Poems I Journey With 19

A young W.B. Yeats

Tonight, yet again, I wish to reproduce here a poem by that greatest of Irish poets W.B. Yeats. In this year of centenaries as we Irish call this commemorative year of 2016, that is, that it celebrates both our national Rising and some of the greatest battles of the Great War.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

(By W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939)

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind,

In balance with this life, this death.

Commentary

Yeats wrote this famous poem "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" in 1918 and it was first published in the Macmillan edition of The Wild Swans at Coole a year later. It is a rather simple lyric written in regular metre, that of iambic tetrameter, that is, in regular lines with four beats or four iambs, that is, “Dee-Dah, Dee-Dah, Dee-Dah, Dee-Dah” with the beat on the second syllable or on the “Dah.”  The rhyme scheme is pretty standard, too, being simply ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH.  Further, if the reader is a lover of war films he will know that in the movie Memphis Belle, the character Sergeant Danny Daly recites this poem but omits the lines referring to Ireland.

The poem is a dramatic recitation or soliloquy given by an aviator or early flyer from the First World War period in which the narrator describes the circumstances surrounding his imminent and certain death. The poem is a work that discusses the role of Irish soldiers fighting for the United Kingdom during a time when they were trying to establish independence for Ireland.  This was a heady, frightening and tumultuous time in Irish history when families were split between loyalty to the crown and sympathy with the revolutionary nationalist cause. In simple terms, this was a complex and complicated period in Irish history. Wishing to show restraint from publishing political poems during the height of the war, Yeats withheld publication of the poem until after the conflict had ended.

Yeats’ young pilot is just that, young and simply non-partisan. For him it was the adventure of flying itself, then a real novelty, that inspired his action – neither loyalty to the crown nor love for his native soil. In this, Yeats captures brilliantly the way a good number of young men would have felt – that is, young men who were full bloodedly wishing to embrace adventure for adventure sake:

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

He tells us that no outcome in the war will make their lives worse (“bring them loss”) or better (“happier”) than before the war began. He says that he did not decide to fight because of a law or a sense of duty, nor because of “public men” (politicians) or “cheering crowds.” Rather, “a lonely impulse of delight” drove him to “this tumult in the clouds.”

A First World War Airplane

There is a deep reflectiveness or mindfulness in this poem that makes it a very significant reflection on war and its futility and uselessness. He says that he weighed his life in his mind, and found that “The years to come seemed waste of breath, / A waste of breath the years behind.” In other words, the young pilot is forced to wake up and live in the now because he realises that the past is gone and gone forever, never to return as it is now very much wasted breath. He also realises that his hours are numbered as he realises all too easily that his death is imminent and inevitable and therefore the future has a similar futility bound up with it just as the past has. Hence the years to come are simply wasted breath, too. He is at the now of existence as that’s all he has, this moment now, this reflective now or this mindful now before extinction.  On the one hand this could be seen as a rather tragic arithmetic that forces the young man into the now of awareness or on another level a sort of mystical wakefulness that Yeats would have embraced in his own life. In shaping or forming this poem, Yeats writes in a neatly balanced structure that mirrors or parallels the balance of an aircraft in flight, with its cycles of alternating rhymes and its clipped, stoical meter. In short, in this poem we have Yeats the consummate craftsman and weaver of words at work. Altogether a simply wonderful poem, and one that was used so effectively in that lovely British-American war film Memphis Belle  (1990) that was directed by Michael Caton-Jones and written by Monte Merrick.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 80

Poem 80

If a country is governed wisely,

its inhabitants will be content.

They enjoy the labor of their hands

and don't waste time inventing

labor-saving machines.

Since they dearly love their homes,

they aren't interested in travel.

There may be a few wagons and boats,

but these don't go anywhere.

There may be an arsenal of weapons,

but nobody ever uses them.

People enjoy their food,

take pleasure in being with their families,

spend weekends working in their gardens,

delight in the doings of the neighborhood.

And even though the next country is so close

that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking,

they are content to die of old age

without ever having gone to see it.

Commentary

This poem is certainly one we moderns would not understand as we live in a global village where the whole world has become our home. We can travel anywhere, now that air travel has become relatively cheap and within almost everyone's capacity.  Very few of us in the Western world do not go abroad for holidays or business or whatever.  Indeed, should we not wish to travel somewhere physically we can even journey there virtually by way of cinema or the Internet, both of which can bring us anywhere we wish imaginatively.  And the imagination and reality are next-door neighbours in a sense. 

