Perhaps the present life is the only place where we can find - and follow - our "bliss."

Joseph Campbell:  Have you ever read Sinclair Lewis' "Babbit"?

Bill Moyers: Not in a long time.

Joseph Campbell:  Remember that last line?  "I have never done the thing that I wanted to in all my life."  That is a man who never followed his bliss . . . You may have a success in life, but then just think of it - what kind of life was it?  What good was it - you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life.  I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go.  When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off . . . The religious people tell us we really won't experience bliss until we die and go to heaven.  But I believe in having as much as you can of this experience while you are still alive.

Moyers:  Bliss is now.

Campbell: In heaven you will be having such a marvelous time "looking at God" that you won't get YOUR OWN experience at all.  That is not the place to have the experience - HERE is the place to have it . . . If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.  When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.  I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be . . . If you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

Photo: A magpie sits at sunset on the topmost branch of a Ponderosa Pine snag, with Long's Peak and Mt. Meeker looming in the background; Westridge, Lory State Park, CO; November 6, 2012.  

As I listened this past weekend to the interview between Moyers and Campbell from which the above passage is taken.  I was struck by the fact that we are called to find and live our "bliss" RIGHT NOW.  Before this point, I'd always thought of the afterlife as a place where the bliss we are experiencing now will be intensified and unhindered by the challenges and distractions of this present life.  But what if - instead - the afterlife is a place where we will be so devoted to the process of SERVING  "the face of God" in others - i.e., in the living - that we will have no time to focus on our own experience?  And what if the reservoir out of which we will draw strength for that kind of giving can only come from the bliss we experience HERE AND NOW?  Something to ponder :)

Our present state of perfection, no matter how great and perfect it might be, is merely the beginning of a greater and superior stage.

"Our present state of perfection, no matter how great and perfect it might be, is merely the beginning of a greater and superior stage.  Thus the words of the Apostle [Paul] are verified: the stretching forth to the things that are ahead involves the forgetting of what has already been attained (Philippians 3:13) . . . The graces we receive at every point are indeed great, but the path that lies beyond our immediate grasp is infinite . . . Thus we never stop rising, moving from one new beginning to the next . . ."

St. Gregory of Nyssa, 4th century

Photo: Sunset on the Westridge, Lory State Park, CO; November 6, 2012

Read not the "Times." Read the Eternities.

"How rarely I meet with a person who can be free, even in thought!  We live according to rule.  Some people are bedridden; all are world-ridden.  I take my neighbor, an intellectual man, out into the woods and invite him to take a new and absolute view of things, to empty clean out his thoughts of all institutions of men and start again; but he can't do it, he sticks to his traditions and his crotchets.  He thinks that governments, colleges, newspapers, etc., are from everlasting to everlasting."

"The last two Tribune newspapers I have not looked at.  I have no time to read newspapers.  If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire, - thinner than the paper on which it is printed, - then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them."

"Read not the  ' Times.'  Read the Eternities."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Aspen trees and the Vedauwoo Rocks glow in last light; Medicine Bow National Forest, WY; November 2, 2012.  Obviously, we in these complex times will continue to read the newpapers and think about what kind of government we have.  But perhaps we can take a tip from Thoreau and focus a bit more of our attention on larger realities.  Time spent in Nature is one way of helping us make this shift.

Nature is more fundamental than politics.

"  'Republicans and Democrats' - what names to write after considering the lilies!"

John Muir

Photo: Glacier Lilies, Mount Rainier National Park, WA; July 25, 2012.  The reference here is to Jesus' statement about "considering the lilies" in Matthew 6:28.

Imagination allows us to taste rock, ingest it, become one with it, and then embody its qualities in all of our actions.

