G returns from Paris * A ghost that's taken a new wife * A prophetic dream * An apology and a lesson from The Priestess * John Middleton Murry arrives.
Thank you. It's wonderful Schuyler. Sensing it as a dilating space and growing knowing.
What strikes me, holds me and causes a sense of light estrangement is how you leave impressions in me as I read your words. As narrator of your awakening, encounters across time - space and opening new aspects of yourself in the story by sharing the gifts of being all as; woman, priestess, mother, child, earth, lover and loved presence. In German the word for the impressions that your embodied speaking leave on my nervous system and help me attune in opening, that synchronise and resonate in me as live updates of my awareness to my life is the word_Abbilden. There are moments in this chapter when the description of the woman- guide, priestess and child of the sun feel in abstract relationship to ALL and also in care of Katherine. Sometimes it feels very whole and resonates. I wondered why I could not feel your love for yourself in Katherine's dream, in the earth chamber as you passed wisdom and acceptance back through time to Katherine there in the earth chamber.
I check, is my filter; a damaged man, thinking and feeling disconnected to woman and also being wildly connected to far more than I can digest and metabolise but now aware enough to extend my subtle sensing beyond my bodily presence. At first "the woman"s voice and wording felt stiff and not fully accepting of herself in the priestess role. I wondered if it was me, or some 60 years of referencing in a man's world of hermeneutic frames, sometimes called "writing conventions". I then projected it out, partial to you and thought that she does not share in words in a way or frequency the timeless roles of woman in a way my living intelligence can feel, yet. I don't know. But let's me come into a sensing space where I wonder as we unfold more and more of your, mine, our capacity to be in timeless and collective presence, whether the wish for embodied resonance is slowly less important. The dialogue between Katherine and with Mme. Ostrowska helped me to attend to some of the weaving of presence and timeless aliveness. I share this comment in appreciation for your bringing me and perhaps other readers into a space where such curiosity and sensing unfold together. So thank you for your gifts and sharing them on this journey. Kei
Hello Keith, thank you for your beautiful comment...it worked on me yesterday when I read it and again today. I appreciate how you describe the writing's effect on you, the leaving of impressions. I'd like to say this is intentional. I have worked at this. And thank you for the German word. Katherine spoke German and often wrote phrases into her journals in German, so I think she would appreciate this, too.
What I've been thinking about is your experience of the "me" in Katherine's dream. You describe your experience of her as lacking self-love; feeling stiff and not accepting of her role...I really reflected on this. At first, I thought "oh no!" I wondered if I'd placed too much emphasis on her experience and had forgotten to love myself in the process...
But, then I re-read the scene and I was just so sure of it. You see...I LOVE that dream. It came to me in a meditation just like that. And when I finished writing it, I loved it. When I love a piece of writing, that usually tells me its "right." What I mean by "right" is something very specific--it means I hit the right notes, I played the song correctly, I got the tune right and the magic words worked and "open sesame!"
I put myself in your shoes--because I can see the stiffness you are referring to. But, I don't experience it as a lack of self-love. It's actually a profound presence and comfort with what is. Which I think is ONE OF the ultimate expressions of the feminine. Beyond even the priestess archetype.
When I experience my soul in subtle states, it is free from "personality." My soul can be very matter-of-fact and very serious when that is required. It doesn't worry about so many of the quirks of communication and socialization we use here on earth to "connect" with others. My soul can be quite fierce, actually (often is)...especially in the face of confusion or suffering. The lack of social affect and ... emotionality/sentiment...as humans sometimes misuse and misunderstand it...is actually a HUGE relief when I get to inhabit that soul level. As a woman on the planet, I have been socialized to be nice, to smile, and be all the things a woman "should" be--warm, affectionate, etc. But, my soul really has no time or need for these affects unless they serve a higher purpose or communicate a truth. She has emotion and IS love (she does speak to Katherine with "warmth" because she is a presence of loving awareness). Her emotion, when it comes, is pure and natural. It's not a lack of love or emotion, but a lack of sentimentality. Does this resonate or shed light?
