the universe that we are

God is our attempt to understand the universe.

We put all the power of movement, of thought, of creation on someone out there somewhere while that power is here, in co-relationship. Our out-breathing is God's in-breathing. Our in-breathing is God's out-breathing.

The situation, the place and setting in which we find ourselves (double meaning) is an interspiraling whose imagery is reflected in the double helix of DNA.

God is found in a whirlwind. We and God interwhirl.

We understand and embody the universe that we are as an interwhirling.

mind renewal

"Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Romans 12:2

One current of the renewal consists of switching from sensory perception to visionary intuition as our default mode. By doing so we open to a community of spiritual kin, beings of pure visionary intuition. We merge with a holoarchy of wisdom and compassion (love) while maintaining our individuality.

Mind renewal comes from this active practice of intuitive vision. In heaven-earth language, rather than focusing as an earth being looking to open to the heavens, one is a heavenly being living on earth. We turn in side out.

capacity

I cannot see what I cannot see.
I can see only what I can see.
I can see only what I have the capacity to see.

If I cannot see it, it does not exist for me.
Others can see it and I cannot.
If I trust the others, I can believe it exists but cannot see it.

If I expand my capacity I can see it.
I know this because I have expanded my capacity before.
I can become more capacious.

The Cosmos is a Who and not a What.
Others whom I trust can see this.
I see it somewhat. I open to seeing it somewho.

When I open to Who, it is no longer an it.
The Cosmos teems with Who's.
All is Who.

The Earth is a Who, not a What.
Animals are Who.
Mountains are Who.

All is Who-ly.

the cha-cha-cha and the hidden springs

In addition to ego consciousness (the encapsulated I-Me-Mine), we have/are ordinal (straight-line ordinary) or surface consciousness and depth consciousness. Depth consciousness is not swayed by the winds and currents of the surface. Depth consciousness is fed by hidden springs, hidden to the ego cha-cha-cha and to the surface make-a-buck-and-spend-it world. Depth consciousness is engaged in two ways: quiet stillness and vibrant openness. The quiet stillness is vibrantly open and the vibrant openness has calm stillness at its core. Thus the hidden springs keep flowing. The Aware Cosmos is ready to reveal itself and does.

the savior laughed

The Savior laughed and said to them: "What are you thinking about? Are you perplexed? What are you searching for?" Philip said: "For the underlying reality of the universe and the plan." [The Sophia (Wisdom) of Jesus Christ]

My soul glows every time I read those words. "The Savior" is the one who has all wisdom, who IS all wisdom. The Savior knows "the underlying reality of the universe and the plan" and evidently the ground of being and the forecast is good.

S/he (the Savior is androgynous) does not cry, weep, and mourn. The Savior laughs. The Wisdom of the cosmos laughs. This is not a laughing at. This is a laughing with.

What is "the underlying reality of the universe and the plan?" Read the rest of the text for a more complete answer if you wish. The answer I hear and have always heard is compassionate love and laughter.

lit

The Light that originally lit and now lights our cosmos is the same Light that lights our soul. "Let your light so shine." Get lit, darling! Get lit! We are the Light embodying.

the interest of the Mystery

The Mystery is not interested so much in WHAT we perceive but HOW we perceive: the HOW that makes us members of the Mage Eye Nation.

Yes

For every Yes there is a multitude of No which fade into insignificance when the Heart is in the Yes. The words of the Eternal Yes: When you abide in me, I abide in you. The Heart is in the Yes and the Yes is in the Heart. An unbeatable combo.

caduceus

The caduceus, the wand of healing, represents not just the energies of humankind (and each individual of the species) but, more importantly, the degrees or levels or dimensions of consciousness of which humans consist and both aspire and sink to.

The energies (and corresponding consciousness states) range from the angelic crown of glory to demonic numbness, from highly sensitive awareness with no bounds to locked-in agnosis (knowing nothing, not even knowing that one does not know). Between these two extremes, of which we are walking examples, lies the current mass hallucination of societal consciousness. I say current because the nature and quality of this social agreement as to reality has changed over time and will change, is changing, yet again.

