A Return to a Source

          It is difficult to know how to begin. I lack the practice I had when I posted regularly and with some frequency. The more contemplative aspects of my life have taken me to places that must remain relatively private. Why is this? Because there are occasions when new inner experiences requires time to mature, and gain no benefit from having intellectual boots walked over them. When a seed bed is sown, it needs time for the germinating seeds to grow.
          Having said that, there has been an ongoing activity that is bearing fruit, and one which I would like to talk about. It all began with a book of daily meditations for Lent and based on the Bible, but one which turned things around so that the meditation came first (based on a sentence), and that was followed by the biblical passage that formed the basis of the meditation. The purpose of the exercise was to look at the chosen passage and interpret it in a non-literal, non-fundamentalist manner. I found the process more and more interesting, even when the meditation period revealed nothing noteworthy. When the book was finished with, at Easter of course, I went on to study further passages with the hope, even expectation, that something of interest would arise. My guide has been the Catholic Daily Missal, chosen for no other reason than it gave me a structure for my meditational studies. In one sense it has been a return, in a roundabout way, to a source but with my inner eyes open. What has emerged has been surprisingly interesting to me.
          Now the question has arisen as to how to introduce my thoughts about this work. Should I even be talking about it? Will it cause offence to those who hold different views from mine? I would most certainly hope not, yet would at the same time wish to be completely frank. Would anything I have to say be of any interest? I simply do not know the answer to that question. And what of that fragile acquisition called reputation? Do I have one that is worth owning? Will my revealed thoughts in the future damage that reputation, assuming I have one? Well that may turn out to be the case, so I must ask myself whether or not I really care, and that is a difficult one to answer.
          I am old enough, and ego-free enough not to care too much about reputation for its own sake. However, does one write anything which one would like to see discarded as the ramblings of someone whose brain has gone soft? I think not. It seems to me that once again I must take a risk and hope for some joining of minds that share my interest in exploring the depths of the spirit, unfettered - as far as that is possible - by preconceptions rigidly held onto.
          If I have achieved nothing else with this post, I have at least overcome my initial difficulty of knowing how to begin. Now I can tentatively move on and see what can be discovered from inner conversations. Yet it would seem that the real point of all this is to hold the conversation. If something is revealed as a result, that will be a bonus.

Of Painting Progress

          As regular readers here will know, I have reduced the frequency of posting of late. Combined with my narrowing of the focus of my studies, this has left me more time to concentrate on trying (desperately!) to improve my ability - if any there be - to paint waterclour pictures. My first task of late, after consulting with Lucy, was to determine whether or not I had even a minimum of ability worth developing. If I have, I am determined to become at least reasonably proficient. This matters to me.
          The first task, on Lucy's advice, was to reduce the number of pigments in my palette. I have tried to do this before, but this time I really did try......hard! For source material, I turned to the work of an artist I greatly admire, Mr. Ray Campbell Smith. I selected two pictures from his, "Watercolour Work-Out" to see if I could make reasonable copies of them. The first picture I managed quite well, and the second picture also even though I began to change the colours he'd used. (Why I chose to change some colours is perhaps more detail than is necessary here.) Below are my efforts. Incidentally, that is a punched hole at the top, not the sun or moon.

The Quayside

Fishermen's Cottages

          My second task was to see if I could make a reasonable fist of painting from a photograph. For this purpose I chose an offered photograph from David Bellamy's, "Watercolour Landscape Course," another artist I greatly admire. The advantage of choosing this photograph was that he also produces a painting (which I took care not to study) for comparison purpose. I show my effort below.

Galway Thatch

          My paintings were about 26 x 18 cm., and proving to be rather restrictive. There began to emerge a tendency to use small brushes, and include too much detail as a result. Throwing caution to the winds (well not really) I chose to paint a picture from a photograph I took in New Zealand some years ago, the picture size being 36 x 51 cm., about four times the area of my initial test paintings. Sweeping, translucent washes were the order of the day; and I had fun. Below are the photograph, and my treatment of it.

Afternoon Light

          Frankly, I am staggered at the change that has taken place in my approach to painting, triggered by what I feel is a modicum of success. Instead of discarding an effort before it is finished, I now find myself eager to get onto the next one. From a short chat with Lucy to a final execution of my first "big" painting has been very short in time, but long in confidence building. Now excuse me; I have another piece to be getting on with.

