Nature mysticism | Contemplative Inquiry

May 3, 2016

DEVON SPRING

A voice from the opening years of the twentieth century. The love of nature does not require any formal religion to give it spiritual meaning. The setting is Devon in south-west England, home to my mother and her forbears.

George Gissing was an established part of the literary scene in later Victorian Britain, though less well-known to the public than his friends Arthur Conan-Doyle and H.G. Wells. Indeed, he struggled both with his health and his finances throughout much of his working life, and died of TB whilst living in the south of France in 1903, aged 46. His themes include the professional and social consequences of embracing Darwinism and religious scepticism. His last and most popular novel, the Private Papers of Henry Rycroft, was published in the year of his death.

Rather poignantly, the private papers of the title are presented as the musings of an older writer who inherits enough money from an admirer to retire to a cottage just outside Exeter in Devon. He has nothing to do but enjoy himself in the countryside of his native land. The papers are arranged by the four seasons, moving from spring to winter. The passages below are late in the spring section, marking the transition to summer. My mother is from Exeter, and her parents were adults when this book was written.

MORNING AFTER MORNING

“Morning after morning, of late, I have taken my walk in the same direction, my purpose being to look at a plantation of young larches. There is no lovelier colour on earth than that in which they are now clad; it seems to refresh as well as gladden my eyes, and its influence sinks deep into my heart. Too soon it will change; already I think the first radiant verdure has begun to pass into summer’s soberness. The larch has its moment of unmatched beauty – and well for him whose chance permits him to enjoy it, spring after spring.

“Could anything be more wonderful than that fact that here am I, day by day, not only at leisure to walk forth and gaze at the larches, but blessed with the tranquility of mind needful for such enjoyment? On any morning of spring sunshine, how many mortals find themselves so much peace that they are able to give themselves wholly to delight in the glory of heaven and of earth?”

WALKING IN A FAVOURITE LANE

“Walking in a favourite lane today, I found it covered with shed blossoms of the hawthorn. Creamy white, fragrant even in ruin, lay scattered the glory of the May. It told me that spring is over.

“Have I enjoyed it as I should? Since the day that brought me freedom, four times have I seen the year’s new birth, and always, as the violet yielded to the rose, I have known a fear that I have not sufficiently prized this boon of heaven whilst it was with me.

“I recall my moments of delight, the recognition of each flower that unfolded, the surprise of budding branches clothed in a night with green. The first snowy gleam upon the blackthorn did not escape me. By its familiar bank, I watched for the earliest primrose, and in its copse I found an anemone. Meadows shining with buttercups, hollows sunned with the marsh marigold held me long at gaze. I saw the sallow glistening with its cones of silvery fur, and splendid with dust of gold. These common things touch me with more of admiration and of wonder each time I behold them. They are once more gone. As I turn to summer, misgiving mingles with joy.”

George Gissing The Private Papers of Henry Rycroft in The Complete Works of George Gissing Delphi Classics, Kindle edition 2012.

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April 28, 2016

POEM: THE ONENESS OF THINGS

The sun low over the beach:

shining wires of dune grass,

stones and the shadows of stones.

On the shoreline, the rush of foam

mirrored in the wet sand.

In the oneness of things

I am nowhere in sight.

Colin Oliver Nothing But This Moment: Selected Poems London: Shollond Trust, 2013

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April 22, 2016

ROSE, PEWTER & NATURE MYSTICISM

In my introduction to Contemplative Druidry (1) I describe “a wholly unexpected and not at all dramatic epiphany … triggered simply by noticing and contemplating a wild rose”. Although the experience lasted for only a few moments, “for some weeks I woke up every day with a sense of joy and connection”. It was a shift in my spiritual centre of gravity.

This happened on a midsummer morning in 2007, just outside the Scottish Border town of Melrose on the bank of the Tweed. It is a place loaded with religious and mythic reference – Melrose Abbey with its Green Man carvings and the heart of Robert the Bruce; the Eildon Hills, those hollow hills where the Queen of Efland took True Thomas, making it clear to him that she was not the Queen of heaven.

