thoughts on spiritual awakening in today's world
Just sharing an observation from my teacher tonight:
>Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except though me.” Buddha said, “In the heavens above, and the earth beneath, I alone am the Most-Honored One.” Krishna said, “I am the **me** in everyone.”
>This would all seem very confusing, until you realize that Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna didn’t say anything. The One Spirit spoke through them all, and does through all who realize the One.
I finally posted my review of Dandelion Wine. It was much harder for me to write than I expected; it’s so difficult to find to words to speak further about what Bradbury has expressed so perfectly. Something else that makes it difficult is that Dandelion Wine brings up memories of insights and revelations long-lost in childhood. Not only does reading it require processing, but writing about it does, too.
I re-read Dandelion Wine this year, and I was struck by how much had gone completely past me before–for instance, how very *Buddhist* this picture of small-town Americana is, with its lessons on the impermanence and *dukkha* of the world, grasping as the cause of suffering, the freedom of non-attachment, and the courage required of compassion.
It even has a story in it about reincarnation–I never remembered that being there! It’s an amazing book. If it’s been a while since you’ve read it, treat yourself again.
I also posted a poem I wrote on Dandelion Wine, and the original AANVVV version of it as well. A few days ago, I posted my review of The Wisdom of the Enneagram along with mini-reviews of other Enneagram books and links to major Enneagram information sites
I never realized, that all my spiritual *thinking*, is actually resistance to spiritual *trusting*.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m on the *jnana* path or the *bhakti* path–the way of knowledge or of devotion, the mind or the heart. On the enneagram, I’m almost an even split between the rational, analytical **five** and the bohemian, emotional **four.** It’s not that I feel split within myself, but I see that this *thinkingfeeling* tends to be divided in most spheres of life.
When I was in school considering my future career, I was torn between the arts and the sciences. I had never fit into a clique–I was too geeky for the bohemians, and too artsy for the nerds. I’m often intolerant of shoddy research and people who simply don’t investigate things. And I’m amazed by people who are oblivious to God and to wonder.
In spiritual practice, there are similar divisions–simply because there is a path for everyone, and most people identify more with the mind or the heart. Most religions tend to favor the heart. Think Christian praise and contemplation, Hindu *kirtans,* Sufi *zikr* dancing, and even some Buddhist chants. But Zen is a rather “heady” way, as is Self-inquiry, and St. Loyola made even contemplation seem rather matter-of-fact.
It doesn’t matter. Either the heart or the mind can be the bridge to the Spirit, as long as the Spirit is allowed to do what It will. When I stopped wondering about wonder… this came:
i open my eyes and You . . . are there. i close my eyes and You . . . are here. all i need to feel is to stop ... feel. You ... there You ... here. "Ever desiring, one beholds the manifestations. Ever desireless, one drowns in the mystery." breathing water so sweet, why should i want to live?
Score one for bhakti? Oh, but then I went to a computer and posted it on the Internet. Feelingthinking.
I’ve got to say that I wasn’t terribly impressed by Narnia. That’s not to say that Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a bad movie—far from it—but it isn’t a great one, either. In all fairness, Narnia was a most risky endeavor to bring to the screen for a number of reasons: its adult fans have a nearly religious devotion to it, and its stature has grown in their imaginations through the years, turning it into a mythic story it never dreamt of being. Deviate from the book, and the wrath of those fans will rain down upon you. Don’t deviate enough, and you’ll end up with a tale that’s as unassuming as the book they think they remember. It’s a Catch-22.
Director Andrew Adamson (his name translates as “Man, Son of Adam”—got to admit that’s cool, huh?) managed to slide between those two dangerous possibilities, and instead created a film that wants to have it both ways—a heroic adventure on one hand, and a charming fairy tale on the other. It’s more successful on the fairy-tale side.
