THE PRIMORDIAL

  I have been asked recently several times what the Primordial in Primordial Astrology means.  The Primordial is the foundation of all reality.  Taoism, Dzogchen(an ecstatic sect of Tibetan Buddhism), Alchemy, esoteric systems, East and West, as well as quantum physics, base their understanding and their technologies on granting access to Primordial Reality. The conditioned mind whether it be experiential or conceptual springs from a lifetime of habits used to perceive the world, and reinforce identity.  The conditioned mind camoflages the Primordial with a continuous narrative wave composed of personal history, preferences and dislikes, and conventional descriptions of reality, that become accepted as an ultimate description.

     The ego(or I)experiences itself as a historical instrument of continuity.  It is a trail of crumbs dropped through the forest of time that conditioned consciousness follows as close as it can back to its origins at the beginning of this life.  It remembers, and organizes its history in order to understand experiences in the present, and extrapolate into the future.  It is a useful illusion in both the construction of its experiences, and the defensive conditioned state that results from being buffeted by the waves of life.  It perceives and makes choices to keep itself within an aperture of experience that is predictable.  Most of what occurs outside its preferred experience is ignored whether it be inspiring, frightening, or causes it to question its presuppositions, however limiting they may be.

     In order to show the elusive nature of Primordial Reality, I’d like to use the metaphor of the perceivable universe.  Imagine the conventional reality that is experienced by the ego as all that is illumined by the Sun’s light.  All that is seen, heard and felt by the instruments of physical perception inform the ego of its place in time and space.   But once the Sun moves to the other side of the earth, a vast universe full of a billion stars, many larger than the Sun itself, emerges from the background that was blanched out by its rays. But there are other challenges to experiencing the Primordial, just as there are other challenges to seeing the four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, beyond the natural veil of sunlight.  If you are in, or near a city, light pollution radiates from it’s homes, businesses and streetlights, and obfuscates the Milky Way and the infinite spaces beyond it, in the same way that  conventional thinking about reality, reinforced by family,  peers, media, and culture, hide the Primordial Reality that is actually the source of everything. .

      Conventional thinking is based on the notion of living in a mechanistic universe.  Actions create reactions. A cue ball strikes a pool ball and its released energy sends it in a predictable direction.  Such is the logic of our self narrative. We are who we are because of the details of our history and how it  causes us to feel and think about ourselves and our world.  The historical information provided to us by our nervous systems is usually all we know about ourselves, and the world.  But when that narrative is quieted, aspects of consciousness emerge that have been drowned out by history, memory and the narrative that conditions our thinking and feeling.   Allowing that aspect of consciousness to emerge into awareness can be the most dynamic experiences a human being can experience.  From the corners of the room, a seemingly forgotten reality arises into awareness that seems to have been forgotten, but was there all the time, waiting to make itself known.  How is this presence contacted?  That is for another essay.