October 2009
This Month's Contents: A Poem by Thomas Whitmire | A Formula for Self Discovery by Bob Fergeson | Words of Wisdom | Inspiration by Art Ticknor | Humor |
Editor's Note
by Shawn Nevins
We are so used to not saying what we mean that the richness of metaphor is
lost on us. Simile is oblique; always to the left of truth. Just as our longings
and dreams are translations of a mind which cannot conceive or contain what is
behind it. "Like" a sound is many iterations away from the primal note.
Metaphor is straight track, a hammer to the finger, a door whisked open, revelation. But we don't believe, so we can't hear the burning bush; the pulsing, booming words, "Come over, come over here," are only a whisper. The whole world is shimmering. The leaf that falls is you and you know it, but, "O' god, please let the truth be anything but that."
A Poem
by Thomas Whitmire
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"Whale Calls" Echoes stir the deep deep loneliness |
A Formula for Self Discovery
by Bob Fergeson
I'm often asked how a seeker can increase their progress along the path. Sometimes the person may feel stuck, or simply wants to know the most expedient way to increase their vector. Looking back over my own life, I've found that one factor stands out. When I became a conduit for realization, passing it along to others, things took off. It's as if we agree to become a link in a chain, and pass on down the line that which was handed to us from above. This is not only a theory, but something we can, and must, actively do in our day-to-day lives. One may argue that if all is one, then this is just another illusion, but the rationalizations of the ego come easy and keep us stuck in our own mud, while active work may put tension on us in a way the ego can't handle.
I can best relate how this works along the lines of my hobby with
photography. I've spent a lot of my time in the great outdoors, and for years
refused to share this experience with others due to a certain ego. I felt that
if I took pictures of my trips, it would somehow cheapen the experience, take
something away from the purity of the pristine settings. Somehow this changed,
thank goodness, and I became willing and inspired to do the work to bring a bit
of what I was seeing back with me to share with others. I broke down and bought
a digital camera, and the magic began. Some inner part of me that had been
denied came back to life, and with it a better relationship to everything
involved. The entire experience of hiking was somehow changed for the better.
At about this same time, I also bought my first computer and entered the world of email and the Internet. I was able to stay in touch with fellow seekers from around the country, and to share my experiences in the search for definition, as with the photography. Somehow this changed the belief that spiritual work was a solitary affair only, and opened doors of opportunity I had never dreamed of. I started a web site, and became involved with an online confrontation group. I began to move within, the connection was made. William Samuel talks about much the same thing. He describes getting answers from within as Glimpses, and stresses the importance of sharing these. It's a double-sided coin, much like the chicken and the egg dilemma, in that we must get answers in order to share them, in order to get answers. But the process is not that complicated, if we just make a move. We become a conduit, a transmitter of realization, and the more we give, the more we get.
One trap worth mentioning here is that of keeping this all in one's head. We may think that by getting a few answers in the beginning of our search, we are on the path and need not put out more effort. Being comfortable in our life, we may not wish to rock the boat of our habits, and thus keep whatever intuitions we receive to ourselves, thus miring our spirit in a dream world. Our intuitions bear fruit when they are put into action and tested in life, and when found sound, passed along to our fellows.
All of the above is what might be called a law of manifestation, an equation as Samuel calls it, and it will work for whatever desire applies it, spiritual or otherwise. If one wants money, success or security, this formula will work as well. This leads to a dilemma for some of us in that we may not consciously know what we really want, until we test ourselves by putting the formula into practice. This can be a paradox. If we believe we want enlightenment, and put it to the test through actions in our day-to-day life, we may find that what we really want is freedom from fear or a desire for power. While we have temporarily fooled ourselves, we have at least come to know ourselves better, and have thus made a move along the path of self-discovery. We may eventually uncover an intense longing for home, for something stable and real, which was only allowed to manifest as the mundane patterns of fear and worldly desire. This was long buried, and is what will provide the necessary pull to carry us farther within. To get real answers, we must come to have real and pressing questions.
One thing is for certain, if we do not make a move, a commitment to action, we will not leave the head-in-the-sand false safety of our dreams. A man asleep in his bed in a burning house may dream of oneness and ease as well as anxiety and need. On the other hand, waking up may take effort, be difficult and even unpleasant, but is most necessary, too.
Words of Wisdom
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"Everything's fighting. Doesn't matter what it is. You wake up in the morning, to get outta bed is a fight, believe it. So, fighting is actually the best thing a man can have in his soul." ~ Renzo Gracie "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." ~ Thomas Edison |
Inspiration
by Art Ticknor
Could your deepest yearning be the desire for absolute security or unity? Does your intuition tell you that what you're looking for lies at the core of your being? If so, then all you need to do in order to satisfy your deepest longing is to know what you really are.
How is it possible, though, not to consciously know—not to know that we know—what we really are? What could possibly prevent us from such self-knowing?
When we ask ourselves what we know, or how we know what we know, our observation leads us to the fact that there's a split between us-the-knower and the objects of our knowing. If that's an absolute limitation, then we can never know ourselves … can never know the knower. That would make life ultimately absurd, as many existentialists and other nihilistic philosophers evidently have concluded. It may well be a limitation of perceptual and conceptual knowing, but is there a knowing beyond subject-object knowing?