I had chosen to walk away from those, and towards a riverside path. My experience of the rose was entirely natural, in this legend laden land. In that sense I can call it an instance of nature mysticism, and a nudge towards a contemplative Druidry largely shorn of mythic narrative for the sake of a clearer eye. Looking back, I understood my experience as a lesser form of the one reported by the German mystic Jacob Boehme, who “fell into a trance upon looking into a burnished pewter plate that reflected the sun. In his ecstasy he saw into the very heart of nature itself and felt totally at harmony with creation” (2). Unusually for a seventeenth century Protestant, Boehme had a sense of the Divine feminine, and thought of Sophia as “the visibility of God”. He went on to be a key inspiration in a growing movement for a kinder, gentler version of the reformed faith despite the trials and trauma of his time. Boehme’s work finally appeared in English in 1662 and gave rise to a group called the Philadelphians, less known or numerous than the home grown Quakers.

Now I have entered another, different, phase. It is marked by a demystification of mysticism itself. It involves a deeper, more conscious inquiry into what I mean by ‘nature’ – the nature I see, the nature I am, and the relationship between them. On 23 May 2014 I scribbled down some words attributed to the 20^th. Century teacher and sage Nisargadatta Maharaj and posted on the Science and Nonduality website. I thought of working them into the text of Contemplative Druidry. But though I found them inspirational, I hadn’t tested them or assimilated them into my experience, and so I left them out. These words are: “Love says ‘I am everything’, Wisdom says ‘I am nothing’. Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both”.

My new connection with the Headless Way, with its simple, transparent processes, provides a framework for doing the work I had not done two years ago. My readiness to do it owes much to my experience of contemplative Druidry during the intervening time, just as my earlier work with contemplative Druidry probably helped me to recognize the value of Nisargadatta’s words in 2014. As I move forward, I increasingly see the threads of continuity in my overall inquiry, and this gives me confidence and energy for the work itself.

James Nichol Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential Amazon/KPD, 2014 (Foreword by Philip Carr-Gomm)
Caitlin Mathews Sophia Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God Wheaton IL: Quest Books, 2001

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April 7, 2016

POEM: BUMBLE BEE

Crawling

among blackthorn stars,

the bumble bee is drunk.

Petals float

from her blunders.

Her wings

move in and out of humming.

On her body is the glory

of the sun’s

wet shine.

From Colin Oliver High River Sudbury, Suffolk: Downstream Press, 2006.

March 21, 2016

WESTERN WAYS II: MOVING TOWARDS SOPHIA

In my earlier Western Ways post I talked about a distinction between a ‘Native’ Tradition and a ‘Hermetic’ one, acting as “complementary opposites”. The first was said to be concerned with “ancestral earth-wisdom”, whilst the second was described as a “path of evolving consciousness”. (1)

I am influenced by this idea and the distinction that is being drawn. But I have a different sense of the detail, and a different experience of how these themes have played out in my life. My original choice to ground myself in Native tradition resulted from an experience in the Orkney’s. I was allowed to hold an ancient eagle claw necklace and an extraordinary energy shot through me – ancestral power, certainly, and a lesson in taking the heritage of land and ancestors seriously. However my current of Druid doesn’t directly follow on from this experience, but is, rather, a contemplative nature mysticism. This is spacious and gentle and from my perspective generally works well in both its personal and collective versions. I feel satisfied with what I am doing and, in a good way, my inquiry energy for it is waning, even as my practitioner energy is present and available..

For me, now, the call of Sophia is more dynamic. It is a call from the other half of the Western Way – though not strictly Hermetic, because not concerned with the Greek-Egyptian figure Hermes Trismegistos. So I have decided to make my Way of Sophia the focus of a new personal inquiry cycle. It is not like starting something new. It is more about making this aspect of my spirituality more focused and specific.

