OPENING TO SUBTLE CHANGES
A good reflection on giving attention from Mark Green’s in Atheopaganism blog.
Contemplative Inquiry
This blog is about contemplative inquiry
Tag: Spiritual inquiry
August 25, 2019
SOPHIAN REMINISCENCE
For me, sacred images are sometimes filled with life and potency and sometimes not. The important ones explode as gifts from the hinterlands of the psyche. They are intensely moving, perhaps shocking, certainly state altering. They may be nurturing and easy to welcome. They may be surprising and demand unlooked-for adjustments. Over time they may continue to be influential, changing and developing with me. They may become formal and emblematic – no longer living yet still anchoring insight. Eventually they may fade. Such images are not possessions. Attempts to grasp or hoard them do not work.
I call my path a Sophian Way. I have an icon of Sophia on my desk and I check in with her from time to time. It still feels authentic and makes sense to me. At the same time, I am aware of how much has changed since Sophia erupted into my life twelve years ago.
In the summer of 2007, I was immersed in my OBOD Druid studies. It was one of the few times in my life when I have cleared whole days for ritual work, and whole days for recovering afterwards. I found the work generating its own momentum, in some ways fulfilling the agenda of my course and in some ways pointing in a different-seeming direction. Images and dreams of dove feathers, either falling or lying on the ground – and then their actuality – became very prominent. Key images and ankh images were present as well.
The powerful dove imagery evoked Goddess associations from the Pagan tradition and Holy Spirit from the Judaeo-Christian one. To honour both, I found a reference in a modern Gnostic group ( www.thepearl.org/ ) that seemed to fit:
“Mortals have been created to dwell in the Garden of delights. … In the Garden stands the holy Tree of Life. High in its branches sings a bird. Listen to the voice of the bird, for when you are properly aligned with heaven and earth, she will tell you all things. … This bird or dove is also called Sophia”.
This felt like an authentic, and unifying, message for me because of its attitude towards the Garden. I as a human belong there. My belonging is not in question. There is one tree, the tree of life. The ‘knowledge’ aspect, such a disaster in mainstream Christianity, is very different here. There’s no apple to pick from the bough, but a bird who will sing to me. But something is expected of me, all the same, if I want to enhance my life and understanding. I am asked to align myself with heaven and earth. If I do this, I am assured that “she will tell you all things”. I don’t understand this as a discourse on metaphysics. I understand it as me listening in another key, listening to bird song in this metaphor, and so refining my sensitivity. For me, the imagery of the tree and the singing bird high in its branches is as resonant of a Shamanic or Pagan world view as it is of a Gnostic or Christian one. I do not have to choose.
The Pearl website turns to Joseph Campbell, a modern spokesman for the meaning of myth, on this point. He says: “people say that what we’re all seeking is the meaning of life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we are seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within out innermost being and reality … as we get to know our innermost being we receive the keys that open up a life that is truly Life, for it is everlasting”.
My own sense of the ‘Life everlasting’ doesn’t pre-suppose an afterlife, re-incarnation, or any other world. Eternity, if anywhere, is present in the now. The song of the bird represents a neurosomatic wisdom, not a cognitive one, of living connectedness within one stream of life.
What I like about this reminiscence is that I have been given a chance to renew my sense of Sophia by returning to source. The original work is well-documented, so I haven’t had to rely on memory. I had completely forgotten about the ‘Pearl’ group. I’m also glad that I’ve seen more than first time round in terms of the tree and birdsong. At the time, I just recorded the images and threw down the references. It has renewed my relationship to the Sophia image in the now.
For information about OBOD see
OBOD | Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids | Druidry
August 23, 2019
LETTING GO
I have been experiencing a pull towards letting go, but until now it hasn’t been very specific. What do I want to let go of? How do I expect to feel and be, once this letting go has happened?
My personal life is already very simple. The pull toward letting go is about my inquiry and spiritual stance. Some aspects of this feel redundant, whilst others have become naturalised and simply part of how things are.
Over my years of inquiry, I have familiarised myself with many spiritual movements and their understandings, practices and literatures. The literatures include overviews of how these movements have evolved over time, place and culture and how they stand in relationship with each other. I’ve never seen them in isolation or selected one as providing a uniquely authoritative guide. I have been blessed with companions along the way, but I no longer seek or belong to a spiritual tribe.
I am now done with the intentional study aspect, having reached the point of diminishing returns. I might read out of cultural interest, but it won’t be as part of my inquiry. I don’t expect to be entering into new mindsets and following new practices. I have a fundamental sense, or understanding, of being held within a greater life. This greater life is a background presence, except when it becomes the foreground and simply what there is, with ‘me’ no longer apparent. It is this sense of a greater life that supports my At-Homeness, and my commitment to leaning into the flowing moment, the fountain of experiencing. That’s enough: ‘just being’, with an open heart. This simple sense provides my internal compass and my practice is also my inquiry.
I wrote recently – https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/07/17/inquiry-and-heart/ – about ‘inquiry as self-abiding’ and this, essentially, what I am left with after my exploration of traditions; what remains after letting go. With clarity on that point, I can let go with ease.
August 22, 2019
POEM: RAPT FORM
FIRE upon Night the way flashing
Cove within Earth the seed receiving
South into North of us –
Eagle upon mountain and the light ascending
The Bowl of the daily dark descending
Stars beyond the shore of us
The Centre stays and the pattern fixes
The Centre moves and the diagram mixes
For many and more of us.
