Pull yourself together,
they said.
Pull yourself together,
they said.
Until we know the shape of something, we cannot begin to understand what it might be or what it might mean. It is in the boundaries, the borders, and the identity of something that we find meaning, purpose, and structure. When the mind has no such boundaries the result is madness. The same applies to societies.
We know that children, particularly teenagers – despite huge resistance – require boundaries in order to feel safe enough to explore the process of their becoming. Societies, systems, and nations are the same because without the basis of order nothing is certain and in the madness of all things being possible, things become impossible.
This is not to say that boundaries (which are our beliefs, traditions, practices) should not change or be redrawn, but that removing them quickly is disorienting and dangerous. Where do we fall when there is nothing to fall against? What stops us from tumbling into some abyss when there is no defined border?
The famous poem by Yeats touches upon the need for the centre to hold. Yeats reminds us why it is important that some things hold fast in order to retain a semblance of order, without which there is chaos. The poem reflects our age where we are tearing down the structures of the past at a sickening pace, leaving individuals and society vulnerable, like some crab that has discarded its shell and now creeps, soft, weak, piteously defenceless until a new carapace can be grown; until a defined, protective border is in place.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The Second Coming – William Butler Yeats
We may not value many things which we have inherited from the past, but we should recognise that the fact they have been handed down means they are important in ways we do not understand.
In every act of destruction of the past, whether statues, gender roles, political systems, traditions, we are removing the borders which have helped keep our world in place. Defined beliefs like armour which preserve and protect, and which can be removed slowly, in small steps. But, where if too much is discarded too quickly, we risk everything.
And when we tinker with things we do not understand we unleash demons beyond imagining and believe that anything can and should be possible, or acceptable then we open ourselves and our world to much we may not have imagined. As the maxim has it – be careful what you wish for.
‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’ are the words from ancient Hindu scripture, which Robert Oppenheimer quoted when he realised what had been created. There are more ways to create an atomic bomb than the literal.
The pace of change in the Western world, in particular over the past century, has been faster than ever before. We humans have evolved over many thousands of years with certain beliefs that have underpinned our societies. While there can and should be variations on those themes, there are basics that form the glue holding society together. One of which is that there are males and females and they come together in committed unions and create life so humanity may endure. Another is that there is more to this world than the merely material and that we have spiritual needs which demand attention. The Ten Commandments, not surprisingly, reflect the basic rules which have enabled humans to not just survive but to thrive.
A healthy society respects and preserves at least half of these rules for life – honour your father and mother; do not kill but protect life; honour the sacrament of marriage; do not steal; do not lie and do not envy others and covet what they have.
The first four rules pertain to religion and in the past century, at least in the Western world, religion has declined and been demonised and mocked, by the new Mammon which is Science. We no longer believe in honouring our parents and certainly do not honour the sacrament of marriage between a man and a woman. Even telling lies is not condemned in this age, but at times, applauded. As to coveting what others have- all too often that is deemed to be a requirement and not a failing.
So, out of the ten rules for life, or commandments as they have been called, we really only still hold to two – do not kill and do not steal. Although even here, the bed in which they lie is rotting because we do kill with abortion and euthanasia, and even stealing can be justified it seems. The Greens recently defended an article that argued it was justifiable for people on low incomes to steal from supermarkets like Woolworths and Coles. No more of this transported to the colonies for stealing a sandwich stuff.
This means the protective shell of such traditions which have held for millennia is pretty much in tatters. Which also means that ‘anything goes’ and that means absolutely anything. We already have people talking publicly in support of adults having sexual relationships with children; of men becoming women and vice-versa; of children being chemically and surgically altered; of sperm, egg, and womb being purchased so two men or two women can have a child – anything is possible, everything is accepted, and there are no rules to hold society together.
Not only does the centre not hold but nothing is held in place, in shape, in form and we barely conceive of the monster we have created, so well described by Yeats:
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/a-society-without-boundaries-is-madness/
We are breaking into pieces,
without Soul’s backbone,
to hold it all together.
