Someday we may discover—after we have passed the border—just how strange an environment surrounded us in life, especially if we spent our time in a modern, highly mechanized urban civilization, out of intimate contact with nature.
Out in nature we’re always in close relationship with living systems, whether we live an agricultural, hunting-gathering, or a herding life. Of course I don’t mean modern agriculture with all of its endless machines and chemical underpinnings. These thoughts occur because I’ve been reading, again, the novels of Alexander McCall Smith, creator of Mma Ramotswe, Botswana’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective. In that book quite frequently we are reminded of an earlier way of life, herding cattle in the arid regions adjoining the Kalahari desert in Africa.
The other root of this notion arises from retirement—and age. In a way, with leisure, I’ve been thrown back into my youth, a period of greater openness, then, as now, to the world of intuitions and ideas, not in the sense of concepts but of perceptions of a higher character. And these, it seems to me, are often indistinguishable from the perceptions that reach us by way of the natural world—the plants, the grasses, the trees, the birds, the animals. The living things, strange though it may sound, are also the worlds of poetry, music, epics, tales, novels, great dramas, and immortal myths.
That on which we focus our attention—that, in turn, takes root in us. Attention is a kind of identification. If we attend to the myriad issues and problems of modern life, that modern life invades our soul and takes up its residence in us. And our perception of reality then becomes, well, industrialized. We see everything in terms of the outer—because we attend to it, indeed must do so.
One of the powerful tools we have to combat this invasion of our natural waters by alien flora and fauna is recurring, periodic detachment. That doesn’t have to take the form of meditation, diaries, worship, or things of that nature. We can also recover our fundamental reality by walks in parks, gardening, or working with our hands outdoors or in.
With age—in which experience has amassed a great deal of visceral as well as formal knowledge—attentive listening eventually produces the strange feeling that what we take to be reality is an artificial construct. It mostly hides that which are, in our essence, and that which really surrounds us, not just in the immediate quarter-mile or so but including the heavens above reaching infinitely far outward (on the visible plain) and in realms only known from myths (in the invisible).
Keep notes. Someday we may have occasion to compare them.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Border Region ABCs
Sometimes we have experiences in which the facts are crystal clear, yet these facts conspire to produce in us emotional contact with something grand: awe, love, union, exaltation. We might actually shiver. To make this sharper: We understand the situation perfectly well. At the same time we have emotions. The two coincide and it is impossible to separate the two sets of facts, the cognitive grasp to one side, the feeling to the other. They go together. They are mutually supportive.
I contrast this to experiencing pure music—no words. We may have powerful emotions, but there is no cognitive counterpart. We can project a cognitive frame in order to explain the music. We might imagine a marriage in heaven, say, and the great climax of the music as the final embrace. Or we may imagine a victorious army taking possession, at last, of the field of battle. But these are—projections. We supply the cognitive frame. It isn’t really present in the music in any even remotely visible or graspable form.
Similarly we sometimes experience cognitive insights entirely devoid of any feelings except, perhaps, a certain satisfaction that we have finally understood the puzzle. We may have an Aha! moment, but it is just a flash.
We can label these three experiences as A, B, and C. Now the question arises, which is the best?
I pose this question because, in accounts of mystical experiences—a good example is the medieval, fourteenth century anonymous work called The Cloud of Unknowing—the middle position, B, pure feeling and the impossibility of knowledge, is held out as the ultimate. And in countless other accounts of a similar kind, however they might be labeled, the same conclusion is drawn.
Now I characterize these three experiences using other imagery. I see B and C as polarities. The ecstatic state is pure emotion but, if carried to its ultimate expression, it is equivalent to annihilation. Not surprisingly, annihilation is one meaning of nirvana, and, I would submit, so is the idea of union with God. So great is the difference between creature and creator, that the first united with the other is nothing at all. The pure cognitive breakthrough, C, pure intellectual grasp, also carries a negative connotation for me. It is ultimately far too abstract. That is why metaphysics bores me. Pure concepts, pure numbers—who cares.
The only interesting experience, for me, is the first, A, in which the two polarities appear in relationship and, at best, in union—but not in fusion. Knowledge and feeling are present and remain distinct, each supporting the other.
