#43. Morning Wisdom: Sophia as Guide

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This blog entry is the second of four about biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia. The main purpose of these four related posts is to look at western culture's religious tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution, and to do so with the help of the four-fold perspectives on the human mind I've described or mentioned in many previous posts.

As unlikely as it seems, and as unfamiliar as the Bible's wisdom literature is to most of us, these biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia can help us to move beyond the lopsidedness of the static, dualistic and patriarchal worldview of recent centuries and help us move toward a better understanding of ourselves as creative participants in the evolution of the universe.

I've called this post "Morning Wisdom" because it's about that group of wisdom images which relate especially to the East on the Medicine Wheel. "East" includes morning, springtime and the Thinking function of our conscious minds.

I've also included "Sophia as Guide" in the name because this group of wisdom images especially expresses one of the most central aspects of the anthropos-theos relationship: that Divine Wisdom not only fashions us to be who-and-what we are but also guides and directs us in our efforts to become all that we have been fashioned to be.

The primal element connected with the east is air. As wind and breath (pneuma, spiritus, ruah, vayu, chi), it is in us as much as we are in it. The animal associated with the east on the Medicine Wheel is the Golden Eagle of the Dawn, an image of our mind's Thinking function which focuses on the dynamic flow of time. In Native American tradition, the Morning Star, the Rising Sun, is also connected with knowledge and growing self-awareness.

All of these images-- the freshness of the breeze on a springtime morning, the eagle flying high in the sky at dawn, the sharp piercing rays of the rising sun-- evoke new beginnings.

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Old Russian icons show Sophia as the Guardian Angel of the Universe, the "wisdom from on high who orders all things mightily," as the old Advent hymn says. We have a familiar phase, "the wisdom of the body," expressing the idea that, while we don't understand much that goes on in our anatomy and physiology, the innate wisdom of the body knows what to do; it heals cuts and digests food, for example, without any conscious effort on our part. In the same way, there is a wisdom of the universe: Divine Sophia guiding and directing all things "mightily."

It's easy to forget that "all things" includes you and me. Just as modern science helps us to see that we are the "universe become conscious of itself," so the Bible's wisdom literature helps us to see that as participants in the cosmic process, our personal growth and development is no less "ordered" by the same Divine Wisdom that guides the sun and moon and stars. Our individuation process-- our "ontogenetic development" in the jargon of biogenetic structuralism-- is guided in the same way.

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All of this is what these "morning" images of Sophia express. The view of God which western culture inherited from the Enlightenment period sees a distant and alien divinity who created the world but then abandoned it, to let it flounder on its own. It's such a culturally pervasive viewpoint that it makes it difficult for us to appreciate the very different perspectives offered by the wisdom images.

In contrast, post-Enlightenment evolutionary science helps us appreciate these 25-century-old wisdom perspectives, to appreciate that Sophia/Wisdom is not a clockwork creator and that we have not been brought into existence out of nothingness and darkness only to be hung out to dry.

We are not alone, we're not on our own, Creative Wisdom does not abandon us. These wisdom images picture the master artisan of the universe as active here and now, not only in our bodies but also in our minds, hearts and psyche.

Another reason why it's so hard for us to appreciate these images of divine Sophia is that for many centuries religious authorities have presented us with a picture of a creator who treats humanity as children and who does not expect us to be able to be in charge of ourselves. (It's really those patriarchal authorities who want to be in charge of us, of course.) So we especially need these "morning" images of a Creative Wisdom which not only respects human initiative but calls us to be nothing less than what we are: the "world become conscious of itself"; to be, in Karl Rahner's words, free and conscious "persons in the world."

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In the previous post (on Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect) I shared many thoughts from the work on Raimon Panikkar about the mood of evening. With modern technology and instant communication-- not just electric lights but especially TV and now iPhones!-- we have lost the earlier sense of what happens within us as the daylight hours draw to a close and darkness comes on. But I don't need to do that with regard to the mood of morning.

