Contemplative Druidry | Contemplative Inquiry

January 10, 2013

NOTE AND SONG

I have continued to experiment with the forms of contemplative prayer and mantra work I use in connection to my Ceile De paidirean. Having worked some time now with the heart prayer, I have started to engage with other expressions of this tradition. These are drawn from the wider range of Ceile De fuinn (chants).

My overall morning practice is customarily held within a circle cast in “the Sacred Grove of Sophia, the luminous spirit of wisdom”. I have found a fonn (chant) for my walking meditation that links back, for me, to her. The words are:

Gun tigeadh solas nan solas air mo chridhe; gun tigeadh ais an spiorad air mo chridhe

Goon tee-guch solus nan solus air mo chree; goon tee-guch aysh an speer-utch air mo chridhe

Come light of lights to my heart; come wisdom of spirit to my heart

When I use this fonn (chant) in walking meditation, I use Sireadh Thall (Sheer-ich Hall) as a mantra, for periods of time, when sitting. It means “seek beyond” and according to the Ceile De, Sireadh Thall is “one of the many poetic names for the Great Goddess of the Gael, Brighide or Bridget”. She has sometimes been called the northern Sophia (as in Caitlin Matthews’ book, ‘Sophia’). Sireadh Thall, as a divine name, gives me a sense of the Goddess pointing beyond herself to a place where names, forms and images of the divine dissolve.

Gun tigeadh solas nan solas air mo chridhe; gun tigeadh ais an spiorad air mo chridhe is the fifth fonn on the first Ceile De fonn CD. Sireadh Thall is the tenth. I find this latter especially moving. For me it is presented here in a perfect weaving of voices. There is no soloist, yet the loss of any one voice – each with its unique integrity – would diminish the piece. So collectively this fonn gives voice to the Oran Mor, the great song of what is.

In working with different fuinn in this way, I can listen in to them, feel them, taste them – their resonance, their energy, and their inspiration. I get closer to finding my note within that song.

(Sireadh Thall can be accessed and downloaded on http://www.ceilede.co.uk/company/the-fonn.)

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January 4, 2013

PAIDIREAN (PAHJ-URINN) II

I started wearing my Paidirean – the Ceile De prayer beads – for my morning practice on 19 December. In the Ceile De Order they are used in conjunction with what in this tradition is called the Heart Prayer:

A Thighearna … Solus an domhain … Chriost mo chridhe … dean trocair oirnn

Ah hee-earn-ah … Solus on dowain … Chree-ost mo chree … Jaun trok-ir orn

O Lord … Light of the world … Christ my heart … show mercy/compassion/grace

I don’t follow the practice as prescribed, but I notice that I soon started saying this prayer aloud (having listened carefully to the Ceile De CD) when doing walking meditation – initially drawn in by the sound of the old language. In walking meditation I am mindful to each footfall and so in working the Heart Prayer I have become mindful to each footfall and a syllable of the Heart Prayer as well (except of course when I am not). As time has gone on I have increased the use of the prayer, sometimes said aloud, sometimes not. I intersperse this with times of complete silence within as well as without to make the practice more spacious. Likewise in sitting meditation, essentially a plain breath meditation, I have introduced the key phrase “Chriost mo chridhe”, as an intermittent mantra within the practice. These words in particular anchor in my sense that ‘Christ’ stands for an interior awakening rather than an external or historical being.

Why has this prayer become resonant to me? I am reminded again of the summer of 2007. At midsummer I went to Melrose and had the experiences I described in my previous blog post. On a weekend late in July I was scheduled to go to a conference with my partner Elaine. The plan involved getting from Bristol, where I lived, to Stroud, where she lived. But we were cut off from each other by floods: roads closed, railway in chaos. So we both stayed put. I was following the OBOD Ovate course at the time and decided to have a day of ritual derived from the course followed by a day of reflection and recovery. The main result of all this, the one image that fully imprinted itself and which I took away, was that of a dove feather falling gently down beside me It felt initiatic and it gave me my felt sense of connection with Sophia the Holy Wisdom. It changed the course of my work. My centre of gravity had shifted and I realised that I had quite a bit of work to do to make this breakthrough good. How was I going to use the altered state of the ritual experience to create a more lasting change? Although not fully recognized at the time, this was the beginning of my ‘contemplative’ turn.