There appears to be an in-between stage, represented by the cosmic
consciousness that Walt Whitman experienced, where we become one with
everything, and by the unitive experience of contemplative Christians like John
of the Cross who become one with God. But since it's an experience, it comes and
goes, in intensity, frequency and duration … and the core state of being remains
unknown.
If our intuition tells us, or our intellect admits the possibility, that there may be a knowing beyond conceptual knowing and even beyond cosmic consciousness, then we're faced with the how-to-get-there question. And that's where we're liable to run into the inspiration roadblock as witnessed by complaints like these:
"A lot of action may be required, and I don't have the inspiration to dedicate myself to the necessary effort."
"I don't feel inspired. I just have to wait for my mood or something to change so that I can act."
Sure, the statistical odds aren't good. Richard Bucke, a friend of Whitman's who also experienced cosmic consciousness and published a book of case studies, estimated that cosmic consciousness occurred in 1 out of every million people. If that's accurate, then around 6,000 of the people now living should reach cosmic consciousness. (Bucke was optimistic, feeling that the rate was increasing, as do modern gurus Andrew Cohen and Eckhart Tolle, who both write about a planetary shift occurring, an evolution in consciousness. Personally, I haven't seen any evidence for it.) Eleven climbers perished recently on K2, the second highest peak on earth but considered to be the most difficult to climb. In fact, for every three people who try to make it to the top, one dies trying. Not very good odds. But look at human life: for every 1,000,000 people who desire absolute security and unity, at least 999,999 of them apparently die trying.
What is inspiration, and where does it come from? We identify it as a feeling or a mood. We feel inspired in relation to negativity or flatness … when the pendulum swings from negative to positive, from being "down" to being "up." The extreme case is bipolar depression and mania. Feeling inspired may last for an extended period during which it produces great activity, as in the manic phase of bipolar disorder, but in most cases it's fleeting and produces little if any productive action. Action for action's sake is nice, especially after a period of inaction, but action toward our primary life-goal is what we're concerned with here.
I experienced inspiration for new or renewed action toward my primary goal mostly when I was on solitary retreats—about the only times my mind relaxed sufficiently, I suspect. The accompanying feeling was like champagne bubbling through my cardiovascular system. I felt bubbly inside and would be hit by many ideas for action. Those periods of inspiration were the only times I felt able to scan my mind for resistances and make honest commitments to myself to carry out actions with great determination—almost exactly unlike New Year's resolutions, which might be made with earnestness but evaporated with great rapidity.
There's a message being piped into the mind from its source, and that message is the cause of the deepest inspiration. It's the voice of nostalgia, calling us home. Home is not a place, but it's where we came from … and actually have never left. The "return" pull is really a call to awaken to our true state of being. Sometimes a book or a person triggers an inspiration. At other times there's no discernible catalyst, with the inspiration seeming to come out of nowhere. In any case, when it penetrates down to our deepest longing, it motivates action toward returning to—really recognition of—our changeless state of being.
We desire inspiration and fear expiration. Emotionally, inspiration is like feeling full while expiration represents emptiness. Douglas Harding, a witty contrarian, referred to a quote from Meister Eckhart ("He who created me rested in my tent") in an essay by that title in To Be and Not To Be:
For many years now I've been in the habit of silently repeating to myself, from time to time, my own secret mantra, "To be saved is to be Him," while breathing out very deeply indeed. My whole body down to my toenails seems to be expiring, breathing me out and You in. The strong sensation of leaning back and collapsing into Your Immensity, of merging with You utterly, brings with it the profoundest physical relaxation I know. As I say, it's as if, breathing out thus deeply, I breathe You in; and, breathing in again, You breathe me in. It's very much as if, having just saved me from drowning in the Sea of Death, You were giving me the Kiss of Life.
Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in Blink how the neurological changes that
produce happy feelings and subsequently cause contraction of the associated
facial muscles also occur as the result of an intentional contraction of those
facial muscles. In other words, feelings produce action but actions also produce
feelings – a chicken-and-egg standoff in terms of which came first. It's not
necessary to wait for inspiration in order to be able to act. We can
intentionally contract the "inspiration muscles." A good example of that
occurred recently in the
Pittsburgh Philosophical Self-Inquiry Discussion Group. One of the
participants, who had been voicing his lack of inspiration and the conviction
that all he could do was wait for inspiration to visit him, volunteered to lead
the discussion at the following meeting, and another participant put together a
poster for that meeting. It contained a quote from Seng-Ts'an, the 7th Century
Chinese Zen Patriarch: "... Just because I wondered deeply, I later attained
penetrating understanding.... If you do not reflect and examine, your whole life
will be buried away." He titled it Wondering Deeply, found and included the
photo accompanying this paragraph, and added three questions: What is death?
What is life? Who are you?
They will likely never know the extent to which their action may have inspired someone else, and they may never know the extent to which their action inspired their own continuing action—or inspired the help that's necessary for bringing about the satisfaction of their deepest longing.
Humor... A Homeopathic EmergencyIf you don't see the video, go directly to YouTube. |
Did you enjoy the Forum? Then buy the book!
Beyond Mind, Beyond Death
