Alternate Perceptions Magazine, August 2021
Echoes, Echoes.
by: James Edward Carlos
Part One of Two Parts:
Notes From The Margins of The Ancestors..
wings drawn, like shields - these metaphors
hidden in night clouds, remain waiting, these
who are angels who tend our desires and need
***
”Maaseh Merkava, the Works of Mysteries of the Chariot, usually refers to the mystical experience. The Chariot experiences is therefore said to be a “vision” (Tzefiyah), which is related to the word for “seers,” Tzofim. A person has such a vision by becoming a vehicle or Chariot (Merkava) to the divine.”
(p. 133. The Bahir – Illumination. Attributed to Rabbi Nehunia ben haKana,
master of the first century esoteric school.
Translation, Introduction, and Commentary by Aryeh Kaplan).
In this essay, I relate my thoughts on close encountering to the first three pages of the chapter labeled Ezekiel’s Chariot (Merkevet Yehezqel -The Zohar. Volume 12 -Pritzker Edition). Translators Nathan Wolski and Joel Hecker, Preface: Daniel C. Matt). My commentary on Ezekiel’s close encounter at the River Kevar considers these initial pages as a general thematic overture about that awesome occurrence. My writing is to the effect of the chapter’s introduction plus my own identification with Ezekiel herein to the point of his perception of “the blaze of light.” (1)
Ezekiel’s awe commensurate with the appearance of the blaze of light and his ascent or disappearance along with his symbolic description of perceptions therein demand additional interpretation of those symbols manifesting through their significance as to close encounters in today’s margins of history. By studying both the commentary of Companions in The Zohar with contextual footnotes of elucidation by the three translators and my own writing about these from experiencing many such during my lifetime, I find significant value in utilizing this method of juxtaposition and concentration. My concern is how insights are factors of close encounters even though often being provocatively obscure and thereof creating an apparent necessity to apprehend their meaning. I am aware of the factors of similarity in Ezekiel’s reactions to my own, of variance to extent with ancient prognostications, but also of differences as to the same.
I prefaced this essay about possible angelic, spiritual, incursions in, essentially, the obviously inspired angelic expressions - tosefta and matnitin (in Volume 1, the first fourth of Volume 2, and as indicated in the final chapter of Volume 12). I consider therein with other manuscripts the widening context of The Zohar – i.e., the first five books of the Bible-or-Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in terms of mystical apprehension. (2)
Ezekiel’s awe commensurate with the appearance of the blaze of light and his ascent into the chariot or disappearance along with his symbolic description of perceptions therein demand additional interpretation of those symbols manifesting through their significance as to close encounters in today’s margins of history. By studying both the Companions’ commentaries on Ezekiel’s encounter throughout The Zohar with contextual footnotes of elucidation by three translators and my own writing about encounters from experiencing many such during my lifetime, I find significant value in utilizing this method of juxtaposition and concentration. My concern is how insights are factors of close encounters even though often being provocatively obscure and thereof creating an apparent necessity to apprehend their meaning. I am aware of the factors of similarity in Ezekiel’s reactions to my own, of variance to extent with ancient prognostications, but also of differences as to the same.
I prefaced this essay about possible angelic, spiritual, incursions, essentially, in the obviously inspired tosefta and matnitin (in Volume 1, the first fourth of Volume 2, and as indicated in the final chapter of Volume 12). I consider therein with other manuscripts the widening context of The Zohar – i.e., the first five books of the Bible-or-Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in terms of mystical apprehension. (2)
Ultimately, cosmically, multi-universally, a system of ethics arises, as defined by the patriarch Moses on Mount Sinai, which simultaneously adheres to a larger code of existence that acts as confluence to mystical consciousness; emphatic in this context of righteousness (referential as truth) the code of existence confers conscience in those terms of rightness or truth. Conscience - elemental to truth as externalized in phenomenon - has to do with the flesh of each of us, mind included, in our sensual, sensorial, and intellectual experiencing through ascendant acts; and, with that comes, per lifetime, a grasp of a personal, emotional, sensuous, passionate, intellectual, and metaphysical-spiritual awareness. (3)
With these considerations, I factor in a provisory conjunct to life and death with the amalgamating idea of sacrifice, but this factoring is in terms that living in the flesh is therein implying the sacrifice of the sojourning, a way station for lessons, thus the flesh is varying from the soul as fleshly demarcation. This implies a sacrifice for greater knowledge, not an accumulation as death by whatever means a life ends. In some respects this is a verification of the legend of Isaac asking Abraham from the sacrificial altar about resurrection, hence reincarnation.
