Talk Corner Part 2

A hero is confronted with his destiny, while gods and mythical monsters block his way. 
He will only return home when he is ready. 
The same, like us...

  

   There comes a time in our lives when all the barriers break and all the horizons open wide. A moment that pushes us to a decision that once seemed unthinkable. And then, overcoming ourselves and its limitations, waking us up! Changing our destiny. Every new beginning is a change of destiny. Changing destiny means to wake up. Because destiny either chooses you awake or chooses you stay asleep. But we often hesitate to take the step of a new beginning. Not willing to give up old habits, although finished or restrictive, seems familiar.

 Uncertainty inhibits us when it comes to walking in unknown areas. But we are never alone. Visible and invisible allies appear, often in unexpected ways. One of them was offered to us by Homer in the Odyssey. 

   Could you imagine that the journey of your life corresponds to the journey of Odysseus? And we, like him. we wander from experience to the next experience. We meet one-eyed giants, we fight to resist the challenges of the Sirens, we are crushed by difficult choices between Scylla and Charybdis, sometimes we sink as if to reach Hades and other times we rise relying on human and divine help. In Odysseus' epic journey there is a secret code that describes the stages we go through as we travel in life, making choices and rough decisions, losing our way, find it again and continue asking to return to the place of our heart. In our Ithaca.

Calypso & Odysseus on Flickr

   Although Odysseus' voyage took 10 years, some of them did not travel. Calypso kept him stranded on her island which, as her name etymologically reveals, threw a blanket at his mind to forget. Also covered him from Poseidon rage at the same time. The correspondence in our life is the fixation in situations, relations and all beliefs that hold us back. Although, we stay with those beliefs. Because we are comfortable. And because they reward us with some satisfaction that calms our insecurities or gives us an illusion of care. 

Calypso kept Odysseus seduced for 7 whole years by feeding him nectar and ambrosia to make him immortal, as he had promised. And he was comfortable and forgotten as Calypso covered with a veil of oblivion his true destination: the return to Ithaca. Like Odysseus, we are often stuck in an addiction to a substance or behavior or in an abusive relationship waiting for something that never comes or that is lost in a flash.

   "Enough is enough"

  Frustrated again and again and yet we stay the way we are. Months, years, sometimes our whole life. However, even if we forgot it, Ithaca does not forget about us. No matter how many covers the Calypso-fixation has thrown, it has never been able to eliminate our deepest substance. The feeling that we deserve better, longing for freedom and self-respect make us sooner or later wake up and mobilize again. And then we re-evaluate what has stuck with us until that moment and regret. We realize them in a new way. This also happens in the Odyssey when Hermes appears to ask Calypso to let Odysseus go, by the orders of Zeus. 

Hermes, as his name reveals, offers a new realization to Odysseus. A new way to see his way of stillness, to recognize it and abandon it. Waking up as if from deep sleep to feel the deep longing to leave all those stillness behind at last. To return to his kingdom, to his soul Penelope and to his creation, his son Telemachus.

   No matter how late this awakening is, it comes eventually. Gathering energy, we accumulate numb pain and frustrations, like the clouds that slowly gather and thicken and multiply and weigh until they reach the limits of our endurance. And then we break out like a storm. With a loud "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" that pushes us to end once and for all the abusive relationship with a substance, habit or person. Then, we gain zero tolerance for what tormented us and limited us for years. Like Odysseus who broke out crying on the shore of the island where Calypso had trapped him. "I don't want that anymore," he screamed. "I want to return to Ithaca! I want to go home!"

Odysseus of our soul meets the alien and Plato

   Almost three thousand years after the cry of the Homeric Odysseus, Steven Spielberg directs one of the most tenderly heartbreaking scenes in the movie "ET". where the small Alien raises his finger with the index finger shining like light pointing to the sky and saying with a nostalgic complaint "Ε.Τ. wants to go home ». E.T. wants to go home. 

   Planets, wanderers and wanderers, we too, like Odysseus, long for our return to a state of bliss and fullness, of oceanic peace, of infinite acceptance and love that, although we have not experienced them in their fullness in this world, we still long for. And that means that we once lived them somewhere. Like in this distant, forgotten song. 

   Plato refers to a memory describing the souls who once swirled happily in the eternal realms of the immortals and who then fell with a deep longing to return. And they feel an irresistible attraction to what dimly reminds them of the heavenly bliss they once lived.

Forgive and it will disappear

There is something good in us, something tender and compassionate and at the same time brave and majestic. There is a kingdom-psychological state that invites us to return whenever fear or anger overshadows our mind by keeping us away from the homeland of our heart. Calypso in our life is on the one hand our fatal attachments but mainly the chronic complaints that keep us stuck in a trauma that we unwittingly maintain by refusing forgiveness.

