Re: Dream about Laura
EmeraldHope said:
I had the most wonderful dream about Laura. I went inside her house and she was sitting on a couch with a book. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was working on the Cass material. I asked if I could watch her. She was writing in the book, but not really writing. What I mean is, when she put the pen over the page, it became animated and lifted up off of the page. It was like in the cartoons when rainbows travel. It was beautiful- a myriad of butterflies, shapes, and music notes. This stream went around the room and out of the front door into the world. Then she said that that wasn't the most important thing she was working on, and asked me if I would like to see what it was. I said yes. She then brought out a huge vase that was very intricate. She said it was the vase for the world.
It was so beautiful I just had to share.
When I read about your dream I immediately thought of Beauty--the Philosophy of Beauty and the Feminine. More on that below.
Ana
I find interesting that Laura told you in the dream her work was not just about beauty Smiley
For me it depends on just what kind of 'beauty' one is speaking of!
RedFox
Indeed....I guess I missed the symbolism until just reading that, but given the forum is often referred to as Laura's house....perhaps the Work on the self and this forum would be represented by 'visiting Laura' in dreams...
The strongest messages coming through (from my point of view) do seem to be about creativity and the feminine aspects of self (one and the same thing). And about sharing them with the world.
Perhaps you need to be working on expressing you/'re creativity/exploring you're creative/feminine side.
I can relate to this, Emerald Hope.
EmeraldHope
Actually, a lot of the things I am drawn to right now are feminine concepts and representations. That may seem like an arbitrary statement, but for me it is a big deal. I have read Psyche's thread on Eros/ Psyche . I have been projecting my animus since I was a child, and I think I have been taken over by my animus on many occasions. I would go so far as to say , due to to my protecting my inner self ( which is very feminine, I am a double Pisces ) , I have been far more masculine in qualities than feminine. I would say that actually, I have been deeply out of touch with my feminine side, although I have always been extremely sensitive. I couldn't even stand to listen to female music/ singing until about 5 years ago.
I have gotten a lot out of "Women Who Run with Wolves' and learning about the goddess traditions. To me Laura, is one of the first representations of the feminine that I relate to. I had a lot of " high strangeness" through out my life, especially as a child, and the wave was one of the first times that I have ever seen a story that runs very similar to my actual experiences. I buried that part of me a long time ago, because it seemed I was the only one that I knew that could sense things underneath the surface and had " experiences". My grandmother, whom I love dearly, always used to tell me not to talk about those things to anyone and that it wasn't accepted.
I have been on the same journey as you have--learning about the 'goddess' traditions, and I appreciate as well, "Women Who Run with Wolves." Back in the 90's I started to see that I had lost my feminine core/essence. I am in my late 50's now.
I was also protecting my extreme feminine, like you, with my masculine armour. I also studied Jungian anima and animus through many years it was the only source I could find.
I noticed a lot of guys in their 'anima,' who seemed very soft and without masculine strength--and a lot of women who were harsh and hard and like me, protecting their inner core with their animus armour.
Now I see that this is a natural progression towards something else, but there is a process to get there! Back then I was horrified!
What happened is that there was a large group of men and women that all at once started attending David Deida's workshops in the city I lived in at the time, around '96. Deida seems to have been a pioneer in teaching men and women to recover their core essence, the loss which imo, started in the 'revolution of the 60's', and women's 'liberation.' This is also when the archetype of Beauty started to disappear, so to speak.
I enjoyed his websites and workshops and books. I don't know if he is still doing this work. He had a book for men called "The Way of the Superior Man" which women loved and usually bought for their men, then the men would read the book! ;)
He had a sort of blog called "Dear Lover" for women. I found this information very crucial in healing that feminine inner core and expressing this without reservation. His slant was Shakti/Shiva.
I am sharing this with you just in case you want to look further in your journey of recovering your inner feminine core. I just don't see how we all can eventually go toward androgyny if we don't recover our inner essence as men and women. Then, we can balance! Some have to do this more than others, and maybe more-so with the 'older' generations. It seems important for women to recover their lost traditions, and Laura has been doing this in her writings, for which I am quite grateful. The way she 'puts it all together' is the best that I have seen!
Here are some quotes from a fun website called Mother-God.com. I don't agree with everything they say, but I learned a lot there. Its' all women, and that can be a healing thing sometimes. Men are excluded, which I did not like, but I decided to be open to the site because there is a lot to learn there and a lot of healing of my 'murdered feminine' took place for me there. I was reading this right before I found Laura's work/websites.
Hope you find this helpful and maybe a little fun too. This is on the subject of "The Philosophy of Beauty" which is, on this site, related to the archetype of the Feminine.
This is also what I thought of when you described Laura holding that intricate, beautiful vase.
"
Philosophy Beauty and Truth are unrelated according to the modern view of the world.
When the poet Keats wrote:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" - That is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
Most people assume that what is being said is at best charming and sentimental, but ultimately meaningless in terms of real philosophy. In the "real world" of "scientific fact", philosophy beauty and truth have no relation to each other.
However, Keats's words are precisely orthodox in terms of Platonic thought, of Vedic or Taoist thought. Indeed of all the traditional thinking of humanity.
When Plato refers to the Absolute as to kalon, the Beautiful, he is making a statement that logically entails that of the poet - that Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty.
So why is this interrelation of philosophy beauty and truth so alien to the modern mind? The answer lies in two radically opposed theories of what beauty is.
