Nothingness for Love

 

May 6

“As you proceed along the Way, you will attain a state of everydayness…
Why leave behind your proper place, which exists right in your own home, and wander aimlessly off to the dusty realms of other lands? If you make even a single misstep, you stray from the Great Way lying directly before you. . .
Form and substance are like dewdrops on the grass, destiny like the dart of lightning—vanishing in an instant, disappearing in a flash.” (p. 5, The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo, trans. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe.)

The next section in The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo tells of Dogen’s “pilgrimage in search of the Dharma in Japan and China” (p. 7). 

     This text and other recent readings open wandering amid the paradox:  A) the lifelong search for the Way, and Z) right alongside is realizing “the Great Way lying directly before.”  Of course, the answer is Love, God is Love. Here, there, everywhere, there’s only the One Love. But what a great mystery this makes in living it out!

     From life’s journey supported by fabulous readings, perhaps there’s come an absorbing of  “nothingness.” Accepting the mystery of love conjoins with my inability to say “I love” because love transcends my naming-containing it as if I could give love. And yet by getting lost/found in submission to the I/not-I, a possibility seems given for love-coming-through. God loves. With this realization, the not-I opens for a flow, like a space through which the wind is moving. 

     Also around 3:32AM, I note the movement through life’s journey by “not” (again, the theme of recent recent readings and posts).  Early on, a detour (an about-face?) happened in this life journey when forced to admit I’m not a preacher (despite Mother’s wish) yet I’m given (a thanks-for-trying prize) a devotion to rhetoric and a (different?) career path. Then drawn by love’s hand into the mytho-poetic but soon enough comes hard knock of not : Not belonging there and not a poet. Yet provided a surprise-gift of a dedication to teaching-story.  In addition, Fate decrees: Not a city dweller nor university professor but this propels to woodland stewardship in our cosmic ecosystem. 

May 6

Another no/not was to a dream design combining quantum storytelling with natural horsemanship. Instead a blog writer reading theology and musing in the middle of the night.

Way. No way. Dewdrop journey from
Fundamentalism but
Disillusion with hellfire conversions into
Relativity. Multiplicity. Philosophy &
Analytical psychology to
“Follow your bliss,” Joseph Campbell; 
Mythopoetics with Robert Bly & Gioia to
Teaching Story— 
Poetry, especially Rumi—but not a poet so
Sweat lodge & “Day for Men” for twenty years…
Then to Sufi healing but not a healer. And
Confronted by the “Death of God”— 
Return to Jesus, theology of the cross.
From Existentialism to Oneness to
Emptiness & Nothingness. Thus
The Way. Is. no-way

May 7 dawning 

Draft…not for release…

 

Lovers: Light/Dark, Open/Closed & Daily reminders of life cycles

Those who might say they know me are unlikely to call me “impetuous,” but surprisingly (especially to me) on several occasions I have jumped in (or out of, over, around, somehow following the invitation: “take-a your chance”). So when my blog-composer-tool puts up “Publish now?…Are you sure?” or whatever it says, I’ll tap it “ok” half-knowing this is a draft that expects revision, maybe deletion. 

     But haven’t we learned to use the term “deleted” paradoxically? oxymoronically? It’s a bit inhibiting to think that every word said (to say nothing of actions done) has been stored somewhere, and possibly in some dim corner of the subconscious already where the fear of such return haunts us. [Note: foreshadowing here. Watch for subsequent “descent/return motif.]  Am I not even warned in the Bible that each fleeting thought might persist to Judgment Day. Perhaps it’s best just not to go there—as if there’s choice. Anyway, this post is published “Draft”… 

And with all that disclaimer, I still see the ghostly figure Kierkegaard approaching with the cartoon bubble overhead: “Despair.” 

Now then, like comfort for a child let’s do story time.