Each of us knows by experience that morning means a new start to our lives, just as we know by experience that each springtime marks a new start for the life of the earth. Many non-western cultures still have their new year in spring, and even western culture once did, until Julius Caesar transferred it to the time just after the winter solstice. The New Year used to begin on March 25, which in those days was the date of the spring equinox, when after many months of winter cold and darkness the hours of daylight begin to be greater than the hours of darkness.

We don't need science to explain to us the mood of springtime or morning. Think of that special morning in early spring when we first hear birdsong again and when we first can smell the life oozing up out of the earth. For many of us perhaps the strongest image of springtime newness is sunrise on Easter morning, but all of us still experience every morning's dawn and sunrise as a new start to our lives.

In the morning, we "rise and shine," as people of earlier generations used to say. We get up and go to work. Not just to a nine-to-five job, but to the larger task of making something of ourselves and of making something of our world.

Even though western culture doesn't have the idea-- yet-- that each of us is "the universe become conscious of itself" and that we have, therefore, a participatory, creative task in the cosmic process, the mood of morning and spring is clear enough: we are called to take responsibility for our selves and our lives, our loved-ones, our jobs and our interests. In making a new and better world, we have a lot of work to do.

And what these morning images of Sophia tell us is that, just as we can trust the wisdom of the body, so we can trust the wisdom of the universe to guide us in our work of creative participation in the cosmic evolutionary process.

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It's this same experience of newness and creativity that Karl Rahner is talking about when he says that one of our primary "existential" experiences of being a person is that we experience ourselves as free. Freedom has to do with "our place in the vast scheme of things."

As I said in post #36 (on Aspects of the Immense Transition), "the experience of freedom means that, although we know ourselves to be limited in so many ways, we also experience ourselves as being able to make choices. Probably the best word we have to describe this existential aspect of our personal experience is self-determination."

In terms of neurological functioning, the main idea is what biogenetic structuralist jargon refers to as the cognitive extension of prehension: because of the structure and function of the human brain, our actions are not controlled totally by our instincts. We can choose, in ways our animal relatives can not. And it's in making these free choices that we "actualize"-- make real and actual-- our individual uniqueness which is our personal contribution to the evolution of the universe. We have a place, indeed, "in the vast scheme of things."

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In Jungian terms, it is the conscious mind's Thinking function that allows us to see the world as dynamic rather than static. Thinking is a judgment function, based primarily on the activity of the brain's Temporal lobe and concerned with distinctions, differentiation and diversity. It is concerned especially with the flow of time and, just like the Golden Eagle of the Dawn, it flies high and sees vast distances.

Sequence-- the flow of time from past to future-- is the key. The Thinking function's orientation to sequence and flow is what keeps us moving forward. Its energy is always directed toward newness, growth and development. And not just to the evolution of the cosmos and of life on Earth, but especially to our personal evolutionary development -- via what Jung calls "the individuation process" and what biogenetic structuralism calls our "ontogenetic development."

It's important to keep in mind that the main activity of the Thinking function isn't logical reasoning but questioning. As I mentioned in post #30 (on Ways of Being Religious), the Thinking function's orientation to the dynamic flow of time (and thus to cosmic and personal evolutionary development) has been wonderfully described by the artist-psychologist Steven Gallegos. He calls it "the psyche's relentless search for wholeness and the 'not yet'."

It's this "relentless searching" which explains why being religious via the Thinking function has to do with effort ("asceticism" in the classical sense), the discipline we need to become all that we can be. The most fundamental ascetic practice is simply being attentive: paying attention, being aware-- being "mindful," as the Buddhist tradition emphasizes.

And at the heart of the Thinking function's way of being religious is courage: the willingness to courageously follow that inner generative drive for enterprise and exploration which we experience as personal freedom.

That impetus-- that "inner generative drive"-- is a way of describing the work of Divine Wisdom who guides and directs us-- by our genes, our cultural background, our personality and the circumstances of our lives-- to become all that we can be.

And "to become all that we can be" is precisely what Sophia wants of us. Back in post #19 (on Diversity: Our Service to God) I mentioned the work of the 17th-century Catholic saint Louis de Montfort who wrote of Divine Wisdom long before the modern re-discovery of the wisdom perspectives. Montfort was a young and enthusiastic missionary priest when he wrote The Love of Eternal Wisdom and, as I said in that post, the resulting text "is filled with the breezy slang of a youthful but charismatic leader trying to speak in a hip style to an even more youthful audience."

