 Two competing thoughts have invaded my morning meditation today. The first is a quotation from Meister Eckhart: "We are all meant to be mothers of God." And the second, from the Little Flowers of St. Francis, "The way to go up, is to go down." If I remember correctly, this quote is from Bro. Giles...
God, the Universe, or Life: take your pick: we are compelled to be born. I suppose that that which we name "God" could just as well be named force or energy. The ancient Chinese mystic-philosophers simply referred to That as Tao... Lao-Tzu wrote, "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao / The name that can be named is not the eternal name / The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth / the named is the mother of ten thousand things... Other mystics have said, implied, or hinted that we are the eyes through which the Holy One looks out upon the Universe, ours are the hands by means of which the Holy One continues working... and according to Meister Eckhart, ours are the bodies that are required for the birthing of the Divine... In my mind, I stutter out a sigh and a "Holy Moly!" All of this implies an intimacy that, truthfully, requires our own re-birthing! If you are not living in an unconditional amazement, can you seriously claim to be alive? To get a handle on both this thought and unconditional amazement, I hold up to my mind the mirror of Michelle: she is not only my wife, my partner, and my best friend, but she is also my home, my blanket, and my welcoming kiss... In other words, unconditional loving is always a re-birthing... In such loving, the Universe abides! This "abiding" is our place, our natural condition, and our re-birth... So, the "problem" that is always before us is exactly how do we cultivate the skills that we free us, so as to "abide"? I think that it is precisely here that the insight of Bro. Giles becomes handy, useful, and a practical "mystic tool". The way to go up is to go down... Isn't this a reflection of Jesus' teaching, the last shall be first? It seems that the Tao, or path, that we are being presented with is a plan for self-organization... It is by loving-in-action that we discover our re-birth: loving-in-action is the cultivation of the mind of the servant, the heart of the mother, and the reality of the Holy Mountain of Life upon which we both climb and descend. If we self-organize according to loving, then in the great mystery of things, we will find that we have become "mothers of God": what did Mary say? "Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord / rejoice, rejoice, my spirit... so tenderly has he looked upon his servant / His name is Holy / he has brought down the powerful / the humble he has lifted high / the rich he has sent away empty / and the hungry he has filled with good things..." Right here: exactly here: we have a descending elevation: the way to go up, is to go down... and we are all meant to be mothers of God... It is possible to actually abide in this practice and in this Mystery...
0 Comments
 Some folks are looking for salvation. Some folks are practicing meditation. Other folks are looking for skin. And still other folks are looking for profit. Some folks... well, the possibilities are endless, aren't they?
Whether salvation, meditation, skin or payday: there is always some degree of separation. Indeed, as the title of this blog protests, even in meditation there is the "skin of separation"... There are rich folks who pay "way hoo-ey" for the shaman drug: "Just get me out of my skin!" But what if... What if the Universe is Self-Aware? What if consciousness is the "foundation", the very organizing principle, of All and Everything? What if the "thing-y-ness" of Matter is the Skin of the Universe: and "underneath" it Is, similarly what Is "underneath" us? Here it is: matter, your skin and my skin, are bound forms of energy: and energy = consciousness. Whew! And precisely here, Mystery gathers Itself into mystique: one could say that Big Abba did not "just" create you, but Needed (kneaded) you into existence: for It had need of your skin, your bit of consciousness, to engage with your possibilities: perhaps, to contribute something sweet to the Soup Pot of Having Lived... We are temporary "balloons of life". Only a thin skin separates that which we consider "us" from the Big ? Out There: just the pin-prick of death and we go "pop" back into the Big ? No Separation... Ah! Ah but we can, now and again, "jump" out of the confines of our skins into the All-Beyond... You must remember (in faith if not experience) that Mystery is, above all else, creative. "Creative" certainly implies an activated use of imagination: if I as a poet can imagine a loving forever for everyone who has ever lived-loved-suffered-hoped-and-strove forward in life, what might Big Abba have imagined? Here it is again: whether salvation, meditation, skin, or profit as motivation: that which we hunger for, all the way down into the Consciousness that animates our DNA, is the transfiguration of our skin into the New Creation Skin of loving-without-limits... We begin our s-t-r-e-t-c-h into our New Skin by the practices of disappearance now: meditate! Serve others with no intention beyond that of gifting! Organize for peace, justice, equality, and the well-being of Earth! Practice adoration! Respect girls and women! Eliminate systems of domination! Cultivate healthy soil! Practice pleasure as sacred! It is only in loving that we may leap into our Sacred Possibilities...  Contemplative soup... or a contemplative life? Which is it?
