Archive for May 12th, 2014
Grist
“I don’t go to church and rarely meditate in a formal way. I wear ordinary clothes and eat an ordinary diet. I have an aversion to much of the language I hear and read from today’s spiritual sources. I don’t aim to be whole, I don’t feel a need for special community, I don’t want to live in the present, and I would rather figure out how to be comfortable in life’s complexity and darkness than to find the light.”
So writes Thomas Moore, Psychotherapist and former Monk, in Spirituality & Health, May/June 2014. I resonated with much of what he said. Although, I have worked hard to be ‘present’; for me, the ‘trick’ to traveling my life path, is finding the way between the opposites. Walking as best I can between piety and impiety. I don’t want to be too spiritual. I don’t want to be too mundane.
Moore cites the wisdom of Sioux mystical teacher, Black Elk, that what we need is to see in a sacred manner. The handiwork of Divine Intelligence is all around us. We need only open our vision to it’s crystal clear presence.
I really identify with Moore when he says, “This isn’t simple piety. A sacred vision is something you win through deep initiations, painful endurance of illness and setbacks, and a willingness to take life on rather than avoid it.”
Some heady grist for the mind’s mill. Late Spring is a perfect time to open our eyes to the experience of sacred seeing.