Overt and Hidden

“There is something that is overt and
hidden,
That exists beyond heaven and earth.
Formless, motionless,
It stands alone, forever, it does not change,
It exists in every place, it never tires.
It can be called ‘Mother of the universe,’
Because I don’t know its name.
If I am compelled to call it by a name,
I will call it Tao, ‘all-embracing.’
‘All-embracing’ exists forever,
‘All-embracing’ is far-reaching,
‘All-embracing’ returns to every beginning.
Therefore Tao is ‘all-embracing,’
Heaven is ‘all-embracing,’
Earth is ‘all-embracing,’
Man is ‘all-embracing,’

In the universe, four things are ‘all-
embracing,’
And man is one of them.
Man adheres to the laws of earth,
Earth adheres to the laws of heaven,
Heaven adheres to the laws of Tao,
Tao adheres to the laws of its nature.”

Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching

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God Re-Visited And Freedom’s Truth

The view from Alan Watts’ brilliant perspective, voiced here:

“In the West we have always admitted in theory that truly moral acts must be expressions of freedom. Yet we have never allowed this freedom, never permitted ourselves to be everything that we are, to see that fundamentally all the gains and losses, rights and wrongs of our lives are as natural and “perfect” as the peaks and valleys of a mountain range. For in identifying God, the Absolute, with a goodness excluding evil we make it impossible for us to accept ourselves radically: what is not in accord with the will of God is at variance with Being itself and must not under any circumstances be accepted. Our freedom is therefore set about with such catastrophic rewards and punishments that it is not freedom at all, but resembles rather the totalitarian state in which one may vote against the government but always at the risk of being sent to a concentration camp. Instead of self-acceptance, the groundwork of our thought and action has therefore been metaphysical anxiety, the terror of being ultimately wrong and rotten to the core.”

Nature, Man and Woman

I recall my father saying of the devil – when I was a bit of an argumentative kid going on and on about the discrepancies in judgements of right and wrong, good vs. evil and how much God does or does not get involved and if he’s in control then why doesn’t he stop this said devil – “He’s God’s Devil.” Wrap your mind around that one.

And remember in Job, what did God say to this keeper of evil? “Have you considered my servant Job?” In other words, “I dare you to knock him around, to rape his family and kill them. Do it!!!” What a huge challenge to simply prove that one man would not curse God. How holy is that?

I don’t know why I’m dragging this out but I am. No. Now I know why. I’m realizing, more and more, that I’m more invested in being an oppression ouster than anything else. And there are beliefs and whole attitudes of living that originate in this wrong notion of God as the tooth fairy or as, cringe, “good.” Why d’ya suppose he forbade such knowledge?

Courtesy of Dave Grant
Courtesy of Dave Grant

I have days where I’m just not so sure I believe in any God’s existence. And then I stand under trees. God/dess is not yet and never will be measured by any religion, philosophy or belief system. But take a deep breath, feel the pulse of the earth of this planet, of your own body and you know the truth. And it’s all good/evil. It’s all there. In the blink of an eye, one moment can wipe out a life or birth another. How is that “good?” It simply is…

Alligators, rainbows and humans too! So, how can this God be good? Do we have to decree a final verdict? I think that, instead, I will go walk through the wet grass barefoot, breathe, feel, know without logic.

jrk

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Spontaneity . . .

“Spontaneity is, after all, total sincerity–the whole being involved in the act without the slightest reservation–and as a rule the civilized adult is goaded into it only by abject despair, intolerable suffering, or imminent death. Hence the proverb, ‘Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.’ Thus a modern Hindu sage has remarked that the first thing he has to teach Westerners who come to him is how to cry, which also goes to show that our spontaneity is inhibited not only by the ego-complex as such but also by the Anglo-Saxon conception of masculinity. So far from being a form of strength, the masculine rigidity and toughness which we affect is nothing more than an emotional paralysis. It is assumed not because we are in control of our feelings but because we fear them, along with everything in our nature that is symbolically feminine and yielding. But a man who is emotionally paralyzed cannot be male, that is, he cannot be male in relation to female, for if he is to relate to a woman there must be something of the woman in his nature…

Childlikeness, or artless simplicity, is the ideal of the artist no less than of the sage, for it is to perform the work of art or of life without the least trace of affectation, of being in two minds. But the way to the child is through the woman, through the yielding to spontaneity, through giving in to just what one is, moment by moment, in the ceaselessly changing course of nature.”

Alan Watts – Nature, Man and Woman

I could repeat this bit over and over:  “But the way to the child is through the woman, through the yielding to spontaneity, through giving in to just what one is, moment by moment, in the ceaselessly changing course of nature.”

Again…

“But the way to the child is through the woman,

through the yielding to spontaneity,

through giving in to

just what

one is,

moment by moment,

in the ceaselessly changing

course of nature.”

the ceaselessly changing course
the ceaselessly changing course

And without being split, in two minds – we come to a wholeness of expression in life.  We unite the maculine and the feminine within, without destroying one or the other. This dynamic of spontaneity in personhood is so vital. And it haunts at every stop, every start, every juncture in life, every intersection and possibility. Spontaneity. And the way to the child through yielding.

