Dragonflies and Baptism by the Face of the Deep

The face of the deep is a rubric from the Bible’s genesis story essentially referring to nature before (macro & micro) cosmic unfolding; its (nature’s) state as pure potentiality before God actualizes what we experience as (inner and outer) phenomena. Sankhya’s pradhana is probably a rough equivalent. It is chaos magic (māyā) in a state of equilibrium; a womb containing the seeds of the entire morphology of life. It is darkness in its utter profundity, not unlike the state of deep sleep wherein the soul encounters, albeit unconsciously, its intrinsic “I”—the “I am”—unqualified by the extrinsic ”I”-sense generated by psyche and soma. It is a black ocean in whose depths can be found the rarest pearls, but only for those who dare—and what a dare it is—to face the darkness with eyes wide open, that is to endure the wounds of the dark consciously.

Perhaps as a symbolic mimicry of the face of the deep, baptism was an initiatic rite crafted to cleanse (from sin) and to confer second birth like birds who are born first inside the egg and born again by “fighting its way out of the egg.” And as Herman Hesse beautifully imagined, “The egg is the world. Whoever wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird is flying to God.”

To be baptize by the face of the deep, then, is:

to enter into obsidian waters of chaos wherein all things are self evidently felt as beyond one’s control;

to be cleanse of the solute of ego constrictions arresting the efflorescence of awareness by the solvent-like essence of its baptismal waters;

to became like babes again entering the womb-like amniotic waters of becoming-potential or like chicks “fighting its way out of the egg,” to be born again out of the contracted mental “egg” (prison) of an enervated-self  into the expansive wisdom of a efflorescent-self that perceives God in everything and everything in God. I imagine the sensation of second-birth like catching breath after nearly drowning. 

I don’t know if there’s an affective catechesis—a formal and systematize pedagogy that is suppose to prepare one for baptism—that could ever prepare us for  Mother’s (nature’s) initiatic baptism by the face of the deep. We probably come closest when those who “dared to face the darkness with eyes wide open” come back with “dark-light” in the form of their transfiguration and measured but veritably cogent words of consoling wisdom. 

Be that as it may, mother (nature) has given, albeit cryptically, a message, teaching, a symbol in the dragonfly whose first birth is as an egg (often) placed in water; who is then fed by the water as larvae; and who finally, in an instance of morphogenic mystery, emerges from the water as a celestial sky creature cloaked by variegated colors shining with the message of survival, hope, and beauty in spite of everything. May we have the courage to dare the baptism of the face of the deep whenever it is upon us, be cleansed and fed by its waters, and in an instance of spiritual morphogenesis, emerge as a celestial cloaked in the colors of individuated life shining with the message of survival, hope, and beauty in spite of everything.

O Shyamsundarī! O numinous dark goddess who accepts the form of a river (Yamuna-devī) black like the color of Shyam! I wish to be baptize in your waters following the footsteps of the young unmarried girls of Braja whose vrata to attain Beloved Shyam would not have been complete, or perhaps even possible, without your liquid grace. Abandoning their earthly-elemental clothes, they adorned themselves with the obsidian-colored liquid-dress of your waters and looked exquisitely beautiful. Pleased by their joyous endurance, and their songs, and their quiet but passionate aspiration which they carried in their hearts whilst bathing in your waters, Beloved Shyam requested one final act of courage and trust: to leave aside their watery gown and emerge from your water fully individuated and naked before Divinity. Oh how charming and enchanting Shyam became to see this act of utter surrender that his promise of full consummation in the near future slipped from his mouth in ecstatic rapture. O initiating goddess, dip me in and adorn me with your liquid mystery so that I too may emerge from your dark luminescence a surrendered soul inspiring the promise of consummation from the lips of our beloved Shyam.