There Is No Escape

          This is not the post I intended to write. Indeed it was not my intention to write a post at all today. Yet here I am attempting to share that which refuses to be put into words. But I should first set this post in context.
          I seek truth, through inner experience, but not as a religious. It just so happens that there is a large body of writing that recalls the words of many who have sought, and continue to seek, truth - the most authoritative of which (or so it is claimed) can be found in holy writ. For me, that is a great resource but one which demands a critical approach. Any other approach, a fervent belief in the words, is nothing more than idolatry. As I have said elsewhere, truth does not reside in words but comes from experience about which all words are inadequate. Prayer and meditation, designed to improve my conscious contact with God, is my way forward. I should say at this point that my use of the word "God" is one of convenience since my belief in that which carries that name is more about what God Is Not, rather than what Is. So let's not get hung up over mere words.
          I suppose it is generally known that the current period in the Christian calender is the period of Lent (the 2nd. Sunday thereof), and I am finding this a fascinating period. Why? Because I feel a desire to assess where I am, what I deeply feel and think, why I feel and think in this way, rather than assess where I have been in the past. Of course I cannot put any of that, adequately, into words. In any case, it is all too personal. What I will do, however, is quote what I wrote in my personal diary for this morning, and that is personal enough:-

"..........And I too, allowed myself to be taken up the mountain where I saw symbolic representations of the Law and of Action. I can escape neither! "Stop the world I want to get off" is like whistling in the wind. The universe is subject to a set of scientific-psychospiritual laws - the Law. There are ways of Being and Acting that are in tune with the Law, and ways that attempt to counter - unsuccessfully - the Law. For even in attempting to break the Law, action triggers reaction, and that of itself is in accordance with the Law, one formulated in physics by Sir Isaac Newton.
          There is no escape, and no way of not acting. What a fearful, terrible responsibility that imposes, particularly as all too often I allow my ego to determine what action is appropriate. Yet when I climbed the mountain of transfiguration, I realised that I was taken up. It was not that state I call my ego that took me up. The power that raises and transfigures is the power that is the Christ, or at least what some religious have named as the Christ. Yet even then, the experience of my apparent understanding was overshadowed by the great "cloud of unknowing." And "it was good to be there!" (Luke 9:32-34) If I do not speak of the actual experience, it is because I cannot do so. Talking about the essential experience, the truth, is beyond me. Only the setting, the background, is within the realm of words.........."

          When I am back at ground level, on terra firma, once again, I wonder how I dare speak of this morning. And I shudder at the possible lack of wisdom that has seemed to impel me to write in this way. There may be reasons that I cannot yet see, may never see. But right now, it is all that I have to give.

