thoughts on spiritual awakening in today's world
Thanks for the encouragement, everyone, especially to Katherine, who emailed me her secret whey substitute: plain yogurt. Yep, that’s it. I just had the best ginger ale of my life, and I made it myself. Ingredients: freshly peeled and chopped ginger root, a little bit of plain yogurt, distilled water. Seal tightly in a jar and wait two days, and strain out the yogurt curds and ginger.
It’s not carbonated, but it frims big-time!
Yesterday, we had a light snow in Norfolk that was just enough to coat every street in ice right before we got off work. Our trips home took at least two times as long for me and all of my co-workers, and one person was caught in bumper-to-bumper gridlock for four-and-a-half hours! This morning, my boss compiled a digest of our experiences and shared it with the group. Here’s his report on my trip home:
>Jon Zuck in the Frimmin’mobile had a nirvana of a time driving the roads of
Ghent. He just began meditating and an hour later he was home. Nothing
like the power of thinking of nothing : ).
He knows me too well! But isn’t that great creative journalism? I’ve told him he should start a blog!
In her famous book Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg describes how her roshi instructed her to begin using her writing as a form of meditation. Recently, my teacher, Kitabu Roshi », gave me a similar assignment, especially through writing poetry. He also instructed me to not write from my mind, but spontaneously, like freewriting, to let the Spirit direct me.
I’ve written a lot of poetry, and I used to have a couple of dozen original poems on this site. Most of my stuff was this outrageously joyful mystic rave in full keeping with my “holy fool” personality. What’s been coming since beginning poetry as meditation is new to me. It’s pretty unfiltered, it shows me what’s there, whether I want it to or not. Some is still the Frimster’s shout, and some shows the deep cries of my heart, and some is a little different:
Subjects
...
My self mailed me an email
To explain myself to me.
The hours I spent teaching me
what I myself don't know.
Norfolk Upanishad I sit listening Listening to the sound of Your spirit and hear my thoughts. But they are not mine. I do nothing to make them come, can do nothing to make them stop, bubbles in the ocean. I'm never so rich as when I have nothing. Listening in the dark to what comes, what goes. Listening in the heart to the beat, the pulse. It's not I. I do not think to live Something lives which is greater than me Auricle, ventricle, expand, contract. Squeezing life from matter. Hear it in your head Hold it in your heart-- The sound of life. One life. That One's you. And me. Pulsing Everywhere. Every one. One. © jon zuck, january 16, 2005, norfolk, virginia
On a related note, Meredith and Akilesh have a wonderful post » on their blog » which discusses a passage from the journal of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the minister/poet/mystic, at the “precipice” of going into no-self. I highly recommend reading this post in depth. This is probably the most concise and lucid description of what I call “awakening” spirituality, and Akilesh’s metaphor of “the precipice” is a wonderful explanation of the point that leads from mere mysticism into the transformation of consciousness, theosis, fana, or enlightenment.
I most definitely relate Meredith’s statement about coming to the precipice, but not yet being able to jump into the void. Boy, can I relate to that! Everyone, please give yourselves a treat and read that post!
What Is Enlightenment? » magazine has an excellent review » of What the #$*! Do We Know?, the movie which I had considered a mixed bag of entertaining, popularized science on the one hand, and grossly deficient pseudo-mysticism on the other.
WIE’s writer Tom Huston explains in great depth the missing pieces glossed over by the Ramtha students’ film, from the alternate views of the nature of quanta (e.g. probability waves is only one interpretation), to the insufficiency (and egocentric motive) of the New Age platitude “we create our reality.”
Mystical practice is traditionally aimed toward the mind-shattering revelation that there is actually only one reality and one self, and this revelation is said to liberate the individual from his or her attachment to personal desires. So if we’re pursuing the manifestation of our desires by consciously manipulating the quantum field, and thereby attempting to re-create reality itself in our own image, how spiritual can that be, really?
He concludes with a very intriguing suggestion about the cause of the film’s popularity:That we should even feel the need to overcome the doubt of the scientific materialist worldview indicates how all-pervasive it actually is, and how thoroughly steeped in it most of us are. In fact, the very need to base our belief in the transcendental Divine on the findings of science seems indicative of the strange spiritual desert in which we currently find ourselves. . . .
There’s some powerful wisdom in these words, which applies to a lot of us, from those who strain to prove prophecies with current events, and the Creation with fossil records, to those segments of the current “spiritual” subculture that lack a vision of their own.
Why is it so hard to just rest in God?
I’ve been reading a book called *Eat Fat, Lose Fat,* by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. It emphasizes natural, organic foods, and the historic importance of *lacto-fermentation* as a means of preserving foods and making them digestible. Fallon also suggests that its *easy* to home-brew natural, organic sodas with kefir powder or liquid whey and distilled or filtered water.
What the heck! I decided to try brewing some berry squeezin’s. Only thing was, I couldn’t find either liquid whey nor kefir powder. So I tried a Spirulina whey protein mix from a health food store, and let it sit for two days. Results:
1. Carbonation happens. If anyone ever doubted that carbonation would happen, let them rest assured, that distilled water was quite carbonated tonight!
2. There’s an art to doing this.
3. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!
