Where is our absolution hidden?
In the heavens, in the forest, in the sea? Behind trees or beneath rocks? In the words of a holy man or a friend? Not at all.
How could it be somewhere else when we are here and now in this moment wishing finally to say, “I shouldn’t have done that”?
Absolution is hidden within our hearts waiting for us to claim. We must claim without looking back, or we’ll need to claim it again.
On June 24, my hero path novel The Sun Singer will be four years old.
The novel, structured after Joseph Campbell’s heropath scheme tells the story of a young man who goes into an unknown land to finish a task left undone by his avatar grandfather.
During the past four years, I’ve been lucky to receive decent reviews on Amazon and BarnesandNoble along with many kind words on various blog sites. The book hasn’t become an “underground cult favorite” yet, but I’m still hoping.
Mythic stories such as The Sun Singer are only tangentially “about” the characters within the story. Sure, my story focuses on a young man named Robert Adams who has been running from his psychic talents. When a family member dies, he treks off into the unknown, a fictionalised version of Glacier National Park, to finish a dangerous task. While doing so, he is changed.
In myths, becoming changed is more important than completing the task. But there’s more to it than that. The trappings of mythic stories are less important that the “inner work” accomplished by the hero or the seeker. The Sun Singer could have been set anywhere at any time because, truth be told, it’s about you.
Myths are catalysts for readers. Yes, we hope there’s an engaging story there to keep people reading to the last page. But really, it’s a road map, a means through which the reader will find ways to listen to the call of adventure, head off into the unknown, and become transformed in the process.
It’s your story. It always has been.
So, as the book’s fourth anniversary approaches, I’m hoping that many of my beloved readers have discovered that the novel, figuratively speaking, is their story. If you haven’t experienced the novel, I invite you to do so and then write me and tell me in you found yourself and/or your path within the text.
Copyright (c) 2008 by Malcolm R. Campbell
“More often than not, life’s most important lessons appear within the framework of the small details and conversations of our lives. Imagine how much more we can receive and how much more we can learn from these little insignificant actions we take for granted.” –Karen Berg in “Simple Light”
Why do we dream of places far away while mowing the lawn and of the important moments we’re expecting later in the day while we’re washing the breakfast dishes?
Quite simply, we’ve written off the present moment as inimportant and have chosen to be absent from it. What, one might ask, can I learn from following the lawn mover in even rows through the fescue? And what secrets can possibly lie within the soapy water?
Within the illusion of time, most of the moments of our lives are spent dealing with small details. Rather than spending both sides of every penny, as folks used to say, we often resign ourselves to simply getting through such tasks as yard work and house work in a zoned-out fashion expecting intellectual and spiritual sustance in larger pursuits.
If we are absent from most of what we do, we’re walking zombies and, perhaps, snobbish ones at that, who presume the clerk at the gas station has nothing to offer us, nor the glimpses of heaven within the soap bubbles of the kitchen sink, nor the bluebird singing in the tulip poplar in the back yard.
I need to recover a rhythm in my heart that moves my body first and my mind second, that allows my soul to catch up with me. I need to take a sacred pause, as if I were a sun-warmed rock in the center of rushing river. —Dawna Markova in Meditations on Nature, Meditations on Silence
One might say it’s the pause that refreshes.
Not easy to do, though, for the TO DO list is endless, the cell phone is ringing, there are weeds in the garden and empty bird feeders hanging on tree limbs, nobody’s dusted the living room for a week, one or more litter boxes await fresh litter…
Even when time is found for taking a break, the mind whirls on thinking of the TO DO list, the busy calendar for the rest of the week, the afternoon trip to the grocery store, the topic for a new post, a book review not yet done…
The more we need that sacred pause, the harder it is to get it. One must relax and silence the chattering mind, literally or figuratively as far away as possible from the exterior racket of phones and ticking clocks. If it’s been a while, the pause may seem less than a pause and prospectively not quite quiet enough to be sacred. Nonetheless, we connect to the light, and as we work at it and make it better, our pauses become longer and more fulfilling.
Our first attempt, though, needs to be today. Not tomorrow after the chores are done or next week after the report has been turned in.
“The Universe Abhors a Vacuum. When you create space, the universe will fill it with what serves your highest good. How do you use it? Commit to clean out the useless, confusing, energy-draining clutter (physical, technical and emotional) and it will be replaced with what you need.” –Tricia Molloy, Divine Wisdom at Work
Carolyn Myss has written that talking about, reading about, and dabbling with a spiritual path does not constitute devotion and provides neither the joy nor the wisdom of chosing that path above all others.
While I believe a spiritual path as interpreted by one organisation or one author/guru/teacher may not represent truth for us, we often go to the opposite extreme and clutter our lives with bits and pieces of many paths. Perhaps the smorgasbord of techniques and ideas fascinates us. Perhaps we think that embracing all paths is a noble effort at diversity and respect. Perhaps we fear that a single approach might miss the mark and see that a little of this and a little of that will ensure we’re at least partly right.
