As scary as it is, who really knows what is beyond?

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

...Pisces...begin to comprehend vaguely the secret of Time as an eternal NOW...

The Pisces Love Mystery

Just as the soul is symbolically “born” into the innocent thoughtlessness of Aries, it symbolically “dies” – or leaves the painful Earth plane – to enter into the sympathetic humility and mystical awareness of Pisces.  In the Piscean Sun Sign stage, evolving man and woman begin to comprehend vaguely the secret of Time as an eternal NOW – able to (in varying degrees) see the Past, Present and Future as one.  This is the soul’s third and final excursion into the sensitive Water Element – its fourth and final vibration as a Mutable Communicator – and the last experience under the feminine negative Night Forces.

Ideally, by the time the soul has reached the Pisces stage, it has attained spiritual enlightenment on its long journey through the Mysteries of Love experienced in the preceding eleven Sun Signs.  If not, then it must return to certain Sun Sign vibratory experiences on the astrological circle to learn lessons not absorbed because they were too hastily skimmed over in previous incarnated stages.  But each such return brings a new vulnerability to that Sun Sign lesson – a new inner urgency to master its positive essence and discard its negative.  Of course, some high or advanced souls, after reaching the Piscean stage, elect of their own choosing to return to Earth to rescue those still in darkness.  However, we are discussing here the average Pisces obligation and pattern.

Man and woman, on the Pisces level, have passed at least once through all twelve stages of initiation, and many have been required to fall back and retrace their steps hundreds of times in this experience, because Pisces is the most difficult of all the twelve Sun Signs to comprehend and master.  Usually such an accomplishment is not gained the first time around the wheel of life, except by intense desire and will, which is not to say such achievement is impossible – but it is a path, up until now, chosen by very few.  This is why astrology teaches that Pisces is “an old soul” – also the reason that on every Pisces man or woman is the epitome of spiritual grace; why some swim in waters dangerously close to the fires of Dante’s Inferno.  The Fish lives in two worlds, simultaneously experiencing both Heaven and Hell.

With the secret wisdom of the Piscean ruling planet, Neptune, Pisceans know that sadness and ugliness are not a part of God’s plan.  They have glimpsed the beauty of truth, and the brilliance of such mystical vision brings an urge to retreat from the negative vibrations of the Earth plane.  So Pisces often avoids confrontation and tension through the escape route of drugs, alcohol, daydreams, artistic creation, philosophical theorizing, meditation or religious retreat.  Pisceans may become teachers, monks, mystics, artists, musicians, composers, abstract mathematicians and highly intuitive scientists – or they may choose to swim down into the murky waters of alcoholism and drug addiction, even insanity.  It is, indeed, a difficult and complicated vibration for the soul, for this Sun Sign experience is fraught with temptation for the Pisces man or woman.

Because they’ve been “through it all” on a subconscious level, the Fishes have a natural compassion for the troubles of those around them.  The Neptunian soul is intimately familiar with life’s vicissitudes, understanding the weakness of human nature, therefore tending to pity, rather than to condemn, man’s and woman’s failings.  This is why these “old souls” so frequently become the recipients of everyone’s secrets, trials, worries and apprehensions.  Yet the initial instinct is to turn away form sticky entanglements in all forms.  Only when the Fish finds the courage to face his or her own problems with as much spiritual wisdom as is offered to others can the Neptune mysteries be fathomed.

Through this “death initiation” (death of the human ego) the soul grows more forgiving, more gentle, better able to understand its true relationship to the co-Creators…as Pisces affirms “I BELIEVE.”  To realize the full glory and truth of love, the Fish can, if he or she chooses, call on the innocence of Aries, the patience of Taurus, the awareness of Gemini, the perception of Cancer, the nobility of Leo, the discrimination of Virgo, the judgment of Libra, the penetration of Scorpio, the honesty of Sagittarius, the wisdom of Capricorn – and the humanitarianism of Aquarius.  But sometimes these many fragments of secret knowledge and talents serve only to confuse Pisces, causing the Fish to then take the easier path of passive nonresistance.

The Pisces positive qualities are humility, compassion, sensitivity, spiritual awareness, psychic comprehension, philosophic insight and a healing potential.  Expressed in their negative form they become timidity, apprehension, masochism, idleness, lying and weakness of will.

