Contemplative Inquiry

I want to say three in things in this post. The first is to clarify what I mean by contemplative inquiry, the name of this blog, and outline the implications of calling it contemplative inquiry rather than contemplative Druidry. The second is to describe my recent contemplations on the Oran Mor, or Great Song, the metaphor which has become central in how I experience my world. The third is to explain my decisive shift to a non-theistic spirituality.

Contemplative inquiry, for me, is a living process and the heart of my spiritual identity. My Druidry itself is subject to the inquiry, and in consequence my contemplative life doesn’t work through marinating me in a received tradition and leading me into experiences that are declared to be the appropriate fruits of the practice. That’s why I’m glad to be in a young tradition, where the jelly still hasn’t set. I work with feelings, thoughts, insights and intuitions arising from my practice and reflection. I’ve abandoned the high language of ‘gnosis’ because it suggests pre-mapped attainments, privileged cosmic knowledge already somehow present and waiting to be discovered in the experience of the practitioner. That’s not what happens for me: everything is tentative and provisional and the aim, if it is an aim, is to sit within an expanded story of being, one that has integrity and can frame abundant life.

How does this apply to the Oran Mor, an auditory metaphor which takes in all my senses and synaesthetically extends them? I can enjoy the sound of a sunrise, the felt resonance of trees, and the lingering note of a caress.  All are encompassed in the Oran Mor. My experience of the Oran Mor confirms for me the felt sense of not being separate or alone. Behind the Oran Mor, and interweaving it, is a silence – not a cold silence, but a warm silence of fecund latency. The Oran Mor points beyond itself as a sensory experience to that underlying substrate of energy, that pulse and vibration of the cosmos, whose fruits include the privilege of our time-bound 3D being. I am the Oran Mor, currently a distinct though passing note within the greater pattern of the Song. So are you. Many forms of communion are available within the Oran Mor.

The invitation to us is to sing our own note within the Song. For all that we are interconnected and interdependent, the way in which we sing the note involves something distinct and individual, a personal existential choice: this at least is the human experience. It works best if we are awake to the rest the Song, as manifested in other notes, in the greater patterns, and the silence. This is why I’ve started to use the word ‘attunement’, despite its hackneyed New Age ring: it’s an accurate description of something I want to do.

As I’ve deepened into this sense of the Oran Mor and how it shapes me, there are certain words that are becoming more pertinent and powerful. In my morning practice I have for some years used the words known either as St. Patrick’s prayer or the cry of the deer:

‘I arise today through the strength of heaven, light of sun, radiance of moon, splendour of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth and firmness of rock.’

I experience this as a summarising the Oran Mor – that which is – in a way that has a contemplative and prayerful aspect, makes good liturgy, and is not a petitionary prayer. I do not pray to the Oran Mor. I do not think of the Oran Mor as our Celtic ancestors did, as a name for God. I do not use it a translation of what is often meant by ‘Spirit’. The ‘I’ who arises is as much included in the Oran Mor as the sun, moon, fire, lightning, wind, sea, earth and rock. In the experience of the Oran Mor, there is no distinction between ‘Spirit’ and ‘Nature’. There’s a sense in which, despite their pragmatic value in everyday use, both terms become redundant.

I’m also continuing to work with the Ceile De fonn A Hu Thi (ah – hoo – hee), using simple breath and silent sounding, first described in an earlier post at https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2015/3/6/. For me this continues to describe and enact the eternally-co-creative aspect of the Oran Mor. I find in my world that the A sets up a sense of latency, a subtle pulse and vibration on the brink of becoming. I feel it in the quality of my inbreath, as a kinaesthetic song. Hu the outbreath feels more vigorous and intentional; there’s a real sense of movement, expressed as exhalation – the breath moves out from my body, through my nostrils. Thi breathed in feels like the delighted expression of a new reality, the world born again in every moment.

The last effect of my continuing engagement with the Oran Mor concerns Brighde as Goddess and it is very recent. Essentially, the Goddess dissolves into the Oran Mor and I find myself fare-welling deity in my poetry of practice. The sense of the Goddess (under different names) as both cosmic birther and mentoring intermediary, which I have had throughout the whole period of my association with Druidry and Paganism, has died. This is not a matter of ultimate belief, where I have always had a form of non-dual view, but rather in a sense of a shift in archetypal poetics and psychology, of imaginal perception. It gives me a sense both of mourning and of release, of loss and of spaciousness.

I am aware of talking about language and imagery, about subjective experience. I do not presume to make statements about the cosmos or recommend ‘beliefs’ to others on the strength of my work or its evolution, or to use it either to question or to validate anyone else’s path. I’m in the throes of letting go a profoundly significant image and concept, one that has had a defining role in my spirituality, and I find it a very considerable attachment to let go of. I did not expect this. It will take a bit of getting used to, actually a lot of getting used to. It is a very significant change. Yet it is the fruit of honest inquiry – of meditative and contemplative practice, and reflection thereon. My trackless path, it seems, is wholly non-theistic.