In my private sacred space I will establish a Temple of Sophia and this will be separate from from my involvement in Druidry. Ultimately there will be an integration and unity, but I’m aiming to craft a coherent overall Way. I’m not happy to treat pick’n’mix eclecticism and pluralism as more than a staging post. I want to give the Goddess her due and discover for myself how these apparently diverse approaches fit together. I hope that this may be of interest to other Druids, since many of us have a simultaneous engagement with other traditions.

I will report developments in this blog, and I will also continue to write posts outside the inquiry, including book reviews, poems, Druid contemplative developments, and other news and events.

Caitlin & John Matthews (1986) The Western Way: A Practical Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition: Volume 2 – the Hermetic Tradition London: Arkana

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February 15, 2016

POEM: VISITING A HERMIT AND NOT FINDING HIM

Where the dogs bark

By roaring waters,

Whose spray darkens

The petals’ colours,

Deep in the woods

Deer at times are seen;

The valley noon:

One can hear no bell.

But wild bamboos

Cut across bright clouds,

Flying cascades

Hang from jasper peaks;

No one here knows

Which way you have gone:

Two, now three pines

I have lent against.

Li Po (701-62)

‘Visiting a Hermit and Not Finding Him’ is a common theme in Chinese poetry. The full title for the particular poem above is: ‘On Visiting a Taoist Master in the Tai T’ien Mountains and Not Finding Him’. Li Po is regarded as one of China’s greatest poets and wrote it between the ages of 17 and 19.

According to translator Arthur Cooper, such a poem is more than a ‘nature poem’ but “relates in its thought to the ‘spirit journeys’ of which Li Po himself was particularly fond and which are to be found in early Chinese poetry”. In such poems the wise hermit ‘teaches without telling’, by letting the poet wait and not even meet him. Awakening to the landscape (external or internal) carries more spiritual meaning than speculation about the whereabouts of the hermit.

Another approach to the same theme is offered in a famous poem by Chia Tao (777-841):

Under a pine,

I asked his pupil

Who said, “Master’s

Gone gathering balm

Only somewhere

About the mountain:

The cloud’s so thick

That I don’t know where.

Li Po and Tu Fu Poems Selected and translated with an introduction and notes by Arthur Cooper. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973

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February 4, 2016

POEM: A WITHERED TREE

Not a twig or leaf on the old tree,

Wind and frost harm it no more.

A man could pas through a hole in its belly,

Ants crawl searching under its peeling bark.

Its only lodger, the toadstool which dies in a morning,

The birds no longer visit in the twilight.

But its wood can still spark tinder.

It does not care yet to be only the void at its heart.

By Han Yü (768-824)

From: Poems of the Late T’ang translated from the Chinese with an introduction by A.C. Graham Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965

Han Yü was primarily an essayist and polemicist, and initiated an ultimately successful Confucian revival at a time of Buddhist cultural dominance. When writing verse, he adopted devices traditionally confined to prose and to fu (prose poems) and sought to attend to the social and human content of poetry.

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January 25, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY IN 3 SENTENCES

Elaine and I were recently asked by a non-Druid local group to define contemplative Druidry in 3 sentences. This is what we came up with.

“Contemplative practice in Druidry supports what has been called ‘the Nature mysticism of modern Druidry’. Our understandings of what this means are provisional and inquiring – those of us who follow the Druid way are encouraged to craft our own practices in accordance with our inner guidance, our needs and wishes. Practices in the Stroud-based group include group meditation, personal sharing, outside walking meditation, chanting and contemplative arts.”

This mix of practices also forms the basis of our retreat days for the wider Druid and fellow-travelling community. This year we are running two such days – one in London on Sunday 7 February and the other in Stroud on Saturday 1 October together with Nimue and Tom Brown. See also http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com

We owe the phrase ‘the Nature mysticism of modern Druidry’ to Philip Carr-Gomm, who leads the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), who used it in his foreword to Contemplative Druidry: People Practice and Potential. He also pointed out that the Druid way as a whole is one where we take responsibility for crafting our own practices. We see this a something we need to emphasise, since this approach is still unusual in spiritual movements as a whole.