Hence, I address essential factors of mystical consequence based on identification with Ezekiel’s observation of his encounter with the hayyot (holy, living beings) in accordance with flight in the merkavah (chariot). The catalyst for this essay is theoretically introductory to the chapter’s very beginning prior to any exposition about Ezekiel’s actual encounter; I follow suit with that system and although I do not include Enoch herein by way of concentration, The Book of Enoch was indeed equally influential to my encounter discoveries and a deepening with regard to my own encounters. A series of related essays follow this one to embrace the rest of Ezekiel’s vision. From the edges of that identification, my thoughts are addressed herein this writing sometimes as imagery involving the first person tense, shifting sometimes to second person, and third person, too. Such inter-capsulation of terms is consequential to the complexity in close encounters. Encapsulating a sense of presence, metaphorically as implied, within this persuasion’s time shifts, too, with past, present, and future tenses appearing. Descriptions rising from these conditions are unstable but assertive at various levels of being.
The images appear grammatically as in the nature of my own personal footnoting in the margins of The Zohar’s printed page and the manner by which identification finds images through memory which remains in one’s present realization after the encounters. By this action I explore the implications of encountering other living beings inferred to be angels per se as in a biblically influential context. Where and how you view yourself in and out of encounters is in itself mystifying, but the ambiance of time and person constantly intervene on any telling. Each life of an individual prefaced by the individual soul, regardless of species, suggests the vast, significant code of existence to which I believe that The Zohar (The Book of Radiance) attests in terms of spiritual and religious values as denoted; these values are echoed in other religious contexts of the past two eras (Piscean and Arian or approximately 4,320 years). This code is akin to what the rabbis or/as Companions discuss throughout the twelve volumes of The Zohar. Equally so, however, this code is significant to all movement and all actions in a cosmic and universal context; the overall structures of eras are parallel to each other as forms of passage. Memories appear in your mind as reverberations of past lives.
I add herein as of this month (July, 2021) that I feel keenly the appropriateness to this being published, because of the hype over the Defense Department’s coming forth about UFOs, because I address content or meaning and the Defense Department does not seem to go beyond the mechanics of security and concerns of warfare. Plus I speak from encounters of the third kind per se, since the references we’ve been given are not really giving much in terms of perspective or as to meaningful statements about perceptions. I refer thus to this publication for which I am truly grateful – Alternate Perceptions edited by Brent Raynes. Hence, I continue:
Every nuance of the rabbis’ thoughts on the Old Testament language, history, symbols, and meaning is based in the Judaic and Aramaic languages hereof transposed into English. These nuances exemplify how languages are important to that living codification as a phenomenal system of experiential data, but languages are essential to Zoharic discussions. Why? Because the rabbis ask questions of their peers as to their own various interpretations about what words of the Torah mean or imply as a symbolic mannerism, the meter of which involves various meditative practices in Kabbalah literature such as the numerical context of mystic, Abraham Abulafia (1240-c.1291). A book, “The Mysticism of Abraham Abulafia,” was glowing brightly as I walked into a bookstore en route to a hypnotic session. I purchased Moshe Idel’s book, and opening that very night at random reading material that close to my own comments made during the afternoon’s hypnosis.
