Earth spirituality | Contemplative Inquiry

July 16, 2019

SEEING: CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY

There is a dance between experience and meaning. Experience informs meaning, yet the meaning given to significant experiences can change over time, in the light of later experiences. Looking back at my introduction to Contemplative Druidry (1), I now sense that my contemplative journey was triggered by a kind of Wild Seeing, long before I encountered the work of Douglas Harding (www.headless.org/ ). Here is what I wrote.

“On 22 June 2007 my centre of gravity shifted. It was late morning. I was just outside the Scottish Border town of Melrose, drawn in three possible directions. One was up the hills at the back of the town – the Eildon Hills, the hollow hills where the Queen of Efland took Thomas the Rhymer; True Thomas as he became. The second was the fine, if half-ruined, Abbey and its grounds; a place of Green Man carvings, fruit trees, and the heart of Robert the Bruce. The third was the banks of the Tweed.

“I took the third option and walked into a wholly unexpected and not at all dramatic epiphany. It was triggered simply by noticing and contemplating a wild rose, growing on the banks of the river. It lasted a few moments, just long enough for me to register it, and to experience a subtle shift of awareness in consequence. For some weeks I woke up every day with a sense of joy and connection. Months later, I wrote the verse that expressed it:

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.”

I was aware at the time that I was contrasting three choices in a fairy tale kind of way. The first was the path of magic (the Queen of Elfland). The second was the path of contemplative religion (Melrose Abbey). The third was the path of direct experience (wild rose on the riverbank). I chose the third. The poem best shows the import of this deceptively simple experience, especially in the last line. ‘I am the heart’s core; mover of mountains’ is more than a nature mysticism. I speak not only as the rose, but as the heart’s core, mover of mountains. I speak from the source.

During its collective life, contemplative Druidry did take its stand in direct experience. It was also very open – we talked of being of like intent rather than like mind; there was no consensus cosmology or belief. On the whole we were naturalistic, but not quite in the humanist or materialist sense. The use of terms like ‘Earth spirituality. ‘nature mysticism’. pantheism’ and ‘animism’ pointed to something more expansive. Now my experiences of Seeing, support the view advocated by Douglas Harding and described as nondualist and panentheist. In everyday terms we can say that we have two identities, one as humans and the other as the ground of being. Ultimately, there is no separation and so only one true identity. Seeing is offered as a skilful means of learning to recognise this identity, and then to live from it.

My Sophian Way is now firmly in this territory. My challenge is to cleave to the experiential practice and its fruits whilst staying open about metaphysical claims. The intelligence of the heart is nourished by this view and is attracted by the reassurance of a clear and simple narrative. The mind wants to stay agnostic and provisional. When mobilised, it can ferret out weaknesses in the view. The Sophian Way is a way of wisdom, as well as a salute to the cosmic mother and healer in the heart. Wisdom invites me to trust the process – maintaining just enough scepticism to avoid attachment to views.

(1) James Nichol , Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential, Amazon/Kindle, 2014. https://www.amazon.co.uk/contemplative-druidry-people-practice-potential/dp/1500807206/

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July 5, 2019

WHEN I WAS A CREEK

When I was

a tree,

I sang and danced

with the wind

and offered

food and refuge

to all who came.

When I was

a cloud,

I floated freely,

bringing

shade and rain

wherever they

were needed.

When I was

a creek,

I flowed effortlessly

around stones

and nourished life

everywhere

I went.

When I was

a seed,

I held

the story

of what

I would become

inside me

until the sun

and rain

let me know

it was time

to share it.

When I was

a flower,

I opened up

to reveal

my beauty

and invited the bees

to share

the sweetness.

Now I am

human

and can do so many things,

yet I am

full of questions

about who I am

and why I’m here.

Kai Siedenburg Poems of Earth and Spirit: 70 Poems and 40 Practices to Deepen your Connection with Nature Our Nature Connection, 2017

CONTEMPLATION

I like this poem for its economy and simplicity, and for its gentle, shape-shifting animism – for the ease with which it moves between identities in nature. For me, there is power and beauty in this, all the better for a relative lack of ornament.

As a human, I do feel a bit set up. Whereas the rest of nature is awarded an innocence and generosity not always evident in the apparent world, we humans are implicitly stigmatised for our questions, and thereby separated from the rest of nature. In our mainstream culture (both religious and secular) we place ourselves above the rest of nature, so the polar opposite perspective does have a corrective value. But it leaves me unsatisfied.

