"We live in a world of theophanies. Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure."
Macrina Wiederkehr
I have felt lately as if I'm walking on the bottom of the river, with all the words and images up on the surface in the light where I can see them but not quite reach them. From the surface, they seem to be separate fragments, floating, and there so many of them--but from down here I feel the filaments trailing down from each one, criss-crossing into the deep of time and space and meaning.
((.)) Last week for a little while I held the hand of a colleague and friend who was just diagnosed with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. Six weeks ago, she was still her radiant self: seeing clients, and writing, and immersed in her wide circle of friends and spiritual community, with no hint of disease. From the outside she seems like she is sleeping. On the inside, I know that her brain has filled with little holes, like a sponge. On the deeper inside, I know that in a day or few, perhaps by the Solstice, she will have completely dissolved back into her radiant Self.
A message just came from the website her family and friends have been keeping, to tell her many circles that our friend "...left us just as the Solstice came to be this mid-morning. She is free now to move to another plane, her abiding spirit able to move to even greater heights. She had a smile on her face as she departed."
The last time we had coffee together was a few months ago, and we talked a lot about our mutual friend and teacher Bill, who died so all-of-a-suddenly in January.
((.)) Last month, I phoned a friend to see if I could join him for a "bird-sit" the next morning, a pre-dawn meditation in the woods that he and some other friends have been doing--just sitting outside and listening as the birds wake up in the morning. It turned out that he was in New York, called back because his twin brother had had some trouble breathing, been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, and then had a stroke while in the hospital. My friend's brother died less than a week later. They had just turned 41 in February.
((.)) In March, a cheer-ful and energetic woman whom I got to know while we were in Israel in 2004, was diagnosed with cancer in the gallbladder and liver, after having had many months of stomach pain, and after having lived through breast cancer 9 years ago. After extensive surgery, she was set to undergo follow-up radiation treatment when a routine CT showed that the cancer had already come back and grown more tumors in her abdomen. She manages to be devastated, deeply accepting of whatever comes next, and entirely open to miracles, all at once. She was at services two Shabbats ago, and looked great; you couldn't tell what was going on inside (the surface of the inside) if you didn't already know.
The stories aren't connected, except that each one is so intense, and abrupt, so peculiar, so much going on under the quiet surface.
((.)) Jack Ricchiuto wrote, describing an abrupt near-death experience of his own, "When we are conscious, we love all the stories."
((.)) Last month was the holy day of Shavuot: the commemoration of Revelation, the occasion of the people receiving the Ten Commandments (it turns out that a better translation might be the "Ten Utterances" or the "Ten Principles" or maybe the "Ten Things") at Mt. Sinai.
My sense these days of revelation: moments fished out from the stream of light, which seems so far away but which enters right into me when I remember to turn my face towards it.
Our rabbinic intern, Olivier, offered a traditional Shavuot night study session (though we didn't quite manage to stay up till the birds started singing) We talked a lot about the dance between Descent and Ascent. The Yin and the Yang of creation and awakening. In the story of Sinai, the people (who are the Eternal in manifest, multivarious form) go up the mountain to meet the Mystery; the unmanifest Eternal comes down the mountain to meet us. Olivier says, "The universe wants this to happen, and it steps forth: God comes down" and we (all of us aspects of God), we go up. "But there is only so high we can go, while we live in bodies -- God has to come down." In our tradition, we also come back down, we don't stay on the mountaintop. For as long as we live in human form, we come down and go up and come down. For our own selves, and for each other.
((.)) Much later in the study session, we each drew a number from 1 to 10, our "Utterance" (or "Thing") for the year, to contemplate till next Shavuot. I drew the number 3, which is the one that's translated "you shall not take the name of God in vain."
Olivier shared Rabbi Ted's teaching on the Thing #3:
It is only on the surface level that we would perceive this to mean something as small as, "don't say 'God' as a swear word or curse."
Under the surface, on the inside, with a deeper imagination, we remember the Self-name of God, the name that rumbles from the blazing bush in response to Moses' wondering who was speaking to him: "Ehyeh asher Ehyeh ~~ I AM as I AM"
If the name of God is I AM,
then who am I?
