"Many from One"

“Many from One”
by Zeus Yiamouyiannis (copyright 2009)

Diversity celebrates oneness
In the divine perspective

We are the myriad reflections
of a universal spirit
poured out

A beautiful
and continual
act of creation.

We are the messengers
of a cosmic force
inflected uniquely through our beings

We are the receivers and givers
Conducted by grace,
Elicited in rapturous symphony

We are the tunings
Of a fine metal bowl
That, when struck, rings long past our lives


Blessings,
Zeus Yiamouyiannis (http://anopenman.blogspot.com/, copyright 2009)

The new religious pluralism emphasizes vitality and cooperation rather than neutrality and isolation

There is a new force emerging in interfaith arenas. Organizations like the Interfaith Youth Core (ifyc.org) are assertively and compassionately seeking to establish religious cooperation and pluralism as a strong norm in global society. Well, some may shrug, hasn't this always been the case by some group? Not in this manner. The change can be seen not only in a youthful energy but a different approach. Instead of fearing religious engagement and finding ways to neutralize tensions with mere discussion, IFYC and other progressive organizations are expanding the reach of religious dialogue into active projects which demonstrate that faith can affirmatively enhance the bonds within society. I think this is a welcome change that will help healthy, pro-social religious attitudes gain footing and meaning.

In the weak form of religious pluralism, approval is the arbiter of rightness, and offense or disapproval is the evidence of wrongness of one's own belief or convictions. In the new strong form, spiritual and religious expression and cooperation is emboldened by the coming together of two independent persons, with their openness and desire to connect. In this new emerging pluralism different believers and non-believers alike can affirm in their connection something beyond themselves, a larger truth than can be embodied by their limited human capacities coming together to birth into reality a new and larger truth.

Spiritual vitality is the arbiter of this new strong form of interfaith. It demands that we be exactly who we are and to deepen that (not water it down) in interaction with others. As it demands we become "more us," it also demands that we become more than us in the face of the unveiling of God's glory in the active, expressed nature of another.

Religious pluralism becomes a necessity of deepening my Christian faith. My faith relies upon Christianity, and the deepening of my Christianity relies upon the gifts of people who do not think as I do, and religious traditions that have developed different ways to understand what Christians call the living Word, Spirit in the world.

I am making a fairly radical claim: My "Christianness" is enhanced by my open, faithful engagement and invitation of other faiths. My "core" beliefs are strengthened and not weakened by God's gifts through the beliefs and religious traditions of others. I am not watered down. I am not made relativistic. Quite the contrary. I am made more ultimate in my devotion, connection, and understanding of God and of the message of Jesus in my tradition.

When I look at Gospels and the sacred teachings of Jesus, this is the message I receive: From the deepest, accepted whole of your being, give and receive. Be both more "You" than you have ever been, and more beyond the small "you", the ego that fears engagement or the the ego that seeks to extract submission.

We are Spirit and Form coming together

We humans are spirit and form coming together, dance of form and formless. It is up to us in this to observe how we might be, what accordance we shall give to our bodies, our spirits, and how we shall understand and exercise the possibilities of our blended nature. It is up to us to decide what we will follow, what shall gain leadership in our lives, what we agree to live by.

So let us consider and pay close attention to what form and spirit offer. What is the reality of each? Are we confusing the elements and attributes which emanate from these very distinct aspects of our being? Does this confuse the choices we make?

Before we proceed, let us distinguish between those things emanating from spirit and those from form.

Spirit, first, and form, second
Energy, first, and matter, second
Subjectivity, first, and identity, second

Being, first, and name, second (brought together in the soul)
Conscience, first, and thought, second
Awareness, first, and perception, second

First let us observe that the spirit is larger and deeper than the world. Spirit is the source or origin of form. As energy articulates and generates matter, so too does the Word give birth to words, the worldly and creative expressions of inspiration. Form cannot capture spirit, but spirit can capture form.

Note the effect of poetry and where poetry gains its strength and meaning. Follow poetry back to its source. A simple and elegant description of a red wheelbarrow (say, in a William Carlos Williams poem), awakens in many different readers a sense of the essence of that object. In so recognizing the essence of thing, a sense of beauty is inspired in the reader.

The beauty does not come from the image of the wheelbarrow, as indispensable as that is, nor even of the simple and evocative words of the poem itself. Rather it is in what the words transmit, essence, spirit, that beauty and life is found. The profound is evidenced and made present, even in simple description.

Second, let us acknowledge that lasting fulfillment is never created by form. Because forms pass, the happiness associated with them also must pass. Even a fortunate son shall die and see his body slowly age and wear over time, wonderfully and gracefully, one hopes, but wear nonetheless. We know that material wealth and accumulation can protect neither against mortality nor ruin. The materially rich can be miserable and the materially poor can remain in good spirits. Our happiness may be affected by but is not determined by their worldly condition. Our spirits decide.

