We Can Choose to Have Joy Either Condensed into Peak Experiences, or Spread Out Over the Mundane Events of Life

 

"Latent joy performs a great office in life.  You may have your stock of well-being condensed into ecstasies, trances of good fortune and delight, preceded and followed by blank or painful weeks and months; or, you may have your joy spread over all the days in a bland, vague, uniform sense of power and hope."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Mormon Tea with Cedar Mesa Sandstone dome in the background, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

In this fascinating passage, Emerson imagines that each of us is given a fixed amount of joy in life.  We may choose to have that joy given in ecstatic peak experiences (symbolized by the dark nodes in the Mormon tea) interspersed with long periods where nothing special occurs. Or, we may decide instead in favor of a constant low-level state of joy that occurs all of the time (symbolized by the seamless sandstone dome looming in the background).  There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to each state. Early in life, we experience joy mainly in the first way; that is, as a passively-received  high that quickly dissipates. Eventually, however, we move to the second way, where we learn to practice and embody joy in a constant manner rather than simply feel it.

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

The Earth is Dry Enough to Keep You Honest, Prickly Enough to Make You Tough

 

                                                    Wide enough to keep you looking

                                                    Open enough to keep you moving

                                                    Dry enough to keep you honest

                                                    Prickly enough to make you tough

                                                    Green enough to go on living

                                                    Old enough to give you dreams

                                                    Gary Snyder, "Earth Verse"

Photo: Purple Prickly-Pear Cactus in last light, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 26, 2011

Mystical Wisdom is an Unbounded Desert

 

“This mystical wisdom will occasionally so engulf a person in its secret abyss that he will have the keen awareness of being brought into a place far removed from every creature.  He will accordingly feel that he has been led into a remarkably deep and vast wilderness, unattainable by any human creature, into an immense, unbounded desert, the more delightful, savorous, and loving, the deeper, vaster, and more solitary it is.”

St. John of the Cross

Photo: The La Sal Mountains and Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

We Know Union with God in the Abyss of the Soul

 

"Only the divine abyss, God in all His immensity, can bring union about.  Sharing in the divine immensity, it defies all measurements.  In this state the soul, purified and enlightened, sinks into the divine darkness, into a tranquil silence and inconceivable and ineffable union.  It is absorbed in God.  In this abyss it loses itself, and knows nothing of God or of itself . . ."

Johannes Tauler, 14th century Germany

"In centering prayer, you intend to go to your inmost being, where you believe God dwells.  As you persevere, you will gradually develop new habits and new capacities, one of which is the ability to be conscious of two levels of awareness at the same time.  You can be aware of the noise in or around you, and yet you recognize that your attention is grasped by something at a deeper level that is impossible to define but is nonetheless real . . . God is much more intimate and accessible than we think.  If the Lord reaches up and pulls you down, great! You may sink into interior silence . . ."

Thomas Keating

Photo: The Joint Trail, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

A Transformed Person is Transparent to the Divine Sunlight

 

"A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object  betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys toward that person."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: The Henry Mountains from Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

In the Desert of Contemplation, God Transfers Spiritual Nourishment from the Exterior Emotions to the Interior Spirit

 

 The Desert Spirituality of St. John of the Cross

"God desires to withdraw the beginning contemplative from a low manner of loving and lead them on to a higher degree of divine love.  At first, it was through the spiritual delight and satisfaction they experienced in prayer that they became detached from external things and gained some spiritual strength in God.  Now, however, God closes the spring of the sweet spiritual water they were tasting.  He now leaves them in such aridity and darkness that they fail to receive satisfaction and pleasure from their spiritual exercises and works as they formerly did.

"The reason for this dryness is that God is transferring His goods and strength from the external senses and emotions to the inner spirit.  Since the sensory part of the soul is incapable of the goods of the spirit, it remains deprived, arid, and empty, and thus, while the spirit is tasting, the emotions taste nothing at all and become weak in their work.  But the spirit through this nourishment grows stronger and more alert.  If in the beginning the soul does not experience this spiritual savor and delight, but only dryness and distaste, it is because of the novelty involved in this exchange.  Since its palate is accustomed to these other sensory tastes, the soul still sets its eyes on them.  And since, also, its spiritual palate is neither purged nor accommodated for so subtle a taste, it is at first unable to experience the spiritual savor and good until gradually prepared by means of this dark and obscure night; the soul rather experiences dryness and distaste because of a lack of the gratification it formerly enjoyed so readily.