According to the materialist doctrine, human beings are merely animals and the world is a mere accident of physics and biology. Nothing exists beyond the material and tangible.
Science is a method based upon the strict consideration only of material things. This is perfectly legitimate, just as it is legitimate for plane geometry to confine itself to two dimensions. If plane geometry were to deny the third dimension it would be stepping outside its defined area and making statements that were inherently absurd.
Similarly if scientists were to declare that nothing beyond the material can exist, they would be stepping outside their sphere and giving voice to what is - within the very terms of their discipline - absurd and illegitimate.
And of course [material] science does not do this. But many ill-educated people who treat science as a sort of pseudo-religion do think this way. And to a large extent the thinking of the modern world is based on this pseudo-scientific superstition of a purely-material world.
What has this to do with the philosophy of beauty?
Simply this. If there is nothing beyond the material, then beauty can be nothing more than the subjective perception of human individuals.
The very name of the modern so-called "philosophy of beauty" presupposes this. It is called aesthetics - the study of feeling (an an-aesthetic is what we have to stop us feeling something). As Ananda Coomaraswamy has said, aesthetics is the mere study of human irritability.
To the traditional philosophy beauty is not a mere human feeling. Feeling is simply a reaction to beauty. Beauty exists before we feel it and independently of whether we feel it or not.
As Miss Alice Lucy Trent says in "The Feminine Universe":
...let us pause and consider the possibility that beauty is not a relative human perception, but an objective reality. That, indeed, Beauty is a cosmic reality that characterizes all sorts of different things - a flower, a star, a song, an angel - just as surely as hotness characterizes a sun and a fire, or wetness an ocean and a drop of dew.
We should be grateful if you would pause for just a moment in reading this page, and think about this most important concept - that beauty is a cosmic reality, not merely a human perception. That beauty is as objectively real as heat or light or weight. Because if, even for a moment, even partially, you can let this truth take hold of you, you will have broken one of the chains that bind you, and will have seen a glimpse of the cosmos as it really is.
Every beautiful thing in creation is beautiful because it shares, to some degree, in the Absolute Beauty which is Dea (a term this website gives to the Mother-God.)
The Philosophy of Beauty (as opposed to mere aesthetics) teaches us that Beauty and Truth are one. Why Beauty and Truth? Because according to traditional philosophy Beauty is the aspect of the Absolute that we perceive through love while Truth is the aspect of the Absolute that we perceive through Knowledge/Intelligence.
Knowledge, is not mere reason (which simply manipulates and organizes the information of the five senses) but the means by which the contemplative may see things that lie beyond the material.
Traditional thought always speaks of two paths to God, or to the Absolute: jnana marga - the Path of Light, or Knowledge and bhakti marga the Path of Love.
Now the Object of Intelligence is Truth and the Object of Love is Beauty. And the ultimate Truth and the ultimate Beauty are One and the same - the Absolute.
Thus, as we are taught by true philosophy Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty. And while that may not be all we know, our other knowledge belongs in the sphere of contingent things - things that might or might not be. In the sphere, in fact, that is currently called "science". For the serious scientist knows that science can never speak of what is, only of what is probable.
So, as we know from our philosophy Beauty and Truth are the only things we can truly Know. The Path of Love and the Path of Light are our only ways to the knowledge of That which Is rather than the shifting flux of material things.
The Philosophy of Beauty is thus one half of the most fundamental philosophy of all."
"There is such a thing as absolute Beauty. Absolute beauty is that which characterises the Divine. All earthly beauty is but a participation in this absolute Beauty, and when we say that a thing is more beautiful or less beautiful, we do not mean it in a quantitative sense. Beauty cannot be measured. We mean that the thing in question participates to a greater or lesser degree in the absolute Beauty - reflects it more or less perfectly in its own kind.
It is for this reason that the cultivation of beauty in our own lives is of fundamental importance, while the cultivation of ugliness or disorder in dress and personal appearance (as well as in art, design and other spheres) is a dark ritual of the Tamasic period and must be resisted. It is sometimes asked: "What of those who have the misfortune to be personally unattractive?" But physical ill-favouredness is merely an accident of the world of flux. The plain maid who makes herself as neat and beautiful as she can be is acting in conformity with the Light. The well-favoured maid who conforms to Tamasic/Dark fashions of ugliness and absurdity invokes the darkness."
And finally, about Chapt 4, "The Feminine Universe" by Alice Lucy Trent
IV. THE NATURE OF FEMININITY AND THE NATURE OF BEAUTY
Examines the true nature of the phenomenon we call femininity. Shows how it is not merely a human quality but is inherent in the cosmos itself. Shows how, despite the ignorance of modern politicized social theory, modern neuroscience and brain scan technology leave absolutely no doubt that the female brain is different from the male brain, and that the psychological, and emotional differences that result from this are precisely those that have always constituted traditional femininity. Femininity is not a "convention" or a "social construct", it is a biological reality. There is no "alternative neuroscience". All neuroscientists know this to be true. The "social construct" theory of femininity, despite the massive vested interests in its favor, is as outdated as the Flat Earth theory. Nevertheless, this chapter goes far beyond biology, showing that biological femininity is only the material expression of a much deeper cosmic reality, how Beauty is not a subjective human perception, but a Universal Truth; and the meaning of these realities in our lives today.
Yes! But honestly, my error is that I don't have a pencil and paper at the side of my bed ready to take notes of my dreams. So I have to start having the paper and pencil everynight with me.
