Winter Containment

While not a big fan of winter, this season perseveres in proving the value found in stripping down to the basics, the beauty revealed in moving toward the essence. Spiritual teachings stress the hard truth of suffering that is necessary in order to remove the superficial and to recover the True Self; for example, “die before you die,” “to thine own self be true,” and “He who knows himself (or his-self, his soul, his mind) knows his Lord.” The latter phrase is provocatively elaborated in an article by Dom Sylvester Houédard, “Notes on the More Than Human Saying: ‘Unless you know yourself you cannot know God.’” For example, he writes:

“The authentically Semitic act of gnosis (daath, yada ‘to know’) is always the fruitful experience of the one living God as Lord and so as obliging us; e.g. knowledge of God’s goodness to us imposing on us goodness to others. It is the certitude of faith fruitful in deeds; the knowledge that produces likeness and makes us like what we know, that deifies and makes us deiform.”

Houédard also links to the Creation and to “the essence prior to the creating word”:

“Whoever wishes to know the divine breath must first know the cosmos for he who knows himself knows his Lord who is manifest in him. (The ‘distress of the Divine Names at the non-manifestation of their effects’ prior to the creating word of command, is not only why the obligating command is for us to show the effects, but indicates that the divine and uncreated energies are themselves an eternal manifestation of the essence prior to the creating word: the former is developed by Eckhart, the latter by S. Gregory Palamas.)”

         Along these lines, Antonio Machado’s Llamó a mi corazón  has long been a favorite, memorized and often recited in Spanish and with Robert Bly’s English translation. The second end rhyme (viento/quiero) capsulizes the essential quest, the human/divine drama; and the entire poem radiates with images of the True Self. 

Llamó a mi corazón, un claro día,

con un perfume de jazmín, el viento.

 -A cambio de este aroma,

todo el aroma de tus rosas quiero.

Quiero translates as “want, wish, or love”; viento as “wind.” And as the ensuing lines tell, this wind speaks to the soul, calling to account for the tending of the garden: The human accountability for nurturing the divine spark poignantly noted with the longing for the aroma of the roses, the watering of the flowers, and heartbreak over the lost inheritance. As often shown in revelation, this wind carries the holy spirit, the breath of God, the communion to and from the Self.

     Like a compass needle, my directional finder points to “true self,” perhaps always, certainly as years advance. Far back in the beginning, only twenty-seven verses into the Good Book, we’re given our inheritance and destiny: “made in the image of God.” And yet, the currents of life confuse the signal system, or maybe the pathway back home takes threads of many colors, making the unique texture of each creation. 

In any case, the current clue that seems to be key to getting there comes in this teaching: “to know yourself is to know your Lord.” That magnetic pole star has been featured across religions and through varied major writers.

Readings resonate as soul guides, especially ones on gnosis/mysticism, suffering, and wholeness. As the season of winter draws inward, space has opened to engage volumes that previously seemed too demanding: C.G. Jung’s Aion, The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, Barbara Hannah’s Striving Toward Wholeness, and writings by St. John of the Cross, including Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross.

The swirl, stirring up muddy stuff from the bottom, among readings, dreams, and weather, seems to compose in the effort and evidence of holding together opposites. Barbara Hannah writes:

“In the empirical Self of psychology, light and shadow form a paradoxical unity, but in the orthodox Christian concept the archetype is split into two irreconcilable halves…

This inevitably involves us in a crucifixion of the ego between these two irreconcilable opposites. Of course, there can be no final extinction of the ego, for that would destroy all possibility of consciousness. The ego has to submit, however, to a continual crucifixion between the opposites, to those dreaded conflicts in duty…" (pp. 28-28, Lectures on Jung’s Aion).