Light on the Path ![]() (Remember to begin with the Opening Meditation and the recitation of the Three Jewels as in Mindfulness Trainings One through Five -- scroll down in the burninghandblog for this.) We begin: "In the Name of the Holy One, Boundlessly Compassionate, Boundlessly Merciful... Beauty within Beauty within Beauty..." Eleventh Mindfulness Training: Aware that great violence, exploitation, and injustice is being done to our environment and society, we are determined to strive to live in harmony with nature, with all creatures and creation, respecting the rights of those who will be alive generations from now. Reflection: Probably most folks giving time to this "Light on the Path" series, the burninghand blog, and to this website have a significant understanding of the science validating deep concerns about global climate change. Hence, it doesn't seem to us to be the best use of space for a few paragraphs to present an argument for climate change policies -- the same is true for the topics of violence and exploitation. One need only occasionally scan the news to (other than Fox of course) to realize the continued precariousness of life (of civilization) on this Planet. So, instead, we are going to veer off in another direction... This "veering" leads back to Rumi: "Let the beauty we love be what we do". Ah! Rumi tells the story of a man who climbed a walnut tree growing beside a small stream. This man picks nuts from around his perch on the tree and drops them into the water below. Someone passing by observes the situation and calls out, "Sir! Why are you dropping your nuts in the stream? Can't you see they are just floating away?" The man in the tree replies, "I'm not harvesting the nuts to eat... I'm listening to the music they make when they splash into the water." Granted, perhaps this was a waste of food and someone nearby might have been hungry... but the story is not about hunger issues: the story is about a deep awareness of Beauty, of Music, of Art, of the Symphonic Harmony underlying all of Creation... and of the possibility of entering ever more deeply into that awareness... Yes: we need rapid leadership and international legislation and action to reverse climate change, eliminate every weapon of mass destruction, and reconstruct international economics towards justice and sustainability... but we want to toss a few "nuts" into the stream of thought of our times... We believe that beyond emergency measures, sustainable and revolutionary transformation will only come through conversion to a new vision of Earth and of Humanity. Tinkering around the edges of the dominator paradigm will not get us to where we need to go. We need to plunge into truly radical possibilities! We need to take a leap with our "nuts" and hear the sound that dynamic splash will make! The core transformative vision and value that we are proposing is that of "Welcome Home". The dominator paradigm (again, read The Chalice & The Blade by Riane Eisler) has "infected" every area of our individual and collective lives and consciousness. The dominator paradigm is imbedded in theologies of "sin" and "separation" -- with the feminine on the margins because of Her Earth centered spirituality which fosters interbeing, harmony, abundant simplicity, and sustainability. On the other hand, the dominator paradigm is sustained by power associations: violence justifications, weaponry adoration, and wealth adulation. Fear is actively cultivated as a means of crowd control (follow "us" or you'll go to hell; follow "us" or the "enemy" will take everything you have, etc.). The proposition of "original sin" is the very root of this dominator paradigm -- that's how deep we need to go to re-discover our beauty and our freedom. Only by uprooting this destructive proposition will we be able to effectively deal with the overwhelming specific issues which must be dealt with, and only by uprooting this same destructive proposition will we be able to "change our minds", recover our original innocence and blessing, and bring the Divine Feminine back into the sacred center of life on this precious blue Planet. THIS is what we mean by "Welcome Home"! We need to "come home" to awareness of our immanent and transcendent nature as human beings and our essential identification with the Divine. We need to actually and truly fall in love with Love: we need to be able to both look into a mirror and know that the Face looking back is Right Now Worth Everything / Worth Love... and then to look out and survey All of Life and Creation and confirm by Sacred Action the very same essential truth for All. Then we will have finally recovered our "right mind" and true identity. When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the above as below, and when you make the male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female... then you shall enter the kingdom. -- Gospel of Thomas, Logion 22 As for the doctrine of original sin as developed by the Church, it has fundamentally unnerved and repressed us in a way that has fuelled and not in any way checked human destructiveness and has exacerbated that