The winter solstice is a time of stripping - the purging of the old to prepare for the birth of the new. This time of year also coincides with the birth of Christ - which the mystics view as God's self-awareness - in the nighttime emptiness and spiritual poverty of the manger, when there was "no room at the inn." This year, the sense of purgation is especially heightened because it is the end of the ancient Mayan calendar.
In order for us to be purged and healed of our untransformed personal tendencies - egoic narcissism, explosive anger or crippling fear, for example - we first must be able to SEE and ADMIT these tendencies. However, we will never have the strength to face them unless we first learn to identify ourselves with the indwelling Divine; that is, with the True Self, as Thomas Keating refers to it. Some Tibetan Buddhists call this core sacredness "basic goodness." Notice they don't refer to it as "MY basic goodness." This makes sense when we realize that we don't own this good-heartedness; rather, it is a Goodness that is much larger than us, a reality in which we simply participate. In any case, without a trust in this basic goodness, we either fail to face our own flaws (because they are too painful), project them onto others, or do the opposite - exaggerate our faults as a subconscious means of avoiding the judgments of others and of a god we perceive as judgmental.
As two recent Photo-Quote postings from Thomas Merton have illustrated so vividly, this is also a time of NATIONAL purging, a season for examining the things about our American culture that we want to change. This includes such qualities as materialism, a failure to slow down in order to relate to others with dignity, an arrogant attitude toward other nations, environmental degradation, free market fundamentalism, obesity both economic and physical, a culture of violence, as well as an imperialistic attitude that historically tried to subjugate Native Americans and enslave those of African descent. However, we will never have the strength to face our American flaws unless we first identify ourselves with the basic GOODNESS that underlies the true American culture in which we all share.
Thus, for example, we can begin to face the ravages of our stressful, frenetic pace of life when we identify ourselves with our country's unique brand of American Buddhist mindfulness. Or, we can begin to own up to the environmental devastation our industrial lifestyle is causing by identifying ourselves with the wide-open spaces we have preserved within our National Parks and Wilderness areas, which some have called "America's best idea." Then again, we can find the strength to face our culture's rampant consumerism by getting in touch with our national tendency to practice compassion and to give abundantly to those who are afflicted by a disaster, like an earthquake, flood or fire. Again, our addiction to monetary wealth can be faced when we remember to identify ourselves with American heroes of simplicity: Emerson, Thoreau and the Shakers, for example. Or, when we examine the high rates of rape in our country, we can recall with pride the fact that America is the place where the 20th century women's liberation movement was born.
Moreover, we can begin to admit to the devastation our government has wreaked on this land's original inhabitants by realizing that we desperately need to align ourselves with our true national psyche in this matter - that is, with a Native American perspective on the sacredness of the web of life - if any of us are ever are to survive. In the absence of this kind of identification with a NATIONAL "basic goodness," we either deny that our nation has serious flaws (e.g., fundamentalistic patriotism) or we become overly judgmental of ourselves as Americans (the liberal tendency) as a subconscious means of preventing God and the world from judging us too harshly.
This Christmas and solstice season, may we as a country find the strength to admit our multiple flaws in the very act of seeing our own simultaneous national basic goodness, a goodness that is rooted in our deepest societal psyche and in the dignity of the beautiful American landscapes we inhabit.
Photo: Sunlit grasses gleam at sunset on soil blackened by the High Park Fire; Lory State Park, CO; December 15, 2012
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