My sense is that the writer is placing herself alongside me, the reader, and the other humans. She is not awarding herself a free pass on the grounds of her vividly present and enacted imaginative empathy. So I would say to her what I say to myself. As I read it, there’s a strong invitation to self-compassion in the last verse.

Our finite minds are as natural as anything on earth.. Our questions about who we are, why we’re here and what to do are part of us. For me, the only way through them is become more skilled in the process of inquiry and to learn to live by its fruits. I value this poem partly through what it evokes directly, and partly because it stimulates useful inquiry.

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Quote | June 17, 2019

BOOK REVIEW: THIS IS NOT A DRILL, AN EXTINCTION REBELLION HANDBOOK

This post re-blogs a review from The Earthbound Report, where the book is is described and highly recommended by a reviewer currently setting up a local XR group.

It was due in September, but the publisher has taken an ’emergency’ approach to getting the Extinction Rebellion handbook ready. How much of that is a marketing opportunity I really couldn’t say, but it’s welcome and useful. (And I love the subversion of Penguin’s logo on the front cover.) I’m in the middle of helping […]

via Book review: This is Not a Drill, an Extinction Rebellion Handbook — The Earthbound Report

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June 5, 2019

POEM: A SPECIAL DAY (CHOSEN FOR ELAINE)

Today

is a very special day.

Today we celebrate

sun and rain,

light and dark,

the cycles of life,

the great turning

of the wheel.

Today we celebrate

every leaf on every tree,

every feather on every bird,

every drop of water in every stream.

Today we celebrate

green growing ones and winged ones,

two leggeds and four leggeds,

all who walk, crawl,

swim or fly.

We celebrate

each breath of air,

each morsel of food,

each beat of our hearts,

each healthy cell.

We celebrate

the profound miracle

of being alive

in this body

in this moment

on this planet.

Today,

like every other day,

is a very special day.

Kai Siedenburg Poems of Earth and Spirit: 70 Poems and 40 Practices to Deepen your Connection with Nature Our Nature Connection, 2017

(Poem shared on the occasion of my wife Elaine’s birthday. It was transcribed for me on a card sent to me on my own birthday last month. It prompted me to buy the collection, which I recommend.)

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May 3, 2019

ARNE NAESS AS PHILOSOPHICAL VAGABOND

“Naess embodies the spirit of philosophy in its original sense as being a loving pursuit of wisdom. It is a deep exploration of our whole lives and context in pursuit of living wisely. The essence of Socratic inquiry is to know ourselves. From his work on Pyrrhonian scepticism to his … positive statements on pluralism and possibilism, Naess says he is a ‘philosophical vagabond’ or ‘wandering seeker’, what the ancient Greeks called a zetetic’” (1).

In 1968 Arne Naess (1912-2009) published Scepticism (2) two years before resigning as chair of philosophy at the University of Oslo to devote himself to environmental problems. Part of this book focuses on Sextus Empiricus (150-225 CE), the last recorded Pyrrhonist philosopher in a line going back to Pyrrho of Elis (c360-c272 BCE).

Pyrrhonists, as described by Sextus Empiricus, neither made truth claims nor denied the possibility of making them. Instead, they cultivated a deeply embedded attitude of suspension of judgement (epoche), allowing possibilities to stand open within the process of continuing inquiry. Such a turning away from the drive for intellectual closure enables peace of mind (ataraxia) in our engagement with the richness and diversity of experience. As Naess says, the Pyrrhonist philosopher “leaves questions open, but without leaving the question. He has however given up his original, ultimate aim of gaining peace of mind by finding truth because it so happened that he came by peace of mind in another way.” (2)

Naess was not himself a Pyrrhonist, but clearly valued the Pyrrhonist frame of mind. He took something from it into his later work, as is made clear in Alan Drengson’s introduction to Naess’s Ecology of Wisdom (1):

“… there is never one definitive interpretation of philosophical texts; there is never one description of an event and all processes are complex interactions involving changing forces and relations, internal and external. Experience and the processes around us form changing patterns or gestalts. The nature of reality is multidimensional and creative. … Our spontaneous experience is so rich and deep that we can never give a complete account of it in any language, be it mathematics, science, music or art … As a deep questioner and seeker, Naess remains free of dogmatic and monolithic doctrine about the world … [which] partly explains why he celebrates a movement supported by diverse people with many world views”.

