NobleSouls.Net

Welcome to the ancient festival of Samhain - the time when the barrier between the visible and invisible is at it’s weakest and those that have left this world on their timeless journey can draw closer to us.

This is the time when our Celtic ancestors celebrated their ancestors and the legacy of life and dreams, myths, magic and legends that they inspired - reflecting not only on those that have gone before us but on their own mortality.

In Celtic lands the passing of someone is always celebrated with a ‘wake’. This is not a sad time but a cause of celebration - a time to rejoice at the passing of the soul to a better place. This time, the time of Samhain was a perfect time to reflect and reconnect with those we have loved and cared for.

This is also a time of primeval energies when barriers fall and worlds merge. The tradition of ‘trick or treating’ came from these lands when on this - of all nights - but it was also done throughout the year - the earth spirits (the Sidhe or the faery) had to be placated - ‘treated’ or they would curse your lands (trick) and livestock.

Today our children take the role.  Playful, in the moment, spiteful when crossed - who better reflects the earth spirits? Hallow’en (All Hallow’s Eve - the Christian festival of the Holy Souls which is tomorrow) is not a time of terror - but of reflection, reconnection and joy.

Happy Hallow’en. I’m off to fill my bags and drink the health of the ancestors and earth spirits!

One of the lessons of life that I have been priviliged to learn is to let go of what I have been conditioned to believe is ‘right’ and discover the ‘rightness’ for me.

A classic example of this is that I was brought-up to believe in ‘duty’ - what one must do. Duty was bound up with honour - therefore if you did not do your duty then you were not an honourable man. Now I recognise that these are outmoded concepts for many today but they were important to me.

The extension of course of not being an ‘honourable’ man was guilt. Now there is a useless emotion - one than binds us and brings us down. It serves no purpose except to control and limit our passions, our purposes and true, adventurous selves. It is a ‘programmed’ emotion and one which is designed to create conformity and control. The pain I have seen in people eaten up with it - their inability to live the one life they now have, all ruled by guilt.

I don’t ‘do’ guilt’ anymore and I no longer act out of ‘duty’. Both of these I believe are driven by the threat of shame and exclusion and serve no purpose in a rebel soul. We choose to live out of passion and purpose. We don’t do ‘duty’ but we do ‘responsibility’. For, taking control and accountability for our actions and engaging with others in a responsible manner is something that is driven by love.  Love for oneself and love for others.

I came across something about ‘la petite morte’ recently - the French for ‘the little death’ or the period of blackout during or after sexual orgasm.

This blackout or intensity has often been linked to the ecstacy of enlightenment and is the intensity of the experience during communion with the Divine. It amuses me how religion has controlled or removed the power of sexuality from any form of faith in the Divine. How the very religions which are meant to celebrate and honour creation have also sought to control that creative process through rules of how and when it can make itself manifest in relationships - usually by controlling the feminine power. Yet the saints and mystics of these religions are the same ones who have dedicated themselves to achieving the ecstacy of divine union.

In ancient times sexuality and sex was as much a part of the celebration of life and spirit as any form of prayer or ritual. Girls would offer themselves at temples to celebrate the act of sex as the act of creation and acknowledgement of our place as co-creators in the world.  The act of union of the divine in the masculine with the divine in the feminine is a powerful affirmation of the place that joy plays in creation and the power that ‘communion’ has to lift us to alternate experience. Where the ‘animal’ within us can unlock the bridge to the ‘divine’.

I met someone recently who was proud to call themselves an atheist - because belief in a divinity of any kind was not logical. For them the world was pure logic - emotion had no part to play in it at all.

It was interesting to explore with them their experience of faith - they had even studied Christian theology in their own personal quest for enlightenment but had remained steadfastly atheistic seeing neither sense nor reason in the belief of something beyond our understanding.

We chatted around things over a drink and gradually it came out that they placed little value on emotion. That, for them, logic was stronger than emotion every time. As we discussed this I asked “if it is perfectly logical to self-preserve, to serve only oneself where does the motivation come from for a father or a mother to willingly sacrifice their lives for the lives of their children. To place themselves in harm’s way, even death itself, to protect those they loved? Surely that demonstrated that love was beyond the self? That logic was not the stronger power but emotion? Is it not emotion that gives us the strength to act selflessly, to act when everything screams not to?”

Then they shared that they had not yet experienced love - that this was still a journey that awaited them.

Love is a powerful force - it can cripple and break us or it can raise us to new heights of existence - and between those levels there are many other levels of what we term ‘love’. But the absence of love itself is a terrible thing.

I’ve always believed that the Creator - however you may perceive it/him/her - speaks to us through our dreams but sings to us through our emotions.