A Tale Told By…   A friend invited me to put my spin in re-telling a love story that in one version begins:  

He came into her life first, and she fell hard. They’d meet on rooftops, where he kissed her like time had stopped and held her like she was everything. She felt safe, even though deep down, he never promised anything. She had been with many before, always the one to leave tired of love that never lasted. But with him, it felt different. Her soul craved the closeness, even if her heart already knew the truth.

So here goes: Once upon a time…   Oops. Hold on. 

     First, a note on my process of composing story. We’ll have to go way back, about 35 years, to when I first experienced narrative discourse enacted by Gioia Timpanelli, who had just been introduced at the Great Mother Conference by Robert Bly as “the greatest storyteller in the country.” Through the next decade or so I’m listening to Gioia, transcribing audiotapes of her tellings, and beginning to try it myself. I was most taken by what I call “asides” in which a different voice or persona comes in, interrupting the narrative flow. I found the asides functioned like a brief commentary that was revealed to the storyteller in the moment of performance as something that was needed for me (and, of course, at times for someone else) in order to get to the Story. The aside somehow mediated the archetypal/personal (similar to the transcendent/immanent, the Self/self), and this allowed access for individual assimilations which might happen or not and could vary according to the readiness of a person for self-development, consciousness, and/or individuation. 

     Whew! That’s a condensation of too much, but it’s been elaborated in previous blogs (especially between Jan 2011 and 2016). In short, this model was the inspiration for my design and implementation of the Good Stories course that culminated my academic career and that often found expression in this blog. Storytelling done in this manner ventures toward an adaptation of Scheherazade’s healing the King through the Thousand and One Nights.

     So, if I’m to re-tell the story noted above, I approach it like a fairy tale 

using guidance from Goia’s model and from theorists such as Marie-Louise von Franz (e.g. The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambhala, 1970).  I might consider the woman in the story as She-Who-Loves. Perhaps this “name” derives from looking for an equal half to the Guiding mantra: “he who knows himself knows his Lord.” The best-case for the would-be lover to liaise with She-Who-Loves looks to be the Archetypal Beloved. Possibly in this rendition, the character progression of Mr. Right might first adapt from the Genesis paradise account in which Adam and the serpent are entwined. 

     This brings the Beauty and Beast stories to mind, especially Psyche and Eros which is drawn from Lucius Apuleius (cf Erich Neumann’s Amor and Psyche), and further developed through C.S. Lewis (Till We Have Faces) as well as other wonderful variations. In addition to these (although I haven’t developed my own blend of it) I’d at least want to source the Majnun/Layla tale for enrichment. Especially of interest in that material are the “madness” of Majnun and the lovers’ capacity to live with longing rather than demanding gratification.

     She-Who-Loves enters with Mr. Right. Depending on the age and development of the audience, he appears as the high-school hunk (or naughty boy); but for a more advanced audience, he may be sophisticated and materialistic. Still more “advanced,” the apparent “beloved” could well be a spiritual teacher, a caring mentor, a best-friend’s spouse… The options are abundant. 

     Their meetings on roof tops suggest a heavenly setting for their romance. Yes? We might draw on personal experience and have love strike at a conference where personal/social ideals are the focus. Wouldn’t an adventure involving natural horsemanship be lovely! Another attractive setting would feature the gathering of friends who search for the spiritual pathway, the better environment, the healing of political, religious, or whatever divides us. 

     I don’t mean to be cynical. That’s just the way love goes as far as I can tell. Making/telling the story offers a wonderful opportunity to turn off the Blame/Shame game because those censors kill life. Let the story go through the theatre curtain and play for a time. 

     For advancing plot, I’m drawn into the descent/return motif where character develops through dark forces more than rosy light. Perhaps we’ll even begin with the Wedding itself! What about opening with a lush lovely wedding and then She Who Loves wakes from her dream. 

