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.

In the land of the tree ferns

The air is damp, perpetually damp, no matter what the season. It’s heavy and close. There is shade, so much shade that the sun’s only presence is the odd hesitant ray. And all around are the brooding figures of giants clothed in brown with enormous fanned heads of green.

I’ve been a few times to this place near a friend’s property in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, each time seductively lured by its strange, exotic, somehow dangerous feel. You approach through a tall forest of messmate and manna gum before the ground starts to slope steeply downwards. The eucalypts disappear as the ground becomes muddy and a creek whispers somewhere below. Unmistakably, inexorably, you are in the territory of the tree fern.

Below a certain level there seems to be no other plant but the tree fern – this is their domain. They stand dense and watchful, their crowns spreading outwards like great umbrellas, discarded limbs piling up around them. I’ve rarely made it all the way to the creek: the child part of me tells me to stop at some point on the descent. This world is so foreign that it scares as it entices. If you stand around long enough, hungry leeches come crawling. It’s better that the visit is short.

I’m fascinated by our relationship with nature. If we are to have a healthy relationship with non-human nature we have to accord it the respect it deserves, which includes understanding our inner or psychic interaction with it. In the modern Western way of looking at the world, my response to the place of the tree ferns would be seen in the light of psychological projection: I project certain emotions, fears etc. outwards. The environment is a catalyst for drawing emotions out of me, but it has no intrinsic quality, no intrinsic consciousness. If I say that it does, I am guilty of anthropomorphism, which is falsely seeing the human in non-human nature.

This is a simplistic and outdated view. Projection is real, but it is not the full story. Projection occurs because a person lacks sufficient insight into their own inner condition and has not integrated aspects of their emotional life. As Carl Jung pointed out, many people carry “autonomous” complexes which cause them to feel strongly a particular way when triggered in certain conditions; others in the same circumstances may react very differently. Unless we are highly mature, integrated people we will project our inner world to some degree. Yet it is also true that projections can be withdrawn as a person psychically matures. The realities of psychically healthy and non-integrated people are very different; while true objectivity doesn't exist, we gain a much more balanced and nuanced view of the world when we can arrive at emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

I struggle to imagine a fully enlightened person striding down the slope of the tree ferns and not engaging with that place. With a level of balance in ourselves, we begin to recognise that all life has intrinsic value and some kind of consciousness. The life of the plant world is different in many ways to our own, but it deserves respect and respectful enquiry through the lens of relationship not human dominance.

When I am in the land of the tree ferns, a psychic relationship occurs. The life that I am, with all that is in me, meets the life in the environment, with all that it is. My emotional response, if I am honest with myself and not engaging in projection, carries the quality of the relationship. Like any relationship, it needs to be understood but will always have some level of mystery, of the unknown. If I feel wary or uneasy, maybe it is not right for me to be there. Until the relationship deepens or I understand more about the environment and my own responses to it, I may continue to feel the same way. Relationships can change over time, but we need always to pay attention to them, to their quality.

I’m interested in the pre-modern stories of certain places like high mountains. When the first mountaineers attempted to climb the Swiss Alps in the early 19th century, locals warned them about dragons living at the top of the peaks. Likewise, the first Westerners who set out to climb Mount Everest were told not to do so because frightful and vengeful demons were up there.

Naturally, we rational moderns laugh at such stories and deride them as superstition. Yet, many people have died and continue to die in alpine areas. The dragons and demons do exist: psychically, emotionally, mythologically. The gear that contemporary mountaineers carry and the preparations they make are markers of a certain relationship to the environment and that relationship continues on their way to the summit. Many climbers become deeply spiritual for the experience. The life of the climber is affected and influenced by the life of the mountain.

We need to rediscover and revalue our relationships with nature. Most of our contemporary myths are related to human material wellbeing and power: there’s the myth of progress, the myth of the economy, the myth of success, of the self-sustaining individual. Nature, in the stories we tell ourselves and which frame our world, is largely absent. Global climate change is forcing us to see the world and ourselves differently, and the myth of Gaia – the wondrous blue planet on which we live – is starting to emerge. As in the land of the tree ferns, so too in every other place on Earth, the challenge is to broaden our horizons, our understanding, through the pathways of relationship.

Barabbas laments

Wholeness requires that we accept and integrate aspects of ourselves and our society that are difficult and hard to face. With that in mind, I was recently drawn to the biblical references to Barabbas, the outlaw who was released from prison in Jesus’ stead. It made me think how every small piece of the jigsaw puzzle of life is connected, how no piece is ultimately more significant than any other, and that everything somehow fits. Barabbas was given the rough end of the pineapple, so to speak, by history and deserves better.

Barabbas laments

So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.
Mark 15:15

I was prepared for death,
Prepared as any man could be.
When the guards came to the cell
They laughed so hard
Their armour rattled and creaked.
I didn’t stop to see him crucified.
I ran as soon as I was out,
Ran for life in my bones and air in my lungs.