It occurs to me as I write...Even the setting -- the desert -- is dry. Which is what H keeps instructing S -- "Dry, be dry..." this is what he means. In real life I misunderstood him and made myself cold, aloof. But he was pointing to a real state of being. Fine lines here.
I hope that helps or is interesting. If I misunderstood your comment, let me know. I really appreciate the contemplation you opened up here for me and other readers. THANK YOU.
Thank you Schuyler for seeing my challenge, speaking clearly to it's entanglement and staying open after noticing the source of my blindspot. Thank you for writing of how you and Katherine relate, dance, die and are reborn, enlivening across the modernist century when so much systemic harm has been done in every way. Perhaps exactly now The Work gives what is needed for women and men.
I was happy to read Part 2 after midnight. I felt your love for all of them and letting Katherine go as her spirit shifted, unfolded and we together followed her lead up the stairs. It leaves me curious and raw as to what is asking to be expressed and perhaps integrated through your emergent community.
Oh, me too! I am curious about what wants to be integrated and expressed. AND am open to suggestions. In these days since posting, I have scenes swimming through my mind from the time after her death. They might be asking to come through - her funeral, Virginia Woolf's reaction to the news of her death, JMM's publishing of her journals posthumously...I am sitting with them to see where the urge is coming from. Thanks for your engagement, Keith.
Hmm, I have to confess that I felt a bit of what I think Keith was experiencing here… for me I think it was that I felt a bit spoon fed and am wondering how this experience would read if we, as readers were left a bit more to our own imagination as to how these experiences would feel to us rather than being told how they felt... vocabulary is so limited with respect to the full range of human emotion and therefore I think that is maybe what is leaving me feeling a bit cutoff from actually feeling anything here - like I’ve been a little bit robbed of the richness of this experience. I tried some suggestions for how we might be given a bit more through less here:
“ She is walking in the silvery moonlight through a desert. Silence fills her ears. There are scrubby bushes, and mountains. She tries to locate herself…Egypt? No. Someplace older, before time…but also, right now.
She sees a woman stranding in a long robe looking out to the horizon towards a bright constellation of stars. As she approaches, the robed woman turns towards her and takes her veil down. *There is great joy as their eyes meet—recognition.* (Maybe try, “There is recognition as their eyes meet.” That leaves the door open for all of the excitement and possibility of such an encounter for us as readers)
The woman reaches out for Katherine’s shoulders and brings their foreheads together. *Katherine feels their closeness.* (I’d skip this sentence) The woman is…formidable, vast, spacious. They stay this way and breathe. She asks without speaking, “How do I know you?” The woman communicates to her *telepathically* (Maybe, “without words”), “I wear the robes of the old, old gods.” In that phrase, a memory of another time they’ve shared is unlocked. Katherine knows the gods of which she speaks. They are not the God of her time. She feels complete trust—a bond of sisterhood. The woman points to where she was gazing out to the horizon and says aloud, “Look, Pisces is rising. This is the time and place of our meeting.”
They begin to walk together. Soon they are walking through high grass and the temperature is cooler, the air less dry. They are approaching a village. Katherine sees the lights along the base of a cliff wall and also lights in the face of the rock…cliff dwellings, caves. She asks, “Where are we?”
“The New World,” the woman says with a smile. Katherine understands that she means America. Her heart leaps.
They pass through the houses to the far edge of the village, down a well-worn trail to the base of a high cliff. They stop when they reach a ladder. The woman indicates that they are going to climb. It seems to stretch all the way to the stars. High, high above, Katherine sees a landing. She cannot fathom making all the way up there in her condition…As soon as she thinks this, the woman stares into her eyes and says to her without speaking, “You have no condition here.” Katherine inhales deeply. The woman is right. They start to climb.