Sophia brings a gnostic understanding to Christ consciousness, awakening the practitioner to a non-dual awareness where knower, known and knowledge, lover, love and beloved, are one. Except that this last sentence is also a formula of sorts and formulas – even if authentic messages from those who have gone before us – are necessarily suspect. This, at least, is what I take away from the gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

“Jesus said to his followers, ‘compare me to something and tell me what I am like. Simon Peter said to him, ‘you are like a just messenger’. Matthew said to him, ‘you are like a wise philosopher’. Thomas said to him, ‘Teacher my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like’. Jesus said, ‘I am not your Teacher. Because you have drunk, you have been intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have measured out.’ Two followers have personal and cultural presuppositions so strong that their availability for direct experience is compromised. Only one is sufficiently open and unknowing to make the connection and the shift that goes with it.

Thich Nhat Hanh puts it another way. “In Buddhist circles, we are careful to avoid getting stuck in concepts, even concepts like ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Buddha’. If you think of the Buddha as someone separate from the rest of the world, you will never recognize a Buddha even if you see him on the street. That is why one Zen Master said to his student, ‘When you meet the Buddha, kill him’. He meant that the student should kill the Buddha-concept in order for him to experience the real Buddha directly.” (From Living Buddha, Living Christ.)

Following my experience in late July 2007, I wrote a blackberry Lughnasadh verse for my wheel of the year tree poem.

I am Blackberry

The bramble and the fruit and the wine

And the spirit.

Intoxication as from a bubbling spring,

Freely measured out.

It alluded to the words in St. Thomas and reflected my realization, such as it was. It was not particularly mature or fully integrated, but it did push me into seeking and developing a more rigorous and systematic personal practice. My hope is that the new shift inspired by the paidirean will deepen and extend it.

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December 30, 2012

PAIDIREAN (PAHJ-URINN)

The Paidirean are the prayer beads of the Ceile De. Some believe that they have a Druid origin. They have always been part of the Ceile De tradition are known to have been used in the days of Columcille (St. Columba).

I got mine from the Ceile De shop a little before Christmas. There are 150 beads, each about 5 mm wide. They are made of unstained rosewood and were left immersed in rose damask oil for a month. As well as scenting the beads, the oil gives the beads a pinkish colour. An equal armed and circled silver cross hangs from the beads – at heart level when worn as a necklace. This form of cross – Celtic, Gnostic and universal – is an ancient symbol, found in pre-Christian and Christian carvings, and sacred to many people from many cultures.

Each Paidirean is ceremonially strung in Scotland by a Ceile De Order member. The process takes two hours and involves prayer, meditation and continuous chanting during the stringing. Then a blessing is spoken over the completed Paidirean which is anointed with water and with oil from a local holy well, used for at least 1500 years. Sister Fionn strung my Paidirean. Many blessings to you, Sister Fionn, at the turning of the year.

The Paidirean is an object of power as well as beauty. I wear it as a necklace when practicing, as well as an OBOD Awen necklace which ends just below the throat. Wearing the two feels like a kind of completion, and I am reminded of a visit I made to Scotland at Midsummer 2007. I was in Melrose in the Scottish border region, an area with strong family connections. And I seemed to be in business with three locations. One was the semi-ruined Abbey, and in particular its orchard and garden. One was the Eildon Hills, looming up into low clouds. One was a path by the River Tweed.

I was wondering where I felt most spiritually attuned and where I wanted to spend most of my time. In its gardens the Abbey felt like a place of peace and tradition, though clearly also compromised by conflicts between nations and orthodoxies. The hollow hills of Thomas the Rhymer fame held challenge, glamour – the heroic spirituality of the vision quest in its local form. But I turned to the river, and had a small epiphany whilst contemplating a wild rose on the riverbanks. And I later wrote this verse, which became part of a longer poem.

