Today I wanted to talk about something that maybe we don't talk about as much, and a lot of material put out into the world doesn't discuss - what happens when we get spiritual messages or insights we don't understand. I'll be lumping those concepts under the term gnosis for this discussion.
This may just be me, but when I read other people's gnosis material it always seems to be presented as an amazing thing that the person immediately grasped. World changing information or poignant insight or deep cosmology, laid out for the person in ways that make the meaning self evident, or carefully explained.
Maybe the Othercrowd I deal with just don't work that way? In which case I could almost envy those who have everything presented in such clear ways. But I think that I can't be the only one who sometimes - or often - is dealing with obscurity and opaqueness. I feel that I am given puzzles to solve as often as I'm given clear answers, and usually the clear answers only come when I have repeatedly failed to get the idea otherwise*. There's a degree of impatience on Their part as I slog my way through metaphysical concepts that quite frankly break my brain.
I have several times been given things in Irish, which I am not fluent in, and had to struggle to translate. This is particularly difficult when its longer messages or in one case a song that I have to remember then try to write down afterwards. I've also been given messages - like being warned about the pandemic - that only made sense in hindsight in part because my own perspective was so limited and my assumptions about the concept limited me further.
I find that gnosis is very difficult. Its a constant process of taking what's given and then working - hard - to understand it. Very rarely do I get things that are clear and straightforward and easy. But on the other side of that coin it is worth the effort to suss things out. Every time I fit a new piece to that puzzle the picture it makes becomes clearer and I get a bit closer to feeling like I actually understand, in some small way, things that are otherwise beyond my comprehension. It can be enormously frustrating to always struggle to get each little bit, but things do come clear in the end (usually).
If you feel that way too then my advice is don't give up. Other people may make it seem easy and fluid but it isn't for everyone. It isn't for me. Its difficult, but its worth it.
So in the spirit of the above I want to share a message from a recent meditation (note the colors are literal, not allusions to human skin colors):
"The Red Mother is the blood of life
The pulse and struggle and joy
The Black Mother is the fertile earth
The source of birth and rebirth
The White Mother is bone & death
The one who takes and returns
The Green Mother weaves all together
Into a single inseparable wholeness
Presence & possibility & impermanence"
No I don't entirely understand what it means.
No it isn't allusions to named goddesses.
No it's not about archetypes.
I was meditating on who the Other might or would worship and got that.
I asked in a bold follow up question if the Red Mother was the Queen of Apples, or another name for Her, and was very bluntly told I don't understand anything.
So that's fun.
*I only found out the name of my fairy Queen because I pieced together context clues, arrived at a very wrong conclusion, boldly suggested it, and she was so annoyed at how wrong I was that she told me the correct answer.
If you feel that way too then my advice is don't give up. Other people may make it seem easy and fluid but it isn't for everyone. It isn't for me. Its difficult, but its worth it.
So in the spirit of the above I want to share a message from a recent meditation (note the colors are literal, not allusions to human skin colors):
"The Red Mother is the blood of life
The pulse and struggle and joy
The Black Mother is the fertile earth
The source of birth and rebirth
The White Mother is bone & death
The one who takes and returns
The Green Mother weaves all together
Into a single inseparable wholeness
Presence & possibility & impermanence"
No I don't entirely understand what it means.
No it isn't allusions to named goddesses.
No it's not about archetypes.
I was meditating on who the Other might or would worship and got that.
I asked in a bold follow up question if the Red Mother was the Queen of Apples, or another name for Her, and was very bluntly told I don't understand anything.
So that's fun.
I know that this information is important, but I don't yet know exactly how or why. I'll keep puzzling it out until I eventually get it, but there is a level of frustration. I want to understand it, it pulls at me, but I just don't yet. In a way its like looking at a beautiful work of art that makes you cry and not understanding why it evokes that emotion.
No matter how easy some carefully curated and presented gnosis might seem to be, the truth in my opinion is that gnosis is messy. Its complicated and convoluted and hard to understand sometimes and that's alright. Spiritual insights and messages are personal and they speak in a language of symbols and metaphor and layers.
*I only found out the name of my fairy Queen because I pieced together context clues, arrived at a very wrong conclusion, boldly suggested it, and she was so annoyed at how wrong I was that she told me the correct answer.