But this position implies duality and hence is denigrated. In pure idealism or mysticism, monism reigns supreme. In one the intellect, in the other feeling are viewed as illusory. Monisms, invariably, lack all dynamism and life. To have real union, you must first have separation. And this very separation is the womb of life. It spawns the desire for union and the energy whereby the separated strive for union again. If you believe the mystics, this striving terminates in annihilation. My intuition shakes its head. For me each union is but the prelude to another separation, followed by another motion upward in a spiraling ascent.
I contrast this to experiencing pure music—no words. We may have powerful emotions, but there is no cognitive counterpart. We can project a cognitive frame in order to explain the music. We might imagine a marriage in heaven, say, and the great climax of the music as the final embrace. Or we may imagine a victorious army taking possession, at last, of the field of battle. But these are—projections. We supply the cognitive frame. It isn’t really present in the music in any even remotely visible or graspable form.
Similarly we sometimes experience cognitive insights entirely devoid of any feelings except, perhaps, a certain satisfaction that we have finally understood the puzzle. We may have an Aha! moment, but it is just a flash.
We can label these three experiences as A, B, and C. Now the question arises, which is the best?
I pose this question because, in accounts of mystical experiences—a good example is the medieval, fourteenth century anonymous work called The Cloud of Unknowing—the middle position, B, pure feeling and the impossibility of knowledge, is held out as the ultimate. And in countless other accounts of a similar kind, however they might be labeled, the same conclusion is drawn.
Now I characterize these three experiences using other imagery. I see B and C as polarities. The ecstatic state is pure emotion but, if carried to its ultimate expression, it is equivalent to annihilation. Not surprisingly, annihilation is one meaning of nirvana, and, I would submit, so is the idea of union with God. So great is the difference between creature and creator, that the first united with the other is nothing at all. The pure cognitive breakthrough, C, pure intellectual grasp, also carries a negative connotation for me. It is ultimately far too abstract. That is why metaphysics bores me. Pure concepts, pure numbers—who cares.
The only interesting experience, for me, is the first, A, in which the two polarities appear in relationship and, at best, in union—but not in fusion. Knowledge and feeling are present and remain distinct, each supporting the other.
But this position implies duality and hence is denigrated. In pure idealism or mysticism, monism reigns supreme. In one the intellect, in the other feeling are viewed as illusory. Monisms, invariably, lack all dynamism and life. To have real union, you must first have separation. And this very separation is the womb of life. It spawns the desire for union and the energy whereby the separated strive for union again. If you believe the mystics, this striving terminates in annihilation. My intuition shakes its head. For me each union is but the prelude to another separation, followed by another motion upward in a spiraling ascent.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Knotty Issue - Art
I am not altogether happy with the last post (Art, Spirituality)—another way to put it, that post needs elaboration. The problems are these:
Borrowed Inspiration
Here is an example. Someone published a novel a couple of decades ago entitled On the Beach. The intention behind this novel was fundamentally political—anti-nukes. Yet it took the form of an artistic creation, with characters and plot. It evoked emotions, used imagination, etc. Now the novel just happened to be relatively undistinguished, but often quite advanced works of art appear, each moved by an agenda drawn from the lower levels of existence. The creative process, no matter what the artist’s intention, is energized by that aspect of ourselves which reaches beyond the here-and-now. Thus it borrows energy to achieve worldly aims. Now, arguably, all human creations have a range of motives in which the lower levels are also present. But great art is distinguished from the ordinary kinds by a motive obeying an attraction from above, aiming to unite with the mysterious higher—not in order to sell or influence anybody but purely for the sake of art, thus purely from a perceived spiritual inspiration. Such art is marked by its orientation. Never mind the details: the substance, the story, the style. The inner orientation is what makes the difference. In these situations nothing is borrowed “in order to.” The work proceeds from love. The pursuit of the arts, in this second form, is a spiritual striving. To be sure it isn’t felt as such because, in our culture, spiritual action is almost always pent up in kennels, as it were. If the activity is not outwardly religious, if it isn’t lit by the lights of dogma, is not intellectually aligned with the religious, and/or is not characterized by various kinds of voluntary self-denial, asceticism, and the like—then it is denied the definition.
