It worked!!
Two weeks ago, I made a shift in my full mind, to better organize my feelings, plans and choices. And suddenly, life also became a lot happier, so far. (I hope it stays that way.) One of our neighbors even commented how much happier I became. WHY? What worked? As in most of life, there were several factors at work, and the wheel will turn again, but for now: ONE very serious and useful factor was how I started thinking about a new view of the old Jewish star. I am not Jewish... but it works because it connects to things which connect to all of us.
And so, here is what I posted 12 days ago ago on Yeshua's discussion list about this new way of reading meaning into that old Jewish star and using it. Just as this symbol can help add badly needed organization in my feelings, I have added headings here to organize this post:
What I posted:
1. No, I am not Jewish. What I am:
First, because there are lots of dangerous phobias out there about Jewish culture, let me start by saying I do not claim or qualify to be a spokesman for that culture, but even there I suppose I should insert a caveat. Yeshua and others have told me that there are TWO tribes, traditionally (Judea and Israel?), but they believe that there were twelve tribes originally. I was happy when my wife showed me a newish book, 1173BC, which shows how archeologists are beginning to remember more about the larger movement of sea peoples at that ancient time; the original Hellenes and the invasions of the Eastern Mediterranean in general were part of that. So who knows? When 23andme uses DNA analysis to show my own family emanated from Doggerland in the North Sea, and even claims I am 88% British/Irish (a great shock to me at first), maybe I do belong to one of the lost tribes?
More seriously, I see a lot of value, diversity, problems and great achievements both in traditional Israeli culture and n Shinto culture, and I have tried very hard to reach out and see what can be learned from both. The traditional Jewish star, and the Tree of Life from the cabbalah of Luria, fit that. I see all these as pieces of one part of a more complete fourfold worldview, depicted in https://youtu.be/jfHBO_uuRyE.
2. How Our Minds Need and Can Use Such Symbols:
Why should ultramodern people (like me?) pay any attention to such ancient symbols? That comes back to my new saying: "To integrate or to disintegrate, those are the real choices ahead of us." INTEGRATION means finding harmonious and efficient ways to unify our thoughts, feelings, values and even levels of existence, and THAT IMPLIES managing a HUGE degree of cross-cutting complexity. In a giant modern server farm, when there is a gigantic mass and variety of data, we do need some "address labels" and "memory cues" to organize it, to keep track of the diversity.
WORDS are important EXAMPLES of PART of what we depend on. These lists use words like "consciousness," "emotion," "self" and even "reality" which have many DIFFERENT meanings. The path of sanity does NOT tell us to give up using such words, but it does tell us to be ever conscious and vigilant about how they have MULTIPLE MEANINGS, some legitimate and some debilitating, but never just ONE meaning ordained by God (who does not speak English or Sanskrit or Hebrew or Mandarin as a first language in any case).
THE SAME APPLIES to the most powerful graphic images. They to can have more than one useful meaning. Instead of wasting time fighting over which is "the right meaning," many of us do better by remembering several DISTINCT useful meanings.
3: How I Learned/See/Use the Upwards Triangle Part
And so, early in my usual daily "Cosmic Consciousness" meditation in bed, I thought first about a Love Triangle. (Those poor pseudo-mystics who never connect their words and ideas to powerful emotions need to get past THAT stage, to ever have hope of attaining even first order sanity.) Love triangle -- talk about a simple symbol pointing to a powerful complexity, with many dimensions and energy!!
But in truth, to manage my own emotions, I have gravitated a lot to a very specific triangle, pointing up, with my wife and me on the bottom, and our local noosphere on top. And no, I do not limit myself to Western or Jewish symbols. At the top, I think of the sun which is so visible from where I am sitting now, most of the day, and I think of Amaterasu, a humanizing symbol for the local noosphere. (By the way, for photos and deeper analysis of Shinto stuff, see links at werbos.com/religions.htm).
As love triangles go... me, my wife and Amaterasu...
if you imagine that such triangles entail a bit of complexity, multiply by 1000. But the noosphere is not specifically male or female (so far as any of us creatures know, or should focus on). To avoid confusing myself, I need to be ever mindful of how SHE has her relation upstairs too, and it really is a love triangle, not a war, the very foundation of what keeps me motivated and alive.
(My incessant efforts to avoid human extinction, for example, have been mainly energized by my feelings of connection to our noosphere.)
4. But then came that downwards triangle... SUCH a power!!!
But THIS morning... an echo. That traditional "Jewish star" also contains a downwards pointing triangle, and I am reminded to give it equal time and equal emphasis, more and more as I can appreciate it too. For me at the bottom (you when you use it), the upper right side may be our local noosphere again, and the left... well, call the right Jung's spirit of the times (another window into our noosphere) and call the left his spirit of the deep.
WHAT IS THAT spirit of the deep?
My integrated theory says that our noosphere (of which our "souls" are parts) is one of an entire huge species of noospheres, filling the entire cosmos. But the cosmos itself has aspects of mind which connect to us as well. In a fuzzy sort of way, that mind of the cosmos (like the creator in the trees of life of Luria and of Yeshua) acts in part as the soul of the entire network of noospheres. Or the network of noospheres might be seen as the "flesh" of the comsos considered as a single entity, which has both flesh and matrix.
So in any case, that's what's on the left side of that downward pointing triangle, and we are called to remember and strengthen ALL these connections.
[Added later: Since this post, attention to and awareness of the "spirit of the deep" has become a central part of my morning meditation. It is much more complete and more fully connected than the old inner morning conversations which I once described as "God is my psychiatrist."]
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Some footnote/caveat things:
My wife (who is so much more than what those four letters carry alone) recently pointed me to more of the true history of the "Jewish star." I used to think that that was the seal of Solomon, familiar from 1001 Arabian Nights and many, many other sources. no. That was a typical drift in cultures. It was actually a five pointed star, like what you would see on old Soviet tanks. I wonder whether they discuss that in Israel? And of course Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis is another upwards facing triangle, quite different in connections, but also important and linked in many ways.
The problem of phobias and how they weaken dialogue, cause disintegration and lower the level of consciousness is very well known in serious neuropsychology (and even known in pop cultures like scientology). That is a huge and important topic, but this email is already too long; I will save that for another day, except to note it IS included in one of the links at werbos.com:
P.S. In two hours I walk to the hospital for the first of my two eye repair operations. Hopefully you will see fewer typos from me after that.
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