As we examine words as to content and context we note that some words frequently have various meanings attached and synonyms personify the wider meanings attributed to proper nouns and other grammatical orientations, becoming metaphors. My sense of this is that such metaphoric implications comprise the language of the angels, expressed in the Zohar as tosefta and matnitin when, ultimately the implications are as to consciousness and the many levels of consciousness that are similar to levels of word-meanings especially significant contextually in the Zohar. Angels are species sharing with us this code of existence. In terms of angelic contexts as expansive in nature, adding meanings to meaning, the thrust is mystical consciousness.
All languages, all efforts of image making, verbal or artistic in nature derive from experiences that are imaginal by nature of form and being. This sense of imagery as exemplifying such a vital code, a momentum for existing, is incorporative of being unitive as well as expansive like waves and crests (a gestural image of movement). Such an image, purposeful to all images, purports a singular awareness deriving from a shared source that is intrinsic to the concept of a non-sefiroth (i.e., Da’at or Daath in the Judaic Sefirot, a term of intrinsic symbolizations and summarily invisible, i.e., not yet showing as externalized as informative knowledge). In Jacob’s dream of a ladder, Da’at depicts the passage of angels. (5)
Hence, Da’at is primal knowledge stirring, fomenting in the primordial depths of space, time, spacetime and all internalizing coordinates thereof, as to the potential of existing and as information when in existence; the concept implies ever becoming and ever being. Mystical Consciousness is a direct emergence through Jacob’s ladder’s central world of Malkhut, Yesod, Tif’eret, Da’at, and Keter as a hierarchical assembly with supernal names. The subconscious awareness thereby involves intuition in the human lexicon substantiating the visual narratives in close encounters and implies a demiurge, a forbearing of a deep, elusive, coordination of eventual expansion, in everything, expansive in nature by every single nuance. The concept is formidable, at once subatomic and astronomically cosmic. Ezekiel’s symbolical description is so vivid, we feel the experience he discusses.
The overall phraseology in pursuance as to this source centers on the word – Creation / creation when echoing. The grid of ten sefirot plus this one non-sefiroth (Da’at) when coupled with the majestic Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai gives us much to grasp. These concepts together are a process of ascendance waiting for each of us to begin the rise upward. A dire element, language-wise, is the shifting of materials in a momentum of eternal forms (Greek in nature – archetypal pre-bearings via Plato’s reminiscing) and here used as the sensing of movement toward abstractions, as in abstracting from the source of such motion. The resonance and process of truth is in its manifesting, in forming and as expansion (i.e., enlargement of the process and in subtle changing of form/s). The process of emerging is a vital, major consequence of inter-melding activities – all congruent, continually evolving.
For some, the chariot (UFO in today’s idiom) of Ezekiel’s experiences is seemingly everywhere appearing in our world today, not just in biblical times but in our present era depicted as close encounters through the vehicle of flying objects - the tip of the many eons over the ages. When so encountered, we are driven as was Ezekiel to grasp the nature of these other beings, in his description – angels and/or hayyot, as we will note, living beings of a supernal world, often seemingly external to the straits of heavens, and/or as if conceived from within our human consciousness becoming as if ordained to that world, as supposition initially.
Angelic forces as in encounters reconcile us as to our nature as humans, in alignment with forces from that supernal world, e.g., angels and archangels. Jacob’s ladder known as the Sefirot (plural as to rungs) depicts something significant to the code of which I speak, deeply ethical in nature as stated above; the ladder is such a grid or pattern abstractly depicting levels regarding acquisition of information within the context of imagery. The manner in which such orientations are given is respectively processed as one at a time if viewed in a linear time-imagined fashion. If another manner is enacted, then: the imprimatur is simultaneously inter-webbed, radiating mental, creative, resonances from one primal point in 360 degrees from that centrifugal force ascertained at one level moving to many others such. In keeping with the grid’s image of ladder-rungs (alternately named as heavens, worlds, spheres, levels, stations - each such being a complex and each openly transitive), the grid facilitates a grasp of being human in a matter of ascent. Thus the grid depicts multiple assents, even, and simultaneous in the coming forth. Such ascension, a form of the resolution of soul and flesh (spirit and body) comes with the chariots manned by living beings, as biblically noted. These ultimately assume various countenances, but these, too, act as our guides. We, too, within the mystical ascendancy change countenances reaching certain stanchions just as during a lifetime we develop through similar manifestations from conception and infancy through to aged shifts moving toward death. Seeing the ladder as an anthropomorphic index for the human body we find the concept of Adam Kadmon, an archetypal configuration akin to the constellation Osiris (or later, Orion) in the stars. We are shepherds as to connotative discoveries. Within each spiraling era, we believe we find new gods equally anthropomorphic as with former deifications.
