Nature mysticism | Contemplative Inquiry

May 26, 2023

‘SOLITUDE: SEEKING WISDOM IN EXTREMES’: SHAPING THE STORY

This post is a continuation of the last (1). During his experimental year of radical wilderness solitude in Patagonia, Robert Kull maintained a journal. The complete journal was 900 pages long, and he had not only to review it but also to write an edited version. Both the original writing and the editing involved a careful process of selection. Even the original entries told only “one among many possible tales”. Kull says: “I have, though, both in the original journal entries and in the editing process, tried to tell my truth as I lived it”. He is very conscious of the way in which “the magic of words”, and cultural expectations about narratives, including the motif of the ‘hero’s journey’, can come between the experience and the record. These considerations influence what he brings back from his year, and what we can learn from it. I feel moved by, and respectful of, the way he works through these concerns.

“In the journal, a saga of physical adventure and spiritual transformation runs parallel to and weaves through the drifting account of daily life – the autobiographical quest of the hero. This is a recognized, even expected, storytelling mode for someone spending a year alone in the wilderness, and I could have enhanced the heroic saga during editing. But instead I’ve allowed that tidy narrative to remain interrupted over and over by the unruly wildness of the ‘hero’s’ soul.

“In the messier story, the hero’s cultural ideals of personal success, social progress, and free will are questioned in view of the cyclic storms of depression, rage, fear, and doubt about his place in society and a felt lack of spiritual development. Despite differences in theology, moral orientation and self-discipline, the man in that pedestrian tale may have more in common with St. Augustine and his surrender of personal agency to Divine Will than with the stereotypical self-oriented striving of modern culture’s secular hero.

“My goal in the wilderness was not to conquer either the external world or my own inner nature, but to give up the illusion of ownership and control and to experience myself as part of the ebb and flow of something greater than the individual ego. But the goal of attaining enlightenment was elusive – except when it was not. Through a shift in consciousness, my quest came to an end as I realized there was nowhere to go and nothing to get. The notion of a holy grail out there – or even within – was illusory, and what I was seeking I always already had: I was not a special hero, but simply a speck of life like all other specks – unless I was not. Personal agency always reasserted itself, and these two aspects of my being struggled and then tentatively began to dance together.

“Stories of spiritual seekers or solitaries in the wilderness are often portrayals of heroic adventure. It’s difficult not to slip into this mode, but I’ve tried. We already have enough of such writing, and in its most blatant form it’s little better than checkout-counter publications flaunting the amazing lives of superhuman ‘stars’. When I read such stories and compare them to my own actual life, I feel diminished. ‘That’s not how my life is. What’s wrong with me?’ I’m also pulled out of my own life and into vicariously living the imaginary life of another. What I offer instead is a more human account so perhaps we can wander the spaces and silences of wilderness solitude together.” (1)

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2023/05/23/radical-wilderness-solitude-an-experiment/

(2) Robert Kull Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes – A Year Alone in the Patagonian Wilderness Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008

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May 23, 2023

RADICAL WILDERNESS SOLITUDE: AN EXPERIMENT

‘Perhaps the most useful aspect of my year alone in the wilderness was to come to accept that my inner world has its own inherent weather patterns, as does the external world. The recognition that I’m not in control and that grey days do not mean I’ve done something wrong, That all the ups and downs, lights and darks, are part of who I am; who we are’ (1).

This post is a second story from Stephen Batchelor’s The Art of Solitude (1,2) – this time not about him. On 5 February 2001, Robert Kull, then aged 54, spent a year alone on a remote island off the southern coast of Patagonia. The nearest humans were at Puerto Natales, sixty miles away across impassible mountains and fjords. No boats ever passed by. Kull wanted to explore extended solitude as a self-challenging inquiry. He had already experienced three months of solitude in northern BC, Canada, which he found strange, powerful and ‘potentially frightening’ especially ‘without other people to help me maintain my identity’. This had led to a breakdown, as the ‘facade of autonomous self-sufficiency started to crumble’, and then to a breakthrough – an ecstatic experience of mystical union with nature that lasted several weeks.

