A Sacred Pause

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.

 

Do we really want to be more conscious?

In her book Entering the Castle, Caroline Myss writes that in a class she was teaching, she asked her students the following question: “If given a chance to become more conscious or to have more money, which “more” would you take?”

I suppose some of us would take the money figuring that we’d use it to buy the freedom or the secluded estate that would give us opprtunities in the future to become more conscious.

Myss says that 99% of those in her class would take the money.

When she asked for an explanation, one man said that being more conscious would force upon him more work and more effort and better attitudes and possibly more grief than those who aren’t worrying about being more conscious. He couldn’t do all that and he wasn’t willing to fake it.

As it turns out, this is a fairly common rationale for why we delay meditation techniques that might take us too close to the Divine. Myss says that most of us keep God at bay, thinking about him/her, studying about him/her, and doing all kinds of intellectual things relating to spirituality, healing, mysticism, and the so-called new age.

We know the jargon, the archetypes, the chakra points, the Reiki hand positions, the paths on the tree of life, the symbolism of the Tarot, how the planets align for auspicious days, and how to attract what we want into our lives. We have a head full of spiritual-type knowledge.

What we do not have is the Divine even though we may give lip service to the idea that He/She is within us, in the water we drink, in the air, in the sunshine, because all of this is mind stuff and feelings.

There’s a reason for this, and it’s not for lack of knowledge about how to come closer to the God of our hearts (by whatever name we call Him or Her). Techniques and methods and protocols are strewn about like weeds.

The man in Myss’ class nailed the answer: If we let the Divine into our lives, we can no longer be who we are now.  We’re not ready for that.

We’re not ready to be a contemporary mystic who, as Myss writes, “responds to the soul’s call to become an effective force in the world” and to put up with the inconvenience of loving one’s neighbor and feeling no hatred towards one’s enemies, and sharing everything, and surrendering totally to “something” greater than ourselves.

Generally speaking, the money just spends better, doesn’t it?

Your Divinity

“In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say ‘Aha,’ that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say ‘Aha’ to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divinite will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses.” –Joseph Campbell

The truth of this statement becomes clear, I think, in our purest acts of creation: writing, songs, pottery, sculpture, paintings, our gardens, our lives.

Perhaps we do not feel our divine connexion every moment, but there are times when we know its there. That is when things click, fall into place, and become real in a huge and multidimensional sense.

It is what I long for when I write and when I read.

Landscape

“Understand that thou art a second little world and that the sun and moon are within the, and also the stars.” –Origen

We spend our lives asking why the sky is blue and who spins worlds through the heavens. The answer, I think, flows through our veins.

Removing Doubt

Natural High recently posted an entry about the concept of appreciative listening, showing that we’re more likely to meet challenges by asking “what’s right here” than listing everything that’s wrong with the situation.

By listing negatives, that’s where we place our focus; then we miss potential solutions. Appreciative listening reminds me of the Kabbalistic practice of seeking out the areas in one’s life that are running smoothly and strengthening those rather that focusing all of one’s attention on things that are not going well.

Obsession with answers in areas of doubt only strengthens our doubt. We make progress through certainty, not by adding energy to our problem areas.  By reinforcing what’s good in our lives, we bring more light into our lives and clear our minds and find solutions where we previously saw none.

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll

The philosopher John Erigena maintained that “all there is, is light.”

Kabbalists use “light” as a convenient metaphor for all that humankind desires. You may prefer to call it cosmic energy, nous, chi, the word, the force, or spirit.

We’re walking, living, breathing, and thinking in a sea of light. We are light in light. But we may not feel consciously attuned with it. People explain this by saying that when we’re not consciously attuned, we’re like a radio that’s turned off and unable to pick up the signals that are all around it.

From a Kabbalistic perspective, one connects to the light through a proactive rather than a reactive approach to life and its challenges. The more challenges we have, the more opportunities we have to transform ourselves.

Alterations in focus connect us to the light. Sex, even wild and illicit sex, connects us to the light. Drugs, including illegal drugs, connect us to the light. So does music, from symphonies to rock and roll to rap.

While these connexions may bring a rush, they’re often–though not always–more like brief and brilliant fireworks in a night sky compared to the constant and more illuminating attunement that can be achieved through meditation or resistance to negative/reactive attitudes or a quiet walk through the woods or along a beach.

We love the fireworks, but they’re not the sun.

Lost and Found

“Seekers are never lost, because spirit is always beckoning to them,” writes Deepak Chopra in The Way of the Wizard.

