Foundations: Session Four B
Nature Part 2: Conversations on miracles, language and idealism.Session Summary - On Miracles
Marilyn: Emerson is into miracles. I found that interesting that he was sort of reusing a fundy (fundamentalist) concept.Paul: Considering where he came from this makes sense. The Unitarians saw matter as proof of God's existence. Emerson turns this to say that spirit forces into matter through will and intellect. His philosophy holds that this isn't a rare occurrence only for the initiated. He didn't like occultist views of spirituality because they were elitist. Emerson held that everything in life is profound and accessible to anyone.
Eldon: But is a miracle a shift of consciousness or an objective change in matter? Emerson says that nature is in Mind as well as physical phenomenon. Maybe the real miracle is to see everything as a miracle?
Paul: Yes. In his essay Illusions Emerson says that Mind creates reality. Its an emblematic, dynamic interaction. The other day I was waiting for the light to change on Arlington and Ellice. I saw this old guy crossing the street. He was wearing faded, baggy clothes and a stupid little hat and walking funny. And this little white dog that looked like a pig, was running after him. The scene struck me as awfully familiar, kind of deja vu like. Then all of a sudden it hit me: it was the Fool and Dog from Bev's Fool tarot card painting. Exactly! It really freaked me out, as if the card had come to life. I felt like I'd entered a different level of reality. Later I saw this was a living emblem of my new life, starting my life as a writer. The fool can represent a new start.
Bev: But on most days you would've just seen a dog.
Paul: Yes. Its like Eldon's question; is it real or is it just our perspective? I think our perspective creates reality. I think somehow something in me called out something on Ellice avenue and this funny old man with his dog appeared and I received a revelation.
Lorna: That reminds me of the walk Dave and I went on this afternoon. Since we enjoy walking , we've been toying with the idea of creating an Emerson Walks web page for our web site. So today we took a camera, and kept our eyes open for Emersonian emblems along the way. But I started to wonder, whether we were open to whatever would come or where we were trying to conjure something? We've gone on a lot of walks but this one felt different. We were trying to capture it. We noticed that everyone else we met on the path was walking the opposite way from us. Later we realized we had started at the end of the trail. When I got home and started to write about this walk, it really struck me that we were seeing things differently and that walking the wrong way was part of that. I don't know whether this was a good thing or not, but it was an emblem to me of how perspective really shapes what you see.
Dave: Yeah, it made me think about whether anything really exists outside of thought? Is nature just a living symbol of something higher?
Eldon: So, does this change the way you live your life?
Marty L: It could make you begin to see the sacred in the everyday.
Eldon: That reminds me of what Emerson said about the forms of nature being everywhere, like architecture being music in another form.
Marty L: My question is, what keeps us from seeing this more often? I find I often end up rejecting when I need to be receiving. I end up not living. I saw this clearly a few months ago when at a garage sale I saw this beautiful blue vase and knew I needed to buy it. I walked by it several times, looking and deliberating. Finally I decided to buy it, but when I turned it around and saw it was broken, I became disillusioned. It no longer wanted it. Weeks later the blue vase still haunted me. I knew I had made a mistake in not buying it.
Paul: These living emblems are important for us to pay attention to. I had the same thing happen to me when in Vancouver many years ago. I had started studying (Carl Gustav) Jung and was going to leave evangelicalism. I bought this beautiful fish that symbolized the possibility of new life for me. But the fish was such a powerful symbol, I became afraid I would idolize it. So I returned it. After that I returned to Winnipeg, to the evangelical church I had left and to a painful realization at my mistake years later.
What keeps us from seeing this living reality? Sleep and ignorance. These emblems come to us as the word of God for us. When we start to see beyond our ego concerns and are passionate towards whatever comes before us, when there is no ideology telling us what we should see, but we see what is before us, then we become receptive to Reality.
On Language
Lyle: I was thinking about the connection between nature and words this week when reading about the evolution of curse words. During the middle ages common curses were "Zounds" and "Gadzooks". These were variations on "God's Wounds" and "God's hooks" (nails), and were obviously religious, Christian references. But today, past the Enlightenment, our cursing tends to be mostly sexual , which is a reflection of our modern, materialistic age.