Sometimes rock, when illuminated just right, seems like something one could eat.  Perhaps a lightly- frosted birthday cake, white chocolate fudge, or some kind of pastry.  The visceral nature of this sort of imaginative experience points, I believe, to the fact that we are meant to take the spiritual presence of the rock inside us, digest it by means of the liquifying capacities of love, let it flow into our veins, and then embody it in all of our actions.  When we become one with the rock in this way, we take on the qualities of strength, self-confidence, steadiness, and the ability to let life sculpt us into something beautiful.  At the same time, our union allows the rock to know its majestic beauty within OUR eyesight, sense of touch, and appreciation.  It is this kind of mutual union that is meant to suffuse every experience of life.

Photo: Vedauwoo rocks at sunset, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY; November 3, 2012

Spiritual masters are called BOTH to reveal their flaws, AND to show the tools they've discovered for transforming those flaws.

Our flaws generally involve the over-expression of one side of our personality.  For example, we may be oversensitive, over-aggressive, or overly focused on the sexual aspect of our being or on the things that make us angry. We may have a tendency to engage in action to the detriment of contemplation, or vice versa. The traditional model of religious perfection treats the spiritual master as someone who has already overcome all of their flaws, and who is now perfect - or at least close to perfect.

However, recent history is filled with cases of spiritual teachers who eventually reveal their clay feet.  A hidden affair, sex with their disciples, a penchant for materialism, or a drive to lord it over others are examples of some of the flaws that suddenly reveal themselves.  The result is often disillusionment on the part of their disciples, or a general skepticism regarding religion for those who don't consciously see themselves on a spiritual journey.

I believe that a new model is needed in our time.  Rather than acting as though all of their flaws have been overcome, spiritual masters should be open to revealing some of the ways in which they are still untransformed, AND the practices and tools they use to overcome their flaws.  Martin Luther used the phrase "Simul iustus et peccator," which means "simultaneously righteous and a sinner."  While I don't agree with Luther's view that the human core is innately sinful, and that "righteousness" consists in having this sinfulness covered by Christ's sacrifice as though by a mere cloak, I do resonate with the sense that we are always righteous (at our core) AND flawed (in the sense that we do not always live up to who we are at our core), BOTH at the same time.

Some early Christian writers -  Irenaeus of Lyon being a notable example - made a distinction between the IMAGE of God that dwells within our essential core, and our LIKENESS to that image, which manifests itself in our actual behavior on a day-to-day basis.  Here, these writers discovered hidden meaning in a passage included in the first chapter of Genesis, where the author says that we are made "in the image and likeness of God."  Irenaeus translates "likeness" as "likening" - a verb - thereby emphasizing the realization that we are always working to actualize - in practice, through the "likening" - the essence of who we really are; that is,  the "image."  In other words, we continually seek to become more "like" the core image in our everyday attitudes and actions.  I would add the fact that since our divine core is infinite, we will be FOREVER in process, working on expressing the richness of that core in endlessly new ways.  Thus, we are forever perfect (in our core) AND falling short of that perfection, since our true self admits of a limitless number of ways of actualizing its profound richness within our daily life. This is simply Luther's "Simul iustus et peccator," translated in a more positive way.

Following this model, I have committed myself in my teaching and writing to reveal BOTH the ways in which I am still challenged by the unbalanced aspects of my personality AND the tools I've found for beginning to transform those aspects.  For me, this involves finding the sacred dimension present within such things as an oversensitive nature, a typically male preoccupation with erotic energy, the tendency toward depression, and a desire to be seen as special (a part of the artistic temperament: the "Romantic," the Type Four personality on the Enneagram). I believe this approach is necessary both to remain true to the virtue of honesty, and to encourage others who find themselves in a similar place.  After all, spiritual growth is an endless process, and without some aspect of the personality that still needs further transformation, I - like all of us - would be deprived of the energy that is so necessary in driving and vivifying my spiritual journey.  Besides, like the tree shown in this photo, we sometimes appear much more interesting to others when we are NOT perfectly balanced!

