Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man (sic) has gone before!
When I hear or see this intro to Star Trek, it still sends shivers up and down my spine. “To go where no human being has ever gone before.”
What a thrilling prospect!
To be the first person to lay eyes on the bones of a prehistoric ancestor;
To make a scientific discovery that breaks new ground;
To engage in a relationship that opens new vistas in your life;
To see the world for the first time when you were blind from birth;
To discover unimagined potentials in yourself.
This is the allure of vacation trips to exotic places. We imagine ourselves sitting on a sunlit beach by the ocean in Hawaii or skiing down mountain trails in the Alps. Each offers the opportunity to leave the sometimes drab regularity of our day-to-day lives and to experience something new. Most of us can't afford to spice up our lives regularly with these extravagances. For many of us, even a single “trip of a life-time” is out of the question.
I sometimes fantasize about taking such a trip to relieve the boredom in my life. Even in my fantasies, I know that the physical experience alone is not sufficient. It's the imagining, the anticipation, and the remembering that makes it special. It's the emotional, psychological, spiritual dimensions of the trip that count.
I remember when we adopted our 5 week old son, Timothy. I was a grad student, tired and pushing. It was three days after the first moon landing. We arrived at the adoption agency and were ushered into a small room with a crib. Jean looked down at the baby and said, “Hi Timothy.” Timothy smiled. Our hearts melted. My life lit up.
The same was true when are daughter, Rebecca, was born to us a year later. I was present at her birth. Once again my life lit up.
I am a now a grandfather, living near my daughter and grandson. As with years ago, my life lights up when I am with them.
It isn't “a once in a life-time excursion” that lifts me out of the mundane. It is the inner anticipation, excitement, yearning and emotion that make these experiences worthwhile. Even when I am sitting in a room with my grandson, I am “exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life, and boldly going where no one has gone before.”
I realize that my experiment in praying for my enemies was also a journey into the unknown. I started out saying, “Bless A; Bless B; etc. Soon the act was more than a mechanical recitation. It was suffused with a powerful yearning that my enemies and I could be part of something greater than our own set of desires and fears.
I was no longer troubled by questions like;
To Whom or What am I praying?
What should I pray for?
Should I have an agenda as I pray for my enemies?
My process of “prayer” morphed into engaging something mysterious that is deep in me and also “out there.” It is almost as if I am in touch with a deep yearning of the cosmos. It's not something I can control. It's more like something of which I become a part.
Now when I pray, I am gripped less often by the sense that I am seeking power or insights to help me deal with specific problems. I feel strangely comfortable that I will be able to discern how I can most effectively contribute. It's no longer “me against the world.” Nor is it “me against my enemies.” I am engaged in something greater.
My experience is similar to that described in “The Cloud of Unknowing” written by an early mystic.i The author asserts: "We can not think our way to God. He can be loved but not thought. So, we dwell in a not-knowing (or claiming to know more than we possibly can) of God.”
This is not a purely emotional experience. My thinking self is still engaged. It's just that ideas and concepts no longer dominate my engagement. As with my experience of adopting of our son, the birth of our daughter and time with my grandson, I am part of something akin to love. Just as the ancient mystic used the word “God” to allude to something he experienced as a “cloud of unknowing,” I am using “energy of the cosmos” to allude to what I am experiencing.
This takes me back to the beginning of this reflection. Physical experiences alone can't free us from the mundane. It's what's on the inside that gives meaning. When we are in touch with this dimension of life, even everyday experiences can be adventures of discovery.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture that focuses primarily on the external. This has dulled our consciousness. We have become automatons conditioned by cultural expectations. We are bombarded with ads that urge us to purchase goods and services intended to enhance our creature comfort. We are told we will have more control of our life if we hire certain consultants or use specific products. Politicians incite fear of certain individuals or groups to promote their programs.
I, like you, am influenced by these societal pressures: I exercise every morning, partly to enhance my health and partly because I envy younger people who are in good physical shape. I read voraciously, partly because it feeds my curiosity and partly because I want to compete with people who are better informed. I push myself, partly because I want to live a full, healthy life and partly to keep up with the competition. I even catch myself watching the clock during meditation rather than flowing with the experience.
We all have a tremendous need to grow our interior lives; our consciousness. Only in this way will we appreciate life, in all of its mundane aspects, as truly enlivening. In this way, we can we live proactively, inspired by goals that transcend the negativity of our complex and dangerous times.
The writer of “The Cloud of Unknowing” gives this advice to engage the cosmic mystery, to grow in greater consciousness.
For He (God or the cosmic mystery) can well be loved, but he cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held. And therefore, though it may be good at times to think specifically of the kindness and excellence of God, and though this may be a light and a part of contemplation, all the same, in the work of contemplation itself, it must be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you must step above it stoutly but deftly, with a devout and delightful stirring of love, and struggle to pierce that darkness above you; and beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love, and do not give up, whatever happens."[6]ii
It doesn't require a Herculean act of will power to grow in consciousness through the power of love. Quite the opposite. One needs to follow the deep yearning to love and to be loved - a yearning that is common to us all. This feels risky in our externalized and goal oriented culture. So it is difficult to follow this yearning.
I experienced this when we adopted our son and when our daughter was born. My life lit up, but I couldn't appreciate the gift in this. I was so consumed by the pressures of my studies that I repressed the yearnings of my heart. It is only now, through my daughter and grandson, that I finally appreciate this gift in me.
It's not that I was totally unappreciative earlier in my life. It's just that engaging the cosmic mystery in the “Cloud of Unknowing” is a gradual process. It involves a metamorphosis, a transformation of the way we view the world. When guided by a deeper consciousness, we begin to realize that this is a major reorientation, “it's more WE then ME.”
I discovered, but wasn't truly appreciative of this, when I was director of Madison-Area Urban Ministry. We engaged community conflicts looking for win-win rather win-lose options. We were often able to promote “out of the box” strategies that reduced injustices while also changing people's perceptions of one another. I now realize that Dr. MLK was right when he reiterated the advice given by the writer of the “Cloud of Unknowing. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.”
I would add, “Love is the only force capable of transforming our consciousness of what it means to be authentically human.” We have the potential, individually and collectively, to move to a deeper level of conscious. This will allow us to experience our daily lives in a new light. We are part of a cosmic flow that gives us the potential to become more than we ever imagined.
We, like the women and men of the starship Enterprise, are on a mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before!
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
-Mary Oliver, Dream Work (Atlantic Monthly Press)
|
i https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/reading-spiritual-classic-cloud-unknowing
ii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_of_Unknowing