Now, admittedly, when someone usually thinks of contemplation, he or she most likely has a mental image something like the above photo: someone special "contemplates": the rest of us don't, for we do "real work", and there isn't time enough in the course of our everyday-lives for "contemplation"... But if not a "contemplative life", how about humungous portions of contemplative soup? If one were to read a "Manual on Mysticism", surely there would be some sort of definition and perhaps example of "contemplation". But, truth be told, contemplation is not just the purview of the professionally religious. Oh sure, professionals have developed many techniques of contemplation and practices which both broaden and calm the mind so as to ready oneself for contemplation, but no professional has anything over that of the contemplative practice of a mother hovering over a sick child... We are all now knee-deep into the 21st century: wars, climate change, racism, sexism, nationalism, oppression, exploitation, unlimited greed, and slick propaganda machines to deceive, manipulate, and control are everywhere on the loose. This being fact, we can't afford to leave contemplation as the domain of the religious professionals any longer! We all need to become contemplatives -- right exactly where we are! In short, we need chefs and circles of contemplative soup! Where are you, right now, as you are reading this? That precise "place" has to become your hermitage of the heart. Above technique and all else, contemplation is the movement and expansion of Love's Presence and Delight in our hearts. The concentrated breaths of that mother hovering over a sick child, side-by-side with an expansive loving heart is the height, breadth, and depth of contemplative practice... To lose one's sense and fear of being an isolated ego is an inevitable consequence of contemplation: the "contemplative professional" disappears, as it were, into a surrender and identification with the Sacred Other: such a person in such a moment, lives only in a conscious love-union with the Other... It is also exactly so for the mom and her breathing and loving her sick child... Love is that which calls us out of our fears and into the radiance of simply loving... Loving is creative as it is gifting: circles of contemplative soup are gatherings of neighbors and friends who are willing to practice and acknowledge their cultivation of the Beatitudes and of contemplative moments in their everyday-lives. One could call this a form of the monastic life. But, obviously, it is also quite different: for if there is a mother, then there is also the practice and gifting of sexuality. So the contemplative is also breathing and loving in her expressions of sexuality... The point is this: we are each and all called to become contemplatives: it is the surrender and identification with our Sacred Other which frees our fear-based egos: and it is in loving that the ordinary moments of our lives become both contemplative and extraordinary. You are the chef of your contemplative soup. Your choices of attention or of inattention will have consequences: too much stirring might dissolve the veggies, as the following of distractions might find the beans getting stuck on the bottom of the soup-pot and burning. It is similar with contemplative soup circles: sharing stories, "wonderings", poetry, and sacred scripture, requires attention to just the right amount of reference to recipe and stirring (or not...) To be contemplative, is to simply welcome opportunities to abide, for awhile, in loving...  When considering the title of this blog, as I was walking the dogs, it occurred to me how similar are gardening and adoration: both are rooted in the stupendous surprise of awe... or as Brother David Steindl-Rast has written, "That you have not yet died is not sufficient proof that you're alive"! Awe is the -- not in the least bit subtle realization -- that one lives upon a Planet and within a Universe in which life is given... Isn't that one humongous holy moly?