Eric Pepin, in his Handbook of the Navigator books, likens this to salmon unerringly swimming from far out in the ocean to a stream to spawn. When the Star Wars movie series began, people resonated to the concept of “the force,” while others said we are forever attuned to “God’s thoughts.”

If we are seekers on the path, what might the difference be between lost and found?

Perhaps there is no difference, but only the perception of one until we reach the point in our journey toward the light where we are finally ready to integrate pairs of opposites.

Symbols

Young Harry Potter readers are posting messages online trying to learn what the word “hallows” means. The term for holy objects, especially those used in a ceremony, was once more commonly used and known.

These objects always symbolize something greater, just as such words as “light” and “darkness” and “candle” and “tree of life” and the rich hexagrams of the I Ching and the numbers and art work on a good deck of Tarot cards refer to something greater.

All to often, the symbols are kept–as holy objects in a closet or words reserved only for discussions and debates about spirituality–separate from ourselves almost in the same manner some people reserve “church stuff” for Sunday mornings. Kabbalists, who say that people commonly interact with only 1% of reality might say to those who don’t integrate the meaning behind the symbols into their lives: “You’re only spending 1% of your time considering how to connect with the other 99% of reality, yet you wonder why those connexions are so few and far between.

In her book A Joseph Campbell Companion, Diane K. Osbon wrote: “Joseph taught me to see beyond symbols to the riches they represent. Those who cannot see beyond the symbols, he remarked, are ‘like diners going into a restaurant and eating the menu,’ rather than the meal it describes. There’s a good deal of menu eating in the world. and the result is a feeling of emptiness and an impoverishment of spirit.”

Several Harry Potter fans, when speculating about the word “hallows,” wondered if there was a typographical error lurking here. Perhaps, J. K. Rowling meant to say “hollows.”

Of course not. But, in thinking about this, it’s clear to me that symbols–whether objects or words–that are not experienced wholly do become rather hollow and unsatisfying.

Hungry?

Spirit

“You have to stalk everything. Everything scatters and gathers; everything comes and goes like fish under a bridge. You have to stalk the spirit, too. You can wait forgetful anywhere, for anywhere is the way of his fleet passage, and hope to catch him by the tail and shout something in his ear before he wrests away.” –Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

Writers are Seekers As the illusions of time and space unfold along the writer’s path, there will come a seemingly random moment when spirit speaks and is heard.You are now forever changed. Your journey–which you thought was focused only on words and stories–begins to take on unimaginable new dimensions. Once you discover spirit is real, you will also discover that you must find it and know it.Spirit is ever illusive. It does not wait for you at the corner of West Wood Street and Fairview Avenue or beside the White Bark Pine in the meadow.

It is not standing in the baggage claim section of an airport holding up a sign with your name on it. You won’t get a “wish you were here” postcard from spirit in the today’s mail.You must stalk spirit as you might stalk a deer or a bear.

You are most likely to find spirit when you are quiet, alert, and observant. Set aside logic and allow your intuition to guide you While your five senses may deceive you, use them to explore what you usually ignore—the shadows between the leaves of a tree rather than the leaves, the scents carried on the wind, the music in the bubbling brook, the taste of air, the texture of rock.

Unlike stalking a deer or a bear, you do not know—and cannot guess—what exactly you are seeking. Spirit leaves no easily discernible tracks to be identified with a Peterson’s field guide.

Do not try to imagine what spirit will look like, sound like, taste like, feel like or smell like or how you might discover it within your thoughts.

And do not seek out spirit as you have read about it in books, seen it in movies, or heard about it from friends. Your expectations will limit your experience and further hide spirit.

“Expectation can only be based on what you already know. In the end you are after what you cannot conceive,’ writes Eric J. Pepin in The Handbook of the Navigator. “By looking for experiences you can relate to you will overlook what you are truly searching for.”Finding spirit is less important than searching for spirit.

In fact, the casually expectant hush of the search will change you, enhance you, transform you and bring you closer to worlds outside your dreams. You will find yourself writing new stories and new articles with words you did not think you knew.

There is no schedule, no expectation, and no goal. As a seeker on the path, you will ultimately throw away roadmaps and guidebooks and you will ignore well-travelled roads, trail signs and blazed trees. This is a spontaneous path of feelings, hunches, impulses and apparent coincidences.

Above all, a writer must always be listening, waiting.

When you can silence the chatter inside your head, when you can forget yourself and all your wish lists, and when you can focus on nothing rather than on the outcome you have always desired, you will be ready.Spirit will not write your next book, your next blog entry, your next story.

Spirit doesn’t take dictation, it inspires. And then, you will discover again and again that your childlike wonder and your patient stalking of spirit is bringing to your writing a glow, a sparkle, and a mysterious hint of things unseen.