The caduceus is a symbol depicting our consciousness capability, individually and collectively. We can get stuck, stick ourselves, at any point along its energetic flow. S/he who is the entire caduceus is a whole human. From whole humans, societies transform.

this peculiar flute

Divine or, if you prefer, Cosmic energies pour through continuously birthing all that Is. We wankle and workle the Energy we are, the Energy pouring through, according to our disposition, our personality, this peculiar flute through which the wind of the Cosmos flows. We sound the notes produced by the holes, the openings in our rigidity.

moment-um

Each of us lives our life in accord with an Energetic Flow. I capitalize because the Energetic Flows are archetypal in nature, eternally recurring.

We choose to live our lives in rebirth, reclamation, resurrection. We choose to live our lives in fear, despair, and alienation. We choose to live our lives in anger, turmoil, and rejection.

In other words, we choose to move with, move away, move against. (We also have the choice of moving toward: we separate ourselves out in perpetual resolution.)

The fate of the universe we are depends upon our choices, the choices of each moment, of this moment now. The choice of each moment provides moment-um.

This is who we are: an eternal energetic flow. Each moment we create the universe we are.

the reclaiming of outer darkness

Can we step outside the Story? Not spurn it, stay inclusive? Nor yield to its dualistic theme, of war of This against That and the necessity, at soul's peril, of choosing sides? Can we swallow all the Stories at one gulp and stand with them inside this cosmic body? Can we reclaim the outer darkness and bring it home at last, welcoming the prodigal while knowing we are the prodigal returning home? Can we rather than building a hedge around us let all walls fall down? Can we become a circle with no circumference whose center is here and everywhere? Can we welcome all kin home and all are kin?

Wrestling for the Angel

Riffing off one of the themes (a major one) of Henry Corbin this morning, my mind reverberates within angelic realms. Each of us has (and is) an Angel of our Being. (Capitalizing is generally anathema today since all is reduced to the plebeian, the LCD, Lowest Common Denominator. Yet some realms call for capitalization.)

Mister Seven reminded me this morning in our all too brief but enlightening talk of those invisible to most, but not to some: beings who live outside the circle  of the accepted wisdom of the current  occidental society. There are many, waiting to be welcomed back in. I wish to speak at the moment only of the Angel of y(our) Being.

My repeated use of parentheses reminds me that we tend to lead a parenthetical existence. We isolate ourselves within our bounds, our self-imposed bounds, our limits to our existence, and we call that Reality.

The Angel of our Being sits patiently outside that self-created circumscription, awaiting our awakening.

The Angel of our Being is our twin, our heavenly twin. We are its counterpart, our legs dangling down into this more solidified experience we call Life. We have, in some sense, the tougher role as a solidification into denser spirit, which we call matter. Solidification is difficult, yet the Angel of our Being also has a tough job, mourning and in pain when we lose our Vision, lose our Way.

Rejoicing (re-juicing) occurs when we finally (intermittently?) awaken and full fill our rightly role: wrestling for the Angel. We are the protrusion of Spirit into this dense dense world and reclaim it, enthuse it as we acknowledge and open to the Angel of our Being.

To do so requires total vulnerability, a state of existing that is, on first consideration, repugnant and fear provoking to many. Yet the Samurai of yore and today proclaim: the best defense is total vulnerability. Vulnerable to Death. Vulnerable to Love. Vulnerable to all that arises. To be hard and strong is to succumb to rigor mortis. Mongols in silk shirts were able to defeat knights in armor. Wu wei.

Ancient wisdom is to live as if you have already gone on. Die before you die. Then who can do a thing with you, a person of no thing? We become Nothing, Nothing Doing. The Angel of our Being rejoices. The world is transformed.

