A Lark

 

   

    Who shows up for the page?  And how is it that  the "I" who shows up for the page is connected to the creative exercise, in my case of writing?  Dr. Eric Maisel, a San Francisco-based therapist who works predominantly with artists, musicians, writers, believes that you should use the liminal state, that state between waking and physical sleep, for your creative work.  He recently spoke at a neighborhood bookshop.
    I asked him if that liminal state would not be better used spiritually, say by sitting in meditation?  Such a look he threw me!  I pushed on.  Wouldn't opening to a higher consciousness first thing, feed you for the rest of the day and nourish your creative work?
    "It's a matter of what you put first, what you want to accomplish,  next question!" He said.
    "I" can't accomplish much, I said.   But  it was plain to see his sails were full of wind and that perhaps, somewhere along the line he'd been pinched, narrowed to the idea of spirituality or dare I say, religion?

Religion - the word originates from the Greek, meaning to link back or make whole.

Mary Ellen Korman's new book, A Woman's Work with Gurdjieff, Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Anandamayai Ma & Pak Subuh: The Spiritual Life Journey of Ethel Merston,  recently published by Arete Communications, provides valuable keys for those in search of the miraculous.

    The spiritual life story of Ethel Merston based on her diaries and recollections is an important historical work, as well as a keen insight into many of the seminal teachers of her times. Merston was one of Gurdjieff's first English pupils and lived at the Prieuré from 1922 until 1927. Her seriousness and organizational abilities led Gurdjieff to put her in charge in his absences. Fritz Peters gives a wonderful account of what she had to put up with (he gives her the name Miss Madison) in his Boyhood with Gurdjieff.   

    In India, she lived at Ramana Maharshi's ashram for many years. She gives a first-person account of his death and also the meeting between The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and Anandamayi Ma (with whom she often traveled). She also attended many of Krishnamurti's talks and seminars in the 1930s, was a friend of Sunyata, Alain Daniélou, Krishna Prem and Swami Omananda. In the 1950s she was initiated into Subud by Pak Subuh at J. G. Bennett's Coombe Springs study house. At Mendham, she met again her friends from her Gurdjieff days—Mme de Salzmann, Mme Ouspensky, Olga de Hartmann and Peggy Flinsch—and was introduced to Lord John Pentland.

    Thinking about castles and who turned up in my subconscious soup, Joan of Arc! Must be all the moats and towers on my mind.
    I wonder, did Joan hear the Voice of God?  Or was she fed up with the One Hundred Year War, with the Brits that had been going on and on, well, for close to a hundred years and France was about finished.
    So she climbed into some handy armor, threw her leg over a nearby horse and off she trotted to present her services.  (Imagine, even throwing a leg over a horse, that is for a woman to ride astride in 1429 was simply not done, jamais!)
    Perhaps Joan did hear the "call" -- the Voice awakening her to serve.  Perhaps she was astonished at her response to the call.  Maybe she trotted off muttering her disbelief.  But she changed the course of the conflict.  The French rallied and France was saved.
    Was she mad?  Or was she responding to a keener sound?

Oh!  Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon.
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
                                  --Wallace Stevens

    Last night I was reading G.I. Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson and round about page 200, Beelzebub, the narrator, explains to his grandson that mankind had divided animals on the planet Earth into "clean" and "unclean". 
    Of note, among the clean animals were sheep, and lucky for us, as they are so much weaker than man.  And among the unclean animals, lions.  Again, lucky for us they were classified "unclean" as they are so much stronger. 
    So, man,  don't bother the unclean lions, but hurry, tidy the clean sheep into ever so polite flocks for slaughter. 
    Do I, internally herd the sheep,  and avoid the lion?  An  old expression comes to mind...don't poke the sleeping tiger, or is it lion? 
    Questions and challenges come up in my life, and I ask myself, can I do this...yes, ...that would nicely merge with my inner sheep, but oh, no, not that other.  I can't do that which rouses the lion...I sense a growl round about my mid-section, the lion stirs, what's to be done?
    What does that mean, to have an inner animal?
    What if something instinctual in me could hold a match, call that match a heated  truth, and the rest of me could catch and in that fire, I  burn clean.  Call it the fire of self-transformation.  All  the accessories and  pretenses of my vaulted person hood drop in ashes...Well, perhaps I am back to Lent again, more ashes.
    But is it possible...that we are missing the meaning of the metaphor of fire...the flame of the Holy Spirit, the fire that brings Palm Sunday fronds to ash, the internal fire, the transforming flame? 
     I do not know.  I sat in silence in Africa, as late afternoon shadows lengthened. 
    I knew this lion was habituated to the vehicle, to the profile of the Jeep even as I am habituated to my mirror image.
    Not my domain, this part of Africa, but his, this young male in South Africa, tucked up on a sand mound as if on a throne. 
    Correction:  On his rightful throne.