As a man of 58 years who was born in a small rural Irish town in 1958 and who experienced at least for a few years pre-television era in that country setting, I would have an inkling of what the poet in the above poem is getting at.  I well remember a young friend's parents having bought their first tv set as RTE, the Irish public broadcaster began life on the 31st of December 1961.  They must have bought it soon enough thereafter, so I would have been about 4 years of age at the time. The TV ushered in the New Ireland, as from then on the global visited in a virtual and imaginative sense the sitting rooms of all the homes in Ireland. Therefore, I can slightly understand the above poem.  Now, we must remember that the Tao Te Ching was written roughly around the sixth century BCE in a very rural and primitive setting so the values of a small community would have been the prevailing ones: working in the fields, ploughing, planting seeds, watering the crops, going to the market, harvesting, participating in  the local gatherings, chatting and conversing.  Everything would have revolved around the extended family or clan, and then around the local tribe or community. The home and the community and the values asssociated with both would have been the origins of the only values known to anyone.  Therefore, it is against this background that we have to understand the above poem.

The above poem presents us with the ideal, indeed with the idyll.  It is purely romantic and is filled with Utopian sentiments.  No such place on earth could possible exist.  However, when we remember that it is a poem, that it was written so long ago and that as a poem it should not be taken literally. Bearing all this is mind, we may then read it and meditate upon it and see what wisdom we might learn from it.

One lesson is that of valuing our lives, valuing our experiences of life in the now, valuing simply being.  We are all so busy rushing to succeed, make more money, get a better job, travel to more countries, gain more wealth, acquire X, Y or Z new item that we often forget that it is the simple things in life that really make us happy like those mentioned in the poem: (i) enjoying our workaday life, (ii) getting in touch with nature, (iii) gardening, (iv) building up and enjoying our homes, (v) enjoying simple but good meals with our families and friends, (vi) supporting all the events that take place in the community, and (vii) happily growing old listening to the sounds of what naturally occurs in nature.

These are obviously extremely romantic and Utopian ideas, but the poem hints that we may experience an intimation of that blessed state by being more mindful and attuned to living in the now.

Namaste, friends. 

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 56

Poem 56

Those who know don't talk.
Those who talk don't know.

Close your mouth,

block off your senses,

blunt your sharpness,

untie your knots,

soften your glare,

settle your dust.

This is the primal identity.

Be like the Tao.

It can't be approached or withdrawn from,

benefited or harmed,

honored or brought into disgrace.

It gives itself up continually.

That is why it endures.

Commentary

Picture of myself some years back

The line that jumps out at this commentator as he reflectively reads the above poem is the one which runs: "This is the primal identity."  What a wonderfully loaded line.  Using the literal meaning of the word "primal" we could substitute into one meaning of the word the following synonyms for it in this statement, namely "original," "first," "initial" or "early."  A second meaning given for "primal" renders the following synonyms: "basic," "fundamental," "essential," "vital" and "central." Therefore, other meaningful ways of stating our Taoist assertion would be: "This is the real identity," or "This is the true identity" or "This is the essence of identity" or "This is the vital identity."  From the moment of first consciousness we are meaning seekers and meaning makers, and certainly the older we get the more strongly we pursue our rather elusive identity.  It would seem that for us moderns that the search for meaning and the search indeed for ultimate meaning is what often keeps us going in life. The question of personal identity looms large for all of us.  "Who am I?" is a question to which we all seek an answer and one to which we do give an answer insofar as we manage to live any kind of meaningful lives. 

My shadow on Donabate Beach

In the philosophy and practice of psychotherapy, and indeed in that of psychiatry, the question of personal identity is essentially very central.  Listening to the client is an empathetic and affirming way is one sure way of helping him or her to greater self-awareness and greater self-acceptance.  And yet, it is surely a huge question as to what the nature of personal identity is in the first place.  One of the founders of humanistic school of psychotherapy, namely Carl Ransom Rogers stated that the goal of all therapy was the actualization of the Real Self, and this is a very good modern equivalent of what our Taoist poet is getting at in the above poem when he mentions "primal identity."  The task of all meditation practices, and indeed what more secular psychologists and psychotherapists refer to as the practice of mindfulness is in a strong sense one and the same.  They both seek to establish a strong sense of the Real Self or of a real sense of living in the Now of existence. Therefore, the turn to the East - and by this I mean both the actual journeys made by many psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, creative writers and musicians and many religious scholars to India and Tibet, as well as the written accounts of their experiences and newly gained knowledge and so on - in the middle of the twentieth century should not surprise us at all.  So many Westerners of note began living in ashrams and studying and meditating under various gurus and masters.  From this there emerged a wonderful blossoming of esoteric scholarship that flowed into the New Age Movement that in turn spawned an almost universal interest in Self-Development, Pop Psychology and Self-Help.  Therefore, mindfulness is merely a secularized account of the meditation practices used in the various religious denominations of Hinduism and Buddhism.

The author as a young lad aged 7.  Is this actually the me I am now?