    The telling might include a recitation of lines from “The marriage of true minds” or from some contemporary song or ancient psalm. It’s a love-story and surely a most significant Face of God is Love with the Creation, one two three: one, creation of human; two, separation of man/woman; and three, the pairing held in Mystery. Yes, when the young woman takes a lover, the deep self overflows—or as the myths tell it: Cupid’s arrow quickens the pulse and the cautionary brain falls into trance…

     What then?  Yes, soon enough the inevitable broken heart falls from the mountain top—from heaven? Ecstasy seldom strays far from its other side—despair. Kierkegaard says despair IS. It’s unavoidable, especially if a person is to gain consciousness. And yet, not total tragedy. For (according to SK) only despair allows the advent of Grace. Perhaps Kierkegaard doesn’t say it that way (I’m only midway through a first reading of the combined Fear and Trembling/Sickness unto Death), so I recommend checking it out.

     Obviously, I’m caught in this Orpheus theme (Persephone, if you wish) which plots 

1) an opening (Kenosis or self-emptying), 

2) then descent (e.g., through the vent to the Underworld that took Psyche), 

3) x, 

4) return.  

1 The beginning, AKA Genesis 1, (anticipate the serpent). Once there were two lovers. The wedding was grand. Just fill in your fantasy. Options: a) Elopement if you prefer. b) Second or third marriage with previous children attending. c) What else comes to mind…

It seems to me marriage (of true minds and with capacity to LOVE) takes several rehearsals or attempts. So I’m tempted to begin this story with characters capable of engaging more substantial dragons (like the death of God or living with simplicity and truth-telling…and death…hmm, did I already say that?).

2 The middle of the story features plot and related character development and thus involves internal/external monsters, I’d draw on my favorite myths. For example, The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell. 

     For another direction within the descent/return motif, as already noted, I love the variants of Psyche and Eros. 

      In the Weddynge option, Ragnell offers a chance to play into magical transformation, trying to bridge the once-upon-a-time with the contemporary as we reach toward relationships that enact fealty, chivalry, beauty, sacrifice, and sovereignty. Yet, while Weddyng attracts, perhaps the story is too susceptible to perpetuating the worship of superficial beauty and of power-over. 

     Although not immediately evident, the significant character development in the Ragnell story has to take place in the male/masculine, portrayed by Gawaine. While often perceived as “pure” due to the Grail connections and as a most accomplished knight as developed in the Arthurian corpus, Gawaine still needs transformation into the radical performance of loyalty and love that includes (gasp) woman! As revealed 2000 years ago, we must remove the pain-giving impurity from our own eyes. Abundant material to build this part of the story is available in Robert Bly’s writings (e.g., Iron John, Maiden King co-authored with Marion Woodman) and many others, including especially those giving attention to how the man needs to develop the feminine. 

     As well as developing the “heroic,” maturity and spiritual progression in men and women depends on suffering, dealing with despair, and building capacity for co-participation in the revelation of continuous mystery. What are possibilities for sustaining community in space/time beyond but known in “now.” [I think this is the theme of my next blog.} How do we find and maintain the “realm of God” that’s already happening and not just in the hope for an after-life. We have vocabulary for this that would benefit from story, for example “re-deem” as imagine anew by recovering an inheritance and “atonement” which can be storied through the telling of marriage and community reaching into “at-one-ment.”

3 x

     X stands for the Unknown (and likely feels like hell or at least a dark dungeon).  X also signifies multiple possibilities, and this is necessary to fit the Individual whose essential attribute is the Unique. But our Life Design, best I can tell, forces a dialectic in which the absolutely personal gets played by the transcendent (as close to the capital T as we can get). So we each have to compose that part individually which means “live it” (for suggestions, read Kierkegaard, my current choice; Iris Murdoch—an old favorite; death-of-God theologians, eg Altizer); and the one/s that provide that telling resonance for your journey. So I recommend you make your own sense of “why X.” It’s life, as I find it and suppose I wouldn’t have it otherwise. 