(Written with a borrowed freshly sharpened pencil on provided paper at the Weatherford Hotel -- if it's good enough for Zane Grey, it's mighty fine for me.  First Tuesday in June, 2013)

the capaciousness of the imaginary

We see what is visible to us. We do not see what is not visible to us. Some things (a vastness) are not visible to us.

We may intuit the invisible. This intuition is a form of seeing. What is intuitive to some is clearly visible to others. What is intuitive to or clearly visible to some may be completely unknown to others. What is visible may be invisible. One can see only what one has the capacity to see.

Capaciousness is a gift from the invisible. The invisible wants to be known. As we disclose ourselves to the invisible, the invisible discloses itself to us. Reciprocity. Mutual disclosure. The visible yearns to know the invisible. The invisible yearns to be known.

The eye for seeing the invisible is the soul. The body provides the base; the intellect provides conceptual birth and manipulation; the soul provides the imagination, the eye-magi-nation.

The realm of the imaginary is the place of mutual disclosure between the visible and the invisible. The realm of the imaginary is the place of mutual encounter. The invisible becomes visible.

Contemplation means to reside in the temple (con-templ-ation). The temple is the sacred space, the mutual meeting ground of the visible and the invisible.

Fantasy occurs when we are outside the temple (pro-fanum). Fantasy is self-generated imagery. The imaginary is the realm of mutual encounter within the temple, the meeting place of the visible and the invisible. Fantasy is cotton candy poofery. The imaginary is solid and powerful, life-changing.

Our capaciousness is expanded by our dwelling in the templum. Mutual disclosure with the invisible expands our soul. We are heartened, deepened, transformed.

Angelology

Henry Corbin and Suhrawardi's Angelology (Roberts Avens)

becoming the hyphen of the subject-object split

Many see Jesus as an intermediary, rather than example. This is a subtle, yet blatant, evasion of responsibility.

the Angel of one's Being

Revelation does not come through logical cogitation but through direct encounter with the Angel of one's Being. As and when one encounters the Angel of one's Being, one is in the realm of God, of the Source, the Wellspring. One is living in the hierocosmos, the eternal and ever present spiritual community all but invisible to the horizontal busy busy makeado world.

the curing of paralysis

Take a look at Mark 2: 1-12. Read those 12 verses first.
Here is the Amplified version of the Bible I am using.

Of course, this is a story about Jesus, but I am going to view it for the moment as a parable.

Regard the house in these verses as the human body, your body. In the heart of the house resides Heartfelt Wisdom. At the roof of the house (the head) there is much consternation, even destruction.

The roof gives way and the paralysis of the head is lowered into the heart for healing. It has to allow itself to be lowered (humbled). It can get in no other way. The front door, the external entrance, is blocked. This is an internal matter.

Heartful Wisdom does not get upset, seems to regard this as a natural course of events. The open-hearted Wisdom says the exact right words to the head paralysis.

The closed minded suspicious aspect of ourselves, our resident cynic, mutters however: "This can't be happening! And anyway if it can, you used the wrong words, Wisdom! You should say it this way!"

The cynic cracks me up. What a clown. Won't do anything to help and when help comes, says the help should have been administered this way, not that way! What a bozo, trying to be so correct and proper while playing the utter fool.

In this story/parable, Heartfelt Wisdom says to the cynic, "Okay, I'll do it that way too." And does. No more is heard from the cynic.

The sick, confused, and  paralyzed head is released from all its junk, takes up its bed of paralysis (provides no room for it anymore), and goes out the front door, obeying Heartfelt Wisdom's instructions:"Be going on home."