The Ambiguity of Art
Such denial is in part very much justified precisely because the category, art, is such a muddled mixture. This is nicely documented by the prevailing the tongue-in-cheek question we’ve all heard used, always with a touch of irony: “Yes. But is it art?” To see art in its two prevailing modes, as serving lower purposes and as a kind of worship, requires adequacy. No arbitrary rules can be applied. To see requires a developed eyesight—and only those who have ears can hear it.
- The arts require the spiritual dimension, and all those who engage in the arts do, in a sense, borrow the fire of the gods.
- But in the arts, as in everything else, the intention is the determining factor. I noted correctly that art is the language of spirituality, but it can be a borrowed language to speak about more mundane things. At the same time, if will is moved by a perception of the spiritual realm, thus if the artist is obeying the Muse rather than using energies that flow from her to shape some intention directed downward, as it were, the art will still be illuminated from above, but it is the intention which governs the ultimate expression.
Borrowed Inspiration
Here is an example. Someone published a novel a couple of decades ago entitled On the Beach. The intention behind this novel was fundamentally political—anti-nukes. Yet it took the form of an artistic creation, with characters and plot. It evoked emotions, used imagination, etc. Now the novel just happened to be relatively undistinguished, but often quite advanced works of art appear, each moved by an agenda drawn from the lower levels of existence. The creative process, no matter what the artist’s intention, is energized by that aspect of ourselves which reaches beyond the here-and-now. Thus it borrows energy to achieve worldly aims. Now, arguably, all human creations have a range of motives in which the lower levels are also present. But great art is distinguished from the ordinary kinds by a motive obeying an attraction from above, aiming to unite with the mysterious higher—not in order to sell or influence anybody but purely for the sake of art, thus purely from a perceived spiritual inspiration. Such art is marked by its orientation. Never mind the details: the substance, the story, the style. The inner orientation is what makes the difference. In these situations nothing is borrowed “in order to.” The work proceeds from love. The pursuit of the arts, in this second form, is a spiritual striving. To be sure it isn’t felt as such because, in our culture, spiritual action is almost always pent up in kennels, as it were. If the activity is not outwardly religious, if it isn’t lit by the lights of dogma, is not intellectually aligned with the religious, and/or is not characterized by various kinds of voluntary self-denial, asceticism, and the like—then it is denied the definition.
The Ambiguity of Art
Such denial is in part very much justified precisely because the category, art, is such a muddled mixture. This is nicely documented by the prevailing the tongue-in-cheek question we’ve all heard used, always with a touch of irony: “Yes. But is it art?” To see art in its two prevailing modes, as serving lower purposes and as a kind of worship, requires adequacy. No arbitrary rules can be applied. To see requires a developed eyesight—and only those who have ears can hear it.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Art, Spirituality
The arts are the language of spirituality, but the complexities involved in this subject—cultural, social, personal, and, alas, commercial—make it difficult to see this. I’ll attempt a little unpacking today. Certainly in my youth the arts were viewed as a kind of rebellion against bourgeois customs. My youth extended from birth to twenty-five, let’s say, thus from 1936 to 1961. But this rebellion or upheaval predated my birth if, say, looking at painting, we see expressionism as an early sign of this collective mood. It goes even farther back if we take Romanticism as the model. It had its roots in the eighteenth century but flourished in the nineteenth. My own view is that the process—we’re talking about the Western Culture by and large—had its origins early in the nineteenth century. It took religious as well as artistic forms, and all of these were, in one way or another, impulses that moved against rationalism as it peaked in the Enlightenment, thus at the divide between the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, marked dramatically by the French Revolution.
The preponderant thrust of rationalism was outward, world-bound, and leveling. It’s ultimate expressions are “All is matter” and “God is dead.” The artistic reaction to this—ignoring the foolish behavior of all young people, including mine when I was young—is to deny and to oppose it. The denial does not automatically translate into an embrace of ritualistic (and never mind dogmatic) religiousness. But what the arts all sustain is something else, something higher, something above, something transcending.