4 return

The ending? The story draft I’m working from left off with this line: “He moved on but she still didn't , remained with her trauma” [no period]. 

     While not exactly “happily ever after,” neither is life and often not narrative either. I’m expecting any day now to receive a book order: Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism. Tantalizing title, yes? The blurb advertises:

Although readers of detective fiction ordinarily expect to learn the mystery's solution at the end, there is another kind of detective story—the history of which encompasses writers as diverse as Poe, Borges, Robbe-Grillet, Auster, and Stephen King—that ends with a question rather than an answer. The detective not only fails to solve the crime, but also confronts insoluble mysteries of interpretation and identity. As the contributors to Detecting Texts contend, such stories belong to a distinct genre, the "metaphysical detective story," in which the detective hero's inability to interpret the mystery inevitably casts doubt on the reader's similar attempt to make sense of the text and the world.

Can hardly wait. Because, yes, life remains a mystery. What is love anyway? To say nothing of God—which may be the same question after all. 

So we might want a closing other than the word “trauma,” and I’m leaning toward “…” the open-ended ellipsis. My middle/muddle-of-last-night’s “meditation” went thus:

Perhaps the story resolution resides in no resolution, in surrender of illusion. The image of paradise imprisons. Ecstasy kills reality. Idols of materialism, power, superiority…separate us from God and from each other, now as then. All the great qualities—truth, justice, peace, love…— have demons stuck to them. God won’t be bought or sold to, neither owned nor lost. And here be Stopping Place. 

   My wandering mind brings up SK where he hesitated to publish material that he felt was getting preachy (“edifying discourse” vs “dialectical lyric”}. See Walter Lowrie’s Introduction in the combined volume mentioned above. 

This meditation closed with the suggestion for following the ellipsis with a phrase and another ellipsis: … our work/play never-done… 

   

Quality of light. Near dusk…dawn…

 

Proximity to Truth

     This past week I finished reading a book that a few years ago I’m pretty sure:

a) I would not have selected at all.

b) If I had started it, I would have shelved without finishing. 

c) And, if I somehow read to the end, I’d have trashed it—as I recall doing with only one book, a highly-rated novel with a similar plot line.

     Perhaps I’ve become able to appreciate the power of the way this author troubled the waters and in doing so reworked my thinking, feeling, valuing, and maybe even transformed conscience/consciousness. For this to happen, the novel was not working alone but was interweaving with other books that are especially contributing to my development, particularly Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying; John Dominic Crossan, Raid on the Articulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges; and Attar’s Conference of the Birds (translated by Peter Avery and by Afkham Darbandi/Dick Davis).

     Rather than explaining, I’ll show portions of the book; but first, here’s the Spoiler Alert: these extracts might mess with the experience of reading Iris Murdoch’s The Sandcastle. If you plan on reading it, consider stopping now! 

     In the opening pages, Murdoch’s main character is portrayed: “He believed profoundly in complete truthfulness as the basis and condition of all virtue.” So, in the early chapters, he persists in telling the full truth to his wife even as he realizes “He could not now make his knowledge of her into love.” Soon enough, however, as he falls in love with another woman, he experiences that “truth” about the new relationship is a phenomenon he cannot express in words that will be comprehended by his wife. He’s perplexed in feeling unable, even if he tries, to tell the truth. Through the second half or so of the book, I am led (but not forced) by the author into a hard acceptance of truth as congruence instead of romance. His lover tells of the spinning (truth or lies or paradox) of the telling of their relationship this way:

“But now I can see. I see that it was you that tricked me—and I too that deceived myself. I saw it all so simply, with nothing to it but you leaving your wife whom you didn’t love and who didn’t love you. But a life has so much more in it than that. I had not seen that I would break so many many things.”

“If you love me—“ he said. 

“That word cannot guide us any more.”