Montfort describes Sophia as almost like a stalker; she is always pursuing us. "Divine Wisdom inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be. That," says this young visionary saint, "is what the Wisdom of God wants from us!"

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Montfort also says that Eternal Wisdom "gives us the courage to be creative." He says that Wisdom's "greatest need, from its point of view, and its greatest gift, from our point of view, is our collaboration with it in the on-going creation of the world."

As I mentioned in the second of my two posts on the Immense Transition (#36), an emphasis on creative transformation, especially on having the courage to be an explorer or pioneer, is not something that was stressed in the religious writings of the past. But as we move beyond the limitations of the Thinking function's imprisonment in the patriarchal perspectives of former centuries, we are coming to recognize, as Matthew Fox notes in his book on Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet, that it's precisely our creativity, via our free choices, that defines us.

"Human creativity," says Fox, "is not frosting on the cake" but "integral to our sustainability." Creative newness is our "survival mechanism... it is the essence of who we are."

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There's one more image of Sophia that goes along with "teacher," "guide" and "counselor." It, too, is unfamiliar, but it's especially important. It's the one that shows up when we are most in need of becoming more aware of ourselves. I mentioned it in one of my very earliest posts (#3, High School 50th Anniversary Report) and also more recently in post #36 (on the second of two posts on Aspects of the Immense Transition): the image of the trickster.

Native American peoples and all the earlier pre-industrial cultures which daily honor the first rays of the sun know about the trickster image. Even Louis de Montfort saw it in 17th-century Catholic France. Montfort says that "although Eternal Wisdom is in charge of the whole world, it works unobtrusively." And "This means," he says, "that often we don’t recognize it, especially in life’s difficulties."

This divine guidance that we "often don't recognize" is described in many religious traditions with animal names such as Coyote, Raven, Brer Rabbit or Anansi the Spider. Although they are often presented in a negative way, these trickster figures don't put obstacles in our path just for the fun of it. They are ways that help us to become more aware of ourselves, to be more conscious of what's needed in our efforts to become all that we can be. And they always promote cooperation rather than competition as the way to our creative transformation.

Trickster images especially help us in one additional way: in recognizing our need to face evil, death and tragedy as aspects of the cosmic flow. In the words of Claude Tresmontant, the author of the book on Hebrew Thought who I quoted back in post #39, transformation "often comes to us via boredom or suffering."

As director of the way the world works and guide to our personal growth and development, Sophia tests us; in her role as trickster-guide in our path to creative newness she helps us to accept our woundedness and vulnerability and to make the right choices in our efforts to become all that we can be. The Book of Ecclesiasticus says explicitly that "She will lead us over rough, narrow and winding ways."

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Here are some thoughts from Hal Taussig's book, Wisdom's Feast, Sophia in Study and Celebration, that I mentioned in the previous post which are especially interesting and relevant with regard to this morning/guide aspect of Divine Wisdom.

Taussig begins by noting that "because she is at the heart of all things coming into being, Sophia is Wisdom itself." It's not, he says, "an obvious connection for the twentieth century mind."

In chapter 4 of the book of Proverbs the author talks about Sophia this way: "Listen my children, to a father's instruction; pay attention, and learn what clear perception is. Acquire Sophia, acquire perception; never forget her. Do not desert her, she will keep you safe, love her, she will watch over you."

Wisdom will not only watch over us; Sophia is identical with "perception" itself, with being a conscious person. Taussig spells it out: "The relationship a person has to Sophia is virtually the same as their own relationship to the process of understanding."

Sophia is also imaged as the process of learning in chapter 6 of Wisdom: "Quick to anticipate those who desire her, she makes herself known to them." Sophia means learning!

At the heart of the creative process, Sophia "pervades and permeates all things" (Wisdom 7). She is at the heart of all that one studies.

