The "Cipher" of a Mystery

 I’m remembering yesterday’s ride. The gift was so light it could have evaporated as if it never visited. We were circling the arena in an everyday rising trot, when I sensed a readiness for the canter transition, almost dreamlike softly settled in the saddle, and with scarcely any disruption of flow, almost seamlessly, we were cantering, as if an image took wing. Through an almost-everyday experience arises the opportunity to enter the intermediate world. I wonder about this phenomena as an embodied symbol in the sense articulated by Henry Corbin:

The symbol announces a plane of consciousness distinct from that of rational evidence; it is the “cipher” of a mystery, the only means of saying something that cannot be apprehended in any other way; a symbol is never “explained” once and for all, but must be deciphered over and over again, just as a musical score is never deciphered once for all, but calls for ever new execution. [p. 14, Alone with the Alone]

The mystery in the heart of our riding has been called “true unity” (e.g., Tom Dorrance, True Unity: Willing Communication between Horse and Man,1987). As Corbin notes above and elaborates extensively in Alone with the Alone, such an experience defies rational explanation; it’s in the breathtaking awe of boundary crossing. In that whispered instant in the arena yesterday, what had been the two of us flowed through a simple trot-canter transition as if we were one, a sensation/thought/imagination lived into being. That particular moment involving the horse/human is special, but the significance runs deeper when taken into the symbolic translation. 

Weaving the image, in my application of Cobin, I’m given the realization, the tasting into “a new plane of being or to a new depth of consciousness.” This play in the imaginal world adds capacity to live by faith, to believe enough in matters of spirit that allows one to hold integrity in going alone, voyaging outside the security of dogma, giving up status markers, foregoing praise, in the hope of deciphering anew and living out joyfully. While dedication to the imaginal world gets demanding, even frightening—like riding a spirited horse, courage rises from acknowledging the alternative.   

Corbin articulates the “metaphysical tragedy” (e.g., pp. 13-14) when the individual loses the “transcendent dimension” (e.g., p. 17). Entering the divine is both a burden “easy and light” (cf. Matt. 11:30) and terrifyingly next to impossible. But the denial of the authentic “water of life” results in a desperate thirst for more than the materialism of conventional life. As we witness everyday, when the thirst for spirit goes unattended or gets substituted for with “crazy water,” the result is abuse of persons (as in delusional claims of supremacy), use of fake “highs” (e.g., speed, sex, drugs, money, fame), and reliance on false saviors.

The living water springs still in the world between worlds and directions to there are yet to be mined from spiritual guides, through teaching stories, in translating resonant images, and especially by tasting transcendent experience.