Wishing for a truly radical solitude off the Patagonian coast, Kull even questioned his own journal writing on the grounds that ‘daily writing feels like breaking solitude’, since ‘as soon as the solitary begins to speak, even if by writing to an imagined reader, he (or she) is no longer truly alone’. For when he writes, or thinks about writing, ‘I’m not really here in solitude, but in an imaginary future where someone else is reading my descriptions’. But he also finds that when he considers not writing, ‘I’m hit with a wave of isolation and loneliness’. Self-compassionately, and out of loyalty to his project, he continues with his journal.

In the early weeks Kull is busy with the construction and maintenance of his cabin (built of material brought with him on a Chilean Navy ship). He is also equipped with a wind generator, solar panels, a wood-burning stove, and a small boat with outboard motors. He has concerns about fresh water, firewood, blackflies and shoulder pains. Once set up, he records his observations of condors, eagles, ducks, dolphins, seals and limpets. He fishes, he reads, and he writes about the books he is reading. He settles into a routine of meditation, philosophical introspection, writing poems, and taking photographs.

Batchelor does not mention that Kull’s sojourn was tied in to a PhD. project for The University of British Columbia at Royal Roads, Vancouver Island. Kull’s research question was: What are the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual effects of deep wilderness solitude? (3) Kull summarises his methodology: “I develop an innovative methodology of vigilant mindfulness combined with radically honest journal keeping and narrative writing to examine and document my own lived experience in solitude. I extend interdisciplinarity and integrate spiritual practice with academic study, and I share my work with the non-academic community”. This seems to me an important piece of context, which makes the project clearly pre-meditated and planned with a community of peers and an accountability to them. It holds the individual quest within a collective endeavour and, in my view, adds to its meaning.

Unsurprisingly, Kull shows dedication, deep thought and meticulous planning in organising his experiment. He shows courage, honesty and rigour in carrying it out. He finds, and reports, that he does not repeat an earlier ‘enlightenment’ experience. Complex subjective experience is simply too tricky in that respect. It is to Kull’s credit that he can accept a new and different outcome. One lesson I draw from his experiment is that solitude cannot be absolute. It is always relative, always negotiated, and will involve different costs and outcomes depending on who is being solitary and what their arrangements are. Kull’s was a well-resourced collective project, though it may not always have felt like it alone on the island.

I will return to Robert Kull’s wilderness solitude project when I have read his own book. I am grateful to him for putting himself on the line in this remarkable experiment. His willingness to share his personal experience in the setting of an academic project, and to explore the issues that it raises, is a gift to us all.

(1) Stephen Batchelor The Art of Solitude: A Meditation on Being Alone with Others in This World New Haven, CT & London, England: Yale University Press, 2020

(3) https://bobkull.org/ Robert Kull’s book for the public, Solitude, Seeking Wisdom in Extremes – A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness, is referenced on this site, with a link to Amazon. See also: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2023/05/26/

* Often transliterated as Chuang Tzu

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May 19, 2023

WHEEL OF THE DAY

Two pictures taken 12 hours apart in neighbouring locations. 7.30 am above and 7.30 pm below. The wheel of the day following its course in the light time of the year. Dawn is well past regardless of mist, and sunset yet to come even if shadows are lengthening.

Delighting in these experiences. No further narrative.

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May 15, 2023

CELEBRATING THE MONTH OF MAY

The Irish name for May is Bealtaine. Linguistically at least, the May Day festival sets the scene for a calendar month. As I experience the wheel of the year in my own life, this feels right. May, the merry month, has always been special to me. Born towards the end of the month in 1949, I continue to feel newer and fresher in May, with a heightened sense of life. Changes happening around me, in the rest of nature, feed that sense. I’m part of something bigger.

The demarcation of time might be a product of human counting and naming, but it doesn’t feel arbitrary to me. Counting and naming have a powerful magic of their own. On 14 May 2023 I went on a morning walk, reaching a small wooded area at about 7.45 am. It was a time of dispersing mists and strengthening light. A time of warming up. I enjoyed it from the start, but there came a moment when my experience of the walk changed radically.

I see the wood. I stand at its edge. Hawthorn invites me in, decked in the green and white of the May season. I understand this as a moment for slowing down and shifting into a softer, more intuitive connection with the realm I am entering. I am moving into a kind of sacrament – a communion with nature in a unique time and place. I feel a joyful kind of reverence here, free of solemnity and unction. As I continue slowly on the path, sunlight, striking a slender tree trunk, illuminates my way.