I enjoy this view of inquiry, and feel inspired to carry it forward more consciously in my own work. My sense is that it will bring my inquiry more into the world, without its losing its contemplative core.

(1) Arne Naess Ecology of Wisdom UK: Penguin Books, 2016 (Penguin Modern Classic. First published 2008)

(2) Arne Naess Scepticism Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1968

May 1, 2019

POETRY FOR THE MERRY MONTH

Below are two versions of late fourteenth century verse, written by an anonymous English author, probably from North Staffordshire or Cheshire. It depicts the turning of the wheel of the year as it moves through spring into summer.

The first version is a mid-twentieth century translation by J.R.R. Tolkien. The second is the original. The poem is embedded in the text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which arguably shows an immature warrior class (King Arthur’s knights) being taken down a peg by the primal forces of nature.

The extract here stands outside the main narrative, which occurs during the Christmas festivities of one year and the Hallowe’en to Christmas period of the next.

“But then the weather in the world makes war on the winter,

Cold creeps into the earth, clouds are uplifted,

Shining rain is shed in showers that all warm

Fall on the fair turf, flowers there open,

Of grounds and of groves green is the raiment,

Birds as busy a-building and gravely are singing

For sweetness of the soft summer that will soon be

On the way.

And blossoms burgeon and blow

In hedgerows bright and gay;

Then glorious musics go

Through the woods in proud array.

After the season of summer with its soft breezes,

When Zephyr goes sighing through seeds and herbs,

Right glad is the grass that grows in the open,

When the damp leaves

To greet a gay glance of the glistening sun”. (1)

“Bot thenne the weder of the worlde with winter hit threpes,

Colde clenges adoun, cloudes uplyften,

Shyre schedes the rayn in schowres ful warme,

Falles upon fayre flat, flowres there schewen.

Bothe groundes and the greves grene are her wedes,

Bryddes busken to bylde, and bremlych syngen

For solace of the softe somer that sues thereafter

Bi bonk;

And blossoumes bolne to blowe

Bi rawes rych and ronk,

Then notes noble innoghe

Are herde in wod so wlonk.

After, the sesoun of somer with the soft wyndes,

Quen Zeferus syfles himself on sedes and erbes;

Wela wynne is the wort that waxes theroute,

When the donkande dewed dropes of the leves,

To bide a blysful blusch of the bright sunne.”

(1) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo translated by J. R. R. Tolkien New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1975

(2) C. Cawley (ed.) Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight London: Dent & New York: Dutton: Everyman’s Library, 1962

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April 23, 2019

DEFINING ‘SECULAR’

Stephen Batchelor’s Secular Buddhism (1) explores what a “nonreligious, this-worldly, secularised Buddhism” might look like. This post is part of my own inquiry into what it means to feel ‘secular’ whilst engaged in ‘spiritual’ practices and connected with modern Paganism. Batchelor uses ‘secular’ in three overlapping senses:

A general contemporary usage where ‘secular’ stands in contrast to whatever is ‘religious’ – the two terms being clearly polarised whilst not very clearly defined.
A Latin derived sense of ‘this age’ (saeculum) – referring to “those concerns we have about this world, that is, everything that has to do with the quality of our personal, social and environmental experience of living on this planet”.
A Western, historical-political sense, acknowledging a 2-300-year period of ‘secularisation’ that has transformed the whole culture to the point where most people can live “almost their entire lives without giving religion a thought”.

Stephen Batchelor talks about an “uncompromisingly secular reading” of the Buddha’s teaching, in which “one returns to the mystery and tragedy of the everyday sublime. Instead of nirvana being located in a transcendent realm beyond the human condition, it would be restored to its rightful place at the heart of what it means each moment to be fully human”. He is an admirer of Ludwig Feuerbach, a student of Hegel who came to reject his teacher’s emphasis on the primacy of Spirit in the unfolding of history and advocated instead a liberal, materialist and atheist view of the world. “Feuerbach’s basic idea is simple. ‘Religion’, he wrote in the preface to his most famous book, The Essence of Christianity (1841) ‘is the dream of the human mind. But even while dreaming we are not in heaven or the realm of Nothingness. We are right here on earth’”.

