Foundations
_I: Today we were visiting the island of Elephantine in Aswan, walking through the ruins of the ancient capital of southern Egypt in Ptolemaic times, and contemplating the ruins of the temple of Khnum, the ram god of Creation. As I observed the foundations, I saw that they were layers upon layers, reminding me of all the ancient sites I have visited. Looking around, I could see makeshift houses made of mud bricks built on large rocks with hieroglyphics, and some were even covered with layers of earth and petrified mud. The guide said, "The island was reused many times in history; after the earthquakes that destroyed the temple, invasions followed, then the Copts, Muslims, many great Nile floods, and all that remained are the foundations of each era." When we visit the oldest sites, we can see that most of them are in layers, reused, reconstructed, or covered as the case may be, either by other cultures, by their own, or by nature.
_AM: Over time, each culture rebuilds itself and uses the foundations of the previous one to build its present. The first rocks that delimited a corral can become part of the foundations of a house. The house can become a temple, and when it collapses, it can become part of a corral again.
_I: Like the Egyptian temples. The temples visited along the Nile are known for being the wonders of the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, and yet, it is not so. Those temples are from the Greek or Roman period, when various kings or regents of the territory incorporated into the Greco-Latin empires ruled over the Nile province. However, in the Pharaonic era, the temples were different, and few remain standing, such as Karnak and Luxor, the city of pharaohs. The same stones that were used to create the Atlantean initiatory path many thousands of years ago were used by the pharaohs for their temples, and their foundations were reused for the Greco-Roman Egyptian temples, which, after the fall of the empires, became churches, abandoned and covered with sand and mud, while with the Muslim invasion, they were used as kitchens and stables for animals, which is why they were filled with soot, covering the colorful hieroglyphs in black. Houses or mosques, churches, and palaces were built on some of them. Or simply the earth covered them, becoming agricultural land or secrets under the sands. You can see all the uses that temples and cities have been given over the millennia in archaeological ruins, just as in more recent history you can see Greek, Latin, English, Italian, and French writings on the walls, peoples who tried or succeeded in conquering these lands. And in modernity, each building can become the foundation of another. In Europe, it is very common to see medieval houses or castles converted to modernity, restored with contemporary technology and styles, while still retaining the foundations of the past in their walls. I remember the first time I went to Rome and observed the Colosseum from the inside, and I was struck by the fact that instead of seeing the arena, as I imagined from the movies, I saw a maze of corridors, like a labyrinth inside. I asked the guide what that was, and she explained that it was below the Arena where everything happened. There the artists, the gladiators, those who entertained, kept all their things, their clothing, tools, weapons, animals, and themselves. It was the "behind the scenes" of the theater, but underground. At the same time, I expected to find stands, where I could imagine people sitting as an audience, chanting the names of the gladiators, and yet, all I could see was arches made of bricks. "They are the foundations that support the structure, like the bones of the building," she explained. The rest had broken, fallen, or been reused to build other things. "What covers changes, but the foundations remain the same."
_AM: That's the key today.
_I: Which one?
_AM: The Foundations. This word comes from the Latin "fundus," which means "deep, base, root, bottom, deep." The suffix "-mento" refers to the instrumental means by which something is done. Thus, the foundation is what is placed underneath and sustains the rest of things. As you said, bones are the foundations of the human physical body, just as cartilage is for fish and some invertebrates. Bones have their base in calcium phosphate and accumulate the same calcium for use in the body when needed. They are the structure that supports the rest of the systems of the physical body, cartilage, muscles, nerves, veins, organs; everything depends on the strength of the bones to hold it together and in order, but also on flexibility because without joints, the force could not be distributed, and the body would collapse. But at the same time, bones have a much more important function for life: they are what allow the existence of bone marrow.
_I: Isn't it the one that produces blood?
_AM: Bone marrow, called "bone" because it is of bone, is a set of stem cells in the form of tissue that originate hematopoietic cells, the cells that create red blood cells, about 500 billion per day.
_I: Wow… A lot. It's like 62 times the total human population today per day.
_AM: All expanding within you, while millions die every day. The circulatory and lymphatic system alongside the immune system depend on the skeletal system.
_I: The more rigid system is the key to the more fluid system… "Paradoxical."
_AM: Without bones, without structure, without foundation, you wouldn't have bone marrow, and therefore you wouldn't have blood, and without blood, you don't have life. In order to flow, circulate, live, you need firm foundations. Foundation comes from the concept of a "difficult-to-cut stone," derived from "caedimentum," in Latin, originating from the word caedere (to cut). It is similar to the word "sedimentum," which means "what is seated at the base." Both define minerals, materials that are located at the bottom, holding what flows on the surface, be it river, sea, plants, animals, populations… But referred to as "foundation," we find an interesting clue: what leads us to flow is what keeps us static.
_I: How would that be?
_AM: Let's go to the description of the Universe, and then we'll go to easy examples. Do you remember that we've talked about how the entire cosmos is actually a single fixed point, static, and that everything vibrates around it, projecting itself, which gives the sensation of polarity, and this generates movement. All cosmic, universal existence is nothing more than constant movement born from a fixed point. Now let's analyze it from the perspective of time. A clock: it arises from the idea of showing the shadow of a pillar projected by the sun on a semicircular surface, which allows measuring the hours with marks on the edges and thus identifying the moments. The pillar is something fixed in time-space, but because everything around it moves, it allows you to see the passage of time. Later, it was understood that the same measurement could be made at night, turning the semicircle into a circle, where the hands attached to a fixed center move showing the flow of time conceptually. You couldn't identify the passage of time without a physical reference point, whether it's a clock, a tree, a pillar, or yourself. The same thing happens with space. You can understand the movement of things thanks to the North Star, which being fixed, allows you to recognize the directions of space, just as the Earth rotates on its own axis, its own center, to which all things are attracted.