     In other Murdoch novels, the congruence of parts includes the break-up of a marriage. Murdoch is not prescribing a case law in the sense noted by Crossan below. The truth of the full trajectory of the relationship of the lovers is best forecast in metaphors; in this novel, it’s in the title, The Sandcastle, and in lines spoken during the collapse of their romantic structure, “You are a growing tree. I am only a bird. You cannot break your roots and fly away with me.”

     The reason I’m compelled by Murdoch’s work may be explained in Peter Conradi’s biography:

“It could be said that all her fiction, and much of her moral philosophy, are acts of penance for, and attacks upon, the facile rationalistic optimism of her extreme youth, when she thought that setting people free was easy, that ‘socialism (of which we had no very clear idea) would bring freedom and justice to all countries, and the world would get better’. . . Her work explores, among other matters, those ‘irrational’ psychic forces within the individual which make Hitlers possible, and freedom problematic.” (Iris: The Life of Iris Murdoch, pp. 78-79)

     Concerning freedom, in a somewhat similar manner, I’m reconsidering my position in relation to the presentation of narrative, particularly in the fable and in the parable. When teaching Good Stories, I wanted students to realize freedom in constructing meaning. Going against the usual approach to the fable as having an explicit moral, we worked at considering multiple possibilities so that each individual could attempt to discern one that fit for himself or herself. We followed the direction of Lloyd Daly’s Aesop without Morals and made interpretations of narratives that did not force a specific moral. Now, I want to be careful in giving freedom, especially in view of Crossan's treatment of parable.

     In his take on narrative truth and freedom, Crossan develops the parable with emphasis on the distinctive features in texts of Jesus and Borges. He articulates “the core elements of parable” in a way that shows the shaking up of a person’s thinking/feeling/valuing and then leaving the person with the freedom to reach into the beyond:  

"... the core elements of parable. The first is paradox. The second is story. This is accomplished by effecting a structural reversal on a traditional or expected story at the deepest levels… 'symbols which through their paradoxical form expressed the inexpressible without betraying it.'" (pp. 94-95 building on and quoting from Heinz Politzer’s Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox)

But Crossan also stresses the danger in the extension of freedom: “to abide with the Holy is more fundamental than any case law and is itself original ethics and fundamental morality. It is also much more dangerous” (p. 69). This radical activity of parable in Jesus and Borges circles back again to Murdoch’s realization that freedom given to person unable to “see,” unable to discern lies, allows the rise of Hitlers.

     Murdoch does not turn against freedom; instead her work pushes us to face the lies we tell ourselves and to engage the hard truths. Our thinking, our moral sense, needs to include paradox, and our realities marry imagination. The most important truth comes in a person’s approximation to discerning the touch of the divine in oneself. As Sells develops in the Unsayings, that’s what the mystics try to show us.

   It’s now early Sunday morning 

in pre-dawn meditations on dreams 

of marking the path, 

reflecting on Attar’s parable 

of surrender to the guide

reading time inside and out

eternal now. Time

is simultaneous line and circle

the eternal return.

Being/doing, identity & ?

Living this

as the game of labyrinth,

and whether there is a center or an exit does not matter so much

as the quality of the player, unending purification.

There is only the dance 

as Eliot sings for us & realizing

all this a poem not a line,

and a story not imitative rhyme

and not just a tale told by an idiot

but some beauty composed by

Beauty of Great Questions

Sunday here flows in subtle tones, like love on the edge off remembering.

“…troubled by the ultimate questions. No-one else’s answer can satisfy the hunger in your heart.” John O’Donohue concludes the meditations with the “beauty of the great questions”: 

[it’s] “how they dwell differently in each mind. How they root deeper than all the surface chatter and image, how they continually disturb. Your deep questions grow quickly restless in the artificial clay of received opinion or stagnant thought. . . The presence of the contemplative and the artist in a culture is ultimately an invitation to awaken and engage one’s neglected gifts, to enter more fully into the dream of the eternal that has brought us here to earth.” p. 247

         The passage referencing the Big Questions takes me back to the final years of teaching, especially in the I-Series program and the capstone course of my career, “Good Stories: Teaching Narratives for Peace and Justice.” If I had absorbed and articulated more of the understanding of Beauty that O’Donohue lays out, the title might have included “for Beauty” or perhaps “Stories on Beauty.” We did explore the frontiers of beauty as well as goodness and truth. The terrain of narrative offers spaces to mine into personal identity and the connection with the divine.