In this way, Batchelor acknowledges all three senses of ‘secular’: a distancing from traditional religious belief, an affirmation of the world and time, and the rise of modern secular belief systems – Feuerbach was an early influence on Karl Marx. I like the way Batchelor teases out these meanings, especially his acknowledgement of ‘movement in time’ aspects as well as ‘not religious’ ones. I am more open and agnostic about the language of ‘heaven or the realm of Nothingness’ alongside that of being ‘right here on earth’. If we treat these as states rather than places, then I can see them intertwined dimensions of being. But I do not hold this as an ideology. I stand, rather, in openness and unknowing: the direct experience of At-Homeness in a flowing now is my ground and source, with or without a cosmic warranty.

Another sense, that of interconnectedness in the web of life, grows out of my At-Homeness – and this is firmly situated in place, time, and history. That place and time, right now, is one of distress, division and confusion, facing runaway climate change as a collective existential threat. My inquiry asks to to be alive to this collective wounding, and to contribute to a healing. In previous inquiry phases, I worked with modern Druidry and Paganism, focusing largely on the ‘nature’ aspect, but also on the powers of imagination and deep cultural stories. I then turned to other paths with a stronger emphasis on contemplative practice and its benefits. There is a treasure trove of resources in all of these these explorations, and I shall continue to draw upon them in my new inquiry cycle.

(1) Stephen Batchelor Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2017

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April 19, 2019

REVISED ‘ABOUT’ APRIL 2019

Over the lifetime of this blog I have made frequent revisions of its ‘About’ statement. Most are small. Occasionally, I make a major revision which I also publish as a post. Below is my revised and edited ‘About’ of 19 April 2019.

I am James Nichol and I live in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England. The Contemplative Inquiry blog started in August 2012, and includes personal sharing, discursive writing, poetry and book reviews. It explores contemplative themes and their role in human flourishing within the web of life.

In my own journey, I have found an At-Homeness in a flowing now, not linked to any specific doctrine. For me, this experience and stance enable greater presence, healing and peace. They also support imaginative openness and an ethic of aware interdependence.

I began this work within British Druidry. I continue to follow an earth-centred and embodied spiritual path, ‘secular’ rather than ‘religious’. I draw on diverse traditions, especially resonating with naturalist, eco-existentialist, pantheist and animist currents within and beyond modern Paganism.

I am wary of metaphysical truth claims, including materialist ones, with an ultimate stance of openness and unknowing. At the time of this revision, I am exploring a tradition initiated by the Greek Pagan philosopher Pyrrho of Elis, who developed his own school of contemplative scepticism after a visit to India.

My book, Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential, was published in 2014. https://www.amazon.co.uk/contemplative-druidry-people-practice-potential/dp/1500807206/

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April 16, 2019

A NEW INQUIRY CYCLE

After an eight-month silence, I feel prompted to write again. These months have featured both continuity and change in my contemplative life. I have decided to stay with the theme of Contemplative Inquiry, framing my work as a new inquiry cycle.

I wrote in August 2018 that ‘I find ‘healing and grounding in a flowing now, the site of an unexpected At-Homeness’*. At the same time my ‘Sophian Way’ has taken what might be described as a secular turn, as a loving friendship with wisdom and its source. In this respect I follow in the footsteps of those ancient Greeks who invented philosophy (love of wisdom) as a new space somewhat independent of their gods and traditional stories.

They used this space to ask, more directly, questions about being human, about what it is that supports human flourishing, and looked for new ways of understanding the world in which they found themselves. I have come to value contemplative life mostly as a context and support in relating to myself, other people, culture and nature. Hence, again following the Greeks, my contemplative life and inquiry include (using their own terms) therapeutics, ethics, politics and aesthetics. Contemplative presence warmly holds the life of the body, feelings, mind and imagination. It is their ground and home. The inquiry moves beyond that space, and into the wider world.

In early posts, I will look in more detail at ways of working that now guide me, offer a new understanding of Sophia, engage with a deeper exploration of the term ‘secular’ and look at the problems raised by metaphysical truth claims and how I deal with them. I hope that these posts will establish the note of the new inquiry cycle.

https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/

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August 16, 2018

CARLO ROVELLI ON TIME

“We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come.”

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist working on the physics of space and time, currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique theoretique in Marseille, France. In his The Order of Time (1), he is writing for a lay readership, offering a naturalist view of time and what it means to us. His reflections draw both on his professional work and his easy familiarity with art, literature, philosophy and music.

