Return to the Source

In which our hero's narrative resumes

Well, I did say there might be breaks…

- Cover art from Dark Mountain: Volume 13 by Caroline Ross (@uncivilsavant / foundandground.com)

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The rice has been harvested, the fields reflooded, and the frogs have returned. In fact, I’ve left it so long that the seedlings have grown quite tall again.

I’ve been Elsewhere. More on that anon.

Sorry not sorry. Because everywhere I look I see people apologising for their lack of posting, or apologising for posting so much. I see people maxxing out on their consumption of other people’s content, and burning out on the production of their own. I see people switching on paid subscriptions, and then turning them off again when they realise the sudden commercialisation of the writer-reader relationship has killed their Muse.

I meant what I said about speaking from the heart. It’s kinda funny that we would start putting words and images and sounds on a telecommunications medium that has never existed before and then somehow convince ourselves we are obliged to maintain a pace and regularity of repeated production such that we need to apologise for not meeting our own entirely arbitrary self-imposed standards.

It is also intensely human. If you don’t keep posting, how will people know you exist? And if your basic human needs of social affirmation are not being met by a healthy and functional community because Empire and Civilisation and The Machine have dissolved the bonds of kin and culture to produce an entirely alienated, atomised society of isolated individuals dependent on electronically mediated parasocial activity to avoid their instinctual templates continually signalling that they are on the verge of likely-fatal rejection by the primate troop, that’s a real concern.

And then the old Late-Stage Capitalism messes with your head a little more, dangling the prospect of escape from the concrete prison cell into a world of life and colour and connection if only you can Make It Big on the interwebs. Why wouldn’t you want to monetise your Muse if it might mean, in whatever humble way, a degree of financial independence from the mousetrap life and the job and the boss and the disapproval of loved ones who’ve mistaken the slow-motion collapse of first-world society for individual lack of pluck and graft?

The only people immune to this kind of logic would be those who’ve Bought Out At The Bottom, the freaks and fanatics who have been forced, by experience and circumstance, to dive off the boat and keep swimming down until they find something solid to stand on.

If someone were to do that, they might find that they no longer crave the approval and attention of online strangers in order to feel real. They might find they only want to create when their heart tells them to, rather than trying to fit the rhythms of their being to the unyielding dictates of Machinetime. And in between, they might find solace and growth in periods of silence, of stillness, of deepening into the self.

As a writer or artist, ‘returning to the source’ can mean just this - simply a fallow period, a trip back to the well to fill the bucket back up with water, that can then be distributed through the usual creative channels. But, even when simply inactive, many of us will still carry the patternings of anxiety, stress, rush or forceful intent through the day. A break may help, but not transform.

If we are this kind of mammal, ‘returning to the Source’ might mean exploring the available means of psychological renewal, delving into the dark cellars of the psyche to shake the dust off the skeletons - and, perhaps, making changes in the choices we have made in our external way of living as a result.

We can look to others for help, of course. I heard that same well-and-bucket metaphor being used by a senior Shidoshi in the Bujinkan, referring to their trips to Japan to train with Hatsumi-soke - the idea being that the nature of the art, and the lessons being imparted by the Grandmaster, were intuitive, organic, living; they required personal connection and experience and, without such topping-up, what they taught to their own students would slowly lose that life and depth.

So ‘returning to the source’ in a community of cultivation might also mean contact with a wellspring of wisdom, skill or understanding. Time spent with the Classics. A meeting with your PhD supervisor. Sanzen with your Roshi. A visit back home to seek Grandma’s advice.

But we’re not at the seabed yet. We can go deeper: in meditation, we can drop behind the linguistic-discursive level of the mind and seek the ground of consciousness from which it arises; in energetic practice, we can ground the mind as a whole in the body, descending our attention until it contacts the source of energetic production in the base of the torso; in spiritual practice, we can seek an ever-deepening understanding that emerges as we abandon our attachment to the known forms of being altogether.

People of old called this the Stem of the Ultimate, the Handle of the Primal, the Source of Open Emptiness, the Root of Undifferentiated Wholeness, the Valley of Cosmic Space, the Source of Evolution, the Opening Back to the Root, the Passway to the Restoration of Life, the Point of True Unity, the Yellow Room in the Centre, the Capital of the Fundamental, the Altar of Preserving Unity, the Crescent Moon Furnace, the Red Sand Cauldron, the Lair of Dragon and Tiger, the House of the Go-Between, the Lead Furnace, the Earth Pot, the Spiritual Water, the Flower Pond, the Divine Unity, the Chamber of the Spirit, the Pedestal of Awareness, the Crimson Palace.
- Compass Centre Directions, c.1300

It is possible to come into contact with something that replaces the dissipative flailing of modern attention-deficit electronica - something that reveals such depth of meaning in one’s own existence that even the ideal of a Wise Master, Kindly Mentor or Perfect Lover is no longer necessary to authenticate the reality of one’s being. It is readily available: to abandon complexity is the simplest thing there is - but, inevitably, that is also what makes it such a rare commodity. The Source is not hiding from us; rather, we are hiding it from ourselves through our very refusal to look unflinchingly at the simple reality of our own being.

Everything around us is encouraging us in the opposite direction, of course. At this point in the cycle, when the body of our faltering Civilisation is Tainter Patches all the way down, returning to simplicity in the most mundane sense would be a wise course of action at the societal level, but we can expect the opposite for some time to come - more layers of complexity, more distractions, more people looking more desperately for something from outside themselves to make things make sense.

The Intellectual Obesity Crisis

Nonetheless, for those of us who have felt the tug of the undertow calling us back, we need not stop our understanding of what it is we are ‘returning to’ at merely societal, vocational or psychological simplification. There is plenty more room at the bottom into which we might descend: not just into the deeper vaults of the mind - we have also been given these monkey bodies and, if we keep heading down into the darkness, we might just come across a Dragon King’s palace, and perhaps even some shiny magical loot therein.

In the meantime: don’t worry! There are Greater Forces at work that are already coming to our aid. And, besides, worry is just another form of distraction - it detracts from the Centre, and if there is one thing we need more of right now (what with how these pesky gyres just keep on widening), it’s Centre.

Moreover, I made good use of my time in the Underworld and I have many more things to tell you now Dragon Time has resumed - more stories of voyaging, more hidden patterns of time, more Mysteries hidden in plain sight, and, if you’ve been very good, possibly more gnomic haikus.

So have courage! Your island is calling you ashore, and all this adventuring is just a way to make the homecoming sweeter…

This teaching comes
from the centre where everything meets,
where the sun sets and lays down a road
that leads back to the divine origin
for all opposites.

And this divine origin is found
by travelling through the underworld.

- Magia, 3:1