Reflections on an Inch-Worm

I stood out this morning watching the sun as it rose red and glowing from the mists across the field. It was breath-taking. When I returned to the house I found an inch-worm had attached itself to my clothing. I observed it in fascination at it made its way across the topography of cloth. It was slow, but sure. In watching, I was reminded of the spiritual progression of the human soul.

First the “searching function” of the head/heart of this creatures ranges far outside the circle of its normal horizon. It lifts its head and quests outward turning this way and that. In questing forward it seeks out a new place to stand. When it has found it, then it brings its feet to its head/heart and a new function begins—the “foundational function.” It grips the new place firmly, grounds its being now in this freshly “found” place and takes its stand. Then it begins all over again—the search for the new—but it can only do so because of the sure footedness of the ground on which it now stands. Its whole journey is a searching, a finding, then a movement from feet up to the head, taking a stand, making a new but firm foundation, and then a new searching begins, which ultimately entails a new letting go of the old foundations to stand firmly in the new. Over and over again it goes.

It makes progress inch by inch across a varied topography that is totally unknown, and yet it appears not to be afraid—even when I gave it my “foreign” hand as new territory for exploration. It did not draw back and refuse to go forward.

Ah, to be like the inch-worm.

Angel Fire

What's in a name? There is a place near Taos, NM with this name--Angel Fire. I've heard it often, but was struck recently by the fact that both the Christian and the Islamic traditions believe that every human being, whether they know it or not, have the capacity for "angel fire," that is to see through the fiery eyes of the Angel of their own being. Though this terminology is strange to us now, it is not foreign to the traditions of either faith. The meaning here is that each individual, besides his or her human capacity to see physically, carries inside another capacity: the "angelic function of being." This function, when it is operative, allows a human being to see things not simply with their outer eye, but with their inner eye (the eye of the heart) that has an entirely different perspective.

The perspective of the inner eye is bi-directional. It can see God, but it can also see from God's perspective (the way angels do). It can see the inner dimension of things. Here are some eye-witnesses to that vision:

Miraculously ... it was as if I were seeing the forest for the first time. A fir tree was not only a fir tree but also something else much greater. The dew on the grass was not just dew in general. Each drop existed on its own. I could have given a name to every puddle on the road -- Vladimir Maximov

We have lost the flame of things and the secret content of simple reality. ... the unspeakable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things, as in the [burning] bush, is the fire of divine love and the dazzzling brilliance of the divine beauty inside everything. -- Paul Evdokimov.

Reflections From Houston

Stacy Stringer, one of our friends of the Order sent me some reflections from her and Steve's experience of the Hurrican Ike, as well as the other storms brewing over the human horizons. These words were thoughtful and provocative. I wanted to share them with you:

Beginning with Palin, continuing through Ike, and then last Monday with the collapse of the financial giant(s) I clearly sensed the abrupt shift, both internally and externally - not unlike what I experienced before and during the Enron collapse. The abruptness is quite different from the growing awareness and concern over the direction of things that has been with me for some time. Is abruptness the tipping point reached?

I've been trying to understand what to make of Ike, what he's telling us, and how he relates to the other external (as well as inner) calamities. Continuous rescue and cleanup activity makes for minimal reflective time for me, but it seems that my dreams are where the conversation is happening. My nighttime dreams are becoming like friends who visit during the day, rather than the jarring intruders they had always been.

I think I am witnessing "awe" in the biblical sense when I hear a few folks comment on the power of the storm, the heartbreaking devastation "out there," the astonishingly quick recovery efforts in Houston, and the reality that so many of us have been spared serious catastrophe. This awe is directed at Ike as well as at the tireless workers who are repairing Houston's infrastructure. Others are sensing that this is about something bigger than a hurricane and inconvenience.

I feel urgency about connecting with our community in order to process. Busyness is isolating (and deadening).

Religion

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irreleant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain;when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

--Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man

Freedom

There is an ancient Greek word used in the early Christian tradition that applies to monks of the ascetical orders, and it is the word apeithia. It is also the word from which we get the term apathy in modern English, and so it is easily misunderstood to mean listlessness or unconcern. Originally it means nothing of the sort. A better word is “detachment,” but understood as being cut loose and set free. Freedom from slavery to the horizontal axis and to the self that forms along that axis into a new world of vertical liberation is the goal.

It is that freedom that allows a human being to be rooted, alive, embodied and real. It is a freedom that opens the soul to the world with compassion that is deep, intimate and even festive. Rumi, that universal poetic voice proclaims:

The one who is peaceful and happy in this world
is not attached to wealth or poverty,
to either “less” or “more.”
That one has become detached from the world and its citizens,
and most importantly from the “self,”
and has simply “gone beyond”
with no trace left behind.