Photo: A twisted, weather-beaten Limber Pine frames the Vedauwoo Rocks at sunset; Medicine Bow National Forest, WY; November 3, 2012

The chief aim of meditation is to experience wonder at the emergence of all things out of the vast sky of awareness.

The chief aim of meditation practice is to identify ourselves with the vast sky of awareness, and then to watch in awe as various forms, energies, occurrences, thoughts and emotions emerge like clouds from that expanse as though they were echoes arising out of Nowhere.  Here, we take great delight in playing a game of amazement, wondering what sort of  thought or occurrence will arise next!

Photo: Vedauwoo Rocks, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY; November 3, 2012

The rocks can only continue to have a voice if we speak to them and pray to them.

"It's very important that we be connected to the elements as a human race.  As a Native person, I am connected to these things, because I can hear their voices, coming from all these elements.  I hear all their songs and everything else.  I'm asking each thing to continue on in a good way . . . I have to DO something so that all this continues on.  In order to connect with all these things, our forefathers had to have ceremony and pray.  That was our duty . . . I think everyone is now coming back to realize that the Indian people have the authority to talk about the right way to care for the earth . . .  I talk to rocks in my prayers.  I ask the rocks, "Make sure that you ARE in such a way that we hear from you.  Make your voices heard, make sure that I hear what you're saying . . . Mountain, make sure the water comes out clean from you . . . And now I ask you, today, Mountain, to continue to have a voice, to have songs" . . .

If the mountain doesn't have a voice, then we as a people are not going to have a voice pretty quick . . . The mountain is where the people are, the little people up there, the mountain people, as we call them, or the rock people - they're up there listening to us.  They're the ones we have to pray to; they're the ones who take care of the mountain . . .We have to ask what's out there, the rocks, the land, the living things, to unite together; everything has to work together.

Long ago, the land, the mountain, used to have more voice, a clearer voice, clearer than it is today.  The land, the rocks, they used to continue to tell us over and over again to take care of them, and to ask us to do those things.  But today, we're lost, and I think its's the reason we're not concerned with anything; we just look at a mountain as if it's just there, nothing more.  But the mountain's got a life to it.  Everything's got a spirit, the mountain's got a spirit, and all the living things on the mountain have got a spirit . . . It's one of the reasons why their voice is not clear and loud anymore - because we haven't been taking care of them."

Corbin Harney, 
Western Shoshone Elder

Photo: Vedauwoo Rocks, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY; November 3, 2012. "Vedauwoo" is an anglicized version of an Arapaho word meaning "earth-born."  Notice the "face" in the rocks.

The true gold mine is present within, and within the solitude of the natural world present all around us.

"I ask myself why I might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest particles, - why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold WITHIN ME, and work THAT mine . . . Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies.  They go prospecting farther and farther away from the TRUE lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.  Is not our native soil auriferous?  Does not a stream from the golden mountains flow through our native valley? And has not this for more than geologic ages been bringing down the shining particles and forming the nuggets for us? Yet, strange to tell, if a digger steal away, prospecting for this true gold, into the unexplored solitudes around us, there is no danger that any will dog his steps, and endeavor to supplant him.  He may claim and undermine the whole valley even, his whole life long in peace, for no one will ever dispute his claim . . . He is not confined to a claim twelve feet square, but may mine anywhere, and wash the whole wide world in his tom."

Henry David Thoreau, 1863

Photo: Golden Cottonwood leaves with Greyrock in the distance, Larimer County, CO; November 2, 2012

Each season gives a tone and hue to my thought.

"Each season gives a tone and hue to my thought."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Wild Rose hips and leaves, Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO; October 20, 2012

Like an autumn leaf surviving in a wintry landscape, an attitude of faith, hope and love is meant to provide a sense of surprise and delight when it appears in the midst of the challenges of life.

