Imagination is in fact one of the traits that makes us most human. Whenever I hike up to Arthur's Rock - just a few miles from my home - I love seeing the face of "Arthur" gazing intently up at the western sky. This face encourages me to be spacious in my awareness, and to maintain the sense of optimism I've felt ever since I was a kid whenever I look toward the west. Similarly, when I photographed golden Willow trees the other day next to the Big Thompson River, I imagined the water as Mother Earth's hair flowing down ceaselessly from the mountains.

And when I hiked up to Emerald Lake later that afternoon, the contorted Limber Pines appeared to me as wise elders who've weathered the storms of life, encouraging me to do likewise.

Imagination is actually a form of perception, as indigenous peoples have always known. Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us that "The feat of imagination is in showing the convertability of every thing into every other thing." Thus, imagination is a a major way of actualizing the innate oneness of all things. However, imagining is not simply an activity that WE engage in. Rather, it is a living presence who visits us. As Joy Harjo - a poet and musician from the Muskogee Nation - reminds us: "The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. Stories are evidence of this praise." Our Euro-American culture views this awareness of both the imagination and of Nature as personal as a naive "anthropomorphizing," as though human beings are the only creature that is innately personal. However, Thomas Moore reminds us that "When a psychologist says that we are projecting personality in the world when we talk to it, that psychologist is speaking NARCISSISTICALLY, as though personality and soul belong only to the human subject."

In our era, people in our society have given up their own imaginative capacities, relying instead on the imaginings of the so-called "professionals"; that is, of movie and TV producers, to do the imagining FOR them. This shirking of one's human responsibility to creatively re-imagine the world is one of the reasons for the massive epidemic of depression that afflicts our culture. For indigenous peoples, our imagining gives us a participation in the life and action of the Creator. In the absence of this kind of imagining, people in our current society have begun to feel passive and disconnected from the life around them. It is no wonder, then, that depression is so prevalent!

May all of us discover the unique ways in which WE are called to participate in the Creator's work by exercising OUR OWN imaginative capacities!

Photos: (Top) The "face" of Arthur's Rock gazes up at the western sky, Lory State Park, CO, November 15, 2014; (Middle) The Big Thompson River is Mother's Earth's hair flowing down from the mountains between golden Willow trees, west of Loveland, CO, November 14, 2014; (Bottom) A gnarly Limber Pine is a wise elder encouraging us to weather the storms of life, Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, November 14, 2014.  The Thomas Moore quote is from Care of the Soul, p. 61.

Finding the Divine Within Obsessive Desires

Earlier, I mentioned the fact that the thing we usually think of as our individual "self" is actually a web of relations tied to something Larger.  In that post, I called It "Life" or "The World Soul."  In this post, I want to be more specific. Here, I want to say that, as a heterosexual man, this primary Web of relations can be identified as the Sacred Feminine - "Mother Nature," "The Goddess," "Sophia,"  "Earth Woman," "Gaia"  - call her what you will. In any case, my perennial experience is that she CRAVES my attention, especially since - as a human being - I am called to be the major means by which She becomes self-conscious of Her own goodness and beauty.  Last weekend, I backpacked three-thousand feet in elevation gain in order to camp right next to this spectacular meadow of Rosy Paintbrush, located on the west side of the Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness.  While there, I had the distinct impression that the Goddess indwelling that meadow was absolutely OBSESSED with getting my attention, and was therefore packing it with as many expressions of Her rose-hued beauty as possible in order to MAKE ME pay attention to the spiritual reality underlying ALL of matter.

Years ago, I came across a fascinating article by archetypal psychologist James Hillman, in which he offered a convincing interpretation for the reason why so many men in our culture become obsessed with images of human female beauty.  In that article, he mentioned the fact that the Sacred Feminine - whom he referred to as "Aphrodite," the Goddess of love and beauty - has been SO oppressed and ignored by our overly-patriarchal corporate-industrial society, which seems so hell-bent on destroying the natural world, indigenous cultures, and everything that would make us heartfelt and human, that She is currently coming to us in any way she can, DEMANDING that we pay attention to Her.  If we won't recognize Her within the natural world, within our current religious systems, or within our inner lives, then She has to come to us in the areas where we DO allow Her, even if in a distorted way  - within the constant images of beauty produced by our media and entertainment industries, and within a seemingly endless number of internet websites.  In the case of men, She has to OBSESS us with these images of beauty if She is to have any chance at all of getting our attention. 