This is the sort of freedom to which all monks of the Order aspire. It is a not a freedom found away from this world, but found in this world.

Empty Calories

We sometimes talk about people eating empty calories—that is food which is materially plentiful, but lacking any kind of nutritional quality. This kind of food may satisfy our craving for something, sweets for example, but has no real ability to affect the nutritional needs of the body.

Let’s suppose that human being can be the same—materially real, but lacking any quality. The great Sacred Traditions speak of that which makes humans “real”—full of quality. The word that is most commonly used in the Christian context is “virtue.” The virtues are qualities that make someone a real person and not just existent but “empty.”

Let’s also imagine that the larger world feeds on quality, and that lacking it becomes unbalanced and weak. Suppose that quality (virtues) are the nutritional element that humans can give the world through who they are and what they do in the world and that this quality comes actually from a higher source—from the divine field of energy that feeds each of us and makes us real, which we in turn we feed the world.

The question facing each of us then is this: Are we eating empty religious quality, or is our diet rich in divine nutrient? And, what, in turn, are we feeding the world around us that has been processed and made available by our own being?

Hidden Truth

There is a logion in the Gospel of Thomas about an invitation to a Feast where all the invited guest refuse the invitation because they are “simply too busy” (Logion 64). It is a very poignant and contemporary story, much like our own world. What lies all around us is simply too compelling to be ignored. We are riveted here. Any other “reality” seems implausible to us. And so the story ends with others invited who will come, and the acquaintances absent from the Feast. The hidden truth behind these words are this: this world is some sort of “shadow play,” a make-believe realm thought up by us to keep us busy and occupied. Here are some important teachings about this hidden truth:

O one who has gotten lost in yourself,
you’re not aware that your life has become a grave.
In fact, you are buried in the grave of yourself.
Finding the One who gave you life
is the best nourishment for you.
Yet you are running around from one store to another
for the food that can only be measured in cups.

The mountain of your fantasies
amounts to no more than a few crumbs of bread.
All your comings and goings
is no more than an excuse.
For a lifetime you’ve listened to the story of My heart,
but to you it was just a fairy tale.

In this world you’ve become rich and clothed,
but when you come out of this world how will you be?
Learn a trade that will earn you forgiveness.
In the world beyond there is also traffic and trade.
Besides those earnings this world is just play.
As children embrace in fantasy
or set up a candy shop, this world is a game.
Night falls,
and the child comes home hungry with his friends.

Thoughts on a "Perfect Storm"

We have just experienced “Ike”—the Hurricane that blew through Texas and Houston this past weekend. In some ways it is illustrative of the term “the Perfect Storm.” We have all heard the term, and know that it refers to a confluence of events that come together to create a kind of unparalleled chaotic vortex that leaves chaos in its wake.

I’ve been thinking about this storm as a metaphor for what appears to be happening all around us—in many respects what we are experiencing now feels like the approach of a Perfect Storm. Here are the steps: A series of disturbances begin in remote locations—beyond where we live. Those disturbances in the weather come together to create a larger “tropical storm” that materializes in the central latitudes of the world that are most populated. There are always storms forming there, of course, but this disturbance has more energy and collects further energy to itself—it begins to draw on the “warming waters” that are potentially active all around it and the storm “powers up,” as they say.

Feeding on the warm waters of its environment, the disturbance grows in magnitude and then begins to move into other realms, other waters, other regions of the world and spins off bands of chaos. As it grows it sucks in more and more energy, bringing together a mass of concentrated wind and water that spins around itself, moving toward the settled land masses where the normal life of everyday citizens lie in wait as helpless targets in its approaching path. There is an interesting hidden variable as well—steering currents—that are unseen, but determine where it will eventually move. These are currents that are even broader and more global than the storm itself. We can detect them, but they remain indeterminate and almost impossible to measure.

Until it hits, no one knows exactly where it will make “land-fall,” and where the most damage will occur… but the fallout is not just the specific place of landfall, but the huge area around it, where millions of people literally lose power, suffer immense damage, and figuratively lose the “normal” power they have over their own lives in the aftermath. Everything is changed. No one is safe in the wide swath of destruction from the affects of the storm.

So is it truth that what we are seeing now are signs of such a storm on the horizons of our world? If it is, then we are all certainly at points of landfall, and few, if any, of us will be unaffected. The forces of our world appear to be rushing into the power of such chaotic energy. All we can do is to prepare, be alert and vigilant, and when it comes, ride out the storm. We will live for a long time in the aftermath. We will be asked to step into the new roles of rescue, treatment and damage control. The question is, are we ready, or are we doing like so many did this past weekend, dismiss it in a state of willful denial and blindly try to ride out the storm in the belief that somehow we will be safe and there will be no long-term consequences?