_I: I understand, the reference of all things that move in existence can only be given by a fixed point. The Universe is just a fixed point projected outward generating the sensation of Order we call Cosmos.
_AM: That's right… And since the Universe is mind, it's conceptual, that fixed point is the I Am. In this way, just as in the world projected outward and manifested in matter, structures are needed for life to flow, the same will happen with the concepts of the mind, where the point of reference is oneself…
_I: …Self-reference…
_AM: …And that's how you can evolve, having an internal reference point, a compass that indicates fixedly the center point and direction, and that allows you to always return to your personal north even if you decide to navigate or walk through remote places of the world.
_I: Those are the foundations of a person.
_AM: The deepest concepts that form the basis of a being. What is a person?
_I: A mask, from the Greek "prosopon," used in Greek theaters so that the actor and actress could make themselves heard by the audience showing the emotion of the moment.
_AM: That is to say, that the person, the individual, is not real. They are only a mask of something real that is underneath. Just as you observed in the Colosseum, what the public saw in the battle Arena was not real; that was the theater set up for the spectacle; the real thing was under the Arena, behind the scenes, what no one saw. Each week, there was a different and unique show, but underneath, everything remained the same. The buildings, the architecture, the passage of time, and the reconstruction and reuse of them by various cultures, philosophies, religions, activities, are similar, if not the same, to how people function. For the universe, there are no individuals, only aspects of the same being that, like stem cells in the bone marrow, multiply creating thousands and millions. Thus, each clan, each ethnicity, each group or species, has built the foundations, based on the fundamentals of collective consciousness, building paths that everyone must walk; and individuals are those diversities, different forms of achieving the same thing. Thus, for example, the foundations of your life have been based on the Italian and Basque vision, and generation after generation, your ancestors, your grandparents, parents, and now you, have added something new, something special, a new layer, decoration, bricks, paintings, to this building, but the foundations remain the same. Perhaps, covered by mud, sand, grass, perhaps ignored and yet to be discovered, perhaps open to the air, like wounds that I don't know how to repair, like an open museum or a construction left unfinished due to a lack of architect. Every time someone new comes to inhabit the house, they will make a change in it, but the foundations will still be there.
_I: The question is who laid the foundations, and whether they are good or not.
_AM: Therein lies the question, yes. But to know the answer, you have to recognize the foundations, search for them, know what the fixed foundations of the family, culture, clan, and oneself are. What you seek in your life is often the north marked by the most ancient ancestors who began the search. Why do you think so many humans share the same interests?
_I: Because we had common ancestors… Today we are 8 billion humans, when 12,000 years ago we were around 1 million. So if half were women, at least 16,000 humans share a common ancestor, and if most lived in communities, the same conflicts and needs were shared, so if each tribe had an average of 50 people, perhaps fundamental conflicts and abilities are shared in groups of 160 million humans. It's… incredible, exponential, and yet it simplifies, helps to understand how so many humans share the same origins and life destinies, so many people working on the same traumas and purposes…
_AM: Just as a house or temple is rebuilt and redecorated for thousands of years by each new tenant, and their children enlarge it, decorate it, break it, cover it, reuse it, modernize it, and so on, your bodies are the same, your genetics are evolutionary and changing but anchored to an original fixed point around which everything revolves…
_I: The foundation. "Upon this stone I will build my temple." The cornerstone, the first brick, the first idea, the first creation, the first belief…
_AM: The origin has marked your destiny, like on an axis, on a pole, the appearance of a south immediately generates a north. Your north flows on the axis of your south, and the south moves on the axis of your north. Destiny only makes sense thanks to the origin. The end is understood only by a beginning. Foundations, structures, are key to your evolution, to your movement. The reason you interpret them as obstacles is because you don't have a clear north, and you consider that you can't move forward because of the weight of your past. In reality, it's not like that. It is by knowing and recognizing through honoring the past that you develop your future.
_I: Yes, I have experienced it in my own skin because everything I achieve is due to my reference from 12,000 years ago, and what I have done in this life I owe to recognizing the history of my recent ancestors.
_AM: The primary intention gives meaning to your existence. The blood that flows in you is produced in the rocks that built the first home your clan lived in.
_I: And what if the foundation is painful?
_AM: No one first built a home thinking of killing or controlling. All homes started with the intention of caring, belonging. It is later that in contexts it is rebuilt to dominate… Go through all the arrangements and decorations, reconstructions, and search in the roots for the foundations. Therein lies the Foundation of your life and existence.
_I: Can I found something new?
_AM: That is a Foundation, the action of laying a new foundation. You can generate it, but only when you have recognized the home you inhabit can you build your own home.
_I: Today is the Full Moon in Leo, and I feel that this is key today, because I recognize that my foundations of life arise in the Age of Leo, 12,000 years ago, here, in Egypt, in Khem, and that to build this new house in Aquarius, of freedom, innovation, expansion, it is necessary to recognize my foundations of structure, of pyramidality, of law.
_AM: It is the foundation of Leo, with its attributes and defects, its desires and potentials, which will show you the key to dancing freely in the skies of Aquarius. Recognize the foundations of your being, remember Shiw, and by being her, you will be able to discover what it means to be you today, to be Matías.
_I: The past lives in me, in my bones, and it is they, its structure, who create the blood that flows in me, which gives life to my current being, and I am the mask in this scene of the great work, and I must make my role a good character for all those who make up the body that I am... And free them in the art of being.
_AM: Face your rigid old structures, but instead of breaking them down to build something new and subtle, rebuild them, use them to sustain Heaven on Earth.