Humanism is a marvelous synthesis of enlightenment thought energized by the new intuition. I always marvel reading, for example, Thomas Mann’s Sufferings and Greatness of the Masters—a book I re-read once a decade, roughly. It is such a splendid example of bridging the chaos between the Enlightenment and what is yet to emerge, a new Age of Faith. I am of the generation, perhaps a precocious member of it, that fully understands the Thomas Manns of the world, my grandfather’s generation, but can already discern the promised land that they could feel but could not intellectually affirm. I am the beneficiary of the dramatic devolution of rationalism into something ugly and destructive. That hadn’t happened yet in the formative years of that generation; and when they lived through the shattering experiences of two World Wars, they still clung to the blended value system that they had fashioned in youth.
Art as rebellion is a youthful gesture, jejune—and perhaps for that reason appealing to the masses. The model of the artist is the Pied Piper not the pitchfork wielding revolutionary who—all too soon—transforms himself into the commissar. In that rebellion is a conflict, it draws the media. Therefore rebellious writers and painters, people who like to exploit shock for fame and money, achieve at least visibility and, if clever, if able to adapt and channel their rebellion, can also achieve wealth.
Real art—which need not always be great art, but certainly great art above all—arises from travelling in the borderzone of life on this earth. It looks like rebellion, at least to some, because it fails to conform to the norms of fossilizing custom. The able artist will strip his work of obvious signs of rebellion, knowing full well that such behavior is posturing. Artistic inspiration is a grace. The artist is an instrument and, once aware of this, intent on making him or herself a fitting means to something mysterious. This is but one layer of an onion; the subject is inexhaustible.
The preponderant thrust of rationalism was outward, world-bound, and leveling. It’s ultimate expressions are “All is matter” and “God is dead.” The artistic reaction to this—ignoring the foolish behavior of all young people, including mine when I was young—is to deny and to oppose it. The denial does not automatically translate into an embrace of ritualistic (and never mind dogmatic) religiousness. But what the arts all sustain is something else, something higher, something above, something transcending.
Humanism is a marvelous synthesis of enlightenment thought energized by the new intuition. I always marvel reading, for example, Thomas Mann’s Sufferings and Greatness of the Masters—a book I re-read once a decade, roughly. It is such a splendid example of bridging the chaos between the Enlightenment and what is yet to emerge, a new Age of Faith. I am of the generation, perhaps a precocious member of it, that fully understands the Thomas Manns of the world, my grandfather’s generation, but can already discern the promised land that they could feel but could not intellectually affirm. I am the beneficiary of the dramatic devolution of rationalism into something ugly and destructive. That hadn’t happened yet in the formative years of that generation; and when they lived through the shattering experiences of two World Wars, they still clung to the blended value system that they had fashioned in youth.
Art as rebellion is a youthful gesture, jejune—and perhaps for that reason appealing to the masses. The model of the artist is the Pied Piper not the pitchfork wielding revolutionary who—all too soon—transforms himself into the commissar. In that rebellion is a conflict, it draws the media. Therefore rebellious writers and painters, people who like to exploit shock for fame and money, achieve at least visibility and, if clever, if able to adapt and channel their rebellion, can also achieve wealth.
Real art—which need not always be great art, but certainly great art above all—arises from travelling in the borderzone of life on this earth. It looks like rebellion, at least to some, because it fails to conform to the norms of fossilizing custom. The able artist will strip his work of obvious signs of rebellion, knowing full well that such behavior is posturing. Artistic inspiration is a grace. The artist is an instrument and, once aware of this, intent on making him or herself a fitting means to something mysterious. This is but one layer of an onion; the subject is inexhaustible.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Householder
The household still figures in a meaningful way in modern statistical measurement (e.g., household income, number of households, etc.), but it has never carried any kind of spiritual connotation. Not so in the East. In Sufi circles, for one, at least in the tradition that I know a little something about, the Naqshbandi, to be a householder is deemed to be the minimum qualification for higher learning, thus for the spiritual path.
This stands in contrast to the Western and some Eastern traditions where higher forms of dedication appear to demand that the seeker abandon the usual life occupations, take up a celibate or ascetic style of living, and devote him- or herself entirely to the pursuit of God. The life of the artist, similarly, is viewed in the same way. Above all, as an artist, do not be bourgeois, for God’s sake! You must pursue a life in garrets, unattached, eccentric, and unpredictable. The nine-to-five is a definite No-No. I’ve always found this amusing in that—as secularization has spread like a brushfire over the last couple of completed centuries—the scribbler, painter, sculptor, musician, dancer, or actor have been required, in an odd sort of way, at least outwardly, to imitate the saint. Only sexual freedom—but to be enjoyed strictly outside the constrictions of marriage—has been granted these not-quite-volunteers to be the secular saints of the West.