The second phrase that jumps off the page at this commentator is "settle your dust."  How many times have we heard the old wise saying that we must let the dust settle on this, that or the other problem?  We have other similar phrases like: "Let's let sleeping dogs lie for a while" or "Let's sleep on this problem for a while" or "Don't make important decisions when you are upset in any way!" or "Choose your battles carefully!"  These phrases or sayings are all getting at the same wise advice, namely not to be reactor to this or that situation.  The easiest thing for anyone to do is to "shoot from the hip" as another phrase puts it.  Still another saying offers this piece of wisdom: "Act in haste, repent at leisure!" Meditation is all about slowing down and taking our time, of getting centered in the "Now" of being, of achieving a point of equanimity we may call the Still Point of life, of stilling the body, of becoming aware of what it's really like to inhabit or to live in this body, or even more correctly still, what it's like to be this body here in the now of existence.  I have always loved the statement, also a very wise one, that our minds tend to either live in the past (regrets and remorse and sad memories and so on) or in the future (expectations, ambitions, anxieties and/or fears and so on) while our bodies most definitely live in the present.  That, indeed, is why all meditation or mindfulness practices begin with stilling the body, of becoming aware of the body at first, then becoming aware of our feelings and just letting them go, then becoming aware of our thoughts and letting them so and so on and on, and deeper and deeper into the stillness of the "Real Self" or what our Taoist poet calls the "Primal Self."

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 48

Poem 48

In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.

Less and less do you need to force things,

until finally you arrive at non-action.

When nothing is done,

nothing is left undone.

True mastery can be gained

by letting things go their own way.

It can't be gained by interfering.

Commentary

Pair of swans, Bull Island, January 2016

Once again, this current poem rehearses all the old themes.  However, that need not distract us, as such is the way all religious writings work, and indeed all great literature works. Themes will be repeated, but almost always in different ways, in different contexts and with different words.  T.S. Eliot underlined that same point with respect to the themes he returned to often in his own oeuvre. 

The Taoist oppositional tension is returned to in Poem 48 above, but this time the opposition is that between addition and subtraction.  Indeed, as a teacher of basic mathematics at secondary school level here in Ireland, I am aware that philosophically these are two inextricably related operations and that subtraction can be looked upon as adding a negative number.  This, in my opinion,  is a good example of how inextricable opposites are in actuality, and that to vere to either extreme is to do some damage to the actual reality of the healthy tension or balance of opposition.  Those of you who have some knowledge of mathematics will know that another example of oppositional operations are those of multiplication and division where division can be seen as the operation of multiplication by a fraction.  Now, to return to poem 48 above, our author is talking about adding to knowledge bit by inexhaustible bit and so on ad infinitum, and yet, he or she sees that, in a way, a lot of unnecessary and weighty information will have to be dropped or subtracted. Indeed, there is much to be learnt here by twenty first century humankind who perdure in a world in which we are literally awash with information.  Indeed, we might quite plausibly push our metaphor further by saying that we are constantly being hit by a tsunami of information on a daily basis in that same world.  One only has to google a topic or a question on that topic to know that one can get literally hundreds and thousands, or more even, of possible answers. Scholars tell us that we are in an era of information overload, and that what is needed is interpretation or analysis skills of that data.  We may be awash with information but we are literally bereft of secure ground on which to anchor our ship of interpretation, and we are often equipped with poor critical and analytical skills to engage profitably and critically with the data.

Unity, Bull Island, January, 2016

A parent remarked to me recently that her second son "carries the weight of the world on his shoulders" while her eldest does not "sweat the small stuff" at all.  Undoubtedly, what the younger lad needs to do is to "let go" or to "subtract" or "take away" or to "get rid of" the small stuff.  This is what our Taoist poem is about above, that is, the subtraction of all that weight from our shoulders, all that heavy unnecessary knowledge.  Knowledge must lead us to the truth, that is, in any deep and reasonable understanding of epistemology, knowledge must not drown us in a sea of confusion, but rather philosophically enlighten our paths to the truth.  This is what we are about in counselling and in psychotherapy.  As a part-time counsellor in my own school, this is one way in which I see my role.  In fact, I will be working with the second boy I have adverted to in the opening sentence of this present paragraph.  That is to say, one of the things I will try to elucidate for the young man is his path to self-discovery by enabling his to throw off some of that weight - how to enable him to subtract or take away some of the load he is carrying.  Admittedly, these weights may not be burdens of knowledge, but they most certainly will be burdens of negative thoughts which are themselves negative information. My task will be to enable the young man to get a handle on what is brdening him, to equip him with the tools to let go of the load he is carrying.  Indeed, in that task, I am a mere channel through which the client is enabled to unburden himself of his load.

