A documentary based on Eastern Philosophy, which my son recommended to me, comes in a series of 4 parts, each comprised of approximately 45 minutes.  There is a lot of terminology which is unfamiliar to me and may be difficult for me to remember once I have been introduced to them.  So, in an effort to hold on to some of these terms and concepts, this short description will list and perhaps define some of these words and phrases. There may be errors but based on my notations and memory, they go as follows.

Kundalini – align with evolutionary potential

Pingala, Sushunna & Chakra – Energy Wheel

Be the Bee, not the Locust for the Bee passes pollen on for reproduction and the Locust only destroys.

Identify with the stillness in the eye of the hurricane.

Having connections to think with your belly, tap into inner wisdom and use “gut brain”.

Gut Brain is native knowledge coming from the spiral of life. ‘Ask the bees, they have not forgotten to love. They help beauty in diversity to proliferate.

The antelope moves in one direction

Pentagonal, Spiral, logorithmics, Tighten the curves.

Quiet mind to observe within self – equanimity – ying yang.

Spiral forces and images in nature, for example, the snail.

Spiral forces make all conditions and ideas possible.  It pays to take the time.

Plato, geometric proportions, golden ratio, world’s soul.

Art in Nature, Nature is a creative machine. Nature is alive and self-organizing.

The universe was thought of as empty space. Dark – always thinking.  It provides expansion and growth of the universe.

William Blake

Pattern is dynamic, embodied in all living things.  Pattern is nature’s secret language in Art.

Nature is precise and efficient.

“How much math do you need to know to be a flower or a bee?”

Nature embodies the process of self-assembly.

There is mention of the Golden Key and the Mind of God.

If you name me you negate me.

Spirit legend.

Tesla

God particle – Everything is made of vibration or a hidden dancer – base material of the universe.

Symatics – visible sound.

Sound imitates the creation of matter in the world.  The tortoise shell.

Water high resonance – Sonic waves.

Energy in stillness lies the greatest power.

Consciousness drives the illusion of reality.

Artist and Art are inseparable – Past, Present and Future.

Everything has spirit.

Tetragramaton – Logos – Primordial Word – Chiva

Heroclitis

Logos – origin of repetition.

William Blake said the following

I see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.

In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as justice.

…in heaven, it is where broken hearts are mended, and love is restored.

…that pop into my head, do you really want to know?  Words unsaid, or too many words spread.  The least said, the better. It’s a saying as it goes. You can’t take them back, really.  Or they may, and very likely be forgotten, and render themselves, meaningless.  So why say them in the first place?

Her husband wrote;

“Soft be thy sleep delivered from thy pain.  Sweetheart of fifty summers, till again immortal LOVE shall join us soul to soul; where tears are dried and broken hearts made whole.”

This article is featured in the anthology, “Representations of Death in Nineteenth-Century US Writing and Culture” edited by Lucy E. Frank, from the University of Warwick, UK.  In her article Ms. Schofield writes about the cultural universality of the custom of mourning to mark the transition from life to death.  These customs are distinct from culture to culture and the rituals performed invariably mark the status, social role and gender of the deceased and their living.  She says, that ‘mourning customs are a way to bridge the gulf between private emotions of grief and social expectations, defining ideas of what is valued by an individual’, in what she calls, ‘crossing the boarder between life and death’.

Schofield asserts that the mourning custom for nineteenth century in the United States was determined by European and Christian beliefs.  Evidence left from the time the Republic was first formed until WWI are visible in textual documents, inscriptions and eulogies, and validate the uprightness of the person in society and their deserving place in afterlife.  In other words, a person of good standing was, by society, guaranteed a respectable sending off party, and a place in heaven.  The funerary objects donned in the way of dress, jewelry, and funeral services and crypts and tombstones, were concrete evidence of the social status of the family and friends involved.   These values are the very one’s which helped to carve out and differentiate the american bourgeoisie, from the rest of society.

American society is and was unique because it was upheld as the land of opportunities including social and economic mobility.  The bourgeoisie, while not encompassing all sectors of society was what many aspired to being, of having the comforts and security to consume whatever was available for making life more pleasant and desirable.  The reality however is that not all sectors of society were in actuality bourgeoisie but rather this was a status reserved for, as Alex Tocqueville envisioned, those who accumulated the fortunes, institutions and positions of power.  Furthermore, this process of acquiring capital by some, narrowed the gap for the serving class to become part of the well-to-do society.  Within the bourgeoisie structure, their were well defined roles; the men accumulated the capital and the women tended the hearth and home, and took care of the emotional backbone of the family, as well as managed the coffers filled by the husband.

With George Washington’s death in 1797 a market for funerary memorabilia became popular. Accumulation of material items, such as clothing for mourning and miniatures, or small portraits of the deceased painted on an oval ivory background was more and more the trend.  A culture of sentimentality arose whereby dying was not abhorred by many because it meant there would be a place for them in God’s kingdom.  This feeling of course was paralleled by an equal feeling of total emotional devastation by the loss of a loved one.  The social pressures attached to mourning etiquette were quite strict and if one didn’t follow them, they would be scorned or looked down upon by society.  One such rule was that black attire was to be worn for a full two years and for six months it was frowned upon to go to social functions such as to the opera or a dinner party.

A sentimental culture was marked by the two feelings of bereavement and sympathy. This was a culture of the Victorian Age and overtly practiced in circles of the bourgeoisie class.  Having these feelings was a matter of all sectors of society but if one were able to afford the hats, the gloves, the black mourning garment with complete accessories, then they were indexed as members of the social elite and special class, whereas all others were simply common people. As Ms. Schofield points out much of this trend was a following of the European traditions, particularly the social mores practiced by Queen Victoria herself.  When Prince Albert died in 1861, the entire court went into mourning and the Queen herself dressed in black until the end of her own life in 1901.

Mourning died out in Europe before the twentieth century, but women in the United States continued to wear mourning apparel into the early part of the century.  Socialist attitudes began to heavily criticize the elite trends and habits and Georg Simmel called bourgeoisie women, mannequins for the display of their husband’s wealth.  The mourning apparel finally disappeared completely when the clothing became so extravagant and the idea of flaunting one’s social status at the expense of a loved one’s death became a question of sincerity and ethics.

 

For all the saints, and the not so saintly, too! Today is, the Christian celebration, All Saints Day. All Saint’s Day, in México is also called, ‘Día de los angelitos’, Day of Little Angels, in memory of all deceased children. This cemetery was seen in Atwoodville.

…about the character, Pip, from Charles Dickens, “Great Expectations”:

“It is shocking to find out that a character you love and cherish is not viewed by the author in the same way that you view the character.  But in the magical world of writing, it is possible for an author to give birth to characters and elements that grow beyond his or her control.”