Letting Go

The truth is, we want to cling, but in order to journey forward we must learn to let go. Its like mountain climbing on a steep slope, you get four good “holds” on the mountain, and if you feel you are safe there in that precarious spot, it would be easy just to hold on—forever! But to make forward progress, you’ve got to let go again and reach forward to the next higher “grip point.”

You don’t let go of everything all at once, of course. That would send you plunging down the slope. But as you can, ultimately every grip point must be transcended for the next “station” of your journey. So practically speaking, what do we grip that must be transcended? Several critical areas come to mind, self, God, and the belief systems (or the dogmatic structures) between them that sustains both.

In order to move forward, as Tom Cheetham suggests, it is necessary to abandon our childish attachments to everything: to ourselves, to God, and to the world. I agree. Strangely, we find ourselves at this critical juncture in our day. It is our task now to work with what faces us. We did not choose this as a project. But it is ours to work with and respond to. The work of the Order, I believe, is to do just this. As we explore further, I will take a closer look at the three detachments I have suggested here, and then at the project of learning new wisdom that I mentioned earlier.

Living in a Post-Theological World

So what are we to do in this post-theological world of Christianity when all the dogmatic certainties upon which we had relied so heavily now seem thin and uncertain, or have slipped away almost entirely? It is a huge question, and one that any sincere seeker must begin to wrestle with.

If we cannot rely on past certitudes and orthodoxies with absolute assurance, then what we are left with is the bedrock of our own experience. But doesn’t this seem equally unstable—to have to rely on our own abilities? So let’s think about it this way. Is this not exactly what we do when we grow out of our infancy, childhood, and adolescence (and out of our parents’ care) and become responsible adults, accepting the responsibility of taking care of ourselves and our families? It feels like an awfully lonely world sometimes. We feel vulnerable and naked to the stronger forces around us, but we manage somehow, and by this experience become stronger as we live, learn and grow.

That is exactly where we are now theologically as we navigate these waters learning from our own experience and from one another tracking between both failure and success. At this juncture, though we may feel vulnerable and alone, we are not without resources both inward and from above and beyond ourselves. At this spiritual “tipping point,” then, we must step forward into a new way of being Christian and spiritual that entails, first, letting go of all the old expectations, and second, accepting the task of learning the new skills and principles of wisdom.

What is a religious man?

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.

- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prayer

Prayer is that which enables the soul to realize its divinity. Through prayer human beings worship absolute truth, and seek an eternal reward. Prayer is the foundation-stone of religion; and religion is the means by which the soul is purified of all that pollutes it. Prayer is the worship of the first cause of all things, the supreme ruler of all the world, the source of all strength. Prayer is the adoration of the one whose being is necessary.

-Ibn Sina

The Tipping Point

It feels to me very much that as a society and perhaps as a world civilization we have reached a tipping point. We are rapidly hurtling toward a point of no return where everything hangs on the decision that is made. It is clear that we are doing this politically in our nation just now, and interestingly enough both candidates for president seem to realize it. Each is moving from the position of business-as-usual to offer a new vision and a different path. The question is, of course, can either one deliver, and are we headed for deadlock or breakthrough politically?

What appears to have changed in all of this is the realiztion that the behavior of the past has failed us and put our world in jeopardy. What is yet to be addressed is, can the belief systems that have determined that behavior change? Will there be real breakthrough onto a new path because something fundamentally has shifted within the spiritual perceptions of individuals and the nation as a whole, or will we collapse back into further forms of self-destructive chaos? Spirituality and change at the level of human consciousness is at the roots of the final outcome. An election may determine the politics of our future, but only an inner shift in human consciousness can change the ultimate outcome for humanity and the viability of our future. It is a tipping point.

Freedom from Imprisonment

Freedom from the imprisonment we have experienced in the conventional religious language of Christianity does not mean what we might imagine. Some have sought freedom through scientific analysis and historical-critical deconstruction proving how false the truth-claims of traditional theology (or even Scripture) actually are. Others have taken the tack of deymtholizaion and tried to remove any false narrative or religious image that makes no sense to the contemporary mind. While others offer a form of religious language stripped of any paradox, metaphor or poetic image that challenges reason.

Though these may free us from the religious language of the past, once free, there is nowhere to go and nothing left us that is powerful enough to transform the soul and cause it to transcend itself. Religion itself is left lifeless and flat, and the religious language that is used is laced with platitudes and clichés that sound vaguely spiritual, but are empty and powerless.

It is true, as Tom Cheetham says, “To transform ourselves and our vision of the world, we need forms of perception that are enabled by a language not burdened with the accumulated idolatries and unconscious assumptions of the past,” but what new language is that to be? What is left us?

Thomas Merton, the well-known Trappist monk before he died saw the future path forward and said, “We are going to have to create a new language of prayer. And this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love” ( from the Essential Writings, 426).

