Loving Old Leaves

 I’m loving these leaves that, although their more appreciated summer appearance and work has faded away, are now simply gathering winter sunlight into gold. This treasure of the leaves’ summer-to-winter transformation perhaps hints at the potential of changing values that is made available when a person moves from workplace into retirement. The promise of transformation draws from and draws us into the imaginal world. Where else can the gold hidden in dried leaves be envisioned? 

        The conception of an imaginal world presages riches through its capacity to compose a between-space, a zone of transformational meaning-making, even a new world where qualities feel more tangible, ones like love, beauty, and peace. This is not a world of escape but instead it’s the way for mediating heaven and earth.

     The “imaginal world” of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s age may at first sound strange, but perhaps it’s only because the stage/screen/page space of our contemporary world provides such meagre spiritual nurturance. Ten centuries or so ago, the vision of world-makers such as the Brethren of Purity guided eyes to contemplate the transmission between the beyond and the below.

… the Ikhwan al-Safa [Brethren of Purity] apply different names to the fundamental cosmic duality depending upon the qualitative relationship in view. . . they explain the principle involved in shifting perspectives: ‘Know that all these words are titles and marks. Through them allusion is made to forms, so that distinction can be drawn in ascriptions that are made among them. Thus one form is sometimes called material, sometimes substantial, … sometimes spiritual, sometimes corporeal, sometimes cause, sometimes effect, and so on’” (Tao of Islam, pp. 161-2).

     Sachiko Murata helps to open up this teaching by applying the yin/yang construct so that we can better comprehend the perspective shift involved in looking toward the Divine and turning to engage the creation. Her account reminds me of a stairway descending from God to First Intellect to Universal Soul and so on down to earth. Even the shifts in perspective seem to me to be participation in a creative act, in transmission. Murata describes the double role happening through the shifting in an imaginal world in the movement on the stairway, looking up and down:

“The Ikhwan say, for example, that the Soul is an accident (yin) in relation to the Intellect, but a substance (yang) in relation to things below itself…what is matter in one respect is form in another. . . the Intellect and Soul are each in turn a source of light and activity. The Intellect is God’s radiance, while the Soul is the Intellect’s reflection. The Soul is bright in relation to the corporeal world, but dark in relation to the Intellect. . . the Universal Soul is a spiritual being, born directly from the First Intellect, it is light. But it represents a movement in the direction of Nature, so it embraces the properties of darkness as well. Like any barzakh, it brings together the properties of the two sides.” (Tao of Islam, pp. 162-3).

     This teaching and explication are valuable to me as they pertain to the possibilities of living with the Imaginal World, a barzakh, a bringing together of Heaven and Earth, a living into the Kingdom of Heaven while on earth (cf. Luke 17:21 , “the kingdom of God is in your midst”). We look toward God so that the radiance we absorb can reflect into our vision of life below. While the earth seems unlikely ever to hold the fullness of Divine Justice or Love or Peace, by moving through the Imaginal World, we may be able to sustain good work. While God remains Beyond, my dealings with darkness in the world (e.g., involving injustice, hatred, and suffering) may be lightened by turning into the barzakh.

“Ibn al-‘Arabi and his followers … were concerned to find the roots of all qualities present in the cosmos in the divine reality, as that reality is described by God’s own Word. These qualities depend upon the relationships that exist between God and the creatures. . . these relationships are precisely God’s attributes or names.” Tao of Islam, p. 162

     If we are to find the treasure of the imaginal world, we may wish to retreat into a time that  believes in spirit. Now is a good time for such retreats, especially as it’s the only time we are given and therein time can be malleable. The “now” may have to be re-created by letting go of the false security of fact and the shallow fascination with busy-ness and material possession. The contemporary imaginal world of celebrities and superstars can be substantially surrendered to an imaginal world devoted to spiritual realization. We can allow words and images to reshape by shifting focus from one world to another. 

     Perhaps we can practice by seeing in our imagination (with the help of mixing photographic images) the presence of one season within another. The play shown above with the golden leaves remembers the lush summer even in the almost leafless winter. In the image shown here

 when I look at the iris garden in snowfall, I can also move into the gorgeous shape and color of springtime.

     Murata draws from Ch 11 of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Futuhat when she says: 

“Among created things, spirits are the most closely akin to the divine. They are more or less identical with the ‘divine breath’ blown into Adam. For Ibn al-‘Arabi and many others, the qualities of spirits stand at the antipodes of bodily qualities. Between bodies and spirits stand the souls (nufus), which partake of the characteristics of both sides. Hence souls are ‘imaginal,’ since they are both luminous and dark, intelligent and ignorant, high and low, and so on. . .The soul is, as it were, simply the face of the spirit turned toward the world of lowness and density. If the soul turns back upon itself it will see its own identity with the spirit. This is the path of spiritual realization and human perfection.” Tao of Islam, p. 144.