Can we not, though, acknowledge that there are many roads for many people and then hold true to the one intended for us? It’s difficult to live that road if we’re not really on it and have no devotion to the ways and means of the journey that road provides.
Paulo Coelho has written that while there are many paths, trying to walk all of them is the same as walking none of them. While we feel comforted, perhaps, in a totally eclectic approach, we’re really stumbling through clutter, a clutter ot maps, recipes, steps and hallows.
Once we choose the path we want to live and clear away the rest, the universe will find the vacuum it’s been waiting for and will manifest our route more fully formed, radiant and filled with light.
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Copyright (c) 2008 by Malcolm R. Campbell
“There are two roads to knowledge–the longer, slower, more arduous road of rational combination and the shorter path of the imagination traversed with the force and swiftness of electricity. Aroused by direct contact with ancient remains, the imagination grasps the truth at one stroke, without intemediary links. The knowledge required in this second way is infinitely more living and colorful than the products of the understanding.” –Johann Jacob Bachofen in 1854, quoted in Joseph Campbell, “The Mythic Dimension”
While this quotation in a Joseph Campbell essay is directed at the viewing of myths more interms of their central meanings and intents (grasped intuitively) rather than only through laboriously studying the outer-world chronology of their “plots,” I see here a wider application.
I do not suppose that any of us has the skill to obtain 100% of our knowledge–especially about the day-to-day events of our lives–via intuition, dreams, Tarot cards or readings from the I Ching. I do think, as Einstein observed, that even within the most scientific of displines, intuition often paves the way to our discovery of empirical facts.
Learning how to to trust our hunches will, I believe, allow us to walk down the shorter path to knowledge more often–and to great advantage.
I especially liked this quote in the recent issue of the Soul Flares newsletter:
“When and where the heart can celebrate each awakening day – that becomes home. When and where the spirit can mine for nourishment in the little moments – that becomes home. When and where the mind can distill meaning from the shadows as well as the light – that also becomes home.” Priscilla Cogan, from Winona’s Web: A Novel of Discovery
Just as likely, home can be a mountain stream, a calm lake, our house, or a good campfire with fish in the pan and a starry night.
I look forward to my e-mail newsletter from Soul Flares partly because of the wonderful quotes at the beginning. This one reminds me Joseph Campbell’s statement that the “privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” That journey we’re taking is, in reality, measured more by time and thought rather than miles.
“But whats wrong? What is this sadness we cannot name? Here is a question that deserves loving meditation. Perhaps the heart of our melancholy is that we miss the person we were meant to be. We miss our authentic selves. But the good news is that even if you have ignored its overtures for decades, your authentic self has not abandoned you. Instead it has been waiting patiently for you to recognize it and reconnect. Turn away from the world this year and begin to listen. Listen to the whispers of your heart. Look within.” Sarah Ban Breathnach, from Simple Abundance
“Only man is placed between perfection and deficiency, with the power to earn perfection. According to the sages, as long as we live, we have the potential to fall.” –Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
If we could not fail, much less fall, we would not be human.
More importantly, I think, our successes would be meaningless for all would be sunshine and roses and bluebirds straight out of a classic Disney cartoon.
It seems to me that if we do not make mistakes, that is to say, fail in various ways, we would be much slower to learn. Quite possibly, we would be like couch potatoes leading charmed lives so divorced from the real world that our experience and knowledge would remain sorely lacking.
With failure comes knowledge. With each fall comes the option and the opportunity for standing back up.
Many wise teachers have stated that it’s more imporant to show a person how to think than to fill his or her head with mountains of facts.
Yet, we live–or, for practical purposes–must pretend we live in a physical world where everything from reality to raising a family to enjoying one’s idle time is dependent on facts. We may not memorize them, but we rely on them as though they are our primary currency.
In The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, Deepak Chopra asks us to consider that while the facts appear to say otherwise, the self is not confined to the physical body. That is to say, the self might considered nonlocal, as no more within the body than anywhere else.
Science has been toying around with the concept of a holographic universe meaning also that the atoms within every object contain–in latent form–every other object that exists.
Of this, Chopra writes, “The whole universe is contained in every point just as the whole ocean is reflected in every drop within its depths. In Vedanta, this insight is expressed as ‘What is here is everywhere, and what is not here is nowhere.’”
Our comfortable reliance on facts urges us to repudiate such a notion. The fact is, we think, that everything certainly isn’t here because some of it’s miles away in Paris and some of it’s in South America and some of it’s within the far stars.
Is it? Or is that part of the illusion of physical matter?
Insofar as everyday reality is concerned, the world seems very solid, very nonillusory, so we can set aside–for now–just how one might navigate from place to place with one’s physical body if one fully understood the workings of the illusion.
We can though, like Chopra, consider the wisdom of the poet Rumi who maintained that the entire universe is contained within oneself. As we search for spiritual truth, such a notion brings us closer to all that is even though we may never physically leave our own back yard. It is, like the Kingdom of Heaven, within us.
Let the facts be stacked up like cordwood for the tasks where facts matter, but on our personal quests as seekers on the path, the facts are counterfeit money.