Selfhood Is An Holistic Experience

          There was a time when it was thought that the orbit of the planet Mars around the Sun described a circle containing a series of epicycles. We now know that this is not the case, and that what was being described was how Mars appeared to behave. The true orbit, when viewed from a more external viewpoint than that of Earth, was far simpler. I would suggest that something similar may be happening when we view the question of Ego and its assumed existence, or non-existence. Interestingly, I find, the same can be said of the existence or otherwise of God. The devil is in the definition - or lack thereof! In this post I shall proceed with masterly disregard for the possible impossibility of defining the ego, and state what I think of as that entity, if entity it is. After all, one needs to start somewhere, and I choose not to wade through the history of the ego concept, and how the word has changed (been corrupted?) to mean different things at different times. I would also like to emphasise that much of what we say "is so" only appears to be thus. "It is as if" might be a better approach to matters psycho-spiritual (and to science in general) than "it is" thus and thus.
          I shall make analogous reference to water, or more exactly ice-water-steam, as a model for the existence of the "self", bearing in mind that all analogies appear to break down at some point. Finally, I shall base my thoughts on the only thing I can trust, and that is my own spiritual experience. Truth comes, not from words, but from experience. Unfortunately, the written word has the annoying habit of getting in the way sometimes. But if I am to communicate anything rather than exist, shut off from the rest of humankind, I must concur with the Bee Gees (and others) that "words are all I have."
          Let me now return to the ice-water-steam model to which I referred above. Molecules consisting of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, when viewed en masse, exist in three possible states; as ice, water, or as steam. (For simplicity I leave out the possible plasma state.) The difference between these states is one of heat content, not temperature. Thus ice and water can coexist at the same temperature, but different heat contents (effected by the latent heat of fusion), as can water and steam (effected by the latent heat of vapourisation.) But enough of physics theory.
          What I am suggesting here is that it may be possible to view the psycho-spiritual world as something that can undergo changes of state, with equivalent changes in energy levels.  Thus the ego or lower self (an idea suggested by Thomas Merton) would correspond to the solid ice, the higher self to the liquid water, and........well let us leave it there for the moment. Thus I would propose that the ego exists, but only as a change in state of the psycho-spiritual system. It does not exist as an autonomous little person, hiding somewhere in the brain/mind complex. Similarly, I doubt the existence of an "I" or "Self" as being independent of everything else, but as a raised (energy-wise) state of an overall Self.
          When I underwent that wonderful experience in Iceland, which I tried to describe in my previous post, I was struck by a number of observations, both then and since. First of all, the self when in its lowest state (the ice or egoistic phase), appears to be entirely oblivious of the existence of any higher state until its very existence is threatened by dysfunctionality (melting) and the need to change and adapt. Until that point is reached, the ego defines itself by attachment to thoughts and opinions; feelings/emotions and obsessions/addictions; physical senses and all the aspects of physical existence. Any contact with anything "higher" requires faith and ritual, hence religion for example. However, politics and other causes may be alternative substitutes. It is in this state that the dualities of life are experienced, such as you-me, right-wrong, good-bad and so on, with all the judgementalism those dualities imply.
          Secondly, I clearly perceived in my "Icelandic Experience" that when in the next and higher state (the water or Higher Self phase), the ego is seen only as part - a necessary part - of a whole, a more holistic or holy concept. For me as an intuitive introvert, that part is much smaller than the Higher Self. But I accept that for others this may not reflect their realities. One thing that has struck me quite forcibly is not that the dualities have dissolved into some kind of "One-ness", but that one half of the duality has simply disappeared, or almost so. In effect, when in a higher state of awareness, the machinations of the ego-state appear to be almost unimportant to the point of triviality. This conclusion may well be pointing to an inability to imagine a state above that of the Higher Self. And here we approach the possible use of the ice-water-steam model to infer something energetically higher than the Higher Self, but nevertheless part and parcel of the whole psycho-spiritual Being.
          Christianity might well refer to this state (the steam or Christ phase) as the experiential awareness of the Cosmic Christ, the Inner Christ, or its equivalent. I have referred in earlier posts to my experience of such matters and can, therefore, vouch for such experiences. Now here we are clearly on the borders of conceptual divinity, so much so that I believe it was St. Catherine of Sienna who proclaimed that everything that she was, was God. (Sorry I cannot find the quote.)
          This post does not supply explanations or definitions: it wasn't meant to do so. There is much that I could have said for which there is little time or space. There are many developments I could have pursued, but that might have entailed gilding the lily. What I have tried to do here is to offer a different approach, an alternative model of the Self that is more holistic, in the hope that some questions may more easily be answered, some understanding may be gained. But in the end it is experience that must be paramount, not words.