Wisdom 6 proclaims: "She is readily seen by those who love here and found by those who look for her. In every thought of theirs, she comes to meet them." As participants in the cosmic process, our conscious growth and development results, in Taussig's words, "in a personal encounter with the One at the heart of the creative process."

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Taussig also notes that most of the texts about Sophia have to do with her relationship to humanity. The first chapter of Proverbs, for example, says of her: "Sophia calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the public squares; she calls out at the street corners, she delivers her message at the city gates."

Wisdom wants to be our teacher! Proverbs 8 says: "Does Sophia not call meanwhile? On the hilltop, on the road, at the crossways, she takes her stand; beside the gates of the city, at the approaches to the gates she cries aloud, 'O people I am calling you; my cry goes out to the children of humanity'."

"Listen, I have serious things to tell you," she adds. "From my lips come honest words. My mouth proclaims the truth. All the words I say are right, nothing twisted in them, nothing false, all straightforward to the one who understands, honest to those who know what knowledge means."

Taussig notes that Sophia gives the impression of being impatient with Earth's children: "Her main complaint is that they will not listen to her."

Taussig also points out that the most interesting thing here is that Sophia never teaches anything specific. What she teaches is herself. Sophia is something and someone to obtain and possess. And the reward is fullness of life. In Proverbs 8 she says, "With me are riches and honor, lasting wealth and justice." And the first chapter of Ecclesiasticus says: "She fills their whole house with their heart's desire, and their storerooms with her produce. The crown of Sophia makes peace and health flourish... [for] those who hold her close."

Sophia and her rewards are identical. Proverbs 4 says, "Acquire Sophia, acquire perception. Hold her close, and she will make you great; embrace her, and she will be your pride." And Wisdom 8 says, "If in this life wealth be a desirable possession, what is more wealthy than Sophia whose work is everywhere?"

Taussig says that as the learning process itself, Sophia "calls us to a life of seeking understanding of the world in which we live. Since she is the One who participates in bringing everything into being, she is the natural teacher and the natural content." He spells it out explicitly: "The learning process is a way that humans share in the creative process." Our personal growth and development, and our growth in awareness of the world, are Divine Wisdom.

In the previous post, I remarked, "Can science and religion converge more explicitly?" Here I would put it in more personal terms: Can our personal growth and development be understood any more explicitly as being convergent with the activity of Divine Sophia "whose work is everywhere"?

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Chapters 10 and 11 of Wisdom offer not just an dynamic view of our personal transformation but also of human history itself as it is guided by Sophia. There, as Taussig says, "the writer retells the sacred history of the Hebrew people from Sophia's point of view." In the stories of "Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Lot, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses," Sophia is seen as the designer and guide/director of human history and cultural development.

Wisdom 11 even describes the Exodus event as the work of Sophia: "She herself was their shelter by day and their starlight through the night. She brought them across the Red Sea, led them through that immensity of water, while she swallowed their enemies in the waves, then spat them out from the depths of the abyss."

Taussig notes that the familiar images of the pillar of cloud and fire (which guided the slaves through the desert in their escape from Egypt) are described here as shelter and starlight. And Sophia not only leads the Hebrews through the sea, she is also described as a kind of sea monster swallowing the Egyptians and spitting them out.

Fascinating stuff!

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My main point in the previous post (on Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect) is that Sophia fashions us to be who-and-what we are; as creative artist, architect, artificer and designer of our identity, the Mystery gives itself to us. My main point in this post on Morning Wisdom is that as counselor, teacher and trickster-guide, Divine Wisdom calls to each of us personally, asking for our free and full cooperation in the work of the creation of the world and of ourselves.

The question once again is, in Karl Rahner's words, "Are we willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive?"

sam@macspeno.com

#12. The Cognitive Extension of Prehension

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This is the first of three blog postings dealing with the Mystery of Person in light of the neurological perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism. It is intentionally being posted on Independence Day: it's about the neurological basis in the brain and nervous system for human freedom.In contrast to the static worldview of former times, the essence of the modern scientific perspective is that we live in a dynamic world, much bigger, older and more complicated than our ancestors ever dreamed.