To Pisces, love is unselfish submission of the ego to the desires of the one needed to become Whole.  The Fish gains more pleasure from giving than from receiving, more happiness in serving than in being served.  Yet enigmatic Neptune tests the Pisces soul with the lure of multiple sexual and romantic experience – floating from one affair to another.

In such promiscuous manner – or by becoming a romantic recluse – does the wary Fish escape the dangers of being “hooked” by deep permanent emotional commitment.  But the Pisces man or woman who resists this temptation to avoid love’s pain by seeking only love’s pleasure…..is richly rewarded by the mastery of love’s final mystery.  He or she can then glimpse for the first time on the soul’s weary journey the true passion of blending in a trinity of mind, heart and spirit, resulting in a rare physical ecstasy – the ultimate Piscean fulfillment of Love’s long-ago Aries springtime promise of a miracle.

...but the satisfaction of desire only leaves the Scorpio soul still hungry for something beyond...

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/161d695b22f964939afdc47e2b403517/

The Scorpio Love Mystery

As it enters its second experience in the Water element, the now mature soul welcomes the chance for meditation through a return of the negative feminine Night Forces of the Scorpio consciousness.  On a public level, Scorpio is enormously capable of executing the now very familiar duties as a Fixed Organizer.  On a personal level, Scorpio is troubled to discover that he faces for the first time the awesome mystery of his own existence.  Where did he come from? – where is he going? – why is he here?  Scorpio must tear the veil from life, regardless of the cost, to quiet his restless spirit, suddenly released from its former preoccupation with earthly needs alone, as he cries out: “I DESIRE!”

There is much that the Scorpio soul knows… but even more that is sensed and cannot yet be defined.  The Scorpio vibration brings such a burning need to penetrate the unknown that it must be buried beneath deep layers of calm reason, or it would consume the mind and sear the soul.  Lessons well remembered from Libra softness and impartial judgment have made Scorpio wary of expressing opinions to those who would tear them apart.  The strong Scorpion instinct for survival springs from a deep-seated fear that he who is not forearmed will be destroyed.  Each defeat sustained by Scorpio only strengthens the inner conviction that the first loyalty must be to his or her own personal integrity.  For Scorpio sense that if the self is lost, then all is lost.

On the Scorpio level of consciousness, the soul is newly aware of the relationship between birth, death, sex and religious truth.  Scorpio knows that, in some mystical way, these are intertwined.  Therefore, sex becomes something intimately explored with an intensity unknown to those either behind or ahead Of Scorpio’s stage of evolvement.  Although Scorpio trusts love only after is has proven itself deserving of such trust, once dedicated to another, loyalty is unswerving and eternal.  Feeling fiercely the need to protect themselves and those they love from hurt, Scorpio is compelled to demand “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” as insurance that injures will not be repeated.

Through the subtle influence of the ruling planet Pluto, the experience of death comes to the Scorpio soul, as friends and relatives pass away, increasing the need to penetrate even deeper for the knowledge buried in the silent subconscious.  While Scorpio’s spirit soars upward like the eagle, defying gravity, worldly desires and passions intensify, forcing him to question his own worthiness.  Ultra-sensitive, but now able to totally disguise such sensitivity, Scorpio now learns the amazing power of his or her own mind – the silent will – and uses it secretly, lest others learn how to use the same kind of power over him – or her.  The Scorpio consciousness is the period of the soul’s testing.

Scorpio’s positive qualities are loyalty, will power, magnetism, gentleness, insight and amazing self-control.  Expressed in their negative form they become ruthlessness, fanaticism, revenge, sadism, suspicion and self-hatred.

To Scorpio men and women, love is a consuming flame, worth any sacrifice – and they must conquer its challenge.  Sexually uninhibited, yet emotionally fearful and mentally suspicious, they strive desperately to unite love’s physical and spiritual vibrations, with a strange mixture of eroticism and purity.  But the satisfaction of desire only leaves the Scorpio soul still hungry for something beyond.

Aries demands Love, for like the infant, without Love, Aries dies.

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/e432214da761129af784bfc982fc2528/

The Aries Love Mystery

The soul, symbolically newborn in Aries (although not necessarily in its first earthly sojourn), relates to dawn, sunrise, spring and Easter – or the resurrection from its “death” in the previous sign of Pisces.

