Certainty of a Higher Power

A recent dream played with finding the Way more by following a scent, like a dog tracking, rather than by logical planning, in the usual travel mode involving maps and guidebooks. The dream seemed to affirm the importance of going into the field of experience and trusting to revelation of the next step that’s taken expectantly with a nose sniffing the immediate moment. I believe the dream’s direction doesn’t say to discard the marvels of the mind, but instead it reminds that guidance for the individual pathway comes in attending to the edge of knowing, open to emergent consciousness, to liberated sense, to beauty and wonder. 

While still treasuring the written and spoken word, much of my journey has led into (re)sanctification of the body and into knowings that elude literacy. Early years were entrenched in fundamentalism, guarded against indulgence of the body (especially sex outside marriage); scripture was selectively forced to desacralize knowing through the body. Absolute priority was given to legalistic reading of biblical text as pronounced by persons asserting scholarly superiority. The decree was mind over body. 

         For many of us, this patriarchal model collapsed of its own bent when we pursued intellectual activity. Bart Ehrman’s account of his passage out of fundamentalism offers a clear example as he describes going from Moody Bible Institute to Princeton Theological Seminary (see “Commitment to Truth,” pp. 2-6 in Forged: Writing in the Name of God). As we advanced in academic degrees we found that sacred text yields a multiplicity of interpretation and not the prescriptive conclusions evident in fundamentalism. In a way, this emphasis on the mind leads back to the scripture in Philippians concerning the unique workings out of each individual’s prayerful accountability. (For more on this, see previous blogs: Oct 4, 2017, One God; many faiths and Mar 12, 2017, Going Where… )

                   The charge to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling properly brings a person to one’s knees which can also occasion a feeling of need to reclaim the authority of the body, not as indulgence but as grounded knowing, true to one’s own fingertips. As noted in other blogs, my personal attempts to recover authentic voice of body have featured natural horsemanship (e.g., Mar 27, 2017 To Tell the Truth and Jan 4 2018 Faces of the Beloved  ) and plant ecology (e.g., Jan 3, 2018 These Frosty Woods). Special gifts from these engagements include increased sense of and appreciation for harmony, for beauty, and for the interconnection of power/love.

     It’s far too simplistic to discuss the pathway to God in only two dimensions: body and mind. A more complete and more provocative notion of the Pathway for “spiritual wayfarers on their journey to God” is given in the commentary on Quran 2:189 in The Study Quran:

“Ibn ‘Ajibah, for example, notes in his commentary on this verse that spiritual wayfarers on their journey to God have three houses whose gates they must pass through: the Law (sharīʿah), the Spiritual Path (ṭarīqah), and the Truth (ḥaqīqah), each of which has three gates. The three gates of the Law are repentance, obedience, and reverence; those of the Path are sincerity, the purification from faults, and the realization of virtue; and the three gates of the Truth (also translated as the Reality) are concentration, contemplation, and gnosis (spiritual knowledge). That is to say, human beings should approach God through the means He accepts, the means He has given them.” Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (p. 83). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

It may be presumptuous to hope for the ninth gate, but it is a fascinating possibility: gnosis! The term and concept refuse to be nailed down and, in that way, require a light touch, open to surprise and insight. In general, gnosis involves “intuitive apprehension of spiritual truths.” The doorway seems to demand appreciation for the mind, the body, and still more.

     A special treasure of retirement comes in the space to immerse in varied readings with less disruption from other external demands. It also provides space for playing the readings into experience, including solitude and meditation. Probably these are prerequisites for entering the doorway of gnosis. Feeling the expanse of time for slow reading and the bodily awareness sharpened in solitude, I’m trying again to find my way into the density of Frithjof Schuon’s Gnosis: Divine Wisdom. Perhaps the best, maybe the only way to approach gnosis is as a “bhakta.” In his glossary to this edition, James S. Cutsinger says a bhakta is a “person whose relationship with God is based primarily on adoration and love” (p.182). Schuon affirms the necessity of letting go the dominance of literacy and single-mindedness:

“It is easy to understand the slight respect shown by bhaktas, or by some of them, for ‘word for word’ exactness in belief or worship… there exists a de facto supremacy of the magic of the soul over the correctness of the symbol and that account must be taken of this supremacy if one wishes to grasp every aspect of the eternal interchange between man and God” (p. 15).

        This “eternal interchange” is what I take the gateway of gnosis to offer. It’s what takes my breath away with opportunity to let it return, more golden in wonder. The throne of intellect is smashed so that, by grace, admission to God’s Intellect may be accessed.

