Thursday, August 31, 2006

Acceptance

It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of the world.For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small imperfect stones to the pile.I have learned other things: One is the futility of expecting anyone, including ourselves to be perfect. People who go about seeking to change the world, to diminish suffering, to demonstrate any kind of enlightenment, are often as flawed as anybody else. Sometimes more so. But it is the awareness of having faults, I think, and the knowledge that this links us to everyone on Earth, that opens us to courage and compassion. It occurs to me that often many of those I deeply love are flawed. They might actually have said or done some of the mean things I’ve felt, heard, read about, or feared. But it is the struggle with the flaw, surprisingly endearing, and the going on anyhow, that is what I cherish about them. Sometimes our stones are, to us, misshapen, odd. Their color seems off. Their singing … comical and strange. Presenting them, we perceive our own imperfect nakedness, but also, paradoxically, the wholeness, the rightness, of it. In the collective vulnerability of presence, we learn not to be afraid.


Alice Walker, Anything We Love Can Be Saved

World Forces

It makes a lot of sense for us to stay current with the unfolding across the globe. For that purpose the following article on globalization and the "local tribe" is very important to understand. For the article go to this link.

Another important text is Shia Revival by Vali Nasr (son of Seyyed Hossein Nasr). If you want to know something of the complexity behind the politics and conflicts in the Middle East just now, there is no better volume. It has just been published and is both readable and gripping while plunging the reader into the Byzantine labyrinths of tension behind the scenes that are played out daily on our televisions. We often watch the horror with little comprehension. This text is a missing link for it helps ground the public affairs of current Middle Eastern politics in the long histories of conflict especially between Sunnis and Shias in the Muslim community.

Growth

"If we do not rise to the challenge of our unique capacity to shape our lives, to seek the kinds of growth that we find individually fulfilling, then we can have no security: we will live in a world of sham, in which our selves are determined by the will of others, in which we will be constantly buffeted and increasingly isolated by the changes round us."

--Nena O'Neil
Courtesy of Gary O'Connor

Truth and Religion

"Religion is only part of Truth. Religion is usually shown in formal ways, in organizations meant to control thoughts and actions of men. But at the core, within every accepted sect of religion, there is a golden thread. This is the secret and hidden sacred techniques and powers which make men able to perform the miraculous. This is the wondrous golden core of Truth."

Nine Faces of Christ; Quest of the True Initiate, Eugene Whitworth

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

The Eternal Moment

In spring, ten thousand flowers.
In autumn, the moon.
In summer, a cool breeze.
In winter, snow.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

One instant is eternity;
eternity is the now.
When you see through this one instant,
you see through the One who sees.

--Wu-Men (1183-1260)

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Poet: Scott Cairns


David Stringer introduced me to this poet, Scott Cairns, and his outstanding book of poetry, Philokalia: New and Selected Poems. Poetry is not only important because it is a continuation of the wisdom tradition's most fundamental means of transmission, but because in our day it may be the last vestige of the prophetic voice available to the modern world. This particular volume is beautiful and full of insight into the deeper meanings of sacred tradition. I recommend it to you.

link

Disparate thoughts

I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science.

- Albert Einstein

Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade, But do not be disheartened, The source they come from is eternal, growing, Branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you And this whole world is springing up from it.

- Jelauddin Rumi

Monday, August 28, 2006

Diamonds

Trials press upon the soul.
The soul is tumbled and tossed like a rock;
gradually its sharp edges chip and fray;
a weak vein is found, the soul is cracked to its core
across the fault line, exposing the gleaming insides--
its crystalline and fractured beauty.
From thence, the diamond can take shape:
from inside out is the soul's crystal beauty
shaped and polished as gentle facets and complexities
emerge upon the face, reflecting a depth of experience;
emanating a soft glow from suffering transmuted into
inner light. Thus, the soul is like unto a diamond:
a vessel to reflect the eternal beauty of spirit.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

The Mystery of Particularity

We live in a world of concrete particularity, and it is easy to get lost there in the details, mired in a myriad activities, swallowed by a swamp of proliferating sensations, emotions and reactions. We need, of course, balance with some larger cosmic picture so that the two stay in some kind of dynamic balance. It is easy to imagine, however, that the details are of no significance--to be cast aside as unimportant to the great cosmic scheme. But that is not so. Wisdom puts the great and the small together. The microcosm and the macrocosm are significant parts of the whole. To help us keep things in focus, here are some important reflections:

The mysteries of the universe do not lie primarily in the universal laws and principles, even though these are mysterious enough. What is most mysterious and miraculous about the universe is its concrete particularity, its every object and inhabitant, each of which is ultimately unfathomable. -- William Chittick.