In this first excursion into the Fire Element – this experience as the first of the three Cardinal signs – the symbolically “newborn” soul projects the positive, masculine vibration of the Day Forces through the explosive vitality of the Aries planetary ruler, Mars.  Like a human infant totally self-absorbed, the Aries soul discovers with delight his or her own toes and fingers – its own physical beingness.  To satisfy all needs, only a loud cry is necessary, heard and answered by elders.  The real infant doubts or fears nothing or no one, simply because it has never experienced denial.  Likewise, the Aries “Infant” soul has a natural trust and a touching faith in the unseen force of goodness which will miraculously grant all its wishes.

On the Earth plane this beneficent force is represented by the parents; in a mystical sense, by our co-Creators.  And so they look tenderly upon the “newborn” Aries soul, as parents look tenderly upon their infant, lovingly protecting it from its own naivete, wisely denying some of the demands made through the excited awareness that the soul is – he has been born, and is here.  The Aries soul senses “I AM” or “I exist”.  And like the symbolic Infant, Aries men and women are oblivious to the possibilities of accident, pain or cruelty on life’s path.  He or she learns of these negative experiences only from those advanced beyond, who have gathered harshness, suspicion and the self-survival instinct from the growing process.

There’s a religious adage that all infants, since they die in a state of purity, immediately become angels.  Of course!  They have not yet met the devil of Temptation.  But if the Aries “Infant” survives, he or she must, like the real infant, time and time again, undergo the sharp disappointment of misplaced trust.  As the victim of unkindness, a lack of sympathy or abandonment, the newborn babe feels shocked, frightened, alone – then yells even louder for attention.  In the same manner (and for the same reasons) does the soul of the hurt and disillusioned Aries man or woman need and “seek acceptance, yet court rejection” – with a violent emotional reaction to neglect.

The positive qualities of Aries are a heart-tugging innocence and wonder, blind faith and raw courage.  Expressed in their negative forms, they can become selfish egotism, thoughtlessness, aggressiveness and impulsive action with no regard for the consequences.

To the Aries, Love is a necessity of life, which is taken for granted; for in its infancy of awareness, Love is synonymous with existence itself.  Therefore, devotion is instinctively expected and joyously accepted, but with little comprehension of how to return it.  Aries demands Love, for like the infant, without Love, Aries dies.  When emotional abandonment (symbolically) can mean death, even, the hint of it can bring on unreasonable panic, and inexplicable terror, calmed only by repeated reassurances.  Aries continually needs to be reminded that “if winter comes”…… the miracle of spring cannot be far behind.

“The Ghost Writer”

in my own words…”…taken from my Heart”

I don’t think I am a film buff. I have seen a lot of films, but I hardly qualify for a person who knows all that much about films, film industry, this and that director.  The knowledge must be very expansive and I don’t have it.

I did indulge in watching movies simply because it was my way of escaping from life.  And lately I do not watch movies for a few fairly simple reasons.  I barely have the time, I have no money and I am too immersed in doing something else.  I indulge more in reading about self-development.  Whether I can show much result for the latter, I am not quite sure, but I certainly seem to have developed more tolerance and patience and open-mindedness.

So, coming from these new heights of being improved me (LOL)…  I wouldn’t have the opportunity to go and see “The Ghost Writer”, but I was lucky enough to make a new friend and she invited me to see a movie to celebrate the fact that she had recently found a job.  The choice of a film we made together, but I still have the feeling that I influenced her choice more than she influenced mine.  The reason I am saying this is purely that our choices don’t seem to be so spontaneous as we sometimes tend to think.

And the opinions we had about “The Ghost Writer” at the end were quite different.  I enjoyed the film immensely despite the fact that thinking back about the story itself I found that it was hardly realistic.  But I abandoned the idea that films should be realistic long time ago.  But everything else gave me pleasure.  The scenes by themselves.  Open and dark and gloomy sea, winds, sand, cold atmosphere, the house with glass walls.  I dare say, the plot did not interest me all that much; I was submerged in something all-encompassing.  What it was exactly, I don’t even know.  But when I found a picture in the review, it struck me again – it was precisely “IT”.  It was my gut reaction to the visual beauty.  It did strike something in my heart, in my mind, it was so much on the emotional level.  Maybe the film very much reflected my own mood indeed.  Quite possible.  I liked Ewan McGregor, he felt so genuine in his role.  And the best thing that he said was “…take it from your Heart”.  Maybe it was not exactly what he said, but I think it was the essence.  I felt it and kept this feeling throughout the film.  I was more in the character of the writer, than the whole political scene that never interested me.  The appeal of Ewan McGregor’s character is that he seems to be open, innocent, naïve, very touching person with whom it was easy for me to identify.  It felt like I could be him, our hearts beating in unison – I go through life making the most ridiculous mistakes.  And his death at the end of the film seems so pointless yet so profound.  In my opinion, of course.

