Thursday, October 30, 2008

Friends and Lovers

There is a tradition in the sacred streams of wisdom which says that human beings in this world can become “secret lovers” and friends of God. It is a category quite different from merely being religious and a person of faith. Recently a young man that many of us know sent me an email saying that he had found someone and had fallen hopelessly in love.

I knew what me meant. Something suddenly had changed. Life had shifted and perceptions about what was important had swung in a totally new direction. Whether any one else knew it or not, he had become a “lover” and was now different inside than he was before.

All across this planet there is a secret society of lovers—lovers of God and friends. They do not belong to any one faith. They don’t all speak the same theological language. But when you find one, whether or not they appear different on the outside, you can detect signs of this deep inner friendship. As Rumi says:

Lovers are such strange people,
they are not like everyone else,
they don’t carry their souls in their bodies,
instead, their souls carry them.
People often run toward the river of the waters of life
in hopes of becoming immortal.
Yet for the lovers,
the waters of life are always running towards them.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Prayer

Prayer is kardial dialogue and inter-active. In prayer we meet the Active Agency (the Presence) that fills this universe and who appears to us personally to instruct the heart in the unique way that each soul can receive it.

Prayer is not so much us talking to God about our problems, but God talking with us about what we next need to understand on this life-path. Prayer is, therefore, dialogical, imaginal, and co-creative. As Rumi says:

With every breath you plant the seeds of contemplation,
for you are the sower of the heart.
Day and night you behold the face of union,
for you are the mirror of God’s beauty.
Every moment you shape your eternal destiny and your resurrection,
for you are the carpenter of your own soul.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Finding our Song

"I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung."

- Rabindranath Tagore

We string and unstring our instrument because we don’t believe enough in our song. Sometimes we’re afraid of our song. The metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly demands a lot, including courage, sacrifice and hard work. It requires resourcefulness. It is shy and retreats easily. It requires nurturing. In return, it offers a deep experience of life.

The starting point, the process from which one discovers one’s song, is a dream. It arises out of our center. Its roots are in the pre-verbal, the half understood, the subconscious. There is a wisdom inside of each of us that often cannot be put into words but, with practice, can be used to guide and shape our lives and our work. Our song arises out of that which is holy inside of us.

Roderick McIver

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Idols and Icons

In current speech we have a modern image that is curious to me. We talk about "Hollywood idols" or "teen idols" that appear on our movie or television screens. These phrases are telling and say much about our contemporary world and its views. I was reminded of this in something I read recently from After Prophecy by Tom Cheetham. Here's the quote:
Many of us who live in a media-dominated world risk becoming unable to percive the inherent uniqueness of the individual persons and things that populate our lives. Modern life threatens to become orchestrated by scripts learned from entertainment and the news media. Though every society has a standard repertoire of social roles, modern capitalism relies on especially powerful images cut loose from any of the usual stabilizing constraints that locate the individual in society in a meaningful way. Technological society is based upon the exteriorization of reality. It encourages us to live as automatons in a world of idols. Idolators are not individuals--they are instances of a type. To discover the deeper self requires a different kind of vision. Idols are always abstract and disembodied. Icons are always absolutely particular, unrepeatable, and individual. The perception of icons requires a transformation of the opacity of the idols, and of the self, so that they becom transparent to the light within them.The practical question concerns how to learn to see this light, to see with ... [the] "eyes of fire" (85).
Cheetham's use of the word iconhere is in reference not to traditional icons, but to the "iconic realities" of real human beings among whom we live on a daily basis.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Little Gidding

Recently I have been working on the Four Quartets of T.S. Eliot in preparation for some of our work here in the Spring. It is an amazing piece of spiritual poetry. The last quartet is called “Little Gidding” and refers to a small, semi-monastic community of Anglicans that formed in response to the collapse of European institutions in and around the great Wars of the twentieth centuries.

In that setting a small community of individuals came into being that lived an interior life distinct from the formal institutions of the Church, and forged a way of being in the modern world that expressed reality and depth in contrast to the manifestations of religion “at the surface of things.”

Small and committed communities of individuals like Little Gidding are in some ways analogous to the experience of early Christianity. What we experience in these less formal but significant gatherings is the realization that it is neither society nor institutions that support spiritual life, but real encounters with real people, not en masse, but as individuals in their unique and hard won pilgrimages with whom we recapture access to the grace and beauty of the divine Presence in this world dominated and manipulated by human power.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Sparrow

Don't be like a sparrow
jumping from branch to branch,
looking for love here,
or looking for love there,
while the fire I've lit inside you
only grows cold.
--Rumi

Friday, October 17, 2008

On Spiritual Transformation

Here is an extraordinary quote:

Spiritual transformation is one of the great mysteries of Creation. In the furnace at the root of things, something is forged, something fragile and elusive. Out of that dark [fire] there emerges a still, small voice of praise, speaking not of power but of life and active love. The human body filled with the warmth of this love, and listening for the dark voice of the Angel is finally and at last a body truly made flesh. Or so we Imagine. -- Tom Cheetham, After Prophecy, (73).