My daily affairs are quite ordinary;
but I'm in total harmony with them.
I don't hold on to anything, don't reject anything;
nowhere an obstacle or conflict.
Who cares about wealth and honor?
Even the poorest thing shines.
My miraculous power and spiritual activity:
drawing water and carrying wood. -- Layman P'ang

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The Gospel of Philip and the Mysteries

If one goes down into the water and comes up having received nothing and says I too am Anointed, he or she is Christian in name only and has simply taken the Name “on loan.” But if he or she receives the gift of the sacred Spirit, then that Names has allso been received as a gift, which can never be taken away, whereas a loan can always be recalled. This is the way one lives into the mysteries.

--translated by L. Bauman

Saturday, August 19, 2006

The Mind of the West

Since the Middle Ages, the mind of the West has lifted off like a rocket, starting slowly to raise itself above the ground, then picking up speed exponentially. ... No other civilization shows this self-propelling explosive development. Seen in this light, the atom bombs and missles of this century do not look like accidental by-products of our culture ... but more like the symbol of the West as a whole.

--Wolfgang Giegerich from "Das Begrabnis der Seele in die technische Zivilisation" (1983)

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

We are all wounded inside in some way or other.
We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or another.
Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing fromone another.
Healing in words, healing beyond words.Like gestures.
Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always
Be like a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described
As the shortest distance between two people.

Ben Orki, “Healing The Wounded Learner or the Pygmalion Complex”

YES, THE HIGHEST things are beyond words. That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions.

Ben Okri, "A Way of Being Free"

Egregore, the Archons, and Mind Parasites

For a number of years now we have been discussing the problem of good and evil in relationship to forces outside of immediate human control (or malign forces in the universe) using the word egregore. This term defines a semi-autonomous entity created by the negative projections of human beings which gains strength and then has power over an individual or a collective body in society. In the ancient world these may have been the “gods,” for example, who demanded human sacrifice. In more modern times, an example of an egregore might be the Inquisition which controlled the ecclesial powers in Spain, or later, Nazism which seemed to have control over 20th century Germany and possessed a life large than its own racial ideology. In our own day virulent forms of religious and ethnic bigotry, terrorism and hate for a particular people, religion, or race may be similar manifestations.

Recently, the well-known artist Alex Grey painted a picture presenting his own personal encounter with such an entity, which he has called a “mind parasite.” This term suggests that such an entity, could be feeding off of the energies of human beings and instigating their baser instincts. Mind parasites could exist in a dimension we are not ordinarily aware of.

During a group LSD experience in the 1970's, Grey vividly recalls seeing beings from above feasting on their energy. “The beings were actually orchestrating chaotic behavior from the group.”

The encounter led Grey to see humans as part of "an energetic food chain." Humans are not at the top of the food chain, such entities are. Interestingly the ancient Gnostics had a special word which they used to describe these creatures called the "Archons," who could also be thought of as mind parasites.

These ideas and terms help us, perhaps, to better understand Yeshua’s concern for human beings under the influence of entities which they have a hand in creating, feeding, and empowering that, then, wreak havoc on the world around us, vividly illustrated most recently in Lebanon.

For a link to Alex Grey’s website.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Action

When you act, act completely. Follow through. Do everything that has to be done. Be like the fire that burns completely clean: only from that pure stage can you then take the next step.

---Deng Ming-Dao (contemporary Taoist)

Monday, August 14, 2006

Attachment or Love?

We confuse attachment with love. Attachment is concerned with my needs, my happiness, while love is an unselfish attitude, concerned with the needs and happiness of others....A relationship free of unrealistic grasping is free of disappointment, conflict, jealousy, and other problems, and is fertile ground for the growth of love and wisdom.

-Kathleen McDonald, "How to Meditate"

On Being Wrong

To admit that you were wrong is to declare that you are wiser now than you were before.

--Unknown

Courtesy of Gary O'Connor.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Do We Need Further Proof?