The scenes of the children in England are quite believable, and the two youngest kids, Georgie Henley (Lucy), and Skandar Keynes (Edmund) are simply brilliant in their roles. However, the screenplay never quite draws us in. We never feel they’re in danger, whether bombs are falling around them in London, or if an evil witch is pursuing them. I would’ve liked more time seeing their characters developed. James McAvoy, who gave us one of the best perfomances ever as Leto in Children of Dune, has a pitch-perfect performance as the faun Mr. Tumnus, and his scenes with Lucy are probably the best in the entire movie. William Moseley (Peter) and Anna Popplewell (Lucy) are under-used, and at 18 and 17 respectively, they may soon become too old for the following movies. The White Witch (Tilda Swinton, fresh off her role in Thumbsucker) is deliciously evil when we meet her, yet we there’s some disappointment in entering her unimposing castle.
Things further slide when spring comes to Narnia. Yes, you’ll believe that beavers and wolves can talk, and Aslan is beautiful and majestic. But his camp is a collision of gaudy red-and-gold tents and costumes, without a hint of dust to be found. The land ends up looking like a garish painting, not a place where a lion might leave his tracks upon the soil. Although it is a children’s fairy tale, Lewis told Narnia with humor, passion, and depth, which are all in short supply here. The kids barely react to their fantastic surroundings in Narnia, so we don’t either. Furthermore, in spite of their call to ascend the Narnian thrones, there is no believable transformation going on. A couple of brief scenes are supposed to show the children training to become warriors, but the shots of kids awkwardly swinging around heavy swords are just embarrassing. Without human adults in Narnia, who’s going to teach these kids martial arts? The beavers?
Lewis described the battle against the White Witch in a couple of short paragraphs. Here, it’s like a diet version of a scene in The Lord of the Rings; for the children it has to be restrained and it is, but for adults, it’s awkward and long, all which raises the question of why it needs a massive battle scene at all. And it’s a zoological mess. Polar bears, leopards, minotaurs, and phoenixes fight in the same scene. It’s as though everything a kid might like is thrown into the mix, just to be sure. Pour in the menagerie and turn on the blender.
I’ll say little about the spiritual symbolism of Narnia, since entire volumes and dissertations have been written about it. Yes, the symbolism of the book is still there, Aslan still dies, resurrects, and forgives. However, I winced at the scene in which Peter gives the battle cry For “Narnia and Aslan”. Enough of that. Enough of war “for Jesus,” “for Allah,” “for [insert divine name here]”. Sure, the battle is “not of this world;” it’s about the spiritual war, the struggle within our souls to become like Christ, united with God. But now and throughout the ages, we have projected our neighbor as the enemy, instead of our own lack of love. Peter’s battle cry doesn’t help clarify things for those who confuse them.
I like Lewis as much as the next guy, yet I think it’s sad that so many Christians can’t see the spiritual reflections in any stories but these, when so many stories, intentionally or not, are packed with symbols of spiritual sacrifice, resurrection, and redemption, and often of a much subtler and higher order than this; e.g. The Matrix, Pleasantville, and Spider-Man 2, to name just a few. (If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out Hollywood Jesus. My friend David Bruce taught me how to look at contemporary film with a spiritual eye, and chances are excellent he can do the same for you.)
From what I’ve read, although they were close friends and Lewis admired Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Tolkien disliked Lewis’ creation, finding it a jumble of beasts and magics with no rhyme or reason other than allegory. There’s little sense in it. Why does Narnia need not one, but four monarchs to govern it, when there’s no governing to do? And both Cair Paravel and the Witch’s castle are so empty they seem little more than places to display thrones. In the books, these aren’t problems at all, but simply exercises to use our imaginations even more as the charm unfolds. Yet after $150,000,000 has been spent on the film, I find myself wishing for more depth and plausibility.
Adamson could have done better, but largely the problems are with the source material. The best Narnia adaptaion might have been to leave it very much the children’s fairy tale, full of charm and rich, grandfatherly voice-overs from the narrator, but in the age of The Lord of the Rings, that would be an unlikely sell. And turning it into a convincing world where good and evil are fighting to the death would distort it beyond recognition. Still, it’s not a bad attempt—but a somewhat disappointing one.