“… sacred Scriptures remain the necessary and unchanging basis, the source of inspiration and the criterion of all gnosis. Direct and supra-mental intellection is in reality a ‘remembering’ and not an ‘acquisition’: intelligence in this realm does not take cognizance of something located in principle outside itself, but all possible knowledge is on the contrary contained in the luminous substance of the Intellect—which is identified with the Logos by ‘filiation of essence’—so that the ‘remembering’ is nothing other than an actualization, thanks to an occasional external cause or an internal inspiration, of an eternal potentiality of the intellective substance. Discernment exists only in relation to the relative even if this relative lies beyond creation and at the very level of Being, and this explains why the Intellect coincides in its innermost nature with the very Being of things; and this is why gnosis underscores the profound continuity between the diverse forms of consciousness of the absolute.     And why this consciousness, some will ask? Because the truth alone makes free; or, better still, because there is no ‘why’ with regard to the truth, which is our intelligence, our freedom, and our very being; if it is not, we are not.” (p. 16)

Wandering in the house of gnosis, I’m humbled, well aware I’m not getting it clearly. And yet, the scent I pick up tracks the Way, best I can tell. I sense the significance of going back out to the trees, to tending the raspberry patch that’s just beginning to yield ripe berries, and to return to the arena with our horse where our mutual training readies the discernment by “filiation of essence.”

Also, in another way, readiness for Schuon probably follows from feeling reassurance through reading Susan Wittig Albert’s memoir, Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place. Albert paints the hill country near Austin, Texas, land to which I owe early wandering from the literalist one-right-way. Her tribute to time spent tending plant life as a medium for growing the soul reassures me about the faint sense of importance I have around loving our woods and gardens. Is the sweat, the time, and money we dedicate to this labor well spent? Although I know the answer is “Yes!” and that the beauty of images found by the camera resonates powerfully, the kind of certainty still wavers before institutional “truth.” 

Perhaps I’d find further support in Philip Sherrard’s Human Image World Image: The Death And Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology. Duane Johnson’s review of the book says: 

“His [Sherrard’s] plea is simply that we need to restore the ancient and more unabashedly 'metaphysical' outlook if we are to stand any chance of averting the political, social, and moral disasters waiting for us by virtue of our having collectively embraced an unalloyed scientific 'world image’.”

 While I’ll probably check out Sherrard, I suspect the certainty I’m longing to trust comes not in the word-world but in another texture more like light, known by warmth and inner vision, more like the sense that the air has turned a golden color and some beauty is calling, longing to be loved. This kind of knowing senses and feels the higher power found by tending the inner garden, the one yearned for by Antonio Machado: “llamo un claro dia con un perfume de jasmin el viento”—the wind one brilliant day called to my soul with the aroma of jasmine… 

Meeting with the Ruler

“Because your path led to the firebird feather, your life now depends on finding the Firebird!”

In the telling of our story on Tuesday, one I’ve told perhaps twenty times, a nuance was coming through, one that I haven’t felt before and that seemed quite significant. “The Horse of Power” tells of a series of meetings between two archetypal figures: hunter and ruler. The nuance came in with an increased awareness of why the hunter had to bring the firebird before the ruler.

         I felt this keenly perhaps mostly because I’m looking at the firebird as a passion and I know that passion can be consuming. When a person gets possessed by a passion, he or she moves into dangerous ground. It’s like getting on a fiery stallion without having the skill to command it. Finding the firebird or the stallion or a passionate engagement is the proper task of the hunter, that part of a person that knows how to track the object of desire, the way Arthur pursued and found the hart. But the firebird can burn up a hunter who does not connect with the ruler, indeed, who does not serve the good ruler.

         Archetypally, the ruler stands for our capacity to bring order, in its varied meanings, into our lives. We command action, and we organize for survival, for efficiency, for productivity, even for happiness. A good ruler sees capacity and orders the worker to advance in development, even beyond the worker’s vision.

         My recent rides with Leg’cy have added my insight related to this. The advance in our capacity has required me to increase the support I’m giving with the reins and from my legs. At earlier stages of our development, my attempts to increase contact with the reins would have been harmful and increased pressure from my legs might have been dangerous. As my skill and sensitivity have improved, however, the higher level of contact is now needed in order to support Leg’cy. This allows us to hold a new form while we learn and adjust to the more elevated motion. If I get stuck in my previous enactment of respectful and safe connections, our advance gets stifled.