I love it!

enthusiasm

enthusiasm : en-thus-iasm : en-theos-iasm : to be filled with the energies of the theos, of our source, of the wellspring

shifting to overdrive

The reading  of Ewert Cousins' "Global Spirituality" turned my awareness to the four senses of understanding that can and do occur when reading the writings and teachings of any sacred path. There is the literal sense, in which one takes the words at face value and does not attempt to go to deeper meaning. The eye scans a particular writing and it says what it says and that's that. "Don't bother my mind with further comprehension." Beyond that is the moral meaning, in which one takes the words to heart and attempts to live by them. Third is opening to the understanding of the writings as parable or allegory, as pointing to a deeper and more cosmic story. Fourth is the anagogic or transcendental experiencing of the words and writings as union with the Divine, with our Source.

For example, "Love your neighbor as yourself." The literalist says yeah, yeah, sure, of course and moves on, having successfully tefloned the words. The moralist looks to apply the words in the human interactions of daily life. The visionary senses, sees that all of life, human and nonhuman, physical and beyond, is neighbor, that all is interconnection and interconnecting, and love extends within and beyond all realms. The mystic drops away all distinction, all separation: the words transport beyond the beyond.

The scriptures of the world are called sacred because they have the power to transport, transform. But they won't do so unless one shifts gears from first, through second, into third, and then to overdrive.

transport

Vehicle -- transport device.   Jacob had his ladder of angels, Elijah had his chariot, Ezekiel his revolving wheels, Buddha his body of bliss, Muhammad his night journey to heaven, Jesus his resurrection body. We trundle around in the physical. This meat will drop back to the ground; and then we soar. No need to wait around. We develop our transport vehicle now. This is done in the realm called spiritual. We put our awareness there. We go wherever our awareness goes. Beyond the body, beyond the horizontal world, we are caught up in our chariot of fire and light, in the bliss body. Our eyes see the Eye that sees us. Mutual recognition. Transport. Happiness. Strength. Awe.

all the way up

It may be "turtles all the way down" but it's Angels (Messengers of Light) all the way up.

real eye zing

One of the hardest things for us humans to do is to recognize, to realize that "I am That" (tat tvam asi). We like to think of ourselves as isolated protoplasmic blobs in an implacable alien universe and engage our full repertoire of responses to such (from raising our spiritual middle finger to falling to our knees in pleading supplication). We cling to our individuality, our persona (mask), as a drowning person clings to a toothpick in the ocean. We seek relief (salvation) in the gods we make for ourselves; the supreme god of all being our sense of isolated self, the sufferer whom no one understands and whose will is rarely if ever followed. We make a god out of Jesus, out of Buddha, out of the Tao, out of anything outside of ourselves. One of the hardest things for us humans to do is to recognize, to realize that "I am That," that the hand of the Source is within the glove of "me." When the real-eye-zing occurs, both hand and glove merge as one.

"The kingdom of heaven is within you."

seeds of new life

1:28 a.m.
Words spoken to me as I awoke:
"The Seven Sermons of the Dead."
"Seeds of new life are found in old jars."

I got up. The book was marked. I opened it.
"Since God is in the soul rather than in a remote heaven
it would be injurious to the health of the soul to deny Him."

God is not dead, but lives within us,
has always lived within us,
is not floating out there with the asteroids.

Until I claim and reclaim the God and gods within,
I have no soul.
I am these gods and they are me.

God is not dead.
It is we who died.
And now we come to life again.

Seeds of new life are found in old jars.

emergence

Let the compassion and grace of That Which Births Us, that is ever birthing us, move through our hearts for right action in this world.

Meditation on Psalm 3

Consider that we are composed of and surrounded by various energies. Energies of construction. Energies of destruction. We are those energies.

Then how is it that we are surrounded? Because we choose. We choose to make our home, our central point, in the energies of construction or in the energies of destruction. We choose for all time and we choose moment by moment.

When we make our home in the energies of construction, we are surrounded by destruction, that which wishes to destroy. When we make our home in the energies of destruction, we are surrounded by construction, that which wishes to bring to life rather than bring to death.