Proof of life is immediately evident as one works to build soil. Years ago while living in California, Michelle and I were residing in a house that gave us the opportunity to garden. However, the "soil" was compacted clay which held virtually no life. Year-by-year we layered given lawn clippings and gathered leaves to turn into the clay: worms showed up to help us. Bad-soil tolerant plants worked their roots down some inches... and after but a few years, we had a topsoil of a few inches, and we kept working it so that, by the time we moved to the Midwest, we had left behind a garden area with a good rich six to eight inches of rich, dark, topsoil... Our gardening experience here in River Falls has been much like it was in California -- excepting sand for clay. Lawn clippings and leaves! Luckily for us, River Falls has a community compost site with a help-yourself to unlimited access to clippings, leaves, and sawdust or ground wood from fallen branches or trees. And so the soil building continues... But how magnificent it is to see tomatoes on the vine and just pull them off and eat your fill before strolling with the dogs! Contrary to those folks who seem to think that everything is for sale, the opposite is precisely how both nature and community actually work. Concepts such as the common good invite each of us to recognize the reality of our interdependence: and it's 'given' nature. While it is true, on one level, that the "strong survive", it is even more true, as philosopher Peter Kropotkin pointed out, that evolution favors those species that organize in favor of mutual aid. This essential gifting requires our recognition and humble awe... Awe is the access point to the Divine Consciousness. Or, in other words, without awe, all that remains in life is for sale! and theologies become marketing plans and justifications: technique becomes the "replacement part" for mystic. The mystique of life, which is supposed to provoke adoration, is overruled by the constructed systems of power, profit, and privilege. Unless you decide, from the vantage point of your own life, to choose otherwise! "OtherWise" is the rEvolutionary choice to bend your knee before nature, and to garden: to grow both food and beauty, in imitation of, well, nature... "OtherWise" is likewise the rEvolutionary choice to also bend your knee before the audacious possibility that the burgeoning Universe self-organized into Awareness Consciousness: call It divine, beloved, mystery, source, or God... Both gardening and adoration are tools for the mystic to cultivate awe in the face of the stupendous gift of life... However you can access soil, and get your hands and feet into It, do it! And surely, wherever you find yourself at this moment of your life, you can, even for just a moment of a few breaths, rest in awe, and in this resting, allow It to be done unto you... And at some following point, it is enough to simply say "I thank you" and "I love you"... Now you are a mystic... and for the rest of the days that you are given, just remember...  The great spiritual master and Trappist monk and hermit would perhaps chuckle at the title of this blog, "God or Mindfulness?"and the not so subtle implication that there is a difference... One clearly evokes the Abrahamic religions, the other, either Buddhism or Taoism... But what if we "bend" the title into something perhaps more manageable?
What about "practicing the presence"? Leaving aside the question of "presence of what?", might we just consider "practice" and "presence"? In other words, if you are at all like me, thoughts run helter-skelter, giving both you and I barely a moment's rest before we are hanging onto the tail of the fast disappearing creature dragging our mind far away from us... In this case, "practice" is the deliberate choice to "let go of that tail" and return to a natural self-awareness: it can be as simple as an intentional incoming and outgoing breath: coming and going with no other thought intruding on that moment... Meanwhile, "presence" is the intentional cultivation of Mystery: a quantum physicist like Amit Goswami, Ph.D. argues for the essential quality of Self-Awareness of the Universe. For him, and the mystics before and current, consciousness seems to be the Root-Source-Reality of us and everything... "Presence" is the grunt work of cultivating the possibility of a Unifying Consciousness behind and within everyone and everything: delving deeper, one works with the naked assumption that that Unifying Consciousness is Itself Self-Aware as Loving Compassion... Admittedly, with the oh so evident violence, hate, greed, racism, and sexism all about us and everywhere, why the hell should a Unifying Consciousness be given the benefit of doubt that perhaps "It" both Is, and Is Loving? Atheists are truly amazing people! They have so much more courage than I! Me? I really don't have an interior orientation towards grandeur: I'm not looking for a brass ring or streets of gold when I die. Rather, I'm simply looking to increase my happiness and that of my family, friends, neighbors and community now. So I practice: I practice moments of mindful breathing. I practice the blessing of my memories, especially those that still cause me immense pain. I practice, as I work, a remembrance of loving-through-my-breath. I practice releasing loving-thoughts out into the Universe. I practice reverence and adoration: I know very little, but the practice of embracing the Unifying Consciousness in the persons I spiritually identify with (like Yeshua, Mother Mary, Hildegard, Francis and Clare, Rumi, Yogananda, Anandamayi Ma, and Kuan Yin) in devotion and gratitude for their loving examples, re-orients my "self" towards the "Self"... So the question is not "God or Mindfulness?" Rather, it is more simple, actually much more simple... How about, do you enjoy receiving surprise gifts? Practicing the presence is sort of like a big "boo!" from a best friend, or maybe a flower from your lover... it's breathing in and breathing out in thanksgiving for this moment... and this moment...  Unlike Bob Dylan, I did not dream that I saw St. Augustine. Rather, I saw Jim Ferguson (pictured above), along with Dwayne Patterson and a great many guests of Dorothy's Place (my old bliss-home). The dream went something like this...