I am Rose. I am wild Rose.

I am Rose at Midsummer.

The river flows by me.

Fragile, I shiver in the wind.

And I am the heart’s core, mover of mountains.

In a sense, that experience, and the verse that recorded it, established the direction for my subsequent spiritual life and practice. The Paidirean sets the seal on it.

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December 22, 2012

THE TURNING OF THE YEAR

I’ve experienced the turning of the year through small yet telling events. Yesterday I got up very early, by ‘mistake’. Awake, hearing traffic, misreading a number on a digital watch, I thought it was 5 a.m. when it was actually 3. I decided to get up any way and do my practice.

What was on offer, when I got to the lights out and sitting part of the work, was an especially strong felt sense of being born in the dark, of an ever-waking-now experience held by the nurture of the night. And my switching on of a lamp, when coming out of this experience, seemed like a natural next step. I could look at the world around me with fresh eyes, with energized attention, with a sense of a blessed awareness.

Later in the day I stood at the Severn Estuary. I experienced the wider world as latency rather than stasis. I was in a watery place at a watery time. There were currents flowing in both directions. The sky above was cloudy and grey, yet looking back to the ridge that I’d come from, I could see clear blue. There weren’t many people around. The energy of the environment seemed to have elements of stillness, of waiting and of gathering. For the first time in this season, I began to feel an onward pull, away from the still point of the turn, and on to what might be emerging.

In the evening I drew a DruidCraft Tarot card – a single card, to reflect the moment. I got the 3 of Wands. A young man looks to the horizon and a possible journey (or a possible visit). He seems at ease and is companionably holding a tree. His three wands have been planted nearby and are beginning to blossom. The path to (or from) an unseen destination (or point of departure) is clearly laid out as far as can be seen. He clearly has a certain confidence, and something to work with. And I thought: “OK”.

Finally, I remembered a poem by William Anderson in his ‘Green Man – the Archetype of our Oneness of the Earth’, a book from the beginning of the 90’s. The poem has 13 verses, each covering a four week period, each connected with an Ogam tree, and I’ve always run the first verse from 22 December to 18 January. By the time I went to bed yesterday I felt ready for that verse. So during this new period I’ll be conscious of:

“Like antlers, like veins of the brain the birches

Mark patterns of mind on the red winter sky:

‘I am thought of all plants,’ says the Green Man,

‘I am thought of all plants,’ says he.”

I wonder what these lines may inspire over the next few weeks. And for now – Season’s Greetings to everyone and warmest wishes for the coming year.

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December 11, 2012

DARKNESS

In her recent book ‘The Wakeful World: Animism, mind and the Self in Nature’, Emma Restall Orr writes:

“At its most fundamental, nature is darkness. Nature’s primary state is darkness. In stillness, formless, in the darkness, nature is whole. Yet, nature is minded: it exists within a wakefulness of its own being. Aware of itself, nature turns within itself in reflection. The essential movement of nature is the breath of existence, the sacred wind of being.

“… Each moment of interaction within the darkness of nature creates a pattern, a spirit fleetingly finding form, flashing momentarily into being before dissolving back into the whole – except where interactions repeat, allowing a pattern to persist, the spirit lingering in its ethereal form.”

The writing is part of a complex revisioning of animism as a possible philosophical basis for a modern life practice – spiritual, cultural, ethical, political, personal. As such it seems to me to be an important original contribution to Druidic thought as it moves and develops through time.

What specifically touches me as a meditator is a recognition of how my experience, when practicing, seems to resonate with the above passages. I tend now to sit in complete darkness with eyes open, and this sitting usually happens somewhere between 5.30 and 6.30 a.m. At this time of year, it’s mostly pretty dark. I generally experience myself as sitting within darkness as a nurturing potential. Sometimes I am alert and mindful, sometimes not. And I come back to this darkness.