fear, desolation, inability to trust and sense of separation from God that is at the core of all destructiveness. What is there to cherish or save if this life is rotten at its core with sin and what possible use would there be in striving for divine wholeness in the dance if sin is always bound to fetter our feet? ...Anything that does not help humankind into the most invigorating and inspiring possible vision of its sacred identity and purpose and of the total holiness of nature has to be set outside. To save ourselves at this late moment, we have to believe passionately in our deepest selves, in God's unconditional love for us and in our worth. To struggle and sacrifice to save nature, we have to believe, to see and know nature in its divine splendor and know that we and nature are one -- one dance, one feast, one radiance whose beauty and joy it would be madness not to do everything in our power to preserve. -- Andrew Harvey So, here we are... one question is lingering on our minds... we're curious if the same question is in yours? Here is ours: "How?" Even supposing everything in this Eleventh Mindfulness Training reflection is "true", how can such a total personal and collective transformation come about? How in the world am "I", are "We", supposed to do "That"? There is only one way to break open a human heart -- or the collective heart of humanity: we must love with the radical self-emptying love of one such as Yeshua of Nazareth. It is by loving that we will discover our liberation and the Other. It is by loving that we will work up the courage to love even more and finally to leave all fear behind. And it is only by loving that we will come home to the Holy Secret: There is Only One -- and we are It. (Rev. Ellen Grace O'Brian puts it like this: It is. We are it. We forget. We remember.) Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity... we shall harness the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. -- Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Eleventh Mindfulness Training is a call to each one of us to accept personal responsibility for our total transformation as the first step in a Planetary transformation. When we surrender to, and then implement, the Way of Love, we will begin to fulfill our destiny for greatness. When we gather in Sacred Circles of 6 - 12 persons and organize for transformation -- when we truly commit to becoming mystic / activists -- we will become agents of the Fire that Teilhard wrote of... When we summon the courage to live lives of radical reverence and thrilling adoration for Good, Being, and Beauty, we will become the very Fire of Transformation... As an exercise in declaring your spiritual identification, from here on out, always refer to Earth as "our precious blue Planet". Declare your love! A new culture, one of a radical commitment to the liberation and full development of every person is coming into existence (of course, not without the pangs of birth). A new awareness of One living "interbeing" of relationship between our precious blue Planet and the lives it sustains is likewise growing in our planetary awareness. Within every human being there lives a dream of the Paradise that is truly possible to build -- only Love will free us from our fears so we can together take a new leap on the evolutionary ladder -- we have to believe with incredible passion this is true! Love is the pursuit of the whole. -- Plato Love all of God's creation, love the whole, and love each grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love animals, love plants, love every kind of thing. If you love every kind of thing, then everywhere God's mystery will reveal itself to you. Once this has been revealed to you, you will begin to understand it ever more deeply with each passing day. And finally you will be able to love the whole world with an all-encompassing universal love. -- Dostoevsky (a saying of Fr. Zosima from The Karamazov Brothers) An Alternate Eleventh Mindfulness Training: Aware of the opportunity before me to become an agent of transformation, I will to live as a possibilitarian for Justice and Beauty -- for our precious blue Planet and for the well-being of all life. I will become a living flame of love energized for greatness! Question of the Week: How can human relationships, cultures, and societies be re-imagined with humans understood to be ontologically one with nature -- and not "masters" of nature? Practice of the Week: Visit the websites andrewharvey.net and resurgence.org. Commit to finding, supporting, and participating in an intentional community organized and established for both personal and global transformation. Recommended Reading: The Gift, Poems of Hafiz, Translated by Daniel Ladinsky Dialogues with a Modern Mystic, Andrew Harvey and Mark Matousek With Love and Blessings, Michelle and Robert "In the Name of the Holy One, Boundlessly Compassionate, Boundlessly Merciful... Beauty within Beauty within Beauty..." Comments are closed.
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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
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