Avoiding Passivity

Most people who engage with spirituality, or who involve themselves in meditation practices, or what is more popularly called practices of mindfulness these days, are aware of the criticism levelled at such practitioners that they are passive actors in a world that requires a greater active involvement.  Again, paradoxically, stillness of soul and centeredness of being lead to a more directed and profitable engagement with the world. Such so-called passivity is exactly what was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as the heresy of quietism which elevated contemplation over actual mental engagement or meditation on scriptural or other spiritual texts or even oral prayer.  When I studied the history of mystical theology and spirituality many decades ago we learnt that this practice of quietism was condemned by Pope Innocent XI in 1687. This quietist heresy (or that heresy which led the mind into sheer passivity, according to officialdom) was seen to consist of wrongly elevating "contemplation" over "meditation," intellectual stillness over vocal prayer, and interior passivity over pious action.  Once again, such concerns are merely fuelled by considerations of control and power (closely linked to the ego, no doubt) rather than with, on the one hand, the paradoxical powerfulness of silence, meditation and contemplation and, on the other, the directedness of still-pointedness and focus in meditation or mindfulness.

Once again, by way of concluding these few words, I should like to invite the reader to peruse the above poem again and to let whatever word or phrase offer itself to you as a mantra for a five minute period of still-pointed or focussed meditation or mindfulness.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 46

Poem 46

When a country is in harmony with the Tao,
the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao,
warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.

There is no greater illusion than fear,
no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself,
no greater misfortune than having an enemy.
Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.

Commentary

Stained glass window, St Vitus Cathedral, Prague, 2016

Our translator Stephen Mitchell is using his translator's licence in his above rendition of poem 46. To illustrate how one translator's version differs from another's, I give here immediately that of Derek Lin which is available at the link given after it.  It runs thus:

When the world has the Tao

Fast horses are retired to till the soil

When the world lacks the Tao

Warhorses give birth on the battlefield.

There is no crime greater than greed

No disaster greater than discontentment

No fault greater than avarice

Thus the satisfaction of contentment

is the lasting satisfaction

(Tao Te Ching Version 2)

Mitchell speaks of the stockpiling of nuclear weapons and Lin that of horses being prepared for battle.  He also chooses to use contemporary or modern images of prosperity and war, that is, tractors and nuclear warheads while his fellow translator chooses the more historic images of agricultural workhorses and warhorses to put across the same message, namely that harmony with the Tao leads both to individual, social, national and international peace and harmony.

Ancient means of war: Prague Castle, February 2016

Evil stalks our world when we as individuals are not "at home " or are not comfortable with ourselves as persons; when we are always envious of others, and when our hearts are shackled, if not shattered, by negative feelings.  If, as individuals, we find it hard to live with ourselves, how can we ever find it easy to live in some peaceful acceptance with others?Whatever happens in our hearts at this micro or personal and social level must surely be magnified if a whole people or nation are not "at home" or comfortable with their identity as a people.  It is no wonder, then, that when crises arise, these opposing nations can see no peaceful solution to their conflicted sense of their own identity and that of the hated other and take recourse to war.  

Therefore, if more and more people are in harmony with themselves they will live in consequent harmony with others.  This micro, personal and social situation will then be replicated further at national and international level.  Hence, the more people practise mindfulness, meditation and prayer as individuals and as small groups there will be a knock-on effect on the world.  When people are "in harmony with the Tao" prosperity comes about.  One could say that peace and prosperity "break out," instead of its direct opposite, namely the inevitability of fighting and war.  Material prosperity follows inevitably on the heels of spiritual prosperity, if one may express the idea thus.

Hitler, and indeed all other dictators whether of the right or left, knew all too well how to manipulate people by playing to their baser instincts like fears, anxieties, memories of old rivalries; by re-opening old wounds; by inspiring the negative feelings of greed and avarice, discontentment, jealousy and envy and thereby fomenting racism, hatred, murder, mayhem and war.

However, to see through all fear is a very difficult thing to do.  The Tao Te Ching is suggesting a path for us to follow, a way of practising reflection and mindfulness, a way of meditating on life, a way of positive action in the world that springs naturally from such practice.  Once, when the great Irish poet, W.B. Yeats was asked how a person becomes a good writer, he replied that he or she must practise continually their craft.  If we are to become mindful people we must also follow the advice given by Yeats, namely to practise the craft of meditating as often and as regularly as possible.  Nothing less is required.

Namaste, friends.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 44

Poem 44

Fame or integrity: which is more important?

Money or happiness: which is more valuable?

Success of failure: which is more destructive?

If you look to others for fulfillment,

you will never truly be fulfilled.

If your happiness depends on money,

you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have;

rejoice in the way things are.

When you realize there is nothing lacking,

the whole world belongs to you.

