From Wonder to Words
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Take a look at this photo.
Tune into the energy of it. How do you feel while connecting with this image? Stay with this feeling. Breathe.
Now find the words to describe what you’re feeling. Get more precise. See yourself depicting to another person the way you felt while looking at the photo.
Those words might come easily to you. Or you might get stuck in the translation phase. Attempting to convert into language an energetic experience can be a challenge that increases with the magnitude of the felt experience.
There is a reason why the most profound of spiritual initiations are usually not found written in books. They might be sung or danced, they might become a painting, a piece of musical poetry. They might be turned into a film or a play, made 3-D into a statue or a cathedral.
How to express the ineffable, how to share with another human being the depth of emotions created but a particular remarkable moment?
This is the dilemma I have encountered for most of my life. The bridge I have tried to build over and over, to cross from the felt to the narrative and allow others to travel with me.
I’ve know since I was a young child that books were in my destiny. Books of words and images. Tools of transmission filled with language and visual. It was never a question of one of the other, I was clear that sentences needed the support of pictures- and that although an image might be worth a thousand words, I delighted in the marriage of both forms of expression.
Back to the photo above.
I took it last night, as the sun was setting. No filter, this is what my phone actually captured.
I feel that the image in itself broadcasts a powerful radiance and evokes the might of Spirit.
The first words that came to mind when I looked at it a couple of hours later was: Phoenix Rising. I clearly see the mythical being: its deployed wings of fire, its wide-fanned tail and even the crest over its head. The fact that the legendary birds appears here as created by the Sun, to which it is historically connected, is not lost on me.
The Sun and the Phoenix are symbols of rebirth, resurrection, rising from the darkness and bringing forth Light.
Let me now add some more words to the image, a personal narrative to bring dimensional context to the visual experience.
We are currently in the astrological sing of Scorpio. This sign is characterized by four archetypes, a representation of the human spiritual evolution as one moves from Scorpio to Snake to Eagle to Phoenix. During the month of November, the collective of earth people gets to reflect, consciously or not, about where one finds oneself on this personal spectrum of transformation. So the concept of the Phoenix is in the energy we are all bathing in.
On a personal level, beyond going through my own deep self-observation, I’ve also had the privilege to guide some fellow koronauts (heart royality enthusiasts) through the growing awareness of the unique power they are born to embody, as they journey along the evolutionary spiral of a human life.
Yesterday’s new moon in Scorpio, when both luminaries conjuncted in that constellation, marked the apogee of that inquiry. The visible revelation of the global experience of the inner Phoenix Rising that I witnessed and photographed took place at the closing of a ceremony-celebration during which the mythical concept had been explored and embodied.
Over the course of several hours, the energy of inner transformation was activated as we participated in a specific physical process meant to symbolize the passage from one state of being to another. The Scorpio stages were discussed, what was actively being released was brought up as well as the conscious intentions for moving forward. Old weeds were uprooted as fresh seeds were planted and protected from outside influences, in order to allow them to germinate and grow strong.
The magick of it all is that the profound alchemy that was being experimented with by humans was being mirrored in the skies, the divine source of inspiration. The exposure of the sun-as-phoenix symbolized in a single visual the wonder we had been seeking to capture with our words.
There is more to our beingness than what our five senses communicate to us. And even more than what our eyes might perceive as a mystical event. And so much more than what we can actually express about such an occurrence. No thing beats the felt experience. No thing measures to what the heart registers beyond time ad space. No thing compares to being fully present to beholding the magnificence of our Spirit. And then, in acknowledged communion, to turn to another human and simply utter: wow.
