Flowing moment | Contemplative Inquiry

August 10, 2019

AT-HOMENESS REVISITED

A year ago, I wrote: “within my Sophian Way, I have found healing and grounding in a flowing now, the site of an unexpected At-Homeness. Everything else grows out of that”(1). This post is to re-affirm this insight and to take it forward.

I wrote of a ‘flowing now’ since ‘now’ is not a frozen unit of time but a living stream of experience. Past and future can indeed be conceived and imagined, but only within the flowing now. The experience of At-Homeness can either steal up of itself or I can invite it by slowing down and attentively companioning the flow as it moves, whatever is going on. It is a way of marking this space and time as sacred. My opening and attention are a sacrament, the means through which the flowing now – all that I can be sure of in this life – is recognised and blessed.

I didn’t invent the term At-Homeness. It comes from the proponents of ‘bio-spirituality’, who say (2) “that the beginning of a bio-spiritual awareness … is finding a way to some larger At-Homeness written deep within bodily knowing”. For them, an enabling and loving attention to the body and its processes gives the felt sense of At-Homeness a chance to ripen. My experience of Focusing over the last 15 months tells me this is true. My experience of Headless Way (3) opens up a world of vivid shapes and colours, all boundaries gone, no self in sight. Immersed in this world, I experience a lightness of being, and stillness in a world of movement. This, too, is At-Homeness in the flowing now.

I sense now, more clearly than before, that I am not at home in the realm of abstractions and absolutes. I do not find Sophia there. I flourish, rather, in processes and relationships. I can stand as awareness only through being aware (a process) of something/someone (a relationship). I find the love and magic in the cosmos, as well as its stresses and horrors, only within the play of movement and connection.

For me, Thich Nhat Hanh’s understanding of ‘Interbeing’ provides the most helpful presentation of a non-dual spirituality (4). “The insight of inter-being is that nothing can exist by itself alone, that each thing exists only in relation to everything else. The insight of impermanence is that nothing is static, nothing stays the same. Interbeing means the absence of a separate self. Looking from the perspective of space, we call emptiness ‘inter-being’; looking from the perspective of time we call it impermanence”. Another modern Buddhist writer adds (5), “if you look at experience there are not fixed elements or even moments; there is simply a process, a transformation … the Buddha called himself tathagata or ‘that which is thus coming and going’. He described himself as merely a flowing occurrence, and the outward form that took was constant, calm, compassionate availability to people who came to him for help.”

Reading this, I am pushed uncomfortably into the recognition of my own volatility. I explored this theme in October 2017 (6). However, because I found Buddhist practice, with its emphasis on long periods of sitting meditation, not right for me, I appear to have lost some of this insight, at least consciously. I am somewhat comforted that ‘At-Homeness in a flowing now’ at least preserves the gist, and the simple practices I’m using work well within an ‘inter-being’ framework. This is not so much because of its Buddhist origin, as because as an approach it seems to me to be on the side of life, relationship and movement. It brings me down to earth and closer to Sophia (Prajnaparamita, Guanyin).

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/

(2) Peter Campbell & Edward McMahon Bio-Spirituality: Focusing as a Way to Grow Chicago, Ill: Loyola Press, 1985

(3) www.headless.org/

(4) Thich Nhat Hanh The Other Shore: a New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries Berkeley, CA: Palm Leaves Press, 2017

(5) Ben Connelly Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara: A Practitioner’s Guide Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2016

(6) https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2017/10/21/the-uses-of-emptiness/

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July 4, 2019

WALKING THE SOPHIAN WAY

Today I tweaked my morning practice, strengthening it as part of a Sophian Way, and recognising how this Way stands at the heart of my life, and has deepened over time.

When I stopped posting for a period of several months, I wrote (1): “within my Sophian Way, I have found healing and grounding in a flowing now, the site of an unexpected At-Homeness. Everything else flows out of that – personal well-being, right relationship, life and expression in the world. It is the fountain that nourishes them all. All it needs is my attention”.

I wouldn’t now say “all it needs is my attention”. Resting in the flowing now is not enough. I want a greater sense of a specific spiritual culture and point of reference. I also said that ‘Sophian Way’ was not using “the metaphor of a path or a journey”, but “describing a way of life”. I now see the Sophian Way, quite literally, as a path, a journey and a way of life.

Some years ago, I was moved by a powerful image. It arose within a visualisation of being in a rose garden (Sophia’s garden) and watching the fountain at the centre – the source of life. The image zoomed in to drops of water flying from the top, scattering outwards, destined to hit a wide sculpted pool at the bottom. Zooming in further, I found a single, separate drop, and froze it in the midst of its descent. It was sun kissed, I as I recall.

I didn’t ‘become’ the drop, at that time. But from my observer position I knew that it was me: one drop, and the whole of H2O. The story of the drop is of separation (and fleeting individual shape) and of fall (or leap, or dance). Then it re-joins the whole and something else happens (oblivion from a drop perspective, still H2O in the bigger picture: no change there).

This was gnosis as a sign-posting experience, not fully embodied, but still vivid, recurrent (outside formal practice settings as well as within them) and easily brought back. It nudged me towards the Way of Sophia, best described in conceptual language as a non-dual Gnosticism. It is Gnostic because it recognises an intelligence of the heart, which, when cultivated, can lead to self-knowledge and the realisation of our original nature (described as divine in Western Way teachings).

Non-dual is admittedly a problem word, because it defaults to readily into ideology and dogma (‘Down with Dualism!’ or ‘I’m more non-dual than you are’). In fact, ‘non-dual’ cannot be opposed to something else called ‘duality’ or to anything else. It makes room for all stories, including those that are dualistic. As Jeff Foster has written (2): “what we are really trying to do when we say ‘non-duality’ is point to life as it is right now, before the appearance of concepts and labels; before thought creates a world of things: table, chair, hand, foot, me, you, past, future”. ‘Non-dual’ points to “an intimacy, a love beyond words, right at the heart of present moment experience. It’s a word that points us back home”.

Going forward, I want to pay more detailed attention to my Sophian Way, and to the Gnostic and non-dual streams that flow into it. Where looking beyond these sources of inspiration, I will discuss their relevance to me and my path.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/

(2) https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/what-is-nonduality/

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/