January 7, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY 2016

The next month is a busy one for contemplative Druidry. Our group in Stroud has its first meeting next Tuesday. Towards the end of January Elaine and I will be working with another local group that meets to explore sacred traditions. Then on 7 February we are running a Dark of the Moon Workshop day retreat in London, at Treadwell’s Bookshop’s workshop space, 33 Store Street, London WC1 E7BS. Our specific intent is to greet the dark of the moon at the time of Imbolc and the first stirrings of the Earth. The programme will include contemplative exercises, subtle energy work, silent sitting and Awen space group meditation. As with all of our public events, anyone willing to work within a Druid framework for the day is welcome.

The end of January also sees the publication of a new Moon Books anthology Pagan Planet: Being Believing and Belonging in the 21st. Century – see http://www.moon-books.net and Nimue Brown’s presentation of the book. I have a piece in it on practising contemplative Druidry. Since I wrote it I have become even more convinced that contemplative Druidry is not a distinct form of Druidry, but rather a flavour, or way of working within it. We can create specific environments and practice frameworks that enable contemplative practice, and understand them as an option within a range of options.

More broadly, I think that the contemplative meme is now well recognised. My 2014 book Contemplative Druidry: People Practice and Potential is still finding new audiences. The Contemplative Druidry Facebook group, which I stopped administering in 2013, continues to thrive, now with a membership of over 1100. Elaine’s blog at http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com/ and the Contemplative Druid Events Facebook page have received increasing increasing attention in the last couple of months, perhaps in part due to the Contemplative Druidry article in the Samhain 2015 edition of Pagan Dawn. Other events are planned for later in the year.

I’ll continue writing about these and other developments in this blog.

October 13, 2015

ANAM CARA

This post is about the anam cara, or spiritual friend in Gaelic tradition, and about the use of language. Recently I wrote about allowing more space and using fewer words. This wasn’t a renunciate view of language, which I value highly. My hope was that “more space” would allow “something new to emerge”, and that my words, though fewer, would be better chosen.

I am starting to see some fruits from this strategy. I’ve also recently said that I experienced Sophia “as a psychopomp or inner guru”. Now I would say, “anam cara”. This term is known from the early days of Christian monasticism in Ireland and is in current use within the Scottish-based Celie De – see http://www.ceilede.co.uk/

It is a mentoring relationship, not a peer one, but it includes the sense of a real personal connection, not just a role. People speculate about whether it is an inheritance from indigenous Druidry. Subjectively, my relation with Sophia feels like this: much more than psychopomp or inner guru. In my understanding ‘anam cara’ is gentler, subtler and less formal.

The Sophia I experience is not a rhetorical device (personification) or a glove puppet arbitrarily selected by me. She is also not – in my sense of things – a mind independent celestial being. Rather she is the felt presence, the voice, and at times the image of a deeper nature – and my inner link with the Oran Mor (the song of what is). From a personality perspective, this deeper nature is ‘not me’ and not owned and controlled by ‘me’, so I have to work at relationship.

From the perspective of deeper nature, the separation doesn’t exist. At times Sophia can point beyond herself and then I may enter the subjectivity of deeper nature and experience the world differently. The little ‘I’ and the anam cara are as one, beyond separation and immersed in the song. But most of the time that’s not how it is in my subjective life world, and a link to that fuller reality is provided by Sophia and her nudgings and promptings.

I don’t make any fundamental distinction between nature and spirit. All, for me, is contained in the word nature (or terms like the Oran Mor). Nothing is lost. Cosmos, relationship and practice remain the same. But the use of a nature language is truer to my experience.

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Tag: Nature mysticism