It's time to talk about Venezia. Indigo is the only color that comes to mind. The city is deeply devoted to and thoroughly entrenched in an ideal. And yet, the urge to evolve toward either Rose Quartz or Tanzanite doesn't seem to be there.
A bit of history: Venice is built in a swamp on a pile of logs. Literally. There are some differences in the lore of who built it and why, but the most prevalent story is that a group of refugees from Roman cities decided to create a shipping, fishing and trading business there because of the access to the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas. At first the people were situated on a small group of islands in the swamp, but over many decades they chopped down entire forests in the Slovenia - leaving that part of the world totally barren - and built platforms on which they placed stones for streets and foundations for buildings. (Did you know that wood doesn't deteriorate under water? No oxidation, no deterioration.) While they were outrageously successful in constructing an almost impenetrable city with a unique geographic position, thus creating one of the wealthiest municipality in the world, they were not so wise in the mundanities of life. Many centuries later they began digging wells to pull water up from the depths in order avoid importing fresh water from nearby lands, and the very act of pulling the water out from under their foundation started sinking the city. In addition, their lack of ability to create proper sewage conditions resulted in a pollution of their canals that almost ruined the city's inhabitability.
Alongside that little bit of history, we must also acknowledge that some of the most talented artists of the Renaissance thrived in Venice, giving us a unique array of paintings, music, and architecture. Marco Polo explored and expanded the world. The glass-makers there changed the art altogether. The wealth of the merchant families brought culture and elegance to it's highest point at certain periods of history.
In other words, this strange community was both ill-conceived and the breeding ground of greatness.
And in that mindset, Venezia got stuck. While citizens of Roma live side-by-side with history, and citizens of Firenze continue to beautify their history, the citizens of Venezia seem to exalt and worship their history, without concern about bringing it into the present. One walks the narrow, dark, kinda creepy alleyway streets of Venezia with an eery sense of bygone days. A close look at any building and one realizes that the city is crumbling. Trying to board a gondola, one notices that there are many steps below water, testimony to the fact that the city is sinking. The sense there is that one is witnessing the end of an era, not the continuation or evolution of a culture.
Indigo is the Sphere of Devotion and Idealism. Of course humanity needs to be devoted to ideals. We must strive to be the best of ourselves. But unfortunately, Indigo also sometimes blinds us to the importance of updating our ideals. We become hypnotized by our devotion to tradition. We lose our ability to become dreamers, living backward in time - diving into the future in our dreams and bringing the future into the present when we awaken.
It seemed to me that Venice has lost its dream. It has become a fantastic tourist stop for cruise ships, but it only offers one the opportunity to imagine how magnificent it used to be.
A bit of history: Venice is built in a swamp on a pile of logs. Literally. There are some differences in the lore of who built it and why, but the most prevalent story is that a group of refugees from Roman cities decided to create a shipping, fishing and trading business there because of the access to the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas. At first the people were situated on a small group of islands in the swamp, but over many decades they chopped down entire forests in the Slovenia - leaving that part of the world totally barren - and built platforms on which they placed stones for streets and foundations for buildings. (Did you know that wood doesn't deteriorate under water? No oxidation, no deterioration.) While they were outrageously successful in constructing an almost impenetrable city with a unique geographic position, thus creating one of the wealthiest municipality in the world, they were not so wise in the mundanities of life. Many centuries later they began digging wells to pull water up from the depths in order avoid importing fresh water from nearby lands, and the very act of pulling the water out from under their foundation started sinking the city. In addition, their lack of ability to create proper sewage conditions resulted in a pollution of their canals that almost ruined the city's inhabitability.
Alongside that little bit of history, we must also acknowledge that some of the most talented artists of the Renaissance thrived in Venice, giving us a unique array of paintings, music, and architecture. Marco Polo explored and expanded the world. The glass-makers there changed the art altogether. The wealth of the merchant families brought culture and elegance to it's highest point at certain periods of history.
In other words, this strange community was both ill-conceived and the breeding ground of greatness.
And in that mindset, Venezia got stuck. While citizens of Roma live side-by-side with history, and citizens of Firenze continue to beautify their history, the citizens of Venezia seem to exalt and worship their history, without concern about bringing it into the present. One walks the narrow, dark, kinda creepy alleyway streets of Venezia with an eery sense of bygone days. A close look at any building and one realizes that the city is crumbling. Trying to board a gondola, one notices that there are many steps below water, testimony to the fact that the city is sinking. The sense there is that one is witnessing the end of an era, not the continuation or evolution of a culture.
Indigo is the Sphere of Devotion and Idealism. Of course humanity needs to be devoted to ideals. We must strive to be the best of ourselves. But unfortunately, Indigo also sometimes blinds us to the importance of updating our ideals. We become hypnotized by our devotion to tradition. We lose our ability to become dreamers, living backward in time - diving into the future in our dreams and bringing the future into the present when we awaken.
It seemed to me that Venice has lost its dream. It has become a fantastic tourist stop for cruise ships, but it only offers one the opportunity to imagine how magnificent it used to be.
Thank you for the history I had no idea.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this information about Venice. It is interesting that the energy there is about Indigo Ray. Sometimes it feels to me that our world religions are stuck in this energy..holding on the the past without consideration for what is now.
ReplyDeleteI agree, BC, that the religions and politics of our world seem to be the last to "get" that we the people are moving on! Interesting, isn't it, that we create institutions that seem to develop a personality of their own that resist change.
ReplyDeleteI am very stimulated by this color blog. The images of Venice sinking under water vibrate with our own cities today. I recently viewed a couple of dvd's of Donna Leon's mysteries about a Venetian detective.(they were in German so a bit odd) I was drawn to the architecture in the film and wondered about visiting there. My sister is going in October. She has mold allergies and I am concerned how the environment might affect her.
ReplyDeleteThis is a backdoor way of bringing in the body's relationship to deconstruct and construct. I just read a blog in which Robert Sardello observes about another Jungian therapist that he (the other) has no practices. He writes: "You have to have practices, not just be in the noble tradition of rhetoric, and not just developing pictures of archetypal backgrounds."
In my tradition there is an explosion of the practice of Centering Prayer. I think resourcing ourselves in direct bodily experience is one way to avoid the rigidity found in so many of today's religious organizations.
I have been practicing Centering Prayer for the last seven years with a focus on spending time emptying, not attaching, having no agenda. Thomas Keating,a teacher of Centering Prayer suggests "Empty, empty. Even if the Blessed Virgin Mary herself appears, just say 'Not now, dearie' and continue with the practice. That advise certainly puts the bodily here and now in proper perspective to the more "settled" forms of devotion.