From my own perspective it is clear, now that this new, radiant language of love must be so alive with prophetic vision and poetic light that it shatters all the old idols of religious language and transmutes them into icons that are transparent to the illuminating light of the transcendence and the celestial archetypes. This is the search and discovery that we are currently making, and the possibilities that are emerging from that search and discovery are powerful and compelling. As Rumi has said,

It is time to be silent and listen
So that the Giver of Speech may speak.
It is time to be silent and listen
so that we can hear God calling us all secretly in the night.
For in each lover’s heart there is a flute
which plays the melody of longing,
and even if that lover looks a little crazy,
that’s only because most ears are not tuned
to the music by which the lover dances.

Trapped By Religious Language

My bottom line is this: ALL religious language is ultimately about transcendent archetypes and not about history. But it is our common perception as students of religion in the West to think of religious language as historical theology—and theology is the official, authoritative teaching of the Church about what must be believed in order to be Christians. Is that it? Is that what religion and religious language is about? If it is, then we are trapped by it.

You will notice, if you are paying attention, that most official religious language is said to be based in historical facts for which we have either factual evidence or, at least, traditional precedence. One example of this is the Church’s official teaching concerning the virgin birth of Jesus. This teaching is said to be true either because we have historical or Scriptural “proof” that teaches us that Jesus was really born from a young, Jewish, virgin girl, or at least because we have we have venerable Traditional precedence for believing this is true.

In either case, if we say that one must believe this (remember it is part of our creedal statements in Christianity) either because Scripture, history, or the Church says it is so—then we are already trapped in historical literalism of some kind, and have missed the point of this particular religious language (or image) entirely. Again, that is not what religious language is ultimately about.

Regardless of what we might have been officially taught, the religious language and image of “virgin birth” is not about history, it is about archetype. One could also take any of the other “official teachings” (incarnation, resurrection, the divinity of Christ, the sacraments) and say the same. None of these are ultimately about some literal, historical fact (though they may have in fact occurred in history as real events). But, again, that misses the point. They are not about historical facts; they are archetypal teachings that are more true than history. All of these images, whether they happened historically or not (and many of them no doubt did), are metaphors pointing toward transcendent archetypes--that is their ultimate truth.

All spiritual births must be from virginity. All spiritual life must be resurrected from death. All truth from above must be incarnated. All human beings must share divinity. All mundane acts of human life are sacramental and iconic. This is the truth of things that take us way beyond history and into transcendence both personally and universally. Religious language is meant to teach us this reality, and not trap us in historical literalism.

My objection to the dogmatic tradition of the Church is not about whether or not it can prove that these things really happened in history, but that dogma and theology which focus upon the history of material causality traps religious experience on the level of the literal. When it does, then, the religious language of the literal (or traditional) becomes a “theological fact” and the Church becomes the guardian of those facts. It also becomes the "offical" mediator between heaven and earth, and truth is degraded into meaningless literalism and not transcendent vision--and membership in the church and not direct personal experience of truth becomes the way forward. It is precisely now that we must step in and start the rescue operation. If it is ever to be effective, religious language and its images must be used, as they were always meant to be, as iconic images of the archetypes.

Disorientation and Idolatry

If, as we have seen (in the previous post, “The Soul of Suffering and the Human Condition”), disorientation is a part of the human condition, making our human life on earth “the most difficult task there is,” then what happens to us in this state, other than our obvious confusion?

Tom Cheetham goes on to explain that the human soul, in this state of isolation and confusion, clings desperately to whatever promises simple, clear, stable answers to the intractable problems we repeatedly experience in life on the plane of space-time. “We fear falling into nothingness and grasp at whatever pseudo-certainties we can,” he says (25). But these certainties that we cling to are all idols—including, and perhaps most rigidly, our idols of religious certainty, our rigidly held beliefs that things must be a certain way, or because others become spiritually lost, we must save them in the way we see as “certain.” It is easy to see how, then, that religious certainties (orthodoxies) easily develop into idols that ultimately will not help us, but only trap us further in painful narrowness and limitations, cutting us off from the flow of divine life.

But it is precisely this state of poverty and even a sense of abandonment by God when our certainties fail, that is the first step on the path toward reorientation and Return. Yeshua himself reminds us, “Whoever of you does not renounce all cannot become my student.” As Cheetham says, we are all fragments of God, “little embryonic persons, in whose hearts lie the absolute mystery of the divine abyss” (25). But because we are finite, we feel this inner darkness and disorientation more keenly as both mysterious and yet filled with terror.

What calls us to live free of both confusion and fear is something more beautiful, more desperate, and more divine than we have ever imagined—it is to live reoriented to the Celestial Hierarchy. We shall explore this further.