Commentary

Flowers on window sill, Hotel, Rome, Easter 2007

The famous American Nobel Laureate for Physics, Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988) once said that he would prefer to live with unanswered questions than with unquestioned answers. Long ago when I entered college as a young man of eighteen, I remember the then Director of Studies, Rev Dr Patrick Wallace telling us that we would more than likely leave the college with more questions than answers.  While we might not have deep and meaningful or clear answers we would, he insisted, have really good mature questions to ask of ourselves and of the world. There is a lot of wisdom then in both these pieces of advice.  There simply are no easy answers to life's big questions.  In like manner, the questions that are asked in the above Taoist poem are asked in the spirit in which the advice of both scholars was offered us in our opening remarks.

In a deep, spiritual or religious sense, then, the opening questions in our poem are rhetorical as they assume the answers are obvious.  Perhaps, like a lot of poems, the final lines really clinch the argument which the poet is attempting to hammer home.  Let's repeat them here for effect:

When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.

Footprints of a dog, Donabate Strand, Feb., 2008

These lines appeal to me more than any of the others in the poem as they plumb the depths of spirituality.  The further we travel along the way of life, the more we realise that life is more about the journey than the destination and that happiness is not the destination, that it is, in fact, the way.  Moreover, the further we journey along the road of life, the more we realise also that everything is linked, that we are all connected, that union, unity, compassion and peace are all interwoven and interconnected; that the present moment is all we have got; that living in the past is to be avoided because it is almost always either filled with regrets or painful memories; that living in the future is almost always filled with anxiety or fear; that if we learn just simply to be in the moment that we begin to realise that "there is nothing lacking and that the whole world belongs to us."

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 23

Stanza 23

Express yourself completely,
then keep quiet.
Be like the forces of nature:
when it blows, there is only wind;
when it rains, there is only rain;
when the clouds pass, the sun shines through.

If you open yourself to the Tao,
you are at one with the Tao
and you can embody it completely.
If you open yourself to insight,
you are at one with insight
and you can use it completely.
If you open yourself to loss,
you are at one with loss
and you can accept it completely.

Open yourself to the Tao,
then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place.

The good old worker bee,  I took this photograph in 2010

Commentary

The above poem is essentially about the twin skills of openness and listening.  Both these skills lie at the heart of the practice of meditation.  When we sit to meditate we firstly relax our bodies and de-stress it bit by bit.  Then we concentrate on the rhythm of our breath as it oxygenates our body and expels carbon dioxide through our nostrils - that basic process physiologists and biologists call respiration.  In meditation circles we call the attention to our respiratory apparatus simply "the act of returning to or paying close attention to the breath." This simple act is one of sheer receptivity to the breath that keeps our very body alive in this moment in time.  In holistic practices like that of Focusing, invented by Dr. Eugene Gendlin the person engaged in the process focuses on the "felt sense" of some problem,  Essentially focusing like mindfulness uses those skills used for thousands of years by the different masters and practitioners of meditation in the various religious traditions.  

The sand on Donabate Beach, 2013

In focusing one is literally listening to how we hold certain feelings in our bodies.  I would argue that meditators actually do that very naturally anyway.  It is also my contention that mindfulness is secular meditation and that modern authors who peddle their wares in the form of books, CDs and DVDs on mindfulness stole the clothes of the traditional meditators, but that is a story for a different post than this one.

Another major theme in the above poem is that of self-expression.  Such expression can be done in many creative ways: in art of all kinds, in literature, in poems, in music, in dance, in mime and in sculpture and architecture and so on.  Then, once one has expressed how one feels, the author recommends that we learn to keep quiet.  This is good wisdom as we must for sure express all our emotions, especially negative ones as unexpressed feelings will eat and gnaw away at us forever until they are given expression through one medium or another,  However, there is nothing worst than someone who continually repeats the same old moan and never has the courage to do anything about it.  Such is not what our Taoist writer has in mind.  He (or she) sees the expression of feelings as being therapeutic once expressed.  In this way, the person gets whatever is weighing them down or even lifting them up off their minds.

The second stanza sings the praises of openness which it also sees as essentially healing and therapeutic.  Such openness allows us to feel empathy with our inner self, with others and indeed with the source of all life which some of us dare call God.  Interestingly, the poet recommends that we be open both to negative and positive experiences: On the one hand we can be open to the positive experience of insight and by being so open we become one with it.  On the other hand, we can be open to the negative experience of loss and in so doing becoming one with loss.  Such an openness paradoxically helps us accept that loss and learn to live with it from day to day.  In short, such openness allows the human spirit to heal.

The author invites us in essence to open ourselves to the Tao and in so doing we open ourselves to the healing powers of the universe.  The final stanza works like a chorus and is worth repeating as it is really a summary of the whole poem:

Open yourself to the Tao,
then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place.

