Our Words

I've just completed binding and getting ready the latest collaborative book done by the Photo Art Journals Yahoo group which I moderate. For this book I asked members to decide on a word to name their year which would help them focus their intention for the year ahead.

What would their lives look like if they embraced and lived this word daily?

And then ... they had to creatively photograph their word!  I then had fun creating a Wordle out of all the intention words that were chosen which I used as the cover for the book.

Thanks to the wonderfully creative members of this group for making this such an enjoyable project for me to put together.  You came up with some great ideas!

Here are links to photographs created for this collaborative book by some of the participants.  I love reading about their process of deciding on the word they chose.
Karen Dorcas in Alaska.
Louie Shellenberger
Paul Bogdan

The Mystic Path: Unitive Vision

Unitive Vision is the final stage of the mystic path. The best description I can find of what this is, is from Meister Eckhart, a 14th Century German mystic.  He says: "If I am to know God directly, I must become completely He and He I: so that this He and this I become and are one I."

If I consider the dark night that comes before this stage of union as a time of germination, then perhaps this stage is one of re-birth into a new reality.

To try and understand this more fully I once again looked to the mystical poets and Hafiz (as translated by Daniel Ladinsky) once again gave guidance:

 

The Seed Cracked Open

It used to be

That when I would wake in the morning

I could with confidence say,

"What am 'I' going to

Do?"

that was before the seed

Cracked open.

Now Hafiz is certain:

There are two of us housed

In this body,

Doing the shopping together in the market and

Tickling each other

While fixing the evening's food.

Now when I awake

All the internal instruments play the same music:

"God, what love-mischief can 'We' do

For the world

Today?"

Does my SoulCollage® card have any wisdom for me?

Take it one step at a time.
The way is always clear.
Let light guide your path towards the Light.

The Mystic Path: Dark Night of the Soul

Most of us have experienced the "dark night of the soul" in one form or another.  Mystics are as human as the rest of us and also experience times of deep sadness and fatigue when nothing seems meaningful or even makes sense and when one feels abandoned. But it appears that this period of the "dark night" also is a period of growth.

St. John of the Cross, who is most well known for the phrase "the dark night of the soul" talked about it as a "passive purification, a state of helpless misery, in which the self does nothing, but lets Life have its way with her".

It seems to me that if I think of this stage of growth and discovery as similar to that of a seed in the deep darkness of the soil.  Essential expansion is taking place within, even though from without it doesn't look as important as the more exciting phases of budding and blooming.  Perhaps this is a time of "gestation of the soul".

And the wisdom from my card?

I am the one who waits patiently in the dark allowing the sadness and despair to wash over me.
I am the one who knows that there is no light without darkness.
I am the one who is growing wings in my darkness, although I am not aware of them sprouting.

The Mystic Path: Ecstasy and Rapture

According to Evelyn Underhill's study of the mystical path, ecstasy is "an exceptionally favorable state; the one in which man's spirit is caught up to the most immediate union with the divine". I come closest to understanding this state through the poetry of some of the mystical poets, such as Rumi, Hafiz, St. John of the Cross and St. Catherine of Siena.  The absolute joy and connectedness they feel with the Divine appears to lift them to a higher state of being.

One of the most amazing collections of these poems is found in the book Love Poems from God by Daniel Ladinsky. Each poem speaks profoundly to connection, not just by the poets to God, but to all of creation.



I have chosen this poem by Hafiz from the book I Heard God Laughing, (also translated by Daniel Ladinsky) because it speaks to me of the deep connection of the mystic to God in all things.

I Am So Glad

Start seeing everything as God,

But keep it a secret.

Become like a man who is Awestruck

And Nourished

Listening to a Golden Nightingale

Sing in a beautiful foreign language

While God invisibly nests

Upon its tongue.

Hafiz,

Who can you tell in this world

That when a dog runs up to you

Wagging its ecstatic tail,

You lean down and whisper in its ear,

"Beloved,

I am so glad You are happy to see me.

Beloved,

I am so glad,

So very glad You have come."

And so what does my SoulCollage® card say to me?