Ongoing for the human consciousness as a personal awareness is the resonance of an equally inter-connectively apprehensive nature. With interlacing an interactive energy manifests as a mass consciousness. Here is an effectual cohesion of/for conscience as a primal instinctive point of departure as to effect, but in actuality this process of awareness and merging insights, one to another is a thing (a form/a process) of tangible and intangible beauty. Beauty (Tif’eret) is the center of mystical consciousness as to the entire Sefirot of emanating realms from the En Sof or infinity. Mystery pervades all of this as a sensing (all senses factoring) inclusive of a presence as a continuous guiding principle through the time of systemic breathing – a personal but universal pulsation as the enacting essence of living matter. The mystic may experience this pulsation as erotic and orgasmic, almost overwhelming to the body and when this occurs environmental factors, e.g., furniture such as a bed touching the body: uncontrollably the bed moves, bouncing up and down and sideways, trembling, agitated, and excited. Everything nearby is absorbed into the mystical moment of a passionate deliverance but aggressive, too, beneath an equivalent compassion. (6)
The nature of discourse herein is a manifestation of the way of study for the rabbis - a narrative, a dialogue of questions and responses/interpretations as a manner of articulating these nuances relevant to this form of study explicated in The Zohar. We who are encontrants as of the close encounters exposed to the mystical forays of our existence identify with the manner of presentation, of assessing within ourselves who the rabbis are and what the gathering of nuances are conditionally. In footnoting we are further informed thereby, “The Account of the Chariot is one of the central objects of study in the history of Jewish mysticism because of the vivid detail of Ezekiel’s vision of his encounter with the lights ala the chariot-vessel.
As to the origin present in the creation of existence, levels of spiritual being are four worlds of Emanation in descending order: Atziluth (realm of the deity, emanation), Beriah (creation), Yetzirah (formation), and Assiah (physicality, action). The emanation presenting this spiritual order is Consciousness, whose dispositions include the Subconscious, Mass consciousness, Unconsciousness, and Mystical Consciousness, plus other levels. These ascendancies as sites of various encounters therein orient the mystic as of the ascendant encountering experiences toward the Sefirot of ladder contained within the spiritual worlds. The referencing elsewhere to the spiritual world implies habitats – literally worlds of denizens of travel. (9)
Because of the admonition of Moses de Leon, Peirush ha-Merkavah, my attempt to address these issues is daring, i.e., to defy such a reproach by addressing the same consequences of the chariot visitations. In doing so I acknowledge that these words reference: “the Account of the Chariot” ...”and fire descended from heaven and encircled [or: intertwined with] all the trees of the field, whereupon they all burst into song. . .” as closely paralleling the ascendancy of Ezekiel, Isaiah, and others, especially Enoch as the layers of transcendence shift into Metatron who thereof is given an angelic significance; this change of embodiment as with Enoch (Note the Book of Enoch) is a process being akin to the regeneration ritual of fire on the chariot the flames bursting forth from the hayyot’s stance on an altar with crystal tubes and filling the entire large dome of the merkavah. This fire is an inner reflection of the fascinating outer flaming wheels of the amber chariot that brought Ezekiel to the ground in prostration.
