Shine on me let it shine on me (ruh roh Ra)

[dreamer_easy]

Remember what I was just saying about how this episode of hypomania, and indeed the recent years of my life, have lacked religious feelings? After a badly disrupted night's sleep (I have a cold), and the first in a week without Saphris, I just glanced at a page, saw this Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, and felt my generator sparking:


It's a sundisc, with rays of light coming down. I know the image from complex diagrams like this one:



The sun god, travelling in his sky-ship, sends down rays of energy that revivify the dead.

I feel like I want to nurture that image. Which would mean nurturing not just positive and sacred feeling, but potentially an elevated mood. Uh oh. How do I stay happy and busy, up but not too far up?

(For those of you who are curious: the black disc in the ship is the sun, with the goddess Maat, representing cosmic order, sitting in the front. Beneath that is the hieroglyph for "sky", with the sun-god's falcon head poking down, emanating what look (to me) like hours of the day and night and general beams of light onto a mummy, which is protected at head and foot by the goddesses Isis (left) and Nephthys. The sun and his rays are also protected by goddesses, in this case Nekhbet (the vulture) and Wadjet (the cobra). This is an image of the dead person safely tucked away in the netherworld, given eternal life by the creator god, and participating in the creator's activities. All is as it should be. The picture comes from the book Egyptian Religious Texts and Representations by Alexandre Piankoff and was redrawn from a funerary papyrus in the Louvre.)

ETA: Aw yiss, this is what I'm talking about. (The rays are turning into multicoloured flowers.)



(The stela of Lady Taperet, also at the Louvre.)

Comments

[acelightning]

I think that, at the very least, you should accept elevated moods (as well as depressed moods). Can you learn how to utilitize both kinds of energy?

[dreamer_easy]

As I've been scribbling, a elevated mood is a mixture of good and bad - creativity and irritability, for example. When it gets too elevated, it stops being a positive thing and becomes horrible, like being on a rollercoaster that's just gone over the first peak, all the time. So you crave the "up", but not too much damn "up", or all you'll do is run around in circles, feeling crazy.

[acelightning]

What I'm trying to ask is whether there's a way you might be able to say to yourself, "Well, this just slid into the horrible zone. I know it's not going to stay like this forever, but until it does change, is there any way I could do something useful with this horribleness?"

See, I'm being a Crone here, and the pictures you posted, along with the explanations you gave, made me think that the Gods might want you to try to use the stuff that goes on in your brain, even when it's severely unpleasant. The phrase that just popped into my own brain is, "When shit happens, make compost and grow vegetables!"

If I'm talking totally out of my arse, feel free to tell me so!

[dreamer_easy]

Maddeningly, so to speak, when you're too "up" you can't sit still or focus enough to get anything done!

But there are ways to use it nonetheless. I just realised this morning that the technological horror I am inflicting on my robot character is the electronic equivalent of mania. Poor little tin boy. :)

[acelightning]

Yeah, that might be one way of using the energy... just remember to write your little robot back to a stable state when you're done...

[lferion]

This is really interesting -- the image of the Sun beaming out flowers/sparkles/energy-made-form. I'm wondering if I can use it to do/think more usefully/positively about the current season here in Tucson, my very least favorite -- 100+ and relentlessly bright for days on end.

I need to think about this. Thank you!

[dreamer_easy]

Literal sunbeams are sometimes not as joyous as metaphorical ones. XD

[klward]

Such beautiful images and thoughts! The numinous can be hard to reach sometimes, but it's always there. I don't wonder that so many practices deny or discipline the body and minimise the affairs of day-to-day life, attempting to maximise the experience. I may not approve, thinking as I do that the sacred manifests through the secular and is often best glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye, but I don't wonder.

[dreamer_easy]

I wish I could say being the hermit I am brought me closer to the gods! My spiritual practice these days is all mental, research and things. There's a role for that, but I miss magic circles. Maybe when I get a novel published and can relax.