Marty L: That's funny. I remember hearing Tony Campolo speak to a fundamentalist group. He was trying to raise the issue of homelessness and used the word "shit". I could tell the whole audience bristled at that word, and he had lost them. They were more concerned with the word, than with what he was really trying to say.
Paul: That's great that he used that word. "Shit" "to shit", Emerson would say this is a basic process common to us all. To release toxins from the body. If Tony was using that word consciously, he was saying something about the basic human processes being off. Its like saying "fuck you" to someone. "Fuck" is not about sex, its about humiliation, its a degrading term. In the right context, its totally appropriate. They are powerful words. We need to learn to speak more naturally.
Our blinders prevent us from seeing the power of words. This is what Emerson meant when he talked about language having roots in nature. We need to see our words not as signs, but symbols. They are powerful, evocative. Be careful of what you think about, you'll become it. When you're disinterested, you'll see things. Otherwise you're only looking for what you want. Let language form your character, as a discipline.
On Emerson and Christ
Paul: In order to meet Christ again, outside the institution, you have to die to the old, to be reborn to Christ again. You have to move to a post-modern place in order to make peace with your pre-modern faith. You can't go from faith to nothing. This is what bothers me about where Emerson took Christ. He rightly says that Christ is over-valued in the institution, the he ends up living the creative life for people, and that we need to take that life back. But he leaves Christ in the process.
Lorna: I don't know how to listen to this. I have a genuine aversion to Christ language. Why do you need to "go back"? Why isn't is enough to live as a human, alive, in touch with reality? Whenever I hear this language it becomes a veneer on life, it deadens life for me.
Paul: I think there's a need to go towards my tradition, my roots. I need to affirm both other people's place (universalism) and my own (tradition).
Bev: Maybe that's an idiosyncratic thing for you. I don't have that need myself. Lorna doesn't seem to either.
Paul: Maybe you're right. You didn't get fed there. I found life through that tradition so it makes sense I have a need to integrate it into my life now. I guess we need to honor our own history, and our own responses and learn from them.
On Idealism
Paul: In order to understand Emerson's thoughts on idealism, you have to move beyond the instinctual. You're not bound, not limited to just be a part of instincts, as if there was no thought outside of what you're in. Seeing idealism in nature, Emerson says that Mind exists above matter, and when you're thinking, you can connect to the transcending Mind . Then you start to understand that life flows on its own volition. You don't control it, merely participate in it.
Janice: Then why is Emerson so into will?
Lorna: I think Emerson's idea of will is to follow the essence of things, to not cave in to ego. His idea of will is to choose to follow life.
Paul: You align yourself with a power, and become one. This leads to compassion, you see yourself in all things, you aren't different, but participate in all life. Something is willing us. We're not "white-knuckling" it, calling the shots. If we think our egos matter, then this perspective will cause anxiety. I think Emerson's understanding of will is more like worship or synergy.
Lorna: But you can get lazy with spirituality, use it for yourself instead of participating in it.
Paul: The questions is: "What kind of world do you want to live in?" You make your own gestalt.
Eldon: That reminds me of this story I heard about an astronomer who discovered a new star. He spent all this time documenting its coordinates and stuff and then later realized he had been documenting a cataract in his eye.
Linda: Maybe it doesn't matter. If you're literal-minded, then its the actual physical star that matters, and you'll be "crestfallen" at discovering its only a cataract. But if what the scientist was really looking for was the wonder at how mysterious space is, and at participating in that awe by describing a star, then it doesn't matter that it happened to be a cataract. The universe is still wonderful.
Paul: Its about what is really true. Sometimes grace comes through a lie as well. I visited my grandmother yesterday, and she was talking about my mother as if she had been a gem all her life. At first I felt I had to correct grandma, because of all the vile selfishness I've seen in my mother's life. But although that was true, grandma couldn't handle it. For her, there was something true about Mona having been a gem. The truth would have been a torment to her. This lie mediated grace to her. If grace is the root of life, then the lie was true, even while my own experience was also true.
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