I wonder some things… I had an odd little experience a couple of evenings ago. I was on an inner journey to talk to the goddess in her aspect of the crone. (I often refer to the crone as "grandmother" and have great affection for her.) On this night, when I addressed her as Grandmother, my own Gran'ma Susie (mother's mother) was suddenly there beside the goddess, just to the right of her. She was smiling a contained little smile with such a twinkle behind it — you could just tell she was trying not to burst out laughing. That expression is so well-remembered, and I've seen that same smile on my granddaughter's face. It was there a lot when Megan was a small merry person full of jokes. Gran'ma liked to deliver her jokes and outrageous puns with a straight face — or nearly straight — and Megan did the same. Anyway, Gran'ma was standing there, atwinkle and beaming, and I was just plain startled to see her. I used to see or hear her often before Megan was born, but I had, we had reasons to think that perhaps my grandmother had reincarnated as my granddaughter — keeping herself in the family, as it were. A whole range of psychics, channels, mediums, clairvoyants, shamans and what not told us over the years, first, that Gran'ma would be coming back as my son's child, then later on that she was then taking the first steps to manifest that, and then after Megan's birth, over and over that Megan was strongly connected to her. This information was always volunteered, never asked for by one of us. In her turn, even as a very small child, Megan had that half-teasing smile, along with the strength, courage, wry sense of humor, and lovingness that one would expect if she were indeed Gran'ma come back. But here Gran'ma stood, feet planted firmly on the earth of my inner world, "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" as we say in my family. And she was very much herself. "You're surprised to see me, aren't you?" I nodded and hesitantly admitted that I thought she had reincarnated. "Well, I won't say I haven't, exactly. But I won't say that I have, either." To say I was puzzled would be understating the matter. I was even more baffled when Megan abruptly appeared to the left of the goddess. She is ten years old now. Gran'ma looked to be in her 50s — about the age she was when I had the years that Megan has now. It was easy to see the resemblance: the eyes, the way the hair curls, their hands, the feel of them both — a fierce and deeply compassionate love they both hold for others, leavened by humor and a charm that I suspect comes from just loving people and the world in general. (I remember that when Gran'ma was dying and I was sitting with her in the hospital, one of the very last things she did was to look up at me and with an obvious effort breathlessly said, "I love you all. I love each of each of you." She struggled to say more and couldn't, so I tried to help. "Do you want me to tell everyone that for you?" She immediately relaxed, smiled, and a tiny nod said all I needed to know. Then her eyes shut. After that, she slipped into a coma and was soon gone. And when she was gone, I spent a couple of days calling each of her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grand children and telling every one of them, "Gran'ma Susie said to tell you she loves you." It wasn't exactly the easiest thing I've ever done, but it was one of the most rewarding. And educational.) But to come back to the present… here Gran'ma is, and there Megan is. Alike as two peas, but in different pods — or the same pod, strung out over time. Or something. Are they the same person or not? Is there linearity here or not? I just don't know. The Crone Goddess steps back and somehow reaches around all three of us, pulling us into a tight hug — so tight that we all melted together for a timeless time. It was indescribable. Then we separated again and looked at each other for one of those forever moments. And Megan and Gran'ma both faded away. The Crone, whose eyes were both Gran'ma's and Megan's eyes, asked. "Did you understand that?" "With my heart, perhaps, but not with my head!" She nodded and said, "That's all that's needed. But here is a picture for you to play with." An image blossomed in my mind — tiny mushrooms in a faery ring. For a moment I was puzzled. I've been learning about fungi recently and they are truly fascinating. What we see above the ground are not individuals. Under the earth, they connect with each other, sharing their roots and underground structure in one much larger being. The things we see are just the fruit of that being, deeply rooted in their living self. Although the mushrooms we see appear to be separate, in reality there is just one, and we do not see much of it at all. That larger underground being does vital things to support the life of trees and other plants. The network of the mycelium, the living body of the fungus underground, is really just beginning to be scientifically studied and faintly understood. Scientists have ideas about how mycelium helps the trees, how it may even be the communication network between them, how it makes the soil fertile and nourishing for all plants — and how it does some other quite magical-sounding things. And did you know, that there is more biomass (living material) under the surface of the earth than there is on top of it? Much more! I didn't, and am still stunned by that. However, to come back to what happened in my lunar cycling meditation, this explains a lot about the relationship between Gran'ma and Megan, and yes, even me, without me being able to quite articulate it. I had been thinking of us as being something like pearls on a string with other beads or gems between us. But… What if Kurt Vonnegut was onto something when he wrote in his book, Sirens of Titian, about a "chronosynclastic infundibulum," which was was a strange dimension where everything became one and everything and one was right? (From the online Urban Dictionary: chronosynclastic infundibulum ~ n. A point in space where, upon a person entering it, that person's existence in space-time ceases to be linear, becoming discrete. This means that a person who has entered a chronosynclastic infundibulum exists at multiple points and lines in space-time. For example, such a person could exist at all points in time in one place and also appear at another point for five minutes.) (And Verbotomy.com says: ~n. A place, or a moment, where all the different kinds of truths fit together, and where there are many different ways to be absolutely right about everything.) It has been so many years since I read the book — it seems that perhaps chronosyclastic infundibulum was both of those things and more, just as the ideas of reincarnation and dharma heirs and mycelium are all true of this and all other relationships, but not even the three together tell the whole story. What if we are all chronosynclastically infundibulated all the time, and only our indecision (or something) keeps us from realizing it? What if all this is related to the ideas on non-local consciousness and natural magic? (This may be too much thinking for a Libra…) It seems like maybe there is a "scientific truth", which currently has a lot of huge gaps in it.Then there is a "logical truth", not quite as restricted as the scientific truth, but again with many gaps. There is a "fear truth" where people believe their fears are true — and they usually have a lot of fears. Then there is a "heart truth" — and I think that's what I'm trying to write about here. My heart knows there is a strong connection, and I have no logical or scientific basis for understanding it. So, what this seems to be is a kind of a spiritual quest for a metaphor, a reality beyond conventional reality, for something that puts that connection in terms that I can understand as a heart truth. I think perhaps we know heart truths about a lot of things that are not backed up yet by science or logic — and they may never be. Both science and logic have limitations and we may never get past them, but there are other, older, deeper ways of understanding the world. It's about trusting what the heart knows. And about being highly suspicious of what fear "knows". We live in Interesting Times.
Copyright ©2014 by Jessica Macbeth. All rights reserved.
|
|||||