Movie stills © 2005 Walden Media.
I’m sure that most of my blog’s regular readers know what I mean by feeling “the Presence of God.” Yet I wonder how many people in the general population know it. Is it something that most sense a few times in their lives, or that most “believe in” but do not feel? I don’t know. Our language is poorly equipped to express it, and our cultures, including many of our churches and religious environments, don’t really encourage it, either.
As for myself, I usually have a sense of God’s presence with me–a knowing of presence that’s definitely more than “belief” although it’s not always a conscious thing. Yet whenever I turn my mind or heart to God, very, very definitely, that *presence* has been there.
Today, something odd happened, in a perfectly ordinary moment at work, I suddenly felt God’s presence again, and realized that I hadn’t realized that I hadn’t felt it for weeks. It was a strange (though welcome!) revelation… kind of like if I’m looking for my cat in his usual hiding places, and turn and see that he’s on the bed, amused by the fact that he had hidden himself in plain sight.
Although I know God wasn’t absent, it was strange that he seemed to be, and doubly strange that I didn’t notice that the feeling of presence was absent until it returned. I find it sad to think this may be what many, if not most, people’s spiritual lives are like most of the time.
Hidden Presence it was like you had gone. i was here, alone behind my eyes, alone in my home, alone in my car and cubicle. days ended and days began, days faded into days, and I was alone. so suddenly, you're back, like the sun breaking through the cloud, like the fading twilight revealing heaven's stars like the passing of the winter uncovering the life that was there all the time, always. so why do you hide my love, my lord? why do you play these games so cruel, so tender, pretending to be absent? next time may it be i absenting myself in you.
In her famous book Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg describes how her roshi instructed her to begin using her writing as a form of meditation. Recently, my teacher, Kitabu Roshi », gave me a similar assignment, especially through writing poetry. He also instructed me to not write from my mind, but spontaneously, like freewriting, to let the Spirit direct me.
I’ve written a lot of poetry, and I used to have a couple of dozen original poems on this site. Most of my stuff was this outrageously joyful mystic rave in full keeping with my “holy fool” personality. What’s been coming since beginning poetry as meditation is new to me. It’s pretty unfiltered, it shows me what’s there, whether I want it to or not. Some is still the Frimster’s shout, and some shows the deep cries of my heart, and some is a little different:
Subjects
...
My self mailed me an email
To explain myself to me.
The hours I spent teaching me
what I myself don't know.
Norfolk Upanishad I sit listening Listening to the sound of Your spirit and hear my thoughts. But they are not mine. I do nothing to make them come, can do nothing to make them stop, bubbles in the ocean. I'm never so rich as when I have nothing. Listening in the dark to what comes, what goes. Listening in the heart to the beat, the pulse. It's not I. I do not think to live Something lives which is greater than me Auricle, ventricle, expand, contract. Squeezing life from matter. Hear it in your head Hold it in your heart-- The sound of life. One life. That One's you. And me. Pulsing Everywhere. Every one. One. © jon zuck, january 16, 2005, norfolk, virginia
On a related note, Meredith and Akilesh have a wonderful post » on their blog » which discusses a passage from the journal of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the minister/poet/mystic, at the “precipice” of going into no-self. I highly recommend reading this post in depth. This is probably the most concise and lucid description of what I call “awakening” spirituality, and Akilesh’s metaphor of “the precipice” is a wonderful explanation of the point that leads from mere mysticism into the transformation of consciousness, theosis, fana, or enlightenment.
I most definitely relate Meredith’s statement about coming to the precipice, but not yet being able to jump into the void. Boy, can I relate to that! Everyone, please give yourselves a treat and read that post!
What Is Enlightenment? » magazine has an excellent review » of What the #$*! Do We Know?, the movie which I had considered a mixed bag of entertaining, popularized science on the one hand, and grossly deficient pseudo-mysticism on the other.