At one level this can be an in-the-moment, ‘power of now’ kind of experience. But the feeling-tone of the experience is influenced by the repetition of the practice over time, by the liturgy that structures it, and the darkness that surrounds and contains it. They help to create a pattern of contemplative experiencing, shaping an extended field of awareness. They support ‘me’ in awakening to/in the world and relationship(s) with/within it. Meditation can seem solitary and in a way it is. Yet for me it brings relationship (the kind that the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh calls ‘interbeing’) into fuller life.

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December 11, 2012

ANOTHER POEM

Here is another take on the divine child theme – this time by Nuinn (Ross Nichols), who led OBOD in its 1964-75 manifestation. Ross’ poem is called ‘The Coming Child’.

We have created a web of flesh and blood

A fish in our river, a frog in our shallows;

And he shall be a beast of promise and a springing grain.

Shedding the child is an act of plenty

The womb full-eared, the excess of the year

And its coming again.

He came in a tent, he

Paddled in a boat, he

Went to the weir.

Who is he that came in a tent

And was known in the waters of the firmament?

Even he, the web of blood and flesh,

The small thing nestled in red,

Floating in the water of motherhead

In a bag of skin.

The beast shall leap aloud and shout

From rock to rock;

And this new grain shall be in ear

Before twelve year.

What is the sign that this shall be?

For life and death fall fatally.

The waters of the weir are dammed

But the falls flow on;

The sun dies and is eaten of Set

But there is a new sun.

The river cannot stop nor for long be stayed,

And its mighty fall

Is the descending of the milk of life,

Birth and succour of all.

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December 5, 2012

HE WILL COME LIKE LAST LEAF’S FALL

Karen Webb posted this in ‘Contemplative Druidry’. It seemed like a natural contribution for passing on.

“This poem moved me to tears. We rarely speak of the Midwinter Born Child, though he or she appears in so many myths. Christianity is but one of those storylines. This is from Rowan Williams, a true Bard if ever I met one. And something to contemplate…

“He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth

“wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

“He will come like the frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

“He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

“He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.”

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November 7, 2012

DEVOTIONAL PRACTICE

I’ve never really thought of my spiritual practice as devotional. Most devotional practice concerns relationship with deity or deities who are perceived – or at least talked about – in terms of self-conscious, independent being. The most widely used practice is petitionary prayer. I have never sat easily with this, though I know it works for many other practitioners. One of the earliest self-directing steps I took in my OBOD path, 19 years ago, was to change the beginning of the Druid prayer when using it by myself. Instead of ‘Grant O Go/dess thy protection’, I said ‘I seek, within Spirit, protection’.

Although ‘my’ (?) spirituality – even in its most withdrawn and solitary moments – is in many ways all about I-Thou relationship of various kinds, relationship with separated deity/deities has not been my way of expressing it. I do have a relationship with the Holy Wisdom, who is more and greater than I am, but I do not experience ‘her’ as separate. That’s complicated, and I can’t say what’s “really” going on there (to the extent that “really” might be a useful word).

So my devotion has to be different. And the difference goes beyond a shift from petitionary prayer to contemplative prayer or other forms of deity yoga that practitioners use to deepen a relationship with the divine, take on the presence and energy of the divine, become possessed by the divine, or enter fully into Godhead. I am deeply moved by the stories (when shared) of people who go down these paths, whilst finding that I am on a different one.

So – at this stage of my journey – I am grateful to Sally Kempton and her Meditation for the love of it: enjoying your own deepest experience. I’ve been in dialogue with this book for well over a year now, because I’ve drawn on its teaching and practice without exactly agreeing with the first of following the second. But she has influenced both. She calls her path a “devotional and contemplative tantra” – a “fusion of knowing and loving” that inspires her to meditate. She says:

The way is tantric through recognizing “the world and ourselves as a tapestry woven of one single intelligent energy”.