In the first section of this book, he deconstructs the time of common-sense. “Not only is there no single time for different places – there is not even a single time for any particular place. A duration can only be associated with the movement of something, with a given trajectory”. Rovelli’s Cosmos shows itself through change, events and processes – not through entities or things. We can know it only through what happens, interacts and evolves; through becoming rather than being. The notion that the present is ‘real’, while the past and future are not, only works if we define ‘present’ locally and in an approximate way.

From the standpoint of quantum mechanics, time is ‘granular’ and not continuous. (The Goddess is a pointillist). Grains, or quanta, of time last for a hundred millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. “In other words, a minimal interval of time exists. Below this, the notion of time does not exist, even in its most basic meaning”. Quanta of time, like other quanta, are ‘indeterminate’. “The substratum that determines the duration of time is not an independent entity different from the others that make up the world; it is an aspect of a dynamic field. It jumps, fluctuates, materializes only by interacting, and is not to be found beneath a minimum scale”. Yet the absence of time does not mean that everything is frozen and unmoving. It is, rather, “a boundless and disorderly network of quantum events.”

Having arrived at this point in his narrative, Rovelli begins to play with different uses of temporal language in the same space and restores our sense of having ground to stand on. He tells the story of how, in 1967, physicists Bryce de Witt and John Wheeler developed an equation accounting for quantum gravity without any time variable. Rovelli first makes the appropriate science related point: “there is nothing mysterious about the absence of time in the fundamental equation of quantum gravity. It is only the consequence of the fact that, at the fundamental level, no special variable exists”. Then he starts talking personally – with a long passage of reminiscence about how he knew and valued de Witt and Wheeler as his “spiritual fathers” early in his career. He is signaling that the warmth of human subjectivity, kept alive in memory, and allowing for a sense of cultural ancestry, is not after all under threat. Professionally he inhabits a world of loop quantum gravity, where time and space “are approximations of a quantum dynamic that in itself knows neither space nor time”. Personally, he relishes human life and values his human sense of time.

Rovelli then asks: what is going on that allows us even to experience such a life and sense, if time isn’t, in fact, fundamental to it? He responds by talking about ‘emergence’. He reminds us that we see the sky turning around us every day, but we are the ones who are turning. “Is the daily spectacle of a revolving universe ‘illusory’?” he asks. “No, it is real, but it doesn’t involve the cosmos alone. It involves our relation with the sun. We understand it by asking ourselves how we move. Cosmic movement emerges from the relation between the cosmos and ourselves.”. In the case of time, we inhabit a cosmic niche that depends on low entropy, which in turn depends on a forward moving time. We earthlings have a source of low entropy – the sun, which sends us hot photons. The earth radiates heat towards the black sky, emitting colder photons, increasing the level of entropy. We hold that the entropy of the early universe was very low, eventually creating the conditions for our relationship with the sun to happen. But, as with the wheel of the day, this may not reflect the precise state of the universe: “The initial low entropy of the universe, and hence the arrow of time, may be more down to us than the universe itself”. For we observe the universe from within it, interacting with a minuscule proportion of the innumerable particles of the cosmos. What we see is a blurred image. In every experience, we are situated in the world: within a mind, a brain, a position in space, a moment in time”. Our lived experience shapes our understanding, including our experience of time.

In this sense, time as we know it is our invention, with our brain’s capacity for foresight and recollection the consequence of an evolutionary advantage within our inherited habitat. Rovelli is fine with that. It is truly the time of our experience, our hopes, our memories, our awareness of our own mortality, and much of our philosophy, poetry and music. Rovelli concludes the book with an elegant reflection:

“Song, as Augustine observed, is the awareness of time. It is time. It is the hymn of the Vedas that is itself the flowering of time. In the Benedictus of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis the song of the violin is pure beauty, pure desperation, pure joy. We are suspended, holding our breath, feeling mysteriously that this must be the source of meaning, that this is time.

“Then the song fades and ceases. ‘The silver thread is broken, the golden lantern is shattered, the amphora at the fountain breaks, the bucket falls into the well, the earth returns to dust.’ And it is fine like this. We can close our eyes, rest. This all seems fair and beautiful to me. This is time.”

Carlo Rovelli The Order of Time Allen Lane, UK: 2018 Translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell. (Allen Lane is an imprint of Penguin Books)

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Tag: Earth spirituality

Quote | June 17, 2019