In conclusion, some word or phrase or line may suggest itself as a matra for meditation or as a thought to inspire a short period of contemplation.  I wish the reader of these few words peace and happiness in the now of experience.  Namaste, friends!

Journal of a Soul 59

Nothing New Under the Sun

Heron in Malahide Estuary recently

Sometimes, it's very hard to write something new, something vibrant, something with an edge.  It's so easy to write trite, hackneyed or banal things about anything, but possibly easier still to write such things about spirituality or about the soul, simply because they belong to a more nebulous and mysterious, if not mystical area of experience.  In my senior years in secondary (high) school, I was very much taken with the rather skeptical remarks from the Old Testament writer Qoheleth who opined just exactly what's stated in my above heading - that indeed most things were thought about or tried before, and so on. A lecturer I had at college many years ago - a brilliant theologian and indeed philosopher - always recommended that if we are to be good scholars we should always deploy a healthy skepticism about anything we read. Obviously we could also use the same tactic with regards to anything we encounter in life. Needless to say, we are quite liable to be duped if we don't employ such basic tactics.

The Spiritual Entrepreneurs: A Word of Warning

What would we do without the simple worker bee?

Recently, I have engaged in some on-line courses that promote spiritual development, and indeed, they have been good for the most part - life-enhancing, positive, and all promoting good sound mental health practices.  I have had no problems with them myself because I still employ that old healthy skepticism recommended by both Qoheleth and my erstwhile, sadly now departed, lecturer.  It seems to me that most of these organizations that are promoting these on-line seminars are very good. I will mention none of these by name as I feel they are providing a legitimate service, and also perhaps my own healthy skepticism may at times be somewhat unfounded, though I suspect not.  (In other words, the philosopher in me asks if I am ever skeptical about my own skepticism!)  What I have noticed is that while these organizations provide some authoritative sources for their claims, promote very good healthy practices - both physical and mental - and quote many recent scientific surveys, they can at times be somewhat prone to slip in rather unfounded promises in the midst of more obvious and scientifically based fact: the easy route to happiness, how to increase one's wealth almost without effort if only the listener or viewer will just sign up to this or that package of on-line courses that will give them the key to success.  Now, as I have stated, most of the courses that I have tasted are impressive for the most part, but then rather subtly insert some impossible promise like total personal transformation, gaining the potential to become a millionaire, or to increase the length of one's life rather substantially in one case.  I'm not against spiritual entrepreneurs and many of them are superb, but one has to be aware of the ones that get that little bit more woolly in their thinking and that little bit more hyperbolic and exaggerative in their claims as they hook and reel in their bait.  They will do this, I believe, slowly and subtly. All I can say is that I accept most of their stuff in good faith, but fall back on my friend "healthy skepticism" when money is involved.  Again, I'm not obviously against paying for downloads of conferences and good solid books, of which I have many.  Nor am I against paying high prices for attending good conferences on spirituality/psychology or for attending extended courses with good solid speakers.  I just feel we must not shut off our intellect when we put our spiritual senses into gear!  I believe in Head (Intellect) and Heart (Feelings and the non-cognitive) - both/and, and never either/or.  Either/Or alone is a human being flying on one wing who will crash to earth all too soon.

The Struggle that is Life

Having trod the soil of Mother Earth for some 56 years now, I have never yet met anyone who has easy solutions to the trials and tribulations either of their own life or that of their friends, colleagues or acquaintances.  Indeed, I shut off my listening apparatus immediately if I do encounter such individuals in my daily life.

The people I encounter in my life comprise real human beings with long lists of strengths and failings.  Just to go through some problems I encountered in others recently in my job as a teacher in an Autism Unit attached to a Secondary School and in colleagues, acquaintances and friends: lack of self-esteem, over-control, ego-tripping, micro-management, bullying, exaggeration, catastrophizing, depression, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, family breakdown, schizophrenia, stress, behavioural difficulties - ADD, ADHD, ODD - suicide, Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, gambling addiction and so on and on. Even people who appeared on the surface to be successful individuals all had one skeleton or other health-wise or problem-wise in their lives.  In my lived experience, there are no easy solutions that trip off the tongue.  There is the listening ear, the compassionate acceptance of others, the offer of practical help or where to get such help.  In my growing understanding of life, both personally and professionally, the solutions if they are there are ones that happen in a community  and family setting where the person can be helped to feel more wanted and more accepted and more belonging to that community.  There are no easy solutions, but gradual supports can be put in place to help the individual cope.

Metaphor of Plant   

Flowers: Marley Park

Metaphors and images speak more profoundly and clearly to the human psyche.  Let me use the metaphor of plant here, and I borrow it from my reading of the great twentieth century counsellor Carl Ransom Rogers.  He had started out with an interest in general science and horticulture and later moved into psychology and psychotherapy.  Hence, he opined once that his clients were like plants that needed all the supports (or nutrients to sustain the metaphor) the gardener (metaphor for counsellor or significant other) could provide: care, compassion, empathy, congruence or authenticity and so on.  Otherwise, the client simply would not grow - instead, like a badly watered plant, s/he will have stunted growth or will wilt and eventually die. 

