Spiritual inquiry | Contemplative Inquiry

December 11, 2014

AWEN SPACE

I’ve heard it said that attempting to describe actual spiritual practice is folly. It’s like pinning up butterflies for display – you retain the husk whilst losing the flight. But sometimes the endeavour seems worth the risk. I want to talk about the group practice of ‘awen space’ that forms a part of my Druidry.

My local contemplative Druid group met for two hours last Tuesday, 9 December. We connect for two hours in the afternoon on the second Tuesday of every month, except for May and November – a pattern that has now lasted for just over a year. In those months we meet for a full Saturday, sometime after the festivals of Beltane and Samhain. The days offer the advantage of time for a greater variety of practice, the presence of people from outside our local catchment area, and an introductory space for new members. 19 people are now at least provisionally involved, and we have decided to close the group. The Tuesday sessions offer a greater sense of continuity, a more intimate atmosphere, and even greater focus and simplicity. Attendance currently fluctuates between five and nine. This week eight of us were present.

Our usual structure for a two hour session tends to be

Pre-meeting for greetings and refreshments
Entry into sacred space through a brief ritual opening
Group check in
A period of silent sitting meditation (about 20 minutes)
A move into the awen field (for about 35-40 minutes)
Group check-out
Exit from sacred space
Farewells

Although our use of ritual is lean and parsimonious, it is a very important part of this process. It is the first step in making our attention intentional, and in turning a domestic hearth into a nemeton. Over time, we have tended to favour putting our personal check-ins and check-outs within the nemeton, since we are entering into sacred relationship as well as sacred space, tuning into each other as part of the practice – not just as a preliminary or warm-up. We use a talking stick process for this, to emphasise the intentional and ritualised aspect of what we are doing.

I think of the awen space as being the most distinctive part of the session. We enter the space through a repeated chanting of awen – how much, or whether we ‘cascade’, depends on our sense of the moment – and then enter silence, consciously together rather than meditating side by side as in the simple sitting meditation that precedes this practice. We may maintain this collective and relational silence or we may choose to sing, chant or say things. In this sense it is an interactive practice albeit a subtle one. It is most powerful when we can hold back from entering into actual dialogue and exchange whilst at the same time moving with the current of communication and relationship which we are generating both through our silence and our utterance. There’s a fine point of balance and tension here. When the awen space is over – it’s over, so it’s not strictly timed. There’s a person whose job it is to lead us both into and out of the space and they make the call. Usually it reflects everyone’s sense of the appropriate ending. We chant awen on our way out of this space as well as into it.

In this context we experience awen, Druidry’s subtle magic, as an energetic field in which we are inspired to be more open and receptive to each other – and at times to find authentic here-and-now language for our felt sense of co-presence and connection within an enlivened space. So it’s something within and between us when we are together, not so much a lightning flash from above. Sometimes our experience completely flows; sometimes it’s more halting. The space gives us a mirror, say rather an echo, of what we bring to it on the day. The physical space matters too – on Tuesday it was a space of wood burner glow and tiny lights in a deepening dusk, and a circle of people working gently together. For me, the feeling-tone and the imagery of this space, lodged in the shifting ever-now of memory, are my key reference point for ‘contemplative Druidry’ as a unique spiritual note. And I am made even more grateful to be able to practice in this way with a group of good companions.

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December 1, 2014

BOOK REVIEW: THE AWEN ALONE

The Awen Alone, by Joanna van der Hoeven, is an economically and elegantly written introduction to modern Druidry for readers with a serious interest in practising. I like the use of awen, Druidry’s subtle magic, as the key word in the title. In the way that the author uses the term, it gets us straight to the point of why we practice.

The introduction skilfully builds rapport by bringing us into the rhythm of a normal working day. Only it isn’t quite everybody’s normal – it’s a reframed normal for a re-enchanted world and an intentional relationship with it. Joanna starts, in a matter-of-fact way, with a “Hail to the Day and Days Sons; farewell to Night and her Daughters” and ends with “Farewell to Day and Day’s Sons; hail to night and her Daughters”. In between, there are grumbles about the price of ethical toiletries alongside an affirmation of their value; a commitment to emotional intelligence amidst the stresses of working life, a noticing of what is going on in the landscape whilst travelling and in the garden at home, a soft threshold prayer to Nemetona, Lady of the Sanctuary, and a period of formal meditation.