As she *relaxes and begins to trust—her body, the woman, the ladder, the destination above—* (I’d try taking this out and replace it with one of the following, “climbs/ascends/moves up each rung?”) she feels stronger and stronger. *When they finally reach the top, she feels she could keep climbing.* (I’d take this out, I think it’s already implied) They have reached a vast rock amphitheater in the sky. At the edge, Katherine stops for a minute to look out over the moonlit valley. She sees the smoke from the small houses in the pueblo and a few fires lit in the distance. *The life below is reassuring.* (I think this could be taken out - the witnessing of it going on and on in the next sentence leads us there already) Life goes on and on and on…
The woman indicates another ladder that descends down a hole in the roof of a round structure—a small room built into the earth. She sheds her robes and stands there in strange clothing made of fabrics and in a style Katherine has never known. She looks at the woman more fully now, revealed as she is. She is her own age, brunette, dark eyes, something unplaceable in her heritage…she could be from the East or West…North or South…She smiles and Katherine suddenly recognizes her as the woman she has seen twice as a “ghost” in Fontainebleu: once out Gurdjieff’s study window, and once along the canals. Before she can ask about the child she has seen the woman with, the woman answers, “She is sleeping. This time is just for us.”
Katherine follows the woman as she climbs down. The darkness envelops them. Katherine *feels fear* (maybe change to “Katherine’s heart races”) as she stands motionless in the bottom of the pit. Briefly, she contemplates being buried alive. *The fear turns to panic and her heart races.* (I’d take this sentence out) The feel and the smell of the earth is overwhelming. She hears the woman rustling and then a spark…she has lit a small handful of kindling and blows on it to fan the flames. She lights a fire in a fire pit and they wait for the light and warmth to fill the room. When it has caught, the woman takes a seat on a bench along the wall and invites Katherine to sit with her. She looks deeply into her eyes *and sends her the message that she need not be afraid.* (i think this might be better left unsaid so that we can imagine and feel for ourselves what it might be like being there in that eye lock)
They sit in silence for a long time. The woman seems to be encouraging her to stop thinking and to feel. Katherine feels. As the panic subsides, what she feels is a deep holding, *like a womb, like a mother.* (I’d take out the “likes” here and leave it as “a woman, a mother”) *When she senses this, her body relaxes and opens.* (I’d take this out as well, let us feel it for ourselves) The woman turns and smiles at her. Her face is glowing in the firelight, but it also seems to be glowing with a light from within.
“Let’s talk. We haven’t much time. It will be dawn soon,” The woman begins to recite from memory: “I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.”
Thank you. It's wonderful Schuyler. Sensing it as a dilating space and growing knowing.
What strikes me, holds me and causes a sense of light estrangement is how you leave impressions in me as I read your words. As narrator of your awakening, encounters across time - space and opening new aspects of yourself in the story by sharing the gifts of being all as; woman, priestess, mother, child, earth, lover and loved presence. In German the word for the impressions that your embodied speaking leave on my nervous system and help me attune in opening, that synchronise and resonate in me as live updates of my awareness to my life is the word_Abbilden. There are moments in this chapter when the description of the woman- guide, priestess and child of the sun feel in abstract relationship to ALL and also in care of Katherine. Sometimes it feels very whole and resonates. I wondered why I could not feel your love for yourself in Katherine's dream, in the earth chamber as you passed wisdom and acceptance back through time to Katherine there in the earth chamber.
I check, is my filter; a damaged man, thinking and feeling disconnected to woman and also being wildly connected to far more than I can digest and metabolise but now aware enough to extend my subtle sensing beyond my bodily presence. At first "the woman"s voice and wording felt stiff and not fully accepting of herself in the priestess role. I wondered if it was me, or some 60 years of referencing in a man's world of hermeneutic frames, sometimes called "writing conventions". I then projected it out, partial to you and thought that she does not share in words in a way or frequency the timeless roles of woman in a way my living intelligence can feel, yet. I don't know. But let's me come into a sensing space where I wonder as we unfold more and more of your, mine, our capacity to be in timeless and collective presence, whether the wish for embodied resonance is slowly less important. The dialogue between Katherine and with Mme. Ostrowska helped me to attend to some of the weaving of presence and timeless aliveness. I share this comment in appreciation for your bringing me and perhaps other readers into a space where such curiosity and sensing unfold together. So thank you for your gifts and sharing them on this journey. Kei
Hello Keith, thank you for your beautiful comment...it worked on me yesterday when I read it and again today. I appreciate how you describe the writing's effect on you, the leaving of impressions. I'd like to say this is intentional. I have worked at this. And thank you for the German word. Katherine spoke German and often wrote phrases into her journals in German, so I think she would appreciate this, too.
