Giving Thanks

We take a lot of things for granted, maybe more so in Australia than anywhere else – take the sun as an example. I once happened to be in Germany at the start of spring. Coming from Australia, where sunshine is a staple of life, it was amusing to see people in parks basking in the feeble rays streaming down on days that were still quite cold. Then it occurred to me that these poor folk had seen very little of the sun through the dark northern European winter.

The other morning while walking to work I suddenly noticed the beauty of the sun. Over the top of the city’s buildings, past the spires of St Patrick’s Cathedral and the date palms crowded around a small patch of green, the sun was a wonderful, gracefully strong presence. Its warmth kindled something in me and I said, quietly and looking upwards, “Thank you, sun, for shining on me and the world. Thank you for the life you bring. May you shine and shine.”

What is the value of such simple gratefulness? In our highly rationalist culture my giving thanks to the sun has no meaning aside from a temporary good feeling I might get, and any further significance would be considered illogical and woolly-headed. But we think this way only because we take for granted the conditions of our existence – nothing on Earth would live without the sun; there would be no life here. In being thankful we recognise and, crucially, renew the life-giving relationships of which we are part and the grace that those relationships bestow.

We start with the assumption that everything has a life beyond its material existence. The sun, the moon, stars, rocks, water, animals, people etc resonate at subtle and spiritual levels and all are interwoven in the one Spirit. By giving thanks we identify ourselves beyond our own finite existence and into this collective channel of oneness, acknowledging that we are part of a much bigger Life. Recognition entails naming, which is synonymous with truth and carries power. The Gospel of John begins famously with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Naming brings us into the field of direct and primary relationships.

Renewal is brought about at subtle levels because of the energy that flows between all things. An act of gratefulness directs energy back to the object of thanks, so there is a mutually enhancing flow both ways. We experience this concretely every day as positive feelings when either we thank someone or are thanked for something we have done. A measure of physical, energetic and psychic replenishment takes place. I believe it’s essentially the same when we give thanks to the sun: when we return its constant, loving presence in our world a mutual reinforcement occurs. Being more aware of nature, growing our awareness of the interdependent conditions and relationships of our existence, also creates a platform to act in life-affirming ways. Protecting a forest is then not just about the trees or the animals, but about us and all life.

Thankfulness to nature is important in another way – it stimulates and nurtures our inner child. Being connected to the inner child, and to play more broadly, brings joy and vitality; we experience life a little more lightly and manageably. Much of the time our culture denies and buries the child in us – we are supposed to be occupied with work, serious and productive, busy for the sake of money and consumption. But the child in us wants none of that; it wants to play and experience the world in its own pure way. The inner child is psychologically closer to nature and can guide us back to the sense of wonder and simplicity that is essential for reverence. Jesus said: “Let the children come to me and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” (Matthew 19:14).

I think that our culture is in the process of casting off the extremes of rationality and is moving again, slowly but steadily, towards recognition and respect for Spirit. In the growing popular feeling for (usually non-religious or non-church based) spirituality we see the sacred starting to return to our world. In truth, it never left but our perception of it simply hibernated for a while. In the 21st century our understanding of the divine and the ways in which we give thanks – by word, ritual and deed – are evolving. Though we can draw from the wisdom traditions of the past, our time in the sun is unique and very much our own. We are in a creative moment in history.

The Wasp and the Cockroach

I watch maybe a bit too much television. It helps relieve an active brain at the end of the day, but I’m also captivated by the stories, anecdotes, myths and humour that I pick up sailing from one program to another.

Occasionally something I see leaves an indelible mark, stimulates further contemplation. This happened to me watching an episode of the British comedy infotainment show, QI. Host Stephen Fry was describing the habits of a certain species of wasp that preyed on a type of cockroach. Rather than killing the cockroach, the wasp’s bite released venom that drugged it. The wasp would then lead the befuddled victim to its nest, lay eggs on it and the hatchlings would progressively eat the insides of the still-living cockroach. After telling this story and showing some vision of the wasp in action, Fry declared in disgust: "I challenge anyone to tell me there is a loving God!"