         Similarly, the interactions between the ruler and the hunter adjust as the development advances. The ruler commands the hunter, “Because you have brought in the firebird feather, which no one has done before, you shall now go and bring in the Firebird!” A person can get stuck at the feather level.  This happens when a person feels that his or her hunt is at the peak of accomplishment. If we have that mindset, we see the ruler’s command as cruel, greedy, and tyrannical.

         If our imagination advances, however, so that we can accurately envision a ruler who sees capacity beyond the present accomplishment, we might realize that the ruler is holding the reins in a way that supports elevation. Once we know the entire plot line in the “Horse of Power,” we’re aware that the story traces the development of the hunter into the ruler, and we can consider the demands along the way as the shaping of this development. The journey may be demanding; as the song goes, “I never promised you a rose garden.”

         Our next story, “Lion Time,” repeats this theme of development with a nice variation. In case you haven’t heard the story yet, I won’t give away the plot line here; but after you enjoy it on that first-time level, return to absorb it on the archetypal level because the teaching is important about how fear must not stop our journey. We saw this in “Horse of Power” when the archetype of power warns, “If you pick up that feather, you will learn the meaning of fear.” Our enactment of power requires discernment about fear. Sometimes we should back off and other times we move through the fear; discernment depends on a positive and strong connection between the hunter and the ruler.

         In “Horse of Power,” the hunter receives guidance from the horse and commands from the ruler. In “Lion Time,” the emergent ruler receives the teaching from a series of experiences. As you can see in the video, I interpret this series as developments of an accomplished person; the experiences build the complete personality that is necessary prior to presuming to lead. This attention to becoming well-rounded reminds us of Teig in “One Without a Story” who mastered craft, art, religion, and science on his way to his new profession. One reason we lack powerful leaders who inspire dedicated support comes in our flat structures that allow movement into elevated positions when persons have not developed the necessary structure. In “Lion Time,” this is imaged as facing the lion.

         We’ll apply the sequencing of experiences in our work next week and we’ll integrate it into the design of our final digital media project.

Destiny Directions

           Each of us would like to know which way to go. What major is the right one? What are the exact directions for the next project? At this crossroad, which road leads home or to success or happiness?

            For better and worse, each individual has a distinct fingerprint, DNA, gift, purpose, and destiny. The truth, then, does not come packaged in a uniform prescription or a computerized program that has never entered the individual’s evolving mind, heart, and soul. And there’s multiplicity—so while each person is individual, we also share history, love, and futures. Our destinies today invite us, maybe even command us, to cooperate in advancing peace and justice. And simultaneously the order says be true to the unique whorl that marks individually the distinct reasons for being here.

            Since we don’t have one right way and because the intention is to discern destiny, the projects in Good Stories diverge, as it were, into the woods. The scent of a good pathway depends on picking up the vibrations that resonate with inner sense as it longs for the source. The design of a good project hinges on good tracking. 
           Some trackers find the way by retracing old ground picking up more subtle cues. Others race ahead with support from guides and travel through history, cultures, and fascinations with people and places across time. Destiny often demands building character and feel by enduring tasks and engaging obstacles.

            Keep in mind our ruler archetypes. Arthur had to go alone on hands and knees through the thorny bracken. The chief Kanu stayed in place, grieved, and blessed the unwanted by commissioning them into the quest. And the sister claimed the golden water by plugging her ears against threats and enticements.

            Also note that the guide has many appearances and can change form. After being tantalized by the Maiden Tsar, Ivan needed direction from the scary Baba Yaga and the kindly grandmother. Teig, thrust from his comfort zone, depended on the old man and later the black-haired damsel. The sister who yearned for the Golden Water showed courtesy to the devout woman and asked permission for a strategic ploy from the haystack hermit before relying on advice from the Talking Bird.

            What kind of task and obstacle calls to you from the stories? Often listeners to Good Stories resonate with little Coot whose dive succeeded even though the treasure appeared initially only as a speck of mud but turned into the generative matter. We’ll soon meet Tatterhood, an unlikely combatant as she takes on the trolls and witches of the world. And we’ll enter the trials of Psyche, remembering that her name means “soul” and her connection is to Love.

            So you have to choose: Do you need to amplify the old ground in order to amp up your feel for what is resonant? Are you drawn more to explore the fascinating folks and travel into history or futures for models that give hints for your own? Do you want to study guides and/or tasks that point the way and build character.

         Mostly listen to your heartbeat and follow the longing.