The dynamic worldview of modern science allows us to see not only that the physical matter of the Earth has become alive in the form of self-transforming structural systems (plants and animals), but also that a portion of the living world has so increased in complexity, via the development of the vertebrate brain and nervous system, that it has become self-aware. Matter, life and mind are three distinct levels of development in the cosmic process.

Teilhard felt that this new scientific perspective was the biggest development in human history since humans first appeared on Earth; we can expect that anything this big will have a major impact on humanity's religious perspectives. Exploring those perspectives is what my efforts with this blog are all about.

I called the previous entry "The End of Dualism," for example, to make the point that we no longer need to think of ourselves as spirits trapped in bodies, as did Greek thought and those dualistic religious perspectives of western culture based on it. As I said in that posting, the modern evolutionary view "marks the end of philosophical and religious dualism which has influenced every aspect of human life for several thousand years." Thanks to contemporary science, we have a much better understanding of the relationship between mind and matter.

Although we know by personal experience what self-awareness means, we find it extremely difficult to put into words. We are indeed a mystery to ourselves. But contemporary neurological studies, set within a biogenetic (evolutionary) context, offer much help in our understanding of the "mystery which we are."

In this posting and the next I hope to share my understanding of the two closely related but distinct ideas about personal consciousness which in the jargon of Biogenetic Structuralism are referred to as the "cognitive extension of prehension" and the "cognized environment." Both have especially significant religious implications.

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To make sure we get off to a good start, we need to keep in mind that the word "matter" means far more today than it did in previous times. Our knowledge of the very small (summed up in Quantum Mechanics), of the very large (summed up in Relativity theory), and of the very old (summed up in Astronomy and Geology), allows us to see that the physical stuff of the universe is something very different from the dead, inert, passive material which for many centuries it was thought to be.

With our dynamic-evolutionary perspective, we can see that the three distinct stages of the material world's development are what is studied respectively by the physical sciences, the biological sciences and the human sciences. But the fact that the findings of the human sciences remain less well known than those of physics and biology, and indeed sometimes are hardly considered authentic science at all, indicates how much we have still to learn.

And of course it is in the "sciences of the mind," those which study the third level of the material world's development, that the implications for humanity's religious understanding are greatest.

But it is the unified perspective-- that matter, life and mind are three stages of the one same cosmic process-- which constitutes the modern scientific worldview.

From an anthropological point of view this unified view is called the "New Cosmology." It is, in fact, a New Story of the World, and one which-- despite religious, ethnic and cultural differences-- all humanity can eventually come to share based on the findings of objective science: plants and animals are the natural result of the evolution of cosmic matter, and human beings are the pinnacle of the development of life on Earth.

This is the new, modern context which we have for understanding the mystery of ourselves as conscious persons.

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One of the most interesting things about personal consciousness is that we have so many names for it. In different situations, we use a variety of words-- mind, soul, spirit, person, psyche, self, inner self, consciousness, cognition, awareness, knowledge, understanding, gnosis and episteme-- to name the inner experience of personal consciousness.

Because we see ourselves from so many different points of view, it's sometimes difficult to recognize that all those terms refer, in fact, to the one same thing. We really are a mystery to ourselves in the most profound sense: we can never exhaust understanding ourselves.

But modern science, especially that combination of neurology and cultural anthropology called Biogenetic Structuralism, offers much help along these lines; and this is one of the places where science and religion converge considerably.

As I said above, I see two big ideas especially worth exploring. The first is Biogenetic Structuralism's jargon phrase, "the cognitive extension of prehension." It deals with the fact that due to the cosmic evolutionary process, the matter of the Earth has become not only alive but self-aware.

The second is a closely related but distinct concept: the amazing fact that we human persons are "the matter of the Earth which has become not only alive but self-aware." "Cognized environment" is the jargon phrase for this concept. I'll try to spell out that idea in some detail in my next blog entry, and offer some thoughts about its religious implications in entry #14.

This present posting focuses on "the cognitive extension of prehension."