My kids remind me of this daily and sometimes especially along the Tallulah River…

jrk

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Chronic Flow

Nigel Richmond’s interpretation of the Yi Jing is by far my favorite at this point. And lately I’m focusing on the top line of Hexagram 25. It speaks to my heart, calms me into a slower, deeper settling flow.

 

Sometimes I think chronic illness is God’s way of keeping me in check. Otherwise, I’d run ahead of flow and wreck things. I asked Yi Jing once why I suffer CFS. I got a response from 34 that indicated my being held in check. That doesn’t jive with the laws of attraction, does it? More and more I think my suitor is unable to comprehend the depths and dances of free will with fate, divinity with “frailty.” But I probably don’t grasp it all.

 

I’ve haunted a blog for a while now and found the most recent post so healing I have to share it. The expression and art is stellar: A Woman Seeing For Herself. Patricia Bralley sees beautifully and with a perspective deep enough to embrace the soul.

 

On to 25.6, what do I find from Richmond’s jewels?

 

“Innocence brings on the unexpected, but to intentionally travel out to meet the unexpected is not innocence, it is a sort of cunning to defeat its unexpectedness. In the whole of this tao the harmonious is uncomplicated by desires and goals, identity is carried by the life force and has problems if it imposes its will

 

        The Chinese image

                Action amongst innocence

                (or the unexpected) brings injury.

 

        Any action that we take through our interest in the unexpected flow is bound to be an interference with it. As in the fifth line we are acting out of discomfort and not allowing it to pass through our experience.”

 

This response (25.6) is sometimes what Yi Jing has to say when I’m freaking out about something I think will happen soon and want to be prepared for. Freaking out is one way to disintegrate any strength to face change. Trying to make it happen faster is the same thing. If you have any psychic tendency, any ability to discern the future, this one grabs you and pulls you back into the flow fast. If you just think you know what might happen and you feel yourself grabbing at activity to greet what you’re certain is likely, this response reminds of the vital importance of simple depth being.

 

For that matter, so does chronic illness…

 

jruthkelly

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Vital Visuals . . .

dg-gull-laugh
Vital Visual -Seagull Silent Laughing

“It felt like a seagull body, but already it flew far better than his old one had ever flown. Why, with half the effort, he thought, I’ll get the speed, twice the performance of my best days on Earth! … And why am I so tired, all at once? Gulls in heaven are never supposed to be tired, or to sleep. Where had he heard that? The memory of his Earth life was falling away.” Excerpt from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a story (By Richard Bach)

This Friday’s Vital Visual is my tribute to seagulls.

And another Dave Grant gem…

jrk

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La La La La Loba…

I’m not hearing it much now, that text message that decided to come back and haunt me repeatedly, day after day: “Where is my la loba?”

But her work has re-entered my bones silently, sinking even more deeply as I read again of Pinkola-Estes’ Women Who…

“Once women have lost her and found her again, they will contend to keep her for good. Once they have regained her, they will fight and fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth and health; their cycles of sexuality, creativity, work, and play are re-established; they are no longer marks for the predations of others; they are entitled equally under the laws of nature to grow and to thrive. Now their end-of-the-day fatigue comes from satisfying work and endeavors, not from being shut up in too small a mind-set, job, or relationship. They know instinctively when things must die and when things must live; they know how to walk away, they know how to stay.”

This is from her chapter titled “Singing Over The Bones.”

Today I found a blogger whose history includes being raised as a fundamentalist. It’s a history I know well from my own upbringing. It’s not something I like to go on and on about or even mention if I can help it. But it does creep into my writing, into my nicknames and own personal archetype work, into my singing. Jezcallmeruth is my tag on Myspace and it hints at the Jezebel archetype, a much-needed balancing companion for Ruthness. A guardian over the predatory goodness of an all-giving, good-natured “your people are mine, your god is my god” character. Yes, some goodness can kill the very heart of what generosity protects and nurtures. But I digress, it seems.

That I was raised fundie and came crashing out of it when I realized I could not reconcile it with love itself and raise children, that fact permeates every bit of my now. It helped shape me. The struggle to gain something as simple as mental emancipation and soul-centered beingness freed of any sense of “sinfulness” dominated whole chapters of my life. That struggle makes for some intense appreciation of things real, things deeply human, potently in-your-face raw. Only recently has the anger and frustration of it all abated enough to give me room to bloom. And the redemption of it rests in the fact that long-bottled soulful jiving yum is exceptionally nourishing.

Google anything to do with recovering fundies and you’ll mostly find blogs dedicated to refuting and ranting at every ounce of fundamentalist nonsense ever conjured by the fearful. It’s a whole new world of anti-fundamentalism fundies. And I want none of it. Except to urge them to find a new religion, one that focuses on restoring what is lost in fundamentalism and not their addictive ranting religion against religion. 

I want to learn from the skeletal remains of experiences, experiences whose blasting clarification of the vital importance of personhood, of innocence never lost, of self-awareness and of creativity catalyzes sweaty work to cultivate the best of being human. We get there by way of La Loba, by way of singing over the bones, by way of embracing the life/death/life cycles of our days, of our decades and by knowing the sweetness of change. And the sweatness.

Where is my La Loba? She is within and beyond in those who sing over the bones of loss, of hurt and of possibility. She resides a humming drumbeat in the soul of every one who longs to live fully even in the silence of rest.

jruthkelly © 2009

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