As one who has experienced life, nature from varying perspectives, studying biology, psychology, philosophy, mythology and so on, I have been awed continuously by both revelations and mysteries, impressed more by the later, mysteries which point beyond, sort of behind the revelations to that which is perceived indirectly in a territory where presence is determined by mere inference, by energetic presences made known by patterns, waves, symbols that merely point to that which the eye cannot see. These mysteries have been forever in my life the guiding stars of my passion to know, feeding my hunger to taste more of what lies at the very core of all.
I think of my interest in altered states of consciousness, especially the visionary and the dream state. By nature I am a dreamer. I remember my dreams which upon waking I routinely record in a dream journal. I have practiced this discipline for as long as I can remember. As a child I kept little black and white marbled notebooks by my bed continually scratching down notes on my dream, often drawing images that called to be remembered. I find it interesting and disturbing that so many people routinely dismiss dreams as mere fantasies of the night. I do appreciate their dilemma in attempting the leap from what appears completely bizarre to that which is a revelation, an important discovery. As many dreams arise as a series of mental images which seem to flow without any specific order or rational sense, they are not easily understood. They present as mysterious stories which arise from some hidden place within our psyche. They lie beneath the rational. Their message is hidden, waiting for us to uncover it. They are mysteries and we are the detectives. We play the word game when it comes to perceiving that which is not tangible, not of the physical sensory world. Some people might cast these mysteries into the darkness of the occult, insanity, pure fantasy or delusion,. Others would embrace these as meaningful and even sacred communications. Different points of view, different schools of thought, and different dogmas influence the verdict. Are these often disjointed mental images hallucination or gifted vision? Is there one definitive answer to this? I believe not.
How strange it might seem that one, namely myself, who began with laboratory research, with beakers and tubes, with distillation apparatus and high magnitude microscopes, should in the end , be led by the mysteriously unknown, the elusive, by the mere suggestion of that which is lies hidden? Yet it is the way of it. For at the heart of all seen there always that mysterious matrix calling for a better look…..Over time I have come to call this mystery, the Ultimate Matrix, the fabric of all fabrics….
In this blog I invite each of you to join me, to take an inner lens to this mystery of the Ultimate Matrix …to focus on it as, the ultimate fabric of life as a deity. I will imagine the Ultimate as a goddess with her veils, as the goddess of love, a love that brought into existence all the manifest. I will visualize her as she is sometimes depicted, veils flowing about her form, posed with her hand pointing to her heart, her hand, like some ancient marker, suggesting a hidden truth waiting to be contemplated and explored.
One of my favorite books is a slender text called The Little Prince by Antoine De St Exupery. My favorite line from the book says it all:
“That which is essential is invisible to the eye” Spoken by a fox. Certainly the clever fox knew the truth, inviting each of us to look beyond and beneath to the Ultimate Matrix!
I hope to talk about the importance of the Hidden in coming blog installments and meditations. As a dreamer I like to believe that dreams and visions contain the hidden truths, waiting to be uncovered in the images that rise on the imaginal landscape. Hopefully these little thoughts will help each of us to pay more attention to the little things, the gut feelings, the strange images that rise on the mental landscape along with the often irrational images that call to us from dream or from waking reality: the butterflies that suddenly are everywhere, the pennies which like breadcrumbs seem to be calling us to follow them, as well as the lovely feathers that gently float from the sky into our space. There is mystery all around us. Like the Oracle at Delphi, the Divine Matrix offers only hints of what lies beyond and beneath the veils of being, beneath the little glimpses which call to us. It takes work to move beyond the veils that cover the Ultimate. Together we can travel on our journey of exploration. In the end there will always be unknown depths which stretch beyond us. Yet the pilgrimage to heart of these mysteries is wondrous and fulfilling. Hopefully together we shall enjoy the journey.