Fragility

Fragility is another thought that comes to mind.  As a poem-maker I love reading poems and writing them.  One of my favourite poets is the late great Gaelic poet Seán Ó Ríordáin who wrote mostly philosophical/spiritual poems about the meaning and purpose of life as he saw it.  Many of them were reflections on the mental and physical pain he suffered as a person who had Tuberculosis for most of his life.  He spoke of "leochaileacht na beatha", that is "the fragility of life."  The other morning I knocked a shade from the spray of lights in my sitting room and that shade smashed into smithereens (a real Gaelic word that found its way into the English language by the way).  Life is like that: things break.  Worse than that: people break, too.  That's a horrible experience of which I have written much in this and other blogs. Hence, I have always found flowers placed on or before altars, or before statues, or at shrines, or simply in abundance at the place where someone tragically died to be most moving.  They are saying something very profound about our fragility.  In fact placing such flowers is an potent ritualistic act that acknowledges our own fragility and mortality.

Candle Light

The lights of Howth Village, June, 2014

Candle light is another image that comes to my mind.  I have always loved the old Chinese saying that it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.  Likewise, I have often lit candles in churches (and still do, even though I am not a church-goer in the sense of attending mass at all) when someone is ill.  In our fragility such ritualistic acts are intra-psychically and inter-psychically potent.  It was always a custom in Gaelic Ireland to place a lighted candle in the window at Christmas time as a sign to all that the stranger is welcome within.  These days candles are replaced by stands of electric lights. Light can be at once fragile (easily blown out) and powerful beyond measure (can cause a tragic fire for example).  Perhaps the profound message here is one of fragility and potential power at one and the same time.  

Mindfulness

There is very little to be said here by way of conclusion except to issue the invitation to all, and also indeed to myself, to be mindful of the polarities of fragility and potential, the weakness and the power of life.  Let us cherish and protect it.  Let us light the candles of welcome and hope and smell the flowers of our small and big successes.  In all this let us shut our ears to false and easy promises that deny life rather than accept it in its sheer fragility and potential.

Journal of a Soul 51

To Travel or Not to Travel

To travel or not to travel, sometimes that is the question.  We are a restless species at base. The great St Augustine described himself as "a restless seeker."  In a sense, that fifth century saint summed up the human predicament nicely.  An acquaintance of mine who died over a year ago was not alone a "restless seeker," but he was also a restless traveller.  The way he dealt with his imminent demise was to take to travelling with an increased compulsion, if his previous obsession with it had not been intense enough.  Even to meet this man, you instinctively and intuitively picked up his restlessness.  He was always on the move, always going places, always living in the future, always making plans and more plans and more plans.  He was a deeply discontent person, and evidently unhappy in the moment. 

This road in Marley Park will eventually lead into the mountains

As I write these lines on the screen before me, I am at home in my attic study, having just finished one of Deepak Chopra & Oprah Winfrey's online meditation sessions.  Usually, I would be down in Isca Marina in Calabria for Easter, but this time I chose to stay at home while both my brothers travelled southward to the Mediterranean.  I have also just completed an eight week guided course on mindfulness in my local university -DCU.  Maybe that was one of the contributing reasons to why I did not wish to travel this Easter. However, there were also issues of getting my house into a more homely state to dwell in.  I have managed to get some long-standing jobs done about the house, and so not travelling did help.

However, for me as I live alone, I enjoy the peace and solitude of my Easter holidays.  I find that when I stay put alone I do a lot mental travelling - sometimes maybe too much. However, such internal journeying can be either stimulating or even disturbing.  Let me spell out what I am about here.  Restlessness can result in our desire to physically travel, but it can also see us staying put and travelling the equally hazardous roads of our own inner landscape.

And so as I sit here typing these words on the screen of my laptop I am travelling the roads of my own inner landscape.  Thankfully these are mostly interesting pathways leading me to a great extent along scenic routes to the discovery of a newer and deeper sense of Self. Moreover, I am also painfully aware that inner exploration for anyone of a depressive nature can be most disturbing, deeply unsettling and not a little scary.  I have written much over the years in various blogs about my suffering from clinical depression of the uni-polar variety.  Hence, I have known only too well the back-roads and side-roads of sadness and depression for a good number of years in my past life.  Thankfully, I have had no reason to travel those dreadful by-ways of the lonely depressed mind in the last sixteen years. Knowing them only too well, and my consequent awareness of what can pull me away from the more secure roadways and pathways to the real self and  into those dreadful by-ways of depression has led me to leading my life with a good map, both medical and therapeutic.