How can I take good care of this name?
In what ways do I use the name I AM unconsciously and what consequences does that generate? How often do I channel it into narrow pathways by the thought-less identifications I choose? Can I imagine I AM without bounds, without separation, without any identification at all?
((.)) I Am moved to read Chris' post, and all the keen and tender comments, on "Going to War at the Art of Hosting on the Art of Hosting" -- about clarity and surrender and collective shadow, about "fierce commitment to defend the territory of the open heart" and "the responsibility of love...never to push our adversary or interlocutor into a place they cannot go unless we are prepared and awake enough to go with them to guard their back."
((.)) In a workshop over Mother's Day weekend, 5-element practitioner and Sufi healer Thea Elijah guided a classroom full of people in a practice of opening the heart and mind and body to Whatever-it-is we conceive of as the source of it all (I Am), for the benefit of all of ourselves and each other:
First, let yourself as much as you can trust the world to hold you as you sit or stand or lie upon it. It can help to widen your base (what Thea called "pyramid butt"). At the same time "open your throat to awe and wonder" --that place in the throat that gets tight when we feel moved and touched--and open your mind and the crown of the head up to the Mystery and the "I don't know." Opening to connection all the way Down, and all the way Up.
With so much space going down and up, the center of the chest, the place of the heart, feels more spacious too. See what you notice at the level of personal heart, at the front of the chest, where emotions rise up. Then let your imagination turn towards your back, to the deep chambers of the heart, and to the spine, which is "our pillar of eternity, our connection to the Infinite."
Then allow yourself to open past that, to fall back past eternity, and with the back body open ("we are prepared and awake enough to go with them to guard their back"), let yourself fill up from that source, which we can call by so many names ~ Allah ~ Elohim ~ Deep Love ~ I Am ~ until you overflow into the group heart, the collective being.
((.)) During a summery, flowery, lunch on her deck, my elder-mentor-friend Anne asked me to describe that practice to her again. She said that it reminds her of a sensation she often thinks of: when you are rafting down a river, with your feet pressed firmly at the front of the raft, and your arms lifted, chest open, feeling the current of the river through your back, holding you up, and carrying you on.
((.)) On Saturday I attended the bar mitzvah of a friend's son, who in her words is "growing up beautiful and strong," including having healed from a brain injury after being kicked in the head last year by a group of kids who thought he shouldn't be in their neighborhood. He was magnificent, charming, genuine, funny (as my friend also said about her shining son in her little speech, "stylistically, there isn't anything more Jewish than the combination of intensity and humor").
Included in his service booklet, for the period of silent meditation, was this Rumi verse:
...Lo, I am with you always, means when you look for God
God is in the look in your eyes
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self
or things that have happened to you,
There is no need to go outside.
Be melting snow
Wash yourself of yourself.
A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.
Right now I am as close as I will ever be to having a tongue of flowers, breakfasting on those inward-facing blossoms we call figs.
And right now, I am finding a similar ripe and secret sweetness down here at the bottom of this river. I think of my friends and the look in their eyes. Mysterious perfect flowers blooming in the quietness.
And right now, I remember, so Am I.
Autumn is Metal:
"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever-more wonders."
—Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother
And Winter is Water:
"This mind of endless effortless movement is what we strive to emulate in Aikido. Joining with, absorbing, surrounding, and protecting all that we encounter, regardless of the perceived adversity. Through our practice we come to embody the emotional understanding that we are very much the same as all of life. Each of us engaged in the inevitable journey back to the center of the universe, to die and be born again."
Senta Yamada sensei
founder of Kikusui Kai Aikido
Springtime is Wood:
"Too often we focus exclusively on the objectives, reacting to the failure of its immediacy with frustration and impatience. One wonders if the apple seed, too, experiences this frustration and sense of dashed hopes as it grows into a wooden stick that in no way resembles the apple it was promised it would become."
Rabbi Gerson Winkler
Summer is Fire:
"I am the joy of the desiring flesh
The days of my living
are summer days
The nights of my glory
outshine the blazing wavecaps of the heavens
at their floodtide
Mine is the confident hand shaping this world."