The Eye shines as the cast is shining
The Bowl gathers darkness as the shade is spreading
The Pentagram weaves its tent overheading
The stars and the Polestar turning and twining
Until the rotating of day.
O day and night O night of time
[the weft upon the warp of rhyme}
I backward step to the abyss
Where Form ends and Nothing is –
Where Nothing ends and All-Thing is.
Ross Nichols Prophet Priest and King: The Poetry of Ross Nichols Lewes: The Oak Tree Press, 2001 (Edited and introduced by Jay Ramsay)
“Ross Nichols, who was a contemporary of Eliot, and rated highly by many including Edwin Muir, was Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) until his sudden and unexpected death in 1975. An accomplished prose writer, essayist, editor and water colourist who exhibited at the Royal Academy, we can now see him as one of the ‘Apocalypse poets’ of the 1940’s As Chief of the Order from 1964, his contribution was substantial, re-introducing into modern Druid practice the Winter Solstice Festival and the four Celtic Fire Festivals, which he led at London and in Glastonbury.”(Book blurb)
For information about OBOD see http://www.druidry.org/
August 8, 2019
CHILD OF THE NOW
“They said to him
‘Tell us who you are
so that we may believe in you.’
He answered them
You search the face
of heaven and earth,
but you do not recognise
the one who is in your presence
and you do not know how to experience
the present moment.
“We are always asking for signs and omens so that we may believe. It is as if we want to be compelled from outside ourselves. But Yeshua offers no proofs, omens or explanations. He is what he Is. All who question must encounter him in the present if they want to see.
“He reminds us again that what we are looking for is already here and now. Here and now are the place and time to recognize, to experience, to taste the vastness of the present moment in all its dimensions of time, of space and of beyond space-time.
“The Gnostic is the Child of the Now.”
Jean-Yves Leloup The Gospel of Thomas: The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2005 (Translation from the Coptic and commentary by Jean-Yves Leloup; foreword by Jacob Needleman. English translation by John Rowe. Original French edition published 1986)
August 6, 2019
THE TAO OF URSULA K LE GUIN
“The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good authority.
“Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasises the uniqueness of the Taoist ‘sage’, his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated, and degraded, in most modern versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people have loved the book for twenty-five hundred years.
“It is the most lovable of all the great religious texts, funny, keen, kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous, and inexhaustibly refreshing. Of all the deep springs, this is the purest water. To me, it is also the deepest spring.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, introducing her own English version of the Tao Te Ching*
*Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Power and the Way Boston & London: Shambhala, 1998 (A new English version by Ursula K. Le Guin, with the collaboration of J.P. Seaton, Professor of Chinese, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
August 3, 2019
ENLIGHTENMENT IS NOW
“Enlightenment is always enlightenment about something. You don’t need to practice eight years to have some enlightenment. Enlightenment is our daily business. If you practice mindfulness and concentration you may get insight, or enlightenment, several times a day. Just breathing in, you can be enlightened about the fact that you are alive. To be alive is already a miracle. While breathing in and making one step, we allow the light of mindfulness to be lit like a candle in our heart. We know that to be walking on this beautiful planet Earth is a wonder. And that kind of awareness and insight can bring peace and happiness already. We don’t want anything else. To be alive, to breathe in, and to make one step, is already wonderful enough. This is already enlightenment. And with the light of mindfulness in us we become a saint, we become a Buddha, we become a bodhisattva. We are a light for the world.”
Thich Nhat Hanh The Other Shore: a New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries Berkeley, CA: Palm Leaves Press, 2017
July 31, 2019
WILLIAM BLAKE: ETERNITY
He who binds himself to a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
William Blake Complete Writings Oxford University Press, 1972 (edited by Geoffrey Keynes)
July 28, 2019
THE TEMPLE SPACE
“In this Temple Space (Aeon) you become all things,
and you see yourself no more;
and in that All-Other you become all things
and never cease to be yourself.
“Light and darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers and sisters. They are inseparable.
“This is why goodness in not always good, violence not always violent, life not always enlivening, death not always deadly …
“All that is composite will decompose
and return to its Origin;
but those who are awake to the Reality
without beginning or end, will know the uncreated, the eternal.
“The words we give to earthly realities engender illusion; they turn the heart away from the Real to the unreal. The one who hears the word God does not perceive the Real, but an illusion or an image of the Real.
“It is impossible to see the everlasting Reality and not become like it.
The Truth is not realised like truth in the world:
those who see the sun do not become the sun;
those who see the sky, the earth or anything that exists, do not become what they see.
“But when you see something in this other space, you become it.
If you know the Breath, you are the Breath.
If you know the Christ, you become the Christ.
If you see the Father, you become the Father”.
Jean-Yves LeLoup The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, And the Gnosis of Sacred Union Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2004 (Translation from the Coptic and commentary by Jean-Yves Leloup; foreword by Jacob Needleman. English translation by John Rowe. Original French edition published 2003.)
Like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip is a Nag Hammadi text, and a central one for a nondual current within Christian Gnosticism. In places the text seems almost Taoist (the fluid inter-relatedness of polarities within a greater unity, the suspicion of words and naming). For me it also resonates with the practice of Seeing in the tradition of Douglas Harding (see http://www.headless.org) It is one of my ‘special books’(see https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/
Contemplative Inquiry 