For those of us who’d like humanity to move to an ecological or earth-centred consciousness, Fry’s challenge is a very appropriate one. We cannot simply see nature as positive and nurturing without also appreciating its destructive side. Killing is a fundamental reality of the created world – life lives upon life. The wasp kills the cockroach for its survival and that of its progeny just as we humans do the same to a multitude of beings, from bacteria right through to sentient animals. Life lives upon life: the Earth Mother and the dark goddess Kali, ever hungry for sacrifice, are one.

Of course in this we are required to see the big picture, to realise that the various interactions of living beings are contained within larger biological systems. The wasp and the cockroach have purposes within their ecosystem, contributing to particular cycles of life. The processes of nature move outwards from the smallest sub-atomic particles to the interactions of stars and the universe as a whole, each process relating to and nested within other, larger processes.

For me, Fry’s response to the story of the two insects points to what humanity’s purpose in nature may be. His outrage is the sign of a being aware of the quality of things. The development of human consciousness allows us to stand back and look upon nature, making independent choices and decisions and distinguishing between right and wrong. In a sense this process is an illusion because we’re not outside nature but are nature like everything else; what is actually occurring is life looking upon itself, creation understanding its own self deeper.

Codes of behaviour that set down what is right and wrong, and by extension what is good and evil, have been part of cultures across the world for thousands of years. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were forced out of the Garden of Eden, banished from a simple undifferentiated existence in nature into one marked by knowledge (or awareness) but also suffering. Human consciousness, as an aspect of the consciousness of nature, had discovered the existence of good and evil, or that which furthers life and that which negates it.

Good is essentially about aligning with the processes of life in their ongoing evolution, embracing and furthering them in the understanding that all is ultimately one and that everything is interdependent. Evil entails denial of unity, separation and self-interest in opposition to other beings, and often leads to domination and abuse. Humans have been struggling with this most fundamental polarity, good and evil, and its implications for millennia.

In expressing disgust with the wasp and sympathy with the cockroach, Fry is not necessarily saying that evil is occurring in that situation, but his reaction does come out of that singular human appreciation of quality. This discernment has always brought out the best in us: from loving human relationships to love of nature, great art, architecture, civilisations, systems of thought and knowledge, magnificent leaps of creativity and inspiration. Without quality all life, not just our own, suffers. That’s the human gift to nature – an awareness of and aspiration towards quality, or soul.

What do we make, then, of the present situation in which we humans have overrun the planet and are progressively destroying so much life? Perhaps it all comes down to fundamental polarities and choices: how many of us are prepared to aim our lives in the direction of quality instead of following the path of ignorance and greed? What is at stake cannot be underestimated – it’s about the radical transformation of humanity and the planet as a whole. With good acts some forests may be saved, some people’s lives improved, some disasters averted, but the big picture is nothing short of a full-scale birth of planet Earth into a new era of life. It’s the new creation that Jesus was said to have initiated 2000 years ago ... if we pay attention, we can see it stirring all around us.

On Beauty

Walking with a friend through the Bendigo Gallery’s Royal Academy of Arts exhibition recently, I stopped at a painting by the 19th-century American artist John Singer Sargent.

In fact, on my rounds through the gallery, I returned to it several times. By about the fourth viewing, I was awestruck. The painting, “An Interior in Venice”, shows a sumptuous room where a well-to-do, older couple are sitting in the foreground, the man reading a newspaper while his wife looks directly at us. In the shadowed background a young couple is standing. The feature of the painting is the light that shines on the older pair, particularly the woman, from an undisclosed source at right. The light has a clean but bold quality, soft yet dramatically enlivening – it’s a statement in favour of a couple in the twilight of their years, a reversal of the adoration of youth with the younger folk almost inconspicuous in the room.

The more I looked at the painting and its beguiling evocation of light, the more its sheer beauty struck me. I was almost in tears. The artist had achieved more than technical mastery – which in itself requires talent and years of work – his creation was inspired. The work had transcended its own forms, its technical and functional capabilities, to a level of refinement impossible to describe in words. Its power could only be felt, experienced, its appeal drawing from our highest senses.