When we choose construction, though surrounded and seemingly in imminent peril, we can lie down and sleep without fear and then awake to face the day. The forces of construction will slap the face of the forces of destruction and break its teeth. We continue on our way embodying the energies of construction with no fear.

the ternal

1. Here is action. Action exists. Action is here. Action unfolds. Here.

2. Action is internal and external. We call the internal action thought. We call the external action the world.

3. The internal and the external are the same ternal. The internal and the external are eternal.

4. We make order of the action through story. Story orders the chaos of action. We live in story land.

5. Stories are neither true nor false. Stories are real.

6. Stories have juice: energy, fascination, believability.

7. The stories with the most juice adopt us. We become those stories and act out our part.

8. This action of our act is both internal and external. They are the same ternal.

Setting Up And Becoming A Cosmic Energy Circuit

Five of us have been meeting over the last few months to focus on the practices of consciousness transformation. I wrote this for us and thought I would share.

Setting Up And Becoming A Cosmic Energy Circuit

By cosmic energy circuit, I mean the interflow of us and the Tao, of us and our Source, of the particular and the Universal. I mean the deliberate setting up of and becoming a spiraling dynamic of Tao flow.

This is not foreign to the martial arts, the healing arts, the spiritual arts. All three arts are applications of, embodyings of, this method. For us, daily life is the practice arena, the crucible, the alchemical furnace for becoming and being a cosmic energy circuit.

Circuit means exactly that. Think of a circle composed of two curved arrows. You stand at the bottom of the circle. An energetic arrow curves out to your left and around the first half of the circle to God, to the Tao, to our Source. The energy of this arrow is Love. (“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30) This is energy extended outward. This is Step One.

Step Two is detachment, not being attached to anything. Even to being detached. Continuously letting go. No clinging. In martial arts, if one wishes someone to come closer, one creates a vacuum. One detaches from any desire for them to come closer, is immobile while wide awake, like a cat at a mouse hole, unmoving. An air of expectancy with no attachment to the expectancy.

Immense room is created in this way. God, the Tao, our Source, the Cosmic Energy Flow cannot help but come in. This is the second arrow of the circle, curving around from the Above where your Love “ends” and filling the emptiness you have co-created.

Meister Eckhart put this two step process this way: “Love constrains me to love God, but detachment compels God to love me.” The Tao will always fill a Void. Our Source will always move in to fill our Capaciousness.

So there you have it. How to set up and become a Cosmic Energy Circuit.

Simple, huh?

Doable.

Blessings,
George

Time-honored methods exist for practicing and opening to this cosmic interflow. Contemplation, Contemplative Prayer, Mindfulness, Mindful Awareness, Creative Visualization, Silence, Creative Imagination. Practicing the Presence, Meditation, Fasting of the Mind are the names of a few.

Man's great body

"The Vedic cosmological experience is not mainly temporal or spatial, as if Man were thrown into a limitless temporal or spatial sea, he himself being of different material and capable of witnessing what was happening. It is a prolongation of the experience of Man himself. The worlds are not empty places devoid of Men: they are Man's great body, the real theater where his existence unfolds. " (Raimundo Panikkar, The Vedic Experience)

At one time we humans were aware of our "great body," but over time our awareness has shrunk until many, maybe most, of us seem to believe that we are isolated particles in an alien universe. We wail and yowl and look to find our place in the order of things. We look to "make" a living rather than "be" a living. Money is our god and our religion is the constant seeking of pleasure and security.

The Vedic scriptures (as well as other cosmological stories) tell us there is a larger rhythm in this falling away from awareness. It is the rhythm of birth, death (sacrifice) and resurrection. Humanity follows this cycle. (There have been many humanities before this current one.)

Many say this humanity of which we are a part is in its death phase. Others say that is fine; it means resurrection is near: the resurrection of fresh new awareness that we are the cosmos, that we are the cosmos embodying.