When I came across the householder dictum in the writings of Idries Shah—and his writings are, above all, traditional Sufi teachings presented in varied and carefully selected assemblages to the modern Western reader—I felt a sense of confirmation. I’ve always subscribed to idea that hierarchies exist, but never to the notion that you could join them by merely conforming your behavior to some set pattern. Similarly I’ve considered the notion that the artist may be (or to be genuine even must be) an unreliable, unpredictable, irresponsible, and destructive rebel simply ridiculous: as if there is something magical in poems, novels, paintings, etc. that balances out a man fertilizing women at a whim, abandoning them and their children when another whim arises, and his body to alcohol and drugs because spontaneity trumps everything else. Pure, ignorant baloney.
I have always had difficulties with priesthoods—and this despite the fact that I believe in real hierarchies among the living and beyond. Priesthoods are the institutionalization, in effect the reification, of something much more dynamic and mysterious. Priesthoods have a certain functional role to play, alas. This comes home to me looking at the Muslim world. There the Prophet expressly forbade the forming of a priesthood, yet ranks upon ranks of lawyers came to represent that functions, and we have a priesthood there, too, in all but name. I bow to necessity. I’ve no objection to priests as functionaries. I oppose priesthood as the presupposition that a priest has a higher status than, say, a carpenter.
Why the focus on the householder in Sufism? In functional terms the householder is a responsible person who has managed the basic adaptations to the world and to society. One thing at a time. Before a person aspires to a higher level, she or he ought to be mistress or master of the fundamentals. This is very good doctrine, it seems to me, and equally pertinent to the would-be artist.
This stands in contrast to the Western and some Eastern traditions where higher forms of dedication appear to demand that the seeker abandon the usual life occupations, take up a celibate or ascetic style of living, and devote him- or herself entirely to the pursuit of God. The life of the artist, similarly, is viewed in the same way. Above all, as an artist, do not be bourgeois, for God’s sake! You must pursue a life in garrets, unattached, eccentric, and unpredictable. The nine-to-five is a definite No-No. I’ve always found this amusing in that—as secularization has spread like a brushfire over the last couple of completed centuries—the scribbler, painter, sculptor, musician, dancer, or actor have been required, in an odd sort of way, at least outwardly, to imitate the saint. Only sexual freedom—but to be enjoyed strictly outside the constrictions of marriage—has been granted these not-quite-volunteers to be the secular saints of the West.
When I came across the householder dictum in the writings of Idries Shah—and his writings are, above all, traditional Sufi teachings presented in varied and carefully selected assemblages to the modern Western reader—I felt a sense of confirmation. I’ve always subscribed to idea that hierarchies exist, but never to the notion that you could join them by merely conforming your behavior to some set pattern. Similarly I’ve considered the notion that the artist may be (or to be genuine even must be) an unreliable, unpredictable, irresponsible, and destructive rebel simply ridiculous: as if there is something magical in poems, novels, paintings, etc. that balances out a man fertilizing women at a whim, abandoning them and their children when another whim arises, and his body to alcohol and drugs because spontaneity trumps everything else. Pure, ignorant baloney.
I have always had difficulties with priesthoods—and this despite the fact that I believe in real hierarchies among the living and beyond. Priesthoods are the institutionalization, in effect the reification, of something much more dynamic and mysterious. Priesthoods have a certain functional role to play, alas. This comes home to me looking at the Muslim world. There the Prophet expressly forbade the forming of a priesthood, yet ranks upon ranks of lawyers came to represent that functions, and we have a priesthood there, too, in all but name. I bow to necessity. I’ve no objection to priests as functionaries. I oppose priesthood as the presupposition that a priest has a higher status than, say, a carpenter.