Contemplate the statement, "Even though I've gone through a lot of changes, I'm still the same person as I've always been." This seems like a paradox, but we know what a person is saying when they say this. The "me," my being, the essential "who I am" has remained intact, even as "I" (the historical, time-dependent, personal human that I am) have gone through immense changes. I am transformed on the level of form (forms of thought, personality, knowledge, wealth, health), but I am remain whole on the level of spirit. I may be brought into closer contact with my being or drawn further away, but I remain inseparable from its beloved source.

Third, on the level of form we can never be the same. Difference is the eternal rule of form. In time and space we are different from one microsecond to the next and from one location to the next. The electrons in the atoms that constitute our bodies and our world shall never again be in the exact same alignment. If we are truthful we can talk about continuity on the level of form only in terms of tendencies, patterns, intentions, projections of our need for coherence and order.

Yet we are intended as well. We are created and part of a created and ever-yet-creating universe. Our patterns and laws cannot capture that of which we are a part. A relief steals over us is we acknowledge this. We are not the great achievers of humanity, but rather conducting wires of the spirit allowing us to midwife a greater creative power that can result in miraculous discoveries and inventions in the world. These, rightly understood, are homages to our spiritual source.

There is freedom in this vertigo. Because it is not bound by the rules of form, spirit never asks that we conform, even to legal and natural laws. We stifle our spiritual impulse to "fly" by jumping from a bridge, only because we know our form shall be destroyed and we want to further enjoy this life in this form. We can, in practice, decide to love our selves, our God, our neighbors, and our enemies not because we fear human law (which asks us to kill our enemies in conscripted war) but because so doing consummates the delight of of the spirit, and its "laws" of infinitely varied loving, giving, and sacrifice.

Sameness, conformity, is merely a projection of desire and a training of perceptions to "recoup the universe," an attempt to be God and to be the universe by claiming ultimate knowledge. Spiritual oneness is the opposite of formal sameness. Formal sameness is a conceit that through symbols, devices, and political power must be enforced and made to rule over both the ineffable spirit and the unruly and changing world. Spiritual oneness recognizes the beauty of uniqueness and diversity and sees difference as confirmation of its ever-creative glory.

In a supreme act of rebellion, resentment, and idolatry, the ego puts forth a false God of order which rejects the flow of creation and replaces it with a rule, which seeks to "civilize" the spirit and make it conform to the world. Yet this very act shows its falsehood: One never needs to enforce that which already is, that which is true on the spiritual level. Spiritual truth generates agreement by the demonstration of its creative and benevolent power in the souls of its citizens. It does not have to force agreement.

Quite the contrary. Spiritual truth allows humanity to recognize for itself what is just and right by allowing humanity to experience the painful consequences of spirit-defying actions- the pollution of the planet, torture of people, neglect of children. It allows people to experience the joys of spiritually consonant living-- clarity, love, devotion, generosity, equanimity. We are patiently encouraged see which actions accord with our spiritual natures and which do not.

Fourth, the spirit can never be possessed, only exercised, just as true intelligence and wisdom can never be possessed but rather only exercised. They who believe they can possess the truth, who confuse dogma or technical fluency with truth are fundamentalists what ever their beliefs might be. One ought first to be inspired, to let a greater knowledge dwell within and "use" one's being, and only secondarily apply the worldly tools of the mind to elaborate upon inspiration. All great discoveries seem to follow this pattern.

There is an inherent humility in this. One is recognizing on can never be a God unto one's self, but in joy, one is glad of this. Being a connected tendril of the spirit, conducting its light into this world, brings great joy and awareness. Why be a ruler of a cold and barren castle when you can be a servant in an infinitely varied and beautiful universe?

Revel in the Exercise of Being

You
Are not on the outside looking in
You are Being

You
do not possess a spirit
You are spirit embodied

In an eternal play and rhythm
Beauty revealed
in this instant

Newly reborn on this
morning
of endless time

Do not objectify yourself
Revel in the spirit
Come to know and be

Who You are

Your Being: Larger and Deeper than You

For your being to delight
For your future (if it is) to be just, joyful, and good,
Manifested reality must not be exactly like you envisage
In your mind

You must be inspired beyond your own images
You must break through the worldly tyranny
Of expectations and assumptions

And be remade anew by experience and grace

Real growth is impossible without this

You are not the author of your own spirit
And if this spirit is to guide you,
You must commit to following,
Opening to something much deeper and larger

Much deeper and larger
Than the you that hangs by a thread
To that tendril of spirit called the soul
The spark of divinity
That leads like a golden cord

To the substance and voice of creation,
To the substance and voice of God

What is the good?

What is the good but manifesting the energy of God, universe, and creation through us so that this energy may transform the world?

What is life but feeling and knowing this energy coursing through us to its fullest?

What is faith but choosing to allow this energy to work?

What is devotion but consummated desire for this energy to be completely within us and we within it?

What is conscience but pain when this energy is oppressed and joy when this energy leads our hearts, souls, bodies, and minds?