Beauty has that spiritual quality, that refinement that takes leave of mundane experience with its separate forms and necessary functional requirements to a different level of consciousness characterised by unity and oneness. As the mundane is transcended it is also transformed, so that everyday life takes its place in that ultimate unity. Light entering a room is not simply light, but an expression of the nameless divine; a seated woman is not simply a woman, but a vessel for divine spirit. We need beauty to remind us who we truly are, in the fullest, most expansive sense. We need beauty’s charm of transcendence.

Nature is perhaps our most constant reminder of beauty. The sublimeness of a red sunrise, the hulking cragginess of ancient rocks on a hill, the power of the ocean pounding on a beach, the misty lushness of a rainforest, all draw us back into ourselves and towards the primal unity. Like the Singer Sargent painting, nature is inspired – which is why for countless millennia humans have worshipped it and sought to explain its wondrous qualities as the work of gods and other divine beings. Nature is the first teacher of beauty: in order to achieve something beautiful the artist has to align their consciousness to reach from that divine, creative ground of being.

As a society we don’t place much value in beauty; or rather it is overshadowed by other considerations. The ugliness of modern cities – with their dominant concrete buildings, roads and endless suburban sprawl – is a triumph of functionalism over beauty, of commerce and industry over simple joy of being. The material considerations of life are important, but they are not the sum of what it means to be human. “Man does not live on bread alone,” the truism tells us, and indeed there lies the root cause of much of what we do wrong as a society – a too narrow vision of life stuck in functionalist materialism. Beauty needs to return as a serious consideration in everything we do, so that human society reflects nature’s beauty more and that reflection finds fertile ground in the life of each individual and community.

Oddly, art itself nowadays finds beauty problematic – for many artists, it is related to conservative or bourgeois values. Hence, much of what is considered cutting-edge art is dark and discordant, aiming to shock or disturb, to deconstruct and disharmonise. In a way, this is symptomatic of where our culture stands more broadly – in a kind of no-man’s-land where the old certainties of religion and values no longer hold, where nothing ultimately is real or makes sense. The artist wanders forlornly through the “dark night of the soul”, the miserable landscape evoked in TS Eliot’s classic modernist poem, The Waste Land.

It’s important to understand that every culture in every period of history has had a particular relationship to beauty, has seen it in different ways and different forms. The spiritual dimension is always entered into from the field of time and space. I think it would be fruitful to investigate our own attitudes and find a way to re-engage with beauty; not in a superficial, Pollyanna or conservative fashion, but with the intention of healing and integration. We don’t have to stay in a dark place in relation to the deeper reality of being – light and dark dissolve in the boundless magnificence that beauty reveals.

Having enough

Only he who knows what is enough will always have enough.

-Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching

My electricity company keeps sending me bills with graphs and colourful pictures. I like the one in which they line up my electricity usage with the average for my type of household. Typically, my consumption is about one-third the norm.

The company’s quoted averages seem awfully large and it would be in its interests to inflate them so people feel comfortable with high levels of consumption, but I’m proud that my glass (or grid) is only one-third full.

Maybe because I’m a conserver and frugal by nature, I don’t struggle to keep electricity use down: I don’t have many appliances, I switch off lights in rooms that aren’t being used, make sure stand-by power is off and use energy-saving light bulbs. It seems fairly simple and no-fuss to have a low-energy, more environmentally sensitive lifestyle, yet it’s not the way that many people choose to live.

Knowing when you have enough is actually quite a radical disposition in our society. Despite inroads made by the environment movement, it is still countercultural to voluntarily limit your material consumption. Ultimately I believe it is a spiritual matter based upon some fundamental questions: Where do you centre your being? What is your understanding and experience of yourself?

Our dominant culture works upon the conception of a fairly small and limited self – an individual who strives to fulfil basic material needs and desires. It manipulates these needs and desires by offering vast and ever-changing selections of material products. In the process, a gap is created between the small self and what each person actually is in the fullness of their being. The gap is in turn bridged with more and ever-changing consumption, but its existence is harmful: it manifests as various kinds of poor physical and mental health such as obesity, neuroses, addictions, anxiety and depression. The ailments that are a result of the restriction of human capacity are then often treated as isolated conditions without understanding the spiritual problem that is at the root.