What I've been thinking about is your experience of the "me" in Katherine's dream. You describe your experience of her as lacking self-love; feeling stiff and not accepting of her role...I really reflected on this. At first, I thought "oh no!" I wondered if I'd placed too much emphasis on her experience and had forgotten to love myself in the process...
But, then I re-read the scene and I was just so sure of it. You see...I LOVE that dream. It came to me in a meditation just like that. And when I finished writing it, I loved it. When I love a piece of writing, that usually tells me its "right." What I mean by "right" is something very specific--it means I hit the right notes, I played the song correctly, I got the tune right and the magic words worked and "open sesame!"
I put myself in your shoes--because I can see the stiffness you are referring to. But, I don't experience it as a lack of self-love. It's actually a profound presence and comfort with what is. Which I think is ONE OF the ultimate expressions of the feminine. Beyond even the priestess archetype.
When I experience my soul in subtle states, it is free from "personality." My soul can be very matter-of-fact and very serious when that is required. It doesn't worry about so many of the quirks of communication and socialization we use here on earth to "connect" with others. My soul can be quite fierce, actually (often is)...especially in the face of confusion or suffering. The lack of social affect and ... emotionality/sentiment...as humans sometimes misuse and misunderstand it...is actually a HUGE relief when I get to inhabit that soul level. As a woman on the planet, I have been socialized to be nice, to smile, and be all the things a woman "should" be--warm, affectionate, etc. But, my soul really has no time or need for these affects unless they serve a higher purpose or communicate a truth. She has emotion and IS love (she does speak to Katherine with "warmth" because she is a presence of loving awareness). Her emotion, when it comes, is pure and natural. It's not a lack of love or emotion, but a lack of sentimentality. Does this resonate or shed light?
It occurs to me as I write...Even the setting -- the desert -- is dry. Which is what H keeps instructing S -- "Dry, be dry..." this is what he means. In real life I misunderstood him and made myself cold, aloof. But he was pointing to a real state of being. Fine lines here.
I hope that helps or is interesting. If I misunderstood your comment, let me know. I really appreciate the contemplation you opened up here for me and other readers. THANK YOU.
Thank you Schuyler for seeing my challenge, speaking clearly to it's entanglement and staying open after noticing the source of my blindspot. Thank you for writing of how you and Katherine relate, dance, die and are reborn, enlivening across the modernist century when so much systemic harm has been done in every way. Perhaps exactly now The Work gives what is needed for women and men.
I was happy to read Part 2 after midnight. I felt your love for all of them and letting Katherine go as her spirit shifted, unfolded and we together followed her lead up the stairs. It leaves me curious and raw as to what is asking to be expressed and perhaps integrated through your emergent community.
Oh, me too! I am curious about what wants to be integrated and expressed. AND am open to suggestions. In these days since posting, I have scenes swimming through my mind from the time after her death. They might be asking to come through - her funeral, Virginia Woolf's reaction to the news of her death, JMM's publishing of her journals posthumously...I am sitting with them to see where the urge is coming from. Thanks for your engagement, Keith.
Hmm, I have to confess that I felt a bit of what I think Keith was experiencing here… for me I think it was that I felt a bit spoon fed and am wondering how this experience would read if we, as readers were left a bit more to our own imagination as to how these experiences would feel to us rather than being told how they felt... vocabulary is so limited with respect to the full range of human emotion and therefore I think that is maybe what is leaving me feeling a bit cutoff from actually feeling anything here - like I’ve been a little bit robbed of the richness of this experience. I tried some suggestions for how we might be given a bit more through less here:
“ She is walking in the silvery moonlight through a desert. Silence fills her ears. There are scrubby bushes, and mountains. She tries to locate herself…Egypt? No. Someplace older, before time…but also, right now.
