Our depression and self-forgetfulness are a reflection of LIFE's depression and self-forgetfulness.

 

In light of all of the discussions about depression that are occurring this week since Robin Williams' tragic suicide, I want to add an element that I feel is missing from the discussion. In our society, whenever any of us struggles with some kind of attachment, addiction or persistent emotional issue, we almost invariably believe the problem is completely OURS. We think that it is OUR depression or anger or lust or fear, or whatever. But what if we were to realize instead that the thing we call our "self" with its problems is actually a set of relationships within a wider web, a relationship with Life itself? What if our problem is actually a mirroring of LIFE's problem, and what if we are called gently to help Life with ITS anger, lust, confusion or depression? Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee puts it this way:

"Just as the individual can forget her true nature and real purpose, as many of us have painfully experienced, so can life itself forget. Life is an interdependent living organism that reflects the collective consciousness of humanity. As humanity has become obsessed with materialism and forgotten the sacred nature of life, so has life forgotten its own sacred nature, its primal purpose of divine revelation. We need to redeem this desecration, give back to the world an awareness of its divine nature. This is the work of the mystic. The mystic, the spiritual seeker, belongs to the core of life, to the mystery of life's revelation. We carry within our spiritual centers the secrets of life, and we know the deep joy in recognizing life's need for what is real, what has been hidden within the heart. Part of our purpose is to give these secrets back to life: to help life become aware of its true nature." Indeed, "The first step on the spiritual path is to recognize that it is not about 'me' . . . The WORLD needs our help in order to evolve. We are midwives to a new awakening of the earth that is taking place NOW."

I firmly believe that the depression and confusion we feel so persistently in our time is actually the depression and confusion that Life Itself - or what Renaissance thinkers called "The World Soul" - is experiencing because Its ability to become self-conscious within the human mind and heart has been severely deformed through humanity's reciprocal self-forgetfulness. If we began to realize that this World Soul desperately NEEDS us to throw off Its forgetfulness and to remember who It is, would a large measure of our depression - formed through a sense of seeming isolation and alienation - begin to be healed? It is certainly an insight well worth exploring.

Photo: Sunrise on Crater Lake, with a Limber Pine in the foreground; Crater Lake National Park, OR; July 28, 2014

Outer Environmental Issues are a Mirror of Inner Spiritual Issues

 

 "Our neglect and dismissal of the sacred within creation are creating an INNER wasteland as real as the Tar Sands in Alberta.  The globalization of our soulless, materialistic culture is having disastrous effects in the inner world, polluting it as much as the outer environment.  And like the danger of climate change and extinction of species, this inner wasteland is growing faster than we realize . . . One could say that this outer physical predicament is a reflection of an inner catastrophe - a catastrophe that is even more disastrous because we remain unaware of it.  We may not be consciously aware of what is happening, yet many people feel it deep within.  There is a primal anxiety beneath the surface of our Western material abundance.  We may project this anxiety onto the outer political or economic situation, but there is a sense that something vital to life is being lost . . . The effect on the inner world remain veiled, hidden by our very forgetfulness of the inner world and its sacred nature.  All that is sure is that an inner tragedy as potent as climate change is taking place - the inner and outer life reflect each other more than we know."

Lllewellyn Vaughan-Lee,
Sufi teacher
"Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth"

Photo: A group of "Needles" and a Pinyon Pine killed by pine bark beetle; Canyonlands National Park, UT; December 1, 2013

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We have lost an awareness that our own individual soul is a part of the WORLD SOUL.

"There has been a recent resurgence in spirituality in the West, what some would call an 'awakening' . . . Yet we still have little understanding of the spiritual dimension within the natural world, or of how our individual soul relates to the larger dimension of the World Soul (what the ancients called the 'anima mundi') . . . Instead we are caught within a contemporary consciousness that focuses on the individual self, no longer even aware of our deep bond to the sacred within creation.  We may have begun to reclaim an understanding of how to relate to our own soul and experienced the meaning and sense of purpose that can come into our life through this relationship . . . But we have little awareness of the relationship between our individual soul and the WORLD SOUL.  We have forgotten the ancient teaching that says that the individual is the microcosm of the whole . . . While there may be a growing awareness that the world forms a single living being - what has been called the Gaia principle - we don't really understand that this being is also nourished by its SOUL, the Anima Mundi - or that we are a part of it, part of a much larger living, sacred being.  Sadly we remain cut off, isolated from this spiritual dimension of life itself.  We have forgotten how to nourish or be nourished by the Soul of the World.  And while there is a growing ecological movement that reminds us that we are guardians of the planet, this guardianship is interpreted as looking after our PHYSICAL environment and its myriad inhabitants, rarely addressing our inherent responsibility of the SACRED within creation.  Instead, in only relating to our planet from a physical perspective, much of the ecological movement perpetuates the concept of the earth as something solely physical, without sacredness or SOUL, and so reinforces the divorce of matter from spirit.  While we may remember the sacredness of human beings, we have forgotten that the Earth is also sacred, and that its Soul can speak to ours."

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee,

Sufi teacher

"Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth"

Photo: The La Sal Mountains, fog, sandstone cliffs, and a housing development near Moab, Utah; December 2, 2013

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Through the fire of our longing, the light within the heart rises to meet the Divine light, and the Divine light comes to meet us.

"Through the fire of our longing, the light within the heart rises to meet His light and His light comes to meet us. This is the secret of the mystical communion, the journey of the soul back to the source . . . Each time the heart sighs for the divine Throne, the Throne sighs for the heart, so they come to meet . . . This is the secret of the heart's sorrow, and why longing is the golden thread that takes us home."

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee,
Sufi teacher

Photo: An aspen lead becomes translucent to late-day sunlight; Red Feather Lakes, CO; October 18, 2013

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God is a Desert Trickster

 

The book of life is written by the hand of God, not by well-meaning people.  There is laughter and infinite love in the way He tells His story, the way He reveals Himself to Himself . . .  [T]here is nothing other than His oneness revealing itself in a multitude of ways, in the most beautiful and terrible forms, full of divine purpose and trickery!  It is always other than what we think, than what we can imagine.  Awakening to this is essential to experiencing the wonder and terror of His world.  It is not about us!

One of the first things we learn on the path is that nothing is as it appears.  We realize how we are deceived and how we deceive ourselves.  Life is a play of appearances in which we are caught by our own desires and projections.  The path presents us with these illusions and other tricks; it deceives us.  Even the idea of a path is an illusion because there is nowhere to go, no journey to make.  We learn to laugh as well as cry at how we are deceived . . .

On the path we come to see how we are manipulated, how we are the fool.  Yet we rarely take this knowing into the wider spectrum of life, appreciating how the whole world is a deception and is itself the victim of trickery.  We blame our politicians for deceiving us, for not telling us the truth.  But they are children compared to the way the divine deceives us all.  What is this “world stage” that seems so important?  What is really being enacted?

We have forgotten or dismissed the magical nature of creation, but gradually the blinkers that have shielded us from this dimension of life will be removed.  We will find that our rational perception is quite inadequate to explain what is happening, and we will discover that we are part of a world full of delight and mischief . . . of the Creator witnessing His oneness . . ."

Sufi Master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee 

"Emptiness is form; form is emptiness."

Buddhist Heart Sutra

Photo: Raven the Trickster in the Needles District, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011