Are the virtues of faith, hope and love dependent on the circumstances of life, or are they meant to be maintained despite those circumstances?  I believe the answer is  "Some of both."  On the one hand, we need to experience enough of the beauty of life to water the seeds of these virtues, and to enable them to take root.  On the other hand, there are times when we are meant to surprise and shock the Divine - present in us, in others, and in the depths of the Universe at large - with an ability to maintain these virtues despite all odds. Like an autumn leaf still surviving in the midst of winter snows, our attitude of faith, hope and love is meant to bring surprise and delight by the contrast it provides.

Photo: A Wild Geranium leaf enlivens a wintry landscape, with Long's Peak looking on in the distance; Gem Lake Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; October 26, 2012

I cannot spare my moonlight and my mountains for the best of man I am likely to get in exchange.

"I feel the necessity of deepening the stream of my life; I must cultivate privacy.  It is very dissipating to be with people too much.  As C. says, it takes the edge off a person's thoughts to have been too much in society.  I cannot spare my moonlight and my mountains for the best of man I am likely to get in exchange."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Gem Lake Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; October 26, 2012

A person's character lies as broad and unexplored as a scraggy hillside or pasture.

"We falsely attribute to people a determined character; putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them, we presume to know them.  Pity the person who has a character to support.  It is worse than a large family! . . . But in fact character is NEVER EXPLORED, nor does it get developed in time, but eternity is its development . . . I approach a great [human] nature with infinite expectation and uncertainty, not knowing what I may meet.  It lies as broad and unexplored before me as a scraggy hillside or pasture.  I may hear a fox bark, or a partridge drum, or some bird new to these localities may fly up."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo:   A hill side of Wild Plum (red) and Three-leaved Sumac (orange) in Lory State Park, CO; October 15, 2012

How do we find divine reality in an over-sensitive nature?

"God IS our self-awareness."  (Rabbi Lawrence Kushner)

"God is closer to us than we are to ourselves." (St. Augustine of Hippo)

I've often struggled with the fact that one of my personality traits seems to be OVER-SENSITIVITY to the opinions others have of me, especially their criticisms.  This trait is a royal pain - both for myself and for others.  However, these past months, I've been working on taking a positive view of this trait.  Is there a spiritual principle at the core of this sensitivity, one that would help me actually feel LESS sensitive to the criticisms of others?  I believe there is.

First, I find it is important to remember that - as Franciscan spiritual teacher Richard Rohr reminds us - we humans are the feeling aspect of God.  In other words, God feels joy and pain through us. WE are the sensitivity of God.  The same might be said of our role in relation to completely spiritual beings - angels.  I recall a movie I saw some years ago that featured angels trying to enter into a closer relationship with humans.  The premise was that angels cannot have emotions unless they are channeled through human beings.

A similar human function might be seen in our relationship to Mother Earth.  Even though individual creatures each have their own degree of sentience, it appears that human beings are the mind and heart of the WHOLE web of beings; i.e., of the ENTIRE Earth.

Of course, this is a difficult situation for us to be in. After all, we can't be sensitive to joy and inspiration unless we are also sensitive to pain.  I remember hearing Thomas Keating, a prominent Trappist monk, once say that part of what the Cross of Christ means is the realization that - in it - God is apologizing for the fact that we humans are enmeshed - without our choice - within this predicament of being the sensitive aspect of the Divine.  In the Cross, God says that HE is to blame for this situation.

However, I find that I also want to move BEYOND my sensitivity.  And to do this, I've found, I need to discover the true nature of the human self.  Generally, we think of the self as a separate substance, a singular identity.  But what if the true nature of the self is to be a MUTUAL identity?  What if the self is not a substance that enters into relationship, but that IS relationship?

Years ago, I learned from James Hillman and Thomas Moore - both of whom were responsible for rehabilitating the word "soul" - that it is sometimes beneficial to view the self more as a polytheistic reality than as a monotheistic one.  In other words, the self - in its "soul" form - is innately a multiplicity of presences, all symbolized by the various deities - "gods" and "goddesses" that humanity has been in contact with since the beginning of human history.  This insight helps me realize that the soul aspect of the human self (in contrast to "spirit," which is singular) is already a relationship among different parts - e.g., mind, will, emotions, and the passions of anger, lust, depression, etc.