Iceland: A Very Personal Experience

          I suppose I first became aware of this liminal experience, some years ago whilst walking on a beach in the northern island of New Zealand. Whilst photographs of the region show clear demarcations between beach, sand dunes, ocean and distant hills, my abiding memory is very different. It is one in which there is no clear distinction between the various parts of the scene; there was no clear form. It was as if the world were in a process of manifestation, a world neither one thing nor the other. It was a world in process.
          As we approached the coast of Iceland in our most recent journeyings, I was struck by the liminal surreality of what I was experiencing. Below me was what appeared to be a snowy ice cap, delineated by a sharp, black line - the shore. I felt I was moving into a new, unknown realm. As our stay extended, day by day, I realised that this was not a new, unknown realm, but one which I have been experiencing ever more clearly as the years and months and, most certainly, the recent weeks have passed. I will try to explain.
          At this time of the year, Iceland is a land of low light levels, a country sitting barely south of the Arctic Circle. It sits in a borderland. To the south is all that which sees change occurring twice daily, whilst to the north is that which which changes twice annually. One area sees the midday sun, the other the midnight sun. Somewhere between the two sits Iceland. In the cold depths of the Atlantic Ocean there lies a split between two great tectonic plates. From the heated interior of the Earth boils lava into the cold, wild and heavy ocean. And in the borderlands between the two there is life....Life! On top of the great ridge sits a mountain that seems forever to be splitting apart......Iceland.
          From the cold depths of space flows the solar wind originating from truly titanic outbursts from the sun. At some point in its journey, that solar wind interacts with the Earth's protective shield. Stupendous outpourings of energy. And it is close. Beautiful, yes! And also dangerous. That night, standing under the Northern Lights, at the bottom of a vast tunnel reaching up into the heavens, is one I will never forget. It was (thank you Natalie) a night of amazement. So small, so powerless, was I, yet.......
          I could go on and on offering examples of my awareness of living in these borderlands, of walking on the liminal edge. But there is something more important yet. As humans, we are adept at, or highly predisposed towards, projecting our inner worlds onto the outer, material world. And the distinction between the two worlds is not as clearly defined as one might expect or, I suspect, as clearly defined as one would like. The great 'out there' can only be experienced through our brain/mind complex. In that sense, everything is 'in here.' It almost seems that if there were any kind of guidance operating at all, I was in Iceland to understand a great truth, a truth that required my inner eyes to be wide open.
          There is another land with indistinct borders, the land of the mind. It is our way to chop the mind up into bits so that we can better understand it. Yet, in reality - and because it is all part of a process of becoming (or so I think) - the borders we construct are artificial. Consciousness is different from unconsciousness, but the inbetween place is blurry and indistinct; it is without form as if the unconscious is trying to become manifest. My consciousness exists in the lowering light which shows a little more awarefully the darkness of my unconsciousness. It is said that there lives - and life abounds at all levels - a place where all our repressed and suppressed memories live on, memories and traumas that have great power. Yet hardly too distinct from that is another place of great power, and one in which exists, what I would like to call, impresenced awareness.
          Between the world of consciousness and that of unconsciousness, there runs a path, a narrow and strait path. It runs between the mountain heights and the great Abyss. It is a path which I am obliged to travel whether I choose or not. This is living. It is a path that separates false security from the frightful powers of the depths of reality. For although the Way may be filled with excitement, joy, happiness and the peace of letting go, it is also a place of great fear. Consciousness does not make the choice as to when we are subjected to the one or the other.
          That path or Way travels through the veils of indistinction that hang between the lower or ego-self on the one hand, and the higher or true self on the other. The ego-self seeks knowledge and safety, the higher self seeks "knowing" and the risk of awareness of reality. It is a path, I realise now, I have walked for years without understanding, without feeling, without knowing. This is what I needed to see. I have found what I needed to find, what was there all the time.
          The inner journey continues. Why it must be like this I don't know. Yet this is how it has to be. I sense a surging upwards in my being which is my Being. I no longer work to my own agenda, but to the agenda of that which seems to live its life through me. How truly amazing life is.
          In the darkened dawn of Keflavik, with the snow ploughs out clearing the ground, an aeroplane took off and flew us south. There is always, or so it seems, a need to return; and I was returning to my physical home, as also I must now return to the silence of my inner "home." What I have taken with me from Iceland I have tried to share. In the end the real experience, my experience of reality, is ineffable. Yet we are all in this together, knowingly or not. Of that I am certain.

Iceland: Bits and Pieces

          I wish now to hurry on with this Icelandic saga. So far the journey has been one of largish, discrete chunks of experience from the "Blue Lagoon" to the "Northern Lights," "Horse Riding" and "Water Birds." Although the last big event was the Golden Circle tour (still to be posted by Lucy), the rest of our stay seemed to be more like a series of small, but interesting observations. For example:-
1.       Many of the buildings were covered in corrugated iron, and painted. This often gave the impression of buildings made from Royal Icing, a not unpleasant sight.

2.       The lake which I mentioned in my post, "Iceland: Arrival," was about 150 metres deep, 90% of its water being fed from underground sources, and so clear that scuba divers often suffer from vertigo when swimming in the lake.

3.       On two evenings, we dined at the same very pleasant restaurant, good food and wine, finished off with a glass of Schnapps.

4.       On the way to our eating place, we stopped to watch the children enjoying themselves - and some of them were very good indeed.

