#141. The Seven Pillars of Coyote

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Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

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Post #141 is a first attempt, made in 2004, at relating basic ideas about trickster aspects of Sophia with the help of Jung and Eastern thought.

1. INITIATION. Initiation to, and attestation for, endurance (of opposites within) is intrinsic to the trickster worldview and to the sophiological perspective.

As Louis de Montfort says, the Divine Energy "gives us the courage to be creative. It 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’s what it wants from us!"

And its greatest lesson is that, in that on-going process, we can endure anything. Nothing good will get lost. Its most significant spokesman says, 'Don’t be afraid'."

2. HEALING TRANSFORMATION. Understanding of healing transformation via the union of opposites within is not part of the worldview of static-dualistic religion. It is unconventional, even in Bulgakov's sophiology, and tends to be found only within contemporary psychology and still-radical religious-psychology thinkers. It is thus within the realm of Coyote.

3. UNDERSTANDING and COMMUNICATION. Sophia is defined in the Old Testament as perception and understanding. And a definition of Coyote-consciousness definitely includes awareness of our limitations in understanding things well.

The modern field of hermeneutics knows, as Coyote teaches, that we have to dance around things in order to understand them well.

Louis de Montfort stresses communication as a gift of Eternal Wisdom: "Divine Energy gives meaning to our lives especially by serving us as a mentor and teacher. The wisdom it gives us is a profound understanding of the nature of things and a deep intuitive insight into what life is all about. It also gives us powerful communication and relational skills, so that our hearts can reach out to touch the hearts of others."

A hermeneuticist is by definition a communicator across cultural boundaries. And the (phallic) herm stands at every cross roads.

4. ROOTS. Jung's psychology, Bulgakov's sophiology, and at least some aspects of the dynamic evolutionary worldview of modern science all have the same philosophical roots in those western thinkers, the Germanic Romantics, who first brought Eastern thought to western consciousness.

5. PSYCHE and RELATEDNESS. Jung speaks of psyche and Bulgakov of relatedness as essential aspects of reality; both make use of the same language to say that neither the conscious psyche nor the divine-human inter-relatedness are "derived" in any sense but are fundamental "aspects of being."

6. OUR WORK OF WORKS. Individuation, as the process of becoming who-what we have been called into existence to be, is not a significant aspect of dualistic religion. But in the dynamic worldview-- of Jung, Sophia and Coyote-- growth and development is what life is all about.

Louis de Montfort says of Eternal Wisdom: it "gives us the courage to be creative. It 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."

Jung says this is the one really important factor: "the salvation of the world depends on the salvation of the individual soul." And this is of course precisely to what Coyote serves as teacher and guide. And it's also found in Grail legend.

7. ENDS (PURPOSE is MEANING). We have many names for the one same reality: the Tao, how the world works, the cosmic ordering principle, Sophia as God's creative helper-craftsperson, the counselor of the Creator, the angel-guardian of the cosmos, etc.

The point of it all is that there is direction to the evolution of the universe and to what Coyote directs our growth and development: unity-in-diversity: all that can be said of eternal cosmic wisdom can also be said of the wisdom of the body.

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#109. Jung & Eastern Thought

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This post is 9th in a series of blog entries beginning with #101-- a collection of notes and essays from my files all dealing in one way or another with the emerging new religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade to clarify my own thoughts but which I now want to make available for anyone who might be interested.




Post #109 is a collection of personal thoughts stimulated by two books with the same name, "Jung and Eastern Thought." It dates from December, 2004.

If you have questions and think I might be of help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macpeno.com

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I've been trying to get these two books with this same name for a long time. It's been so long that I can't remember now what the impetus was that set me to locating them. 

Finally got them, thanks to (son-in-law) John. One is by Harold Coward (SUNY, 1985), the other by JJ Clarke (Rutledge, 1994). Both are interesting, but the Clarke book is more useful. It contains about a dozen references to the Coward book, which is essentially a collection of essays. Clarke's book is a much more detailed study. He is (at time of publication) Senior Lecturer and director of degree programs in history of ideas at Kingston University (UK). His book is subtitled "A Dialogue with the Orient" and divided into three sections: Prologue, Dialogue and Epilogue. I took no notes from the third part, but the first two offer many interesting and stimulating ideas.

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From Part I, the Prologue...

1) There are a half dozen basic similarities between Jung's ideas and Eastern perspectives; both hold strongly to ideas about:
• The reality of the psyche 
• The primacy of inner experience
• A sense of self as more than ego
• The possibility of transformation/healing via one's efforts
• The psychoid nature of reality
• The quest for healing/wholeness via creative interaction of complementary opposites within the psyche.

The first five of these six are identical to basic ideas of the New Cosmology and of Mary Coelho's work. The focus on union of opposites within the psyche seems to me less obviously part of either. I'm sure it's there, at least in Mary's work, but I don't recall it being stressed; I don't recall it at all in the materials offered by Swimme and Berry. (Which, again, doesn't mean it's not there.)



2) One immediate thought is to suggest to Mary C. that in any presentations of her work and in a second edition of the book she give some attention to Eastern thought (more than merely mentioning it as not within her competence). Just one or two paragraphs, making some connections, would be sufficient to open her whole "way of seeing" to a wider perspective and wider audience. New Age spiritual seekers, especially, would be more receptive to the Western contemplative tradition if it is more clearly acknowledged as part of an even broader pan-human unitive worldview. And, even more basically, if the presentation is meant to be "for the future," this "way of seeing" needs to be set in the widest context of the emerging global culture.



3) To go back to the list of six similarities... It's clear that these views are also the fundamentals of Bulgakov's sophiological perspective. Some, of course, are taken for granted, just as he takes the reality of person for granted when he says the divine gifts to the world are essentially diversity and unity (whereas Berry and Swimme spell it out more explicitly in terms of the cosmic goals of "differentiation, subjectivity [autopoesis] and communion"). Systems Theory uses "autopoesis" instead of "subjectivity." [All three terms (person, subjectivity and autopoesis) refer to what Systems Theory calls self-organizing systems. This idea seems to me to indicate the very ending of 19th century atomistic materialism. It remains still to become known and its implications understood in the wider scientific community and, needless to say, by "the person on the street."]

Similarities like the reality of the psyche, the primacy of inner experience and the self as more than ego would be "givens" for Bulgakov. He would talk about the psychoid nature of reality in terms of the world's sacramentality. And the idea of the possibility of transformation/healing via one's efforts would be included in all that he would think of as an authentic traditional asceticism. The quest for wholeness via creative interaction of complementary opposites within the psyche is his most fundamental idea; he would say it in terms of created and uncreated Sophia, and their interaction. Indeed, the fundamental Russian term Bogochelovechestvo (usually translated very unsatisfactorily as "GodManhood") Bulgakov describes precisely as "the synergy of the divine-human inter-action."

I don't think Bulgakov had anything to say about a broader understanding of union of complementary opposites; that seems to be an idea limited still to psychology, and even there only to those who would be trying to re-think good and evil, light and dark, in religious terms, such as the Canadian RC Jungian, John Dourley, and those such as Brewster Beach who are thinking through the Gnostic tradition. 

It's exciting to realize that these widely diverse perspectives (of Bulgakov, Jung, the East, Mary C. and the New Cosmology) are all very much concerned about the same things so lacking in Western culture.



4) Frequently referred to Eastern texts in Clarke's book include: I Ching, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Tibetan Book of The Great Liberation, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Tao Te Ching, Rig Veda and The Bagavad Gita. A significant ideas in Clarke's Prologue is that that Jung is described as taoistic, buddhistic and a hermeneuticist.


5) If Taoism means to "go with the flow" (of the natural world, cosmic process, etc.) then Jung was most definitely "taoistic" in terms of his ideas as well as personality. He was personally "taoistic" in that he was most comfortable with experiences of nature rather than society, and most at ease with simple activities such as gardening, cooking, sailing and stone-carving. [I'm with him on two of the four! Never had opportunity for sailing or stone-carving. Walking and tai chi exercises may have a similar role for me. The closest I've come to something like stone-carving is working with stained-glass, and both tai chi and stained-glass are late-in-life activities for me.]



6) Jung was "buddhistic" in his willingness to confront one's inner demons (the Jungian "shadow"), and in his understanding of the importance of fantasy (imagination) for experiencing those inner demons.



7) Jung was also a "hermeneuticist," in the sense of an interpreter of things. The term "hermeneutics," says Clarke, dates from the 1600's and originally referred to knowing details about biblical texts (date of composition, cultural context, etc) that would help readers better understand them. It later was extended to mean "the art of understanding used to understand texts, artifacts and human beings" (the quote is Jung's, apparently). And eventually it came to mean much more, an attitude or realization that accepts the fact that all attempts at understanding anything are culturally conditioned and we can never get totally out of our own cultural limitations, so that the best we can do in trying to understand anything is to pursue a dynamic course of interpretation followed by critical reflection on our interpretation, followed by more interpretation. (This understanding of understanding is called "the hermeneutic circle.") [I note that Taussig says, "Sophia is understanding," so there's yet another-- and I think especially significant-- connection to follow up. Of all these ideas, so far, this one most "calls me" to pursue it further.] 

Another aspect of hermeneutics is communication. A hermeneuticist is a communicator, a communicator across cultural boundaries. [Needless to say, this understanding immediately brings to mind an essential trickster function, "border crossings," and probably the very name "hermeneutics" comes from the (phallic) herm at the cross roads, so here we have another very positive aspect of Coyote to take into account in relating Sophia and sacred manhood.]



8) Of special interest: Many of the thinkers mentioned by Clarke as significant in bringing eastern thought to Western consciousness-- such as Hegel, Kant, Leibniz, Nietzsche, Sheller, Schelling, Schopenhauer-- include the same Germanic Romantics who provided the philosophical foundations for the sophia thinking of Soloviev, Florensky and Bulgakov. So, again it's clear that the sophiological worldview is strongly related to Jung, Eastern Thought, the New Cosmology and Mary Coelho's work.

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From Part II, Dialogue...

9) With regard to the reality of the psyche... Jung's view is that the psyche "isn't derived" but is "a pre-condition of being." He calls it "the world's pivot" (a neat translation of axis mundi!). [I found it interesting that that same language about something being "derived" shows up in Bulgakov's Introduction to the Outline of Sophiology, where he makes the point that even the doctrine of Incarnation isn't basic but "derived" (from the more fundamental sophiological perspective). It was a new idea/term for me there; so here's another, even if small, link between Jung, Eastern thought and Sophiology.


10) Jung describes the West as seeing reality outside, the East as seeing it from within. He says the mind/psyche is as a big as cosmos inside as is the entire physical universe outside. And he makes the point that we know the mind directly, whereas the external world is "a hypothesis." We know it only indirectly, via the mind and senses. The main idea is that, in contrast to the view of Western materialism, reality is in fact "mind-like." [That matter outside the mind is a "hypothesis" according to Jung is a new idea to me. What a comment it is on the atomistic materialism of the western secular mentality!]


11) With regard to individuation, self-transformation, healing.... The goal of psychic growth and development is wholeness: a dynamic balance of parts, union of the opposites within. [In a religious context the only person I know who stressed this was Ira Progoff, who was talking 30 years ago about "The Next Step in Religion." Organized religions have yet to take this step, alas. It may simply not be possible for the institutional churches to take the step: establishments by their very nature are not a place where a promotion of individuation can be expected. Even Bulgakov's sophiology doesn't seem to move in that direction, although surely it is at the very heart of the sophiological perspective. Much to think about here!] 


12) Re Jung and Taoism... A basic meaning of tao is "the way things work." This is precisely the meaning of Sophia on the old icons when she is called things like the "Guardian Angel of the Universe." And it isn't different from the term "cosmic ordering principle" of David Bohm's Implicate Order ideas. (Or even from Sapientia in the Advent hymn's "O come, O come, thou wisdom from on high, who orders all things....")

But Jung says the best meaning of tao is "meaning." (By which he means what I usually call "significance").

O come, O come, thou Meaning from on high,
Who gives to all things their sig-ni-fi-cance.

I would like to pursue this double sense of ordering principle and significance in terms of wisdom of the body as analogy for Eternal Wisdom. Does the phrase "wisdom of the body" also contain a sense of the body's meaningfulness? Is the body's significance contained in that "wisdom" it has in terms of how it works?  Does "how the universe 'works'" also contain a sense of its significance? Jung obviously would say 'yes.' Is it perhaps just another aspect of the pervasiveness of materialism that we're not able to readily see the meaning of the world (or body) in terms of its workings?

Even as I'm writing this I'm seeing that the link between ordering and meaning isn't tenuous. They really are one and the same thing-- in the Teilhardian-Berry sense that the evolution of the universe has a telos (of differentiation, subjectivity and communion). The world is ordered toward unity-in-difference (of persons). (Bulgakov would agree!) And that is precisely the meaning of our existence. I still like best Bruno's (or is it Teilhard's?) term, "eucharistic omega."

One more thought, then: What does this say about the wisdom of the body? Does it too work towards a telos? Would "fullness of life" be an accurate description of that telos? What does this say about the wisdom of an old body? Of the body of a dying person? Is a dying person's body still working toward fullness of participation in and contribution to the cosmic telos? I think the answer would definitely be 'yes.'

And if all that's the case, then-- to push the words a bit-- we should be able to talk about a "somatic sophia," or at least a somatic aspect of sophia. [My brain is starting to hurt!] To Taussig's "understanding is sophia" we could add "dying is sophia." And helping persons to die well would then most definitely be an aspect of Bogochelovechestvo.


13) If the tao is the meaningful ordering of all things, other basic ideas in taoism also make good sense: chi is the dynamic energy of the cosmos, wu-wei is source [the "no thing from which comes every thing"], and ying-yan is the balance of opposites in which wholeness consists. Lots to think about there! (I think it's an understatement to say that's an understatement!)


14) Clarke makes the point that the I Ching and Jung's idea of synchronicity are based on the same idea of the universe: a (post-Newtonian, post-rationalist) understanding of the unity of all things: "All things are linked by a hidden pattern of significance". I.e., "meaning is a function of interconnection." Again, this is the same as D. Bohm's insight of the Implicate Order as "the unbroken wholeness beneath the surface of the manifest phenomena." Clarke explicitly refers to David Bohm's work, and in fact closes the book with a quote from Peat's and Bohm's 1989 book, Science, Order and Creativity.


15) Emphasizing the distinction between an orientation toward whole or parts.... Jung and the East both recognize that we can't see the tao when we focus only on details (as Western science does). We have to take into account everything, down to the least detail, which makes up the present moment. The point is that the significance of every part of reality is only clear in terms of every other part: the interconnections of the whole.

This means, then, that there are correspondences (correlations, homologous-ities) between parts, and this "homologous-ness" is the order or pattern to the unus mundus. 

This idea of the harmony of the whole is the basis not only for Jung's synchronicity ideas but also for things like astrology, sympathetic medicines, and the Medieval idea of macro- and micro-cosmos, etc. (Neat stuff!) It's also at the base of ideas like karios, Mary C's "chime," Brian Swimme's "one time event" or "window of opportunity," Brother Lawrence's "practice of the present moment," etc. etc. etc.!


16) Notes 9-16 above all come from the chapter on Jung and Taoism. There are also some, although fewer, interesting things in the chapters about Yoga (notes 17-20 ) and Buddhism (note 21).


17) With regard to Yoga... Jung used the term "yoga" (as others also do) to mean both the postures and breathing exercises and also the worldview out of which those practices originate.  Brahman is described as the dynamic creative life-energy within us. Jung calls this "libido" (meaning much more than merely sexual energy, which Freud limited it to) and makes the point that our truest self is one with this cosmic principle. Tat twam asi = "This is what you are."

Jung also makes the point that this cosmic principle has a goal (purpose, direction) and that the whole idea of individuation is to bring yourself into alignment with this Brahman (Great Self, Great Person). Yet another link with ideas about Eternal Wisdom and a basic insight in the New Cosmology.


18) Especially interesting is Jung's contrast of the spirituality of the West as "up-rising" effort: the effort "to raise yourself above the world" (imaged by phallic church steeples, he notes [and Islamic minarets, we can add]) on one hand and the yoga's downward spirituality (imaged by caves and underground shrines) on the other. (A fruitful line of thought to pursue might also be to relate in terms of a single gender contrast the up-standing phallus and the low-hanging double-round.)


19) The Sanskrit term or name for joining with the cosmic principle of Brahman is rta-- from which comes our word for rites/rituals. Jung calls this joining "sinking" or "going back to the maternal depths of nature." "Sinking" is also then, Jung notes, returning to the taoist wu-wei ("mother of everything"). It's also what Freud calls the "regressive" activities of the psyche, and which Mary Coelho recognizes as contact (via the archaic triune brain) to the primordial archetypal powers; she mentions in this context the work of Masters & Houston with regard to the third and fourth levels of psychic functioning.... A whole world of things to think about!

Eckhart has the same idea somewhere, and which (as E. Edginger) points out is even an advance over Jung's thinking on this, about letting the divine reality be released or "leaked out" into the world. Even Mitch, my tai chi teacher, uses the same word "sinking" to talk about movement originating in the place (the tantien) which is the source (wu-wei) of the mind-body's (cosmic) chi. Too much!


20) The section on Jung's ideas about tantric yoga and kundalini serpent power is fascinating; the chakras (imaged as circles and lotus flowers) are recognized as "psychic centers of the subtle body." Jung says they have "fairly definite bodily localizations" but also calls them stages or levels of development.

1st: perineum/cloaca = sleep = instincts/unC = earth [and north?].

2nd: genital/bladder = initial arousal/awakening = initiation = water, sickle moon, Leviathan/sleeping serpent [and west?]. 

3rd: stomach/belly/solar plexus = emotion/earliest localization of consciousness/creative-destructive passions = fire [and south?].

4th: heart/diaphragm [& lungs] = seat of feeling/thinking, where individuation begins (and inflation becomes possible) = air/breath/wind [and east?].

5th: neck/throat = ether = abstract thought, mental concepts, inner-subjective experiences, experience of psychic/archetypal reality of world: trans-ego self-knowledge.

6th: third eye = where the ego disappears

7th: top of head = where there are no dualities = all is one.

I note that Jung had little to say about the last two; he felt the Western mentality simply wasn't able to think in terms of no ego at all. Certainly he wasn't. (And I'm glad he wasn't!)


21) With regard to Buddhism... Jung and Buddhism agree on the importance of taking charge of yourself and of the possibility of working at your own inner healing.

He sees the mandala not only as an image of the balance of opposites but as being in itself a healing image: mandalas promote inner wholeness by trying to organize inner dis-organization. (The text uses the term "chaos.") By themselves they have the ability to move a person out of a state of conflict and anxiety into an inner condition of wholeness and reconciliation. (What a wonderfully explicit statement of what Native Americans would call "power objects"! And Christian would call-- or would once have called-- "sacramental realities.")

Jung says mandalas are a good example of the essence of religion, since all religion is about meaning and purpose, healing and reconciliation. (I once was given an earth name which was a version of the mandala: Hoc'oka. It's the Lakota word for the relatively safe and secure area inside the tipi circle encampment, in contrast to the much less safe area outside it; and is also used in shamanic language to mean the area where initiation takes place.)

22) I have no idea how to proceed from here with all this. +++

#62. "Let Us Attend"

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In the two previous posts I talked about the half-dozen words I think are needed to make sense of religious ritual in an evolutionary context: symbol, myth and meaning in post #60 and wisdom, cosmology and creativity in post #61.

It seems like an awful lot of words. I'd like to be able to say what I have to say with fewer, but I don't think I can. Some of the words are more familiar than others; some mean something different in an evolutionary context than they do in the old static-dualistic worldview; and some simply are words which our culture (western civilization, American society, Judeo-Christian tradition) doesn't use at all.

In this post, I'd going to try to put them together. For easier reading, I'll skip referring to the two previous posts, but do check back if it looks like I'm not being clear enough. And do keep in mind the complexity of the topic; trying to spell out an understanding of religious ritual in the context of cosmic evolution is an ambitious project!

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Although "cosmology" is a relatively unfamiliar word to most people, it's probably the easiest of my six words to understand. It's simply how any group of people (a society or culture) understands its place in the vast scheme of things. Of course it's also how the individuals within any group understand their place in the world. 

It's what people take for granted-- for the most part, unconsciously-- about the question "Where do we fit in?"

The old cosmology said we don't fit in. We're aliens, strangers in a strange land. Our home is in heaven, our task is to get there. And we can't do it without outside help.

For those who still accept the dualistic cosmology, religious rituals are actions and words with the power to help us escape from the world-- and from hell. For that reason, many who no longer accept the old cosmology have written off any need for what seems to them to be simply magical words or superstitious activities.

But humans need rites. Religious ritual is far older than the Judeo-Christian tradition, so even if we don't accept a dualistic understanding of the western world's religious tradition, we're still in need of rites. They're part of human nature.

Ritual even presents a problem, however, for many who do accept the New Cosmology. The influence of the reductionist perspectives of 19th-century science remains strong even into the 21st century, so that still today many have a difficult time seeing what value there might be to the meaningless words and archaic gestures to which ritual is reduced when seen only from a rationalistic view point.

As I've said many times in these posts, we need a bigger picture. In this case, the bigger picture we need is about the workings of our conscious minds.

I hope to offer some thoughts about the relationship between consciousness and ritual in the next post. But long-time readers will probably guess what my main point will be: that our conscious minds can operate in more than one way.

The bigger picture that we need here is that our conscious awareness is not limited only to logical reasoning. Just as many in our culture are unaware of having a cosmology-- even though they do-- so, too, do many remain unaware that consciousness itself can function in several different ways.

It's easy to see, then, why ritual is so misunderstood in our culture which claims to value rationality so highly. (From the news, however, of what politicians have been up to with the health care debate, for example, it's obvious that our society doesn't really value rationality all that much.)

My point is two-fold: that the New Cosmology also includes a bigger picture of the human psyche than the one the old cosmology assumed, and that ritual can be much better understood when we are aware of our minds as capable of far more than only rational thoughts.

We also have to keep in mind a bigger picture of the New Cosmology itself. The evolutionary worldview includes not just an understanding of the physical world of matter or the biological world of living things, but also-- and especially-- of the mental-psychological-social world of human technology and global culture.

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My second term, "Wisdom," refers to the biblical perspectives within the Judeo-Christian world which have remained little known even to devoted followers of those traditions. It's a three part perspective: non-static in its view of the cosmos, non-dualistic in its view of anthropos and non-patriarchal in its view of theos.

The essence of the Wisdom tradition is that it doesn't see the world as an evil from which we need to escape; it emphasizes, instead, the presence of the divine at the heart of a dynamic creation-- from the very beginning. As a reader said in commenting on post #61, "Wisdom fills the world with beauty and goodness."

Wisdom has no place in the old cosmology. In the New Cosmology, the divine, the human and cosmic come together. Wisdom and the New Cosmology coincide, and it's here that I see most clearly "the convergence of religion and science."

Recovering our roots in the world-- and, indeed, coming to awareness of our roots as the world become conscious of itself-- allows us to see that neither religious dualism with regard to the Earth nor the patriarchal domination and exploitation of the children of the Earth is acceptable in our day.

The Wisdom perspective emphasizes the role of all humanity in the world's continuing development beyond patriarchy and dualism. The whole New Testament is about that cultural transition; the gospels speak of it on every page.

The Wisdom perspective also helps us to have a better understanding of the very nature of the cosmic process itself. Just as we call the body's self-healing the "wisdom of the body," so we can understand that there is a "wisdom of the universe" oriented toward the healing and completeness of the whole world.

From the Wisdom perspective's practical point of view, our personal and communal growth beyond patriarchy and dualism is only half the story. The other half is actually living in communion with the cosmic healing process.

In this practical perspective, each of us can understand ourselves as a unique personal expression of the Mystery behind the universe and so as a free, co-creative participant in the world's evolution. Creativity is the key to our self-understanding.

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Surprisingly, "creativity" isn't so easy to talk about. It means "making newness," but even "newness" is an odd word in our culture. A clearer way to describe creativity might be something like "engaging in on-going transformation." (Which is, of course, what the wisdom of the universe is all about.)

In the old static context, the word "creation" was a noun which referred to what was or is now-- to all that has been created; and "creativity" in that perspective was a characteristic only of the Creator.

In contrast, "creation" in the New Cosmology is a verb. It refers to the on-going emergence of new and more complex things-- at the cosmic, biological and human levels. In this sense, "creation" is precisely what's meant by the word "evolution."

And it's precisely because we know ourselves in that evolutionary context as the universe become conscious of itself that we share-- both as individuals and in our communities-- in the creative activity of the cosmic process. We know ourselves as co-creative participants along with the creative Mystery behind the universe.

Obviously, this understanding of human creativity has no place in the old cosmology. There, we humans are only passive recipients of our life and existence.

And it's obviously this passivity that's promoted by patriarchal authorities. In our day, the abuse of authority by Christian priests and bishops, for example, has come to such clear light that no one can miss it. But creativity is no less suppressed in the secular world as well. Serious artists can hardly make a living, while "famous for being famous" celebrities make millions.

Closer to home, when school budgets get tight, the first thing to go is the art or music department. When the mayor of Philadelphia, a decent person, recently needed to save money he suggested closing many of the city's libraries.

It's easy to be negative. My main point is that in the non-static, non-dualistic and non-patriarchal perspectives of the New Cosmology, creativity is the central focus.

Creativity refers both to our personal efforts at transformation and to the on-going efforts of all human societies to make a better life for the Earth's children. The personal and communal come together best, in my view, in the understanding that we make the world better primarily by our own efforts at personal transformation.

Transformation is at the heart of the New Cosmology, and creative transformation--of our individual selves and our global human culture-- is the very meaning of our existence. On-going creative transformation is our "myth" in the most positive sense, and creativity is the very essence of our "meaning."

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Probably the most difficult of those six ritual-related words to be clear about are the two I used just above, "meaning" (how we understand things) and "myth" (how we express that understanding).

In the evolutionary context, "meaning" refers especially to our understanding of the patterns of the universe's workings and "myth" to our expression of those patterns.

All this is especially confusing because we call those expressions of our understanding by many different names. Besides "myths," we also talk about the "principles of science," the "laws of physics and chemistry," the "patterns of biological growth," the "wisdom of the body," the "functions of consciousness," and the "workings of the unconscious psyche," for example.

As "myths," they are not so much facts and ideas as they are expressions of the phenomenological apprehension of the designs inherent in the processes of nature. They are expressions of our experiences of the intelligible patterns of the world's workings at the various levels of matter, life and mind.

And all of these "myths" have to do with health and wholeness in the broadest sense. Whether we call them the rules of quantum physics, the principles of natural selection, or stories about stealing fire from the gods, they are all expressions of our experiences of the wholeness-making patterns of the evolutionary process.

Of course "myth" and "meaning" in the New Cosmology have to do especially with own human self-understanding; creativity is our meaning in that dynamic context.

In the New Cosmology, our efforts toward personal development and our social-communal efforts to make a better world-- in terms of justice, equality and ecology-- are the most central aspects of our own self-understanding.

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And this, finally, is where ritual comes in. Ritual empowers our efforts.

The essence of ritual is our intentionally plugging into the energies of the cosmic process for the purpose of our empowerment to participate in the evolutionary cosmos.

I have never been able to come up with a better phrase for describing ritual than "plugging into the energies of the cosmic process." But I can't say those words (and you probably can't hear them) without having in mind the image of the prongs of an electrical plug being inserted into a wall outlet.

Less mechanical-sounding phrases-- like "tuning into the cosmic process" or "aligning ourselves with the evolution of the world"-- just don't express as clearly the energizing and empowering effect of ritual.

The problem is that what we're talking about here is momentous: nothing less than those simple human actions by which we intentionally unite ourselves with the life-giving dynamis (pneuma, spiritus, breath, wisdom) of the universe. So it may just be too big a thought for anything more than a grossly mechanical image.

(However, if you have a suggestion for a better descriptive phrase than the mechanical-sounding "plugging into the energies of the universe," I would love to hear from you!)

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A reminder: What I'm trying to do here is to put together the six terms-- wisdom, cosmology, creativity, symbol, myth and meaning-- which we need to understand ritual in a evolutionary context. I think what best integrates all these complex ideas is our understanding of symbol.

The Greek word "sym-bol" literally means "puts together." Its opposite is "dia-bol," "pulls apart." The diabolic is whatever separates or alienates us from ourselves.

While in our culture the word "symbol" can also refer to the conventional designation of arbitrary markings to represent something-- the way we use "H₂O" and "water," for example, to represent water-- that's not what's meant here.

The symbols we use in ritual are those natural things, like water and fire, which grab our attention so powerfully that they don't let us not pay attention.

It's these natural symbols which unite our minds with the energies of the cosmic process. We use them in religious ritual precisely because, when we give them our conscious attention, they unite us-- "put us together"-- with our self-understanding.

So an accurate definition of ritual might be something like this: Ritual is using natural symbols to intentionally pay attention to the meaning of our existence.

Symbols aren't ideas; they are tools. They can put us back together, heal us, make us whole, and thus empower us to be co-creative participants in the cosmic process.

Our words "rite" and "ritual" are ancient names for using symbols in this way. "Rite" comes from the Sanskrit term rita, which refers to the rhythms of nature.

The early Indo-European speakers of Sanskrit obviously understood that we are consciously linked to the energies of the world when we give our attention to the round of the seasons, the cycles of nature, the patterns of the cosmic process.

And it works the same way today. The powerful effect our winter solstice rituals at Christmas time have on us is experienced by almost everyone. It's a good example of the fact that rituals are most powerful at transitional times in nature.

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These are, as I've been saying, complex thoughts. See if you think this three sentence summary works: Wisdom orders the cosmic process. Ritual is our plugging into its energies. Symbols let us do that.

I know of one even briefer summary. During the liturgical rituals in the Eastern churches, the deacon frequently cries out, "Wisdom! 
Let us attend!"

That puts it all together in just four words. We probably can't do better than that.

sam@macspeno.com

#56. A Saner Approach to Nature

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In Latin, "sane" means healthy. So, this post is about a more healthy approach to nature-- more healthy, physically and mentally, than those negative attitudes toward the natural world which were the norm for centuries in western religion and culture and which, in our day, have resulted in the environmental crisis.

The thoughts I'm sharing in this post are based on an essay, "Shaping a New Ecological Consciousness: Insights from the Spirituality of Interreligious Dialogue," by Dr. Fabrice Blée, a Professor on the Faculty of Theology at the University of Saint Paul, Ottawa.

My thoughts here extend the ideas expressed in the three previous posts about a better understanding of the natural world, so needed in this time of ecological crisis. Dr. Blée is a colleague of Dr. Heather Eaton; his views complement both hers and those of Jakob Wolf which I described in post #53 (Bridging the Gap).

It was a footnote in Dr. Blée''s article that first lead me to Dr. Eaton's work. I mentioned her work in post #52 and shared some of her very significant ideas in my two most recent posts: #54 (We Take Care of What We Value) and #55 ("All we have to do...").

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I originally saw Dr. Blée's article in the July 2009 issue of the Bulletin of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, published online. Since "monastic interreligious dialogue" is hardly an familiar phrase, I need to say a few words about it.

When I first heard of it, I thought "monastic interreligious dialogue" referred to Catholic monks getting together to talk about things like how long their monastic robes should be or how early they got up for their morning services. Not too interesting!

Turns out it's something completely different: Christian monks and nuns talking with Asian monks and nuns (primarily Hindu and Buddhist). And what they're talking about is nothing less than their understanding of how to best go about being fully human beings.

Even more surprising is that these monastic individuals of East and West have been at it for a half-century and that they have been learning a lot from one another.

It seems monastic people have a great deal in common, no matter what their cultural background and religious beliefs. Their basic orientation to life-- and even much of their monastic practice-- is surprisingly similar. 

It seems "monasticism" isn't-- as I'd thought-- an intensified way of being religious so much as an intensified way of being human.

While the origin of the word "monk" isn't clear, it probably comes from "monos" (meaning "one," as in "monotone"), and for that reason monks and nuns are sometimes described as persons who live alone-- or, more generally, "go it alone."

But a much better understanding is that they are simply people who are working hard at being integrated within themselves, at being whole-- "together," fully human-- persons. "Single hearted" or "undivided," as the nuns of Green Mountain Monastery, where Thomas Berry was buried, say on their website. (Do see their website for some beautiful photos of Thomas Berry's funeral.)

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The focus of Fabrice Blée's academic work is the dialogue between Asian and western 'monastics' (as they are being called nowadays to include both men and women). But in this essay he is specifically addressing Christian monks and nuns and specifically with regard to their need for a "New Ecological Consciousness."

I'm aware that this sounds like odd stuff. If you're thinking that Blée's claim to offer a new slant on the natural world based on "insights from the spirituality of inter-religious dialogue" seems a bit of a stretch, I agree. I had my doubts.

But I read his essay anyway because I was interested in seeing where he was coming from and what he was going to come up with. And as it turns out, I was not disappointed.

I think it's precisely because Dr. Blée is speaking from a context in which most of us may not be comfortable that what he has to say can be of value to all of us. It wasn't so long ago that Eastern spiritual practices like tai chi and yoga were considered "odd stuff."

So today maybe we can also learn from the experience of western monks-- especially if it has to do with the ecological crisis and acquiring a "more healthy attitude toward nature."

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For me, anything that offers a new slant on things is something to look at. The more perspectives we have-- about anything-- the more meaningful they become. And in this case, the religious perspectives being offered here can help us to see our own personal attitudes in the broadest context-- as part of global humanity's cultural development.

To some, it's extremely challenging to accept the fact that our religious perspectives have a history, since it means that we may very well be "faced with the task," as Dr. Eaton says in her essay, "of allowing [our] theological understanding to be transformed."

But that kind of transformation is a big part of the Immense Transition we're experiencing It's why I think, as I said in post #52, that we do indeed live in "Exciting Times."

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But can we really say that the changing views of monks are "exciting"?

In this case, I think we can. If even western monks are moving away from Christianity's long-held negative views of the natural world-- which, as Dr. Eaton says, "belittled the Earth as a spiritual reality"-- then what Dr. Blée has to say may in fact be of great value.

His article first appeared in the April 2008 issue of a French-language review published by the Faculty of Theology of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Parts of it sound as if it may have originally been given as a lecture. If so, what we have is an online translation of a transcript of a talk originally given in French to a monastic audience-- which may explain why some of it is difficult to follow. But it's valuable.

It's filled with profoundly significant thoughts for those seeking to promote care of the Earth in the context of both the Judeo-Christian tradition and the New Cosmology.

While we may not be interested in inter-religious monastic dialogue in itself, what the Christian monks and nuns of western civilization are learning with regard to the environmental crisis may, in fact, be quite valuable for all of us.

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Dr. Blée begins by noting that, with few exceptions, Christian participants in the monastic East-West dialogue hadn't given much attention to the ecological crisis. As he says, "It took them 30 years to get around to it."

The basic point of his essay is that the new attitudes which are emerging in the monastic world are in fact inherent in the principles of inter-religious dialogue and that they have something of great significance to contribute with regard to healing the Earth.

It's important to keep in mind that he's talking here to a Christian audience. While he never uses the word "dualism," his use of terms like "new consciousness" and "new approach to nature" refer precisely a post-dualistic Christian perspective on the material world.

His goal, as he says, is nothing less than "to describe a way of establishing a relationship with nature that can give support to informed [ecological] action."

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Dr. Blée focuses on one of the most central practices of Christian monastic life: hospitality. In his early Rule for Monasteries, "the father of monks" Saint Benedict of Nursia notes that "guests are never lacking in a monastery" and that they "are to be received as Christ."

Dr. Blée says that the monastic emphasis on hospitality is the very essence of the perspectives which have emerged from the inter-religious dialogue. Hospitality requires participants to welcome the stranger, "the one in whom we cannot immediately recognize ourselves and who [we see] as a threat to everything we stand for."

He adds that "nothing else is so difficult as entering into someone else’s world and receiving that person into our own, regardless of what we think about the individual and his or her beliefs."

The main point of Fabrice Blée's "saner approach to nature" is that just as monks are to welcome guests "even without having any positive perspectives on their views," so this same welcoming attitude needs to be extended to nature itself.

Needless to say-- given the pervasiveness of religious dualism in Christianity for the last 1,000 years-- this is a radical view.

But welcoming the natural world-- and welcoming it precisely "in its very otherness," as Dr. Blée stresses-- is the needed perspective which he says will enable Christians to "incorporate a saner approach to nature in their life of faith."

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Welcoming others means having respect for their "otherness." Just as we "must allow ourselves to be questioned and challenged by our guests," says Dr. Blée, in the same way "we must allow ourselves to be affected by the cosmic process."

Hospitality and respect for "otherness," when applied to the natural world, means "taking the cosmic process on its own." The heart and soul of the environmental issue isn't just biological survival, Dr. Blée says, but nothing less than "communion with nature."

This is, indeed, a totally new and different perspective for western Christianity.

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Dr. Blée makes an especially good point when he observes that Christians engaged in inter-religious dialogue never encounter Islam or Buddhism in an abstract sense. We always meet specific persons, followers of specific religious traditions.

In the same way, he says, we never encounter nature in the abstract. We always meet the cosmic process in terms of "the disparate elements that constitute it."

His heavy academic language here can get in the way, but his point is clear enough: "evolution" is no more of an abstraction than are individuals who practice Buddhism or Islam. In the same way that we encounter specific persons, we also encounter specific aspects of the natural world. And in neither case may we write them off as insignificant.

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Dr. Blée makes a very profound point about hospitality toward nature when he says that we need to welcome the cosmic process even though we may be afraid of it. Otherwise, we miss something important about ourselves, our "capacity for wonder."

If you have been asking yourself why I think these views of Fabrice Blée's are so important, I hope you will see here how they relate completely to the thoughts of Heather Eaton and Jakob Wolf which I described in my three previous posts.

Dr. Eaton stresses awe and wonder, Pastor Wolf stresses our "apprehension" of nature's intelligibility, and Dr. Blée stresses welcoming the cosmic process even when we experience the threatening aspects of its "disparate elements." All three offer different slants on what's needed if we are to heal the Earth.

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Dr. Blée, however, emphasizes one important point the others don't. It concerns what he calls "liberation of the body." He says that the ecological crisis is forcing Christians to deal with their many-centuries-long "negation of the body."

He notes that it's precisely because we have cut ourselves off from nature in terms of our bodies that we in the west are so alienated from ourselves, and that "this alienation from self is precisely what characterizes modern society."

If we are to deal properly with the ecological crisis, we need to understand ourselves physically as part of "nature." We need to recognize that our own bodies are part of the cosmic evolutionary process.

In one especially good paragraph he notes that Christian monks in dialogue with the Asian contemplative traditions have "re-discovered"-- thanks to Asian practices such as zazen and yoga-- that the body has a part to play in the process of what Christian monks call “divinization."

"Divinization" (theosis, in Greek) is an ancient term for union with the divine. Blée says it "does not take place in spite of the body, but in its very depths, in a body that is totally accepted." Healing the Earth depends on our "total acceptance" of our own bodies!

There's a famous statement by the 10th-century eastern saint, Symeon the New Theologian, about total acceptance of the body. In his Hymns of Divine Love, he says that we are divinized even in our genitals-- and adds that thinking otherwise is blasphemous! (When Symeon's work was being translated into Latin back in the 1600s, the western translators deleted that passage.)

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Probably the most profound implication of this understanding of acceptance of the body as part of the evolutionary process is that it allows us, in Dr. Blée's words, "to be reconciled to two of nature’s characteristics: its impermanence and the irrationality of its power."

"Impermanence" doesn't mean that things don't last. It means, rather, that everything in nature-- the environment, our bodies and our very selves-- is always changing.

This understanding of the world as dynamic is a major aspect of the Immense Transition presently happening in human culture. I described it in posts #35 and #36. An especially important part of this tremendous change is the fact that, as Heather Eaton says in This Sacred Earth, we are at "new religious moment in the history of the world."

Today, we can see better than previous generations that each of the world's religions has distinct contributions to make and that we need to identify the "transformative and prophetic insights of each tradition." As we search for the "common ground" that's "necessary for the world to face such a global and intertwined [environmental] crisis," we need "to appreciate each religious tradition as offering specific insights and teachings within a tapestry of revelations."

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One especially strong example of a transformative insight that's found in the Buddhist tradition in a scripture, chanted regularly in the monasteries, which bluntly describes nature's irrational power. The text begins, "Thus we should frequently recollect..."

I am of the nature to age, I have not gone beyond aging.

I am of the nature to sicken, I have not gone beyond sickness.

I am of the nature to die, I have not gone beyond dying.

All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will become separated from me.

I am the owner of my kamma, heir to my kamma, born of my kamma, related to my kamma, abide supported by my kamma. Whatever kamma I shall do, for good or ill, of that I will be the heir.

We are told to "thus frequently recollect" these facts because most of us would prefer not to. But it is precisely this irrational power of the evolutionary process which we are called to welcome. As Dr. Blée says, we are to "allow ourselves to be challenged and transformed by it."

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"Transformation," like divinization or theosis, is not a conventional aspect of spirituality in western religion's dualistic view, however. The emphasis has been far more on morality and redemption (getting to heaven, escaping eternal punishment). The Earth has not been understood to be our home; any concern for healing the Earth was irrelevant.

But emphasis on transformation is, in fact, one of the basic insights of the Judeo-Christian Wisdom tradition. It was lost for a thousand years but, with its "transformative and prophetic insights," it is precisely this Wisdom tradition at the core of western religion that Christians needs to recover at this time of ecological crisis.

Dr. Blée expresses the Wisdom perspective well when he notes that the irrational power of nature, which appears as such a threat to us, "is the same divine power that Christian faith sees present and active at the heart of all creation."

It is this same dynamic energy (spiritus) which the book of Genesis describes as "hovering over the face of the deep" at the beginning of the world.

Karl Rahner expresses this Wisdom perspective more explicitly when he says that the divine spiritus present in the world is the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.

The Wisdom perspective has been preserved by Eastern Christians. Their understanding of the transformational power of nature is expressed most explicitly in their Easter hymn, sung repeatedly throughout the Pascha ("pass-over") season:

Christ is risen from the dead,

trampling out death by death

and upon those in the tombs

bestowing life.

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At this new religious moment in the history of the world, welcoming nature-- confidently accepting its transformative power even in our bodies-- is the "saner approach to nature" we need if we are to heal the Earth.

sam@macspeno.com

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ARCHIVE TECHNICAL PROBLEM: Since I started this new series of posts, each time I publish one, an earlier one vanishes from my Archives list; they're still there, just not visible. Until tech support can deal with this, I'm putting links to those "missing" posts here.

#6. Tai Chi

#5. Alternative to "Human Nature Redux"

#4. The "Biogenetic" Perspective

#3. High School 50th-Anniversary Report

#2. Spirituality Research Symposium

#1. On Recent Developments in Science and Religion

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