The messages I would get from this as an inquiring reader are the intended ones. Druid life is shown to be the same life as anyone else’s, albeit lived with a distinctive quality of wonder and attention. Moreover, it is entirely possible to live such a life without being part of a Druid community.

The book is carefully structured into three parts.

The first is about the basics of Druidry. It covers current views of Druid history; looks at what Druidry is; investigates the meaning of the key term awen (more about this below); explores deity in Druidry (some modern Druids are theistic and others not); affirms connection to ancestors (of blood, place and tradition); and describes the eightfold wheel of the year and its celebration.
The second is about Druidry in practice. This looks at the roles of meditation, prayer, inner pathworking (guided meditation), outer pathworking (walking with awareness outside); altar creation and sacred space; seasonal rituals and other work connected with the seasons; and craft names.
The third is about creating one’s own path and includes chapters on designing Druid ritual, daily practice and a more general consideration of “walking your own path”.

All of this work is well presented and gives a good overview of the way many Druids today think and practice. For me however, the really distinctive feature of this book is its discussion of awen. Awen is classically thought of as creative inspiration in a sudden, lightning flash form. But Joanna links awen, as inspiration, to the breath. The air we breathe is all around us. We take it in and give it back, a little bit changed. “The inspired Druid exhales the inspiration gained”. Awen is right here, in the web of what is, inherently present in the communication and relationships which make our interdependence work, enabling our creative choices and their results. For Joanna, awen is therefore linked also to our responsibility for personal awakening:

“Awake to our own energy and stretching out towards the energy of nature around us, we begin to see just what awen is. It is the opening of oneself … to see into the nature of all beings and indeed to see into the nature of simply being. … For awen to exist there must be relationship. We cannot be inspired unless we are open and we cannot be open unless we are in relationship, whether that is with the thunder, the blackbird or a god”. Joanna develops this theme further, seeing a cyclical process of giving and receiving at the heart of awen as we release ourselves “into the flow”. Ultimately we can be so attuned to “the threads that connect us all” that we can be inspired all the time – moving into the “bigger picture” of a compassionate and integrated life.

With this view of awen, at least as I understand it from reading the book, Joanna integrates her ‘Zen’ more fully into her Druidry. In the original Zen Druidry book, ground breaking as it was, I still had a sense of their being on parallel tracks. Thus The Awen Alone, although an introductory book, also offers an evolutionary step in the ‘Zen’ iteration of Druidry. For this reason it has importance not only to the inquirer and the newcomer, but to also to any Druid practitioner interested in the questions raised by this valuable work. Highly recommended.

Joanna van der Hoeven (2014) The Awen alone: walking the path of the solitary Druid Winchester: Moon Books

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November 24, 2014

A CONTEMPLATIVE DRUID EVENT

Thanks to the interest generated by Contemplative Druidry, members of the Gloucestershire contemplative group have set up an entity called Contemplative Druid Events. So far we have a blog at http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com/ and a forthcoming retreat.

The retreat is being held on the weekend of 17-19 April 2015 at Anybody’s Barn, Birchwood Hall, Storridge, Nr. Malvern, Worcestershire WR13 5EZ. Details of the retreat can be found on the blog.

I am excited by this prospect. It provides the opportunity to work with a larger group of people and to learn from them. Contemplative Druidry doesn’t come with a long specific tradition or an inherited set of practices and teachings. As modern Druids, we are engaged in an exploratory and co-creative enterprise. Events will extend the experience and understanding of participants and facilitators alike.

At the same time we do have a vision of what we are offering, and a sense of how the retreat will work. We will use the Friday evening to enter sacred space and move into introductions and a culture setting process. I consider the way in which we enter into relationship with the space and each other to be a highly significant part of the event and not just a warm up or preamble. It does much to determine the quality of living presence in the space, as important as any practice or activity. As for practices and activities – there will be sitting meditations and an introduction to what our existing local group calls “Awen Space”. Other offerings may include chanting, sacred movement, outside walking meditation and ‘lectio divina’ from the book of nature. We will likely make use of a fire pit on the Saturday evening.