She sees a woman stranding in a long robe looking out to the horizon towards a bright constellation of stars. As she approaches, the robed woman turns towards her and takes her veil down. *There is great joy as their eyes meet—recognition.* (Maybe try, “There is recognition as their eyes meet.” That leaves the door open for all of the excitement and possibility of such an encounter for us as readers)
The woman reaches out for Katherine’s shoulders and brings their foreheads together. *Katherine feels their closeness.* (I’d skip this sentence) The woman is…formidable, vast, spacious. They stay this way and breathe. She asks without speaking, “How do I know you?” The woman communicates to her *telepathically* (Maybe, “without words”), “I wear the robes of the old, old gods.” In that phrase, a memory of another time they’ve shared is unlocked. Katherine knows the gods of which she speaks. They are not the God of her time. She feels complete trust—a bond of sisterhood. The woman points to where she was gazing out to the horizon and says aloud, “Look, Pisces is rising. This is the time and place of our meeting.”
They begin to walk together. Soon they are walking through high grass and the temperature is cooler, the air less dry. They are approaching a village. Katherine sees the lights along the base of a cliff wall and also lights in the face of the rock…cliff dwellings, caves. She asks, “Where are we?”
“The New World,” the woman says with a smile. Katherine understands that she means America. Her heart leaps.
They pass through the houses to the far edge of the village, down a well-worn trail to the base of a high cliff. They stop when they reach a ladder. The woman indicates that they are going to climb. It seems to stretch all the way to the stars. High, high above, Katherine sees a landing. She cannot fathom making all the way up there in her condition…As soon as she thinks this, the woman stares into her eyes and says to her without speaking, “You have no condition here.” Katherine inhales deeply. The woman is right. They start to climb.
As she *relaxes and begins to trust—her body, the woman, the ladder, the destination above—* (I’d try taking this out and replace it with one of the following, “climbs/ascends/moves up each rung?”) she feels stronger and stronger. *When they finally reach the top, she feels she could keep climbing.* (I’d take this out, I think it’s already implied) They have reached a vast rock amphitheater in the sky. At the edge, Katherine stops for a minute to look out over the moonlit valley. She sees the smoke from the small houses in the pueblo and a few fires lit in the distance. *The life below is reassuring.* (I think this could be taken out - the witnessing of it going on and on in the next sentence leads us there already) Life goes on and on and on…
The woman indicates another ladder that descends down a hole in the roof of a round structure—a small room built into the earth. She sheds her robes and stands there in strange clothing made of fabrics and in a style Katherine has never known. She looks at the woman more fully now, revealed as she is. She is her own age, brunette, dark eyes, something unplaceable in her heritage…she could be from the East or West…North or South…She smiles and Katherine suddenly recognizes her as the woman she has seen twice as a “ghost” in Fontainebleu: once out Gurdjieff’s study window, and once along the canals. Before she can ask about the child she has seen the woman with, the woman answers, “She is sleeping. This time is just for us.”
Katherine follows the woman as she climbs down. The darkness envelops them. Katherine *feels fear* (maybe change to “Katherine’s heart races”) as she stands motionless in the bottom of the pit. Briefly, she contemplates being buried alive. *The fear turns to panic and her heart races.* (I’d take this sentence out) The feel and the smell of the earth is overwhelming. She hears the woman rustling and then a spark…she has lit a small handful of kindling and blows on it to fan the flames. She lights a fire in a fire pit and they wait for the light and warmth to fill the room. When it has caught, the woman takes a seat on a bench along the wall and invites Katherine to sit with her. She looks deeply into her eyes *and sends her the message that she need not be afraid.* (i think this might be better left unsaid so that we can imagine and feel for ourselves what it might be like being there in that eye lock)
They sit in silence for a long time. The woman seems to be encouraging her to stop thinking and to feel. Katherine feels. As the panic subsides, what she feels is a deep holding, *like a womb, like a mother.* (I’d take out the “likes” here and leave it as “a woman, a mother”) *When she senses this, her body relaxes and opens.* (I’d take this out as well, let us feel it for ourselves) The woman turns and smiles at her. Her face is glowing in the firelight, but it also seems to be glowing with a light from within.
“Let’s talk. We haven’t much time. It will be dawn soon,” The woman begins to recite from memory: “I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.”