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Hello Everyone,
Here’s hoping the holidays were fantastic for you and your families and friends, and that you’ll continue good relations through 2007. There’s so much for which to be grateful these days, not least of which are our computers. Most of our friends’ worlds and much of the rest of the world is at our fingertips. I find that fascinating!As you see, the new Staying Awake banner features the sun so you and I won’t take it for granted any more than we already do. For new Staying Awake readers, I wouldn’t have imagined an affinity for the sun would during the last few years unfold into my personal cosmology. Updates about our solar system, cyclic solar activities, solar winds, and warming oceans will ripple this ezine in 2007.
The inspiration for redoing the banner was felt after NASA reports confirmed the sun had projected four unusually powerful solar flares (called coronal mass ejections) Earthward from December 5-14. Four flares in ten days aren’t noteworthy, but four strong flares are.
You’ll recall residents in the area of Seattle, Washington USA, were without electrical power beginning the morning of December 15, and, with straight-line winds of 90 mph, outages very likely occurred because magnetic storms resulting from relentless solar flares were pounding power grids. Refer EarthChangesMedia dot com
Have too many Earthlings lived in predictable environments of relatively peaceful landscapes for too long? Rather than considering the Sun, are we assuming technologies will protect our well being while our curiosities are sullied? Staying awake to the Sun’s activities is staying awake to physical habitats, and to possible alterations in acuity, cognition, and mobility—within all animals. (Yes, last time I looked, humans are still listed in the animal kingdom.)
Let’s take deep breaths of gratitude when sensing our safety, and the safety of our global sisters and brothers. From the list of numerous tips, when weather conditions were extreme; airlines changed courses; cell phones went on the blink; global positioning systems compromised; hibernations of animals or their navigational sensibilities were interrupted; or landscapes were disrupted, we can presume the Sun’s effects.
Refer Staying Awake synopses ‘Energy Ball Rotating,’ September 3 and 17, 2006, with NASA’s forecast (dated December 21, 2006) of predicted intense solar flares and winds from now throughout the Suns’ cycle-24 apex in 2011-2012.
September 11, 2001, changed the ways I regard relations, creativity, curiosity, history, science, and imagination. Then my own deep sleep became apparent once Staying Awake newsletter began publication. Now, it’s time again to remember the serendipity that eventually pivoted my lackluster cosmology into an opaline ezine 36 months ago.
David’s Top Story
In June, 2003, it came to mind that my dad passed away nearly four years ago. Sitting here quietly researching at my computer, I looked up to the wall where his photo hung, and asked (with a bit of tongue in cheek), ‘If you’re around, let me know in a way I don’t have to guess it’s you.’ That request alone was enough to surprise me!
Maybe minutes later, I received what at first I thought was an unsolicited email. It seems a business man, Derek, had had a visit from a spammer who visited his web site to add who knows how many email addresses, like mine, without permission. In his email, Derek expressed his apologies about the incident.
Needless to say, I was curious about Derek’s enterprise, and went to surf his site titled Smile At You. When I read that web address, my jaw dropped.
I saw Derek was an artist, an excellent wood carver. Golly, my dad was a wood carver, too!
Dear readers, if I hadn’t been awake and curious, I would’ve missed that near instantaneous nudge in answer to my request, and I would’ve missed a reason to gawk! Just think of both dad and Derek as artists, and David’s piano performance makes three artists—pointing to each other!
That narrative depicts what many of us have thought: Unimaginable Universal energies manifesting our physical bodies are the very energies carrying “Surprise!” instances that catch us off guard, and can delight, change, or thwart our expectations. However mysteriously, those energies prompt images that nod toward our path’s calling, escorted by lovely imbued memories tucked inside.
Exposing the Escort
I’m clearing out books. Over the years, every time I’ve chosen books to give away, I’ve always ended up keeping those in philosophy and psychology. Recalling that many books in my personal library are on the humanities (along with pounds and pounds of piano solo literature), I thought, ‘Yep, that’s me—that’s my calling.’
As I began writing this piece, I hoped exposing what is assumed my escort might remind us that we can interrupt and expand our usual way of discerning choices.
While emptying shelves of books, and packing them into boxes that would be delivered to the next round of readers, I asked, ‘What will I read next?’ Then, I saw Dr. James Hillman’s book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, and it might as well have fallen off the shelf into my hands. I should have known I’d get a quick answer—one of those “Surprise!” nudges, it was!
From memory of the first reading of Hillman’s book, I asked, ‘Is it I who is choosing, or am I intuiting a presence that chooses on my behalf? Who or what’s prompting the choices, and making me aware of the best possible choice available?’
I remembered my escort was exposing itself; still pledged to remind me of deep satisfactions for the performing arts and humanities, and the calling forth of artistic expressions.
Your Eminent Image
Dr. Hillman is known as a renegade psychologist, so asking, ‘Who’s prompting the choices? Who’s doing the choosing among those choices?’ are ideas few consider, or have forgotten. Hillman’s book fit the pick for my next read. ¹
This is Hillman’s acorn theory in a nutshell: Each life is formed by a particular eminent image, an escort that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny, just as the mighty oak’s destiny is written into the tiny acorn. Plato and the Greeks called the image daimon; Romans called it genius; Christians, guardian angel; and, depending on the context, today we use terms like character, soul, calling, vision, paradigm, passion, and so on.
An eminent image, thought too as partly reflected in your physical presence observed in a mirror, exemplifies the extraordinary power of calling to a particular path, and, to acknowledge and make use of that eminence is to see extraordinary people’s biographies of qualities also called forth in yours.
Extraordinary people like Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, Walt Disney, Truman Capote, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, George Orwell, Leonard Bernstein, bear the better witness because they show what we ordinary mortals simply cannot.
Clearly, we are engaged neither in a worship of the rich and famous nor in a study of creativity and genius, of why Mozart and van Gogh, and Newton and Thoreau were as they were. Yet our destiny must be woven by the same universal complexities. Extraordinary people are not a different sort; the workings of Universe in them are simply more transparent.
Is it too much to ask, then, to replace what we’ve come to presume another’s pathology and abnormalities with extraordinary and exceptionalities, letting the extraordinary be the vision against which our ordinary lives are examined? ²
Have you noticed a child’s invisible escort shows up convincingly, with such candor, unconstrained by pretence-cloaked behavior and thoughts? With or without our adult pretences, are we cognizant of our escort’s nudges to keep our choices in line with our path?
An escort belongs to everyone; an eminent image, a genius or daimon or angel, et al, is an invisible nonhuman escort. It is not to be confused with one’s conscience nor moral instruction, and it isn’t your ‘self.’
The legion of words and names do not tell us what ‘it’ is, but they do confirm the mysteriousness that it is. What was for centuries perceived as reliance on an eminent image must now, in post-medieval monotheisms, squeeze itself into shadowy hints, intuitions, inklings, sudden urges, oddities… ³
If you’re unaccustomed, esteeming your eminent image may be too ambitious and provocative, so you may instead call it your dream or ‘who you are.’ Looking backwards on life to see its invisible blueprint, or to observe how an escort helped style your choices and behaviors are other ways of approaching a big question mark of life—not your lifestyle, but your breathing, cognizant, accountable self—especially the exceptionally challenging, unsugar-coated choices in life.
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Staying Awake :: an ezine with your awareness in mind