As the human society is built upon this understanding, this knowing that each of us is a cosmic citizen, we will shed our clothing of death, of mistrust, violence, and despair. This transformation is happening now. Many of us are awakening to this anciently new knowledge.

get on with it

God is not dead -- only the God we idolized, made something of, is dead. And good riddance. No need to dance around that Golden Calf. It is time for us to hitch up our spiritual britches and open to a direct partnership with our Source, with God. To move from that old servile consciousness and its I-It split to direct open companionship with The One Who Breathes Us.

To paraphrase Bob Dylan, the old order is rapidly fading. We are in a new world. A new consciousness is required. We have already achieved (or been blessed with) a planetary awareness. Now is the time to open even further -- into a cosmic awareness. Cosmic consciousness (as Richard Maurice Bucke calls it) is no stranger to many of us. Abraham Maslow pointed to its existence in his writings about "peak experiences." I have also done research in this area.

It is time for us to move beyond our petty games on this earth. It is time for each of us to actively generate our spiritual body. Consciousness is evolving on this planet. We either move along with this birthing or get left behind, dinosauric dregs of a failed experiment.

theosis, kenosis, perichoresis

theosis: union with the ever emerging energies of our Source, the Wellspring

kenosis: emptying self of self

perichoresis: the interflow of all with All

incarnation

I fail to understand why some Christians insist that Jesus is the only incarnation of God. What is the rest of the universe but God incarnate?

unknown and known

Meister Eckhart clears up some of the confusion when we say God cannot be known and God can be intimately known. The God that cannot be known is called the Godhead, that which births the Wellspring which births all. The God that is intimately known is called God. In more Whiteheadian terminology, all is one process which reverberates as us -- a "stepping down" of energies producing and maintaining our being. Of course, one may not wish to use God language in the first place if one considers oneself a post-modern realist wishing to avoid such difficulties. But God language is here and is meaningful to many, including myself. I appreciate Eckhart's distinction.

current current

Naked apes with goat-like genitalia priding ourselves upon our immense capability while growing fat on fructose as a precursor to our more extreme genetic modification.

Like monks and nuns, we wear our habits, pray in our cells for release. Called into this form by genetic will, moving with it to go beyond it. Creative rebellion. Nitro with a slow-mo explosion.

God help us!

the razor's edge

Occam's razor, the cutting edge for all science, reminds us to postulate no more than what is necessary. The razor shaves differently, however, depending upon one's definition and understanding of what is necessary. Necessary for the head or for the heart? The heart's necessity requires meaning beyond stark logarithms and blind chance. The heart's necessity requires soul.

revelation

In a cosmos that is alive, aware, and energetic, revelation and disclosure is not "supernatural" but is a natural process. One simply has to be quiet and receptive with open heart. Of course, if one has dialed it down to "only matter," little is disclosed. One does not hear a mate who is only a piece of meat.

God

To those whose intellectual purity is upset and who respond to the word "God" with cold fury and heated aggravation: Get over it. It is a short and useful word for that-which-exists-prior-to-the-big-bang-or-slow-mo-orgasm-and-births-all-that-is-and-continues-to-exert-influence-through-its-streaming-on-your-unfolding-and-cannot-be-known-by-the-intellect-mind. God. Get used to it.

a visionary map of christianity

In map art, one paints the canvas with visionary scenes rather than lines of highways and numbered miles.

If I were to paint a visionary map of christianity, I would include a scene of the god colluding with the devil, the forces of creation conspiring with the forces of destruction, to tempt a third party into turning against, renouncing the creative forces. I think I would paint god as a whirlwind and the devil as coyote, the trickster. The third party would be a tiny figure in the distance upon whom they would advance.

A second scene would be an angry war god of dark cloud and lightning eye urging world domination of his followers, small beings who are replicas of himself with sword and shield -- killing "all that piss against the wall" of those outsiders who will not accept this god. Out of them are emerging christian missionaries.