5.       Under the floor of a local town, hit by an earthquake in the not too distant past, can be seen (not too clearly) the divide between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. The divide can be seen more clearly out in the countryside.

The Eurasian Edge

The North American Edge (on the far side of the lake)

6.       At no time did the sun rise very high above the horizon, our daylight time being approximately from 11am-ish to about 4.30pm-ish. During those hours, the sun slipped along just above the horizon. And there was still a week to go to the winter solstice.

7.       We kept well clear of the Rock Trolls but saw no elves, although one knew where their cities were because the road was obliged to go round, not through, them.

8.       In the far distance we saw the volcano that famously erupted in 2010, and

9.       The geyser, close up, that erupts every four minutes or so.

10.     Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.......except that we knew that all good things must come to an end.......but not yet!

Hot Springs and Northern Lights

          On the following day, our first full day in Iceland, off we went to visit the Blue Lagoon. We set off in a state of relative darkness, the sun not fully up, at about 10.30 am GMT. Shops do not normally open much before 10 am to 11 am in the winter.) On arrival at the 'spa,' a project under considerable development, Lucy offed and changed to do her 'spa thing' whilst I did a tour of the surrounding area, before relaxing with my Kindle in the cafeteria. I should perhaps explain that, although I did rather fancy sampling the 'waters,' I was still struggling with the tag end of bronchitis, and didn't fancy risking yet another cough.
          As with much of the country we saw, the rock was black and of a very porous nature, reminiscent of large lumps of cinder. Bearing in mind its origin below the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, I suppose its appearance was not surprising. Here and there were great upthrusts of basalt and granite which formed the mountains of Iceland. It seems odd to think of Iceland having mountains as Iceland itself is just the top of a mountain sitting on the mid-Atlantic Ridge. The other thing of note, besides the cold, was the relative absence of noise and the sense of calm and serenity which depicted the mood of the bathers and the waters. It was as if an inner search had ended only to discover that that for which one had searched had been present all the time. Here was my first intimation of my inner world being projected onto the outer, material world. And the awareness of this link was to develop as time passed.

Like Large Lumps of Cinder

Black and Porous

With Upthrusts of Basalt and Granite

          Inevitably the time arrived when, having lunched on sushi, we had to leave and return to our apartment in preparation for the evening's trip out to the middle of nowhere to see the northern lights. On the way I noticed that the coach's outside thermometer was reading -6 deg.C.  When we finally arrived at our destination, there was a cold wind blowing which produced a sizeable wind chill. It was definitely not a mild evening, but one which needed to be guarded against. To begin with, the temperature seemed very manageable. It was only after having removed my gloves for about a minute, to take (as best as I was able with a hand-held camera) three pictures of the lights, that I found my fingers painfully cold. A further two pictures, and that was enough! The quality of the photographs is not of the best, but all things considered......

Whirls

Swirls

Plunges

Spins

And a Fiery Finale

Whilst we were there, our driver took some photographs of his passengers, as shown. He used a technique that required his setting up his camera on a tripod - the camera set to a suitable exposure time - then at some point 'swiping' us with the light from a torch.

"Stuffed Owls That Had Died From Hypothermia!"

          We moved on a little further to another stopping point. For a while there appeared nothing that was particularly different from our previous sightings. Then our driver/guide said, "Look straight up!" Now what I saw was not a staggeringly beautiful sight, but one which nevertheless had a deep effect on me. It was as if quite faint streaky lights were arrowing in to a point immediately above (remembering that the North Star, Polaris is higher in the sky than in countries further south than Iceland, the northern coast of Iceland touching the Arctic Circle). The display gave the impression that I was standing at the bottom of a tube that reached up to infinity. I was also very aware that in this in-between place, fearsome energies were apparent as charged particles from the solar wind were drawn down into our space. There are times when it feels healthily good to be made to feel small. The only thing that prevents the eradication of life on this beautiful planet, and protects our atmosphere, is the electromagnetic shield which surrounds us, and that field is generated by the planet's core. If there had been nothing else that evening that filled me with a sense of awe, that would have been enough.
          So there I stood, atop a mountain which itself sat on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, looking up into the infinity of space and surrounded by immense energies streaming out from the sun. And all the while, the cold sat and waited....... Who could not feel moved by all that?