The retreat also gives us the chance simply to be, alone and with fellow travellers, in a beautiful nurturing space. (After the opening process, every activity is an invitation to the participants, rather than a demand on them.) We will work with a maximum of sixteen people, including ourselves – there are five of us with facilitator roles from the Gloucestershire group. This is not the full capacity of the centre we are using, for we wanted a spacious environment on the physical as well as other levels.

I have a strong belief in this way of working and look forward to sharing it with new people.

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November 20, 2014

THE FEELING OF TASTE

Juicy apple, pear and banana,

Gooseberry … They all speak of

Death and life in the mouth … I have a presentiment …

Read it from a child’s expression

If she savours them. It comes from far, from far …

Aren’t you slowly becoming aware of something inexpressible in your mouth?

Where a moment ago there were words, a flowing discovery

Is released, startling, from the fruit’s flesh.

Venture to say what your apple is called.

This sweetness, which originally condensed itself,

Spreading out, slowly in being tasted rose up

To achieve a clarity, awake and of transparency,

Resonant of opposites, sunny, earthy, of the here and now – :

Oh the experience of it, the feeling, the joy -, immense!

From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Robert Temple

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November 17, 2014

NATURE LANGUAGE

Philip Carr-Gomm wrote an essay, Deep Peace of the Quiet Earth: the Nature Mysticism of Druidry, as his foreword to Contemplative Druidry (1). Emma Restall Orr talked about her own nature mysticism in a recent radio interview, published on Joanna Vander Hoeven’s Down the Forest Path blog (2). Last year Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist scholar and teacher who leads the ‘Community of Interbeing’ (and is now perhaps near the end of his journey) wrote a deceptively simple-seeming work called Love Letter to the Earth (3), with chapter headings like: We are the Earth, Practices for Falling in Love with the Earth and Ten Love Letters to the Earth.

These prompts have led me to reflect more deeply on how I use Nature language and what, specifically, I mean by it. Thich Nhat Hanh’s starting point (3) is a helpful one: “at this very moment the Earth is above you, below you, all around you, and even inside you. The Earth is everywhere. … The Earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the Earth and we are always carrying her within us. Realizing this, we can see that the Earth is truly alive … we can begin to transform our relationship to the Earth.” The overall point, familiar enough yet made here with fresh elegance and clarity, is one with which Druids and Buddhists alike can find a ready resonance. But its main effect on me this time round was to get me wondering about the language of Nature.

What do I understand by Nature? For me, the key word is Nature rather than Earth. The Earth is a subset of Nature, larger than you and me who are indeed contained within it, but still a subset. In my understanding, Nature is simply what there is. And ‘what there is’ seems to us, in this culture at this time, to have exploded out of a remarkably fertile emptiness, into the 3D and time-bound reality that our perceptions somewhat mesh with, and of course a great deal more outside our normal range and beyond our range entirely. We humans are wholly natural with all our known and realised potentials – and others too that are but dimly intuited and largely untapped.

We cannot individually encompass the whole of Nature. We must choose, at whatever levels of relative awareness, where to put our efforts and attention. Thich Nhat Hanh is pretty clear about his: he has a strong intent, which involves a mutually sustaining balance of contemplation and action. My key ‘contemplative’ choice, not feeling very accomplished, is to enter more fully into the Heart identity I spoke in my Heart Language post. This seems like a good thing for me, and likely to improve my relationships and connections, particularly with my local world – the Earth and its inhabitants. I could call it extending the human side of human nature, a natural thing for a human to do.

(1) Nichol, James (2014) Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential Amazon CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing

(2) http://downtheforestpath.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/interview-with-emma-restall-orr/

(3) Thich Nhat Hanh (2013) Love Letter to the Earth Berkeley, California: Parallax Press

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November 10, 2014

HEART LANGUAGE

I tend to feel most centred and empowered when using heart language. By ‘heart’ I don’t mean the physical heart, or even the heart chakra, but the mystical Great Heart, a place of ultimate stillness, where the microcosm of the human heart opens to the macrocosm. Some people, for example in the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, think of this as the consciousness that underlies all forms, the divine mind, the Self (1).

There are those, like the Sufi teacher Kabir Edmund Helminski (2) who, for the very best reasons, make a separation between Heart as “the subconscious/superconscious mind and all the faculties that are non-intellectual” and the thinking mind activated by will and reason. For me this creates a separation and dualism. In my world Heart includes the reasoning mind, and continues to hold it at some level, even though the existential angst of the reasoning mind itself may defensively lose connection with the greater whole.

