A Downward Journey

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
(Joseph Campbell) 

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how

long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River Gorge

“Meister Eckhart radically revises the whole notion of spiritual programs. He says that there is no such thing as a spiritual journey. If a little shocking, this is refreshing. If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long, though many miles deep. It would be a swerve into rhythm with your deeper nature and presence. The wisdom here is so consoling. You do not have to go away outside yourself to come into real conversation with your soul and with the mysteries of the spiritual world. The eternal is at home — within you.” (John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: a Book of Celtic Wisdom)

When I started this journey of silence and reflection,

I needed to start peeling back the layers to see what is under the surface,

I needed to pop the hood and take a look underneath to see what’s driving things,

I needed to keep drilling down until the truth began to bubble up from the center of my world.

Follow the truth,

no matter where it may lead.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Seek the truth

no matter where it takes us;
no matter how it looks,
we must always face the truth.
~ David Bohm

The following blog post was one of the first I wrote back in 2008. A very early awakening that I had was that this striving upward, to be greater, better, bigger, is misguided, and that there is another, less appealing, and yet critical striving and that is downward. 

For me, it was the beginning of my unraveling, unlearning, uprooting of everything not tested and true. I've found that it was only a beginning when I first wrote the post below. Today, it continues. I am left with a profound groundlessness that I am still getting used to, a groundlessness that is based not on the illusion of certainty and security, a groundlessness that is now my "ground of being" that has set me free... to be.

"Gone from mystery into mystery
Gone from daylight into night
Another step deeper
Into darkness
Closer to the light"
(Bruce Cockburn)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Ground of Being

What is the direction of our striving? What do we spend ourselves on? We arise in the morning and toil until we are weary to the bone. Then we fall in bed, hoping for sleep, so we can do it again the next day. If we are lucky, our endless striving brings us upward, advancing in our career, our religion, upgrading our home, our car, our furniture, our technology, our . . . on and on and on. Ensuring we are better than “them”, safe and secure, and very very comfortable.

OR is it possible that if we are truly “lucky”

we get stopped dead in our tracks;

while everything falls apart at the seams?

After all of our striving, all of our toiling,

we are left ravaged and in shambles;

tattered and torn, battered and bruised, 

derailed and desperate, shattered and shocked,

weathered, worn, and weary.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” (William Butler Yeats)

“But something in me knew that down, down to the ground, was the direction of wholeness, thus allowing that image to begin its slow work of healing in me.

“I started to understand that I had been living an ungrounded life, living at an altitude that was inherently unsafe.”

(Parker Palmer in “Let Your Life Speak” p. 66)

“I had always imagined God to be in the same general direction as everything else that I valued: up. I had failed to appreciate the meaning of some works that had intrigued me since I first heard them in seminary – Tillich’s description of God as the “ground of being”. I had to be forced underground before I could understand that the way to God is not up but down.”

(Parker Palmer in “Let Your Life Speak” p. 69)

“Years ago, someone told me that humility is central to the spiritual life. That made sense to me: I was proud to think of myself as humble! But this person did not tell me that the path to humility, for some of us at least, goes through humiliation, where we are brought low, rendered powerless, stripped of pretenses and defenses, and left feeling fraudulent, empty, and useless – a humiliation that allows us to regrow our lives from the ground up, from the humus of common ground.

“The spiritual journey is full of paradoxes. One of them is that the humiliation that brings us down – down to the ground on which it is safe to stand and to fall – eventually takes us to a firmer and fuller sense of self, When people ask me how it felt to emerge from depression. I can give only one answer: I felt at home in my own skin, and at home on the face of the earth, for the first time.”

(Parker Palmer in “Let Your Life Speak” p. 70)

“There comes a time when both body and soul

enter into such a vast darkness

that one loses light and consciousness

and knows nothing more of God’s intimacy.

At such a time, when the light in the lantern burns out

the beauty of the lantern can no longer be seen.

With longing and distress we are reminded of our nothingness.”

(Mechtild of Magdeburg)

I can testify that it is at that point of “nothingness”

when we are pressed down, down to the ground,

“rendered powerless,

stripped of pretenses and defenses,”

it is then

that our façade falls away,

our ego dissolves,

our endless striving stops,

the clutter of our mind clears,

our eyes open . . . and behold . . .

we are no longer full of ourselves.

From this position we can either

grovel in the dirt

or turn and look up into the open hand of love.

It is here that we connect to

our Ground of Being

our Source of meaning and purpose

the Common ground where all are equal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The above post was posted on November 19, 2008 at the very beginning of my wonderings and writings. 

https://ronirvine.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/ground-of-being/

As I continue to evolve in my understanding and my awakening,

I continue my wonderings and writings with these questions:

If after having let go of everything that identifies and defines us,

after falling and getting up; what if we find that there is no real ground to stand on,
that this too is a story we told ourselves?

Maybe once we fully let go, we lose not only all wanting, longing, and desire

but also all sense of permanency, certainty, security, and comfort.

For all of these are fictions, stories in our heads that we tell ourselves.

Maybe Living with Open Hands is learning to stand on nothing

nothing anchored to past memories or experiences

nothing attached to future longings and desires

nothing grounded in assurances, expectations, and certainties.

We learn again to stand and walk in a groundlessness 
that exists only in each present moment
where nothing is solid
where nothing holds us
where we are free
to be fully human, fully alive
fully living here and now.

If I loose my grip...
will I take flight?