                                                                    
    This swimming pool on the big island, Hawaii, offered me an opportunity  for reflection. 
    Gazing at water helps me to empty out and then I can listen, just listen.
    This particular afternoon I had the pool to myself so all was quiet save for the wind in the palms.
    And the I heard my mother's voice, "Well," she said, "You can hope and then you can work.  But never hope more than you work."
    Few things happen on their own accord.  Results require effort, but the correct effort.  So I have a children's book that was turned down by an agent last year and I am in the process of rewriting it.  And as my darling mother said, never hope more than you work.  Each day brings the story closer to the next phase of completion. 
    Two books I've been reading of late, about writing and silence are Woman in Front of the Sun, On Becoming A Writer, Judith Ortiz Cofer and  the empty mirror, Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery by Janwilliam van de Wetering.  Steep yourself a cup of green tea and enjoy!

    Yesterday, it was "Super" Tuesday in the U.S and Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday in much of the world.  But in the old nonsecular world, say the world of this 18th century convent in Ireland, it was Shrove Tuesday.  Perhaps the expression Shrovetide is familiar?  How about the word "shrift" as in "Well, you made short shrift of him!"*

Shrove Tuesday for Roman Catholics in centuries gone by, was the day for confession, the day to prepare yourself for Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season.  (Lent is a period of forty days of prayer, fasting, reflection, to prepare for Easter.)

    Now is this interesting...that "shrove" becomes "shrift" and the meaning changes to something like being verbally chewed up and spat out as in the example* above.  Is that indicative of how the sacrament of confession evolved?

    In the late 20th century the Church renamed "confession"...it's now called "reconciliation".  Not nearly as satisfying as the act of confession.  That's what we used to do, make an act of confession, active!      

    I attempt to work each day, to be active,to reconcile, to accept life as it is.  So when I approach the alter today and the priest intones, "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, so you were and so you will be," and he places a thumb full of palm ashes in the sign of the cross on my forehead, I will pray in the words offered by Gurdjieff:

                                                   "Holy-Affirming,
                                                    Holy-Denying,
                                                    Holy-Reconciling,
                                                    Transubstantiate in me
                                                   For my Being."**

**Prayers in Gi.I. Gurdjieff's All and Everything (First, Second and Third Series)
published by Arete Communications

    Yes.  The category I selected for this post, religion, was not an error for a horsey post.  The word "religion" comes from the Greek, meaning to link back.  To link back to what?  To the original source of our arising.  Are we not an interesting cocktail, one part cosmic particle to several parts earth's own carbon.
    What does it take to become a fully organized, cognitive, functioning, harmoniously humming along human being?  That's the trick of our life.
    And the equine bit?   That's the piece that's missing in the above statement.  It's about a stirring of genuine emotion, not sentimentality.  Nothing can be created worth the paper or canvass it's on if it is not  created with an emotional awareness.

    The genuine emotional expression between horse and rider, that's the connection it takes to be a partner not a passenger.  That extends for me, like a lovely extended trot, to the rest of my life.

And the quote? "The best thing for the inside of a person is the outside of a horse." -Lord Palmerston

Italics for those that speak horse