mmmyyyttthhhooosss + LOGOS

recovering from spiritual jealousy I didn't know I had—not another ego trip!

Last week I talked about the higher level thinking that comes when we grow ourselves up. This week my mind went elsewhere. I had a meandering thought the other day, eh not meandering…it was one of those thoughts that sort of squeezed out like toothpaste from the tube after the long applied pressure of a long philosophical discussion.

searching. for. a. link….an insight…an opening

It came after a mildly disturbing experience I had of myself in my meditation teacher’s training where I got hung up trying to figure out if Tibetan Buddhism’s take on reality is true or not. I went into a full blown panic.

It was an involuntary physical response that got turned on week 3 and then stretched out over the next 7. I was rattled. I had sweaty palms and pits, my heart would pound every time I spoke, I couldn’t figure out if the space was safe for me or not. Something deep was getting triggered. I was sitting in some charge.

There’s far out there stuff in the lineage but I’d encountered it before, I was honestly surprised by my response. I had never been rocked like this by a training. It took me til week 7 to sort it out and in the meantime it twas some vulnerable discomfort.

It sent me into a spiral.

The downward kind.

Here’s what it touched on.

It touched on the part of me that first felt superfluous, a 12 year old who doubted her existence mattered, if anyone would notice if she suddenly disappeared, who still from time to time wonders if anyone really likes her company or if she’s just as good as the next person.

object permanence is tricky for us with attachment trauma.

Don’t stress I know how to keep that 12 year old company. She is a hooot. We have a blast.

That part has been seeking a higher order to make sense of things ever since.

I cannot deny the divine, and I no longer see myself as deprived or out of touch with it. In fact, most of what my work over the past 5 years has been focused on is about creating a life in which I’m able to be in touch with it consistently.

I’ve placed it at the center, oriented my being toward it, dialed in the signal, and got busy channeling. Not for any reason other than wanting to make my life richer, somehow more concentrated.

I’ve made space for it in heartbreak, moments of loneliness, matters of great curiosity, and a deep wild, feral need I cant quite describe that yearns to be in touch with her.

The bliss is higher than orgasm.

What I’ve learned over the years is the divine doesn’t only visit me in big ecstatic moments, acid trips and aya sits.

no no no.

she is dancing with me always.

So here was the ear worm I couldn’t solve for.

Do we define our existence on the basis of first principles and cosmic law? Pedestal an irreducible logic and reason over passion, poetry and feeling? De really escape to the Ivory Tower and just bunker down?

Or

Do we imagine ourselves the Buddha and stay committed to the mythic, forever working towards enlightenment? Do we really buy into mistaking the symbolic for the actual? I have largely divested from the mind over matter sentiment but is enlightenment actually a thing?

my deeply expert mystic friend ben would laugh and say no zoe, they aren’t teaching you that?

I’ve always had this edge of competition with people who seem more in touch with their spirituality, suspecting they are IN on something that I’m not, that they know something I don’t.

That if I turn my attention away I’m going to miss out on some big reveal about reality that will …. that will…

there.

will WHAT exactly?

evolve

evolve

evolve

evolve

evolve

evolve our consciousness? our soul?

….then I think, let’s get busy taking care of earth first, shall we?

This is where I correct my thinking. What value does it give me to gain access to the next realm? To know what happens next?

Does it actually make a difference?

Like what fundamentally, measurably changes?

Hannah Williams makes the best memes on her ig @organic.abundance

And why am I being so greedy? The mystery is tryna stay the mystery or we woulda cracked the code ages ago. I mean maybe not, maybe all timing is divine but it’s not like people haven’t been working on these questions for thousands of years.

I am not the first to ask them.

They came from…somewhere.

I’d say they are in service of this here earthly existence. I’d put some $$$ on that.

Like I really wanna let that be enough. The excess, the waste, the striving, enough already. There’s more than enough.

Pretty sure thats it, am I being a good person here on earth? Am I committed to that? To keep playing the game? See how long it can go? What’s my duty? My role? Who do I serve and who is it inappropriate to serve? Who is safe to connect with. Who can I be myself with. Where can I give and make more life? What can I give a new life?

That feels like a combo of Mythos and Logos. I’m not so worried about picking the right one as I am interested in their relationship. What they wake up in each other.

What I’m more interested in is the s p a c e

[between]

those two ideas.

Where eros lives.

What’s their individual function and how are they intrinsically linked?

Tripping into my more complex thinking, I focus on the yes and...

so let’s see.

According to Merriam Webster:

Logos:

1: the divine wisdom manifest in the creation, government, and redemption of the world and often identified with the second person of the Trinity

2: reason that in ancient Greek philosophy is the controlling principle in the universe

Mythos:

1: a pattern of beliefs expressing often symbolically the characteristic or prevalent attitudes in a group or culture

ok interestiiiiiiiing, divine is showing up in the definition of Logos on Merriam Webster.

😏

“The point of Logos is not to reduce our understanding to the organizing principles of the cosmos and then never color in the pages again.” Ilana

we talked this over her and I, at the Holocaust Museum in Montreal. That Newsletter is coming later.

It’s also not meant to take the mythic literally, forgo all logic and forget where and what we are.

Hannah Williams | @organic.abundance

Logos grounds us in a reality where action is taken, where we experience the effects of causes planted before our time, while Mythos allows us to imagine what has been and what could be, driving us toward infinite potential in touch with what might be possible to make meaning of our efforts and make efforts that serve a better today, maybe even tomorrow.

One we may not in fact live to see ourselves.

One is in service of while the other is in the spirit of.

And even then it’s not so black and white.

*spinning wheal of death but make it yin and yang*

⚡️ mythos and logos are like a battery 🔩

two opposite poles holding a charge.

a charge of streaming, running, current.

can you see the light?

that golden spindly thread gently twisting to an end

I’m going to let the many scriptures and stories that tell the mythic experience of humanity remind me any quest for enlightenment is about becoming better now, for humanity’s sake, all sentient beings, trees, the sky, moon, for the waters, mamma earth, gaia, panchamama.

And that THAT is all in service of putting me in touch with the divine.

maiden.
mother.
crone.

Sure there might be after realms and before lives to consider but if they all point us back to the idea that we get masterful at living well now, maybe it doesn’t matter so much WHAT happens next if its in the spirit of the good the true and the beautiful.

Maybe I can set that ego trip down. For good.

Maybe just maybe they are saying turn all the way towards the feminine. The dense, dark, soil. Chaos. What if they serve as reminders to build a living relationship with death.

Something we haven’t been historically good at in the west. Being with death or extending devotion to the feminine.

Perhaps they serve as a reminder once death arrives, we will be powerless to it. And it’s the only thing for sure. Maybe that’s all you need to deeply consider to best get on living baby..

The myths seem to be methods used to humanize and unite our efforts, and encourage our capacity for peacemaking where the edges of our difference meet. And to warn us, of our true more primal nature and instincts.

They are humanity expressing itself, as the universe wakes up to itself. I like that version of what reality is…its just the right kind of poetic.

We’ve got some impressive storytelling in our history books and mythic tales worth remembering.

Some good hard won lessons if we know where and how to look.

Kali, butcher paper, magazine, charcoal, 2024

xx
thanks for being here for this midnight ramble. It’s 11:17pm here in Montreal. close enough ;)
z