Kenneth Patchen
And this is Earth, sometimes called the season in-between the seasons, sometimes called Indian Summer, sometimes called the center and axis of the wheel as it turns:
"I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Three Taoist Treasures are Qi (energy), Jing (essence) and Shen (mind/spirit).
Jing is stored in the Kidneys and belongs to Water. This is some of what I learned from Thea about Jing:
Jing is Potential. Resource. Blueprint. Seed (see Chris Corrigan's telling of the Sky Goddess creation story: in it, Seed holds the roaring power of transformation, which can require deep endurance and sacrifice, and the prospect of that often evokes terror -- all Kidney/Water attributes).
Jing is "the thing you can't change about yourself", your individual uniqueness given through family, lineage, ancestry, everything that's come before. You can fight it or embrace it, but it's innate and it unfolds over time.
The transformation to virtue is from Fear, to Wisdom. The wise person is deeply attuned to the inevitable unfolding, to what is going to unfold/emerge from the seeds planted now, deeply attuned to the song whose opening notes are just starting to be sung.
We have two kinds of Jing: Original Jing, which is passed to us by our parents and all of the ancestors before; and Postnatal Jing, which we make from Kidney Yin (sleep) and Kidney Yang (from the energy of the Sun -- in the air we breathe, and in the food we eat). One of the main ways to deplete Jing is to be other than what we're meant to be, to deny our authentic nature. We are given quite enough Jing to realize our True Nature, but it uses up more Jing to be/do something other than that. "Are you going to will for yourself what Heaven's willed for you?"
Original Jing is irreplaceable. When we kick into "willpower" (effortful striving) to live our lives, it means we've surpassed the amount of Jing we acquired from eating, breathing and sleeping for that day, and we are squandering Original Jing. "It is OK to tap your Jing for immortality" -- for that which will live beyond you: your child who needs you in the middle of the night, your life's devotion; just be aware of what you're choosing to use it for. Teaching is a Jing activity, relying as it does on the ability to understand the authentic Nature of each student.
A "Jing crisis" will put you into what Dr. Ted Kaptchuk calls "existential vertigo": it's "looking into the pit" or looking at the night sky and feeling like you're falling in, it's "losing your place in Time". People in a Jing crisis will visit their home town or people who knew them "before they got lost", wondering "who am I now?"
Jing tonics and medicines can't replace Original Jing, but they can help us attune to our "Jing vibration" so that we will be more likely to move in accordance, and not squander.
Each of the phases/elements/seasons/organ systems pertains to a particular aspect of the human psyche-spirit. The aspect that belongs to the Liver and thus to Spring is the Hun, the Ethereal Soul.
What Thea says about Hun: (filtered through my own mind and hands, and I apologize for any mistakes...)
The Hun is the aspect of Spirit that is completely unfettered by time and space. It's utterly free and can go anywhere, because it is the power of imagination, of creativity. It's the part of us that allows us to be always larger than our circumstances. Because of the Hun's ability to go anywhere, we can know that our own true size is the Whole Universe.
Sometimes if we can't see the way ahead, we lose hope and put the Hun in a box of preconceived restriction.
First the Hun flies,
then it figures out where it's going.
Hope does not rest on seeing the future.
Hope must precede vision.
Moses was a prophet of the Wood element: someone who, in an external situation of slavery, refused to be a slave internally. The untameable part inside is the Hun, is Hope, is like a bird circling, waiting for opportunity. It's the one who sees the problem in the first place who can be the greatest visionary, the one with the greatest solution, the one with the greatest Hun. Their tendency to anger is a sign that their soul is acutely aware of fairness and how often it doesn't manifest, and their route back to alignment with Tao is to transform excessive or stuck anger into visionary creativity.
