Contemplative Inquiry

SOPHIA AND THE ORAN MOR

Who is Sophia for me, here and now? To do the question full justice, I want to back up and look again at her presence in Eurasian culture.

In the old cosmologies, she is ‘Wisdom’ in three spiritually influential languages – Sophia (Greek), Hokhmah (Hebrew) and Prajna (Sanskrit). She has attracted titles like Goddess, Mother of Angels, Saint, and Mother of Buddhas. In the Mahayana Buddhist world, she is related to bodhisattvas such as Tara and Kuan Yin. She has resonances with the Shakti power of Kashmiri Shaivism and with ‘spirit of the valley’ and water imagery in the Tao Te Ching.

In the Hellenistic culture of the Roman orient, especially Alexandria with its large Greek and Jewish communities, she has clear resemblances to Isis (already somewhat remodelled by the Greeks from an indigenous original) and to Asherah, the lost goddess of Israel, and her continuing half-recognition as Shekinah. Sophia is also a key figure in certain iterations of Christian Gnosticism, in some of which Mary of Magdala has been understood as her human incarnation. She is sometimes a cosmic mother, but never exclusively an earth mother, though that aspect can be included. Her main role is to complete our spiritual knowledge and understanding by imbuing us with compassion. The result is wisdom.

I am inspired by these ancient traditions. But I am not directly guided by them. I look more to my own experiences and sense-making, together with input from contemporary teachers. As I write, I sense Sophia as a body-feelings-mind wisdom, a systemic presence greater than my linguistic/narrative identity. It is as if she nudges me from all sorts directions. I might call some of these intuition; others, synchronicity. Embarking on a Way of Sophia was part of a plan. Discovering the Headless Way, and finding that its methods worked, was not. It came at me in a very odd, sideways manner, that I had not thought of at all, and I just went for it.

In the past I have sometimes thought of Sophia as a cosmic mother, representing the whole world of form. I no longer have this sense. For me she operates at a more personal and human level. To name the world of form, and its relationship to empty awareness, I would rather work with the old Gaelic term Oran Mor (Great Song). Here – adopting auditory language – I am personally an ephemeral note, perhaps a brief tune, in the Great Song. Yet ultimately I, like you, am the timeless aware silence that contains the whole song, and which the song so beautifully fills.

And what is the The Way of Sophia? It is learning to live from the eternal silent centre, and lovingly offering my unique if passing note to the Oran Mor.

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May 14, 2016

SOPHIA’S OPEN SECRET

There is a locked vault containing everything you’ve ever longed for – all the riches of the universe.

You spend your life trying to open the vault – through struggling, striving, meditating, transcending, guru-worshipping, believing, rejecting, accepting, praying, self-enquiring, yoga-ing, and so on and so forth.

Finally, exhausted, you give up trying to open the vault … and that’s when the vault opens by itself. It was never locked in the first place.

What’s inside the vault? This moment, exactly as it is.

You always knew. The Beloved calls us home in any way she can, and this ‘ordinary’ life is her ingenious invitation.

And the raindrops whisper that the enlightenment we seek is this unspeakable intimacy with the appearance of form, with this ever-changing watercolour scenery of life, its colours forever running into the gutters of emptiness. “Love us”, the raindrops whisper. “That’s all”. And still the raindrops keep falling and I walk on, embraced by a love with no name.

Jeff Foster Falling in love with where you are: a year of prose and poetry on radically opening up to the pain and joy of life Salisbury: Non-Duality Press, 2013

NB: I have messed around a bit with Jeff Foster’s work, eliding sections from two separate entries and giving the result another title. All the words are his.

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May 13, 2016

HUMAN

Some people, having vaguely heard of non-dual traditions, get a notion that they turn us away from our messy human lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here are two brief passages by (respectively) a mid-twentieth century and a current non-dual teacher.

BEING AND BECOMING

“To be, to exist with a name and form is painful, yet I love it …. It is the instinct of exploration, the love of the unknown, that brings me into existence. It is in the nature of being to seek adventure in becoming, as it is in the very nature of becoming to seek peace in being.” Nisargadatta Maharaj.

SACRED WORK

Cherish your doubts. They are the seeds of Mystery.

Embrace your sadness. Great joy lies within.

Turn to face your fears. At their core lies peace beyond words.

Celebrate your boredom. It is radically alive.

Hold your grief. Let it break your heart wide open.

Befriend your anger. Know it intimately as the life power that burns suns.

Acknowledge your pain. It is the body’s plea for attention.

All feelings are deeply intelligent. Get out of their way.

Let them do their sacred, universal work.”

