On Meaning Making
Symbol, synchronicity, & how to understand the Metaphysical mind
☤ Authors Note: Summer in Nashville has been taxing and invigorating in equal measure. Conversations with other people always lead back to the idea of ‘enoughness.’ Each time, I am invited to dive a little deeper into my personal idea of what is enough, what it is that I truly want in life - not necessarily what I have been convinced that I need. There is a throughline of this concept here in these essays. This idea of enough is absolutely one of my personal burnished threads. My husband and I use the phrase ‘good-better-best’ to explain our long term visions to one another. For now, let me bring us to the idea of Faith & the vulnerability that comes with it.
Meeting Her.
March 13th 2023 - The British Museum, London, UK, 12:11 pm
I felt rushed — slightly panicked — weaving through knots of bodies, drawn to a specific moment in time. 3,800 years ago, someone pressed a depiction of the Mesopotamian Goddess Ishtar into a piece of clay to create a mass produced depictions of Her for the purpose of worship. Standing in front of this small clay relief, I became light headed. Suddenly, a crushing sense of longing overtook me, like needing a hug from my Mother...
For a few moments I let the mixture of melancholy, piety, grief, pleasure, & even rage wash over me. I felt panicked - no one around me understood that we were standing in a TEMPLE, a CHURCH! We were surrounded by concepts older than dust and people were taking photographs! How inane and disrespectful!
I was teetering on the edge of a Gnostic experience in the middle of a crowded museum - not exactly the place to drop to one’s knees in a religious fervor. When I got back to where my husband and our friend were standing, I still felt slightly overwhelmed, even gloomy, and yet so blessed — reverence is such a daunting thing. When I attempted to explain why I was unwell, our friend told me that what I was experiencing sounded familiar. Stendahl Syndrome.
“I was in a sort of ecstasy… Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty… I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations . . . Everything spoke so vividly to my soul.” - Marie-Henri Beyle aka ‘Stendahl’
The ‘child seeking Mother’ feeling that I had experienced at Ishtar’s feet? Spiritual and religious individuals understand it. We with a metaphysical world view honestly chase it, that celestial sensation. We crave the frisson of Something Else. When we are first beginning our spiritual journey, we follow the feeling from practice to practice, trying to capture & place it inside of ourselves, at the base of our necks, where the hairs stand up. Contact with something greater than us is often astounding.
A Mystic sat at the feet of Kali and wept.
“Sometimes I would open my mouth, and it would be as if my jaws reached from heaven to the underworld. "Mother!" I would cry desperately. I felt I had to pull her in, as a fisherman pulls in fish with his dragnet.” - Ramakrishna
In 1927, Romain Rolland wrote to his good friend, famed psychologist Sigmund Freud. In the letter, he first described his personal understanding of divine awareness, inspired by the experiences of Hindu Mystic Ramakrishna, as an “oceanic feeling” - a sense of interconnectedness, the feeling that all religious or spiritual individuals tap into when faith becomes a motivating factor for expansion. Rolland was a Nobel Prize winning writer, Communist, & mystic - his understanding of the psychospiritual condition can be examined through many different lenses, including this one.
In 1929, when published his collected essays, La vie de Ramakrishna, Rolland was attempting to bring his understanding of Tantric religious fervor and conscious-alteration through to the public Western mind. The experiences that Ramakrishna had of meeting and being known by Kali, the Goddess of time, destruction and creation: "a sensation of 'eternity', a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded." His goal was to explain how religious reverance can be seen as a vast, primordial depth.
“The buildings with their different parts, the temple, and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with a terrific noise, to swallow me up! I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother.” On his lips when he regained consciousness of the world was the word “Mother”. - Ramakrishna
Our nature is to Perceive.
When we realize we are a small portion of a greater whole, our grip on patterns begins to tighten - lest we slip. By using our discernment to examine those patterns, we are attempting to understand - using our best judgement, our strongest instincts. We experience the world through a lens, a Schema, a wire-frame structure upon which we hang our interpretations, stories, expectations. Each of us has a variation upon that wire-frame created by the deviations in our individual lives - our personal interests, the opportunities we have had, and the choices we have made.
