While writing this post the sentence kept coming back to me: "This beast almost got me." And that's the truth. Going through the aftermath of the ritual of OCH took its tribute and I paid the toll. 

I guess any successful spirit communion will express itself in changes in our lives? So when it comes to determining the impact of a rite it is much less about what happens while we are in the temple than it is about what happens once we leave it behind. The forces of the spirit we work with will take shape and merge into our personality as soon as we allow them to sink into our subconsciousness and become one with who we are underneath our skins... Assimilating the powers of spirits into our everyday lives is similar to the way our body assimilates the nutrition of food - the powers unfold once their taste has vanished in our mouths. 

Entering the sphere of the Sun taught me how it feels to arrive at the spot marked 'X' on my life map: there is no next step to take, no next goal to turn to. Once I allowed the forces of OCH to enter my live it was easy to lose any sense of direction. In an earlier post I had mentioned that the Sun is the only place at which a wind emerges into all directions. The solar winds come forth from a single point and expand into all directions. The Sun is the ultimate center of our realm of creation. And measured from its centre every other point seems to be just as far away. No living thing approaches the Sun, yet the solar winds reach out to everything... 

As a human we are not made to live in the Sun, but to live in its orbit. We are not meant to be the centre of our own universe - but to circle around it in spheres. To maintain stability our lives depend on a reference point that is bigger than ourselves, a point that can sustain balance while we go through the transformations we call a living. As a human we are the host of our body and minds. We welcome experiences, strangers that come to visit and to change us. As humans we are constantly becoming by allowing life to work on us.  

The Sun, however, never changes. It is the agent of change itself. The Sun is not a host but the light that shines over every encounter. We need the Sun to shine in our back to look far into the future or close up at a detail. If we come too close to it, if we even allow it to shine behind our own eyes, it will blind us and leave us without a sense of direction.

Engaging with the spirit of OCH was a wonderful experience. It took me to the centre of everything we know. It kills social and cultural stereotypes about the shining star and replaces them with real life experiences... The spirit of OCH is a wonderful teacher. But he is also unforgiving, relentless, merciless. His light doesn’t mind if it dries tears from our face or burns the last fertile soil in Somalia. More than a rose ever will be, the Sun is the Sun is the Sun.

If we approach the Sun to engage with it, we need to understand that we will be blind for the duration of the encounter: Every other life, every other career, every other relationship  will suddenly seem in reach. The power to re-imagine and start afresh will be abundant and the ease to destroy what we have built uncannily alluring. When we encounter the spirit of OCH it take all our willpower and a busload of faith not to burn down the bridges of the live we had created before... Because once we shift identification from the objects we see in the Sun, to sunlight itself no single shape will ever be good enough. Ego and hunger will be infinite.

Here is the beast that almost got me: As humans we don't belong into the Sun. We carry its seed in our hearts, a single spark instead of a planet of fire. If we re-imagine each day who we are and what we will achieve, we won't achieve anything. And ultimately we will be at the end of everything and nothing.

From the moment we step into the Sun it will burn us to ashes. It will eat our centers of identity and give way to the illusion that any form and shape out there could be us... This is the illusion we have to face: while we can engage with forces and spirits that are lightyears beyond us, our nature as humans will remain the same. We are the flask that contains all elements, not the fire underneath.