I do however share the view that Heart is accessed through the growth of a sensitive awareness that allows us to be receptive and whole by entering in to a more spacious ‘I’, a more integrated quality of presence. Through a fine balance of passive and active attention we can view the present moment through the eye of eternity, a viewpoint from which many wounds can be healed, many mistakes forgiven, many losses accepted. Whilst Great Heart cannot be grasped or understood through consciousness alone, “we can see with its eyes, hear with its ears, act with its will, forgive with its forgiveness, and love with its love” (2).

1: Sally Kempton (2011) Meditation for the love of it: enjoying your own deepest experience Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True

2: Kabir Edmund Helminski (1992) Living presence: a Sufi way to mindfulness and the essential self New York, New York: Penguin Putnam

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November 4, 2014

ANCESTORS

I generally meditate in a Druid circle sitting in the northern quarter, facing south. It is early morning and my eyes are open, ideally with a soft and panoramic gaze. There is a curtained window in the south east, so I am alerted to the coming of the light. At one level, subtle shifts in the quality of light are just passing phenomena. At another level I experience myself in a liminal, numinous space, not entirely of this world, as I slowly re-engage with daily life.

According to the archaeologist Francis Pryor my positioning, and to an extent perhaps its meaning, is deeply traditional. In the long transition from ‘neolithic’ to ‘bronze age’ culture, north was the direction of the dead and the ancestral realm, and materially marked by stone; south was the domain of the living and the everyday world, and materially marked by wood. So I’m working with a spiritual sense of direction which in some ways echoes theirs, without being the same. It would make sense to me if this were true, for I am here on the same part of the earth, with the same relationship to the sun, as my ancestors of this period.

Talking in more detail about Avebury and Stonehenge specifically, Pryor proposes (1) that the great stone complexes, when fully developed in stone, were a place of the ancestors, of the dead. The place of the living, the place of wood, was to their south. Here is how he describes it:

“The second main period of ritual landscape development at Avebury recalls that at contemporary Stonehenge. Again we see the henge suddenly ‘harden’, with the construction of the great outer circle of massive stones, spaced around the inside of the henge ditch and two (actually three) inner circles of stones. This marks Avebury’s change into a new monument. The domain of the living would have been south of the Kennet, and access to the no man’s land between it and the realm of the ancestors would have been via the river and the great complex of great timber circles and enclosures recently excavated by a team directed by Alasdair Whittle. From this ‘reception’ area funeral parties would move to the West Kennet Avenue. Turning right, to the south, would bring them to the Sanctuary, which had also ‘hardened’ from a timber to a stone circle by this time. … Most parties visiting the ritual landscape in ancient times would have taken the processional route northwards, leaving the vast bulk of Silbury Hill on the left, a silent outpost on the edge of the next world. Eventually they would pass through the enormous portal stones that still guard Avebury’s southern entrance into the West Kennet Avenue. They were then within the circle of the ancestors.

“If travel, or some form of symbolic progression from one state to another, did play a significant part in the way ritual landscapes were experienced, it may also have been important to look backwards and forwards at the same time: backwards towards previous or existing states of being, and ahead towards worlds that were yet to come. Maybe that was why certain key transitional places, such as the Sanctuary or the King’s Barrow ridge at Stonehenge, were so important. To be able to look both ways can be a humbling experience, but it can also sharpen one’s sense of self and appreciation of the here and now. Archaeologists, in their natural enthusiasm to explain the workings of prehistoric minds and the landscapes they inhabited, should be aware that we will never explain all aspects of past spiritual experiences. There will always be lost dimensions of meaning and mystery – which is one of the things that make the subject so addictive.”

I don’t have the knowledge or standing to say whether Francis Pryor is right in his hypothesis, which as he says himself can only be tentative and provisional. I do deeply appreciate him for being willing to risk using his imagination, whilst informing that imagination with the best evidence that he can muster. He looks back to ancestors who in their turn show a high level of imaginative engagement with their own. We can read what he writes in our here and now and thus, within that here and now, are able to anchor a sense of continuity and connection, through our own imaginative openness. The people who built those monuments were essentially like us. They were mortal like us, and they knew it like us. They had a relationship with the earth, sun and stars like us. They had imagination like us. And they had a relationship with death and the unknown like us. Something to do with these characteristics that we share moved them to change their physical landscape. Those are the things that connect us, more importantly than details of custom or belief – rightfully fascinating though they are.

