The evolutionary process occurs WITHIN the spaciousness of Divine awareness.

 

Another way to reconcile evolution and divine creation comes  from meditative experience.  Using our exhalations to expand our awareness, we enter right into the spaciousness of God's awareness, a consciousness that is rooted in love.  We might say, in fact, that God is LOST in this spaciousness, emptied out in an ecstasy of joy, similar to the way we feel when we sit on a beach in the sunshine, listening to the constant roar of the waves.  During meditation, as we allow our identity to expand and merge with this vast awareness, suddenly all things - all thoughts, perceptions, objects and feelings - come popping out of that vastness as though out of nowhere!  It is out of this sacred spaciousness that the evolutionary process has arisen, including mutations, adaptations and all of the multitude of different species.  In other words, creation occurs WITHIN the Creator - inside divine awareness, within the mind of God!

Sylvia Boorstein is a Buddhist teacher who is also Jewish - a "Bu-Jew."  In a fascinating passage, she combines Buddhist meditation, an experience of God, and the process of creation all into one. Using the word "emptiness" as a synonym for "spaciousness," she writes: "I experience God as Source, the Emptiness that gives rise to Form . . . Looking at emptiness, I feel I see God.  Form is the manifest side of emptiness.  Creation keeps on happening . . . My experience of emptiness is that it is alive with the possibility of everything waiting to be born . . . When I pray, I think of how 'God is One' and 'Emptiness' feel the same to me.  When I give thanks, daily, for my life, I think about creation as the amazing process by which nondifferentiated emptiness continually is reborn as form."

Photo: A rock lies on the beach at sunset, with the Quileute Needles in the background; First Beach, Quileute Nation, WA; July 26, 2013

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The creation makes itself through evolution when the Creator turns inside-out in an ecstasy of joy!

I just watched a fascinating PBS series on Evolution. The final section covers the conflict between science and religion. Did all creatures evolve by natural selection, or were they specially created by intelligent design? From a contemplative / mystical perspective, there is a third option. I'll mention some of the other contemplative views in other posts, but here, I'll talk about just one of the possibilities.

In a book entitled "God's Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World," Christian contemplative Beatrice Bruteau has this to say: "Creation is the Reality (God) turning itself inside-out. Whatever the Reality is that manifests itself as the universe, it seems to turn itself inside-out in doing it. The finite aspect of the world is in fact the ecstatic aspect of the infinite's interior aspect. We are modeling a universe that makes itself, from the inside out, as an act of divine ecstasy, not one that is made from the outside by imposition. I have called this creative act 'God's ecstasy.' Ecstasy means standing outside oneself. It is kin to the kenosis of Philippians 2:6 - being God is NOT a thing to be clung to, so God empties Godself, taking the form of limitation in finitude, and is born as a universe. It is the defining divine act: self-giving, being-bestowing. Ecstasy has the connotations of extreme love and supreme joy. That is right for the creation of the universe."

In this vision, creation by evolution and creation by God are one and the same. Infinitude empties out into finitude. God creates by self-emptying, becoming the driving force behind and within the evolutionary process. Here, God is neither outside the creation nor identical with it, but subsists rather as a kind of "Beyond within." In other words, when Divine Reality turns inside-out in an ecstasy of joy, the Creator becomes a loving power residing within all things, one that enables the creation TO MAKE ITSELF. How amazing! As usual, mystical wisdom is not an either/or proposition, but a both/and process :)

Photo: Lewis Monkeyflowers growing along the Garden Wall, Glacier National Park, MT; July 31, 2013

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Monologue is a dialogue with silence.

"Monologue is a dialogue with silence."

Max Picard,
"The World of Silence"

Photo: Pink and White Heather, Picture Lake and Mount Shuksan; Mount Baker Wilderness, WA; July 22, 2013

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Silence looks at us more than we look at silence.

 

 "Silence looks at us more than we look at silence."

Max Picard,
"The World of Silence"

Photo: Ponderosa Pine and snowy landscape, Lory State Park, CO; January 4, 2013

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God uses things as language.

 

"The difference between our active thinking and the thinking of God is that God expresses Himself through things themselves, using them as language, whereas we express our thoughts only in the language of words."

Max Picard,
"The World of Silence"

Photo: Cottonwood Tree and an iced-over Horsetooth Reservoir; Larimer County, CO; January 4, 2014

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It is only through the Divine that two people are united into One.

 

A healthy relationship involves two people - each having their own spiritual life, standing side by side, with neither casting the shadow of dominance on the other. Paradoxically, however, when Divine Light shines from the infinite Horizon of Being - the dwelling place of the Great Beyond - a magical thing occurs: the shadow of each joins together into One! Indeed it is only through our relationship to the Divine that we are able truly to be united to another person.

Photo: Two Lodgepole Pines, with Beartooth Butte in the background; Beartooth Mountains, WY; August 4, 2013

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The loneliest people above all contribute most to commonality.

 

"The loneliest people above all contribute most to commonality."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Yes, the creative process usually requires solitude, yet it brings to birth something new for the benefit of EVERYONE!

Photo: Pebble, sand waves and sea stacks; Second Beach, Olympic National Park, WA; July 26, 2013

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Wilderness is a tonic, a panacea for nervousness and monotony.

"The great mass of recreation-minded Americans see in the wilderness not an opportunity for exploitation or for the furtherance of knowledge, but rather as an opportunity to satisfy a vital spiritual deficiency within themselves.  They are the ones who head into the wilderness regions because they must.  Wilderness to them is a tonic, a panacea for nervousness and monotony.  They go to it . . . as a sick person might go to the physician.  These people know that wilderness to them is a necessity if they are to keep their balance."

