KEEP THE LASAGNE FLYING!
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| Photo by Rodion Kutsaev via Unsplash |
KEEP THE LASAGNE FLYING!
Robert Anton Wilson wrote about “flying
lasagne” in his book "Reality Is What You Can Get Away With" back in
1992. In his final writings before his death Uncle Bob wrote "I don't see
how to take death seriously. I look forward without dogmatic optimism, but
without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagne
flying."
Whatever the world is facing this
decade of high strangeness, let’s keep the lasagne flying!
This is blog post 101. The new
weekly HAPPY series (a 2021 reimagining / great reset of 2020’s Resilience Magic)
begins in a couple of weeks. Until then, a short – yet on theme – distraction.
Grab a fork, some garlic bread, a
nice glass of wine and dig in!
Do you feel happy?
Are you happy? Do you feel and
express gratitude? Have you strength of purpose? Have you found your power? Are
you a rational and perhaps radical optimist? Have you been practising you
bounce-back-ability during pandemic times? Do you nurture good relationships?
Are you in touch with your inner spirituality? Do you live and experience life
in a positive glass-half-full manner? Are you your own best
self-help guide for yourself? Do you feel happy?
In his book ‘Flourish’, Professor
Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania developed a model called
PERMA as a way of enabling resilience with positive psychology:
· Positive Emotions
· Engagement
· Relationships
· Meaning
· Achievement
Chris Johnstone, and Miriam Akhtar –
both expert practitioners in this field - extended this model further at the ‘College of Wellbeing’ to add extra layers to the alphabet soup:
· Resilience
· Mindfulness
· Physical
They share these Positive Psychologies tips in their many books and courses. These are techniques to help yourself feel better, savour the good stuff in life, better encourage mutual flourishing, find inner depth, maintain purpose, keep a strong head game, see real progress, resolutely goal-set, remain optimistic (despite all circumstances), be flexible in one’s thinking yet also keep within a ‘realist’ frame, accepting stoically everything (a radical notion) and being compassionate to the self and other. Their teachings enable us to manage our own stress, self-ease addictions, monitor neuroses, check mood swings, and soothe demons.
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| January 2022 study goals |
In December 2019 through early 2020 (just before and through the start of the COVID pandemic and when here in Singapore we went into our Circuit Breaker) I took Chris’s Resilience Practitioner certification online (a 20hr professional coaching development accreditation course with The Association of Coaching). Soon, I’d like to study Miriam’s ‘Positive Psychology Foundation’ certificate (also online) to deepen my practice and widen my hands-on experience. I have read her books (referenced in my earlier blog posts) on happiness and Positive Psychology to beat Depression and they are excellent, as are Chris’ tomes Find Your Power and 7 Ways to Build Resilience. The Happiness Training plan is an excellent low-cost investment I highly recommend to buy and listen to.
Archetypal Soul
Something else that makes it sing
and soar is when I look up at the stars, at the sky, at the boundary of our
lives. My soul expands.
When I study (and practice) various
esoteric traditions or astrology or read a bit of Jung, watch a Rick Levine astrology
video or listen to a The Higherside Chat, my soul and all my archetypes are
triggered – my archai all come out to play. Sometimes they enhance my life,
sometimes they destroy it.
Archetypes help me to make sense of my life, they can help all of us find (label and distinguish) meaning and navigate a better course to the sacred. The archetypes are within us and without – just like the zodiac is. They are in every plant, animal, star and planet at the macro level and every cellular microscopic reality within. They help me on my Hero’s Journey quests, on my initiations, in my parenting, my work, travel, communities, Karma and destinies. Archetypes are both my fated existence and my self-determined way to change my futures with free will. They are timeless. Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians, Atlanteans, Romans, Greeks, Victorians, ancient Chinese dynasties etc – all who lived have lived through culture and civilizations, have lived through their gods and with archetypes.
They are Heaven, Purgatory and Hell.
They are Sun, Moon, Midheaven and Ascendant. They move within our signs,
houses, planets and aspects. Whether Stone Age or COVID-age, they lead our
characters on this world stage through our fretful and yet fruitful dance of
life. They are in the I Ching, the natal chart, tarot cards and pendulums.
Our souls are their sugar rush. I’m
feeding their happiness and they mine.