I am the one who has the wings to fly into the encircling arms of all creation. 
I am the one who rides the wild horses of joy, going wherever they lead, knowing that all is well.
I am the one who opens up and says "I am here.  I am waiting."

The Mystic Path: Contemplation and Introversion

We live in a world where time for contemplation and inner listening do not happen unless we consciously make time to be quiet.  Often this means saying "no" to friends and family and hoping they will understand that the time you make for yourself is just as important as time you give to them. 

This was said a little differently in the Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer: "I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself."  When I first read these words I thought they had been written incorrectly.  Surely the author meant to write "....if you can disappoint yourself to be true to another."  Surely one should always put other people first? Wasn't it selfish disappointing others?  It took me quite some time to understand the true meaning of this line.  It is about being true to your Soul.

I believe that turning inwards doesn't need to be meditation.  It can be sitting on the side of a stream fishing, lying watching the clouds go by, reading spiritual literature, sitting on the beach watching the waves and digging your bare feet into the sand, walking a labyrinth. For the mystics it was a way to God. Angela of Foligno says that through contemplation "the eyes of her soul were opened".

My SoulCollage® card says to me:
Make time to align your soul with the cycles of nature.  They are your teachers.  Let the moon speak to you.  Let the trees speak to you.  Unless you listen with careful attention you will not hear what they are saying.  You too are part of these cycles, and time in quiet is to you what the soil is to a seed and what the soil is to the roots of the tree.  It nourishes and feeds at a deep level and is necessary for growth.

The Mystic Path: Voices and Visions

This is an interesting stage to consider as it is a stage where some might think the mystic has in fact gone mad. Evelyn Underhill suggests that visions and voices are to the mystic what pictures, poems and musical compositions are to the great painter, poet or musician, and that they are messengers which speak to all the senses, not only sight and hearing.

It seems to me that dreams are a form of vision, and the voice that Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love heard telling her to "Go back to bed, Liz" was real to Elizabeth.  But of course, this doesn't mean that anyone that dreams or feels guided is a mystic.  It is just interesting to note that voices and visions are not as unusual as one would imagine.

Eileen Caddy, one of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland, in the book Weavers of Wisdom: Women Mystics of the Twentieth Century by Anne Bancroft says this about voices:

"You know if you start hearing voices and you're having a difficult time, you begin to wonder if you're going to end up in a mental hospital.  I thought I was having a breakdown, quiet honestly.  But that's the way it started, over thirty years ago, and I've been living by that voice ever since.  And that's what my life has been all about.  Listening, and not only listening but following it through."

"Listen, listen, listen," the voice said to her.  "To become a good listener you have to listen often.  You have to spend time in absolute stillness and learn to be."

So what did my SoulCollage® card representing this stage of the mystic path say to me?

I am the one who exists between earth and spirit.
I am the one who is all around you and always available when you need guidance.
I am the one who can show you your magic if you just look up and look within.

The Mystic Path: Illumination

Illumination is the third stage of the path of the mystic. According to Evelyn Underhill to "see God in nature" and be conscious of the "otherness" of natural things is the most common form of illumination. Beauty inspires illumination and the state of illumination results in the expression of love and rapture, such as one finds in mystical poetry.

Poets such as William Blake, John Keats, Rumi, Hafiz and in my opinion, Mary Oliver share with us the discoveries they make when they feel close to the Divine. The artistic form is the best way to communicate the goodness, truth and beauty that the mystic is opened to in the state of illumination.

The following poems/extracts illustrate this for me.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
John Keats

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."
William Blake 

The beauty of the heart

is the lasting beauty:

its lips give to drink

of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,

that which pours,

and the one who drinks.

All three become one when 

your talisman is shattered.

That oneness you can't know

by reasoning.

Rumi

"I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world."

Mary Oliver

And as I let my SoulCollage® card speak to me, it says:

I am the one who receives illumination into my very core.
I am the one who basks in the light shining down on me.
I am the one who feeds on the beauty of the world around me.
I am the one who is infused with the pure joy of existence.

What poems remind you of your connectedness to All Life, a connectedness that makes you feel fully alive?