Stories for a Living Future

The teachings of the Tao have always been a hidden influence in my own journey, its qualities of silence and stillness, and a relationship to the “natural order of things.” Here I explore the way the teachings of the two great masters, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, give us a “firm foundation” to living in these toxic times, helping us to reconnect to the song of creation, the primal spirit that moves through all things.

Transcript

Transkript in Deutsch

These stories came unexpectedly as Spring turned to early Summer. Although they include the story of the Earth and our shared journey together, they are more autobiographical, more directly mystical. They speak about the light and love that have been central to my own journey in recent years, about the power of mystical experiences that have drawn me deep into the inner worlds.

But there is another element that is less visible, more simple and silent, but which resonates as deeply. This is really the story of the heartbeat of the world and how to hear it, and how its history stretches back through the centuries, when it was most commonly known as the Tao, the Way.

How the teachings of the Tao became so central to my own life and journey belongs to the mystery of reincarnation, of teachings practiced many lifetimes ago in a very different time and place, and yet surfacing soon after I started to meditate in this life. By the time I was nineteen Tao Te Ching was the only book I treasured, and its practice of non-action, or wu wei, has always been a hidden foundation to the way I live, as is the teaching that “the true human nature is the primal spirit …”¹ and the primal spirit is the great Way.

I am no longer a Taoist hermit walking amidst white clouds, but its quality of quietness, of stillness, in which “the water of the sea is smooth and mirrors the moon in its surface,” has remained. I have found the primal spirit within and around me, and have come to understand how it is connected to the deep roots of our being, and can be found in the simplest, most ordinary things.

I also find it a balance to the increasing complexity and distortions of our present culture, helping me to stay attuned to life’s essence. The primal spirit loves stillness, and in being attentive to this quality I have found stillness like an inner ballast in a world that seems to spin more and more out of control.

But in order to share a little of the thread has been woven into my daily life and way of thinking, I will tell a little of the song that is at the heart of the world. This song I understand to be the primal spirit of life that runs through all things, and like the great Tao, flows everywhere.

THE SONG OF THE HEART OF THE WORLD

Standing beside the lagoon in the early morning I see the head of a river otter suddenly appearing in the wind-ruffled water. Just as quickly he vanishes, only to appear near to the shore, and then again he is gone. Turning, I find that the sun has come through the fog, flooding the lagoon with reflected light, and then a grey heron rises from the reeds, gracefully spreading its wings. In these moments it is as if I can hear life’s deep rhythm, normally buried, hidden beneath the daily clutter.

Sometimes I can hear this song of the heart of the world, echoing the creation stories of the Aboriginal people when the land and all of life was sung into existence by the ancestors, who included humans and certain totem animals. And this song and its music are still present, because in the dreaming there is no past but a beginning that never ended, an everywhen. This morning it was here, all around me and also in my breath, the rhythm of my own life and becoming. In this primal moment there is no separation, not even a memory of separation. It belongs before the Fall when everything is.

In this moment outside of time the essential nature of all that exists is not veiled, but present in its beauty and wonder. It is captured by the mystical poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Everything sings its name and true purpose—it sings itself into being. And we are a part of this divine revelation, connected, interdependent with it all. In the Kalahari Desert the Bushmen live with this awareness, hearing the song of the stars, and telling stories of the star-soaked music filling the night air. They believe that “those who could not hear the stars singing suffered a terrible sickness of the soul, for they were not attuned to the invisible strings and threads that tie us all to Spirit and to the land.”

But our human journey has taken us far from these songs, from what is simple, essential, and profoundly beautiful. Our ears are no longer attuned to this music—we can no longer hear. Our primal purpose of praise and thanksgiving has been forgotten, and we have long lost the way back. When the land was first awakened we were a living part of its mystery and magic, were alive in a multidimensional world. But now for centuries, even millennia, we have closed the doors to this awareness and its music has long faded away. And so we have lost our own purpose, our relationship to the patterns of being and becoming.

The music and the purpose of creation are not separate but part of a living oneness, a unity that transcends time and space and yet is deeply rooted in the land, the place where one is, where one’s feet touch the ground. That is why this hidden purpose is so near and yet so far away—far away because it is so alien to our rational consciousness and its ways of thinking, and yet so near because it is all around us, in the leaves in the trees, the sound of water over stone. That is why I am most happy to watch the river otter, how it moves under the water, appearing unexpectedly.

In China this was called the Tao, what is natural, “having deep roots and a firm foundation.” It is most easily reached through caring for little things, “cooking a small fish,” rather than big projects. It belongs to the wisdom of what is most ordinary. If we can find a way to return to this—to embrace what is natural despite the distortions of today’s world—we will be able to participate in life where “their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple, their home secure; they are happy in their ways.”²

The Tao is the rhythm of life that embraces how the days pass in one’s body and soul. Today I am old. Before I was young and rushed through the days. Today that seems like a distant dream. Maybe because I am old I do not have to be caught up in the ten thousand things, or maybe it is because I have unlearned the ways of the world, and instead opened my heart to this other music, to this song that is life itself. Every day I still have to remind myself that this is what matters, that this is where the heart of the world turns, this place where the wild roses are now in bloom along the fence, where a cup of tea is warm to the touch.