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| Photo by Founder of London School of Astrology, Frank.C. Clifford, via Instagram |
Psyche Party
One does not require great
philosophy, mysticism, or psychiatry to reflect on their deeper role in our
human makeup. The universe is alive. Synchronicity is alive, the universe
‘notices’ us. Our souls are forged in stolen Promethean archetypal fire. The
science and art of the mundane is magic. Omen logic, cycles and patterns
abound. Magic is real. It’s an inner job.
We need to integrate magic with the
rest of our lives and bring our whole self to the game. Our psyche needs an
invite to the party. Archetypes (or as Jung called them our “psychic
projections”) are inside us all, like our own profound design - our internal
sacred geometry and magic geography.
Archetypes are powerful and dynamic.
They are a complex realm. Deep, abstract, transcendent. Metaphysical software,
universal and timeless, blueprints to the ‘real.’ They are the pillar of Jung’s
psychology – he believed that we are given primordial software that allows us
to interpret the world. This software is the Archetypes. “Bio survival depends
on getting the tickets” proposed Robert Anton Wilson. It also depends on
archetypes.
Archetypes are at play in Joseph
Campbell’s monomyth work, detailed in Carol S. Pearson’s books – she defines
twelve (Innocent, Warrior, Caregiver, Magician etc). We have been given a map
with which to travel. They are preternatural, legend, fairy-tale and
supernatural. They are portal to worlds. Astrology and Psychology (and Yoga and
Magic) all activate the archetypes within – these modalities help us adventure
caves within, traverse the abyss, heed the call, and follow the return. They
are evolution. They are religion. They are meaning. They are elves, bogeymen,
ghosts, hags, fey folk, deities, jungle spirits, mermaids, green men, gods,
goddess, monsters, spirits, and aliens. And just like the planets, like the sun
and the moon do, they affect our energy on earth and in our human experiences.
“The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy” argued
Timothy Leary. Archetypes are certainly magical energy. They are not just
psychology, to be explored in Seligman, Akhtar and Johnstone’s work, but also
living vital “beings” that dwell within, animistically alive.
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| My books galore |
Maps, Morphics and the Mundane
“The map is not the territory,” said
Alan Watts. There are many reality tunnels. What we think is going on (the map)
is a mirage, almost Neptunium fog. The territory is explored and charted by our
legion of archai within.
Rupert Sheldrake says that there is
a morphic resonance in everything. The universe, the living cosmos, is
numinous, faerie, multi-dimensional, mystical, magical, and indwelt by all
manner of beings, entities, and programmes. Hairy dwarves and DNA, the dead and
the living. Synchronicity, electricity, frequency, and field. Paranormal and
psychic phenomenon abounds, consciousness is alive and vibrating. From maths to
gravity to music to dream – gnosis is illuminated all around us. Invisible
becomes visible. Our hardware is local, but the software is non-local. We make
fire out of ice. Ultimately “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as
to accept the one that is waiting for us” as Joseph Campbell urges us.
Cave-dive with me into the soul and depths of your subconscious, the archai,
the astrology within.
Gentle anarchy, soft resistance – both can be fertile responses to 2021. We are at another tipping point. We can heal (by restoring, as Gordon White calls it quoting psychologist, Emergence Network founder and writer Bayo Akomolafe, ‘right relation’) deeply, we can reimagine our ecology, reassert old pagan ideals of nature and culture, we can conserve and farm responsibly. All things can be balanced again, restored to Gaia’s dream before man.
“Yesterday is but today’s memory,
tomorrow is today’s dream,” said Khalil Gibran. Our power to find (as Chris Johnstone rallies in his book) is in the present, in the now. How can we
alchemise and transform? How can we be resilient and satisfied? How can we find
fulfilment in the everyday? How can the mundane now be catalyst for cosmic
destiny, fate, and futures?
I begin my adventures in astrology
this next 12 months with faith in my destination. “A life well lived” said Fincino is my goal – I will live my time of study (and full-time corporate
employment, motherhood, blogging etc.) to the full. This is a manifesto for my
new way of living.
There is my way to be in the pandemic and ‘great reset’ power struggle high strangeness as it rattles and rages on. To be a version of myself, my best self. To bring forth what is spiritual, practical, ecological, self-reliant, wise, hopeful, connected, beautiful, simple and to be from a plane of action. A gentle magical approach, full of happiness and positivity, one of both people-care and planetary-care. We can, I can be less robotic and more human as a gift at this time in our Kali Yuga. The world can be less frenzied and chaotic if I will see it in a new way. “What the thinker thinks, the prover proves” said Robert Anton Wilson. I need, I will, think differently so as to prove differently.
