Spirits Calling

"My soul glowed from the fire of your fire. Your world was a whispering water At the river of my heart." --by the poet Rumi

While in love we often fear, often unconsciously fear, that another will subsume us, that we will drown in relationship, and to some extent this is true. The ego must move aside for the opening to the path to love. Love and the soul however will not be lost or drown in another. Rather these are our immutable essences; they cannot be lost or drowned, and yet ego strongly fears this fate. Our sense of self-protection that is ego rapidly assesses any situation in which we must potentially yield to be a threat.

There is a fundamental mystery to the soul, however, writes Deepak Chopra in his book, The Path to Love. He writes further, "its integrity is not violated by merging with another person. The blending of two spirits brings more to the union than each partner started with. The process of soul-making that used to be [for me alone] "me" is now for "us." The poet Rumi expressed this thought with these words:

My soul glowed from the fire of your fire.

Your world was a whispering water.

At the river of my heart.

With the growth of spiritual realization is the awareness that two can be as one; that the multiple aspects of the Dharmakaya are are work; that the Christian idea of a triune relationship within the soul of a great spirit, communing with God are all infinite and possible. While in the state of ego, on the other hand, persons remain isolated and self-protected as if in a siege mentality. There then is no room for the other; often a feeling of isolation and a vague, undefined loneliness results. Yet spirit calls to us powerfully, first, in romantic love. 

We fall in love and for the first time as Rumi passionately writes, we have the opportunity to engage our self into self as an expansion of identity. The Spirit uses relationship as its vehicle. No man is an island; spirit calls to us to overcome our fears such that love may be its replacement.

Once in relationship, however we gain a foothold over ourselves despite the passion, despite the growing self awareness, and ego often returns to us with a vengeance. Falling in love is delightful; it is passion, and a glimpse of the spirit itself. Being in love, love itself entails commitment, and a certain struggle. Many who come to this place in their spiritual journeys feel a sense of loss, and fear what is to come next. 

Relationships have consequences. While they give to each person a sense of belonging, friendship, security and compassion, love also demands something from each partner. Things like patience, devotion, persistence are part of the work and struggle to be realized along the path. Sometimes relationship is hard and painful. Resolution brings joy, and it brings disappointment. "The only real difference between romance and relationship, spiritually speaking, has to do with surrender. Surrender comes naturally to two people when they first fall in love." Love's first flush gives us the courage to do that, to be fearless and act under its protective power. Spiritually, surrender is a solution to the paradox existing between ego and spirit. 

Yet persons who love, who are intimates, over time often find that the ego, now returned carries them on its own agenda. Lovers play games to test one another, they withhold themselves; they are unwilling to give to spirit, and they are unwilling to give to and serve one another. Surrender now must be conscious. It must be an act of free will, of choosing this as your path. Chopra writes, "this isn't to say that surrender isn't hard work; it is conscious work. As such it can bring the same joy and delights as falling in love, the same sense of play which relieves lovers of the ego burdens." 

The British writer and poet, D. H. Lawrence wrote, "That is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust, the sapphire of fidelity. The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love."

A free loving commitment of the will made to another is the realization over time of: peacefulness, a companionship and a trust made by the Spirit to another which is, and is not self. "When they are fully committed... they see God in each other." On that basis, they are able to surrender, not to one another so much, as to surrender themselves to the God in each other, and to the God, the Dharmakaya in all things. Dharma is an ancient idea. It means perhaps most fully, sacredness. In its Sanskrit origin, dharma means to sustain or uphold. 

Thus what upholds, honors, or respects another's life is in keeping with dharma. It is, for example in dharma not to tell lies, to deceive oneself or others. Dharma looks to the sacred, it is tied to and intimately guided by spirit. Dharmakaya, likewise, is Karuna, love; love then is a guiding force emanating from the great being, the Dharmakaya. Thus surrender in relationship is surrender to spirit, to dharma. In the Way of the Beloved, the dharma is "a vision of spiritual equality; when you perceive life through this vision, separation ends."

God Is No Businessman

"Eros makes promises, but agape keeps them." -- The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

Poets and philosophers alike have spent many words describing the almost indescribable. They write words of love, friendship, affection, brotherhood; the writer Dante said of love, "[there was] the love that moves the sun and all the stars." It is this love, all encompassing, that concerns Peter Kreeft in his book, The God Who Loves You. He writes in a Christian perspective of love experiences. "Everything is a gift from God," writes Kreeft.
This is, he says, incredibly simple, yet our human tendency towards complexity makes it look murky and confusing. The writer, Chesterton, said "life is always confusing for one without clear principles." Yet here is, says Kreeft, simplicity itself, shining brightly if we will only look. God is Love. What he wills for me, comes from goodness, for my own good. This, "is not poetic fancy, but sober, logical fact."

