Finding My Naked Feet
On Tuesday I was writing to a friend and came up with what is to me an new theory, but which might already be an accepted fact within Eastern tradition. I was thinking of divine or spiritual energy flowing into the chakras in two ways. From the crown down through the inner eye and throat to the heart flows the masculine god energy of the sky - from spirit, psyche and self to the emotional core, expressed as the spirit of fire. From the feet up through root, sacral and solar plexus to the heart flows the feminine goddess energy of the earth, from physical, creative, and manifesting to the emotional core again, expressed as the spirit of water. And at the heart these two streams mingle and fuse, each one permeating the other as it continues on its upward and downward paths.
Next I found a new insight into satori chess, with its special piece, the "transcendent function", expressed as either the Fool or the Magician. Now it is possible that I read about this long ago as a teenager although I certainly don't remember it, but I have just discovered that this is a specific
Jungian term (two thirds down this long page of definitions).
The Jungian transcendent function arises when the conscious and unconscious equally balance each other, causing a negation of the will and a damming up of the two energy flows. In the presence of this full but static parity, the ego has no choice but to synthesize each psychic stream into a new entity incorporating both portions of the soul. This is the creation of the androygne, the newly integrated person arising out of the sacred marriage within. Is this not another way of stating my theory of how the counter-flows of the dynamic chakric energies may blend and fuse within the heart?
My problem last week was that the perceived betrayal by my female mentor reheated the ancient emotional soup containing all the profound betrayals first stirred in by my biological mother. My natural reaction was to retreat from the feminine into masculine energy, so that my soul began to feel deadened and even my most cherished music became an abstract mathematical expression. But since the Inner Beloveds have been so strongly differentiated and empowered over the past year, I did not equate them with the negative mother, and so I did not and probably
could not completely reject them from consciousness. They remained fully and energetically alive in dreamtime, and when I felt so much despair that I did not want to get out of bed on Tuesday morning, they emerged in a profound expression of will which
would not let me retreat into idle self-denial.
In the first dream of Wednesday night, I was serving on a Coast Guard vessel with another woman [an interesting slip - "another woman"]. We had started out from Victoria but returned to harbour and were going to transfer, in fact we did transfer, to another vessel. That's all I remember. Although that's not what I typed above, I remember being a man in the dream. In a previous dream some time ago I had been waiting for "my ship to come in" in this idealized Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia, known for being more English than the English. Now I had made a false start, but returned with my female life-companion to begin my Coast Guard patrol and rescue mission again.
Similar to your continuing Victorian adventures Sue, I have had these continuing adventures in Victoria. Victoria seems to mean for me the victory of the feminine principle within my life, and a reconciliation with the feminine English in my childhood and heritage. I do not see this victory as coming at the expense of the masculine: Aragorn (Prince Albert?) is also alive and flourishing!
I have also had the
Victoria Regina Tarot at the top of my wish list for some time, and so I am taking this recurring theme seriously and have ordered the deck.
In the second dream I was again working, perhaps at a Coast Guard base. But I was taking a break and looking at the pictures of a woman in the Playboy magazine. Although I was a man, I recognized the pictures of the woman with dark curly hair, it was me. The pictures were erotically beautiful but not pornographic, and I don't think there was nudity. I was not aroused by the pictures but was searching them for an image of her feet. There was only one picture which showed them, but they were seen though a black lacy overdress and she was wearing heels. It was really important for me to find her naked feet but I couldn't. I woke up.
Now I haven't actually looked at pornography in over ten years, but on one level this dream is a beautiful expression of Buddha consciousness: that we are all one, and that to look at another's body as an object is to look at oneself in the same way. The erotic and the pornographic are quite different things: whereas the erotic draws one into spiritual connection, the pornographic objectifies and isolates. In this dream the observer and the observed were literally one and the same, the Sun conjunct with his Venus, and I was desperate to find my feet.
This dream relates to my theory of the Chakras being filled with feminine energy from below, and masculine from above. The feet connect one to the female energy of the earth - or the ocean - and I was being reminded of this interface. On Tuesday I knew I needed to walk in the ocean to find healing, but I lacked the energy. My profile here has always stated one of my hobbies as "walking barefoot in the ocean". With the encouragement of this dream, I did so again on Wednesday evening. The only effective solution to the experience of negative feminine energy is not any kind of masculine energy, but immersion in the positive feminine - not a turning aside in hurt and fear, but a return in a long and loving embrace.
So I drove to Wickanninish Beach in Pacific Rim National Park and walked with bare feet from there to Green Point, about 7 km, first in the ocean, and then in the sand, with the occasional touch of shore grass and logs - the furthest I have ever walked with naked feet. When I first entered the ocean, the familiar first words of Sophie during the union, the mantra, "Embrace, embrace, embrace..." filled my mind. Soon there was the familiar feeling of tràlage*.
But I also walked on the beach itself, and the sand this time was the most surprising, an incredible variety of textures and patterns, varying from saturated to completely dry. Fascinated, I kept my head down most of the time, not in depression, but in appreciation. A breeze was blowing towards me, picking up the dry sand with the sun behind it, and again the movement and beauty brought tràlage.
I was walking due west, and just as I got to the black rock and trees of Green Point the sun set behind it. It was the night of the full moon in Capricorn, although I never did see her. As the evening was getting late and my feet were tired, I put on my shoes for the return journey, a round trip of 2-1/2 hours in all. In finding my naked feet I had found the cure.
And incidentally, this was a journey which had long been recommended by my mentor...
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*
Tràlage, pronounced tray-
lahj. My neologism meaning "walking through the edge of time" or "holding the moment", a state of consciousness associated with divine energy and insight, often stimulated by the onset of vertigo experienced when walking through water or sand which is moving in several directions at once. Children experience this quite naturally!