Pryor, Francis Britain BC: life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans HarperCollins e-books (Hardback first published 2003)

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October 21, 2014

DRUID CHANTS

Nimue Brown shares a chant that she offered in our Gloucestershire group and talks about chanting more broadly. Her chanting changed the space in the room, as resonant chanting does.

Druid Life

Music has always been a big part of my life, and I’m deeply attracted to the bardic threads in the Druidic weave. I’m also interested in meditation and contemplation. Unshockingly, this has led to time spent chanting. I even run the odd workshop on subverting and messing about with chants to make group singing more collaborative and playful. Let’s face it, there’s only so many times a bunch of people can sing ‘we all come from the goddess’ until it tails off in awkward silence. We are more likely to fall into tedium than reverie, if my experience in circles is anything to go by. I’ve long been interested in finding ways of changing that experience, for myself and for those around me.

I’ve been blessed with some excellent chanting experiences, too – most notably those led by JJ Middleway. His ‘enchanting the void’ sessions offer room for creative exploration…

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October 21, 2014

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUID RETREATS

Following the publication of ‘Contemplative Druidry’* I have been working on a residential retreat programme. It is likely that three of us from the Gloucestershire group (discussed in the book) will be offering a pilot next April, sponsored by OBOD (the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids). The proposed venue will take up to 20 people, which will allow us to do some real relationship and community building as well as sharing some of our practices. We don’t simply want to roll out a programme. Indeed, we hope to enrich our own work by learning from participants and extending our circle to include them if they wish it.

For me, the only way to strengthen the contemplative thread in Druidry is to build our work in a spirit of open inquiry and sharing, as well as holding a space for tranquillity and renewal through the practices themselves. This is why we are extending the work cautiously. We also hope to offer something at Druid Camp, Lughnasadh 2015, since many of the people in our local group and in the book are involved in The Druid Network. It’s not just an OBOD thing. Samhain this year will be the third anniversary of my commitment to a contemplative inquiry within Druidry. I’m looking forward to what the fourth year may bring.

*Contemplative Druidry is an Amazon CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing venture, involving me in learning a variety of new skills, and is mostly based on interviews with people involved in Druid contemplative practice. It includes a foreword by OBOD’s Philip Carr-Gomm.

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October 14, 2014

AWEN MANTRA MEDITATION

As part of my solo practice, I sometimes do Awen mantra meditation. Aah comes in with the inbreath and wen goes out with the outbreath. Classically, I have followed these two syllables into a felt sense of what has been called the Shakti of the mantra, the power of the mantra, its inner pulsation and grace. In my embodied poetry of practice, Awen resonates like the primal breath and energy of the Cosmos, a subtle vibration underlying the apparent world, welling from a paradoxically creative emptiness. Visually, if my eyes are shut, the world tends to dissolve into a river of tiny lights, set wide apart from each other. If they are open, my visual experience of space changes and boundaries become more porous. This tends to be a place of deep receptivity and renewal.

Just lately I have been experiencing Awen mantra meditation differently. I believe this relates to being more active in the world – paradoxically through the contemplative Druidry project itself, with its relationship building, writing and now publicising ‘Contemplative Druidry’, and the beginning of plans for retreats beyond the local group level. I like this side of things more than I anticipated, because it connects me in a different way. And I also find that, in these times, the Awen mantra meditation becomes more focused and directional. I start to have the traditional understanding of Awen, as creative inspiration, more in mind.

So working with the mantra takes on a sense of dedication and intent, and also an aspect of invocation. There is still a receptiveness in there, of making myself available to Awen, as a vehicle for it. But it’s not in the manner of possession or channelling, or any obvious sense of psychism. I have to keep my wits absolutely about me, hold my intent actively, use discrimination and make decisions.

When my contemplative work became a project as well as a practice, I feared that I would saw off the meditative branch that I am sitting on, and fall into a sort of repetitive busyness syndrome. Now I see a greater range of possibilities. Life and awareness are always moving, always in process, and require different means of grounding and centring at different times.

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Tag: Spiritual inquiry