So, I'm walking to work a few days ago. I've got a wicked sunburn on my back from a cottage weekend and I can feel those sharp tingles which I can only imagine are capillaries bursting or something. My medical ignorance aside, it got me thinking... as so many things do. I envisioned my ankh hovering over me in its divine radiance and I drummed up my best, albeit weak, feelings of worship and devotion for it. Call me Orange Ray, if you will but the ankh is my chosen symbol because it symbolizes so many things for me. Here's a Photoshop doodle of my initial inspiration for the ankh. What can I say? I like sex. So, the ankh went from simple sexuality to represent the eternal lovemaking of Shiva and Shakti, hence, this insight. It then expanded to include this thought train as well. Now, these things were also grasped many centuries ago by the Chinese and symbolized by the Yin-Yang symbol but I think that with its roots as a glyph for the sex act, the ankh holds more passionate meaning for me.
Where was I? Right, walking to work with a sunburn, its microscopic daggers clamouring for my attention. I thought of the sun, our penultimate avatar of order here on Earth, spewing power onto us; power so overwhelming that our skin scrambles to protect itself from the radiation coming at it from millions of miles away. Surprisingly, radiation is the element of chaos; it buggers organic tissue at a molecular level and if it does enough damage, you have the ultimate in chaos, cancer... cells completely out of control and near-impossible to stop. So, while this interplay is going through my mind, a war is being waged. My body is a battlefield and the front-line infantry is taking heavy damage from the mindless minions of its own deity... and I'm just a witness. So, it hits me. Who's doing all of this? My subconscious mind, I guess, or is it deeper? The inherent animal mind of my body directing blood to the skin for repairs and triggering the production of melanin for added defense. I, foolishly, will call this added defense a tan and be happy about it, despite the damage that I've allowed to happen. Here's a lesson. Mortals are beneath the notice of the gods. Worship all you like but defend yourself against your own deity for should it step on you, it will be oblivious to your demise. The warm embrace of Helios keeps us alive but it's also powerful enough to kill us very painfully and He'll be none the wiser.
Enough waxing poetic. So, I saw myself as a witness to the struggles of a mind against the powers that be. A mind that I've always assumed was mine but the doubt was raised. Am I the subconscious? What am I talking about when I say 'I'? Can I include my body or is it simply an organic machine feeding information into my brain? The thought occurs to me that I'm smaller than I realized. Perhaps my mind is the same, an extension, a second body. A thought is an action, like willing the arm to grasp an apple.
So, I find myself back at my intuition that 'I' is what? The thought comes to me that it's again like a fetus. The 'I' is a fetus, safely encased in an egg, the mind, which sits snuggly inside a nest, the body. The nest takes all of the damage, it weathers the elements and it offers support and shelter in the world. The egg sits in the nest, in its way fragile and strong, doing its own thing almost with an intelligence of its own. In time, it, too, will fall apart and succumb to the elements, especially if the nest fails. What is the egg doing? It nurtures the potential within, the unborn being. So, I ask myself again, is that what we are? A world of the unborn? Unborn what? Are we fetal gods?
On a side note, if we strip away the 'bodies', the walking, talking, thinking, sleeping, what does the I do? It seems to me that the I can only do two things. It rests in awareness, whether that means taking in sensory information or mental calculation. It also causes intention. Every action, be it movement or thought, begins with intent, a focussing of will. The reception of awareness and the push of will... the Cup and the Wand... the Ankh.
