Crone thoughts with Kairos

So, progress on the Croning Thing.

I might have decided on the object to let go of and bury and may have found something that will be new.

In addition, I managed, despite the still ongoing (as I write) Paralympics pressure to get to visit Kairos.

Sitting. Very peaceful indeed. Quiet. Except for squirrels and pigeons moving heavily in the trees and occasionally snapping twigs. Quiet and yet this overwhelming sense of the livingness of the world. An exquisite electrical buzzing of a sense that I have no name for. The sense that is attuned to vibrancy.

After a while I began to write. A twig snapped and down came some leaves and I thought of how the tree, this tree, can let go of what he doesn't need - but all the same, he draws back into himself the nutrients from autumn leaves. There may be a richness, a meaning, to be taken back before one relinquishes something.

I thought of how hard it is for me to let go of the desire for some ultimate sense-making. It's like I want to discover or reveal or develop a dogma!

Instead, the messages I receive suggest a more free-form process. Like the branches of an oak. But then, I considered that the oak is not free. The tree's growth is constrained by the available light as well as by the soil he finds himself in and by the actions of others. There is no such thing as true freedom, I thought. That led to the idea of freedom of thought... but of course that is constrained by the context, the culture, the environment of ideas. What about imagination? Even that builds on what exists, what has been experienced or learned or dreamed, already.

So, one accepts the constraints of the situation but responds still creatively, individually - as John Stuart Mill would have it.

Kairos reminded me of something: in a session with Nina, I decided that my guiding values were Curiosity, Love and Wisdom and they align with Maiden, Mother and Crone. And I had the sense that the aim is not to be guided by tradition and by hate/anger/resentment, for through them there is no route to Wisdom. Instead one is lost in fear and boredom and pain.

Then the tree spoke up. Kairos explained something. We humans have separated wants from needs. We have so many wants that are not needs. In the more-than-human, needs are what is wanted, that's it - and consequently, he said, there is vast, intense pleasure in the satisfaction of needs. That is why the animal world, for example, does indeed have joy and happiness and delight - it comes from the satisfaction of needs. We, for whom fulfilling needs is so often taken for granted, demand more and more and have all these wants. 'Like you,' he said, 'wanting to see the fox and the raven, the hare and the owl.' I suffer pain for not having these wants met, rather than experiencing the full pleasure of having each and every need met.

Think of all the joy felt by the treecreeper as she finds bug after bug! All the ecstasy of the robin as he creates song! And, though of course there is pain and fear and so on, think of all the pains that there are not: the pains of not having this lottery win or that car or this holiday or that pair of jeans!

Of course, Kairos espouses a similar view to the Buddha, who did, after all, attain enlightenment sitting under a tree.

Afterwards, I was looking for acorns and found only one - I think the busy squirrels had collected and buried the rest. But I saw leaves and they drew me with their incredibly varied palette.