The Way In Gravity

By John Sacelli

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In that case, the female direction is “into the earth;” the male direction “into the sky.”

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“We exist in a locally curved region of space and time created by the mass of the earth. The tug we feel downward as we stand by our beds in the morning is the sensation of our daily slide down that well in spacetime, a slope heading inward toward the center of the earth.”

— Thomas Levinson (American sciencewriter), Einstein in Berlin

That’s physics, Relativity to be specific. And what could that have to do with Consciousness? Could Einstein have been referring to what Dante alluded to when he said: The Way In Is the Way Out?

     Let’s try positing definitions of “male” and “female” energies as descriptions of energy flow direction: male is energy coming up and out, female coming down and in. In that case, the female direction is “into the earth;” the male direction “into the sky.”

     There are many on a “spiritual path,” whether “New Age” or of some more orthodox religiosity, who think our purpose here is to ascend. If we live a good life, the reward is “Heaven”—or the Mother-Ship which will sweep us off this tear-stained “material plane” and up to the stars or the clouds with the angels and the Star-Beings. They believe the goal is to “ascend.” God and Spirit are above us, we are told. We move up into higher consciousness, higher chakras, higher purposes, higher ideals—and leave this low-consciousness material shell behind. God is in the sky. The Sun, the Stars, the Light. Salvation is above us.

     Which is all a part of our patriarchal bias. Matter is female, spirit male, and God’s on top.

     But “ascend” sounds suspiciously like “ass end.” And how many of us don’t have our own favorite miss-begotten memories about a time we had our heads in the clouds—and ended up on our ass?

     The truth may in many ways be just the opposite. Try a thought experiment: Imagine you are standing upright somewhere, and your best friend is next to you. Run an imaginary line up your spine, and have your friend do the same. In fact, the higher you go up that line, the further you will get from each other. You are moving into the experience of your own uniqueness, a resonance with “the stars” or “fate” which speaks to you alone, whispers the story of your soul. (Just as your natal astrology chart tells the story of your coming-into-being—a unique resonance of the planetary and stellar harmonics at the moment you separated from the mother and began your earth-walk.) Your friend, however, both from birth and in the moment, may be hearing quite another story. We are free to share with each other what “God”—or our own sense of inspiration—is telling us, about ourselves. But we err when we try to make that a story for others. When we try to make that sky-story of ours fit the life of others.

     But now reverse your imaginary journey, and head downward. You and your friend will meet, at the same point at which all consciousness beings meet—at the center of our own local gravity well. Otherwise known as Earth, or Gaea. It is here we find our community, our oneness with each other, our spiritual unity.

     Which is why, in a world in which we are all recognizing that “self” and the economy of consumption has outrun the earth’s ability to provide, we must “return to the mother” and make the journey in. It is not an easy one, and we resist. Inanna, Sumerian forerunner of the Greek Persephone, does not like surrendering her privilege in the underworld:

     Neti, the chief gatekeeper of the Underworld, answers the pure Inanna. “Who art thou?”

     “I am Inanna, of the place where the sun rises.”

     “If thou art Inanna, why art thou come to the land of no return? On the road whose traveler comes not back, how has thy heart led thee here?

     At her entering, the crown was taken from her brow. “What pray is this?”

     “Be silent, Inanna, the Ordinances of the Underworld are perfect.”

     At entering the second gate, the scepter of lapis lazuli was taken from her brow. “What pray is this?”

     “Be silent, Inanna, the Ordinances of the Underworld are perfect.”

     At entering the third gate, the little lapis lazuli beads were taken from her neck. “What pray is this?”

     “Be silent, Inanna, the Ordinances of the Underworld are perfect.”

And so Inanna succumbs to necessity, bows to that which is greater than herself. At each of the seven levels of self—the chakras—Innanna is stripped of her separation. And because she does so, the world is reborn.

     But how is it that “the Ordinances of the Underworld are perfect?” What was the poet telling us? That if we know how to strip ourselves of the outer trappings of individuation and personality, that some deeper manifestation of Self, rather than self, is there to be found?

     It is the female power, the down and in, which takes not only the self, but also everything in the outer world connected to the self, into those inner realms for transformation and renewal. We enter that gravity well—and “gravity” sounds suspiciously like “grave”—to return to the womb from which we came. Life goes backward. Time goes backward. And therein lies the great secret.

     Losing the crown, the scepter, the beads, and all the other offices of earth-life while we “return to the source” is the third phase of the Triple Goddess, the Crone. In the Maiden phase, male energy is drawn into the female womb, initiating new life forms. In the Mother phase, these forms are protected and nourished as they grow. But in the Crone phase, the Feminine becomes “destructive.” Unlike destructive male energy, which is explosive, destructive female energy is implosive. Forms of life—bodies, social mores, rusty cars, plastic water bottles, belief systems—are pulled back into “the Source” or “the Womb” to be broken down into new energies, as yet unassigned, before new worlds are created.

     And is this not the purpose of the cycles of life?

     Or, in the words of T.S. Elliot: “the end of all our exploring ... will be to arrive where we started ... and know the place for the first time.”

     Is not the journey into conscious death—of the self, of the society—the door to the creation of new worlds? The “Way In” is also the “Weigh In”—passing consciously through the plunge into the inner worlds allows us to “weigh in,” or make contributions to the shape of the collective fate.

     Recently a friend shared a dream in which enormous figures rose out of the earth, half snake, half woman, and threatened to destroy humanity if we did not cease our rape of the planet. In her dream, she argued with the snake-women, trying to convince them that there was still hope for us. They were unpersuaded. So we re-entered the dream, called the snake-women back, and offered ourselves as sacrifices. They ate us, and instead of disappearing, we were filled with energy. Now, having surrendered to that feminine power, the snake, or kundalini, was alive with new possibilities inside us.

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John Sacelli has been on a Shaman’s Path since the early 1980s. He works with dreams and soul intention, as well as “star logic” (astrology) in Chicago, and can be reached at 773-761-0252 or salynx@johnsacelli.com, www.johnsacelli.com. John is the author, along with local visionary artist Chris Deschaine, of the AngeLynx Oracle Deck, www.angelynx.com.

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