The small self, the ego grasping solely to satisfy its own wants, more broadly restricts the development of humankind. The global social and environmental challenges we face require an opening outwards towards a much bigger self – one that embraces other people and other species as ourselves. The new “we” that is created can be a dynamic force to heal the planet.

Having enough is based upon a healthy relationship with yourself, upon a recognition of “I am what I am” and not “I am what I have”. It requires a fundamental valuing of self as a growing, organic process that is unbounded, unrestricted. The self, or the soul as it’s also known, has its own needs and requirements that are different, though connected to, the material needs and requirements of the body. In a spiritually developed human being it is the soul that is in charge, directing his or her actions through the personality. Such a person is not enslaved by the chaotic whims of desire and is less prone to be manipulated by outside forces. Far from being restrictive, spontaneity or life force actually increases under the aura of the soul as a person centres deeply in their own being.

There is an invocation that appears in a number of the Upanisads, the Hindu wisdom texts that were written more than 2000 years ago, that goes: That is full, this is full/ Fullness comes forth from fullness/ When fullness is taken from fullness/ Fullness remains. This could be interpreted to mean that fullness is a condition of humanity no matter what state it is in. That is, you are spiritually whole even when you feel empty, even when you have never experienced wholeness. Fullness of being is always available to us and is our true condition, the true fulfilment of what it means to be human – partiality, separation from self, alienation occur as a result of a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.

The path to having enough is simply experiencing fullness in yourself just as you are.

Globalisation for good or ill

Globalisation used to be a dirty word for me. I took part in the anti-globalisation movement that was a force a decade or so ago, marching against corporate greed and global-scale capitalism, blockading with thousands of others the World Economic Forum when it came to Melbourne in 2000.

The intentions of that movement were good: to fight the rapacious exploitation of the world’s resources and people by increasingly powerful corporations, governments and transnational entities like the IMF. However, the processes underlying the growth and reach of the exploiters have also, for instance, fed the development of global environmental organisations and understanding. The ant-globalisation movement was itself, ironically, global in scale and arose out of a global awareness. It all points to a particular transformation of humanity and the planet in our time.

Our species, Homo sapiens, ventured out from its cradle in the great rift valley of East Africa about 100,000 years ago. For thousands of years thereafter, humanity was in a state of dispersion as we spread to most parts of the globe. Separate cultures, languages and physical features formed in adaptation to particular environments and out of the social dynamics of specific human groups. Communication between groups, trade and cross-fertilization of cultures occurred mainly at local and regional levels.

The reversal of the process of dispersion – of humanity drawing back together – began in the 16th century when Spain, Portugal and Holland, followed by France and England, took to the seas during the so-called “Age of Expansion”. The colonial empires they built were global in breadth: cultures from different sides of the world came to be continuously in contact with each other. European power was entrenched through the control of vast new trade routes in natural resources and slaves, and European hegemony was eventually established everywhere – often at the point of a gun. European explorers finally “discovered” and mapped the entire globe.

In our time the process of global convergence is well advanced. Events that occur at one end of the world can have immediate effects everywhere; communication between people shoots instantaneously around the globe; financial systems tie all countries together; political and economic leaders meet to decide global protocols and directions. The result is an emerging planetary “culture” with particular vision and sets of values. Following the historical dominance of the great European powers, this culture is essentially Western in outlook and underpinned by ideas of continuous economic innovation and expansion. However, as can be seen in the rise of worldwide movements for the environment and Indigenous rights, planetary priorities are up for contest. There is no certainty what the global culture will be, say in 100 years’ time, particularly given the volatility of a rapidly increasing human population, scarce resources and the dire realities of climate change. There are also the tensions that occur between local cultures – with their own histories, views and directions – and the overarching global worldview. We can see this, for instance, in the current political struggles in the Middle East as the more globalised democratic impulses clash with older, tribal and authoritarian local traditions.

We are living in a remarkable phase of the Earth’s history. It seems to me that the template for our time needs to be “unity”, that the challenge in the process of global convergence or globalisation is to create systems that nurture and affirm life. The older, fragmented vision of self-interest, of identifying purely with one’s own needs and that of one’s immediate others, has to give way to a much bigger self, the global self. The difficulty is, of course, that the old ways are deeply entrenched in the systems and societies that we have created, and it may be that they will only be transformed by global-scale catastrophe. The nascent world spirit is developing at the edge of a cliff.