Yet another scene would show a god who had advanced beyond his tempestuous adolescent years and able to say someone has to die so it will be me. He offers himself in sacrifice and disappears. He is no longer cross. A rainbow arcs across a darkly radiant sky.

A fourth scene would be a man awakening as if from a dream, walking across the canvas and beyond the frame. If sound could be painted, heartfelt laughter would be heard.

A fifth scene is a blank canvas upon which new vision can be painted and is being painted eternally anew.

re-juice

"The founder of any branch of Chinese gung fu must be more ingenious than the common man. If his achievement is not carried on by disciples of the same ingenuity, than things will only become formalized and get stuck in a cul-de-sac; whereby breakthrough and progress will be almost impossible." Bruce Lee, Jeet Kune Do

I see Bruce Lee's insight as applying also to religions. Christianity is my birth religion so I use it as an example, though the same line of thought applies to all religions and philosophies, including the philosophy of no philosophy.

In my opinion and experience, the teachings of Jesus have "become formalized" and "stuck in a cul-de-sac." Christians chase their own tale round and round every Sunday and at every meeting. No progress or breakthrough is expected or desired. To even think of doing so may be regarded as approaching blasphemy. This is a sure sign of stagnation.

Relinquishment of this closed system comes from stepping out into the air of the cosmos,living neither in fear nor in arrogance, but as the particular Jesus that you are: a cosmic being born of the Source, the Great Mystery, the Wellspring. This is the true Church.

Jesus was no Christian. The invitation is to go beyond all rigid form and creed to a living experience of the Tao, the Interflow, the Holy Spirit, the Juice. (Rejoicing comes with re-Juicing and rejoicing is what It's all about.)

In martial arts lingo, getting stuck in doing the same old katas (forms) over and over was not the intent of the founder of one's particular martial art. What do you think the founder was doing, but learning the old forms then coloring outside all the lines? We recognize his genius; now we must claim our own.

on heaven and hell

Early thought was that hell existed below (beneath the earth) and heaven existed above (in the sky). That gave way to a belief that both heaven and hell are inside of us. Now we open to the understanding that we are embodyings of the cosmos. We are the universe universing. Where does that put heaven and hell? Hell is when we continue to encapsulate ourselves in our seed husks while being pulled to open and flower. Heaven is when we open to the flowering of the universe that we are and move beyond the shuffling zombie existence of a seed refusing to die and be born.

becoming an angel

becoming an angel

“the Active Imagination is not a theory, it is an initiation to vision"

theosis

"Another characteristic was his (Suhrawardi's) view of the inseparability of philosophical study from spiritual experience, namely the mystical experience designated as ta'ullah, the Arabic equivalent of the Greek theosis. For him, a philosophy which does not lead to a personal spiritual realization is a vanity and a waste of time, yet mystical experience which is not founded upon sound philosophical training is exposed to all the dangers of going astray which we now call schizophrenia." -- Henry Corbin, A Theory of Visionary Knowledge

True philosophy is the love of (philo) sophia (wisdom).

Wisdom is personified, is a spiritual energy, a person.

When one has a love of Wisdom, Wisdom does not lead one astray.

a case of the grip

If, as David Miller proclaims, "Religion means being gripped by a story," then all of us, every mother's child of us, is religious. Every one of us has our story about who we are, from whence we came, and where we may or may not be headed.

The story by which you are gripped is your religion!

It is foolish to rail against religions, O proud bearers of the scientific flag, when you yourself are religious and filled with zeal for the grip your story has upon you.

It is foolish to say you have the only true religion, O Christ-ian and O Pagan! It is equivalent to saying that the story that grips you is the only true grip. What inbred arrogance!

Religion means being gripped by a story. Just because I am enchanted by a story (and I am) does not mean that you will or should be enchanted by that story. I enjoy the enchantment of my story and as I open to the richness of your story and the stories of others, I see the interweaving of our stories.

So let's stop our belly-aching about other people's stories and our belly-swelling about our own story. We need to get past that. There's work to be done.