It took me a long time to scoop the sickly mush out of the jar (and out of the sink, and off things near the sink, etc. etc. Did I mention carbonation happens?) The residue in the jar did look kind of like Cherry 7up, but ahem, a small taste was enough. It needed more sugar, but I wasn’t going to waste that when there was still some purple algae in there. Perhaps I’ll give it another whirl sometime later. Yeah, with REAL whey!
Carry on, my whey-ward son,
There will be peas when you are done.
Lacto weary head to rest,
Don’t ferment no more!
What can I say? That’s Jedi life in the real world.
I’ve been feeling a lot of pain recently, largely because the tsunami affected me very deeply. Although I’ve never been to Asia, I’ve long felt a strong resonance to the lands that were hit by the tsunami, especially Indonesia. Today I learned a former colleague of mine is dying. My thoughts tonight:
Death surrounds me. I can deny it as well as you, but I cannot hide and I cannot forget. A wave washed away my home, though I live a world away. I die. They told me Sharon is dying, a cancer in her brain--I die. Every moment, my body sheds a million cells— Just living is dying! Every day, the world sheds a million souls for living is dying. I feel I'm in a tapestry, pulled one way, then the next, then in all directions at once. For living is dying.
I’m back from my trip and blogging again. I’ve actually wanted to blog about the tsunami disaster in Asia and Africa for a while now, but haven’t quite been able to. I felt numb just thinking about it.
Last night, though, I cried, and it was very freeing.
To some slight extent I feel the waves of sorrow that my brothers and sisters on the other side of the world feel. It’s like I too, have lost my family, my home, my livelihood, although at a much, much lower level. I think the waves of sorrow are like radio waves–if we’re willing to be receptive, we can tune in to each other, and share the sorrow and the emotional pain.
I’m heartened by the fact that there is so much awareness and compassion regarding this disaster. It makes me feel the world is changing for the better when I consider that when the Tangshan quake hit China in 1976, anywhere from 250,000-650,000 people were killed, and there was virtually no awareness of nor concern about it outside of that country.
It will take years to rebuild, and we will need to continue offering support not just now, but for years to come.
Last week, I had a strange experience at the airport. As I was waiting at a gate for my departing flight, a man whom I took to be a fellow passenger on my flight sat down a few seats away from me. I felt almost an instantaneous dislike for him. He proceeded to whip out a cell phone, and have a loud conversation in which he laughed about the disaster and called it “just good population control” and said “guess God wasn’t with them this time.”
I felt such a shock in my spirit — this wasn’t mere ignorance, this was *evil*. I felt that I wanted both to get the hell away from him, and at the same moment, to go up to him and punch his lights out. In a few seconds I calmed down, and realized that I would must make my objection known — strongly, though silently.
When he ended his call, I caught his gaze and held eye contact with him for a few seconds. This happened again a moment later. and he then got up and left. I didn’t look to see where he went, but he didn’t come back, and he didn’t board my flight.
There’s an excellent blog by Amit Varma about the devastation in India at:
indiauncut.blogspot.com ?
It’ s almost bewildering to me that we’ve made our “sacred” holidays into such secular rushes of madness. The three saints days which have penetrated our cultural calendar–those of Sts. Valentine, Patrick, and Nicholas, have almost lost all memory of these living lights, as has All Saints Eve. And the celebration of Christ’s birth barely survives the whirling madness of the modern American Christmas.
I try fighting it in small ways, but I’m fretting about how to wake up at 3:30 tomorrow morning to board a flight , and making plans to cut my hair, wash my clothes, and board my cat. Most of my shopping is done–not all–and it’s not that I have that much–I’m just a really bad shopper! Once again, Trev’s posts here and here say it better than I can.
I’m looking forward to seeing my parents whom I haven’t seen for quite some time, spending quality time with them, and lending a hand. I’m looking forward to the Christmas Eve Mass I’ll go to with my folks. As I take care of the necessary details, I need to remember this. That this is the Christ-Mass–not just in church, but our whole lives are the burning candle of the Christ light. Sometimes this week, I haven’t been burning very brightly. I need to quiet down, focus, meditate, and remember this light of the world–in a manger in Bethlehem, and in myself.
>You are the light of the world…
>Let your light shine before others.
>Jesus, Matthew 5:14-16
Igniter of Stars!
lies naked, bawling on rough straw
God in the manger.
Scandal of Ages!
The King of Infinity
in this time, this place!
“What?” “Why?” Resounding cry
across the galaxies—wings
and heads bow in awe.
Joy! This Special birth!
And more! Beyond all reason
The Giver is given!
Quiet night explodes!
Angelsong, ten billion strong—
Glory to the King!
Pungent barnyard smells
mix with the aroma of
His wonder, His love.
In orbits ordained
before Time, planets align—
form the Star, the Sign!
She names Him “Jesus.”
Yet more strangers will arrive—
they will name Him “King.”
© jon zuck | chesapeake, virginia | december 25, 1995
* How to be Like Rich DeVos
* A Course in Miracles in 5 Minutes
* Jesus: the Last of the Pharoahs
I kid you not, I saw all of these tonight at B&N and Borders!
In other news, last night I saw my teacher at our weekly Zen satsang. He helped me a lot with understanding the nature of conflict and spiritual warfare, within the universal Oneness of God. I checked out Trev’s blog when I got home, and found that someone else had been having similar questions, so I posted a comment, which Trev made into an entire entry. I might expand it into a static page later on.