    

Transformation from the Ugliest

Remember in the story of Arthur (Marriage of Gawaine & Ragnell) that the ruler returned to the hunt. We discussed how the fundamental role of Ruler focuses on providing order and manifesting justice. For the ruler to return to the archetypal role of hunter suggests that order and justice in the realm is not being satisfied. The ruler anticipates what is needed for civilization to adapt to new possibilities and is willing to go hunting with the search party when the time is ready.

         An archetypal hunt aims at the unknown; typical images include the forest primeval and the ocean depths. Ivan’s search for the Beloved ventured there toward the place “beyond the thrice ninth sea.” Hunters intend to bring back the treasure needed for the good of the realm. The “realm” includes both the full development of the individual, of consciousness, and of society.

         Our Good Stories aim at advancing into needed levels of peace and justice. We believe that’s good work.  It’s what story and art are for. And it’s our destiny!

         Imagine yourself into a story, like Arthur’s, that does this. Part of you fills the role of ruler giving order to your life, searching out your destiny, advancing peace and justice. What question might you find in your hunt? Arthur’s life depended on entering the question: What does a woman want most in all the world? What does the claim on your life demand that you search out?

         Don’t be surprised if the quest enters nonsense, trouble, and deception. King Arthur stands as the prime exemplar of the sovereign ruler with the Round Table at the cutting edge of civilization, chivalry, righting wrong. And still the idea that woman and the feminine could be equally sovereign appeared as the ugliest creature ever seen.

         I think it still does. Deep levels of caring (tending the “other” in the ditch, health care for everyone, respect for “illegals”) are perennially pictured and repeatedly appear as something ugly. Our task is to participate in transforming the “beast” into the beauty. The edge of civilization and consciousness continuously roils, an exigence in urgent need of realization.

         Remember how the strangers to Kanu’s village were first seen as undesirables. Even the chief could not spell out how their nature would advance the good of the community, but their positive contribution was anticipated. And they did the unthinkable (although they got big-headed about it) in returning the treasure to the village. As in most Good Stories, the treasure is textured in the journey: the diamond for the community involved the realization that “ugly” strangers turn out to be the major contributors to the advance of civilization.

         Apply this to your own quest. How might it be that the direction you must take will likely lead you into what looks like the ugliest creature? Connect a part of yourself that looks undesirable (like Jack’s bumbling about or the Lazy Man’s apparent inferiority in contrast with Mr. Industry). Remember the special capacity of Jung’s “inferior function” that draws forth the vitality needed if we are to engage the big questions.

         You might begin by preparing the resonant images from the stories. Put yourself into the picture with one of those ugly creatures, like a Shrek-ish character. You might return to the stranger with whom you made resonance in Kanu’s village. What unexpected characteristic offers a link enabling you to adventure further into your destiny? While we often can’t see the far-off destination, we can identify challenges in stories that build the character to move further in the process.

         Another way into this journey comes in the sense of longing. The Kuan Yin story starts with an “ugliest creature” although we might not initially recognize the ugliness. Their community was known only for racing on swift horses and shooting arrows. Something vital was missing and no one knew it until the FisherMaiden came. This figure (like the Maiden Tsar, even like Ragnell, and also similar to Teig’s loss of basket-making supplies) brings awareness of a need, a desire, a longing.

         Now, as you’ve heard me say in many stories, what takes a day in Storyland might mean a decade in Everyday. So don’t expect that the sense of longing will show us the destination with a few clicks of the computer. We can, however, play around the points of resonance, and digital media production offers a terrific field to do this.

         Let’s engage the archetypal figure of ruler and amplify around it, picking up clues about qualities shown in the story. How does Arthur relate to the task? For example, he crawls through the thorny bracken on his hands and knees, and he takes on the trouble alone. But then Knight Gawaine (like a secondary function within us) confronts the ruler about the need to share the task.

         Arthur, in the traumatic manner (also shown in Ivan’s confrontation with the “tutor”), has to discern between rules: the old law told him to follow Gromer’s demand that he tell no one (in other words, BE HEROIC—do it alone!) and the new law that’s trying to emerge, saying “Cooperate, please.”

         Again, the texture of the story tells the nature of the answer to the life-or-death question. The ruler has to trust in the relationship, and so does the knight. The Native American teaching sounds the answer: all-my-relations. All the characters in the story participate in the passion of the advancing culture. For example, the ruler has to suffer letting go of control, just as the beloved (Ragnell) has to endure being treated as something ugly, and the protagonist (Gawaine) has to give up illusions of superficial beauty. The challenge calls for kinship taking precedence over control, both within our individual development and in social structures.