Crumbling into sad, small bits
of almost being, where we
can no longer identify the
shape of who we are, let
alone who we should be in
this pockmarked form of
creation without Self.
Where Spirit weeps dark
tears, at the soft mound of
shredded becoming and we
wait, to touch, the outstretched
hand of love which is forever
held in offering to firm Spirit,
as eternal connectedness.
A
SPIRITUAL LIFE
The earth, the sky, the sea..
the bird, the ant, the you, the me...
the rock, the fruit, the tree..
it's all God....
it's called to Be.
I use the word Spiritual a lot. I define myself as seeking to live a spiritual life.
By that I mean a life where I have a
lot of time for God and little or no time for religion.
Religion can of course be spiritual
but often it is not. And spirituality can be religious but it does not need to
be.
For me reacting to life from a
spiritual perspective means that I see everything, and I mean everything, as
having purpose and meaning as part of my spiritual growth. Nothing happens by
chance and good can come out of everything. It is of course far more complex
than that. And yet, at the same time, incredibly simple.
Having explored many religions in my
life I finally decided to stick with God and stay away from religion. Hence I
began to use the word spiritual a lot. So what do I mean? I have started to ask
myself that question.
We need to understand what we mean
when we use words to describe who we are or how we live. We need to understand
what we are saying for our own sake.
The dictionary definition of
spiritual includes:
·
religious: concerned with sacred matters or religion or the church; religious
texts; a member of a religious order; lords temporal and ... (Yes, I am
concerned with sacred matters but not religion)
·
apparitional: resembling or characteristic of a phantom; a ghostly face at the
window; a phantasmal presence in the room; spectral emanations; spiritual
tappings at a seance (this is a part of what is defined as spiritual but not
an important part for me. These are effects not substance.)
Everyone
is different, every journey is different, every Soul is unique and that is why
each and every spiritual journey is unique. We may learn from the experiences
of others but we must always walk the spiritual path alone. Perhaps that is why
spirituality and religion make such odd bed-fellows. A religious life demands
that we obey rules, that we believe what others tell us, that we conform. While
a spiritual life demands that we live by our own inner rules; that we question
everything we are told by others and that we are guided by our own truth... a
truth which emerges from our intuitive relationship with God.
With
religion God is given to us - handed out on a patriarchal platter in the main.
With a spiritual life we are called to search for God in every moment of our
being. Religion hands God out in defined shapes and forms; spirituality offers
God without shape or form.
A
religious life is bounded and hounded by rules; a spiritual life has no
boundaries and no urgency. A religious God is made in the image of man (mostly
men with female support staff) while a spiritual God is in any and every image
and yet without image for it is the source and being of all things.
It's
interesting trying to define what one means by the use of a word and it makes
me realise how inadequate words are to describe such things. No wonder the
ancients decided that God was beyond words.
Carl
Jung said, 'symbol is the lost language of the Soul,' and the spiritual journey
is always symbolic. Within those images we find God without turning God into an
image. It is not an easy journey because so much of it is solitary and their
are no rules, except for the ones that you discover upon the way. But within
that place of terror where you realise that at the end of the day, it is between
you and God and your job is to do the hard work, there is freedom. When you
depend upon others and the beliefs of others you remain dependent; when you
depend upon yourself and your relationship with God, only then are you truly
free.
And
the beauty of the spiritual path is that you can find God in your own way. It
requires a commitment to walk with open eyes ... most of the time anyway ...
and to remain open to all that is, knowing that within any 'death' there is
always 'rebirth.'
And
there will be many 'deaths' along the path. It can be no other way. And that is
why so few choose to walk the Spiritual Path for, as W.H. Auden so succintly
wrote:
We
would rather be ruined than changed.
We
would rather die in our dread
than
climb the cross of the moment
and
let our illusions die.
This
is actually the only quote I remember and I am sure there is a reason for that
as well. Perhaps as a reminder of how hard it is to let our illusions die. And
the most powerful illusion that we have and which most of us refuse to let die,
is certainty. For it is such a comfortable illusion that we never cease
striving to attain it. But illusion it is.
Living
with uncertainty is the First Lesson on the Spiritual Path.