Jeff Foster Falling in love with where you are: a year of prose and poetry on radically opening up to the pain and joy of life Salisbury: Non-Duality Press, 2013

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May 10, 2016

HEADLESS AWEN?

In my current spiritual inquiry, I am exploring Douglas Harding’s ‘Headless Way’, now with some direct guidance from Richard Lang and the Shollond Trust. For me, the brief passage below suggests a re-framed view of what we Druids call Awen. It also feels very Sophian, so I’m finding my pointers to an integrated path. I just have to be patient as new understandings unfold and I learn better how to live them.

“Speaking from my own experience now, if I picture a writer here who is thinking up these words, the result is more-or-less mechanical, uninteresting, inappropriate.

“But to the extent that I experience these words moving spontaneously from the empty Awareness that I am, from the Tao, why then they have a more authentic ring. That is not forgetting myself in the heat of literary composition. Quite the contrary: it is being clearly Self-aware as the Tao, the formless origin of all form.” (1)

(1) Douglas Harding Religions of the world: A handbook for the open-minded London: Shollond Trust, 2014 (digital edition). Originally published by Heinemann Educational Books in 1966.

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May 3, 2016

DEVON SPRING

A voice from the opening years of the twentieth century. The love of nature does not require any formal religion to give it spiritual meaning. The setting is Devon in south-west England, home to my mother and her forbears.

George Gissing was an established part of the literary scene in later Victorian Britain, though less well-known to the public than his friends Arthur Conan-Doyle and H.G. Wells. Indeed, he struggled both with his health and his finances throughout much of his working life, and died of TB whilst living in the south of France in 1903, aged 46. His themes include the professional and social consequences of embracing Darwinism and religious scepticism. His last and most popular novel, the Private Papers of Henry Rycroft, was published in the year of his death.

Rather poignantly, the private papers of the title are presented as the musings of an older writer who inherits enough money from an admirer to retire to a cottage just outside Exeter in Devon. He has nothing to do but enjoy himself in the countryside of his native land. The papers are arranged by the four seasons, moving from spring to winter. The passages below are late in the spring section, marking the transition to summer. My mother is from Exeter, and her parents were adults when this book was written.

MORNING AFTER MORNING

“Morning after morning, of late, I have taken my walk in the same direction, my purpose being to look at a plantation of young larches. There is no lovelier colour on earth than that in which they are now clad; it seems to refresh as well as gladden my eyes, and its influence sinks deep into my heart. Too soon it will change; already I think the first radiant verdure has begun to pass into summer’s soberness. The larch has its moment of unmatched beauty – and well for him whose chance permits him to enjoy it, spring after spring.

“Could anything be more wonderful than that fact that here am I, day by day, not only at leisure to walk forth and gaze at the larches, but blessed with the tranquility of mind needful for such enjoyment? On any morning of spring sunshine, how many mortals find themselves so much peace that they are able to give themselves wholly to delight in the glory of heaven and of earth?”

WALKING IN A FAVOURITE LANE

“Walking in a favourite lane today, I found it covered with shed blossoms of the hawthorn. Creamy white, fragrant even in ruin, lay scattered the glory of the May. It told me that spring is over.

“Have I enjoyed it as I should? Since the day that brought me freedom, four times have I seen the year’s new birth, and always, as the violet yielded to the rose, I have known a fear that I have not sufficiently prized this boon of heaven whilst it was with me.

“I recall my moments of delight, the recognition of each flower that unfolded, the surprise of budding branches clothed in a night with green. The first snowy gleam upon the blackthorn did not escape me. By its familiar bank, I watched for the earliest primrose, and in its copse I found an anemone. Meadows shining with buttercups, hollows sunned with the marsh marigold held me long at gaze. I saw the sallow glistening with its cones of silvery fur, and splendid with dust of gold. These common things touch me with more of admiration and of wonder each time I behold them. They are once more gone. As I turn to summer, misgiving mingles with joy.”

George Gissing The Private Papers of Henry Rycroft in The Complete Works of George Gissing Delphi Classics, Kindle edition 2012.

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April 28, 2016

POEM: THE ONENESS OF THINGS

The sun low over the beach:

shining wires of dune grass,

stones and the shadows of stones.

On the shoreline, the rush of foam

mirrored in the wet sand.

In the oneness of things

I am nowhere in sight.

Colin Oliver Nothing But This Moment: Selected Poems London: Shollond Trust, 2013

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April 22, 2016

ROSE, PEWTER & NATURE MYSTICISM

In my introduction to Contemplative Druidry (1) I describe “a wholly unexpected and not at all dramatic epiphany … triggered simply by noticing and contemplating a wild rose”. Although the experience lasted for only a few moments, “for some weeks I woke up every day with a sense of joy and connection”. It was a shift in my spiritual centre of gravity.

