“The contents of the collective unconscious are archetypes, primordial images that reflect basic patterns that are common to us all, and which have existed universally since the dawn of time.”
– Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious
It is an archetypal journey. The action, the beckoning, the characteristic, the defined, the empowering, the foolish, the grand, the hierarchical, the idealistic, the justified, the karmic, the love-blind, the materialistic, the nurturing, the ordinary, the perilous, the quark-shaped, the resisting, the surviving, the tempestuous, the utopian, the visible, the wanderers, the X-catchers, the Y-believers, the zealous.
Collectively it is all done. But still the individual holds the absolute power to create… to create once again, to retell, to relive. And together we witness.
If you find the process as a slow one, then let the jester hit you with paradoxes. Understand, later you will, that every cell is wholly participating and it isn’t slow or fast, but magnificently beautiful.
This elemental connection when subtly enters the conscious, baffles and simultaneously glorifies us.
Nearing the known, reaching the unknown; beginning with a fear, ending triumphantly or vice-versa; thinking that it doesn’t matter, feeling that it does… each journey has a homeland.
Well, the map in my possession is incomplete, I still have to collect many missing jigsaw pieces- Ponyo, Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, and more. I am all AGOG!
Dominant colours– green, blue, white, yellow, and red – on the map, endless stretches of farmlands, mountains, rivers, sunny days, foggy evenings, starry nights, and cottony skies are fulfilling.
Colours reinstate the quiet you, making you sensitively aware. Wide EYES!
The map warmly takes you to different worlds; worlds you will strongly start to believe you belong in, you always did. Yes, each world on the map has that charm, each world is linked through MAGIC.
Magical creatures, seen for the first time as you follow the map, will become your close friends, the closest ones. Tell them your secrets to make them yours forever.
The map took me to the magnificent majestic world of Princess Mononoke. I confess I was afraid, threatened for my familiarity with and my memories of this life-journey disowned me and left.
Alone I walked, met many Kodamas and I walked ahead. Alone and FASCINATED!
This world merges evil and good, rights and wrongs, anarchy, and peace… thoughts and feelings of being in the centre, with a grand forest and a grand iron fortress, converging. I will return to this world, for I have to.
Do you know what Prince Ashitaka said to Lady Eboshi when she asked him what was he there for? Prince Ashitaka said, ‘To see with eyes unclouded by hate.’ GRAND!
In the world called Spirited Away, I was with Chihiro all the while even when she became Sen… or was I? She kept swinging on the threshold, meeting and understanding the spirits and their realm.
With Chihiro I crossed the tunnel in the end, we turned together with a measure of hope, wanting, trust, and belief.
We left and the threshold disappeared, but the feeling stayed. The feeling is ALIVE.
The map will take you, to your utter pleasure, both in the future and the past, in the known and the unknown, in their story and your story.
Gladly I followed the dirt road and reached the world of Totoro, My Neighbour Totoro. All I did there was dancing, under the huge tree in the Tsukamori forest along with Satsuki, Mei, Totoro, and two small Totoros.
Listen to the track we all danced to –
Déjà vu, dreams, and fantasy fused together in this world and promised. A promise so DEEP, one never made before.
Oh how the dreams never end, how we build on and on… maybe for the dreams speak to us honestly without any guilt, without shying from LOVE.
I have been on Howl’s Moving Castle, what a wonderful world.
But I warn you, it is like being in a dream, a lengthy dream, one which tackles evil and disgust and the power game; where love and compassion dimly shine and darkness shakes you from within, leaving you weak.
If you hold on, Howl the wizard fights back and casts a spell to restore harmony and balance.
How well a spell can work? For how long will it preserve? Corruption spreads, how will it all end? Howl’s Flying Castle a dreamlike reality…
I left this world after learning how to make a castle fly – apart from Calcifer’s (the fire-demon) help, you need to nurture freedom within. VOILA!
And so the map showed me another beautiful world which was all about flying, The Wind Rises it was called. Know that ‘flying and magic’ is a must in life. Abide by for there is magic WITHIN.
If you happen to forget yourself, truly forget yourself, may you be reminded as the wind rises, that you must LIVE.
Live to fulfil, to cherish, to create, to inspire, to love, to remember, to let go, to smile, to embrace the truth as it all ENDS.
I will continue to make the map to Miyazaki as slowly it is being revealed to me how the dreams are unfolded, how the stories are made, what it takes to truly believe in it all, and what a treasure living is.
P.S- My friend Tashi gave me the first piece of this map, the one that took me to the world of Princess Mononoke; this is the tradition, I now pass it on to you.
A joy so complete without any rise or fall, so free without any time corners, so real without true being false, false being true.
Witnessing the colours dance by, I swayed along to see I am nowhere around.
Light’s brightness pierced through and through with love and warmth, permeating the space and beyond. Embracing it, I started to radiate but didn’t see myself around.
The whole enchilada gathered momentum, passing and reaching the whole enchilada.
I gazed and found the beginning and the destination to be the same, but I didn’t reveal it for I was happy and still, not present there.