What the Sacred Feminine really desires, of course - as Hillman points out - is for us to find Her within our imagination, which is and has always been  the lens necessary for discovering Her presence hiding within the entire web of life.  But since we are currently so out of touch with our imaginative, myth-making capacity - something that was a staple of life within all indigenous cultures - She has to appear to us within LITERAL images of the feminine.  However, all the while, as Hillman points out, She hopes we'll tire of mere literalism and seek Her in a deeper, more imaginative way.  As Hillman's friend, Thomas Moore once put it: "The mystery of male sexuality is not to be found and lived in literal gender and literal sex.  The Other can only be loved and pleasured when one has discovered the cosmic couple, inside oneself and in the world at large.  Only when the male and female have coupled in out-buildings and economies and schools and politics will the god and goddess take their long night together with us."

What I find so liberating about this kind of insight is the realization that male desire - or ANY desire, for that matter - can be treated not merely as an aspect of the ego-self but as a quasi-independent Presence who desperately needs us to pay It our full attention.  Hillman calls this "finding the gods in the disease." When we identify our own emotions as OURS alone, we find ourselves struggling and struggling with them, without any real victory.  However, if we instead view our most challenging emotions as PRESENCES who desperately need our attention and help in bringing them into full, conscious self-awareness, then we suddenly begin to feel empowered to spring into action in order to HELP THEM OUT.  In other words, instead of beating ourselves up for our obsessions and addictions, it begins to dawn on us that they are presences who NEED OUR HELP!.  Jungian analyst Marion Woodman says something similar with regard to alcoholism and eating disorders.  In the case of alcohol (which we tellingly call "spirits") the much-neglected spiritual dimension of our lives is calling out to be recognized and brought to the fore.  And with eating disorders, the spiritual presence indwelling food (and all of matter) is - Woodman tells us - trying to get our attention in order to prod us into bringing its sacredness to the fore within our unbalanced corporate-industrial culture.

Some of the medieval mystics said something similar regarding the masculine aspect of the Divine; that is, of God.  For example, Mechthild of Magdeburg, a 13th century German Beguine mystic, tells us that "we must guard ourselves against Divine fervour,” which obsesses us with the desire for union.  In fact, she says that God tells her: “I must protect you from inordinate desire, both yours and MINE.”  Otherwise, we burn up in our desire for union with the Beyond.

I find this kind of vision incredibly liberating.  Instead of feeling isolated in my struggles with male longing - which I usually think of merely as MY desire and MY problem - I am instead able to view it as a spiritual presence - a quasi-independent being who indwells my desire - one that is trying to get my attention in order to have me help It - or Her - become more self-conscious of Its own beauty and goodness spread throughout ALL  the Earth and human culture.  And in that Rose Paintbrush meadow where I camped last weekend, the Goddess definitely went ALL OUT in Her desire to get my attention!

Photo: Rosy Paintbrush meadow; Silver Creek Basin, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO; August 9, 2014

The Phallus and Vulva are symbolic of deeper spiritual realities.

On the topic of sexuality, our societal attitude can be SO unimaginative and literalistic! For example, when people encounter sexual organs depicted in isolation from the rest of the human body, they automatically jump to the conclusion that such images can only be considered pornographic, unless of course they find them situated within an obviously medical context. In other words, people seem unable to view the depictions as transparent to any sort of deeper meaning. Why, I wonder, do we allow ourselves to fall into this rut, over and over again?  Here, grumpy second-wave feminists, finger-wagging fundamentalist preachers and sex magazine publishers depicting the same worn-out erotic scenarios for the gazillionth time are actually all in the same boat. All three have become mired in literalism, seemingly unable to find any deeper meaning within the realm of explicit erotic images.  

However, the situation has not always been this short-sighted and unimaginative. Thomas Moore, in his book, "The Soul of Sex," reminds us that "Ancient religions often detach the phallus [and vulva] from the body, like the ritual lingam and yoni in India, and treat this separated part as a celebration of the organ and its rich religious symbolism and NOT as emotional castration" (pp. 127-128).  Moore is referring here to the fact that - all over the landscapes and within the religious temples of India - the stylized lingam and yoni appear as vibrant symbols of SPIRITUAL realities: of Shiva and Shakti, of the sacred masculine and feminine.

Unfortunately, our culture has no such carvings - at least not within a religious context - but we can't escape the fact that our LANDSCAPES contain geologic formations that possess a definite resemblance to the lingam and yoni, especially within the deserts of the American Southwest. These forms, I would argue, contain a surplus of meaningful spiritual significance. 