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When I first discovered that the field of Biogenetic Structuralism is what I've called "the parent generation" of research for contemporary neurological studies being done at the University of Pennsylvania by Andrew Newberg and associates, it took me a half-dozen readings of their original text Biogenetic Structuralism [Columbia University Press, 1974]) to make sense of their ideas about the cognitive extension of prehension.

So you might like to look back at posting #10 (Overview of Biogenetic Structuralism) where in the sections on Chapters III and IV I've tried to describe these challenging ideas. As I've said a number of times, they are not easy to understand, but they're not impossible either; they are well-worth whatever time and energy we can give them.

The main idea encapsulated in the phrase "cognitive extension of prehension" is that, thanks to the way the human brain works, we are to some extent free of the affective or emotional ties our primate relatives have to their immediate environment.

The structure and organization of the human brain is such that we have a real, if limited, independence of the brain's limbic system, the part of the brain we share with all vertebrate animals going back to our reptile ancestors. It is this relative freedom from instinctual action and response to things in our immediate surroundings which enables us to imagine possible causes of things not present in the external environment; it allows us to deal with things in their absence, to plan ahead and to make choices. This cognitive ability obviously had great survival value for our earliest human ancestors and accounts for contemporary humanity's predominance among the living things of the Earth.

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At first hearing, this idea of the "cognitive extension of prehension" doesn't sound too helpful as an understanding of the mystery of personal consciousness. But in fact it is.

"Prehension" comes from a Latin word which means to seize or grasp; we're familiar with its use in describing the prehensile tail of South American monkeys who use their tails as an additional appendage for wrapping around and holding on to tree branches.

But "prehension" also has a conceptual meaning, as when we say of something which we've previously had a difficult time understanding, "Oh, now I get it". We're saying that we have "grasped" the issue, that we have been able to "wrap our minds around" it. That's what's meant by the cognitive extension (at the human level) of primate prehension.

As I said above, the findings of the human sciences remain less well known than those of the physical and biological sciences, so these words sound strange. But in fact we know what they mean from personal experience.

The main point which the phrase "cognitive extension of prehension" conveys is that human behavior isn't just a matter of instinct, as it is with our primate cousins. We are less stimulus-bound and have a certain amount of autonomy because of the way the structures of our brain are organized. And, obviously, this behavioral freedom from "instinct," limited as it is, is what distinguishes us from our primate cousins and accounts for our characteristically human traits of speech, creativity, technical know-how and imagination.

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What's less obvious-- and this is my whole point in this post-- is that this partial independence of the human brain from the vertebrate limbic system is precisely what was meant in earlier times by our spiritual nature.

In the centuries before anything was known about neuro-physiology, it made good sense to say that "humans have a spiritual soul." In the context of the pre-scientific static worldview, talking about the spiritual nature of the soul was a good way of expressing the fact that what distinguishes homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom is our limited but real autonomy from the world around us. Liberty or freedom is the very essence of what we mean by the human spirit.

Thanks to 20th-century scientific studies of the brain, we can understand even better what the freedom of a human person means. And the great advantage of seeing our spiritual aspect from a neurological perspective is that it doesn't separate us from the rest of the living world but situates us within it. Today, we can see more clearly than other generations that personal consciousness doesn't exist apart from the Earth's biological evolution but, rather, that we are an integral part of the evolution of the universe.

And it's this neurological-evolutionary perspective-- that the human spirit is rooted in the Earth-- which I described in posting #11 as marking the end of religious and rationalist dualism.

When we see what the cognitive extension of prehension means, it becomes clear that we neither have to deny as do scientific rationalists that we have a spiritual soul, nor to claim as religious fundamentalists do that only our spiritual side has value.

And this New Cosmology, this New Story of our place in the living world, coming out of 20th century science, takes away nothing of the awe, wonder and astonishment we experience at the mystery of being a person. Indeed, it enhances it tremendously.

And it opens the door to a much more healthy religious understanding of ourselves not as aliens to, but as participants in, the cosmic process.

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In the dualistic religious perspectives of pre-scientific times, humanity's main task was to escape from the world. Today, thanks to the modern evolutionary perspective, we can see that we not only belong to the world but also that we have a role to play in it.