Wherein, with such transformation, these living beings assemble on a circular platform, an “altar” (a throne) perhaps, that is constructed with a variety of crystal tubes. Hayyot assemble, floating to the altar to stand on this structure facing outwardly toward the external circumference edge of the entire chariot, i.e., 360 degrees facing the windows of the craft. From the edge of said platform or altar (perhaps the throne-heikalot as to interpretation), their fingertips and long arms extended outward, raised a bit, toward the next being’s own finger on either side, but not touching. At that point the flames begin from around both the base of the circular platform itself raised from the sub-level area beneath the floor of the chariot’s dome, and bearing the fire, too, initially, from the area of the hayyot’s feet, differing in format and countenance from humans, often lifted a few inches from the base of their stance. Floating is a frequent means for angelic movement, but moving on a substance (ground, floors, etc.) also occurs.
The flames devour the beings, leaping forth into the entire room-domed space and flying to all parts, a total consummation therein. I note, too, with this sharing that the supernal fire is not the same as earthly fire, in that the flames hereof are regenerative in the sense of the phoenix meteor fires that burn but do not destroy in that the legendary phoenix, symbolized as bird, remains as ash and is reborn. The “worship” as the process seems herein to what might be basically solar-oriented, an identification with this universe’s sun’s energy and light, and continual resurgence manifesting in an inner chariot-ritual on such occasions.
The experience is one of transfiguration - that is, transformative and migratory and regenerative. The implication of bodily resurrection in this focusing is that of re-incarnation – a means to raising the dead. As to mystical ascendance the “encontrant” (one who encounters) or mystic may go through changing of countenances as initiatory to the ascendance of mystical consciousness, momentary as to developmental stages of an enriching of levels of consciousness overall and throughout. Amazingly, you seem outside yourself observing the flames dancing and you are aware of yourself disappearing and becoming one with the movement and circulation.
As to the mentioning of trees as to such a sensation of momentum rising in the consequence of the encircling “wind” I ascertain that the indication for this observer and participant in the ceremony of shifting countenances is that this movement’s references are indicative of waves exemplifying this resonance as the movement, as in a photon ocean at the subatomic levels, as air in the mammalian degrees of form which roll in with ground contours. The symbolism is about life, or breathing. Therein trees are drawn into song and dance, movements interactive with the lay of the land. A consummation is enjoyed thus, like an orchestration where diverse sounds come fleetingly together. Both beneath the ocean and in the shorelines, in the air ruminating the song of the trees ashore, the oceanic surface communion of waves and crests indicate a huge range of diversity within the depths beneath and within. This is especially evident in our night visions when studying the darkness as when our personal retinas are given to seeing such multi-dimensional imagery. We are constantly aroused and engaged by this energy, a consistent forbearing of frequencies throughout space. Frequencies between soul and body are subject to change giving shape and form to our destinies.
Although perhaps some might see this activity as chaotic disorder, for this observer I find such an evaluation to be a misnomer. I am bound to accept my own impropriety in addressing these issues. I refer to the transcendence of the above ritual undertaking as a pivoting of all primal points en mass, juxtaposed at the subterranean level of order and outwardly centering in a radical and intercalate enmeshing, their movements being that of waves at another “larger” order in the workings of form and process. This amounts to a primal source of all being hence a reification of the one who is naught because such is superfluous. We are within, hence part of that one – the monolithic God, otherwise the inherent source given viability in the awareness of biblical Abraham.
Entering a mystical garden (e, g., entering a merkavah perhaps) and then divulging any secrets that are understood becomes a factoring of caution. What you know (exemplar of Da’at), what you experience and remember is limited. Therefore the fountain of knowing involves pungent, sobering, risk that in becoming visible as knowledge and thus like our original parentage you are endangering yourself. Symbolism is often extremely cryptic. Speaking of and divulging the unsubstantiated intensifies one’s apprehension. The presence sensed, felt, perceived divests you of any calmness. The energy is vital and substantial. This movement can be assessed as an inner working of turmoil because of the aggression of archangelic forces and the oceanic cosmic constancy of motion. In the turmoil of the ascendant movement as to the encounters, symbolically as to the narratives you are taken, shaken, destroyed by death; you are sought and destroyed. Ash. Dust. Sand. By the wind you are given reprieve and come forth again. From breathlessness, as humans conceptualize, to breathe, to each breath, inherently we all therein are significantly coherent with and subject to the cosmos in its aggressive expansion. I.e., we are an act of (the) Creation, as an act of forbearance. I.e., breathing out is as if a form of dying just as breathing inhalation is a rebirthing.