Then comes a tanglewood immersion. Variations in wood. Variations in green. Variations in light – especially light. This place could be dark and dank. At times, no doubt, it appropriately is. But it is May now, and wonderfully backlit. There’s a yellowing of green that points to new light and growth rather than their decay. I have a strong sense of participating in a living world. My own vitality is boosted.

I am now drawn towards water. Again, some foliage is shaded. Other foliage is vividly lit up. On the water, the mist is still clearing. It is still fairly early in the day. It is at times like this that I feel most Druidic, very at home and blessed in this quiet connectedness.

A little later, I crouch at the water margin’s edge. Whereas the previous scene had a spacious serenity, this has intimations of activity, a small but crowded world of its own, with thriving plants and and a thriving sub aquatic realm beside them. Even in this small space, life is complex and abundant. The same holds, on a somewhat expanded scale, to this vulnerable scrap of woodland as a whole. I emerge from my sacrament refreshed and renewed, with the imprint of Bealtaine 2023 upon me.

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April 10, 2023

BLUEBELLS BEFORE BELTANE

Seeing bluebells

In verdant grass.

Will summer really come?

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April 3, 2023

APRIL AND ‘DRUID MINDFULNESS’

Where I live, April 2023 brings qualities and freshness and new growth. My heart meets the moment as I walk in the bracing breeze. Sunny and overcast periods succeed each other. Moving through this enlivening space, I naturally welcome the energy of change it embodies.

But it’s not quite that simple. There’s an underlying turbulence too, which can easily challenge my balance. Slogans like ‘I am the sky. Everything else is weather’ aren’t enough. I, as natural man, have to ground and embody them. They have be be aligned with my felt sense.

I wasn’t sure how to talk about this when I discovered that someone else had done it for me. Philip Carr-Gomm, who until recently led OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids), offers a regular podcast: Tea with a Druid. No 249 is about ‘finding calm in chaos’. It is up on YouTube as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew4pD3OJen8

Philip suggests that the best way to deal with chaos, turbulence, or the everyday stress of modern life, is to turn to the stillness inside. Then it becomes possible to stay in the moment whilst expecting nothing. It takes work to get there – to identify ways of finding stability and calm even when all around is unstable and unpredictable.

Philip understands modern Druidry as a tradition of ‘mindfulness in natural settings’, whether real or visualised. The stillness found in those settings isn’t a dead stillness but a living one – leaves rustle, waves crash. The refreshment is somewhat different from that of a more abstract meditation where we sit with thoughts and feelings, finding the space beyond. In the podcast, Philip takes us through a meditation of the kind he describes. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone, whether or not involved in Druidry.

Returning to my recent walk, and the record of it, I see branches, buds and sky. I remember the movement in the sky, and a slight quivering of the wood. Records have their limitations. The stillness wasn’t one of complete stasis, as it may appear below. My current response is complicated by the human gift of memory, which is not the original experience. I am also absorbing someone else’s input. I am in a completely different here and now. But I am held within an enlivened tranquility, not at all that of the ‘tranquiliser’, and this is certainly a wonderful resource. Gratitude to the culture that has enabled it.

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March 29, 2023

GREENING

Lately I have been seeing more catkins and leaves amongst the elegant branches of their trees. A vivid green is present on the ground. As yet the changes are tentative. But they hold the promise of new life and growth. There’s a freshness here, enhanced by strong breeze. I notice and feel energised, walking down the path.

The changes have not gone very far, but the trend is now clear. For me, it shows up well against a blue sky. In this changeable season, I see possibilities for my own life, now that I am settled and in good health. These too are in their early stages, showing signs of promise more than accomplishment. My inner wisdom warns me not to move past ‘promise’ into ‘accomplishment’ too speedily or strivingly. Promise has its own season.

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March 25, 2023

EMERSON: ‘IMMORTAL BEAUTY’

“Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.

“Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, – no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.

“Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am a part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, – master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of an uncontained and immortal beauty.” (1)

In the first paragraph above, I hear my own experience, described in a mid 19th century American voice. I share the sense that the exhilaration comes partly from the land, woods and sky themselves and partly from the continuing life of the child within us.