"Those whom God begins to lead into these desert solitudes are like the children of Israel; when God began giving them the heavenly food  - the manna - which contained in itself all savors, they nonetheless felt a craving for the tastes of the fleshmeats and onions they had eaten during their captivity in Egypt, for their palate was accustomed and attracted to them more than to the delicate sweetness of the manna.  Yet, as I say, when these aridities are the outcome of the purgative way of the sensory appetite, the spirit feels the strength and energy to work, which is obtained from the substance of that interior food, even though in the beginning, it may not experience the savor because of what we might call the beginner's spiritual 'sweet tooth.'  This inner food is the beginning of a contemplation that is dark and dry to the senses.  

"Ordinarily this contemplation, which is secret and hidden from the very one who receives it, imparts to the soul, together with the dryness and emptiness it produces in the senses, an inclination to remain alone and in quietude.  And the soul will be unable to dwell upon any particular thought, nor will it have the desire to do so. For it will desire to remain instead in a general loving awareness of God, the All.  Here, God is producing an interior peace in the spirit through the dryness of sense.  Since this peace is something spiritual and delicate, its fruit is quiet, delicate, solitary, satisfying, and peaceful, and far removed from the the gratifications of beginners, which are very palpable and sensory.

St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night

Photo: Needles District, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

We Must Possess a Strong Sense of Self Before We Can Release It to God

 

"Before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. No one can give up what they do not possess."

Thomas Merton

"We need a strong sense of "who I am" before we can let go of ourselves, of our self-images and self-concerns . . . I remember once befriending a young man who said to me suddenly, almost shocked at making this discovery, 'What are you doing?  You're building up my ego.  I'm trying to get rid of my ego.'  I answered him, 'I have to build it up first because you have no ego to let go of."

Brother David Steindl-Rast

Photo: Six-Shooter Peak and Pinyon Pine, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 26, 2011

The True Self is Hidden and Cannot Be Manipulated

 

Desert spirituality is concerned with stripping away the superficial self in order to reveal our true inner identity present as the bedrock of our being.

"The person who is dominated by what I have called the 'social image' is one who allows himself only that which his society prescribes as beneficial and praiseworthy in its members . . . If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be.  Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become . . . 

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory false self.  This is the person who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him.  And to be unknown by God is altogether too much privacy . . . The shallow 'I' can be possessed, developed, cultivated, and pandered to.  But the deep 'I' of the spirit, of solitude and of love, cannot be 'had,' possessed, developed, perfected . . . This inner 'I'; who is always alone, is always universal: for in this most inmost 'I' my own solitude meets the solitude of every other person and the solitude of God.

. . . There is and can be no special planned technique for discovering and awakening one's inner self, because the inner self is first of all a spontaneity that is nothing if not free . . .Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness and void . . .  The inner self is precisely that self which cannot be tricked or manipulated by anyone.  It is like a very shy wild animal that never appears at all whenever an alien presence is at hand, and comes out only when all is perfectly peaceful, in silence, when it is untroubled and alone.  It cannot be lured by anyone or anything, because it responds to no lure except that of the divine freedom . . .

The inner self is as secret as God and, like Him, it evades every concept that tries to seize hold of it with full possession.  It is not reached and coaxed forth from hiding by any process under the sun, including meditation.  All that we can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the silence, the humility, the detachment, the purity of heart, and the indifference which are required if the inner self is to make some shy, unpredictable manifestation of His presence."

Thomas Merton

Photo: Slot Canyon in Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 26, 2011

The Interior Desert is an Empty Expanse of Immense Beauty

 

"There is a physical desert, inhabited by a few exceptional men and women who are called to live there; but more importantly, there is an inner desert, into which each one of us must one day venture.  It is a void; an empty space for solitude and testing."

Frere Ivan

"For you, the desert is not a setting, it is a state of soul."