Sigurd F. Olson  

Photo: Subalpine Fire and mountains; Mt. Rainier National Park, WA; July 29, 2013

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We must stay connected to the Earth, and not let our BEING be mined!

 

"How bad can you make yourself feel through your fears, your doubts, and your insecurities? You can sit around feeling powerless, but this deal about being powerless or feeling powerless is all a lie. We have power. It is perpetual. We constantly have power, and we're constantly using it or it's being misused . . . But our intelligence and the power of our intelligence have been put into a box. We've been programmed to BELIEVE; we have not been taught to THINK. What happened to us, to the Native Peoples on this hemisphere, happened to your [European] tribes, to all peoples. You're descendents of tribes and it happened to your tribes; it just happened to your tribes before you got here. And then when you got here, you did to us what they had done to you. All of that was done to change your tribal perception of reality; to change and alter the spiritual perception of reality and turn it into a religious perception of reality, because there's a difference between spiritual and religious. Religious is about submission and obedience and authoritarianism. Spiritual is about taking responsibility. We have to look at this; submission is not taking responsibility. It is an easy, convenient OUT that they programmed into us . . . They wanted us to believe that there was something wrong with us and that we had to obey them. This was the gig they ran on the tribes of Europe and the descendents of the tribes of Europe and they ran it here. But it was about altering our perception of reality from a spiritual perception of reality into a MINING perception of reality. The mining tools became religion and government and politics and racism and sexism and all of these other divisive things. Mining tools are not who we are. We are human beings - our bone, flesh, and blood are made up of the earth. We have BEING that is is our spirit, our energy, and our essence. All things of the earth are made up of the same thing. All things of the earth have BEING . . . They take the BEING part of humanity and mine the BEING part of humanity through how they program us to perceive reality. They then take that and they turn that into fuel to run this system that we're in. This is the gig that goes on all the time. But to be a human being, we have to connect to the reality of our relationship to power, to the earth, and to our original instructions."

John Trudell,
Dakota Sioux activist, musician and author

Photo: Avalanche Lilies and Tolmie Peak, Mt. Rainier National Park, WA; July 29, 2013

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You are not powerless! Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth!

“One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the  earth.”

Winona LaDuke,
Anishinaabe elder

Photo: Mount Adams hangs mystically above the land at sunset, with a Subalpine Fir in the foreground; Mount Rainier National Park, WA; July 29, 2013

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How do you inspire respect for something? By giving thanks.

 

"How do you inspire respect for something? By giving thanks, by doing it. We have to do that. We have to be thankful. Two things were told to us: to be thankful, so those are our ceremonies, ceremonies of thanksgiving. We built nations around it, and you can do that, too. And the other thing they said was enjoy life. That's a rule, a law - enjoy life - you're supposed to. I know you can only do as much as you can do and then when you do that, you're supposed to get outside and enjoy life. Don't take yourself so seriously."

Chief Oren Lyons,
Onandaga Nation

Photo: Lupine and Mount Rainier, Spray Park, Mt. Rainier National Park, WA; July 28, 2013

 

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Wintertime rivers and lakes are a canvas for the artistry of ice and snow!

 

I view wintertime streams and lakes as a sort of canvas on which ice and snow paint their beautiful, ever-changing designs.

Photo: Ice on the Big Thompson River, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; December 30, 2013

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Snowshoeing in fresh powder offers wisdom for life's journey.

 

Last week I snowshoed up the Lake Agnes Trail accompanied by almost complete solitude.  Because of the abundance of fresh snow, it was very slow going.  Even with snowshoes, my boots sometimes sank two feet into the fresh powder!  The uphill sections were particularly strenuous, especially when I had to break trail toward the end of the hike.  The only way to do it was to plant one foot firmly on the cliffy hillside (using the claw on the bottom of the snowshoe) before taking the next step.

The hike reminded me a lot of life's journey.  Often, we have some goal in mind, and we become impatient because we're projecting ourselves WAY into the future where we want to be RIGHT NOW!  Sometimes we get quite anxious about the potential for failure, and find it difficult to keep moving toward our goal.  However, the only way to have any chance of actually GETTING to that goal is to take one step at a time, planting ourselves firmly and mindfully with each one, and fully savoring the gift of that moment.

I have a quote by David Starr Jordan displayed above my computer that says: "Wisdom is knowing what to do NEXT."  When I become especially anxious about the possibility of reaching my future goals, I remember that all I am responsible to do is to throw myself into the next task, trusting that a way will open up for the journey to continue beyond that.  When I find the grace to practice this principle, life is much more fulfilling and satisfying - AND - less stressful!

Photo: My snowshoe tracks with the Nokhu Crags in the background; Lake Agnes Trail, Never Summer Range, CO; December 27, 2013

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches on the same tree.

 

“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.”

Albert Einstein

Photo: Aspen Branches are silhouetted against a sunset sky; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; December 30, 2013

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The alpenglow light is so holy, so spiritual!

 

"The alpenglow is so holy, spiritual; even the inspired atmosphere of the New Jerusalem is inadequate. When we read, 'And God said: Let there be light,' we are too apt to think only of the light of the sun. But it is not the sun that makes the day, it is Love. In this Light of light, rocks and seas and everything is not only illumined, but transfigured and fused and changed into religion."

The Contemplative John Muir

Photo: Alpenglow on Nokhu Crags, Never Summer Range, CO; December 27, 2013

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