In my dream, I am sleeping and begin to dream... in that dream Jim Ferguson awakens me and says to come with him as I am needed... So I get up and follow: we are somehow magically transported from Wisconsin to Chinatown-Salinas. We walk into Dorothy's Place where a lot of folks are eating their lunch and I follow Jim into a side room (that didn't exist when I was there). Dwayne Patterson was leaning against the wall. I sat down with the two men who were in conflict... Jim pulls out an I-Pad and starts a movie recording (that was a hoot)... Anyway, after a bit of conversation, the two men reconciled. And Dwayne laughed because he thought it funny for me to be back at Dorothy's, and then, just like that, I was back in Wisconsin reaching for the 5 0'clock alarm... I leaned back for a minute pondering that my dreaming self was also having a dream... I suppose that if there is a "truth" in this dream it is, as much as anything, the simple awareness of how deeply embedded within my consciousness are the years of my "Chinatown" life... Of course, it isn't "Chinatown" or even "Dorothy's Place" that yet live in my mind and heart: but much more. It was there that I learned how to really and truly love... Indeed, as I sit at my desk here in our home in River Falls, Wisconsin, writing these thoughts down, I know that in every true love there exists simultaneously a practice in dying... This practice is above all else a willing appreciation for taking the last place... The great Buddhist mystic insight, likewise above all else, is the Bodhisattva Vow wherein the person who so vows wills to forsake heaven until everyone else enters first -- and promises to work assiduously for everyone's eventual salvation... Like the "Little Flower" St. Therese who solemnly promises to live her heaven in service to all of the rest of us still in the throes of life... And isn't this "last place" the exact place where Jesus is still found, at least for those with eyes to see... Okay. So now I'm going to do my "Robert thing" and mess with your head: I'm going to jump from dreams and the mystical straight into the bed! Writing now as a pleasure mystic, all of this "taking the last place" stuff connects deeply with partner intimacy. I believe, based upon personal experience, that every aspect of partner intimacy (marriage, if you prefer) is best lived in the relaxed but intentional state of a "holy competition", each gently striving to love more, to give more, to pleasure more than the Divine Beloved... While serving the orgasmic pleasures of one's partner is a delightful necessity, it should come as no great surprise to learn that there is an "orgasmic way" to fix breakfast, lunches for school, do the daily chores, practice yoga, go for a walk, pick up the dog poop, sit in contemplation, garden, write a poem: in short, when your life is less and less about you, and more and more about the well-being and happiness of your partner (family, friends, tribe, etc) it will lead to the inevitable discovery that your own well-being and happiness will likewise increase. Of course, the hinge upon which this "orgasmic door" swings is mutuality and communally: if everyone is in sync with this "holy competition" then there will finally be no last place... neither will there be a first place... What's left? Why, the Best Place, of course! |
AuthorRobert Daniel Smith was privileged to serve the homeless and marginalized for 30 years in California. He is living now almost within shouting distance of the Twin Cities. He is a poet, artist, writer, and long-time Companion of the Way still dreaming... Archives
May 2022
|
RSS Feed