mysticism

The true shape of your face..

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TILICHO LAKE by David Whyte

In this high place
it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.

Step toward the cold surface,
say the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.

Those who come with empty hands
will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow

the true shape of your own face

tilicho lake

Tilicho Lake is located in the mountains of Nepal. Over three miles above sea level, it is one of the highest lakes on Earth; thus, one of the most difficult to access. The poet David Whyte uses it here as a metaphor for that place of transformation of which we all are aware, but may not be consciously able to either express or explain the necessity of our finding it.

That shared longing is for the place where we are able to begin to move from the adolescence of our lives to becoming an adult. Without that transformative place of passage, it is possible to be an adolescent trapped in an adult’s body, endlessly seeking to find a role to play, a way to sate the the hormonal beast within, and unable to discover the exact questions which will further the journey that the body and mind are capable of travelling.

We all need to find Tillicho Lake for ourselves. It need not be high in the Himalayas, or in what others may call a sacred place. It does not have to be a far away, difficult to physically access place, and it almost certainly will not be a place one can buy a ticket for with the promise that the maturation of the soul will occur.

It will almost always be “happened upon” as it was with David Whyte. He travelled there, wanting to see a place of great beauty about which he had heard and read. But, upon seeing it, he became a part of the lake. He opened his arms to everything new that he was experiencing, and in turn was astonished as the lake opened its arms to him as well. It became his new face, part of the permanent shape of his soul.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in his Journal in 1857 of a dream in which he revisited a mountain he’d climbed years before: “What distinguishes that summit above the earthy line, is that it is unhandled, awful, grand. It can never become familiar; you are lost the moment you set foot there. You know no path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud.” He is remembering the mountain, probably Mount Katahdin, described  in his book The Maine Woods, as a metaphysical place- a place where his mental and spiritual selves meet in transforming ways.

For Jesus, that sacred place happened during forty days among the rocks and crevices of the Jericho hills hard against the Jordan River. He left behind who he had been, and who he could have been, then opened his arms in astonishment  to his experience of the purest of Light.

It is there. If a person can remember that place, that time, even in a dream, then they have almost certainly experienced it a number of times since. It became a part of them, a mark on their being that has almost certainly been emotionally and spiritually enabling in the movement into their adult selves.

If neither the memory nor the dream seem to be there, I believe they will be, and soon, if one acknowledges the need for them.  Expectation and willingness are the insurance that the place will be discovered. There will be no need of its affirmation from an outside source. Tilicho Lake, Mount Katahdin, the banks of the Jordan: those places have been attracted toward the seeker even as the seeker has been attracted toward them.

It might also be the southeast corner of the neighborhood park, or the sight of a ginkgo tree in autumn as it becomes fluttering gold. Or the remembered blue wall of a childhood home where you first lost yourself in fixation and wonder.

Empty your hands, raise your arms in a rough prayer, and behold..

 

 

Spiritual Mentors: Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

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aa Molana (1)

Rumi was born in what is now Afghanistan in 1207, but most of his life was in Persia and Turkey, where he wrote..voluminously. He was a jurist, a theologian, and a Sufi mystic who influenced writing in the Middle East for centuries and has become popular (and accessible) in the West through translating and paraphrasing in modern vernacular languages.

Sufism is a subset of Islam. (I’d call it a cult of Islam, but that word has become so loaded with negative meaning by many commentators that I resist its use.) Sufism is, let’s say, a mystical subset of Islamic beliefs, as Zen Buddhism is to Buddhism, as Kabala is to Judaism, or as Yogaism is to Hinduism. Mystical Christianity also flourishes, and- I believe- has been a primary vehicle for moving The Way of the Christ through the centuries, in its most well-preserved forms.

All of the world’s mystical traditions look toward the revelation of God around them (which is precisely what Jesus stated again and again is what he wanted to do: reveal God the Father).

Looking deeply for God requires discipline; the practitioners of the mystical disciplines are drawn to them by the unquenching and relentless and often uncomfortable desire to know more about God.

And what they learn, or experience, is often difficult to communicate to others. The “previously known” boundaries of what they knew about God begin to blur, even dissolve! There is a unity of all things that defies much of the language we have available to us as humans. Some will attempt to describe the Light they have perceived in poetry, or in painting, or even in dance.    

aa dance aa sufi 5

The Sufis like to dance. I don’t know if Rumi himself was a Dervish dancer, but he would have experienced them often because even the watching of the dancing is participation in it.

Spinning in ectasy. Notice the hands: One hand is up and open for receiving from God, the other hand is holding and giving, sharing God’s blessings received, to others. The headpieces represent tombstones of their individual egos.

But we do know Rumi wrote poetry- reams of it. And that poetry, now accessible to Westerners (primarily in America through the paraphraser Coleman Barks), has made Rumi a favorite of all who seek a more intense experience of the Light. It is the Light which I understand as Christ, which is how the gospel of John describes Christ in its first chapter).

Examples and excerpts:

~from “Say Yes Quickly”

Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.

You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray.

You’ve carved so many little figurines, too many.

Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar.

Reach your long hands out to another door, beyond where

you go on the street, the street

where everyone says, “How are you?”

and no one says How aren’t you?

~from “Unseen Rain”

Don’t let your throat tighten

with fear. Take sips of breath

all day and night. Before death

closes your mouth.

There’s no love in me without your being,

no breath without that. I once thought

I could give up this longing, then though again,

But I couldn’t continue being human.

~A Community of the Spirit (one of my favorites, in its entirety)

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street and being the noise.

Drink all your passion, and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes to see with the other eye.

Open your hands, if you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders. Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food. Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.” Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.

Flow down and down

in always widening rings of being.

All of these are from the collection-‘Selected Poems” (Penguin Classics), translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. Many, many Rumi collections are in in print and available wherever books are sold. Well, maybe not..everywhere. But most places!)

Many of Rumi’s poems are not so easily understood at first. In that regard they are like Zen koans; they open the door to contemplation and thought on “heavenly” things or, at minimum, thoughts outside of one’s own jabbering ego-mind. So, call them poems of Sabbath, of rest and reflection.

And Light.