Born of nine waves
Published: Mon, 05/15/17
In the Northern tradition Heimdal is the teacher of mankind. We have the story of how Heimdal, disguised at the traveller Rig, fathers the classes of mankind, Trel, Karl and Jarl. Heimdal later returns as the teacher to Jarl.
Where does Heimdal first come into the story? Heimdal’s genesis is particularly strange in that, according to the mythology, he is supposed to be the offspring of nine wave maidens with Odin as his father. What this suggests to me is that Heimdal represents the combination of divine wisdom with the ebb and flow of human emotion.
What does it mean to be human? I would suggest that we have the potential to be profoundly wise and yet we cope each day with the flood tide of desire and the ebb tide of attachment.
We know that emotion drives human behaviour, people act out of desire for something they want or out of attachment to something they don’t want to lose. As you observe human behaviour in yourself and others it is possible to see that desire and attachment are at work at the same time and create conflicts. Once you realise that the conflicting forces of desire and attachment actually cancel each other out you have realised something quite profound. Sometimes the realisation that your life has been driven by conflicting feelings can you want to give up on life altogether. What is the point of living life in the thrall of conflicting emotions? Why not just give up? Actually that feeling of existential despair is just another ebb and flow of your emotional state.
Maybe that is the point of Heimdal’s strange birth. For us to really learn how to live we need the wisdom of the divine father married to the ebb and flow of emotion, the one actually has no purpose or meaning without the other.
If you really want to understand yourself and where you are in your life right now then see what desire is drawing you to and what you are ebbing from, yet still attached to. Tides ebb and flow but it is still the same ocean and the same beach. In the same way your feelings about relationships, your work, activities, environment and every aspect of your life will ebb and flow. But it is still your life. Often the best way to manage what seem like a problems is just patient observation. Eventually the tide will turn and a new cycle begins.
I have not been writing these emails much recently, as you may or may not have noticed. It isn’t that I have not been relatively creative. In the past week I preached a well received sermon on Sunday morning, taught three Stav classes and gave a talk to the local chamber of commerce at a breakfast meeting on Wednesday. All these I had committed myself to do so I got on and delivered almost despite myself. Writing regularly though has been difficult but maybe the tide has turned now. I got the inspiration to write this when I stopped and asked myself why I am finding it so hard to write? Lets see what happens tomorrow.
In the meantime I have two courses lined up in the next few weeks. How to train with the Web of Orlog in May http://somersetstav.co.uk/web.html and then how to train with the Five Principles of Stav in June http://somersetstav.co.uk/principles.html
regards
Graham
PS Sadly the USA training this month did not go ahead because we did not get quite enough committed support to make it possible. However, we are going to have another go in September, more details soon.