Let’s get back to Serpent. The first post of this series offered that identity is primary and purposeful. Sameness is equal in purpose, and both are emanations of one ultimate source: Non, emptiness. A yin yang symbol is saying basically the same thing.
The point was made that emptiness, being empty of identity or definable attributes, is perfect in meeting all needs. Out of emptiness (sunyata) that which is necessary can arise and be offered. The attribute or quality pouring forth seems different from emptiness but at essence is not because it is the same vibration as that which is necessary. The necessity and that which arises are self-same. The example used in post #1 was that during a teaching the Dalai Lama felt his prayer beads missing from his arm. It actually was the vibration of his prayer beads that was missing and his usual experience of fingers rolling through them during a teaching. In finding the beads his need was met. If someone on stage had offered him their beads he would have said no. They would not have been the perfect meeting of the vibration he was missing in his auric field and felt sense of Wholeness.
How is this Serpent as described in post #1 of the Ancient Egyptian creation myth and post #3 of the Ancient Greek? His Holiness, like anyone else who is living their being or is completely in the moment, is an emptiness that will pour forth. An expert skier at the top of an unblemished slope of snow is equally empty, and must be. This is Serpent: self-same as the void that is all possibilities. Serpent is Awareness-Being’s awareness of Awareness as Being and Being as Awareness. Therefore, Serpent is the noticing, and the vibration that is noticed, as well as all potentials that can follow. This is the skier on the blank white slope. The slope will require the precision that only emptiness can offer. Therefore, the undulations in the body of the expert skier are empty – they are not thought. There is only perfect skiing, undulating with the blank surface.
***********************
Serpent is the first emanation and its self-same cause. It is line and circle. Line is vibration as intention leading to formulation; it is the string of string theory, it is phallus complete with seeds of origin and movement. This is first emanation. And Serpent is circle: non, whole, womb, Sourceless-Source. It is one with and therefore, one as. The image of Kuntuzangpo displays this well. The undulating white female might appear to be lesser to the blue male but she, like Nun, is describing limitless potential. Her back is toward us because we cannot conceive the scale of this limitless potential, thus she is veiled.*
The repeating curve of Serpent is also describing emanation. One begets the next begets the next. The Hindu example given in post #1 for emanation was: “Brahman is the Absolute, ineffable and without attribute (a non). Yet Brahman chooses to express which gives rise to Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma, which give rise to Shiva-Shakti, Krishna, and all diverse presentations of life and form.”
Thus each is the undulation of Brahman, and is a self-sameness repeating and densifying with each repetition. Shiva is like unto Brahman, shiva -shakti is like unto Shiva, qualities of fire, spontaneity, creativity are like unto Shiva and thus are like unto Brahman.They, fire, spontaneity, creativity, are empty and all are emanations.
Emanation is the cosmic method of pervasion. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, “Having pervaded the universe with but a fragment of myself, I remain.” Krishna is one with his father, Vishnu who is one with his father, Brahman. Krishna need only a fragment of himself by which to pervade the universe because of emanation. Like homeopathy, the smallest amount of tincture gives a full result. Through the cosmic process of emanation only a fragment of Krishna is required to pervade a universe. Which means that only a snippet of Vishnu was required, which means that not even a drop of Brahman was required.**
The difference perceived from one wave of self-same Serpent to the next is in the mind of the perceiver. Like the image of serpent-wave, depending on our vantage point we might only see bumps, or repeated black holes, or great mountains, or deep valleys. No matter what myth, culture, or image is being used to convey the teaching of emanation and its universal application, Serpent is Self-Same. It is a holograph, a hall of mirrors, a fractal, and is the vibration of emptiness. Trippy; but that’s the point. Serpent is a wave of vibration, formless but potent with the seeds of form. Waves are a continuum without discontinuity. Waves are Self-Same birthing, repeating, birthing, repeating in a pattern that is without end. The speed of light is what it is because of this. Each crest of the wave is the trough of the wave is the crest is the trough. The space between is Self-Same as well; it has to be. It is the perceiver that fabricates up, down, edge, and therefore appearance.
Where does this fabrication come from? From Awareness-Being. In the ancient myths, Serpent is the noticing of the vibration of Being, thus awareness. That noticing signifies potential. Even commonly, something unnoticed has no potential. Fabrication is a stepped down, stepped down, many ripples removed awareness from Awareness-Being yet actually is self-same. This is why it is said that one can be enlightened in an instant. Awareness-Being (enlightenment) is already here.
*********************
We call Nun-non by various names: Tao, primordial Buddha nature, mulaprakriti, Brahman, sunyata. We call Serpent by many names,: Shakti, kundalini, fohat, breath, chi, prana. Yet in both cases we are simply naming the the fractal reiterations of the Self-same.
If this sounds complicated, I apologize because the teaching given to us from the most ancient of time is simple. As said in post #3, most creation myths start the same. They do so because this teaching has been repeated over and over. (Serpent again!) And though the teaching seems to be expressing the creation of duality and therefore divisibility and separateness, my meditations have brought me to an alternative understanding: YES/AND. YES, all existence is empty. All is the ever undulating thus self-creating fractal reiterations of emptiness perceived as expressive form. Emanation. AND all is self-identifiable because Nun (Source) is Awareness-Being. Thus awareness of any kind is an awareness of Being, and Being is the self-same expression of Awareness.
This is where the statements “nirvana and samsara are one” or “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” come from. Similar but less abstract is Krishna’s statement to Arjuna from the Bhagavad Gita to engage a battle he is loathe to engage. Krishna tells Arjuna that he, Krishna, has already killed those who will be slain by Arjuna’s weapon in this battle of light and dark. In other words, Arjuna is an emanation of Krishna accomplishing in the realms of form what the vibration of Krishna has already patterned in the formless realms.
Other similar statements are that rigpa (naked awareness) is present now or to “let awareness take its seat.” The enlightened ones have always said that we are already enlightened. We just don’t believe that. As the ever present emanation of emptiness you, too, are empty. You are Nun, non-conditioned, naked Awareness-Being. But because one does not believe that is possible then one is limited by the beliefs in form.
What one has not realized is that form, duality, and Serpent undulations that we think are distinct and separable are not. Every thing is reporting the same: the perfect fractal emanations of emptiness.
*********************************
*Her power is so great that she must not look into manifestation but be called forth as necessary. She, primordial Shakti, is creation-destruction. He is duration and manifest existence with self-knowing awareness. Ultimately, this knowing became so threatening to those who would limit power to the reference of me and mine that they denigrated it and Medusa was contrived. The power of her gaze would turn one to stone; it would densify one in the idea of limited self.
**These considerations are some of the deeper teachings behind the tantric practices of winds, drops, and channels and references in the tantras to a drop of sperm or of a woman’s creation blood.
