The dream…dreaming us
April 26, 2009 by Bill
I close my eyes, put my memory in rewind, and am once again experiencing a moment that transcends language. I was sitting in front of a glorious wood burning fire in a cabin by Redfish Lake in the magnificent Sawtooth mountains of Idaho. It was early morning, my favorite time of the day. I was reading “The Labyrinth of Solitude” by the Nobel Laureate in Literature, Octavio Paz. When I finished this exquisite closing paragraph, my eyes were moist.
“Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide awake. But this wide awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason. When we emerge, perhaps we will realize that we have been dreaming with our eyes open, and that the dreams of reason are intolerable. And then, perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed.”
Behind my closed eyes a dream did begin to take shape. My dream saw the religions of “the book,” the bible, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, evolving toward a higher consciousness. It is these religions of the book that have historically produced the vast majority of the violence in our world, from Moses to the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem and Kosovo, the West Bank and the Gaza strip, along with Northern Ireland. In modern Europe, Serbian leaders have killed people en mass to safeguard what they call “holy places.” In “Mein Kampf” Hitler wrote that “I am completely convinced that I am acting as the agent of God by killing Jews. I am doing the work of the Lord Jesus. I am now a Catholic and will always remain so.” Hitler was never excommunicated and Mein Kampf was never banned by the church.
It is religion that has produced the vast majority of violence in the world, historically. Those countries without religion, even in our own time, are the least violent. Read more
Love song to the Earth
April 19, 2009 by Bill
Earth Day is fast approaching, under a full moon, for April 22. For some strange cosmic reason it is always “nature” that fills me with the most poetic love. I remember that “Men and books lie. Only nature never lies.” (Thomas Paine) This is my Earth Day love song.
- Dawn breaking…the first light of a new day. Outside of my study window is the cosmic dance, the winged ones of the air…my mourning doves floating in for the gourmet breakfast that I prepared for them before dawn…my finches darting in from all directions for their little sacks of feed hanging in the trees.
- My “paisano” will show up. My “fellow countryman” as the Mexicans call the road-runner. This bird has a four toed foot with two pointing forward and two backward…equally divided between the past and the future…reminding me of time past and time future…always pointing toward the eternal now.
- The beauty of the Yucca, as always, appears eloquent to me…even distinguished in beauty and form. The creamy white blossoms shooting up on their great spike are dazzling to me. No wonder the Spaniards called them “The Candle of the Lord”. There is a sermon here for me on nature and symbiosis. There is only one little moth, Pronuba yuccasella, that can fertilize these flowers which could not be fertilized in any other way. The moth and the Yucca exist only for earth other… I ask: “Where did mother nature arrange this relationship millions of years ago?” It reminds me, daily, of that Mystery…that “something unknown doing we know not what.”.
The month is April. I have my calendar of the soul that is far more accurate than the printed one on my desk. It is now that nature says the new year is here, with bursting buds and warm earth and fresh new leaves dancing and quaking on winter branches. I am not alone in calling this the birth of a new year. My brothers and sisters of the Sioux and Cheyenne knew this naturally living so close to the rhythms of the natural world. They called this time “the moon when the geese return and the red calves are born.”
In Zen Buddhism they say that “the highest modes of experience transcend the reach of any language”. And so it is. How can I, through words, describe what I feel in the desert rains, which this year have broken all records. The fragrant odors…the rich aroma of an earth moist and alive. Rolling sounds of thunder waking the earth from its restful slumber, as they say in the Taos Pueblo…followed by dazzling rainbows receiving a standing ovation from the little red flames on the tips of the Ocotilos and great white blossoms shooting up on the spikes of the Yucca.
A free thinker mystic
April 12, 2009 by Bill
People are always asking me “what are you…what do you believe?” Well, what I am is a free thinking mystic. With no creeds…no dogmas…no doctrines…no violence…no absolutes and no dualism.
MYSTICISM IS:
- Sir Arthur Eddington, Nobel in Physics, writing: “Something unknown is doing we know not what.”
- Louis Dr. Broglie, Nobel in Physics, writing: “Man has need of a mystical supplement of the soul. The spiritual guides of humanity must awaken this supplement of the soul”
- Carl Jung, writing: “The creative mystic has always been a thorn in the side of the dogmatic church. It is to the mystic that we owe all that is best in humanity.”
- William James writing: “The true mystic has insight into depths of truth that are unplumbed by the discursive intellect.”
- Albert Einstein, writing: “I believe in mystery…only in relation to mysticism do I consider myself a religious man.”
- Sir Julian Huxley, writing: “Science must come to terms with other systems of knowledge…the aesthetic and the intuitive…the subconscious…imaginative and visionary…or in other words the way of mysticism.”
IN MYSTICISM:
There is NO VIOLENCE:
The vast majority of all the religious violence of the last 2000 years has come from the “believers” of Judaism…Christianity and Islam…the people of the “book”…the bible. Carl Sagan called the burning of the library in Alexandria by Christians in 391 one of the most obscene atrocities in the history of our species. In Mysticism there would have been NO Crusades…no Inquisition…no slaughtering of nine million witches…no killings in Northern Ireland…no West Bank or Gaza strip killing field…no holy wars or Jihads…no bombing of abortion clinics…no inflammatory preaching against gays and lesbians…such violence is obscene to anyone living within the world view of mysticism.
There is NO DUALISM:
A virus in the mind of organized religions is the separation of man from nature…and nature from man…and spirit from matter… Organized religions want to separate something called “God” from the earth down here. They use the word symbol “God” as something “out there” apart from “down here”. It is always God and us…God and the earth…God and the creation…God and the creatures…God and something else…As Zen Master Suzuki put it…”man against God…God against man…man against nature…nature against man…God against nature…nature against God…very…very funny religion.
