the Heart and Place, and Heroes (such as the Divine Julius and Hercules).
 
Asking for support can be done in various ways depending on the person. I write. However, other people employ sitting in silence, creating art, dancing, playing music of simply using gestures. Each activity prepares us and transports us to the liminal spaces and times.
 
While we wait for the Call to journey, we listen and reflect on the Holy Powers. Jung said, “If you put yourself into the icon, the icon will speak to you.” As we step into the unknown, we let go of controlling the encounter. When we crossover the threshold, we give our consent to the invitation of the Gods to enter the Sacred. To navigate the Unknown, we do divination.
 
Then we wait and incubate the Holy. What does this mean? By welcoming what we have been given by the Gods, we practice hospitality. We now have their seeds to attend to in our fertile soil. Through dreamtime, meditation, dance, and other holy arts, we tend to the moments of unfolding and ripening of these seeds. Of course, divination will guide us in the spiritual alchemy that is occurring.
 
As Paintner points out in “Birthing the Holy,” we are given expression to the Sacred through co-creating. Relying on the Divine Graces, we can give birth to a new dream. Our inner mystic takes us to where we need to go, and to what we need to do. We co-create with the Divine Energy that flows through us. In the end, we aid the ecosystem of the community of humans, Gods, and Others.
 
During this alchemy, we must remember that things do not unfold linearly but in circles and spirals. Since we are engaging in mythic time, many things do happen simultaneously. While this is occurring, we do our daily devotions. This is how the Gods sustain us.
 
Notes:
Note 1. While Roman Catholic, Paintner sees meditation on the Titles of Mary to be embracing the Sacred Feminine during meditation.
Note 2. The “Cloud of Witnesses” are all of the believers who have gone before including those of the Old Testament.
 
Source:
“Birthing the Holy” by Christine Valters Paintner, Sorin Books, 2022

Profile

neptunesdolphins: dolphins leaping (Default)
neptunesdolphins

May 2025

S M T W T F S
     123
4 567 8910
11 121314 151617
18 192021 222324
25 262728 293031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 29th, 2025 04:46 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios