Category: Mind Body Spirit

I’ve been reading through a really neat book that Aldous Huxley wrote. There was a saying in there that came to me the other day, and I had to go back to it.

The essence is this: Our relationship with G-d defines the shape of our life in the form of a sponge. The particular traditions and teachings that we pick up along the way are what fills the sponge, but if you squeeze all that tradition out, you’re still left with the underlying sponge – the relationship with G-d.

Tradition and intellectual teaching is just the fill that we use to let the sponge take shape. Like a living sponge, filling it lets it grow, the more it grows, the more it’s able to absorb.

In a life made full by a robust and deep relationship with G-d, the sponge grows. The more the sponge grows, the less it’s about the tradition and intellectual teaching, and the more it’s about the relationship with G-d.

When ripe, we should be able to squeeze the tradition and dogma out of the sponge completely, and yet the relationship with G-d remains full and complete and strong.

Here’s the quote that got me thinking about this:

Why should what Abbot John Chapman calls ‘the problem of reconciling (not merely uniting) Mysticism and Christianity’ be so extremely difficult? Simply because so much Roman and Protestant thinking was done by those very lawyers whom Christ regarded as being peculiarly incapable of understanding the true

Nature of Things.

“The Abbot (Chapman apparently is referring to Abbot Marmion) says St. John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory (in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy) remains. Consequently for fifteen years or so I hated St. John of the Cross and called him a Buddhist. I loved St. Teresa and read her over and over again. She is first a Christian, only secondarily a mystic. Then I found I had wasted fifteen years, so far as prayer was concerned.”

from Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy

Folks I know who have a problem with religion should resonate with some part of this. After all, the most common complaint that the “non-religious” have about religion is that it’s so shallow – that it focuses too much on human traditions and interpreted teaching, rather than searching for real meaning in the world we live in.

I think they’re right in many ways. Too often, our religions fail to encourage us to grow and mature in our faith. Too often, our religions want us to grow in our relationship with the church, rather than in our relationship with G-d. The best pastor or rabbi should be looking for ways to help parishioners become so strong in relationship with G-d that they no longer need the pastor or rabbi.

A wise boss used to pound the idea into my head that my job as a leader was to be wise enough to work my way out of a job – to help people around me grow so that some of them would go past me, or at the very least be ready for my job. It’s a hard leadership style to truly live, though I always strived toward it.

This wisdom and teaching has a place in the seminaries of the world, as pastors and rabbis would be well served to try and achieve the same thing. In my experience, most pastors work to keep their flock contained, and dependent, and tied to what’s taught in that church. Instead, pastors should be trying to help people become the most absorbent sponge possible, ready to move past that pastor and on to ponds where even more can be absorbed.

A faith sponge can only grow when it’s constantly given just a little more to absorb than it’s ready to absorb.

Go see how much you can absorb this week.

Scrape, throw; scrape, throw; scrape, throw. My heart thumps heavily in my chest and my lungs find a steady rhythm – pulling the cold, fresh air deeply into my chest and sending the steamy exhale back out. These rhythms come into a sweet harmony with the strokes of my arms as they dispatch one shovel-full of snow after the other from the cold concrete of the driveway.

In short order, the heat is building nicely inside my jacket, and the steam rises from my head. Though the temperature hovers around zero, both my body and soul are saturated in a zone of warm satisfaction as the concrete is steadily stripped of the layer of snow that covers it.

Shoveling anything is satisfying to me, but snow is a particular pleasure. Especially when it’s fresh snow with a consistent weight and consistency – before it’s been walked in or driven on. It lends itself to the mindless rhythm of shoulders, back, legs, lungs and heart as the shovel sweeps in a steady motion. The cold air is a bonus, as it allows high work output without overheating.

Like bicycling, shoveling snow has a sweet combination of qualities that allows the body to fall into a holistic rhythm of work. It’s almost like a drug to me, and I suppose there’s something to be said for the endorphins that are probably released during high work output. Perhaps there’s some physiological reason for the magic, but it’s magic nonetheless.

This morning, there’s less snow than was forecast. The dry ground of the high prairie needs the snow this year. Beyond the joy of shoveling, it feels good to see the moisture coming down. I enjoy the peace of the quiet blanket of white in the early light.

Simple joy. Deep joy.

We’ve built a complex world of broadband, fiber, blogging and email. We keep ourselves wrapped tightly in our cocoon of warm isolation from the world around us, while sharing a high level of intimate information with all the friends, family, and complete strangers who happen to read our Facebook page updates.

We shop a lot – our entire economy now revolves not around making and building things of value, but instead around filling shopping carts full of “stuff” – most of which we have no real need for. Buying “stuff” is not only the center of our economy, but seems also to be the place we’re searching for some sense of satisfaction. Doesn’t it seem, sometimes, that filling our shopping carts is our misguided attempt to fill the gaps of joy and meaning in our life?

But we still feel that gaps. We’re still searching for the meaning. We still long for the joy.

Simple joy. Deep joy.

These gaps aren’t always foremost in our minds, but I think they drive our behavior more than we’d like to admit.

When for most of us, many gaps are easily filled by pretty simple things in our life. They’re usually things we don’t have to reach very far to find, and they’re often things we spend a great deal of time hiding from.

Like hard work. Simple hard work with a steady, mindless rhythm to it. Work that keeps the heart pounding and the sweat pouring. Work that makes the muscles burn now and again. Work that lets the mind wander in peace.

Later in the morning, I sit in my office, and I feel good. The warm satisfaction from a little shovel work is still wrapped around me, and the sunlight is occasionally exploding across the snow-covered landscape outside. I watch as some folks struggle with their snowblower, finally getting it started, turning their head away from the exhaust blowing in their face, putting in earplugs to mute the scream of the motor.

I shift my gaze back to my front porch. There – leaning up against a rail – is my trusty snow shovel. I’m pretty sure the machine doesn’t save the neighbor any time, and I’m absolutely positive it deprives him of the joy to be found on the end of a shovel.

I don’t think I need to go shopping for anything today.

I hope is snows again tonight.

Since she was born in the middle of December, we always worried that our daughter’s birthday would be overwhelmed by the Christmas holiday. Consequently, we never decorated the house, or let the “Christmas Season” begin, until after her birthday was complete.

That tradition remained, and even today as an adult, she’ll have no part of anyone in the family starting “Christmas” until after her birthday.

Which is great with me. Traditionally – back in the olden days before we were an economy and a society addicted to consumerism – Christmas actually didn’t “start” until Christmas Eve. Back then, folks would come together as a family on that eve, and decorate the home, and share good cheer, in anticipation of the beginning of the season of Christmas. Starting on Christmas Day, the season lasts 12 days – hence the song, “The Twelve Days Of Christmas”.

Acting like it’s Christmas too early in the year gives us all too much time to squabble over whether or not this group or that group celebrates the holiday correctly, or whether it’s OK to use this decoration or that decoration in front of this building or that building. It gives us too much time to wallow in the “stuff” that we want, and the “stuff” that people around us want. It’s a sad but true commentary on the degree to which we all submit to the consumerism that’s become our master in these modern days.

Build a new way to celebrate Christmas this year and in coming years. Come together as a family on the eve of Christmas. Decorate the house for the holiday if you haven’t already, and share in good cheer and joy. Seek and find the religious significance in the holiday that’s important to you. Let the joy and significance linger for the entire holiday season – all 12 days of it.

The winter solstice brings the shortest day of the year – the day when the sun stops its retreat toward darkness, and begins to move back toward light. The Latin root of the word “solstice” translates to something like “the standing still of the sun”. The sun stands still for a moment, then turns away from darkness and begins the journey toward longer days and greater light.

This year, the winter solstice brought a bonus of a beautiful red lunar eclipse to my part of the world. The moon turned dark red as the earth shaded it from the bright sun. Then, emerging on the other side of the shadow, it sparkled again in the bright winter night sky.

Each year, the solstice is the opening act for the Christmas Holiday, (though I suppose my daughter would argue that her birthday is the opening act for the solstice…) As we bask in the joy of lengthening days and growing light in the world around us, it’s the perfect time to stand still in our heart and soul for a moment, and seek the Light that waits for us. This year, a moon emerging from a shadow is an extra bonus.

Stand still for just a moment, and feel the warmth of Light shining into your heart. Open yourself and let the Light from within your Soul shine into the world around you, and into the lives of those you love. Emerge from any shadow that life or the season might have brought into your life, and find again the bright Light shining into your heart and reflecting on your face.

The “true meaning of Christmas” – find it for yourself.

The closer you look, the less you see. If you want to understand the Pacific Ocean, you’d hardly look at a tiny drop of water flowing into it from a river – you’d need to back up and see the thing in context, see the whole picture.

How much damage is done in business, politics, and relationships by folks who charge into something with a “solution” or a “change” that causes greater damage because the situation or the problem wasn’t understood well or fully? How many times have we each been embarrassed by actions we took or words we spoke that clearly didn’t have the wisdom of good understanding behind them?

To understand something, you have to be able to see the context.

Great sages have talked about this throughout history as it relates to our ability to walk the path of a Faith Journey. In different ways, with different words, in all languages, they’ve described that moving further toward G-d in this life requires that we release our human requirement to understand everything about G-d.

One of the greatest favors bestowed on the soul transiently in this life is to enable it to see so distinctly and feel so profoundly that it cannot comprehend God at all. …They who know God most perfectly perceive that God is infinitely incomprehensible.
Those who have less clear vision do not perceive so clearly how greatly God transcends their vision.

St John of the Cross

This is tough for us in our western world, where we’ve constructed a universe in our mind that we know and fundamentally understand. Our addiction to knowing and understanding are the very things that keep us from moving toward G-d.

Walk outside on a dark night. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Try see something clearly in the dark by looking directly at it. You’ll find that if you look a little to the side, instead of directly at the thing, you’ll be able to see it much more clearly. You won’t see color and detail, but you’ll see shape and movement. While there are physiological reasons for this, it demonstrates the point well.

There are things for which we have no context for understanding. If we take our natural human approach – if we look directly at them – we won’t be able to see them. But if we accept that we can’t try and see the thing in the same way we’re accustomed to seeing things, the shape might start to appear.

Try it next time you find yourself out on a dark night. Each time I use this trick, it reminds me of the humility I need to nurture in order to have a chance to glimpse a shape now and then that might be the edge of G-d.

We’ve had an amazingly mild autumn in Colorado. We’re within days of the winter solstice, and it’s 60 degrees today, as it was yesterday. We’ve had a little snow, and a couple of cold spells, but overall it’s been incredible.

I was chatting with a friend the other day, and we were fretting over the fear that this mild weather now might mean some really nasty stuff later on. As-if there is some sort of cosmic balance of “rotten days”, and we might now have gotten on the wrong side of that balance.

It’s an interesting tendency, isn’t it? We look at many things in life within the context of this “ledger sheet” view of the universe. As-if someplace up in the cosmos, there’s an accounting clerk hunched over a ledger book with his green eyeshade on, making sure that we’re each enduring our fair share of misery. If we’re blessed with some good fortune, or unseasonably great weather, or a string of particularly good luck, we automatically look for “the catch” – the other shoe that must be going to drop.

It comes back to our desire to look at everything in life as a “payment” or a “barter”. There’s no free lunch, right? If it seems too good to be true, it probably is, right? There’s always a price to pay, right?

When we’re dealing with each other – with other human beings – it’s probably a good idea to maintain a wary approach. Since this is how we see the world, this is how we deal with one another. It’s safe.

But when it comes to Creation, the cosmos, the universe or the multiverse, or just plain Mother Nature, there’s a healthier way to let ourselves be part of the world. That image of the accounting clerk and the green eyeshade not only limits our capacity to receive the gifts of Creation, but also limits our capacity to be the source of gifts.

Every single day is filled with gifts. Sometimes the dice fall in our favor for several days in a row, and the gift is even sweeter than we expected. Sometimes our perception of “luck” or “fortune” limits our ability to see the gifts that fill the path around us, and we’re challenged to build the wisdom required to share and experience gifts in a new way.

Our fear of “the other shoe” or the “price to be paid” can consumes so much of our energy that we’re prevented from savoring the beauty of what’s been laid right in front of us.

For Christians, we’re approaching the final Sunday of the season of Advent. It’s a season of preparation – of opening ourselves to Spirit and anticipation. It’s not a time to worry about ledger sheets. It’s not a time to worry about whether or not we’ve received our fair share of misery. It’s a time of simple and hopeful beginning. A time to rejoice in the gifts that are laid all along the path that we’re on. A time to celebrate all humanity, all Creation, and all wonder.

Ad-vent: The arrival. The beginning. Especially of something momentous.

Every single day is momentous – every day is the advent of yet another gift.

Seek it, feel it, and enjoy it.

It’s a wonderful day outside today. Tomorrow might be another beautiful day, or it might not, but I think I’ll deal with that tomorrow. Today is waiting for me – I think I’ll not make it wait any longer…

In the pale inky darkness my eyes catch a tiny bit of movement in the field about 100 yards in front of me. There’s a sliver of faint pre-dawn light along the eastern horizon, which provides a hint of light on the meadow.

Peering through my binoculars, I can see the form more clearly – a single deer moving across the open field in the darkness. It moves like a doe, but the fact that it’s moving alone leads me to believe it’s a young buck – either looking for trouble or trying to stay out of it.

The rut seems to be peaking this week, and the growing energy in the woods has me amped with the hope of strong activity today. Tomorrow is the full moon, so this little sliver of morning is the only real darkness the deer have seen tonight. Typically, a full moon tends to bring the rut to a fever pitch, and the electricity in the air is nearly palpable this morning.

As the light builds, I hear a doe off behind my left shoulder snorting. She could be warning her group of a danger, or trying to get them back together into a group before daybreak. I hear the footsteps of deer in the woods back over my right shoulder, but am unable to see anything when I crane my neck and watch over that shoulder. I suspect that there’s a doe that’s split off from her group, interested in gaining the attention of a nearby buck. That would explain the snort a few minutes ago as well – the dominant doe trying to bring her group back together.

I rattle a bit with the antlers I’ve got up in my stand with me, seeing if I can attract the attention of any bucks in the area. By the time the sun is rising, I’ve rattled 3 or 4 times, and have watched 3 different bucks flitting nervously around the area. My rattling is almost meaningless, as the group of does close by has all the attention of the bucks in the area.

I hear the prancing footsteps of deer over my right shoulder again, and this time I can see a lone doe, with a decent buck chasing her. She ducks down into the creek, about 75 yards to my right, and I see the buck head down that way.

It’s interesting watching a buck chasing a doe in heat. He spends a good deal of time with his nose down on the ground, following her scent. Even when she’s in sight right in front of him, he’ll drop his nose to the ground as he moves – snorting that pheromone drug off the ground as he moves toward the object of his lust. This is what gets so many of ‘em killed on the highways this time of year – they’re completely oblivious to the world around them – focused completely on that object of lust leaving a trail for him to follow.

This morning, his object of lust is in the mood, and anxious to be caught. Occasionally, he slows down too much for her – spending too much time sniffing in the leaves after her – so she stops and waits for him to catch up a bit. I see her at the edge of the creek bank, having climbed the other side now, and waiting to make sure her buck sees where she heads. He apparently does, so she gallops off to the hedgerow where I’m sitting, stopping 20 yards from me to look back over her shoulder again.

I suspect she catches some scent from me, because she doesn’t wait long before jumping the fence beneath me, and scampering up the lane a bit. She stops there 30 yards from my brother-in-law, who’s tucked back into a cedar tree, and looks him square in the eye for a few seconds before heading up the hill.

Meanwhile, her suitor has stopped beneath my stand, and has his head up looking for that which he is pursuing. He casts his nose just a bit to catch the scent of her direction, and bounds over the fence and after her. He, too, will stop and look at my brother-in-law from 30 yards away, before heading up into the woods in pursuit of the object of his passion.

This dance won’t go on long. She’ll let him catch her, and nature will run its course. Afterward, she’ll go find her group and settle back into the routine of survival. If nature didn’t take its course, and she’s not pregnant, then she’ll likely go through another estrus cycle in a month or so. More than likely, nature will take its course, and she’ll drop a fawn or two into spring litter on the forest floor.

And next year, this little enclave of deer in this little corner of the universe will have evolved through one more generation.

I’ll look forward to sitting in this stand again next year, watching the frenzy of the rut as it develops. I’ll carry with me the lessons I’ve learned on this hunt, and look forward to lessons waiting for me still.

It’s counterintuitive, but focusing inward to quiet yourself opens your mind and senses more fully to the world around you.

I’m reminded of this each time I sit a treestand while hunting. I’ve isolated myself from human connection by retreating into a secluded spot in the woods. I’ve taken pains to enter the “space” of my treestand in a very slow and quiet manner, blending with the space around me as best I can. I’ve taken up a still and quiet posture in the treestand. I’ve focused a good deal of energy inward, on making myself as unobtrusive as possible. I want to become part of the space around me – to blend – rather than standing out as anything individual.

My body quiets and cools. I always need to dress warm for this, as my heartbeat drops to 50 or 55 as I focus inward on stillness. Vision and human language are the inputs our brain depends on the most these days in our evolutionary journey, and in the treestand, I’ve eliminated both of them. Even when the light is good, my vision is generally limited to a couple of shooting lanes close to my stand.

In this state, I tune much more keenly to the sounds in the space around me. As the pre-dawn darkness gives way to faint light in the east, the sound of tires on the highway several miles away becomes more common. I hear the squirrels roust from their nests, and hear their claws on the bark as they move through the trees around me. When they’re on the ground, I can tell exactly how many are down and where they are as they disturb the leaves they dig through.

I hear the beat of my heart in my chest, and the whoosh in my ears soon after each beat. Thu-whoosh, thu-whoosh. A slow and steady beat.

I hear a small flock of songbirds as they fly overhead, the sound of the air under their wingbeats giving me a good guess as to what birds they might be by how they’re beating their wings. A large flock of 30 or 40 birds sounds as loud as thunder as they thump past 50 feet above me – I hear the sound of their wings for 100 yards before they reach me, and 100 yards after they pass.

Mid-day on a nice day I hear a tiny scraping in the leaves not far away. I watch intently but see no movement. A mouse maybe? Training my binoculars on the spot, I eventually make out a small garter snake pulling himself out of the leaf litter into the warm sun.

The footsteps of deer around me tell me a good deal about what they’re doing even when I can’t see them. Are they nervously poking about, or calmly grazing? Are they talking to each other softly, or snorting a warning?

The movement of air becomes something my ears perceive in a way my eyes can’t. I map the movement of tiny gusts of air through the bare branches of the woods around me by the path of its sound, and am able to predict when I’ll feel it in my tree based on how my brain perceives the arms and reach of the pockets moving about.

I hear individual dry leaves bounce off branches as they flutter to the ground.

I smell the shift in the wind. The smell is damp and musty when the air moves across the creek and the forest floor before it gets to me, while it changes dramatically to grassy and dusty when it comes to me from the open field on the other side of me.

There’s a Chickadee who comes around in the evening, about the same time each day. I can hear Chickadees throughout the woods around me, flitting and buzzing, but this one seems to follow the same pattern on the same branches around the same time each afternoon. He’s very curious about me, often stopping on branches only a couple feet away from me and watching me before moving to another branch.

After a few days, I come to be able to recognize what kind of bird is fluttering through the woods by the sound of the air beneath it’s wings – the wingbeats of birds are sometimes quite distinctive.

Of course, when deer that might be prey come close, my senses zero in completely on the prey. But 99%+ of the time, I’m focused on remaining quiet and unobtrusive. Doing so opens me completely to the input of the world I’ve immersed myself into.

As my mind absorbs the space where I sit, my heart and soul become part of the Place where I sit.

In our culture, we tend to have a very delineated view of the world. Things are either black or white, they’re either on or off, they’re either left or right. Everything has a “side” to it, or sometimes multiple sides, and I’ve always got to choose which side I’m on. Somebody’s going to win, and somebody’s going to lose.

The older I get, the less I think the universe is set up that way. Oh, I accept that we try and construct the world we live in that way, but I don’t think this is the “order of things” as they’re laid out in the universe. I don’t think this is how G-d sees it.

I write about this in my book – Peace at the Edge of Uncertainty – and I recently had a discussion with someone that got me to thinking about it a little differently.

M.C. Escher was inspired by a mathematical concept called the Möbius Strip. Think of it as a flat noodle that you make a loop out of and join the two ends together, but before you join the ends, you give the noodle half a twist. Now, there’s no inside or outside of the noodle, right? If you traced a path along the noodle you’d cover the entire surface – inside and outside – and end up right back at the same place.

Kind of like the concept of giving. In our delineated view of the world, there’s a giver and a receiver, right? One person is on one side of the strip, and the other person is on the other side. But when your heart opens during the act of giving, you’re much more accessible to receiving as well. On the other side of the interaction, the receiver gives gratitude back to the giver, creating a continuum in the giving cycle. Done well, there is no giver and no receiver, but only the blessing of giving.

Like forgiveness. In nearly every religion, the instruction to forgive each other exists, but we often come to think of it in our delineated fashion – thinking that if we want to be forgiven, then we first must forgive others. The classic if/then statement. But I don’t think it works that way.

Expressing forgiveness is something that’s contagious, and infects everyone around us. Forgiving enhances a state of forgiveness, and there’s no inside surface or outside surface. It just happens. We can’t make it happen, or keep ourselves on the outside surface of it, we can only contribute to the state that exists, or turn our heads and try and pretend it isn’t there by refusing to express forgiveness.

G-d doesn’t forgive us because we forgive others – we just choose to join the state that G-d creates – it’s all one surface. G-d doesn’t let us fall into blessings because we give to others – giving to others opens us to the state of giving, and lets us participate in the never-ending cycle of giving and receiving.

The Möbius Strip. Jump on.