Thus, for example, whenever we see a lingam or phallus embodied in a rock formation while out exploring the natural world, we might think of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "principle of correspondence," according to which external physical realities are always symbolic of inner spiritual realities. Applying this principle to the realm of sexuality, we might say that the phallus or lingam represents the penetrative capacity of a disciplined meditative gaze to see clear THROUGH material forms into the sacred masculine spaciousness out of which all things arise.  This gaze, directed VERTICALLY in an upward or downward direction, sees all forms - sexual ones included - as jewel-like crystallizations of the transparent and sky-like vastness of divine awareness, or of the the interior abyss of divine love that opens up within the human soul.  

This sort of awareness offers us liberation from the tightness and claustraphobia that our usual constriction around the events of life - and around the seeming solidity of the ego - so often elicits. Here, our constriction is replaced instead by a vast and spacious (or endlessly deep) freedom. 

In addition, this same penetrative gaze - directed HORIZONTALLY across the world - is also able to see through each individual being in order to understand how it is actually a variation on the reality of every other adjacent being.  In other words, all things are transparent to one another when we view them from the perspective of the feminine web of life within which they are situated. This awareness in turn brings liberation from an obsession with individual objects of lust, and instead places all things within a wider and more spacious divine context.

Similarly, whenever I see a yoni or vulvic form within Nature - in a cave, a slot canyon or a tree crevice, for example - I think of the ability of all beautiful things to hold and "squeeze" us within their intimate embrace, making us realize that we are truly loved and appreciated.

Interpreting the lingam and yoni in this symbolic sort of way is NOT, I would argue, a case of mere sublimation, an attitude which makes the assumption that all spiritual energy is simply a variation on the realities present within the realm of sexuality.  Instead, the spiritual traditions of the world help us realize that the true situation is actually the other way around; in other words, sexual energy is simply one variety of a more intense and general SPIRITUAL energy, one that is rooted in the masculinity of God, the Great Beyond, and in the femininity of Mother Earth, Gaia, Sophia.

In our culture, however, we are not accustomed to viewing particular things - such as the lingam or yoni, for example - as symbolic of more universal divine realities.  As the great German theologian Paul Tillich often said, we moderns are all children of nominalism.  That is, we have a tendency to remain agnostic about universal realities, and pretend that only particulars, or collections of particulars, are real.  In this case, we act as though a person who believes otherwise is from another planet if they suggest, for example, that the phallus might be a symbol of the penetrative quality of meditative awareness, or that the vulva represents the all-embracing quality of the circle of life. Spiritual teacher David Deida is a clear exception to this tendency, and I wholeheartedly recommend his work.

We should know better, of course, since our own biblical book of the Song of Songs - filled as it is with elaborate poetic descriptions of the erotic features of the human body - was brought into the scripture because the compilers viewed it as a symbolic allegory which speaks of the love affair occurring between the feminine human soul and the masculine spirit of God.  In fact, when I engaged in research for my Master's thesis, I had to read hundreds of sermons written by the Cistercian monks of medieval Europe, who - I discovered - viewed each body part described in the Song as symbolic of a specific INNER and spiritual reality.  Unfortunately, however, most people are not even aware of such a rich and symbolic tradition.

We will never find liberation from the literalism of either the pornographic or moralistic realms of our society until we cease taking life so superficially and instead view each aspect of reality - erotic ones included - as symbolic of deep INNER and SPIRITUAL realities.  Only in this way will we activate our own creative and imaginative capacities for symbolism and experience the sense of self-esteem that arises whenever we help bind together all of life's particulars into something much more Universal!

Photo:  "The Phallus" occurs in the Dewey Bridge Member of Entrada sandstone, formed during the Jurassic period and carved by wind, water, freezing and thawing; Arches National Park, UT; November 26, 2012.  The wood in the foreground is from an old Rocky Mountain Juniper.  For more information about erotic forms that occur in Nature, you might want to check out http://thejetpacker.com/nature-porn-20-famous-penis-rocks-vagina-caves-and-breast-mountains/ ..

Phenomena are "saved" when we gasp at their loveliness with the ahh of wonder.

"Phenomena need not be saved by grace or faith or all-embracing theory.  They are saved by our simple gasping at their imaginal loveliness.  The ahh of wonder, of recognition.  The aesthetic response saves the phenomenon, the phenomenon which is the face of the world."

James Hillman

"We are saved when we see our own beauty in the display of everyday life.  We find our own face, the unique visage of our soul, in the world's display of itself."

Thomas Moore

Photo: Indian Paintbrush and the beautiful teal-colored Mirror Lake, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 10, 2012