(Zeus Yiamouyiannis, http://anopenman.blogspot.com/, copyright 2009)

Descend into blessedness, rise to transcendence

In much of the Western imagination, redemption is associated with being risen. The quintessential image most take away from Christianity is the Resurrection, the joyous victory by Christ over a suffering death. I have a different intuition. In the circle of an eternal life, it is my belief that one must very much descend into blessedness, into the rich and fertile earth, into the mind and soul of the Eternal Child. From this sacred and warm place, one is as a seed, drawing in the primordial to grow and spring forth. It is in this seed that one discovers one's soul. It is in this seed that one discovers one is made of the tendril threads of spirit.

Indeed, one can then rightfully ascend in the confidence and wisdom of a human being who knows his or her own origin. There is no sage without the child. There is no transcendence without descent. To take the example that many would choose to ignore, let us visit Jesus' death. A grisly and heart-rending affair, for most. Utterly unredeemable. A tragic day with no comfort, save the hope of resurrection and a Grand Bearing and Atonement for the sins of others. Jesus is primarily seen as a noble victim or a martyr.

And yet look closely. The human and divine in Jesus have an intense and transformative interchange. "God why hast thou forsaken me?," cries the suffering man. In his pain he turned up, stripped of all his defenses, beseeching, in need of love and filled with a pained desire to touch the presence of the holy in his temporally racked body. Then an opening occurred. "God, I commend my spirit to thee," a praise and a recognition of the divine in him already ascending, touching, and conferring itself to its source, its Father of many names, it's Mother of all. And when Jesus had offered up his spirit, consummated in the Grace of God, he said, "It is done." And he died.

The lesson I take is a very different one than most. What I see is the triumph of spirit in the deepest depths of humanity in the conduct of present human life, not simply after it is finished. I see the tragedy of Jesus' death. I understand the rite of sacrifice embodied in the way his life was taken. I see that Jesus died for the sins of humanity. However, I see in his example, that it is in this life that we must open, and allow our own spirits to touch God and the God in one another. In this very most human of all human experiences of tremendous vulnerability and pain, Jesus chose Openness, Questioning, Love, Compassion, Courage, and Giving. He allowed the spirit to evoke through him, and demonstrate to the world the present, actual, and triumphant powers of love.

As he was given (His only begotten), so he gave. As we are given, so shall we give. Life is a miracle, every moment, death an inevitability. What is to give us meaning beyond our small distractions and plays at courage. We cannot seem to accept our own mortality, much less face a most painful torture. We must accept that we cannot know ourselves without descending into our deepest spirit. We cannot know this life without raising that deep spirit up the well to offer a thirsty world. And we cannot know the Eternal without offering ourselves to a Love that ever offers itself to us.

I look at the forms my life has taken, and they appear to have very little rhyme or reason. But I am beginning to see by offering myself, what I may become, indeed realize what I have always been. I journey on.

Anam Cara: Soul Friend

My wife and son are traveling, leaving me time to indulge in my newest favorite author of the moment, John O'Donohue, a wonderful Celtic philosopher and spiritual poet and sage-- Anam Cara; To Bless the Space Between Us; and Conamara Blues. Though I am a practicing progressive Christian, the spiritual language of my soul and my biography could best be described as "naturalistic theism," (with a philosophical and psychological disposition greatly influenced by Mahayana Buddhism) having grown up on a farm with many hours of delight and reflection, quite literally, in the fields of God. John O'Donohue probably comes closer to that than anyone else I have yet read.

"To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together. No one can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of an inner world. This wholesomeness is holiness. To be holy is to be natural, to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you. Behind the facade of image and distraction, each person is an artist in this primal and inescapable sense. Each one of us is doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries and shapes a unique world."

"Friendship is a creative and subversive force. It claims that intimacy is the secret law of life and the universe... If approached in friendship, the unknown, the anonymous, the negative, and the threatening gradually yield their secret affinity with us... The Celtic imagination articulates the inner friendship that embraces Nature, divinity, the underworld, and human world as one."

[John O'Donohue, xvi & xvii, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (Anam Cara means "soul friend")]

What does it mean to be an Open Man?

A wonderful friend, Antonia, suggested the title of a book for me to write: An Open Man:  Reflections of a Spiritual Journeyman.  I've collected quite a few essays.  I've sent them to a select group of friends.  I'm now "openly" considering just writing them into a blog.  Much of my own journey as a man, human being, and inquiring soul, has been toward one of more openness, less certainty, more wonder, less presumption.  

I like to challenge myself not to a duel but to a deepening.   I've simply found that this deepening doesn't happen without openness and this openness doesn't happen without a kind of passionate vulnerability and faithful conviction that I might be more than my images of me.  So consider this an opening in itself.  

I hope to return many times to share my reflections.  In this journey I hope you will comment and most importantly pose questions, clarifying, spiritual, and philosophical questions.  Sometimes I write in a very non-linear manner, sometimes very simply, but each way emerges out of a need to contribute a new way of thinking about how I, and we, might conceive and act more effectively in the world from a soulful center.