The intelligences forecasting thereof the earth’s own psychological state and all therein the state, thus, is one of relationship and there is no exclusion as to placement of existing entities one to another and one group to another already interposed as to their living soulful existence (i.e., the waves seemingly invisible, meaning in-visiblity – i.e., being within the visible foremost act as metaphor, intrinsic to the code of living soulful subsistence). I refer to the distinction of ascent for seers, such as Enoch, such as Ezekiel, and others who are below (i.e., on Earth) in this current age as in the Piscean and Arian Eras sequentially in our recent past: “In Heikalot literature, the ascent is made during lifetime, and followed by descent. A similar distinction has been mentioned by Johann Maier (Vom Kultus, p. 17). ... ‘It is not a soul essentially different from and detachable from the body which ascends to God’s throne, but the mystic in his own total person. Only in the very late texts can the heavenly journey of the souls of the dead described by means of the old esoteric depictions of ascent. Thus in the phenomenology of religion the ascent of the mystics to the merkabah belongs rather to the sphere of temporary ascensions than to the Gnostic heavenly journey of the soul.’(10)
With reference to the primordial light when interpreting the mystery present within the experience of Ezekiel at the River Kevar, the effort may appear to render finality in terms of completeness (rather than as a new beginning). But such a rendering is dangerous because no comprehension of the mystery is concluded in the sense of completion. Creation is continuing. Interpretations such as my own may confuse, yet to divulge information about such means the primordial light is ever born in the sense that light is constant and the changes in terms of comprehension and interpretation are constant. By one’s memory you eventually adduce only a peripheral sense of what is happening during or after the encounters. The struggle continues thereafter, and with each intensifies. The mystery remains. But confusion is a stage, however, of insight in terms of a possible eventuality; reconciliation comes but not in the instance; amnesia frequently assists us and the encounters seem dream-like often but these, as such, are visionary nonetheless.
All continues even as everything changes per each separate occasion of encountering. Light continues even in the sub durance of darkness and night and amounts to a doxology of faith. Faith by this means is a matter of receptivity and acceptance. Maneuverability and fusion are possible which may lend partial understanding but with that mixing of elements as stated in this chapter on the merkavah what is suggested is a deeper, wider, richer ascent into the light–a frequency subjected upon the humans who find themselves within mystical mechanics. These occurrences are phenomenal.
The human finds with such an encounter as Ezekiel’s – that encountering the light as of elements of the supernal magnification, you are pushed upon by the images present and you are drawn into a new dimension. ... “I saw visions of God (Ezekiel 1:1). Originally concealed with the supernal light, not revealed, now I see them in the darkness, screaming outside, as is said: Behold, the Erelim [angels] cried . . . (Isaiah 33:7). I see them shrieking outside (ibid.), having descended into exile that is outside – outside the Holy Land, beyond their domain.”) (Ibid. The Zohar. p. 450). In some regard the mystical experiences acclimate one to the thought of being exiled. Self-exile may be considered a sacrifice – self sacrifice by such exclusion at two levels: one as to the beings who are present including the angelic watchers, and two: isolation for the rest of one’s time from one’s own former peers. You subsume the emotional sense of separation; your acceptance of this mode of life is sacrificial in nature.