When building a personal metaphysical practice with the intention of creating rhythm and intention, we use our schema to inform the direction we will travel. The shiny, sparkly interests we are drawn to in turn draw us in, leading us to collect data over time which reinforces our schema. We experience glimmers of this knowing in what Carl Jung referred to as "synchronicity,” moments that appear connected when viewed from our own individualistic perspective, from the Self.
When you begin to slow down and take notice of your surroundings, you begin to experience a clarity that allows for deeper awareness. This awareness then brings to light our interconnectedness to all of life and a sense of unity. This is the basis for any religiosity or spirituality that one might find themselves associated with. While all of this is true, one must avoid over examining the Mystical and simply Feel.
It is human nature to crave expansion and contraction simultaneously, to desire an explanation and an answer for the Unknown, the Other. In some cultures, they still have the means to support this sort of Knowing. Of course, one must consider Apophenia when discussing the possible toxicity of this form of expansion. If an individual struggles with depersonalization or compulsive behaviors, tracking synchronicity can become unruly, obsessive, painful. These potentially difficult circumstances occur when individuals who struggle with their attachment to reality begin to travel down roads of self-examination while unsupported by a measured and guided framework. It is important to have a firm hold on the Local Self, the body, the breath in order to ground you in the newness of greater awareness.
More recently, the study of Neurotheology has begun, with scientists attempting to measure religious and psychospiritual states. People want to know why we become Awestruck and I worry that by explaining these experiences too much, we begin to dampen them.
“These ecstatic experiences are thought to be caused by the activation of the anterior insular cortex and some neuronal networks (basically related to mirror neurons and salience) participating in introspection, social cognition, memory, and emotional processes. Thus, neuroscience could explain in a retrospective way some facts surrounding the situations of such relevant figures as Paul the Apostle, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada, and Dostoevsky, whose origin was previously considered paranormal or supernatural … In all these events, there are pleasant and affective symptoms which have a great impact on patients.” - Neurology of ecstatic religious and similar experiences: Ecstatic, orgasmic, and musicogenic seizures
Our need to track symbols and participate in group ritual is wired deep into our bones. As our culture loses rites of passage and connection to genuine piety, we can see rampant substance and nostalgia addictions, obsessive fandom, sports viewership as substitute for religion. We have begun to supplement modern cult-like behavior for the loss of genuine spirituality, neo-idolatry for animistic awareness, bypassing for faith. This is not a terminal condition.
We can instead allow ourselves to be wrapped in the velvety-warm glow of possibility. My personal metaphysical body is primed and ready for Stendhal Syndrome - for astonishment. It feels like the remembering and curiosity of the child-mind being exercised. In order to create space for more Magick in our lives, we have to shift back toward an Enchanted worldview. Our inner child, who screams to have their toes in the mud, beckons us to Remember. Some of us have a stronger connection to the curious, whimsical, effervescent charge required to spark this line of thinking. And I personally work to keep my senses sharp for those wave-crashing connections, glimpses of Oceanic Feeling.
“… cultivating a sense of awe periodically incites upon our well-being, calming down our nervous system thanks to biological changes such as the release of oxytocin, a natural hormone and neurotransmitter that manages, among other things, our sense of bonding with others.” Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner
Thank you for reading!
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with a friend. ✨
If these last few essays have interested you, I suggest you read about The Three Degrees of Wisdom: Epicureanism, Stoicism, & NeoPlatonism - the attached article is written by Bruce J. MacLennan, Phd, the author of The Wisdom of Hypatia: Ancient Spiritual Practices for a More Meaningful Life. One of the 4 books I am reading currently, I’m taking it in waves, with a fine point pen & I am finding that somewhere in the milieu of these Ideas lies a personal Truth. I highly recommend it.
Collecting my thoughts to write BurnishedThread has an absolute joy and I am so pleased to have you on this journey with me. Let me take a moment and say how much I admire those of you who write on a routine & consistent basis! I am pleased with the work I have produced thus far and am looking forward to continuing on this platform for the foreseeable future.
Substack will offer me the opportunity to host recordings of these long form essays alongside interviews with individuals in my community via a podcast! That version of this project will likely begin in the Autumn and I am hopeful that you all will be as enriched as I am by the experience.
❧ Raven