More and more I have strayed from what the Chinese called “the world of dust.” I look to other stories. Even my library of spiritual books now remains mostly unopened. I no longer hope to change the world, or even myself. Many years ago I had a dream in which a saint told me how “everything changes and nothing changes.” I now like to be in a place where the rhythms of nature return again and again, like the heartbeat of the land where I walk.³ Here I can inhabit what the Taoists called “the constant unfolding of things.”⁴

Sometimes I walk with an empty mind, absorbing what is around me. Sometimes I let my mind wander, like today when, seeing the grass higher than me, I thought back to those years on the plains, before they were tamed by tractor and combine. Those brief years of the Indian horse culture before Wounded Knee and the broken circle of Black Elk’s vision.⁵ But in his earlier great vision the circle was unbroken, “Behold the circle of the nation’s hoop, for it is holy, being endless, and thus all powers shall be one power in the people without end.” And in this vision the sun sang a creation song:

With visible face I am appearing.
In a sacred manner I appear.
For the greening earth a pleasantness
I make.
The center of the nation’s hoop
I have made pleasant.
With visible face, behold me!
The four-leggeds and two-leggeds,
I have made them to walk;
The wings of the air, I have made
them to fly.
With visible face I appear.
My day, I have made it holy.⁶

This vision and the creation song belong to a world we have lost, a circle we have broken. And yet it is still present because these visions and songs remain in the memories of our collective psyche, are part of the landscape of the world soul and the land itself. They tell the story of our dreaming Earth and how we once were a part of this song which made the day holy.

These songs come from the archetypal world, what the Sufis call the imaginal plane “between the world of Mystery (‘alam al-ghayb), and the world of Visibility (‘alam al-shahadat).” While most people live in a four-dimensional world of space and time, this dimension is between the physical world and the world of the Self, a timeless dimension of pure love and light. Time does exist in this in-between world, but it moves slowly, the archetypes evolving gradually over centuries. Here are born the songs and dreams that can create civilizations as well as revealing the sacred nature of existence. Carl Jung called these energies “the great decisive factors, they bring about real change …” foundations that can create a new quality of consciousness, a new way to see the world around us.

I have seen these patterns of change forming deep within and know they have a far greater power than the forces that seem to determine our surface world. But as yet they remain under the surface, waiting to constellate into form. This is the embryonic nature of our present time which allows things to flower at the right moment and also to decay. And is why I prefer to wait, watching the waves break on the seashore, the pelicans flying low, their wingtips almost touching the water. I prefer to listen for this hidden song, or simply rest within the depths of my own soul, remembering the words of the Chinese sage, Chuang Tzu: “He knows the endless transformation of things follows its own inevitable nature, and he holds fast to the ancestral source.” ⁷

In stillness and silence I can watch and wait most easily. I can be present in my garden, now full of the flowers of early Summer, and also feel my roots reaching deep into the archetypal world, where the land is still sacred. I am at the moment of the in-breath, returning back to the Source, knowing that it is part of this vast unfolding we call life. Life’s interdependent patterns reach out all around, from the fungal networks that nourish the trees in the nearby forest, to the rising and falling of the tide that follows the cycles of the moon. And behind and within it all, this song, this dreaming of existence.

Sadly, tragically, the divisiveness and discord of today’s world has entered even the inner worlds, amplified by the toxic miasma of social media with its false stories. Because we live in a time of transition the inner world is not so defined, these false stories resonate louder, and one may need to go deeper to be able to watch what is really unfolding. And as our world becomes increasingly unbalanced there is a pressing need to remain attuned to life’s deeper song. There is much work to be done to alleviate climate change and it’s accompanying environmental crisis, but also a calling for the Taoist practice of “work without doing,” like the rainmaker in his hut who stayed within the natural order of things, and thus helped the rain to come after a long drought.

So I try to stay with what is sacred and simple, echoing the words of Basho, “Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.” Life unfolds in its own patterns according to its own rhythm. Even though our culture may have forgotten those patterns, lost this rhythm, this does not mean that I cannot hear the grass growing. I can watch the breath and walk with attention, just as I can cook food that is simple and nourishing.

The Tao itself cannot be named or defined. Unborn it is present in all things, in both the outer and inner worlds. It holds the mystery of things and their primal meaning. I can feel how the song arose from the Tao, how it stays within the heart even as it flows into all of creation. Returning to the Tao we return to what unites us, and recognize that

If you are willing to be lived by it, you will
see it everywhere, even in the most
ordinary things.⁸

Being lived by it means being present with the heartbeat of the world, that is our true human nature.

These ancient teachings were present in my blood when I was born, and in their simplest stillness and quiet speak to me, as natural as clouds moving across the sky. They are in the rhythm of all of my writings, and particularly in the spaces left empty. Since I stopped teaching the meditation room is full of empty cushions, my mind is mostly empty of thoughts, but none of this matters to the woodpecker eating seeds from the birdfeeder, or the way the autumn rains turn the hills from golden to green.

©2024 The Golden Sufi Center, www.goldensufi.org