Why the focus on the householder in Sufism? In functional terms the householder is a responsible person who has managed the basic adaptations to the world and to society. One thing at a time. Before a person aspires to a higher level, she or he ought to be mistress or master of the fundamentals. This is very good doctrine, it seems to me, and equally pertinent to the would-be artist.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Journal: A Tool of Contemplation
In my experience keeping a journal is one of the most valuable tools for contemplation. But a word about that word: certain words have awkward shadows. By contemplation I simply mean a centered inner state, balance, calm, and clarity. It might be put into the language of martial arts and called readiness; in that category readiness is also means emptiness. Nothing interferes with the steady look at reality as it is. I also like the word “sovereign,” used as an adjective, because in a state of contemplation we feel above the fray but not superior to it in a down-the-nose sort of way, just above it, ready to act, able to refrain, mistress or master of the self.
A contemplative journal is not a record of what I did yesterday. To-do lists are much more efficient for tracking. The point of an inner journal is to help me become aware. Its subject matter, in my case, is often something that troubles, irritates, or exercises me. I look at that and examine why I’m agitated. In due time—usually about a page of handwritten material later—the problem begins to sort. Another half-page later, calm begins to manifest. The irritation has receded. I see it clearly now. My various internal constituencies have calmed down. I am aware of the sources of my anxiety. These are almost always reflexive and therefore unexamined reactions. They combine and produce a collective shouting. I examine the matter with awareness, like an Inspector General, uninvolved. Then I see why I was reacting, see the point or pointlessness of it. If there is a point, I can jot it on a to-do list. In nine cases of ten, the root of irritation is something minor or unimportant—as seen under the species of eternity.
I don’t use the valuable time of journal writing—best done first thing in the morning—for tackling intellectual, analytical problems. Those are best done when I’m already “present.” Intellectualizing has no effect on inner states unless the activity is difficult enough so that it really deepens concentration. The process of journal-keeping serves me to clear away useless or energy-consuming “states”; states, in this context, are moods, preoccupations, emotionally-toned anticipations, anxieties—but also feelings of triumphalism (“Just wait till I tell him that! I can hardly wait to see the confusion on the bastard’s face.”). Upcoming events have a way of throwing a shadow backward from the future—even relatively minor events, e.g., having to go to the dentist for a cleaning or a checkup. These shadows disturb my equilibrium. Big meetings, trips, presentations—indeed any and all occurrences that in some way involve the self, disturb routine, or offer opportunities for momentary failure or success. These shadows are like strings—and I’m the puppet. But I want that feeling of sovereignty. From within that feeling, I am not at all concerned with the outcome. I am above it. I’m in a state of readiness. Que sera, sera. And I feel that without any kind of accompanying resignation or reservations. That is sovereignty, and looking at the day to come in that state, focusing on the up-boil of emotion-laced mental contents, until I see them objectively—that is the real value of journal-keeping of this kind.
These practices, to be sure, demand that we already have an effective cosmology. We must see ourselves as capable of worth. We must see ourselves as intended by something higher than ourselves; we must know, even if temporarily we don’t feel it, that we are empowered to be self-governing souls by our creator. If we seek our own worth in the very turbulence that we are fighting, we will merely (to change the metaphor) stir the pot. Nothing will change. We may just work ourselves into a greater fury or depression. We must become aware of hard rock beneath or steel within our own spine. In the Unity movement (but it is just one example), negation and affirmation are recommended. We must deny every lower manifestation of the mind, every associational stream attempting to suck us back into the problem; we must affirm our transcending origin and destiny. With practice and with time, the stable of Augias will be cleared of manure, even if we have to reroute a river to get the job done. Thereafter, things will improve if we keep returning to the inner silence that we can produce by the right application of attention—in this practice expressed as words on paper.
Public journals—blogs are today’s best example—do not serve this function. They are means of communication in which an audience is always at least potentially present. Journal-keeping is not communication. It is more akin to housecleaning or taking inventory. In many traditions mirrors are used as a symbol. Cleaning the mirror is the object—so that it is capable of reflecting the higher light. Windows work as a good symbol too. Life’s dust and grime obscure them. But the sun shines beyond the pane if we attack the surface with Windex, that favorite of mine.