Rhythm flowed through the grand wadis, deeply and rapidly it flowed to form a vortex. Whirling merrily in rhythm I followed without any wish for more or less, when I realised I am missing.
The sea of quietness fulfilled itself and the sound of stars falling enhanced it beautifully. I saw it in double wonderment because it was sublime and my presence there was a lie.
If not the gust of wind, what was so strong there, if not the heat of fire, what then burned majestically there, if not the heavens of this, that and all the worlds, what made it truly blissful there?
I do not know the answer, for I was undeniably not there.
I could never reach there, no ‘I’ ever did. One with the One, alive and in absolute existence, surpassing the limitations, one in Union is the one with the answer.
And once you get the answer you choose to forget it right before entering the door to illimitable splendour.
It is kind of, sort of looking amazed and all it has done is talking… talking to itself. If thoughts wear colours then this mind is making rainbows after rainbows.
Mind’s petty issues
Whether a smoothie is meant to be always cold? If instead of right we had turned round and round? Why am I scared to say, ‘I said so’?
Mind’s grand tales
Oh, endless journey don’t you end… don’t you end before I set the hat right and check the change within and without with a smile. Don’t you end or change or stop or move or be false. Be happy.
Mind, when at peace
Waves, lights, colours ocean up and down for seconds, until the old stories return. Back and forth between peace and everything else.
Mind talks
And with enough repetitions dear mind, one is ought to remember it all.
Mind makes
The one standing under the shed, waiting or not waiting, unsure whether to wear the spectacles or not, is being made and unmade at that very moment.
Loitering mind
It rests quietly when one sleeps, but only to run wild and free in the dreams.
Sooner or later usher the mind beyond what it tells. Then have a laugh. A real laugh.
It is still writing. This writing won’t change. Or it will, if growth is synonymous to change, if evolving is change, if awakening is change, if change is truly blissful. It has bundle full of memories stored sincerely, memories that glisten when talked about. New vistas, old memories, feelings usurp, and the writing continues.
Yes, it continues, even though realisations slow down with time. Amazingly, just in a déjà vu second it speeds up, collecting all shades and colours of memories, infinite times faster than before. And what do memories do? Memories create, elaborate humbly, resolve, express, spread warmth and love. Pure, true love!
It in the making of itself uses the eternal ink of faith. Sometimes it believes and sometimes it smirks, cheats, forgets, sinks and turns away. But it nevertheless keeps writing, always. Either with a heavy heart or a feathery lightness. And when in the end it listens to its heart’s beating, the heaviness vanishes.
It in the making of itself? Whence did it all began? Listening to its memories it gets to know whence. A tough journey gets no support, but a rough straight answer. Accept or ignore the answer, toss it away or idolize it, the answer stays.
Incredulously, observably it lives in its own truth, the truth, the only one for it. While walking in every direction, on every day, in every moment, it distils the world through its sieve, adding and subtracting memories at its true whim.
Lightly, o lightly, it writes forgivingly, gaily, o gaily, it enshrines its memories, softly, o softly it speaks of the truth, deeply, o deeply, it sinks to reach the end, bravely, o bravely it passes on the pen. And the writing continues.
Almost inaudible jibber-jabber, continuous sound of a conversation going on and on, then someone squeaks, there must be two or more of them, or maybe the person behind the wall is talking to herself.
Sure there are laughs, loud ones, suppressed ones, fake ones, shameless ones. I laugh along but only with one of the ones.
Silence surfaced for seconds, I then pay attention to the pigeon coos’ outside my window and the loud airplane coos’ passing up across my sky.
Oh! The murmur begins. Happy long hours of chit-chatting has ended for the friends. They are now mildly viewing what life has offered them each in the past few months. Yes, few months I say, that is how old the memory stays, unless, of course, it is given the chance to time travel.
I hear a question ‘coffee?’ Evening yawns and gazes passed at the clock welcomes automatically warm beverages.
I yawn and look at the clock and don’t move; I am doodling. O now they are repeating a name, it is Martha, also a Petunia and a Joshua. A triangle I assume, but which one… scalene I think.
After the reverie I become once again aware about my chitchatting neighbours. When and where did the hours go by? There is a lull in the talking. I might doze off.
What is this? I hear rushed movements, I sit up straight, a door bangs open and I jump up and run towards the main door, my focus – the peep-hole. I see two girls, both of same height, one is carrying a bag. What is going on?
One of them says, ‘do you think…?’ The other replies, ‘betcha, she is lying.’ They leave.
I stand against the main door, thinking who were they talking about, Martha or Petunia? Coming back to my room, I lie down and start doodling again.
Ding-dong! I am back on the door, I see a boy standing outside my neighbour’s door. I sense he is Joshua. Eager to know that I am correct, I open the door and tell him that my neighbours aren’t at home; the boy turns to leave when outlandishly I ask, ‘Joshua?’ Right then my neighbour, a girl, looking sleepy, opens the door.
