The Moon Palace Chapter 7 The beginning of the return.
The Moon Palace story. Returning to Earth. Returning to a full life.
The daughter, (us), stayed in the Moon Palace, for a short time or a long time, or however long time that takes.
I visit the Moon Palace when I make myself small, smaller than I am. I come and go from the Moon Palace as though it is my home from which I go out to work in the world, to return in the evening to the comfort of my denial. To rest from the opposing voices in my head, the contradictions, and the double binds.
In order to break through these conflicting inner voices I use poetry, “the words against which we have no defense,” the words that penetrate to the depths of our Soul. To understand the power of poetry click here.
Here is one such poem by Patrick Pearce
The bell and the Black Bird.
The sound of a bell still reverberating or a blackbird calling from a distant corner of a field,
Both asking you to waken into this life
And inviting you deeper into the one that waits.
Either way, it takes courage,
Either way asks you to be nothing but that self which is no self at all.
Wants you to walk to that place where you find that you already know that you have to give every last thing away.
That the approach is also the meeting,
Without any meeting at all.
That radiance that you have always carried with you as you walk both alone and completely accompanied by friendship by every corner of the world crying. hallelujah.
The call of the Bell, is the same metaphor we use when we start a story. “Once upon a time” Time and the bell call to similar things. So many bells in our lives, the bell that marks the passage of clock time, in the old days the town hall clock had a different bell for each quarter-hour, and everybody within hearing of the clock knew what time it was. Now we are both called and driven by the clock. Called to our responsibilities and commitments and driven by our need to fulfill our financial and time requirements of career, family, and friends. Time is not our own but usually, somebody else’s especially if one is employed. As we move away from our own center we fall increasingly under the punishments of time, as such time increasingly proves our reality
Then one day she was looking over the edge of the Moon Palace and she saw the young fishermen from the village in their boats, getting ready to go fishing. It was the custom in the village for the young men to offer a prayer before going out to fish. They would take a small cup they would scoop up some water from the ocean and would throw it high into the air. The one whose water reached up the highest point would have his prayer answered.
There is a time when we have all felt this splash of water on our face metaphorically when we have been touched by something divine. The first time this happened was in our youth about 12 years old. I have called it the Parsifal moment. This moment is described in the Parsifal story you can find that story on this link.
How do we know when we have had the first Parsifal moment?
Perhaps “Parsifal’s” own, Parsifal moment will give us some insights and direction. The narrative tells us that the young boy who as yet had no name was out in the forest. He saw five Knights riding past with their armor, weapons, and horses draped in fine cloths. He assumed he had seen gods and raced home to tell his mother. He wanted to go and meet them and would not be dissuaded.
This is the power of the first Parsifal moment. He would spend the rest of his life trying to fulfill that vision.
For us, it’s easier to see in retrospect. Here are some pointers. These moments can be quite fleeting. A sunrise with some special quality especially if a special place is involved. A visit to a place, especially if that is a place to which we want to return to. It could also be a special piece of music, an event, meeting somebody, or a piece of art. That moment can be something we did for the first time, and it turned out great, usually, we want to go back there and repeat that experience. In that place, in that time, with that person, we experienced something larger than life, something that could sustain us for the first part of our life. Being touched by something inexplicable is our First Parsifal experience
This is also how we get “The Fisher King wound.” Like the Fisher King, we have that moment when we experience something of the Divine. In the narrative, the Fisher King takes a bite of the salmon on the grill and burns his fingers and his mouth. His life is never the same after that. The salmon represents Divine wisdom, having taken a bite of that he is always dissatisfied and in pain in this world.
Do we have this dissatisfaction with the world around us? We have had the first Parsifal moment, after that the world is lacking something glorious which we seek everywhere and in everything but remain dissatisfied.
We stand in circles at malls looking outwards waiting for somebody to bring us our spiritual inheritance, Our parents, our teachers, our religious leaders, our Elders. When it doesn’t arrive, we turn around and face inwards. The peer group is created. The parents and the rest of society are excluded. Now we are really stuck with the Fisher King feeling.
It seems to me in some ways this is the eternal winter of our discontent. The world at large is in a state of discontent all of our lives are affected by this. Unless you live in a rural setting and are self-sufficient. Until somebody spots your piece of paradise and wants to take it over.
The voices of diminishment. The internal voices constantly criticise and pull us down. The ones that make us feel worthless. Who has a vested interest in pulling us down and making us feel worthless? …………………………………………
I left that space for your own thoughts and feelings. Please take a moment to consider that question before reading on.
While I can’t answer that question of you, the individual reader, I can answer in general.
One of the agendas for putdown and comments of diminishment is to make us feel small and worthless, in that way we are easily controllable in all aspects of life. There are those who would steal our Personal Gold while telling us that personal gold is worthless anyway. See the story of the “Devil’s sooty brother” This story describes the way our Gold gets stolen by “The false Inn Keeper” and what to do about that.
Then there are the words of the Giants. The most famous of these is “FE FY FO FUM I smell the blood of a Man.” “Be he be alive or be he dead I’ll grind his Bones to make my bread”
Everything we would want to be fearful of about Giants is contained in those words. FE FY FO FUM. As the story came down to us it seems to have no meaning. A Google search revealed the following.
