State of Mind ...

 

No Pill Direct Access. Clean First

Thursday, two weeks ago I asked a good friend: "Why don't you drink alcohol? Don't you need being intoxicated every now and then?" Answer: "No!" My follow-up question: "Did you know that alcohol is one of many ways for the mystic to reach That?" Answer: "No!" Next to that he explained that he didn't know much about mysticism.

All the above puzzles me. He is a renowned historian who still has the ability to stay curious and wonder.

How to explain my direct experiences with That to someone who apparently never experienced feeling One with humanity and planet Earth with everyone and everything on it? I was given That three times:

• Czestochowa (Poland) in 1984. More
• Aswan (Egypt) in 1987. More
• Castelo de Vide (Portugal) in 1990. More

I did experience That without being intoxicated. Is it a coincidence that all three were abroad? All I know is that I felt pregnant with It for days. I never looked for That. It happened to me. Meanwhile I learned that looking for It makes no sense. It has to be granted. You can literally take no pill for It. 

After my first direct experience with That I hadn't words and a language to speak with. Only after reading Catharina  Dessaur's book 'De Droom der Rede' (1982) I understood that I had my moment of enlightenment. 

Back to being intoxicated. These roads or gates seem "proven" as good 'soma' for entering That (not exhaustive):

• Fasting
• Praying
• Meditation
• Alcohol
• Sex
• Laurier blades
• Hemlock
• Fly agaric
• Other psychedelic drugs
• ... - there must be more

Gates for entering but ... you will never know for sure - there is no guarantee - if you will experience That. (Mark that I don't write "see".) It has to be granted. In a way you have to be ready, clean or pure first. Donna Tartt, 'The Secret History' (1992):

"Only this. To recieve the god, in this or any other mystery, one has to be in a state of 'euphemia', cultic purity. That is at the very center of bacchic mystery. Even Plato speaks of it. Before the Divine can take over, the mortal self - the dust of us, the part that decays - must be made clean as possible." 

All Dreams of World

The key of understanding my personality is scouting. I was a Sea Scout for five years (from the age of 12 to 17). I remember countless sailing trips, camping, hiking/ walking and cooking on wood-fires. Golden days! Be prepared, that's what we always did. Good equipment. Train and prepare as good as possible and if necessary improvise.

What I learned above all is that we don't need much - clothes, shoes, backpack, pocketknife, small amounts of food and water, sleeping bag - to stay alive and to move from one place to another. Next to that it gave me self-confidence.

All the tips & tricks I learned back then shaped my personality mentally. I have been using it in the army as a drafted soldier, at the university, in my professional life and in love.

Since then I know that the unknown is "not-known" and that we just have to face that literally and use all the other senses too. (Did you know that the excessive use of and trust in the sense of 'seeing' is a bias of the species 'homo sapiens'?) It will be fun - partly - and there will be constraints - that's for sure - but at the end of the trip we will know more of what we didn't know before. As if we peeled an onion.

To paraphrase and transform Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935): "I am prepared for anything. And if not I'll improvise. Next to that, I have in me all the dreams of the world."

And you ... where did your self-confidence come from? In an image: what is it's 'wellspring'? 

P.S. Original quote reads "Não sou nada. Nunca serei nada. Não posso querer ser nada. À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo." Source: poem 'The Tabacco Shop' (1928).
P.P.S. Trip. What I mean is the physical trip like a 25 km walk and mental trips like writing and reading. 

Lady Almina

In 1895, at the age of nineteen, she married the 5th Earl of Carnarvon (1866-1923). She was Almina Wombwell (1876-1969), the daughter of banker Alfred de Rothschild, and brought in a considerable amount of money. She held the title. He the money!

The book 'Lady Almina and the Real Downtown Abbey' (2015) describes in great detail the story of their lives. A lovely read! In telegraphic style: peerage, money, big money, country houses, archaeology in Egypt, Howard Carter and the discovery of the tomb of Tutankamon. 

In fourteen years of digging in Egypt, the 5th Earl spent around 50,000 British pound (10,000,000 in today's money). He wanted to stop in 1922 - he could no longer afford it - but Carter seduced him to pay for one more season. And the rest of the story became history and front-page news. In the first week of the 1922 season - in November - the tomb of Tutankamon (KV62) was discovered. Four months later the 5th Earl died. Almina paid for the eight years it took Carter to unload the tomb and to catalogue all its artefacts. In 1936, the Egyptian government paid Almina 36,000 British pounds for her expenses and to get the ownership of the Tutankamon discovery. 

To pay death duties, in 1926 Almina sold the Earl's private ancient Egyptian collection to 'The Metropolitan'. Three items of his collection #inblue:

 More details: here.

 More details: here.

 More details: here.

She was the woman who made it, with her money, possible to "discover" Tutankamon. But ... her greatest contribution to humanity are her activities in the medical world. In World War I she opened Highclere Castle - and later a house in London - for the wounded soldiers. Medical care with an integrative or holistic method of treatment.

What Road to Take - If Any?

Stairway to heaven firework. Impressive work of art!

But .. what road to take - if there is any! - to heaven?

Up?

Down?

Inside or through a black hole?

Blow yourself up for your "God" - and take with you as many "enemies" as you can?

Something metaphorical - the solstice sun falling on the statue of an ancient Egyptian "God"?

Something metaphorical - mist over meadow?

Something metaphorical - indian summer?