Showing posts with label The Phoenix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Phoenix. Show all posts

Friday, April 27, 2012

The Fire Bird

There is a phoenix inside of you. Know what to do when the flame erupts.

Dana Bate
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Hello Ken
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The phoenix is a fabled bird with brightly colored feathers. Legend has it that the phoenix lives for a long time but then one day it builds a nest. Sitting in the nest it catches fire and nest and bird are both destroyed in the fire and reduced to ashes. But out of the ashes comes an egg. The egg is hatched and the phoenix emerges to live again.

There are times in life when things don't feel right. Our mood is dark and gloomy, perhaps we are having twinges of fear and don't know why. We are disturbed and confused.

Then we try to do things to compensate and erase the gloom. We may listen to some of our favorite music or go for a walk, do some shopping, or pick up a book or magazine and try to read ourselves out of our morose mood. But those things don't help.

Some people will go off to the doctor and get a prescription for pep pills of some kind, some mood altering substance, or some will drink liquor or take illegal drugs, or some similar extreme and excessive behavior all in the attempt to ignore the signs from within ourselves that something important is taking place.

THE NEST Transitions are never easy. They usually begin with an unsettling dissatisfaction with things and at first it is hard to determine what we are dissatisfied with. We may not know until a crises occurs if we keep pushing our uncomfortable feelings out of the way. But the omens are insistent enough that we finally have to pay attention to them.

THE FIRE "Put off the old man...put on the new." When it becomes clear what the transition is that is taking place we discover changes in our lives. Old things about ourselves that we are reluctant to discard suddenly become useless and are cast off and thrown into the fire. It's difficult. Memories will remind us of the fine, former feathers we used to display. Forget them.

THE EGG Then the period of adjustment comes. We have to get used to ourselves in a new light of understanding. We may feel a sense of loss. Uncomfortable memories wail come to remind usof who we used to be and will make us want to recapture some of that life.

THE BIRTH There is a definite gestation going on now and the new person is about to emerge with a fine new set of feathers and a new life. Most of the old life is still with us but now we have a different point of view about things that are important to it. When the new birth is accomplished flap your wings in joy. The gloomy days are over.

Check you Hands of the Vagabond http://vagabondhand.blogspot.com/

Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up

Friday, May 29, 2009

Burning Birth 5/29/09

Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.

Christina Baldwin
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Come in and bring your brain.
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The Legend of the Phoenix exists in some version the world over. It can be found in the ancient texts of China, India, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, and Europe. In Russia it's known as the Firebird. It tells of rebirth, regeneration, resurrection.

Briefly the legend is that the phoenix is a very large bird with many colorful feathers. There is only one phoenix. It lives for 500 to 1,000 years. When the time comes it builds a nest in a palm tree. It then sets the nest on fire which burns up both the nest and the bird. But out of the flames comes another phoenix who constructs an egg out of myrrh, frankincense, and other spices, some say cinnamon. Gathering the bones of the parent phoenix it puts them in the egg then flies to Egypt where it leaves the egg on the alter of Ra, the sun god, in the temple of Heliopolis.

One interesting Biblical reference reads: "I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand." (Job 29:18)

Some day I'd like to write about Heliopolis, an ancient Egyptian city of great leaning, visited by Herodotus, Plato and others, possibly Jesus, the place where monotheism was born and where Nebuchadnezer threatened to smash its obelisks but never did (one of which now resides behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and the other in London, mistakenly called Cleopatra's Needles). The city was also known as On, whose high priest Potaphera's daughter married the patriarch Joseph and bore him two sons.

By placing its egg on the alter to Ra, the phoenix is celebrating the fiery rising of the sun again, the rebirth into existence from a nest of darkness, the continual change that signals the "always" of life.

In the tree across the street from me the bird who lives there has again built her nest and will soon have eggs to care for. Down below I hear the yammering of a class of young school children on their way to the library. Those things please me very much. They tell me that the sun will rise again tomorrow, that the eggs will hatch into baby birds, that the children will learn and grow and that life itself is immortal.

DB Vagabond Journeys
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Smile at me.
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