Monday, October 13, 2008

Revolution

My call for a spiritual revolution is thus not a call for a religious revolution. Nor is it a reference to a way of life that is somehow other-worldly, still less to something magical or mysterious. Rather, it is a call for a radical re-orientation away from our habitual preoccupation with self towards concern for the wider community of beings with whom we are connected, and for conduct which recognizes others’ interests alongside our own.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Soul Work

In his remarkable work, Lost Christianity, Jacob Needleman makes the case that what we have lost in modern religious life especially within the Christian tradition is not only missing elements in the life of Jesus, or doctrines that have been misplaced or suppressed, but the very essence of spiritual life itself—what has been lost is “soul work.” The work of the soul is, in fact, soul-making; that is, the recreation of the soul of each human being according to a template other than what is imposed upon it at the surface level of existence—its social construction as an egoic identity, and that this kind of work requires that we expend considerable effort and pay close attention.

Soul work, or soul-making is the secret inner work that each individual must accomplish in life, and what is striking in the religious domains of modern Christianity is that the very doctrines and teachings that we cherish—the teachings about love and grace, for example—seem to imply, at least to many contemporary believers that all one needs to do is give up and rely instead upon an external force that will impose itself upon the soul. We need “do nothing” (or perhaps, “do little”). Salvation is regarded as a “pure gift” over which we have little or no control, and in which the only hope is becoming passive recipients of this grace. God will do it all, if we will just let Him (sic).

Is that true? Does grace mean that we are passive recipients? Or is soul-work the most demanding work of all, and one that requires our complete and honest attention; that we are each co-creators of our own souls? Yes, there is grace, and help, and guidance from Transcendence in many forms, but the real work is done when we throw ourselves into it and “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling” (as the good Apostle suggests).

The whole of the biblical lineage which we inherit suggests that human life in the realm of space-time is indeed soul-work, requiring sincere attention and considerable effort. And yet, as Yeshua suggests in the Gospel of Thomas, "it is movement and it is rest."

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Good motivation

A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Contemplation

In a recent email from Gail Wiggin I received this important quote from Thomas Merton which is pertinent to our work in the order. It comes from a book recommended by Cynthia Bourgeault.

Christianity means much more than change in behavior-- it calls us to a change in consciousness. And if it is understood in this way, it involves, just as truly as Zen, an experience that is transforming: an experience that can never be adequately put into words. It is worth noting that among the early Christian writers theology was not so much reflection on doctrine as the actual experience of the realities that doctrines attempt to express. The Greek word theologia was the word they used for what we today call “contemplation."
--from “Something of a Rebel” -- Thomas Merton, His Life and Works, pg. 120 by William Shannon

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Change

In this political season the catch-word is change. Its an interesting word, fraught with complexity. At the heart of the work of wisdom is also change called transformation or metamorphosis. So what kinds of changes are possible, and is the political catch-word the same thing as wisdom’s way of working?

An answer might be possible if we consider three different meanings (or aspects) of change. There are parallels to spiritual change (or transformation) to changes in the physical world. The first is Swiftly Reversible Changes. These are changes that come about as a result of emotional and affective shifts within a person or a society. They have to do with temporary swings of mood, emotion, or fashion. They might come as a result of meeting new people, seeing a new movie, watching TV, or reading a book on some new fascinating topic, which causes us to change some aspect of our behavior. This is usually temporary, and we easily fall back into the old patterns again.

The second is Environmental Adaptation which means that an individual or a society’s attitude, behavior, or language changes because of association or membership in some new form or movement. Perhaps there is a change of vocation, work space, school, or someone moves to a new location, or society experiences some new event (natural or otherwise). It shifts things in the environment, and so individuals adapt and change, but those change are largely external, and should the environment shift back or change again—more adaptation will occur.

The third is Genotypic Change which means that there is an actual altering of the form of something from the inside out (in the physical world, at a genetic level). Something fundamental reconfigures itself on the inside. It might be triggered by the outside, but the shifts are largely interior rather than external (thought they affect external behaviors). For example, a person looses a loved one, or experiences new insight—and the actual form, personality, or worldview of that person begins to shift radically. They are never the same again. On a physical level this might be some mutation that triggers evolutionary change. On a spiritual level it is some basic change of form at the level of the heart. It is not egoic, but kardial. These explanations are crucial in understanding wisdom’s way and wisdom’s work.