I took Tinneus’s donkey and rode to Samaria.
My father’s eyes bid me a frozen welcome.
He broke the milk jug
As he heaped his sour bag of misery
On my shoulders.
I spat and left his shitty hovel.

I am on the road now, many years since.

And I am tired of the looks saying
"You should have been in his place."
The whispers, the sneers,
The women without kindness,
The taverns unfriendly, the towns
With their gates shut.

If not for me,
What glory for this Son of Man?
For a martyr cannot be questioned,
Cannot be doubted but his life (and death)
Are aflame with heaven.
I am no preacher or spinner of charmed words,
I work with my hands and know what is good.

King of the Jews, Son of Man.
His followers throng, they appear
As out of the ground in every town.
They parade and sing
And mimic his path to the cross.

King of the Jews, Son of Man.
They say God willed his death,
So I played my part;
No man can deny this.

How am I different to him?

Nature and the divine

I used to frown at the rows of English elms that line my walk to work each morning through Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens, but somehow I have fallen in love with them.

These are foreign trees, I used to say to myself. They were planted in the 19th century in that European sensibility of the promenade – the stately arboreal avenue framing the weekend strolls of couples and families at leisure. Whatever was here originally – red gums, yellow box, grassy tussocks – had to give way to an imported Europeanness with little interest in the indigenous quality of the land.

My view of the English elms began to change on a sunny day last autumn. The 30-metre giants were clothed in yellow – a vast golden dress shimmering along their length in the sunshine. Whenever a breeze blew, curtains of gold leaves descended on the path, a drifting dazzle. A stranger walking in the opposite direction with his head craned upwards stopped in front of me. “Isn’t that amazing,” he said. I felt blessed to be in the presence of this ordinary, extraordinary sight, this vision from heaven.

Ever since, my respect for the elms and whoever planted them has increased. I’m interested in the craggy, furrowed grey bark. In the way the trunk splits into two main branches and how the leaves cascade in wisps down the tree, as if it wears them like a boa. My morning walks to work have new grace and meaning, though it is hard to explain how exactly. The English elms have presence and character, soul.

Every day people walk past those trees without appreciating them; they’re simply a backdrop to busy thoughts cocooned in busy lives. Then we wonder why we are out of balance with nature and perplexed about how the situation can be fixed. The answer is directly in front of us: it’s in how we live our lives, in the quality of attention and consciousness we give to all life. Only a full re-enchantment of nature, a full awareness of everything as being alive, can lead to human harmony with and within the natural world.

I think there are three fundamental steps in human realignment with nature: appreciation, kinship and spiritual grace. In the first, we are moved by nature’s beauty and quality but we are outsiders observing it. This tends to be the most common attitude: we go to nature for the scenery, for the chance to see animals in the wild, for the fun and enjoyment of the beach, for the walks through magnificent forest. It’s important we do this because our lives would be impoverished if we didn’t and the default position in our culture is an almost complete mental separation from nature – many people feel disconnected even in the midst of great wonder. However, though we are being moved in some way, we are as outsiders looking in. There is a gap between “us” and what we define as the “natural world”.

In the second stage, that of kinship, we move beyond the position of spectator to recognising a relationship between us and nature. Thankfully, this appears to be a growing trend. Scientists, at least at the intellectual level, are rapidly coming to the conclusion that all life is related and all life is interdependent. That means we have a responsibility to nurture and care for all living ecosystems. In the position of kinship there is an implicit understanding that we are bound up with nature; we feel its pleasure and pain as our own. The inflated human ego is brought back to a point at which it can appreciate commonality with other beings. Ancient Western and Indigenous cultures established kinship relations with plants and animals knowing that mutual care and responsibility was the order of the world, and that great harm would result if those ties were broken.

Aspects of spiritual grace, the third step, can be found in the earlier stages. At the level of appreciation, it is something mysterious: we can’t fully explain why we feel a certain sense of harmony or balance, why there is deep contentment or even why at times we may be moved to tears. Spirit is the animating dynamic of the universe and it moves through and is in everything. Spirit is oneness: when we are conscious of it, we recognise the unity of all things. All is one and there is no separation. Spiritual grace opens us to a relationship of true depth with nature where we are in touch with the deepest essence – we act to further all life. With the benefit of spiritual grace, we begin to open to the different levels of being, to the different stages at which life operates in us and in everything.

Nature can be the gateway to Spirit, but so can any other aspect of living. The point is the development of a level of consciousness that is receptive to and aware of Spirit; once this consciousness establishes and grows in an individual the divine is increasingly experienced as ever-present. The challenge is to create the conditions in one’s own life and personality for Spirit, then to bring that reality to concrete action in the world.