The modern scientific worldview doesn't take away human dignity, it restores the age-old religious insight of the value of the human person. It allows us to see that each of us has a cosmic vocation, called by our very existence to make a personal contribution to the evolution of the world.

This is one of the most significant places where religion and science at their best converge: in helping us recover the sense that our personal existence has meaning and purpose.

sam@macspeno.com

#6. Tai Chi

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In a note to friends last summer (06), I mentioned that "In some ways I feel in better shape now than I've been before, in my whole life." "Thanks, mostly," I added, "to tai chi."

A note came back: "Need to know more about Tai Chi. Sounds like you really benefit from it."

"Benefit," I do. And since it fits so well with the convergence of science and religion, at least for me, I thought I would share my response.

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Dear D & M: It's been a while since you asked me to tell you a bit about tai chi, and I didn't forget I said I would. It's late February; today seems to be the day. I have an extra hour or two this morning: although it's usually a day for the tai chi class, my tai chi teacher has taken off to Thailand, "to look at temples," he said. So the time, combined with the dreary weather (heavily overcast, here, with lots of slush; maybe colder and frozen where you are?), seems right. The problem, alas, is that the more I learn about tai chi-- both from practice and theory-- the less I'm able to talk about it coherently.

Although tai chi is usually grouped with other related Asian martial arts, it is more accurately understood from its own perspectives as an anti-marital art. One especially nice way I've heard it described is "a dance of self-defense."

It's Taoist in origin, of course, which means that it goes back to pre-patriarchal Neolithic times. So, at least in its basic perspectives, it is many thousands of years old. Over the centuries it evolved, like everything else, into multiple schools; they seem more to be expressions of the personalities of the founders of those schools than something more basic. As far as I'm able to tell, the fundamentals are the same no matter what school or founder they come from.

Tao is the Great Mother, the overflowing abyss, the "no-thing from which comes every thing. So it's utterly kenotic. And gentle. Its action is best described as no-action. And it's dynamic, never static. The familiar yin-yang image tends to be misleading if we think of it as representing balance. It's really more an image of what Jung called enantiadromia: things always moving into their opposites. And that's what tai chi is about.

Taoism is also non-dualist. There's no "human vs natural world" split, no "body vs mind" split, and of course no "world vs source" split. The Taoist ideal for humans is simply to be one with all that. The cosmic chi (energy, breath, spiritus, pneuma, ruah, prana, vayu) is no less in us than everything else, and tai essentially means something like working with, cooperating with, being in tune with: going with the flow.

And the chi of the universe is always relational. It focuses on each person in relation to the whole of reality and to everything in it, but it no less focuses on each of us, as individuals, in relation to the various aspects of our own makeup (bones, muscles, nerves, feelings, whatever).

And that's where the praxis comes in. In practice tai chi is really nothing more than slow, smooth movements, done with the best, most full attention we can give them. The assumption is that the cosmic chi fills everything including our mind-body self and, with practice, we can let it flow freely. We take responsibility for the chi within us, intentionally becoming a conscious expression of the Tao. And our assisting the Tao to flow freely is what allows us to fully be who and what we are.

Is it really that simple? Yes, I think it is. The various schools seem to differ primarily in what sequences the routine moves can take. The sequence of moves is called a "form." It's simply a pattern for making sure you get in all the essential movements. I've been doing tai chi for more than five years now, and I can do the elementary "19 form" fairly easily. It's called "19" because it has approximately nineteen essential steps to it. It takes about five minutes.

There are also some warm-up exercises. Although the term "warm-up" makes it sound like any other high power work-out activity, it's not. The warm-up includes mild stretching and bending, but even there the emphasis is on not forcing anything. "Just bend as much as gravity lets you." Last year in Philadelphia I saw a old woman doing tai chi with great ease and flow; she said she was 92 years old.

The various movements that are part of the warm-up are called "silk reeling." The idea is that you move like a silk worm spinning the thread: if it's too loose it gets tangled, too tight and it breaks. The main point is smooth flow.