It is devotional because “it cultivates a loving attention to ourselves and the world”. It is contemplative because it asks us “to turn into and rest in the interior spaciousness where we know the self as pure transcendent awareness”.

I’m still in dialogue. I’m not sure I’d express myself 100% in the same way. But I find here – as in the case of Taoism understanding and practice – a view from another tradition which is close to that of my ever evolving Druidry. In particular “loving attention to myself and the world” (especially other beings who are close to me) seems like a good way for me to reclaim the word “devotional” and see myself as both devotional and contemplative in my practice.

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September 15, 2012

HOLY WISDOM

The reed beds are flanking in silence the islands

Where meditates Wisdom as she waits and waits;

‘I have kept her secret’, says the Green Man,

‘I have kept her secret’, says he. [1]

This is a dawn image for me, cool, misty, expectant, liminal. I’m on a lake shore looking out. I can see the reed beds and an outline of wooded islands. It’s probably late November or early December, an in-between time, a period of latency between dissolution and awakening. Not quite the still point at the turning of the world, yet leaning into it. I don’t see the Holy Wisdom, and so am free of any fixed and limiting image of her. She may manifest as she wills. Yet even at a distance, I am aware of her presence. Holy Wisdom is more than simple sagacity. She is the fruit of spiritual insight and loving-kindness. She belongs here as everywhere, connecting to this landscape with a simple English name. Holy has morphed somewhat, over time, from hāliġ or hāleġ; Wisdom has remained the same.

The reed bed image is what remains from my OBOD ‘sacred grove’ work, an active imagination practice in which I would build the core image of the grove and then develop a free-form narrative, often encountering inner world beings and/or moving out into other landscapes and connecting with them. I began my personal contemplative inquiry when the practice lost its power as a working method for me. What didn’t lose power was my strong felt sense of contact and guidance from a feminine higher power. This contact had been initiated in one of the major rituals of my original Ovate grade work – though not planned for in the script. At times I have thought of her as Sophia, but in the end this hasn’t quite felt authentic for me while practising. I don’t feel fully engaged in the Gnostic theology and metaphysics which goes with that name.

My contact with Holy Wisdom feels simpler and She asks for a single-pointed clarity of working method – which, paradoxically, I can then relax into. I’ve adopted an eyes open, real time form of sitting meditation, going to other traditions to get the form, yet always with Holy Wisdom as my ultimate guide. I dedicate the whole of my morning practice to Her – body/light body work, walking, sitting, and blessing. But my sense of connection with Her is strongest on entry into sitting meditation, where I feel supported in accessing the presence and attention I need for a free flowing communion with what is. The reed bed image doesn’t play a direct part in this process. Yet William Anderson’s quatrain reminds of what my practice is about, and I can slip into this imagery at any time.

[1] Green Man: the archetype of our oneness with the Earth, William Anderson HarperCollins, 1990

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September 12, 2012

MARTIAN WALKING MEDITATION

I’m still walking around in circles. But since I wrote about it a week ago, the way I do it has changed. I’ve lightened, lost density, slowed down.

And with those changes I’m shedding solemnity. (I’ve never valued solemnity in spiritual practice, yet in truth I have sometimes been solemn.) My arms have freed themselves to move and engage and explore. I’m discovering myself as softer and more playful in the room. My attention has improved and shifted into the act of moving through the air around me. I am much more aware of being held in my energy body. And I really like it.

Why Martian? It’s the sense of reduced gravity. I first thought of Lunar – but that’s too far in the other direction. So, Martian.

This change was spontaneous and body led. But I believe I owe it to the contemplative inquiry I’m doing. When I wrote my first walking round in circles post, I was letting go of old Buddhist teaching and moving into a place of inner authority. My writing let me identify and put down what is now a burden, and freed me for another experience. And I’ve also realized more fully that contemplative inquiry as I understand the term is mostly about opening creative spaces for integrated and embodied knowing.

The inquiry continues.

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