Hi from a new member!

Hello Gaia and Integral Pod members.  My name is Tom.  I am a 45 year old Canadian male, born and raised in a small town on the hot-and-cold Canadian prairies.  I am an evolutionist at heart and by study, and am natively attracted to Ken Wilber’s work, which I appreciate warmly.  My way in this world has been a pathway of inquiry and language underscored and guided by feeling, these being original loves I have pursued many years.  I am an INTP (off the scale INP, close F) on the Myers-Briggs typology, a 4 on the enneagram with 5 leanings, father of three daughters, interested in music and photography, and am currently refashioning my life workwise following inner promptings.  Favourite influences include Otto Rank, Marie Louise von Franz, Edward O. Wilson, David Bohm, Ken Wilber, Ramana Maharshi and Eckhart Tolle.

I love life, the mind, thinking, feeling, experiencing—everything that falls under that big umbrella of is.  I have approached life, and the path of my query has been, primarily via the mind and ideas, language and knowledge, in a word inquiry, but always, as I mentioned, guided by feeling, which to me gives a sense of the personal values at stake.

I look forward to meeting those with whom I interact, and contributing to discussions.

: )

Tom

Re: Hi from a new member!

Welcome to the community, Tom! It looks like you'll have a great deal to contribute!

Enjoy!

~G

Re: Hi from a new member!

Hi there, Hermes! Nice to meet you I'm sure.

Re: Hi from a new member!

Hermes/Tom,

Re: Hi from a new member!

Welcome to the pod…Hermes, great choice of name:

Hermes (Greek, Ἑρμῆς, IPA: /ˈhɝmiːz/), in Greek mythology, is the Olympian god of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunning of thieves and liars.^[1] His symbols include the tortoise, the rooster, the winged sandals, and the caduceus. The analogous Roman deity is Mercury.

The Homeric hymn to Hermes invokes him as the one “of many shifts (polytropos), blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods.”^[2]

Welcome, bringer of dreams, to the realm of the deathless gods.  :)

cheers,

Arthur

Re: Hi from a new member!

Hi Tom/Hermes, it's nice to meet you!

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Re: Hi from a new member!

Thank you, all!  It's very nice to be here.

Re Hermes, he was, as Arthur's quote suggests, the god of borders in early incarnations.  Travellers walking between towns or just somewhere else would use stone markers to mark their way, which markers built in time to heaps.  Hermes literally means “he of the stone heap.” 

These heaps signified a traveller had crossed into new territory which, given conditions of ancient travel, carried not a small whiff of danger, hence a stone would be offered to the god of the heap for luck and safety in further travel.  The god Hermes deepened from early associations to become god of the underworld, the place of the new and the dark unknown, the psychopomp to guide inner travelers to hell and back.  These are not functions I ascribe to myself, but they do spark my imagination.  I love this myth.

Hermes is found in the English word hermaphrodite, which in a subtler understanding describes a state of inner union and love.

Re: Hi from a new member!

Hello Tom,

And welcome here! I love the way you hold the Myth lightly yet lovingly.

Cheers,
Doug