"Our deepest pathology is our only hope of redemption."
it is just a precious day, as all days are too,
but this one is lit all the way through
with that yellow autumn light so acute in the heart
~chris weaver "yellow autumn light"
As the northern hemisphere moves from late Summer into Autumn, we can sense all around and within us the shift in energy, the piercing angle of the light, the crisp brilliance of the air and the dryness of the leaves as they fall away. Cross-cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien has distilled the indigenous wisdom of many traditions into the awareness that autumn is the time to practice letting go of attachments (~and that we will know when our attachments are lightening, by the bubbling up of our sense of humor~)
“When we are inspired, we are breathed in to a sense of heightened aliveness. What seemed impossible to our rational mind, suddenly seems possible; it seems probable; it seems certain…all we have to do is step out of the way” Stephen Mitchell
In the wild and elegant Taoist 5-Phase system, Autumn is the Metal season, a time to be open to inspiration, to recall and refine what is precious, and to practice letting go of what we no longer need or may no longer hold onto. The natural emotion associated with the process of taking in and letting go — of changing — is grief, a sense of loss that arises whether we are letting go of something we still care about, or are letting go of something that is just familiar or habitual. Subtle aspects of grief such as nostalgia, homesickness, and restless longing, are common autumnal feelings that serve to remind us to appreciate this poignant living moment even as we watch it pass away.The Metal phase is embodied within us as the Large Intestine (Colon), the Lungs, and the Skin — each an important organ of reception and elimination, each an important interface between Inside and Outside ourselves.Autumn is a good time to tonify (strengthen) the Qi (energy) and function of the Lungs, especially for those who experience seasonal respiratory allergies or frequent colds and ‘flu’s. Culinary herbs and spices that gently support the Lung Qi include small amounts of cardamom, anise, or thyme. To ensure the ability of the Lungs to fully receive and absorb inspiration — which pertains both to the inspiration of oxygen-rich air, as well as to creative inspiration — it is important that the Lungs' capacity for expiration — that is, for letting go — is also strengthened. How comfortable are you with breathing out all the way, to the bottom of your lungs? How long can you comfortably pause in that phase of emptiness before you have to allow your Lungs to fill back up? Pranayama, which is the yogic art and science of breath, teaches that a few cycles of slow expiration through slightly pursed lips, with a pause before the next inspiration, will calm the nervous system, soothe pain, and enhance cellular detoxification and nutrition.
“We breathe air deep into the most moist, warm, intimate parts of our bodies, and we fuse to the air. You can’t draw a line and say the air ends here, and I begin there. There is no line.” David Suzuki, Bioneers Conference 2003
The Skin, which is ruled by the Lungs, is the largest organ of the body and an obvious interface between the inside and the outside of our bodies. At the microscopic level, though, we are constantly exchanging molecules, heat, and electromagnetic energy with the surrounding environment. Echoing the old medicine traditions and indigenous wisdom, science gives us the tools to deeply appreciate that our bodies don’t end at our skin. Our skin skillfully protects and contains our internal organs, while at the same time much of what we perceive about the outside world—the rest of the Earth’s body—comes from signals we receive through our skin. Our complexions, via fleeting changes in color and radiance, and our myriad complex facial expressions, also serve to connect our “inside” to our “outside” by transmitting signs and hints that can reveal very precisely our inner states.
The countless dazzling foliage colors that illuminate the landscapes so characteristic of Autumn suggest another precious Metal insight: the understanding that the glorious beauty of Nature arises from multiplicity and assortment. Our friend, Rabbi Ted Falcon, remarks in his teachings that the word for “face” in Hebrew (“panim”) is a plural construction. All of the wisdom traditions suggest, just as the Hebrew word subtly underscores, that each of our individual faces is really composed of many faces — all the various masks and expressions that we put on for different occasions — and at an even deeper level, that every single one of our faces is an essential and indispensable part of the One Original Face, which we could also call the Community of All Beings, the Divine, the Tao, or the face of Nature.
((.)) During a summery, flowery, lunch on her deck, my elder-mentor-friend Anne asked me to describe that practice to her again. She said that it reminds her of a sensation she often thinks of: when you are rafting down a river, with your feet pressed firmly at the front of the raft, and your arms lifted, chest open, feeling the current of the river through your back, holding you up, and carrying you on.
Right now I am as close as I will ever be to having a tongue of flowers, breakfasting on those inward-facing blossoms we call figs.