WIE’s writer Tom Huston explains in great depth the missing pieces glossed over by the Ramtha students’ film, from the alternate views of the nature of quanta (e.g. probability waves is only one interpretation), to the insufficiency (and egocentric motive) of the New Age platitude “we create our reality.”
Mystical practice is traditionally aimed toward the mind-shattering revelation that there is actually only one reality and one self, and this revelation is said to liberate the individual from his or her attachment to personal desires. So if we’re pursuing the manifestation of our desires by consciously manipulating the quantum field, and thereby attempting to re-create reality itself in our own image, how spiritual can that be, really?
He concludes with a very intriguing suggestion about the cause of the film’s popularity:That we should even feel the need to overcome the doubt of the scientific materialist worldview indicates how all-pervasive it actually is, and how thoroughly steeped in it most of us are. In fact, the very need to base our belief in the transcendental Divine on the findings of science seems indicative of the strange spiritual desert in which we currently find ourselves. . . .
There’s some powerful wisdom in these words, which applies to a lot of us, from those who strain to prove prophecies with current events, and the Creation with fossil records, to those segments of the current “spiritual” subculture that lack a vision of their own.
Why is it so hard to just rest in God?
Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
Jesus
My spiritual life has seen a lot of changes. After my Baptist childhood, I had a “born-again” experience in my early teens, and began to see my life with God as a spiritual adventure, which I lived in a wide variety of Christian environments, from Methodism, Messianic Judaism, and the Charismatic movement, to the Disciples of Christ, Lutheranism, and Catholicism.
In addition, ever since my college years, I’ve been learning as well from other religions, and in the last several years, it’s become much more than academic. I study with a Zen master, and sometimes pray in temples as well as my own church. I read the *Upanishads*, *Tao Te Ching*, and *Dhammapada* in the same light which I read the Gospels.
I sometimes don’t know whether to think I’m a part of all religions or apart from all religions. All I can say is I hear the voice of God in a lot of places, and I want to see and know everything as part of God’s self. (I like your self-description of “freelance panentheist,” Darrell!)
But it isn’t easy for me. Being both introverted and single, I find it a lonely path. I’m often misunderstood, and sometimes I can’t effectively reach out to others because they find me too “far out,” or heretical, to hear me. I’ve had the experience of sometimes feeling like an outsider in my church. If I’m paying attention, the Creed can be difficult. I stand silently during it, or recite it with my own wider-than-usual interpretations in mind!
So I’m wondering what it’s like for you… Do any of you have similar problems, or is that all far behind you? Do you sometimes feel torn? Misunderstood? Even guilty for going farther than what your friends or family consider to be “within bounds?” Have you had to make a “clean break” with some of your past religious environments? What do you do to integrate the different traditions and experiences you learn from within your life?
I just rewrote and restored three old pages to the site. Buddha, by Karen Armstrong, also her wonderful and brilliant A History of God, and, now, back by popular demand, my old page The Lotus and the Cross: Common Threads in Buddhist and Christian Spirituality.
See, the old pages **are** being restored! It just takes time; my perspective has changed so much in the last couple of years that almost every page of my site has to be rewritten to some degree. For instance, I’ve been studying Zen now for a year, and that makes a big difference. It may not sound like much if I say that the main change is that I’m shedding conceptual beliefs, but if you’re as wrapped up in them as I was, it’s pretty significant.
As I was developing this site from 1996 until around 2000, I still had the very mistaken notion that mysticism would give “the Answer,” that replacing some beliefs with better beliefs would bring me to God’s truth. That’s like saying the number ten is closer to infinity than the number nine!
Over the last few years, I began to realize that God’s reality is inexpressible, but I couldn’t find the right way to convey the change in my perspective on my site, which had over 140 pages by early 2003. Finally, I took down almost everything, started blogging my current thoughts, and restoring old pages, slowly, in their own time. More are coming, but this is all for today.
That’s Jedi life in the real world.