In the second paragraph, I feel at home with with the overall sentiment, whilst having to work a little with Emerson’s terminology. At the beginning I am not sure what he means by ‘God’. I do understand that ‘plantations of God’ restores innocence, as well as wildness, to the term ‘plantation’. (Emerson was a notable abolitionist.) I also note that the woods are a domain where reason and faith are brought together, in a time and culture where they seemed to be in conflict. Nature isn’t just a word for material reality. Nature is a source of protection and healing that goes beyond the mundane.

The third paragraph makes Emerson’s transcendentalism clear, and with it the true power of contemplation. ‘Standing on the bare ground … uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing: I see all”. God and Nature become Universal Being, from which ‘I’ am not separate. To be simply present in this space, with no agenda and nothing in mind, is to be “the lover … of an uncontained and immortal beauty”. The nature of our experience is a living nature we perceive, are part of, and relate to – not a reified externality. An open, enlivened receptivity to this reality can allow a deeper awareness (for Emerson, that of the Divine in us) to declare its presence.

(1) Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature Boston, Mass: Thurston, Torry and Company, 1849

NOTE: According to Wikipedia, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) “was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century” who gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay Nature”. He wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. “Emerson’s ‘nature’ was more philosophical than naturalistic. … Emerson is one of several figures who took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting the view of God as separate from the world”.

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March 22, 2023

VIKING PAGAN GODS IN BRITAIN

Professor Ronald Hutton’s fourth lecture in the Gresham College series on early Pagan history in Britain (1) is about the Vikings and their spiritual legacy. An overview of the old Norse world shows a people who, expanding beyond their Scandinavian homelands, were notable both as aggressive sea raiders and as traders, farmers and town builders. Travelling to new lands, and often settling in them, they grew familiar with cultures from Britain and Ireland in the west to Russia and the Byzantine Empire in the east. Their name was known in the Islamic world and as far as China. Slaving was a major part of their trade.

The raiding came first – a ‘Viking’ is a raider. They first became known in Britain and Ireland as looters of monasteries, where non-warrior monks lived close to the sea in places noted for their treasure. Monks who were not killed often became slaves. Hutton notes that early Scandinavian literature is largely realistic (relatively sparse in supernatural themes) and shows a tolerance of psychotic violence. A small boy gets bested by larger peers in a ball game and, enraged, drives an axe into another boy’s head. The community wonders what to do with him and steers away from serious punishment. For ‘he has ‘the makings of a real Viking’. Saga heroes are not very religious. Asked by a Christian ruler what he believes in, one replies: ‘I believe in me’. This seems to be the self-reliant ethic of the rootless, adventuring Viking.

Our written knowledge of Viking Pagan gods largely comes from Icelandic sources dating from 150-400 years after Christian conversion. It includes poetry, sagas and scholarly work. According to Hutton, the Pagan poems are no longer fully understood. It is thought that depictions of Paganism in this work are drawn partly from contemporary Baltic and Slav Paganism, better known by the writers than their own past. It is possible that Odin’s sacrifice of self to self, over nine days, on the windy tree is a response to Christianity: Odin is tougher than Christ.

In prose work, goddesses are few and far between. There are more goddess names in the older poems, but we do not know their stories. The gods on record are those still known in modern popular culture: Odin (the leader, god of travel, wisdom, knowledge, war, poetry); Thor (god of sky, weather, farming); Frey (god of fertility, crops, animals); Freya (goddess of love, war, magic); Baldur (handsome, beloved of all); Tyr (heroic god of war); Loki (devious and cunning – with a question around the word ‘evil’?). However, there is some doubt on whether either the warriors’ paradise Valhalla, or the end-of-the-world story of Ragnarok are derived from early Pagan tradition.