An anonymous monk

The inner desert is a place of spiritual thirst, an endless expanse that seems devoid of any meaning.  When we first encounter this void, we feel afraid and try to fill it with a multitude of distractions. But the loveliness of the redrock desert of the American Southwest teaches us to look for a similar beauty within our own inner desert.  Suddenly, our thirst for meaning becomes a participation in God's thirst for us. Emptiness of any passively-received spiritual consolation allows our own creativity to become that consolation instead.  And the arid inner expanse turns out to be an echochamber in which the never-spoken love-word of God can be heard in all of its glory.

Photo: Sunset in Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

Desert Spirituality Discovers Silence as a Word of God

"A desert spirituality is a spirituality of waiting upon God.  There is an element of timelessness, of eternity, about the desert.  The characteristic prayer of the desert is a prayer of simply waiting."

David Prail

"The true contemplative waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is 'answered,' it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence.  It is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God."

Thomas Merton

Photo: Sunset in Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

Those with Shortcomings Who've Overcome Them are the Most Admirable People

 

Why do we enjoy natural arches so much?  We would probably never create a national park or monument simply to preserve a few massive free-standing rock walls.  But arches we find stunning and awe-inspiring.  Why?  Perhaps it is the artistry involved - the sculpting of reddish rock by wind, water, freezing-and-thawing, and gravity.  But our attraction to these amazing arcs of stone goes deeper than this. For arches symbolize the fact that it is precisely the positive character traits which we are missing - and the strength it takes to overcome that lack - that make us most attractive.  Everyone resonates with someone who has struggled to succeed in life and overcome despite all odds. Helen Keller, Nelson Mandela and Thomas Edison are notable examples.  And so are each of us whenever we find the strength to embrace our shortcomings and turn them into strengths.

Photo: Druid Arch, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 26, 2011

All Things Arise Out of the Spacious Desert of God's Simple Nature

 

"God's desert is God's simple nature . . . The soul takes God in his oneness and in his solitary wilderness, in his vast wasteland, and in his own ground . . . It is an amazing thing that something flows forth from God and nonetheless remains within . . . All creatures flow outward and nonetheless remain within – that is extremely amazing.” 

Meister Eckhart, 13th century Germany

"As we become more aware of the spacious awareness that is the essence of who we are, we come closer to God. Faith now looks more like a trust in the empty, spacious awareness that belongs to God and is God.  So instead of trusting in ourselves, in the story of I, to decide our next action, we can now have faith in God's spaciousness.  Here everything appears, here everything is loved . . . We have faith in no-thing . . . In fact, Life is love flowing out of emptiness . . . We are each a space of awareness which is also the infinite space of God's awareness.  It is out of the empty space of God that literally everything comes and to which it goes.
As each event arises in our clear, spacious awareness, it stands before us as an awareness of sound, movement, color, and so on.  Then it disappears back into clear awareness . . ."

Wesley Lachman, Eugene, Oregon

Photo: Alpenglow in the desert, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 25, 2011.  This glow lasted for only several minutes.

The Center of Our Being is in God, and It is Inaccessible to the Imperfections of Our Own Will

"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.  This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.  It is so to speak his name written in us, as our poverty . . . It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.  It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely . . . I have no program for this seeing.  It is only given.   But the gate of heaven is everywhere."

Thomas Merton, Trappist monk

Photo: The Joint Trail, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011.  The Joint Trail is just a bit wider than the hiker's body, and extends for several tenths of a mile.  When I was there, the sun just happened to be hitting the sandy floor, and the illumination only lasted for about twenty minutes.  I happened to be there at just the right time!

Beauty Simultaneously Pushes Us Away and Draws Us to Itself

 

"The sublime is that which by its mightiness shocks us and fills us with pain at our own smallness, but then fills us with a feeling of the exaltation of the greatness of our own nature."

Immanuel Kant

If our nose is pressed flat against a mirror, we see nothing. However, if we push it away from us, we are then able to enjoy the reflection.  Similarly, beauty is an explosion that at first pushes us away, like a firework that stuns us with its centrifugal glory.  But this very action empowers our amazement to act as a mirror in which the beautiful object can admire its own greatness. And in serving this noble function, we in turn recognize the reality of our own greatness.

Photo: Alpenglow, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 26, 2011