So there's nothing ascetic or macho to tai chi. "Relaxed attention" is the ideal. It's very much like zazen where you focus on only one thing (like breathing), but here you focus on the movements themselves, doing them smoothly, being "in the flow" with them. "Be as relaxed as an old sweater hanging on the back of a chair." This is one of the reasons why tai chi, unlike most exercises and martial arts that are attractive to jocks and other high energy persons, is especially good for older people. There is none of the strain and effort involved in yoga, and nothing like the aggressive actions of karate.

And there also is no fantasy or image-oriented aspect to it, in the way there is to Tibetan or tantric praxis, or in Wicca, with things like "calling down the moon." The one exception I know has to do with the image of the body-center called the tantien (which is pronounced "dan-tien").

The tantien is pictured as a sphere or ball in the abdomen a few inches below the navel; it's where the cosmic energies come together as they move into and flow out from the body. I've learned from my interest in biogenetic structuralism that in some sense it's a real "place" within the body, a "functional structure"-- but we're just not conscious of it; it's very much like the chakras of Hindu tradition or acupuncture points in Chinese medicine. In neurology, they would say its functions are "not entrained to the conscious network." I.e., the tantien is not really any different from digestive processes or heart beat, for example, which work without our consciously control of them. So, when we want to work with the tantien, we have to "image" it.

In the five-plus years I've been doing tai chi, one of the things I've found that makes it so good for me is that every time I do it, it's like a new beginning. I keep getting better and better at it. It's literally a bodily experience of Gregory Nazienzus' "going from glory to glory." And that's why there's really no way to describe it. It's a profoundly cosmic and wholistic experience that just can't be reduced to rational and verbal concepts.

So that's the basic things I can tell you.

With regard to Taoism, there's an excellent translation of the Tao Te Ching available, by an Ellen M. Chen (Paragon House, 1989). She's a graduate of the National Taiwan University and was a scholar at Fordham University in Thomas Berry's time; she mentions him with thanks for his inspiration and encouragement. So the book has an authentically Chinese character as well as a context which isn't alien to Teilhardian and contemporary ecological perspectives. Her detailed commentary is a delight.

There's no book I can recommend for tai chi practice. Innumerable books, tapes and DVDs exist, but I know of none that's good for helping someone new at it to get started. Tai chi really is a "oral tradition"-type of thing. I am extremely lucky to have the tai chi teacher I do.

Ellen M. Chen's translation and commentary of the Tao Te Ching emphasizes peace and social justice as the normal social consequences of following the Tao, and those same perspectives show up in tai chi applications. The basic self-defense ideal is to avoid conflict: to never attack; and, if forced into conflict, to deflect the attackers energies (unbalanced, by definition) rather than meeting them head-on. And no weapons are involved, of course. (Although there is a school that uses swords for practicing balance.)

The ease with which an accomplished practitioner can side-step even the most direct assaults is simply amazing, and understanding the martial arts applications turns out to be quite helpful in understanding some of tai chi's essential movements. But even though it produces useful practical results in terms of self-defense, it is the practice that's an end in itself. And that end-result is simply "balance." Again, though, I need to say that I mean not something static but dynamic. "Dynamic balance" is the best way to say it.

The emphasis on dynamic balance is expressed in everyday tai chi praxis by the fact that it begins with doing nothing: you start simply by standing, relaxed and attentive, with arms out as if holding a beach ball to your chest, allowing the cosmic chi to flow into and through and out of you. You are the incarnation of the "no-thing from which comes everything." The stance is called "wu ji" and referred to as "meditation." 

Only after a period of "meditating" do you begin to move, and once you do, you (ideally) don't stop until whatever "form" you're doing is completed. You become a microcosm of the evolutionary cosmos. "As above, so below." So tai chi offers us an essential experience found in any pre-industrial culture's cosmology, but which is utterly missing from our own western religious and cultural traditions: the experience of being a participatory contributor to the cosmic process.

For me, all this converges so wonderfully with the contemporary New Cosmology and the Jewish sophianic perspectives that my life-long interest in science and religion finds a physiological and psychological fulfillment that previously I'd never dreamed possible. I'd better stop; I'm starting to sound like a fanatic!

sam@maspeno.com