Druidry | Contemplative Inquiry

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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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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September 2, 2012

OUTDOOR WALKING MEDITATION

“For mother, walking was much more than a physical exercise, it was a meditation. Touching the earth, being connected to the soil and taking every step consciously and mindfully, was supremely conducive to contemplation.

“’Our Lord Mahavir, the great prophet of the Jain tradition, attained enlightenment while walking. This was dynamic meditation. Mahavir was meditating on self and world simultaneously, whereas in sitting meditation one is much more likely to focus on the self alone.’”

Satish Kumar You are, therefore I AM: a declaration of dependence.

This is the best summary I know of outdoor walking meditation. Two things strike me immediately. The first is that Satish Kumar’s mother was not setting up special walks for the purpose of meditation. She walked a good deal in the course of the day and could be meditative in her walking. The second is a plain emphasis on mindfulness both to self and world and their interdependence. It is less a practice than a way of life, and something to drop into consciously on any occasion.

It is something of a truism to say that the value of formal practice is twofold: firstly the experience for its own sake and second the ability to extend a meditative awareness into the rest of life. When I go out walking I sometimes have a conscious agenda of being aware of my surroundings, surrendering a sense to and within them, which is a half-way house between formal practice and a still ‘normal’ everyday possession by the monkey mind. At other times I slipping into an easy ‘just being’ state and experiencing the nourishment that’s in it.

Indoor walking meditation is a valuable experience for me, yet it continues to have a feeling-tone of being an exercise, though less so than formerly. Outdoor walking meditation has a naturalness and freedom to it – and may be even better without the ‘meditative’ or ‘contemplative’ label being applied. Just experiencing the interwoven ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ stimuli and their underlying oneness.

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September 2, 2012

WALKING ROUND IN CIRCLES

I’ve been taught to walk around in circles, as a meditative exercise, by three varieties of Buddhist. In each case the walking was partly a break within sitting meditations, allowing sitters literally to stretch their legs. It also gave a focus for attentional training other than the breath.

But the styles and to an extent the meanings were different. The Theravadin Insight Meditation Society asked for very close attention to the process, a mental noting, for each step, of ‘lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting, moving, moving, moving, placing, placing, placing’. Mindfulness to the changing action was everything. Walking provided a context for mindfulness – without pleasure, aversion or independent purpose.

For the Tantric Shambhala Buddhists, walking was partly about stilling the mind in the service of ‘peaceful abiding’, partly (in group settings) about negotiating with other people so that a meditation group worked smoothly and partly about guru devotion, so important to all forms of classical Tantra. Chogyam Trungpa had described it as ‘boring’ even as he asked people to do it – and there was an element of doing it for him (and his successors).

In the Western Chan (original Chinese Zen) there was more of an emphasis on the movement itself, on slowing down and getting into a physical flow. There was a view of ‘body-mind’ rather than ‘mind’ alone. In contrast to the Theravadin approach, there was no mental noting. Led by body and movement, practitioners found their point of flow, gliding into choiceless awareness within the moment.

I learned from this that an apparently simple activity can give rise to different states and have different meanings, and that experience flows from intent, which then flows into experiencing.

I have, as a Druid, carried a circumambulatory walking meditation into my morning solo practice, free to make my own meaning. The main difference is willing surrender to the senses and to memory, the soft pleasure of the footfall on my woolen magic carpet, bought in the west of Ireland 19 years ago and the heart of my indoor sacred space ever since. As I walk, I trace my egg shaped ‘circle’ around the rectangular carpet, deepening, with my human action, a physical sacred space.

As someone who has undertaken to accept suffering and joy within an embrace of life on this earth, I don’t have to cut off desire and aversion at the root as the Buddhists, especially the Theravadins, are committed to do through their allegiance to the four noble truths. Yet I am still mindful to the gestalt of my experiencing. In an abundant now, which finds room for pleasure, memory and anticipation, the little ‘I’ (itself a cherished navigator through 3D reality) can still dissolve into an expanded awareness of experiencing.

That, for me, is the shift from a Buddhist view of indoor walking meditation to a Druid one. I will write about the external one another time.

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