This happened on a midsummer morning in 2007, just outside the Scottish Border town of Melrose on the bank of the Tweed. It is a place loaded with religious and mythic reference – Melrose Abbey with its Green Man carvings and the heart of Robert the Bruce; the Eildon Hills, those hollow hills where the Queen of Efland took True Thomas, making it clear to him that she was not the Queen of heaven.

I had chosen to walk away from those, and towards a riverside path. My experience of the rose was entirely natural, in this legend laden land. In that sense I can call it an instance of nature mysticism, and a nudge towards a contemplative Druidry largely shorn of mythic narrative for the sake of a clearer eye. Looking back, I understood my experience as a lesser form of the one reported by the German mystic Jacob Boehme, who “fell into a trance upon looking into a burnished pewter plate that reflected the sun. In his ecstasy he saw into the very heart of nature itself and felt totally at harmony with creation” (2). Unusually for a seventeenth century Protestant, Boehme had a sense of the Divine feminine, and thought of Sophia as “the visibility of God”. He went on to be a key inspiration in a growing movement for a kinder, gentler version of the reformed faith despite the trials and trauma of his time. Boehme’s work finally appeared in English in 1662 and gave rise to a group called the Philadelphians, less known or numerous than the home grown Quakers.

Now I have entered another, different, phase. It is marked by a demystification of mysticism itself. It involves a deeper, more conscious inquiry into what I mean by ‘nature’ – the nature I see, the nature I am, and the relationship between them. On 23 May 2014 I scribbled down some words attributed to the 20^th. Century teacher and sage Nisargadatta Maharaj and posted on the Science and Nonduality website. I thought of working them into the text of Contemplative Druidry. But though I found them inspirational, I hadn’t tested them or assimilated them into my experience, and so I left them out. These words are: “Love says ‘I am everything’, Wisdom says ‘I am nothing’. Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both”.

My new connection with the Headless Way, with its simple, transparent processes, provides a framework for doing the work I had not done two years ago. My readiness to do it owes much to my experience of contemplative Druidry during the intervening time, just as my earlier work with contemplative Druidry probably helped me to recognize the value of Nisargadatta’s words in 2014. As I move forward, I increasingly see the threads of continuity in my overall inquiry, and this gives me confidence and energy for the work itself.

James Nichol Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential Amazon/KPD, 2014 (Foreword by Philip Carr-Gomm)
Caitlin Mathews Sophia Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God Wheaton IL: Quest Books, 2001

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April 19, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUID PRACTICE: SIMPLE AND PROFOUND?

People of like intent working together. That was an early principle of our Druid contemplative retreat days, when we started in July 2012. We didn’t have to be like-minded, in the sense of having a common doctrine, or even of entering a common spiritual trance. That’s one reason for choosing plain, open and simple practices.

We have carried on in that spirit ever since, and it means that people who have otherwise diverse practices and views can comfortably share our contemplative space. My sense over the years has been that, essentially, this way of working has a restorative and regenerative role for people who live with the pressures of busy and/or challenging lives. That would include most of us, Druids or not.

Then there is the thought of being ‘simple and profound’. The ‘simple’ is easy to describe. We are very sparse in our use of ritual or mythic narrative. Rather, we enter into more conscious relationship with the space we are in and with each other. We are attentive to where we stand in the wheel of the year, what the actual conditions are like, what we notice around us and the effects on us. On retreat days we make sure of including time outdoors. We spend time side by side in solo meditative silence, turning within. We also spend time in a more outwardly attuned collective silence (Awen space), from within which we may speak or sing out. Sometimes we have specific activities like toning, chanting, meditative exercises, or contemplative drawing.

What about the ‘profound’? In Moon Book’s recently published Pagan Planet (1) I wrote a short piece called Living Presence in a Field of Living Presence: Practicing Contemplative Druidry. For me, being ‘living presence within a field of living presence’, and living this presence more consciously, is the key to any deepening that we may find in our simplicity. It enables both the transformative potential of ‘knowing’ ourselves a little more, and does so within a context of interconnectedness.

I find that when I cut to the chase, and get to this experiential level, I need have no worries about working the Headless Way or how it fits with Druidry. My solo practices and meaning-making have indeed undergone a shift, yet Druid contemplative sessions and retreat days remain a highly appropriate and nourishing vehicle for practice and community.