Surprised and embarrassed, maintaining a faint smile, I shut the door. The boy speaks, ‘Ma’am I have a courier for J. Pollack from CITI Bank.’ My ears glued to the main door. ‘Joshua doesn’t live here anymore.’ Slam!
Ideas dance in and out of my mind, there is a story here. I sit down to write. Fresh page, pen in hand, I am thinking…
Embracing, accepting, forgiving the doll walks on. Struggling, fearing, hoping the doll looks around. Learning, recognizing, changing the doll steps out, no longer a doll, but an individual.
Jeremiah wrote in the letter that Ferdinand must continue his journey across the five oceans, dipping when the moon rises and shinning when the tempest calls, stopping to explore the alien lands and fleeing if he sees a woman with snakes for hair or the trolls.
Ferdinand understood not much for he was not travelling to any place and was rather at home, sick and jaded.
Jeremiah further expressed his own adventure of a morning walk through the deep dark forest when he met a king cobra who nattered about this and that, about the tales of the netherworld and of a future when the sky was to fall down; who got to the point only at last with a fang-full smile and asked him to bring all the eggs of the cuckoo bird that lived nearby.
Ferdinand, confused, spoke aloud, “But Jeremiah goes to that park near the colony for morning walks…”
Jeremiah then mentioned in capital letters the highlights of THIS WORLD –
1) The raven flew away and the raven came back, we talked, ate and enquired, ‘who can change the track?’
2) Maria knows that Keith knows that Jenny doesn’t know, and now we also know.
3) For a few days we hosted the Police at the colony, ha ha!
Ferdinand sat straight, scratched his head, and tried calling Jeremiah – “the call cannot be completed.”
Jeremiah signed off his letter with the words – flying to Alpha Centauri, good you left your swimming goggles, peace-out mate.
Ferdinand got up, stood numb holding that letter in his hand for a few seconds, then haphazardly packed his bag and left the house. Bang!
He closed the door behind him, not replying to his mother’s alarmed shout, he dashed out.
Ferdinand forgot that Jeremiah is a writer, a writer by choice, profession, and living standards.
He also forgot his keys to the flat.
Now no one would be there to welcome him back in the city as Jeremiah was flying to Alpha Centauri.
Perhaps it is me who is circling the glowing warm glorious light.
Music is flowing, revolving, working as Time it has harmonized every moment.
Truly, that is why my whirling floating steps don’t stop.
Bright suns, moons, planets dance round and round, in absolute bliss.
I quietly follow the bliss as I listen. It is the Sama.
Long, long time back ago, Rumi, the Sufi saint, was passing a market place when he heard the gold beaters at work, their hammering noise was melody to him as he could hear ‘la ilaha ilallah’ (no god but Allah) in that beating of the gold. Rumi, exhilarated, started dancing and whirling there and then.
Sama means listening, listening to the One, meditating and accepting the One wholly.
Sufis have the tradition to celebrate the Sama, a spiritual concert; with praying, singing, dancing and reciting poems begins this mystical journey to surpass visual reality and enter the divine world – no self, but the Self.
The whirling dance, the soulful music slowly takes you away to be in the light of the Ultimate, a close encounter so as you listen and listen truly what is beyond the five senses, and then you return amongst many imperfections, but this time with a compassionate heart and a free soul.
Rhythmic patterns of the bright light haven’t disappeared.
My spinning steps haven’t stopped either. Feather hands guide me.
The macrocosm meets the microcosm, politely becoming a wave.
At some time I settle down, quietly look up and stay there.
A roguish year, 2020, I believe was a twist in our LIVE story. Terrible, oh, terrible things happened. Let us nurture hope, let us learn from our mistakes, let us help each other and contribute honestly to this change.
Let the old charm of stories work, let stories heal your tired heart.
This colossal twist proves that the great writer is planning to finish a chapter, but the story is far from over. Dawn is about to break, the sun rays will fall on a new beginning soon.
Come to Chiming Stories, pocket old and new posts and watch, along with me, the horizon.
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Arthdal Chronicles is a South Korean fantasy drama TV series that takes us back to the Bronze Age in a mythical land named Arth, where different human species and tribes struggle to be on the top of the power pyramid.
Silver cascade shimmering the night sky, music to the waves and surreal beauty to the eyes, the Moon loves the art of discipline.
It may be difficult to believe for the Moon’s splendour defies time, it stupefies the clock, it follows the path of a dreamer, but how could this be possible if the Moon knew not discipline?
Yes fly! For walking on the second track is dull and usual, but dreaming high, high, high requires tools. Tools like the right pair of shoes, a chirpy, gritty soul that eats butter-jam dreams, a soul that drinks milky-milky creams.
In this moment, I am a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I am complete and incomplete, I am pleased and uncertain, I wish for nothing and I know I have to wait.
Because the distance covered reminds me of the hurdles I have crossed and the ones I could not, it reminds me of a throbbing past and a dreamy future and it reminds me of how much time is left.
Meredith and the Green Lake
Illimitable Splendour
A joy so complete without any rise or fall, so free without any time corners, so real without true being false, false being true.