Few, perhaps, need further proof, but we’re mired nowadays so deeply in the forest of national politics and international strife that we can just barely see the trees which are about to fall upon us.

A geophysicist at the Centre for Space Research at the University of Texas, said that a huge mass of ice that covers most of Greenland is melting at an alarming rate, almost three times faster than it did five years ago, and the pace is increasing each year.

According to this new study, conducted by a US-based research team led by Chinese scientist Chen Jianli, Greenland is currently losing 240 cubic kilometers of ice each year since 2004, and accelerating. The researchers’ team estimated the loss after assessing ice mass changes over Greenland between 2002 and 2005. Earlier study had shown that the annual loss of the Greenland ice sheet was nearly 90 cubic kilometers between 1997 and 2003.

link

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Mind, Spirit and Truth

This is what I say: Your mind is spiritual and so too is the sense-perceived world. The spirit is timeless and it dominates all existence as the great law guiding all beings in their search for truth. It changes crude nature into mind, and there is no being that can't be transformed into a vessel of truth.

-Brahmajala Sutra

Idolatry

Idolatry immobilizes us before an object without transcendence.

--Henry Corbin

Monday, August 07, 2006

Sakka asked the Buddha: "Do different religious teachers head for the same goal or practice the same disciplines or aspire to the same thing?""No, Sakka, they do not. And why? This world is made up of myriad different states of being, and people adhere to one or another of these states and become tenaciously possessive of them, saying, 'This alone is true, everything else is false.' It is like a territory that they believe is theirs. So all religious teachers do not teach the same goal or the same discipline, nor do they aspire to the same thing."But if you find truth in any religion or philosophy, then accept that truth without prejudice."

-Digha Nikaya

Paradoxes Along the Vertical Axis

In wisdom work there are paradoxes everywhere -- and this is especially true in the higher dimensions along the vertical axis. The relationship between ascent and descent is one such paradox that leads us to an understanding of the interior "traffic" in the vertical dimension. The paradox is spoken by Saint Isaac the Syrian:

Dive down into your self,
and there you will find the steps
by which you might ascend.

Friday, August 04, 2006

The Essence of Mind

The mind is not just 'oneness' or a singular entity because it manifests in manifold ways. It is not a plurality or many things, either, because these numerous manifestations all have one essence. No one can describe its nature saying, "It is exactly like this!" It is indescribable, unutterable, inconceivable, nonarising, unceasing, and nondwelling, like the essence of space. Mind nature is discovered within the experience of awareness and is cognized individually.

-Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche

Thursday, August 03, 2006

The Modern World is "Posthistorical"

Recently in a critique of the modern world I read the following which makes a very bold claim, but also perfect sense:

Modernity can be called "posthistorical" because it too offers no scope for radical change, even if this idea seems paradoxical at first stight. The present age is surely the Age of Change if there ever was one, but this must not obscure the fact that the flood of changes released in modern times consists mostly of changes that affect only matters of detail and technique, and for no great time at that. On all essentials modern civilization is now just as immobilistic as that of the early Middle Ages. It is designed for the production of endless minor changes in all manner of restricted realms, with all energies mobilized for this purpose under the headings of industry and bureaucracy, and hardly any deviations of effort are permitted from these priorities. ... the final result [is] to make change so all-pervasive that every change will be countered by another one before it can make any difference, and the only permanent condition left will be just this condition where all forces cancel one another out (14).

link

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

The Purpose of Our Present Lives

Recently, while translating the Gospel of Philip from Coptic, I came across this passage in which Yeshua speaks of our present purpose for being here in this world. Our work is to sow the seeds of eternal life. It is not here, now, that we should expect to reap, but in that world beyond space-time where the harvest is made. If you thought about your life everyday as the work of sowing the fields of earth, not worrying about the harvest, simply spreading the seed of eternal life through compassion, care, a well spoken word, simple attention, awareness of the inner reality of things--this would be enough. Here is the passage:

Those who sow in winter, reap in the summer. Winter is the world-system (the kosmos), and summer is the Great Age, (the Aion), the realm of transcendence. Let us sow in this world that we may reap in the summertime. For this reasons, we are not asked to pray (for harvest) in the wintertime, but for the summer, which comes from winter. If one tries to reap in the wintertime it only uproots the field, and there is no harvest. This approach is fruitless since nothing emerges in the winter, and in that other realm—the true Sabbath—the fields are barren.

Analogue Three