A contemplative journal is not a record of what I did yesterday. To-do lists are much more efficient for tracking. The point of an inner journal is to help me become aware. Its subject matter, in my case, is often something that troubles, irritates, or exercises me. I look at that and examine why I’m agitated. In due time—usually about a page of handwritten material later—the problem begins to sort. Another half-page later, calm begins to manifest. The irritation has receded. I see it clearly now. My various internal constituencies have calmed down. I am aware of the sources of my anxiety. These are almost always reflexive and therefore unexamined reactions. They combine and produce a collective shouting. I examine the matter with awareness, like an Inspector General, uninvolved. Then I see why I was reacting, see the point or pointlessness of it. If there is a point, I can jot it on a to-do list. In nine cases of ten, the root of irritation is something minor or unimportant—as seen under the species of eternity.
I don’t use the valuable time of journal writing—best done first thing in the morning—for tackling intellectual, analytical problems. Those are best done when I’m already “present.” Intellectualizing has no effect on inner states unless the activity is difficult enough so that it really deepens concentration. The process of journal-keeping serves me to clear away useless or energy-consuming “states”; states, in this context, are moods, preoccupations, emotionally-toned anticipations, anxieties—but also feelings of triumphalism (“Just wait till I tell him that! I can hardly wait to see the confusion on the bastard’s face.”). Upcoming events have a way of throwing a shadow backward from the future—even relatively minor events, e.g., having to go to the dentist for a cleaning or a checkup. These shadows disturb my equilibrium. Big meetings, trips, presentations—indeed any and all occurrences that in some way involve the self, disturb routine, or offer opportunities for momentary failure or success. These shadows are like strings—and I’m the puppet. But I want that feeling of sovereignty. From within that feeling, I am not at all concerned with the outcome. I am above it. I’m in a state of readiness. Que sera, sera. And I feel that without any kind of accompanying resignation or reservations. That is sovereignty, and looking at the day to come in that state, focusing on the up-boil of emotion-laced mental contents, until I see them objectively—that is the real value of journal-keeping of this kind.
These practices, to be sure, demand that we already have an effective cosmology. We must see ourselves as capable of worth. We must see ourselves as intended by something higher than ourselves; we must know, even if temporarily we don’t feel it, that we are empowered to be self-governing souls by our creator. If we seek our own worth in the very turbulence that we are fighting, we will merely (to change the metaphor) stir the pot. Nothing will change. We may just work ourselves into a greater fury or depression. We must become aware of hard rock beneath or steel within our own spine. In the Unity movement (but it is just one example), negation and affirmation are recommended. We must deny every lower manifestation of the mind, every associational stream attempting to suck us back into the problem; we must affirm our transcending origin and destiny. With practice and with time, the stable of Augias will be cleared of manure, even if we have to reroute a river to get the job done. Thereafter, things will improve if we keep returning to the inner silence that we can produce by the right application of attention—in this practice expressed as words on paper.
Public journals—blogs are today’s best example—do not serve this function. They are means of communication in which an audience is always at least potentially present. Journal-keeping is not communication. It is more akin to housecleaning or taking inventory. In many traditions mirrors are used as a symbol. Cleaning the mirror is the object—so that it is capable of reflecting the higher light. Windows work as a good symbol too. Life’s dust and grime obscure them. But the sun shines beyond the pane if we attack the surface with Windex, that favorite of mine.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Contemplative Life
The last three weeks in my own life illustrate the reason why, in every culture, contemplative orders or aggregations have come into being and still persist despite the violent churn of Modernity around the globe. A sudden up-surge of work caused me to turn my head away from blogging—and the blog that I neglected most was Borderzone. We live in a layered environment in which the most demanding is the lowest level, the physical; the social is next; we will neglect it when we are ill or injured; and we neglect the one above that, the mental and the spiritual, when turbulence draws our attention downward.
I was editing novels I wrote about ten years ago to prepare them for publication. These books are not exactly time-bound in that they deal with an imagined future, and if anything has changed in the outer world since about 2000-2001, it has merely confirmed the trends that I used in my sagas as the base of my projections into the twenty-first century and beyond. But the effort to pummel these works into shape had to be done in the eternal Now, and my attention pulled me well in-land and away from the borderzone.
