Water for the Sweet Willies!

On this Pentecost Sunday evening a light rain drove me back onto the dry balcony. From here I have to bend over in order to see the terrace flowers: the geraniums and in the Western corner: the Sweet Williams, Dandelions, Marguerites and all kinds of “wild” flowering upshoot. But here you have the full view on Carlsheaven. The last sun beams are just retiring over the the Diemel Heights. A rosa red glow is floating over the houses there. And then we have only the moon up here together with some long white greyish rainclouds. It will be a dry and refreshing evening after this very hot day.

Mischa has been writing all day, Willemien had to start a new life for her now uncovered index finger after a six week period of strict rest is over now. I wish her much patience and also joy to encourage the revalidation, reintegration of that excluded body part into the wholeness of the daily unconscious dance into the world. Again I have been reading this afternoon, lying in a deckchair, sometimes more waking up in the middle of a niddle-noddle. Not quite that kind of clear and sharp form of awakening, about which I was reading. What could have been a form of mindful training, a spiritual exercise, was narrowed down into some form of snoozing. The heat of course….

But really, I did try to reread my “Essential Plotinus”, texts from the Enneads, which I had studied thoroughly during the nineties. Now I was astonished seeing all these early notes and I missed the concentration to enter these magnificent texts. Nevertheless I will refer here to what Plotinus says on “Beauty” (I, 6, #1#). This pure, authentic form - not idea - of inner experience of Beauty can only be accessed through a stern and uttermost combat of the soul, a struggle to release that ambitious quest for worldly knowledge, power, honor and recognition by turning inward.

“He is the true unfortunate who has not seen this Beauty and he alone. It were well to cast kingdoms aside and the domination of the entire earth and sea and sky, if by this spurning, one might obtain this vision. What is this vision like? How is it attained?” Such was part of my reading today. And let me conclude that whatever your answer on these last question would be, I do hope that any kind of niddle-noddle, snooze, or slumber is excluded. Or we would have to undergo some form of rude awakening: a shower of cold water from the watering can for the Sweet Willies!