The earliest invocations of water in Indian archetypal wisdom call her Amba or mother. As the maternal dimensions of consciousness, water invites us to attend to the particular nature of the maternal as an archetype and not as we have narrated this in our technocratic reality.
Read MoreI call the nature of the body in an archetypal embodied archetypal tradition, the poetic body, because we approach the body itself in a poetic way. We want the body to be inspired by something poetic, we want the body to be infused by something poetic, we want to experience it and we want to express it all in this poetic way. In fact, the poetic vision or the poetic intelligence was the essence of divine intelligence.
Read MoreLightning in archetypal traditions is often associated with very fearsome deities who have the power to create cataclysmic events that can affect the whole cosmos. In Indian tradition, there is a deity called Indra whose weapon is the thunderbolt, and he is feared for his powers to create huge weather events and bring about great change.
Read MoreI adored my teachers in dance, philosophy, Yoga, martial arts, and literature. Finding inspiring teachers is a blessing I have been honoured to have in my life and almost makes up for all the turbulence in other quarters! Each time I studied under a teacher, I aspired to be like them—a dancer, philosopher, Yoga guru, or a writer. For a while I would be thoroughly distracted, pursuing the next aspiration as my “calling”.
Read MoreI have been preparing my next course, which is called Invoking the ancient waters: dance as the secret intelligence of water”. I have been dwelling in the domain of the archetypal intelligence and teaching of water. I'm going to share some reflections with you around the water archetype, and importantly, what it offers for us in our times.
Read MoreWater is essential for life. And water is also essential as an archetypal invocation. Water deities are present in traditions across the world. We've got Neptune, for example, the goddess Aapah in the Indian tradition, who later morphed into the masculine deity of Varuna.
What is really interesting about water is that it holds the archetypal invocation of consciousness. And it suggests that this great mystery of consciousness, the source, from where we all come, is not actually very distant to us.
Read MoreWho Am I? is a terrifying question. We really want to land an answer to that very quickly. So when we pose it in the ordinary domains of our life, we want to say, I am a dancer, I'm a writer, my mother, I'm a CEO, I'm a social worker, whatever it is, but we want to really have a definition. And usually that definition, especially in the times we live in, is by what we do in the world. What we do in the world seems to define who we are.
Read MoreAnimal archetypes play an important part in allowing us to experience the intelligence of nature. What is interesting about animals as archetypes is that it's not about imitating the animals.
Read MoreThe warrior or the Archer is an ancient archetype which is seen in traditions across the world. However, today in many of our philosophical aspirations, we don't think that the qualities of an archer warrior, especially ferocity, is something that is spiritual. In fact, we think that spirituality should be cleansed of ferocity. But the truth of the matter is that if we want to venture into the cave of self-inquiry, we do need a degree of ferocity as well as skill. And these are the two things that the archer warrior archetype held in these traditions.
Read MoreNon duality is a very important principle of many philosophical traditions. And non duality is considered to be something to aspire for. Because it is said that when we can move beyond divisions of liking something or disliking something, or whether something is right and wrong or good and evil, then we are also able to come into a space that is more compassionate, less judgmental, something that is much more harmonious and more uniting rather than something where we judge not only other people, but also ourselves. However, non-duality is not a space that could always be very comfortable, it is a space that comes with experiences of unease or being unsettled.
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