(1) Nimue Brown (ed.) Pagan Planet: Being, Believing & Belonging in the 21^st. Century Winchester, UK & Washington, USA: Moon Books, 2016

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April 18, 2016

HEADLESSNESS AND DRUIDRY

Douglas Harding (1909 – 2007) described his ‘Headless Way’ as a “truly contemporary and Western way of ‘seeing into one’s Nature’ or ‘Enlightenment’” He went on to say that “though in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion” which would save the Seeker/Seer “years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort”.

This is achieved by “a variety of simple, non-verbal, fact-finding tests, all of them asking: how do I look to myself? They direct my attention to my blind spot – to the space I occupy, to what’s given right here at the Centre of my universe, to what it’s like being 1st-person singular, present tense” (1). Elsewhere he describes “a Reality which is Indivisible …not a thing, nor even a mind, but pure Spirit or clear Consciousness; and we are That and nothing but That … and the only way to find It is to look steadily within, where are to be found utmost peace, unfading joy, and eternal life itself” (2).

Harding claims that this experience is natural, ordinary and easy to obtain – not at all something that demands extreme practices for spiritual heroes. The real question is about how to make the experience habitual and how, if at all, we might need to do life differently. He is careful to say that “by habitual I mean remaining in contact with one’s central clarity and not … clinging to it. Not demanding that it should remain in the forefront of one’s attention in all the changing circumstances of life. The alternative is a crippling obsession. ‘In darkness are they who only look outwards, but in thicker darkness are they who only look within” (1).

I am now working with the Headless Way, a path culturally grounded in the Sophia Perennis – see https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress/2016/04/11/wisdom-of-Sophia/ – here based in Western modernity yet with a global and trans-historical frame of reference. I have known about it for some time, but discovered it in earnest only three weeks ago whilst checking information about something else. I do feel in some way nudged. I find the way of working very effective, partly because I have been warmed up to this kind of spirituality for many years without finding quite the right vehicle for it. This changes things for me.

The main change is that Headless Way exercises have largely replaced the Kabbalah based work I was planning and beginning as a complement to my Druidry. The new methods move me away from the direct heritage of the Occult revival and its use of Jewish tradition. Not completely – I still use the Middle Pillar, with vowel sounds instead of the names of God, as an energy/light body exercise. The Sophia icon described in my last post remains highly important to me as a visual and symbolic representation, with Sophia sensed as a psychic power of guidance. But that’s about it. Relative plainness is my direction now, with an emphasis on brief and tightly focused formal practices.

As it happens, my personal practice of Druidry – especially the contemplative work – has moved stylistically in the same direction: naturalism, minimalism, plainness, economy of form; making sure that the spirit isn’t lost in the cocktail. The integration, it seems to me at this early stage, is that for me the Headless Way primarily supports an inward arc, from the apparent world to the central clarity of the void. Druidry, as embodied earth spirituality, supports an outward arc, from the central clarity back to the apparent world. My life experience is made different by this two-way flow, now more fully known as contained within the Oneness. But from the standpoint of my life in the apparent world, this is a work of progress, and moving quickly. From this perspective I don’t yet know how the process is going to evolve.

(1) Douglas Harding The Headless Way Leaflet out of print. There is now a website of that name at www.headless.org

(2) Douglas Harding Religions of the World London: Shollond Trust, 2014. Revised edition.

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April 14, 2016

ICON

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This is my icon of Sophia. It was created by New York based artist and illustrator Hrana Janto and I am using it with her permission. More of her work can be found at http://hranajanto.com

I like this image. It is both traditional in symbolism and somewhat naturalistic in style. There is an energetic balance of belly, heart and head. Sophia’s gaze is present and level. She has – beautifully – the accoutrements of a celestial being, whilst powerfully suggesting the stance of the realized, self-recollecting human.

Currently I am working with a small print-out pasted on card, but I have arranged to buy a full-sized print from the artist. Since I have been connecting with this image, and working a Sophian practice, my experiential understanding of who she is continues to change and develop.

I encounter Sophia within, as both a voice and a silence, the movement of the breath and a stillness in it. She makes herself known as an access of energy, an opening in the heart, a steadiness at my back. She inspires my glimmers of insight, and nudges my intuition. She calls me to the recollection of my true nature. That is her Wisdom. She will provide a theatre of fall, struggle and ascent if I forget myself and need reminding. She guides me to places where remembering is easy, if I am but willing to allow this.

As such she inhabits, in my subjective life world, what western tradition describes as psychic space, a middle ground between the physical realm of the everyday and the causal realm of luminous emptiness. All of these are known to me and experienced as One when I am truly awake.

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