So journeying to the centre, or journeying to the Real Self, can and often is a painful one. However, as I have just stated, like any journey we set out on, we must make preparations, arm ourselves with the best maps, bring passports, visas, money and so on.  For the journey inward, we need the help of friends, spiritual guides, reading, discernment, patience, humility, openness and above all compassion for the Self.  All self-exploration, then, must be done with sound preparation and guidance, because as all spiritual teachers, guides, counsellors, therapists and any good, solid and well-trained facilitators of it will know, any form of deep meditation or mindfulness must be accompanied by solid sustenance for the journey. 

Flowers in Ardgillan Castle & Demesne, Skerries

In a nutshell, the difference between mindfulness and meditation is that the former is the secular face or incarnation of the latter.  Mindfulness is meditation divested of its religious garments, to use a metaphor.  However, in practice, to my mind at least, they are very much the same thing.  In short, I believe that mindfulness can be done at several levels.  The basic or foundational level is that of being mindful of the body and breathe.  The next is the level of being mindful of the thoughts, feelings and emotions.  A further and deeper level would be mindfulness of the Inner Self or the Real Self.  Again, more religious incarnations of mindfulness, would speak of a spiritual, if not a divine, experience associated with either meditation or prayer.  However, I do believe my nutshell explanation in the first sentence in this paragraph gets at the essence of the thing for the beginner. 

Yesterday and the day before I went out walking with my camera in hand, after I had done my period of meditation.  I found on both occasions that I had a new and more aware sense of the beauty of things than I usually would have if I had not done any mindfulness practice at all. Having said that, I was also somewhat overcome, too, by the fragility and beauty of life.  I had a sense of the destructiveness of the power of the more worldly pursuits of humankind, namely the despoiling and destruction of nature that is occurring at an alarming rate.  One would have to be living in a cocoon not to be aware of the environmental destruction we are subjecting our planet to literally on a minute by minute basis.  

Now, as an experienced meditator, I know myself only too well and realize that I cannot let myself dwell too much or too deeply on the flip-side or negative side of the "realization of the fragility and beauty of life" as such would bring morbid thoughts on.  Enough to go out into my garden, mow the lawn, and do my own little bit to nurture nature, and in so doing nurture my own soul.   Likewise, I recommend getting involved in one or other green campaign because so doing lessens the negativity that can be overwhelming when we contemplate how humankind threatens the very survival planet Earth.

More flowers, Ardgillan Park, Skerries

Recently, I was counselling a young boy who is suffering with depression.  He is also attending a psychologist. He was sent onto me by the school counsellor as she felt that my teaching him some meditation and visualization practices might help him.   Usually, I make a brief sketch of the client's state of mind on the whiteboard, with his help.  Needless to say, I work with all the good advice given by his psychologist and school counsellor, ensuring at all times that I do not contradict what they say, as working with others and on the same path is always crucial.  I sketched out what he was doing with his psychologist.  She was working with what made him Happy and what made him Sad.  We listed both these on the whiteboard.  What made him sad was that life was ultimately about loss, that everything and everyone grew old and died.  What made him happy was everything to do with living.  These were polar opposites as we sketched them out.  The birth of his little sister in more recent times has been a moment of singular happiness and joy for him. "Seek life", "go on living", "live in the now" were all messages we felt were good for living.  I recommended that he buy a present for his little sister and one for himself to celebrate the option for life.  When he returned the following week he had bought both presents and was a far happier boy.  As we were talking we spoke of the cycles of life and that often the life-death cycle can be a unity which we must respect as we are integral parts of it.  To get lost in either end of the cycle might not be the whole truth somehow.  Certainly getting lost in a cycle of depression, where we choose the dark and the negative and the deathly and death-ridden will lead us to despair.  Choosing sheer hedonism, a life of sensual pleasures may be choosing life as nothing but empty satisfaction after empty satisfaction.  Such a choice may, in fact, be very superficial.  Choosing to hold the hand of a sick or dying person, may paradoxically be choosing life, because those last moments of that person's life are so worthwhile.

Now, this is what I mean by travelling within.  Another metaphor could be "internal weather."  What's the weather like in your mind now? Stormy? Sunny? Cloudy? Grey? Dark? Dismal? Rainy? Windy? Night? Day? Sunset? Sunrise? and so on.  We do mindfulness and meditation and we travel ever deeper or ever higher (depending on your directional metaphor) into the Real Self, but that journey has many twists and turns, many obstacles, many hills and valleys, many rivers to be crossed, even seas and mountains at times - all of which means that we need to be well prepared and always look for help.  Going it alone is always dicey, to say the least.

To all the readers of this journal of a soul, I say "Buon viaggio!"