August 07, 2008   Inspiration , Nature , Peace , Social Awareness , Sonoma Ashram , Spirituality

Dear Pondering Spiritual Warrior,

I am not sure that we are to expect peace anywhere. I am doubtful about all expectations. Waiting for what is not here yet seems to be a bug...

I am not sure that we are to expect peace anywhere.

I am doubtful about all expectations. Waiting for what is not here yet seems to be a buggy program at best. Ha! I’m not even sure about the reliability of my definitions of what a certain thing is or isn’t.

At best I seem to be looking through a tunnel of social conditioning, compounded race-thought and inherited stuff to the point that I wonder about the meaning of every little thing. I wonder about “meaning” itself. And purpose. Does beauty have a purpose or meaning? And I wonder if everything I see is all-there-is to see or even if seen, exists.

And I notice there is more than one version of the story of being. In the version of the story that is about wars between nations and people and survival and justice – there are accompanying rules for each of the scenes – social rules and laws and agreements and consequence for keeping them or not keeping them. And there are other versions of the story, like the one you touched on briefly, the story of the sort-of endless dance-drama in which the energies of individual life lines are playing out on each other, perfectly balancing fates and futures and pasts – attracting this and repelling that in some kind of monstrous/beautiful drama.

But in these stories (and still other countless versions) who is the designer?

Who designed them and for what purpose? Who/what made it so that a society should emerge and agreements arise? What kind of design is it that insists lives must be balanced out with various attractions and repulsions that unfold like inevitable fates?

I’ve often wondered about Jesus’ statement “Behold the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” I see how that may be understood to be a comment about the immanence of something that apparently folk around him were missing. I was reminded of that comment when visiting Varanasi in December last year, when the Guru at the Ashram I stayed at told me that the “real” city of Varanasi exists on another plain. Imminent, but missed apparently by folk who are caught up in the filth and shock and color and smell and life stories of suffering, survival, enlightenment, and so on. While at exactly the same place and the same time is where the doorway between worlds lies wide open and divinity is present – and present to some people in such a shocking abundance that they are intoxicated and dismayed and ecstatic – even while they continue one arm in this world and another in some other world...

At what I think is one of the most important climax scenes in the Gita – and I apologize in advance to true Gita scholars for my surface knowledge of the scripture – the Prince pleads with God to have a vision of Him, to really SEE how things are. God says that it is impossible for the Prince to see It All with human eyes and that it would be necessary to grant the Prince eyes-divine to see beyond the veil in to the imminence of the all-pervading Presence of what God is. And when the Prince receives this vision he sees something that is both ecstatic and terrifying, beautiful and horrible, placid and chaotic and finally he can’t take it any longer and asks for his former vision to be restored in which he sees God and Creation in their more friendly form as a human being in a chariot on the brink of a massive battle. In the middle of seeing the vision, however, God says some startling things to the Prince; for example, He says that the Prince should not labor under the delusion that if he decides not to go ahead with the war that it will in any way whatsoever alter the nature of Being.

Oh, by the way, I know my body seems to be violent in this version of the story. Still I aspire to peaceful behavior as much as possible. To the point, I hope, where my peace will be the better part of my being. Maybe when that is achieved then violence disappears and is no longer necessary – but that brings back in to the conversation that pesky little “purpose” thing.

Most helpful has been Byron Kate who says, “All war belongs on paper” when she is teaching people to examine the war in their own thinking.

I’m not sure I said anything.