In his book Re-enchantment, Australian thinker David Tacey describes the emerging spirituality in our time as moving from an older “either/or” worldview to one of “both-and”. He says: “At the stage of post-enlightenment, life can be understood by way of paradox and complexity.” To me, this holds something important: “both-and” means we include the needs of the individual, the local and the particular with the needs of the planet overall (as in the slogan, “act local, think global”) and what is created out of that is a new life or new phase for the Earth.

I believe we are ultimately agents for and within something bigger than ourselves, that the period of globalisation is not simply happening by blind chance. Humans are an expression of the magnificence of the planet and our journey of self-discovery is very much that of the Earth. That’s why we carry an enormous responsibility of acting with its highest interests at heart, something that we are only just learning to do.

On process

Something happens to us when we reach the middle stages of life: we start to see more of the intangible and subtle dimensions; we start to identify less with the world of objects and more with the patterns and processes that underlie it. At least, that is my experience.

In a culture that is outwardly and objectively focused, process is mostly a mystery. Without wisdom traditions to guide us through the inner pathways of life, many end up in the therapist’s consulting room. Some of us break down severely before we begin to see and act on what is really the truth.

I wonder if we can become attuned to process as the reality of our lives. Process, I believe, requires us to recognise the essential meaning of existence: call it God, Spirit, Buddha or any other name, something in this universe loves us. The universe is held together by love. This cannot be explained by mental reasoning but is a subtle realisation of the heart. Even in the darkest abyss of despair, the universe is still held together by love.

When we realise that life is meaningful, we begin to deeply appreciate process. At each stage in life we are called to certain challenges, certain questions are asked of us, and it is the way we respond that shapes us. Our responses are inevitably influenced by personality, psychological development, culture and other factors, but they are nevertheless opportunities for growth, for wonderful libratory leaps in development. It’s also true that sometimes all that is required is to find the appropriate attitude for a particular stage of life – we simply need the key for the lock, not to rebuild the entire lock. That may be no small task.

Process implies continuous movement and change as life unfolds from one state to the next endlessly. The development of human consciousness means we have the choice to align with the essence of life or negate it: we can choose to be with it or fight against it. Regardless of our conscious attitude, being and unfoldment simply flow on.

I’ve been privileged to be around a few people who were dying. Often because of our strong emotional responses and the suffering of the dying person, we don’t see that a process is under way. The challenge is to find the meaning in the suffering, in the process. Dying, it seems to me, requires a great letting go, and a reckoning of our life in total. We have to accept and deal with the mistakes, miscreations and unfulfilments of our past as well as the beauty and joy we have experienced along the way. We often say that in old age we want a quick death, but to have that opportunity of letting go in dignified circumstances is a great gift and preparation for the next stage of the journey, whatever it is.

The different stages of life each have their threshold at which we are tested before we plunge into the next stage. For all of us these thresholds relate to our physical existence: birth to childhood to adolescence to adulthood to middle age to old age. For a few, those who are actively engaged in inner work, there are also the thresholds and initiations particular to the inner life. As we approach the end of a stage, there is usually great tension as the old patterns and the new collide – we may want to hold on to that which is known and secure but which no longer satisfies us fully. Suffering – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – arises as a result and the grace with which we enter the new is related to how we meet the challenges at the threshold. Only love and compassion and the best in ourselves that we have been able to develop to that point can serve as tools in our endeavour.

An awareness of process allows us a measure of ease in life – we no longer thrash around in a world of objects devoid of meaning, but begin to see and act in accordance with inner patterns. The source of those patterns is life itself, the forms that are created in time and space and that are bound by the physical and spiritual laws that apply in temporal reality. The deeper we look, the greater the depth that is opened to view, even if that means an increase in the size of that which is unknown.

Process is therefore a door into the many layers of reality and into the wholeness of being. It could be said that all things, in as much as they are subject to constant change, are actually processes – dynamically evolving, affecting other processes and in turn affected by them in many ways. I think humanity fully waking up to process will represent a quantum leap in consciousness: separate, dualistic reality will no longer be the template for our actions as something far more subtle and sophisticated takes hold. We can already see awareness in this direction growing in the sciences but collective psyche and culture takes a long time to shift. In the meantime, we can all continue to develop attunement to process, acting as explorers in our own lives and life overall.