However, I also experience this  self-as-relationship in the realization that - according to Christian mystics like Ramon Panikkar and perhaps Jewish mystics like Abraham Heschel - the human self is actually a "thou," not an "I."  In other words, the self is innately a "word of God," spoken by an Other.  As such, it is a reflection of the primal Thou - "God" - who, as Panikkar points out, is ONLY known in the second Person, as a Thou - through US.  What I'm saying is that both God and the human self are INNATELY constituted in relationship, and that the singular "I" is not ultimately real.  Here, I am contradicting such thinkers as Ken Wilber, who talks about an "I-I" spirituality.  For I believe that God's I - and ultimately, the human I - is completely emptied out in love. The biblical word for this is "kenosis" - self-emptying.  A singular I is thus ultimately illusory.

However, there is also a trickster element in the nature of things. The mystery is that God keeps on giving us this sense of I in the very moment when we try to give it away in love!  As Rumi laments: "Alas, I want union, but HE wants separation!" Perhaps this move on God's part is paradoxically the very thing that enables us to keep on reaffirming the true reality - that our "I" is actually a "thou."  Indeed, without the continual reappearance of this illusory "I," we would not have an endless multitude of fresh opportunities to see that this "I" is really a "thou"!  Thus we would also be deprived of the fresh sense of surprise that this continual insight brings. To use alternate imagery, we might say that we need a continually-reappearing sense of "I" to serve as the "fuel" which is then available to burn up in the FIRE of a self-sacrificing love that alone is able to produce the LIGHT of insight - an insight which reveals that "I" to be a "thou"!  However, since this process is rooted in an eternal God, we might say that we are somewhat like a celestial star: the light we see now is actually the result of a fire - a "death" - that burned in that star MILLIONS of year ago!

This may be all well and good in theory, but how do we actually EXPERIENCE the "thou-ness" of the human self? For myself, I find that I experience this sense of being a "thou" during contemplative prayer, where I discover that I am GRASPED AND HELD by a magnetic presence - a loving gaze of God - that wells up from the depths of my being.  This is the "absorption" that many of the Christian mystics - Teresa of Avila being a prime example - talk about in their writings.  And yet God's presence - the One who is the Source of this loving gaze - is ALSO known to be a "Thou" - known only, through me, in the second Person - when I realize that this gaze is occurring.  How mysterious!  God's gaze - which never fails to see me lovingly as a "thou" - is at the root of my being, and yet the reality of this gaze is only known in MY realization of it!  For God's love is so entire that he is LOST to himself in bliss - in his gaze upon me, a gaze that is only known - in the second Person - through me!  This, indeed, is a true non-dualism, albeit a relational one.

The upshot of all of this is that I can begin to let go of my over over-sensitivity to other human beings when I realize that a sense of relationship ALREADY resides at the core of my being.  Thus, I become less vulnerable to others, because I understand that there is ultimately no such thing as a separate self that is then subject to criticism from the outside.  For the true self is ALREADY a relationship - GOD'S thou, and thus is always and forever lovable.  May each of us discover the ways in which we are already a "thou" of the Divine, a conviction that thereby enables us to give ourselves in self-sacrificing love to the world.

Photo: Twin leaves, with the Twin Owls formation in the background; Gem Lake Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; October 26, 2012

"My life was ecstasy . . . I can remember how I was astonished.  I said to myself, - I said to others, - 'There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly, pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and I have had nothing to do with it.  I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers.  This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.  I speak as a witness on the stand, and tell what I have perceived' . . . I was daily intoxicated, and yet no person could call me intemperate.  With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?"

Henry David Thoreau

Hallett Peak at sunset, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; November 27, 2012