   When the youngest sister leaves home and enters the darkest center of the forest, she meets with the threshold question each of is invited to open, to circle around, to listen into: "Who are you?" And, of course, the companion questions: "Where do you come from and where are you going?" "What are you doing here?" Her answer allows us to reflect on our divine heritage: “I am the child of the ruler and I’m searching for my brothers as long as the sun may rise…”

          William Stafford asked it this way: “Who are you really, wanderer?” And the response as I remember it, allowing myself to reconstruct, as each of us might do, instead of looking up “the artificial clay”: “And the answer you have to give/ no matter how dark and lonely,/ I am the child of the king.”

Using the Sacred Imagination

     As Facebook friends know, we get flashbacks: “x years ago…” For today, March 2, Facebook reminds me that I posted two years ago “The Treasure in Good Stories.” So in looking back, I’m reminded of the gift of culminating a career with a sense of purpose, of feeling a fit that comes with accepting limitations, letting go of external expectations, and living into closer harmony with destiny. The treasure in Good Stories, at least one focusing, comes in the first sentence of that post: “Good Stories entertain and engage Big Questions such as: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?”

     Big questions like these don’t accept final answers. Instead, they offer direction and vitality for going farther, going further on. Good stories provide a schoolroom with always open doors for recess so that humans have room to continue growing up, even into retirement. They’re not so much for dispensing information as they are for opening imagination. Our imaginal capacities need developing as much, if not more, as do our ability to reason and to learn the scientific method.

     Having left the university, those years spent in Good Stories have opened now into more intense journey with imagination and further travels with the big questions. Just yesterday, I completed reading William Chittick’s Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity. The one before was James Morris’ Orientations and before that Morris’ The Reflective Heart: Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn ‘Arabi’s Meccan Illuminations. In it, Morris offers a connection with the bigger purpose of Good Stories:

one might say that his [Ibn ‘Arabi’s] method is one of using the sacred Imagination—in the sense of the archetypal images and stories provided by his own religious tradition—to awaken each reader’s individual spiritual imagination, to illuminate and reveal the recurrent ‘reflections’ of those scriptural likenesses in the ‘ever-renewed creation’ of his readers’ own unique spiritual experiences. (p. 161)

     I scarcely presume to select one passage from Chittick’s Imaginal Worlds to illustrate the illumination about imagination because the entire text wants to be included. The chapter “Death and the Afterlife” still draws my gratitude for better understanding God’s mercy, and the final section on the nature of belief adds hope for peace, both inner and in the USA.

     The world around us looks a mess. Our education system hasn’t proven to develop citizens who are capable of democratic governance. Of special concern are the failure to discern truth, bad judgment about character, and little evidence of love for self, others and the environment. In my view, part of the problem with our schooling comes from too much faith in reason and too much denial of imagination. Chittick explains how Ibn ‘Arabi asserts the importance and place of both reason and imagination:

imagination erases differences and unites, while reason discerns and separates. When people are left to their rational faculties, they tend to separate the Real from the cosmos and themselves. This leads to a loss of the vision of the divine presence in all things…[capacity with] imagination allows them to establish links and overcome difference. (p. 168)

There—I did finally select one passage, but doing so leaves a need to go back and re-read the many other pages with markers.  Let’s keep moving further into the imaginal worlds…

Winter’s Invisibility Cloak

Our woods on January 30, 2018

For January 30, David George Haskell in The Forest Unseen, writes, “plant resurrection after a full surrender is so far removed from human experience…” (p. 22). And yet the Path of Attraction* calls to us humans, urging the full surrender of the ego-self. Instead of a contrast, I find that Haskell’s elaboration of the winter woods offers a helpful model for our development through wintry conditions.