We may then view love in the light of goodness. What comes in a life may be a sign, an indication pointing the way; it means something. Our suffering in love means something, in this view. Christian thought believes that like the Christ upon his cross, our suffering is for all, for the common good--ours and others. Love then, points the way back to the divine giver. The parables of the Christ do not tell us to love humanity in the abstract.
We are called instead to love our neighbor as our self. We are not called to like our neighbor, but to love as our self. It is to individuals that this love is directed. God's love then is personal, like a mother or a father love; it is unique because it becomes us, and giving it then, becomes its expression and cause. Love means then to share the light of the world, one person at a time with our family and friends.

Here is the part which becomes difficult for us: When we share with our neighbor, love, as ourself, we sometimes confuse the love God gives with our physical, corporal self. It's as if, in love, we have given our self literally, and not spiritually; thus in ego, a sense of possession arises. You are mine and I am yours. Perhaps even ownership, a relation which gives no heed to free will, replacing loving freely.

God is a lover. God is not a businessman or a manager taking account of all his stock. Martin Luther wrote in his treatise, The Liberty of a Christian, that what God wants is not possession nor a technical performance in life, but something simple and profound.
God wants our hearts. He gives and we receive through the Spirit. A heart may not be demanded or bought; it may not be contained or caged. It is freely given, and freely received. Luther was right. This is a simple truth which liberates us from the darkness and confusion of love. In love we are free.

As adults we may first try many ways to obtain and capture a heart. Some may work for a time, but ultimately the heart of love is free and flies where it wills. It cannot be possessed. This is frightening to one who feels great desire or need for that heart.
Yet thinking carefully, one may discover its source is not the person who first made its presence felt, the Beloved, but the One who gave it first in the Spirit of Love. The one who loves all, who loves freely.

The chains of possession must not be; yet at times ignorance or wickedness overcomes, and possession is confused for love. It is not. Love is free and must be. This recognition of freely given love is a love that honors, respects and lasts at least as long as the One who formed us in it.
Thus as adults mature, many come to the knowledge that romantic love "reveals the beloved, and is meant to point us towards union, Oneness with God."

Often we find ourselves in places which we never have dreamed of before, places which call for our complete attention, and challenge us beyond measure. Love is one of those places; yet there is no school for love, no way to read a book to easily or painlessly learn of its nature.

So we come into adult life armed with the love we learned as children within our family, the love that we may have encountered in our religious experiences, the friendships we develop in our youth, the pleasures of shared activities and hobbies with family, friends, groups or clubs.

All this we bring into adult life, but romantic love, eros, we have the least direct experience of as young adults. Perhaps we witnessed the many occasions of fondness and affection our parents exchanged, a friend in high school, a romantic flush that grew for a few months and then faltered.

Bringing these early experiences into the everyday world, we find that one day, we are inexplicably drawn, impelled into a connection with one who is not our family, not quite like anyone whom we've known before, and yet we are drawn to them, to a flame that seems to burn brightly when together. A relationship develops, perhaps not like one we've known before in our young life, but then a bit like every relationship we have experienced. There is friendliness, sharing, laughter, understanding, and perhaps, a quiet peacefulness when together. But what of it?

Much of our social relationships are influenced and dictated not by individuals, but by societal norms and values which seek to define and place persons into fairly rigid categories. And society, as a component of the everyday world is rigid in conforming to the established norms. Unlike the words of poets, the mystics, and philosophers, living a love story can be difficult and confusing.

This article first appeared here on October 19, 2009

Reincarnation

"The withering hope in eternity is simply the reverse side of a withering faith."   J. Ratzinger

For as far back as recorded history exists, there rarely has been prevalent the idea that everything ends with death. Some form of the notion of judgement, and forms of salvation may be found the world over. In places with a strong tradition of faith within non-theistic religious expression, the imagining of  "other" life, life "beyond the veil," is sometimes vague and imprecise. While not quite an existence in nothingness, this unknowingness, or obscure relation, is perceived in a remarkable way, connecting itself with the everyday, living world.

Firstly, there are connections in many of those traditions, with the spirits of this shadowy realm who need the help of the living to continue to survive; first they need offerings and continual attention: food, prayer, money, housing, and other comforts. This makes for their immortality; they are not forgotten. And secondly, they, as spirits, are powerful; members of a universal realm, they may pose either as a help or as a threat to living persons.