The men and women who formed and still inhabit the zone of contemplation, to give it a novel name, scorned the kinds of self-centered motives that make me wish to see my work enjoyed by others. For this reason they created environments for themselves in which “the world” was walled off to the maximum extent.
This has some curious aspects. One is that I wrote these novels while I held a demanding job and typically worked about 10 hours a day, not counting two hours of commuting. The writing itself, then, was a form of contemplative activity. It energized me and kept me sane. I used to carve out the time in the early morning, rising at 4 a.m. to write until 7. Contemplation is not, repeat NOT idle musing and idyllic walks. It is creative work. Its chief outer manifestation is concentration, but with the mind and heart in an invisible dimension. This is as true of writing as of sculpting—or cooking, or singing, or scientific work. The other aspect I would touch upon is that the contemplatives typically do a great deal of work, but they set boundaries to it, keep it as routine as possible, and pursue it in a structured manner. Some historians assign virtually all credit for the agricultural restoration of Europe to St. Benedict (480-547), at a time when the shattering of the Roman Empire and wide-spread depopulation had allowed large tracts of Europe to grow wild. In due course, the monastic orders, of which the first was the Benedictine, slowly accumulated immense wealth that, as other historians suggest, was the capital that Europe seized to underwrite the Industrial Revolution. In other words, not mere musing and idyllic walks with the occasional holding out of a begging bowl. But this sort of thing is not taught in our grade- and high-schools, therefore it comes as a surprise to some.
Indeed the contemplative life is not the contradiction of action, per se. But it has a very conscious and sophisticated view of action and thus harnesses its power more effectively. My own short-comings as a contemplative were demonstrated in the last several weeks. I allowed the excitement caused by revisiting my vivid imaginary worlds to break my usual routines. Live and learn. It’s possible at all ages. Indeed trying to do so is a sign of youth. A neighbor passed on to me just the other day a wise old saying that I hadn’t heard before: “If you want to stay young, keep going uphill.”
I was editing novels I wrote about ten years ago to prepare them for publication. These books are not exactly time-bound in that they deal with an imagined future, and if anything has changed in the outer world since about 2000-2001, it has merely confirmed the trends that I used in my sagas as the base of my projections into the twenty-first century and beyond. But the effort to pummel these works into shape had to be done in the eternal Now, and my attention pulled me well in-land and away from the borderzone.
The men and women who formed and still inhabit the zone of contemplation, to give it a novel name, scorned the kinds of self-centered motives that make me wish to see my work enjoyed by others. For this reason they created environments for themselves in which “the world” was walled off to the maximum extent.
This has some curious aspects. One is that I wrote these novels while I held a demanding job and typically worked about 10 hours a day, not counting two hours of commuting. The writing itself, then, was a form of contemplative activity. It energized me and kept me sane. I used to carve out the time in the early morning, rising at 4 a.m. to write until 7. Contemplation is not, repeat NOT idle musing and idyllic walks. It is creative work. Its chief outer manifestation is concentration, but with the mind and heart in an invisible dimension. This is as true of writing as of sculpting—or cooking, or singing, or scientific work. The other aspect I would touch upon is that the contemplatives typically do a great deal of work, but they set boundaries to it, keep it as routine as possible, and pursue it in a structured manner. Some historians assign virtually all credit for the agricultural restoration of Europe to St. Benedict (480-547), at a time when the shattering of the Roman Empire and wide-spread depopulation had allowed large tracts of Europe to grow wild. In due course, the monastic orders, of which the first was the Benedictine, slowly accumulated immense wealth that, as other historians suggest, was the capital that Europe seized to underwrite the Industrial Revolution. In other words, not mere musing and idyllic walks with the occasional holding out of a begging bowl. But this sort of thing is not taught in our grade- and high-schools, therefore it comes as a surprise to some.
Indeed the contemplative life is not the contradiction of action, per se. But it has a very conscious and sophisticated view of action and thus harnesses its power more effectively. My own short-comings as a contemplative were demonstrated in the last several weeks. I allowed the excitement caused by revisiting my vivid imaginary worlds to break my usual routines. Live and learn. It’s possible at all ages. Indeed trying to do so is a sign of youth. A neighbor passed on to me just the other day a wise old saying that I hadn’t heard before: “If you want to stay young, keep going uphill.”
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