   Haskell describes how most plants survive through freezing winter by moving the essential to the center: “Plants start their preparations several weeks ahead of the first freezes. They move DNA and other delicate structures to the centers of their cells” (p. 22). In similar fashion, in order to survive the freezing times that worldly life brings toward the soul, humans need to follow the example of the plants’ preparation. 

   Importantly, the testing times of winter demand the development of discernment. Purification of the human heart means discerning the individual’s spiritual DNA. Coleman Barks places a Rumi poem here in the midst of winter where it teaches us about the ability to discern true ecstacy: “There are thousands of wines/ that can take over our minds.// Don’t think all ecstasies are the same./ Jesus was lost in his love for God./ His donkey was drunk with barley.”** Yes, humans need the “fire” from wine in order to make our way through winters, but we have to choose the wine of spiritual ecstacy over the intoxications of pride, ambition, domination, as well as alcoholic drunkeness.

   If a human surrenders the ego, surviving the winter of life might be possible. Haskell’s elaboration of his woods in Shakerag Hollow offers helpful models for us. In addition to the way taken by perennials, he notes “a different path”: 

Leafcup herbs completed their short eighteen-month lives last fall and now stand dead, surrendered entirely to winter. They have sublimated into a new physical form, like snow passing into vapor. Like vapor, these new forms are invisible, but they surround me…seeds, waiting out winter…When spring sparks the mandela, the energy released will carry the whole forest, birds included, through another year. [p. 24]

   Haskell’s account stirs several themes worthy of meditation. For one, consider the value of going invisible. Of course we saw the power of the Invisibility Cloak for Harry Potter. Perhaps less apparent is the value of the quiet life somewhat protected from the storms of status, wealth, and winning. When we realize this, we have gratitude for not being seen, for not receiving the “merit” bonus, even for losing the world’s prestige. The authentic life of the individual soul has to be known in secret. 

        Or perhaps there are sightings or scents but only accessible to those prepared to receive them. The pathway toward God moves into the invisible, the inarticulate, the ineffable. I believe that human capacity for such movement develops, for example, when engaging Good Stories through increasing discernment of “resonance,” by discriminating the authentic, the holy. Although I’ve just discovered the book, I’m excited to open John Renard’s Friends of God where his Preface notes “when an author appears to have slipped off the straight path of ‘fact’ onto the mucky byways and quick sands of credulity” and going forward as “travelers in the realms of the religious imagination” guided as “smaller stories communicate the ineffable” (xiii-xiv). God’s light breaks through every instant but catching the rainbow spectrum takes special vision. These new forms wait out winter preparing to spark into spring.

==================

* Path of Attraction is “code” for following God’s light, for the “Religion of Love,” perhaps even signaled by the code-word  “resonance” that I use in Good Stories [clink on the resonance “label” at bottom of blog], and for continuing purification needed to track or to be drawn by the Source, the Truth… 

** From p. 40 for January 28 in A Year with Rumi, taken from Mathnawi IV, 2683ff. In the passage, Rumi warns us that these two “wines” (infidelity vs. true religion, line 2716; carnal soul vs. reason, line 2718) are “at war: take heed, take heed, and strive that the spiritual realities may prevail over the (sensual) forms” (line 2719, Nicholson’s translation).

In her notes for Hafiz’s ghazal 5, Elizabeth Gray comments on the symbol: “Wine has a rich array of meanings and resonances in Persian poetry, and is associated with light, illumination, and truth… The surface of the wine in the wine cup reveals the face of the Beloved, the reflection of one’s own face (which is a mirror of God as His creation, and therefore is Him)” (p. 147, The Green Sea of Heaven.)