As To The Telling:
Regarding separate, unique, human forbearances (implying thereof the multiple levels of consciousness that we each, I suggest, carry), I present momentarily a tale which can be ascertained as metaphoric, an illustrating of a personal experiential resonance, regarding the nature and impact of such as event/s. The story implies a sense of the resonances surrounding the idea of sacrifice that life as given seems to perpetuate. Hence:
My family, wife Sarah and our three children, Aaron, Adam, and Malia were together on the island of Iona in the inner Hebrides in the 1960s. With the sleeping quarters in the abbey we were separated by gender as to the rules of the Presbyterian church then overseeing the abbey and island, although Sarah had the children with her in her quarters. As she was organizing the bedtime of our two younger children, the young Aaron went with me to the evening chapel service in the abbey’s crypt. Vespers were held each evening in the abbey’s lower crypt as to my recall, correspondent to the origins of the Catholic monastic orders with historical regard to, but from the time of, St. Columba and his flock of twelve monks.
In the crypt, my son, age 9, and I were startled by a loud wind noise including clamoring from the high long horizontal windows where large black birds were desperately thrusting themselves against these windows as if wanting to gain entrance, dark wings flapping frantically, beaks against the glass. Although the prayers were silent and individual, differing from audible Gregorian chants of monks from earlier moments, my son at his young age dropped from the stiff hard wooden seat to his knees onto the rugged stone flooring to take on an ardent prayer position, palms clasped while looking devotedly upward as if lost in the dark heavens. He was so interiorized in something I did not recognize (in his actions as to himself), so much so that I was startled - even frightened by this sudden change in demeanor that seemed, ironically, somehow demonic (like he was imminently taken over by some unknown resolve intimate to the history of the abbey). Confused by this action, his infused new sense of spirit to me, I gathered Aaron up into my arms instantly and left the crypt going elsewhere immediately to the abbey’s upper level sleeping quarters to what I presumed as safe – separate from the frenzy of the storm. The crypt had, suddenly, from moments before become dire, darkened, and foreboding. The others in prayer there seemed ancient, as if suffering from a profound disquiet although solemn in posture and attitude in a state of perhaps supernal quiescence. From Aaron’s reaction to the darkness, to a claustrophobic crypt, the density of silent prayers, the throng of large black birds flapping, crying out/cawing while striking at the window in the dark night storm outside, and with our hearing evidences of shrill moving wind outside beyond the abbey, I felt that we each were as if caught in a powerful systemic penetration into or from (simultaneously) the Iona violent history of the religious survival (nonetheless), of the nature of the life thereof being one continued sacrificing.
The sacrifice I mean herein this sense is of humans actually being born and living on this earth, a movement of lessons, severe often, dark and mysterious always I felt from other seemingly irrational and uncontrollable impulses born of the spiraling swirl of Creation. As if the compulsive, obsessive, history of humans isolating themselves in such manners as with monks and as with Viking warriors, e.g., as to the latter killing themselves, other humans, and other species as if a compulsive necessity in the continuance. An intensification of the moment by moment continuing sacrifice of a deeper, wider, broader significance to the life’s implications as an Earthling and compelling insistence of sacrificing piety, grace, love, and life itself. Our spiritual accentuations are amidst a broad, often enveloping system of multiple potentialities.
* * *
Discussion of encounters herein resumes momentarily with a thought in relating the Sefiroth-ladder of phases’ schemata to nuances: various indications are presumed to be in accordance with the metaphorical dimensions that arise when comparing those attributable variances to the actual happening. Vulnerabilities are inherent to our persistent interpretations when such a breach in the heavens opens and we encounter significant viabilities that seem other than our previous realizations of actuation; the heavenly light sprays its radiance as with Ezekiel’s ecstatic and frightening apprehension caused by his experience with the appearing merkavah laden with symbols.
In such a manner as to these encounters we (re)live segments of our history which may surround us once again as an actuality within our current life as if to give us pause for necessary determination to continue a pursuance of our destiny. The prospect, the revelation, is, initially at least, overwhelming. Hence, we might share with Ezekiel’s awe - his sense of intensity before the light, and the presence according the landing of the merkavah-vessel on our earth.