Beauty and Truth
We can be pilgrims of hope. We can
take inspired action. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” said romantic poet John Keats. Let’s embrace beauty as core essence in our creative output – whether in
learning how to read a natal chart or practising a herbal bath ritual or
planetary magic candle spell or writing therapy. The ecologist Satish Kumar in
his books speaks of the “Resurgence” as a philosophy. In his book Elegant
Simplicity, Kumar says: “If we have no opportunity to use our resilience and
trust, then we are missing out on something important.” To Kumar, problems are
welcome riddles from the Universe for us to solve. Let’s open the puzzle book
and play.
But in all this, I plan to have fun.
To find coherence. To seek joy. To chase down happiness. To be positive. To
live in a more analogue way, in sync with nature. And above all to be resilient
and to laugh and to “Keep the lasagne flying!” as a wise man once said.
I’ve published this on the weekend leading into Mercury coming direct from it's retrograde just before Jupiter also stations direct and the Full Moon. Pluto shenanigans are
comin’ afoot, and it’s not even Halloween yet. So I ask again what I posed at
the start of this essay: Do you feel personally empowered? Would you like to
keep improving the quality of your life and keep pushing yourself forward? Do
you apply wonder and magic to your life every day? Are you helping yourself to
help others? Do you proactively enhance your wellbeing?
Tarot, Jung, Archetypes and The Stars
I was reading on astrologer wizard Rick Levine’s
social that Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli wrote “Only the development
of his inner powers can offset the dangers inherent in man's losing control of
the tremendous natural forces at his disposal and becoming the victim of his
own achievements.” We need to find our inner power and happiness! Just as Positive Psychologist Miriam
Akhtar urges us in her wonderful audio book (referred to earlier) 'Happiness', we must develop our own resilience and self-help reliance.
As well as the Positive Psychology tools and resources
I’ve also continued exploring other modalities to create a robust mix. Such as
more Astrology study and picking up Tarot again.
Tarot has long had roots in the deep psychological. Jungsaid tarot cards were an application by which to represent the ‘archetypes of
mankind’. Tarot cards show (visually) pictorial images of strength, courage,
foolishness, love etc. all of which play out in our daily psyches making them helpful
in healing therapies as well as more occult and new age practices.
I use it all: rituals, spells, prayer as spiritual
healing, Tarot cards, candle magic, positive psychology techniques and
astrology. In these crazy times, an age of huge uncertainty, spiritual practice
is needed more than ever – be your jam #WitchTok or horoscope or Hoodoo oil or
occult incantation.
My current go-to for the next 52 weeks is a big focus
on Astrology, I’m studying it under a schooled framework - the Western 12-sign
zodiac system, which is as old as Babylonia. But I'm also curious aboyt other systems such as Siderreal and Vedic with wonderful readers such as Trifon Nikolov - he has a great webinar on the Fixed Stars.
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| My Algol Hydra placement |
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| Robert Fludd's Fixed Stars. As Above So Below |
Tarot and Astrology both connect with me magically as they are systems overflowing with symbols, patterns, and archetypes. I’m on a new hero’s journey of my soul, a new path. These more esoteric hobbies combine with my other skills, interests, and various certifications I’ve gathered over the decades in as varied a collection as: Herbalism, NLP Master Practitioner, Permaculture certificate, Science of Mind (Spiritual Mind) Counsellor, Raw Nutrition, Resilience Practitioner and Life Coaching. Combined they pack a weighty punch as an all-in-one swiss army knife toolkit for self-determination.
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| Books currently on my reading list, as well as Steve Judd and The London School of Astrology |
Room 101
Timely that this is literally blog
#101 folks. May the crazy begin in room 101.
Feels like, listening to all the
astrologers, the rest of the year will be Halloween everyday – especially the
eclipse mid-November and the last Saturn-Uranus square of the year at Christmas
Eve. Hold everything down folks and hold on. The pasta and sauce are hurtling
through the air, the Squid Games Hunger Games are just warming up. Duck for
cover but opportunistically grab a fork and make hay. When life gives you
lemons…I’ll take parmesan cheese on top with that 😊
“Keep the lasagne flying!” – Robert Anton Wilson
P.S. In a couple of weeks time, the week of Halloween begins my weekly “how-to” series and sharing of what I’ve been learning in studies of Astrology and Positive Psychology with a little Resilience & Planetary Magic thrown in too. See you at Samhain when the veil thins for a weekly Sunday Sermon from S’pore. See you again on All Hallows Eve! x
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