From Robert Greene “The 48 Laws of Power”.

Law 48 – Assume Formlessness

Page 419

Judgment

By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack.  Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move.  Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed.  The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order.  Everything changes.

Source: http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/eduoff/vt-2004//mt-2003/mt-mercury-map6-normal.jpg

In martial arts, it is important that strategy be unfathomable, that form be concealed, and that movements be unexpected, so that preparedness against them be impossible.  What enables a good general to win without fail is always having unfathomable wisdom and a modus operandi that leaves no tracks.  Only the formless cannot be affected.  Sages hide in unfathomability, so their feelings cannot be observed; they operate in formlessness, so their lines cannot be crossed.

The Book of the Huainan Masters, China, Second Century B.C.

Character Armor

To carry out the instinctual inhibition demanded by the modern world and to be able to cope with the energy stasis which results from this inhibition, the ego has to undergo a change.  The ego, i.e., that part of the person that is exposed to danger, becomes rigid, as we say, when it is continually subjected to the same or similar conflicts between need and a fear-inducing outer world.  It acquires in this process a chronic, automatically functioning mode of reaction, i.e., its “character”.  It is as if the affective personality armored itself, as the hard shell it develops were intended to deflect and weaken the blows of the outer world as well as the clamoring of the inner needs.  This armoring makes the person less sensitive to unpleasure, but also restricts his libidinal and aggressive motility and thus reduces his capacity for achievement and pleasure.  We say the ego has become less flexible and more rigid, and that the ability to regulate the energy economy depends on the extent of the armoring.

Wilhelm Reich, 1897 – 1957

Observance of the law

When you want to fight us, we don’t let you and you can’t find us.  But when we want t fight you, we make sure that you can’t get away and we hit you squarely…and wipe you out… The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.

Mao Tse-Tung, 1893 – 1976

Keys to Power

The human animal is distinguished by its constant creation of forms.  Rarely expressing its emotions directly, it gives them form through language, or through socially acceptable rituals.  We cannot communicate our emotions without a form.

The forms that we create, however, change constantly – in fashion, in style, in all those human phenomena representing the mood of the moment.  We are constantly altering the forms we have inherited from previous generations, and these changes are signs of life and vitality.  Indeed, the things that don’t change, the forms that rigidify, come to look to us like death, and we destroy them.  The young show this most clearly: Uncomfortable with the forms that society imposes upon them, having no set identity, they play with their own characters, trying on a variety of masks and poses to express themselves.  This is the vitality that drives the motor of form, creating constant changes in style.

The powerful are often people who in their youth have shown immense creativity in expressing something new through a new form.  Society grants them power because it hungers for and rewards this sort of newness.  The problem comes later, when they often grow conservative and possessive.  They no longer dream of creating new forms; their habits congeal, and their rigidity makes them easy targets.  Everyone knows their next move.  Instead of demanding respect they elicit boredom: Get off the stage! We say, let someone else, someone younger, entertain us.  When locked in the past, the powerful look comical – they are overripe fruit, waiting to fall from the tree.

Power can only thrive if it is flexible in its forms.  To be formless is not to be amorphous; everything has a form – it is impossible to avoid.  The formlessness of power is more like that of water, or mercury, taking the form of whatever is around it.  Changing constantly, it is never predictable.  The powerful are constantly creating form, and their power comes from the rapidity with which they can change.  Their formlessness is in the eye of the enemy who cannot see what they are up to and so has nothing solid to attack.  This is the premier pose of power: ungraspable, as elusive and swift as the god Mercury, who could take any form he pleased and this ability to wreak havoc on Mount Olympus.

