Trumpeter (1996)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Seeing Gestalt Ecosophy:
Two Biocentric Meditations
DAVID SPARENBERG is a Jewish Mystic and visionary poet who has written several books and also edits a poetry journal . He lives in Seattle.
Everything we do with the imagination holds the potential for opening up the imaginal (alternate) reality. And everything we experience in, and receive from, the imaginal realm possesses a potency which we can translate into helpful and healing experience in the world of everyday consensual reality.
This transference, which begins with primitive reverence, passionate redefinition and serious intention, leads on to the liberation and spiritual ennobling of the senses, the emotions and the languages and silences of thinking. Then, from that inwardness, the same energies can be moved toward the rehabitation of the great ordinary, which is currently endangered by ingrained ideological misrepresentation and pervasive misuse.
Roundly, this connects with that and so on; one faculty stimulates the next, one dimension penetrates another.
I.Winged Serpent: Symbol for the Primal Earth Warrior
The Earth and all of her life forms are under seige, and the elemental spirits of nature are calling out the shaman-names of sundry people, penetrating the mythic layers of personal identity. Empathizers, shapeshifters, protectors are needed. In the movements of the wind, the breath of sky that hovers over and vivifies the earth (arousing the procreative life force) the name of your spiritual essence is sounded.
You have been patiently listening, longing for this lamentational music. Now you hear the summons, the cry of despair, and you respond.
You are sitting cross legged in the grass, absorbing the sorrowful communication, feeling a bonding of pain and anger. In the eyes of your imagination, you see the primal effective cosmology of our species: a solid rock, a living tree, a source of fresh water. You know that these presences are foundations of planetary life, are habitat, are teachers of the Earth's ways. And you know the danger to even the most basic properties of physically and spiritually sustaining.
Still sitting, as the primary cosmology begins to fade, you next see a green snake coiled at the base of your spine. The snake awakens and begins to ascend the length of your backbone. Its body is sinuous and mysterious. It is so very green that you feel and even smell the richness of its slender color.
Here, as the green snake climbs, you are conscious of a thunderstorm generating at the top of your head. The dark clouds billow and rumble and a powerful bolt of brilliant white lightning flashes, striking at the base of your skull, then shooting along your spine. The body of the lightning is amazingly exciting and mysterious.
Steadily, the earth snake ascends; swiftly, the sky bolt descends. And the two living forces (procreational polarities) meet in a swirling explosion of verdant fire in the center of your wounded heart. There the powers dance in a bold picture of ecstasy and fusion, generating the new, composite image of a brindled dragon, a green and white winged serpent.
You see the colored body and movements of the creature, alive inside your pumping heart. The wings beat a heart-strong rhythm, the tail thrashes in excitation and the eyes flash with electric fire.
The dragon you visualize is the symbol of your response to the summons of the elemental spirits. This winged serpent transforms the acid of earth affliction, of sorrow, despair and mounting rage into a fighting spirit, a protective fire.
Now, with the symbol of the green bellied dragon imaged in your heart, you are empowered to become an earth warrior. An ancient and determined courage begins to sustain you. A righteous ferocity to protect the integral body of primal ecosophy, to guard over the roots of the shamanic tree of life, and to watch over the source of processional waters, is pulsing within you, as free energy, as redefinition and as action-oriented purpose.
Sustained by the power of these pulsations, can you next recollect the secret, beautiful language of the winged serpent? Sitting cross legged, you continue to look and listen, opening to learn more of the alchemical creature's deep wisdom. You are luminous with heroic fervor as you understand that the green and white dragon, in sleep, in dream, in flight and in battle, is a born creator of a natural gestalten: a defender of vegetative and atmospheric circles.
II. Floating the Tree: A Shamanic/Kabbalistic Visualization
Lie down or sit in a comfortable position. Now, close your eyes. Picture a tree in full leaf. The trunk is reddish brown and sepia and the boughs are spellbindingly vivid green. The tree is large and around it is a circle, a ring of brilliant, medium blue, like a flowing color painted on the air.
As you begin envisioning the living tree, you see only tree and blue ring. At the initial leave, the interior (enclosed) space, between the tree and the blue circle, begins to pulsate and reveal a web, sparkling on your inner eyes with the fluctuations and colors of a holographic image.
When you have successfully established each of these elements - the great, green tree, the bright, blue circle, with the many colored web behind them - you may begin to engage in spontaneous, meditative prayer, freeing your body, imagination and mind of fears, worries and constricting habits.
Once you are truly unburdened of experiential pain and distractions, allow yourself to enter the visionary mandala and float in the luminous air above the holy tree. This is accomplished by releasing yourself into archaic, ecstatic buoyancy and identifying with the light, even as you concentrate on the verse of sacred intention: "I will meditate on your wonders" (Psalm 119:27).
Now, as you float the tree, the web in the background is wondrously transformed into a soft, multi-colored wind, swirling around you, breathing colors of warmth and energy into your life. In this same other dimensional time and space, you can feel and absorb the aroma and vitality, the unity and mystery, of green life, and of the aliveness of all colors, reflected here from a deep cosmic source, which is the same as an everlasting, spiritual fire and an eye of several, polychromatic irises.
Thus, as you are free to float and soar with wind and light, breath and wonder, your eyes and your soul may open and see the multiple forms of power inhabiting the leafy branches of the abundant tree. These visionary forms can range from categories of angels, such as maggidim, ofanim, cherubim or seraphim, to winged and four legged peoples of the Earth, or to gifted representatives of different races; to elemental spirits or holy (imaginal) creatures.
Having seen, return now to your normal body and consciousness, remembering to give thanks for the journey just taken. Remain grateful, through your behavior, that the presences you have communed with are accessible in both our natural and alternate realities. Know, in all ways, that the ongoing democratization and normalization of non-ordinary experience leads toward the restoration of creation and the reinvestment of the great ordinary with sufficiencies for personal and planetary renewal. This is, again, expressed in the beauty of the Psalms (77:7): "I meditate with my heart and my spirit seeks."
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