The Pagan Viking Gods came to Britain, with serious settlements beginning in the 860s, and they are remembered in place names. Odin, for example, is very well remembered in Orkney. But their worship did not last long, at least officially. The last Pagan ruler was removed in 954. The settlers had always lived among a larger co-existing Christian population. However, King Canute had to pass a law in the early 11th century forbidding the veneration of trees, stones and pools, the use of charms and the worship of sun and moon. Hutton suggests that here we see glimpses of a family and nature oriented religion without priests and temples and so unlikely to leave monuments. There is no archaeological evidence for Viking temples or shrines in Britain, though 34 swords have been found in English rivers in a way that suggests they were placed there as offerings. There are carvings that seem to show Pagan themes on crosses and a slab in the church at Sockburn, County Durham, shows the war god Tyr with Fenris, the wolf who bit his hand off.

Most of the archaeological research focuses on burial sites and grave goods. High status burials in particular included graves goods – on the whole, men had weapons, women had jewellery and both might have horses and dogs. These suggest a belief in another life in which people will want their possessions, but there does not seem to be a consistent narrative about what this afterlife would be. In some cases it is possible that, where more than one person is involved, someone may have been killed in order to accompany the deceased. Norse-settled Scotland and its islands (Both northern and western) are rich in burial sites, as is the Isle of Mann (still constitutionally a Norse lordship under the British crown run by its Parliament the Tynwald). In one ship burial there, an earlier Christian burial site was desecrated to make room for the newcomers. English Viking burial sites include the Henley Woods burials and the large site by the River Trent near Repton in Derbyshire. This is the site of the military camp set up the ‘sons of Ragnar’.

All in all, there is enough to suggest that Viking Paganism once flourished it Britain. But we do not quite catch the subjective life of its adherents. Perhaps people wore their religion lightly; perhaps it was deeply interwoven with material life and not seen as a major specific preoccupation. Soon enough, it was superseded, often for largely political reasons, by Christianity. Enigmatic pointers from literature and archaeology, enduring place names, and the land, the sea, the sky themselves (to borrow the Celtic elements) are what remain.

(1) https://gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/viking-gods/

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March 16, 2023

MARCH 2023: WINTER PUSHES BACK

Where I live, March has so far been a contest between the coming of spring and a winter that won’t let go. The city of Gloucester has been relatively insulated, but we have still had sub zero nights and low day time temperatures. There has been snow that didn’t settle, cold hard rain and occasional high winds. There have also been frequent periods of sunshine – still cold, still rainy, yet a joy to be out in. Underneath this changeability, the period of daylight grows longer.

A canal side walk shows a more subdued world than last year, and a sense of latency, as though life is waiting to see what will happen next. The wheel of the year turns as ever. What to expect on the ground has become less certain. The climate crisis is visibly in process, with the consequence of vast changes in the arctic now making themselves felt here. We could say that the Cailleach is angry and mobilising. But what this means for our day-to-day weather isn’t always clear.

As I experience these shifts (not so dramatic in themselves in the here and now) I can’t help thinking about culture as well as nature. Climate has moved down the formal political agenda – again. Outright denialism and repression of information about relevant topics still aren’t over. Sir David Attenborough, who has been making nature programmes since the beginning of broadcast TV, will not be having his most recent one (6th and last of a new series) shown live by the BBC. It will be available only on iPlayer.

Supported by groups like WWF (World Wildlife Federation) and RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), this programme highlights the destruction of nature in Britain and looks at rewilding as part of the solution. There are allegations that the restricted availability of this content stems from a fear of offending Conservative politicians and the right wing press. The BBC has issued denials but I have not seen any other plausible reason put forward. Yet this is about conservation: in older meanings of ‘conservative’, the protection of nature and the exploration of rewilding could readily have become a conservative cause. They have been, in the past – think about Theodore Roosevelt and the National Parks movement in the USA.

From a Druid and Earth spirituality perspective, the desacralisation of nature, and the emergence of a wasteland culture, lie at the heart of this problem. This is not new. It has being going on for a long time, for many reasons – religious, economic and political – driven by people with widely different projects and motivations. I know that there is much creative work going on to develop better understandings and positive projects. But it still saddens me that the balance of power and resources, especially in a renewed time of wars and the threat of wars, remains so troubling.

In my personal life I am happy and optimistic. I can feel sad about what is going on around me without being defined or disabled by my grief. Moments of fear and sparks of anger, too. They need not be driven away. They too have an honoured place at the table. They are part of the larger whole, and, lived with emotional intelligence, a way of bearing witness and a spur to action in the world.

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Tag: Nature mysticism