Human creations evolve toward abstraction, toward being more mental and less material.  This evolution is clear in art, which, in this century, made the great discovery of abstraction and conceptualism; it can also be seen in politics, which over time have become less overtly violent, more complicated, indirect and cerebral.  Warfare and strategy too have followed this pattern.  Strategy began in the manipulation of armies on land, positioning them in ordered formations; on land, strategy is relatively two dimensional, and controlled by topography.  But all the great powers have eventually taken to sea, for commerce and colonization.  And to protect their trading lanes they have had to learn how to fight at sea.  Maritime warfare requires tremendous creativity and abstract thinking, since the lines are constantly shifting.  Naval captains distinguish themselves by their ability to adapt to the literal fluidity of the terrain and to confuse the enemy with an abstract, hard-to-anticipate form.  They are operating in a third dimension: the mind.

Image:

Mercury.  The winged messenger, god of commerce, patron saint of thieves, gamblers, and all those who deceive through swiftness.  The day Mercury was born he invented the lyre; by that evening he had stolen the cattle of Apollo.  He would scour the world, assuming whatever form he desired.  Like the liquid metal named after him, he embodies the elusive, the ungraspable – the power of formlessness.

Authority:

Therefore the consummation of forming an army is to arrive at formlessness. Vitory in war is not repetitious, but adapts its form endlessly… A military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.

(Sun-tzu, fourth century B.C.)

“Our imagination flies — we are its shadow on the earth.” (Vladimir Nabokov)

 

 

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

 

 

“Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

 

 

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge — myth is more potent than history — dreams are more powerful than facts — hope always triumphs over experience — laughter is the cure for grief — love is stronger than death.” (Robert Fulghum)

 

 

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” (Gloria Steinem)

 

 

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.  He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” (Albert Einstein)

 

 

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942)

 

 

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.  Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” (Theodore Geisel)

 

 

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.” (William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, 1595)

 

 

 This image is taken from www.allposters.com, http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Imagination-Posters_i2548950_.htm,

I do not have the rights, but then again, I don’t sell them, I just use them as illustrations.  I might some day buy something from either www.allposters.com or www.webshots.com, because pictures are just breathtaking.

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

I cannot say that she was especially good-looking.  On those occasions when I saw her after a long separation, I was amazed at how this skinny little creature with such fierce eyes could have become everything for me – love, life, death, the salvation of my soul.  But she only had to meet my glance, and everything changed.  First of all a started doubt that she was loved would appear in those green eyes.  At that moment it was obvious that there was nothing to love her for, and every time I experienced a wave of pity, merging into tenderness.  But she soaked up those feelings like a sponge soaking up wine, and immediately blossomed into a tormenting beauty that could drive a man insane.  A brief exchange of glances changed everything.  A moment before it, I was not able to understand how this essentially unlovely woman could have enthralled me, and afterwards I could not grasp how I could have doubted even for a minute the magical power of her features.  And the longer I gazed into her eyes, the stronger this feeling became, rousing me to ecstasy, to a state of physical pain – as if she had thrust a knife into a crack in the wall behind which I was trying to hide and, with a few swift movements of the blade, had loosened the brickwork so much that the wall had collapsed and I was left standing before her once again, as naked and defenseless as a child.  I have studied this metamorphosis through and through, but I have still not learned to understand the nature of the fire that has seared my soul and reduced it to ashes.

Alas it is true: beauty is like fire, it burns and consumes, driving you insane with its heat, promising that in the place to which it drives its victim there will be calm, cool shade and new life – but that is a deception.  Or rather, it is all true – but not for the victim, only for the new life that will take the victim’s place, and then also be consumed by this pitiless demon.

“How can non-existence get sick of itself?

Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don’t even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing.”
— Victor Pelevin (Babylon)

Aubade means “Morning Song”. The posts on this web site are more than anything reflections of my mood.  They mirror my thoughts and sometimes give solace, or sense of direction.  Right now I feel that I lack focus and need to go back and reflect on my past.  Frankly I always do that.  Since I started writing (well, writing in my own way), it became easier to see myself from different angles of my changing moods.  For a month I was not sure I will live – the reality of being suicidal is harsh.  But now the last thing I am thinking of is death and yet after an extensive search of a poem – I surprisingly for myself picked a couple named “Aubade”.

Aubade

Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain edges will grow light.

Till then I see what’s really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

- The good not used, the love not given, time

Torn off unused – nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:

But at the total emptiness forever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says no rational being

Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing

that this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, known that we can’t escape

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.