Shakespeare writes, "Whoever hurts in vain steals himself," reminding us that in the end we are the ones who lack the relief and freedom of the past. Complaints within us are often from more decades old. By themselves they do not have the power to sustain themselves. We give it to them. The facts themselves do not last long. Their echo is what lasts. They can resonate in us for a lifetime until we decide we don't want that anymore! 

Whoever is to blame, whoever we have blamed - the other or ourselves or both - we can always make a new choice. To say "Enough is enough" to pain and to shake off guilt and condemnation from our lives. Bravely and majestically to abandon the past and choose another destiny. At last!

What supports us in difficult times?

The adventures of the Odysseus impressively represent the psychological states we face in the journey of our lives. The solutions that Odysseus found in the various trials offer us understanding and examples of intelligent solutions in our own lives. 

The etymological meaning of the names in the Odyssey and the hidden symbolism of the objects become guides. The leader of Penelope's suitors, for example, is Antinous, the anti-thoughts who fights within us the right mind and our wisdom. What irrational thought to tyrants? The mast where Odysseus voluntarily ties himself to cross the Sirens is what has kept us steadfast in the difficulties. So what is it that sustains you in difficult times? What is hidden in the weaving of Penelope that is woven and unraveled and how is it connected to your own life experiences? 

Homer has hidden in the Odyssey a psychological roadmap that can accompany us and protect us from unnecessary pain. In the book "Secret Odyssey" Homer's secret code is revealed along with the comforting confirmation that we are never alone. From the depths of the centuries comes a message, a wealth of information and a great guidance that supports us and pushes us to return to Ithaca of our soul. With Triumphs!

The Inspiration

Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) - "Ulysses and Calypso" 1882 oil painting on mahogany wood

Arnold Böcklin & Symbolism

Arnold Böcklin, Swiss painter whose moody landscapes and sinister allegories greatly influenced late 19th-century German artists and presaged the symbolism of the 20th-century Metaphysical and Surrealist artists.

Influenced by Romanticism, Böcklin's symbolist use of imagery derived from mythology and legend often overlapped with the aesthetic of the Pre-Raphaelites. Many of his paintings are imaginative interpretations of the classical world, or portray mythological subjects in settings involving classical architecture, often allegorically exploring death and mortality in the context of a strange, fantasy world

Clement Greenberg wrote in 1947 that Böcklin's work "is one of the most consummate expressions of all that is now disliked about the latter half of the nineteenth century."

See more of this Artist here

Calypso

Calypso symbolizes an attachment to merely earthly beauty, which threatens to stall our search for deeper, more spiritual beauty, truth and meaning.

Calypso, in Greek mythology, seduced Odysseus and kept him for years away from his wife, Penelope, until Athena intervened; eventually Calypso had to let him go and even helped him to build his boat. She has both negative and positive connotation in Greek mythology: as a concealer and seductress, Calypso is a negative symbol, but as a rescuer she is a positive one. She is always compared with Penelope and thus ended up being a force of diversion and distraction.

In the island Ogygia, Calypso welcomed the exhausted Greek hero, Odysseus, who was drifted for nine days in the open sea after losing his ship and his army to the monsters of Italy and Sicily when coming back home from Troy.

Mythical Calypso fell for Odysseus and wanted to make him her immortal husband and give him the eternal youth. But Odysseus didn’t accept her generosity – he was dreaming about going back to his Ithaca and his wife. Calypso was so much in love with him that despite his refusal of her offers, she kept hoping and seducing Odysseus. Eventually, she made him her lover.

If goddess Athena hadn’t asked Zeus to “save” Odysseus from Ogygia and Calypso, what could have happened? Zeus sent the messenger of the gods, Hermes, to persuade Calypso to let Odysseus go. Calypso couldn’t refuse Zeus, the King of the gods, but being somewhat fearful of Zeus’ s powers, somewhat angry because of her loss to come, she had something to say to Hermes: “Cruel folk you are, unmatched for jealousy, you gods who cannot bear to let a goddess sleep with a man, even if it is done without concealment and she has chosen him as her lawful consort.” (Homer, Odyssey 5.120). So, she helped Odysseus build the boat that would take him back to his wife and his Ithaca. She provided enough food and wine for the long journey, and good winds.

Calypso, who believed that she saved Odysseus, after losing her lover of seven years tried to kill herself. But being immortal, she only went through terrible pain and suffering.

Did Calypso, a sea nymph, really have such a power to tie Odysseus’s free will to leave? Could she have kept him against his own, presumably strong will? Was Calypso really the myth of diversion or the eternal temptation of passion?

If you made it till the end my dear reader, I'm proud of you making this far. 

I hope your own journey gave you something in this stop you made and liking your reading.

Till the next time we meet for another Talk Corner, be well, healthy and wiser