Angels and demons

Four stern-looking winged angels in metal stare out on top of the entrance to St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne.

Above the angels are three saintly figures. I’m not a Christian, just a person exploring spirituality as I pass through the entrance into the vast interior of the cathedral for a respite from the world outside.

You don’t hear the Catholic Church talk much about angels these days. Though it has held out resolutely for a long time in many respects, it too is influenced to a degree by the dominant materialist world view that holds physical, objective reality as the only truth.

Angels belonged to the Church’s pre-modern tradition. They, and their demonic counterparts, appear in both Testaments of the Bible (see for instance Genesis 28:12 and Matthew 12:24). Until relatively recently in history, Western culture accepted the existence of angels and demons. Christianity built on and refined the pagan heritage of various spirit beings existing in particular places and in the heavens. The Reformation, followed by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment effectively put an end to this rich world teeming with good and evil “presences”, showing that it was mere superstition, mere myth, the product of culture weak in logic and reason.

Despite this momentous shift, these beings have never completely disappeared, thanks to the attraction they have held for the human imagination. The romantic strains of Western culture, those most appreciative of nature and folk traditions, have helped to keep them alive: one can think of the poetry of Coleridge, Keats and Shelley, the music of Wagner and Greig, the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites. The popularity in contemporary times of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the genre of fantasy fiction generally is testament to an abiding attraction to beings and powers that transcend purely material existence.

Why are angels and demons at all relevant to contemporary reality? The answer lies in our attempts to bring greater connection and meaning to the universe. Recently science has started to challenge and overturn its own long-held mechanistic cosmology of discreet and disconnected objects in favour of the notion of the inter-relatedness and interdependence of all life. In this new way of seeing, humanity is not “alone in the universe”, as some influential 20th century thinkers maintained, but is an integral part of a vast patchwork of inter-related and interdependent phenomena. If this is the case at the physical levels of existence, why should it not also be true at the inner dimensions of reality?

The discovery by Freud, Jung and their contemporaries of the unconscious depths of the human mind has helped modern Western society understand itself better. Jung concluded that angels and demons were manifestations of aspects of human nature or energies of the psyche. In older times humanity had projected those energies onto the world, believing in the actual existence of various gods, fairies, demons and the like. Modern society had turned the projections inwards, and the psychic energies to which they corresponded were now unconscious. Jung famously saw the presence of the ancient Germanic storm god Wotan in the rise of the Nazi movement.

Thinkers like the American philosopher Ken Wilber and the Christian monk Bede Griffiths have started to broaden the reach of the psyche beyond humanity and to conclude that there are psychic or “subtle” dimensions to all reality. For Griffiths, writing in A New Vision of Reality, this means a rediscovery of a pre-modern sensibility in which all things have spiritual as well as material existence; all things are part of one spiritual life. Reason is not abandoned but connected to intuitive wisdom in service of meaning and soul.

I think Griffiths is right. If humanity is part of nature, of a greater life, then the energies of the human psyche must relate to or be present in other phenomena. The discernment of something as an “angel” is a human attempt, through limited human means of perceiving, to define a particular type of energy present in reality. We do the same in naming a “demon”. Both can be seen as aspects of human nature, but they are also present in the universe at large. If we are not isolated beings, this has to be so.

Our actions, no matter what they are, touch on this psychic level. Loving acts invoke angelic energies or angels, bringing them into our individual psychic sphere and allowing those energies to influence us. Likewise, evil deeds court demonic energies. Mostly unconsciously, we pick up the subtle energies around us – for instance discerning certain qualities about a particular place, or a particular person when we walk into a room.

Problems arise when we literalise or overly concretise psychic beings, holding them to be real in a material sense. They’re not – they exist subtly and are best approached through intuition and the imagination. They are powerful and effective in the world, if it is understood that power can be held at a multitude of levels. They should also not be the cause for people losing reason: angels and demons need the moderating hand of the best qualities of humanity in the work towards true wholeness.