People as often admire the departed spirit as they fear, even dread them.Over the ages a variety of rituals have been engaged to address the spirits and to sometimes protect themselves from them. Simultaneously the spirits of one's ancestors, primarily those who are seen in a protective role for the clan, are most often worshiped to ensure their favor. This practice of ancestor cults is one of the most ancient forms in human society.

Ancestor worship gives evidence that the bonds of love, family and community are unbroken, even by death. The belief of incarnation in these instances may be understood as a remedy for the justice or injustices of the world. One may, for example incarnate as a simple life form such as an animal or an insect, or they may attain perfection and complete their spiritual journeys, in the view of believers. The teachings of incarnation lend a sense of an inflexible justice, expiation for wrongdoings in life and a correction for that karmic condition. However when the bulk of life experience in this world is experienced as suffering, trans-migration of souls may not be enough. The goal may then be described as the intention to escape the bounds of individuality, to escape the confusion of the world, cycling of existence, so as to surrender to the origins of the true, universal self. This is sometimes described as the Dharmakaya, the great intelligence-mind.

Reincarnation encompasses a sense of everything and nothing; it is all times, all places and all spirit.  Full of hope and innocence, the belief in incarnation, cause and effect and the transmigration of souls is part of a vast, turning wheel in this world. For many today, however and for many in the West it loses its ancient sense of faith in moral justice; it is not universally perceived as the means by which a hidden power of justice is meted out in the here after.
Instead many now wish to interpret the ancient belief as a type of "energy conservation" wherein the soul's energy is not merely dispersed nor deleted at death; it instead in this view, there requires some form of embodiment. This newer view is at odds with the classic faith of the transmigration of souls.

Shintoism and Japan Today

"Human beings have the potential to become Kami." --The Essence of Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Heart by Motohisa Yamakage

In the Shinto mind there are many, many symbols of heaven here in earth. Armed with no other knowledge, the casual observer while traveling in Japan may remark upon the many shrines. There are about 80,000 Torii-gated Shinto shrines in Japan. They are located throughout the countryside and in towns and cities as well. Passers-by may spontaneously pause at these little edifices for prayer and reflection, taking a moment of their busy, modern day. A few of the best known: Ise Jingu Shrine, the most sacred site of Japanese Shintoism, as it enshrines the ancestry of the Japanese Imperial family. It may be said to represent the 'grander' side of things. Shrines to the Imperial family, both old and modern, serve to strengthen the state and its core symbol, the heavenly-descended Emperor.

 Ise Jingu and Yasukuni Jinja shrines, stand as products of the modernizing influence of revolution. Ise Jingu resulted from a Chinese led coup in a seventh-century palace that altered an earlier style of loosely affiliated clan-ship into the more centralized style of the Chinese invader. Yasukuni Jinja was a result of the Meiji Revolution. Built in 1869, its original name was Kyoto Shokonsha. Today it is best known as a memorial to World War II.
Increased contacts with the West  prompted the evolution of Japanese society into a more Westernized military-industrial complex over time. While the result of  the Meiji Revolution was the restoration of the Emperor, he no longer ruled singularly or directly.

 Ise Jingu Shrine, while emphasizing the Imperial ideals within Shintoism, composed of the inner and outer buildings, Naiku and Gekku, focuses upon a remarkable ritual symbolizing the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, from whom the Emperor is traditionally thought to have descent; so it is with great importance of place many Japanese regard this shrine, an essential element of beauty. Curiously, both Naiku and Gekku portions of the Shrine are completely taken apart every 20 years, then identically rebuilt on adjacent sites. This has been going on for almost 1,500 years; it will again  occur in 2013.

Author Motohisa Yamakage writes in The Essence of Shinto, "the union of the sacred and the mundane is a distinctive feature of Shinto... Shinto is found in our relationship and interdependence with Kami... Shinto is the path with which we seek to realize ourselves fully as human beings by acquiring the noble characteristics of Kami... but we must first become attuned to Kami... the essence of Shinto..."

He writes further that in the modern, consumer world values such as the intangibles of spirit, selflessness and sacrifice are increasingly lacking. He makes reference primarily to the 'invisible' world, the world that may be felt but not seen. Many disregard, or actively disbelieve what they cannot see before them. Simply put, as a point of reference: can we believe in the winds that bring rain, though we do not see them? We may only feel the wind. So what is wind? What is Shinto or Kami? Yamakage challenges his reader to find the unseen, the Spirit in the modern world today. He writes of a lack, a hunger to reconnect with these spiritual values within a living, breathing Shintoism.