Sacred Disorder

I know. You’ve read this on a zillion such blogs: I’m a lousy blogger. Just like all the others. Really, blogging is an odd undertaking if you’ve spent years writing for (small amounts of) cash.

Anyway, I wanted to post this video if only for my own records. I posted it on Facebook, where every post has a lifespan of — what? — 60 minutes? This is a young Romanian woman who makes frequent, often funny videos about the damage religion does us. In this case, she cites the beauty and pain of the world and alleges that we create gods to justify our inhumanity.

Check out her many other videos on her YouTube page.

The current issue of the Gay and Lesbian Review includes an interview with Edumund White about his new biography of the poet Arthur Rimbaud (right).

If you know Rimbaud’s work, you already know I’m a huge fan. The name of my blog, “Sacred Disorder,” is taken from a line in his long poem, “Une Saison en Enfer” (”A Season in Hell”). Rimbaud’s story is fascinating for many reasons, much of it outlined in the interview with White.

One rather incidental mention in the interview took me by surprise — the speculation that Emanuel Swedenborg’s work indirectly influenced Rimbaud, via Balzac and Baudelaire.

I grew up on the periphery of the Swedenborgian church. My father spent his childhood in Bryn Athyn, Pa., a community originally founded by members of that church. I was born there but my parents moved south soon after my birth, first to Charlotte and later to Atlanta. There was no Swedenborgian church in either city, so I got very little exposure to the religion, except during the few years we moved back to Bryn Athyn when I was about 11.

We did sometimes meet with other families in Charlotte and Atlanta to listen to tape recordings of services in Bryn Athyn. My father usually led these. Also, a minister of the church visited several times a year, like a circuit preacher, to conduct services and show us slide shows about the life of Jesus. But, for all practical purposes, I didn’t have most people’s exposure to religion and I’ve always thought that was mainly a good thing. I’ve seen many clients — gay ones in particular — whose lives were made miserable by religious upbringings.

Despite that, I have been continually amazed how often it turns out that writers and thinkers I admire have been influenced by Swedenborg. I think part of this is simply the fact that Swedenborg’s influence has been much broader than is popularly known, especially on the Romantics like Blake and Whitman. But he also turns up as a serious influence on favorites of mine like D.T. Suzuki, Jorge Borges and Jung. He influenced many others.

I’ve thought a good bit about why I end up drawn to writers who themselves were drawn to Swedenborg and I think it probably has to do with his so-called “language of correspondences” by which an “internal sense” of the Word [Bible]” emerges. This is something like a language of metaphors or mythopoetic exegesis — a poetic way of seeing the world. Indeed, it’s not unlike the way depth psychology approaches the psyche. Gaston Bachelard, another favorite of mine, put it this way: “The psyche’s reality is lived in the death of the literal.” I think Rimbaud is expressing much the same idea when he talks about the way “disorder” is essential to apprehending reality, as I’ve written in an earlier paper.

Swedenborg had other qualities that I think many of these writers admired. Principally, he was also a scientist — an important one — and he did not find the mystic’s path incompatible with empirical analysis.  This was also Jung’s position — and Freud’s if you substitute “artist’s path” for “mystic’s path.” (And Freud was Rimbaud’s contemporary.)  Also, Swedenborg was remarkably frank about sex; he wrote extensively about it.  (See Freud again.) And he understood the importance of dreams. (Ditto.)

I think it would be accurate to say that Swedenborg’s opus — of metaphors and myth, of visitations by angels, of tours of other worlds, of looking behind the seen world to the invisible, of attention to the body and its appetites and dreams — is consistent with James Hillman’s description of our task to sort through the “pandemonium of images,” a phrase he borrowed from Jung.

Still, it astonishes me every time I encounter Swedenborg’s name in the context of a favorite writer. But it’s also a good feeling, reminding me of the times I spent in Bryn Athyn, the happiest periods of my childhood.

Okay, I need to let everyone know that I’m awaking to full enlightenment by 10 p.m. Sunday. This means that after tonight you cannot reasonably question anything I have to say. Of course, it also means that even if you do question me, I’ll respond with such equanimity that you’ll gladly believe the sky is a lovely shade of puce, just to keep soaking up my vibe.

How do I know this? I attended the talk and blessing by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche (above) at the Atlanta Shambhala Center Thursday night.  At the end of his talk, the Sakyong blessed each person present. Part of this was receiving a red thread with a “vajra knot” that we were instructed to wear for three days.

The event was seriously a wonderful experience. I’ve hung about the periphery of the Shambhala Center for over 20 years. It teaches meditation in two series of workshops, along with regular classes in Buddhism. It’s part of an international organization founded by the Sakyong’s father, Chogyam Trungpa.

I promoted the center’s work in my Creative Loafing column, Headcase, for years. While there are many reasons to meditate, the most important to my neurotic mind is learning to watch my thinking without getting attached to every despondent, judgmental, angry thought. Buddhists have been doing this for thousands of years and, as I’ve also frequently written, psychology is now borrowing the technology. About the only self-help book I ever recommend to clients is Jon Kabat-Zinn’s “The Mindful Way through Depression.”

I’m not a good meditator. I’m the least patient person I know and sitting still to watch my brain’s frantic activity while I try to direct my attention to my breath often feels agonizing to me, no matter how useful. I had a pretty amazing experience in regard to this at the Shambhala Center Thursday night before the Sakyong began his talk.

‘I’m leaving!’

I arrived before 7:30 but, despite having made the requisite donation for a seat, the meditation hall was full. I was told I’d have to sit outside one of the doors. The more I considered this, the more annoyed I got and the more I thought, “Fuck it, I’m leaving.”  I was literally about to walk out when I looked up at a framed piece of calligraphy that turned out to be by Pema Chodron (above right), one of my favorite teachers in this tradition. The calligraphy was a single word: “Wait.”

It was one of those synchronicities that is so timely and potent that I laughed out loud, telling myself to calm down. Then, as it turned out, several center volunteers offered me seats in the hall and I declined them, genuinely feeling quite at peace sitting outside the main doors.

Because my knees are shot, I have to sit in a chair instead of on a cushion when meditating. Finally, though, I did accept an offer of a cushion that turned out to be almost directly in front of the Sakyong. It was the first time in three years that I’ve tried to sit on a cushion and I was surprised that my knees did not bother me.

Until…until I stood up to receive my blessing. I felt like I was 100 years old and could barely walk. I thought I was going to fall over. That would not be fun.

A light-hearted leader

The Sakyong himself, in his mid-‘40s, absolutely blew me away. He completely embodied the levity and seriousness that I’ve often encountered in mature spiritual teachers. He talked about the importance of the heart and reminded us that the Shambhala path isn’t about self-improvement but about waking up and bringing basic goodness to society at large.

I could not help comparing my experience of the Sakyong’s vibe with that of another spiritual teacher, Mother Meera, whom I’ve visited several times in Germany.  Mother Meera conducts darshan – the meeting with the “guru” — in complete silence. People who attend darshan kneel before her one by one. She looks into your eyes, while holding your head. The experience, in both its collective and personal respects, can be overwhelming.

Interestingly, in one of her books, Mother Meera describes what she’s doing with each person during darshan as untying knots in consciousness. (My partner Wayne described exactly this image after meeting her, even though he’d never read her description.) I couldn’t help but recall this after being given the knotted thread during the blessing ceremony with the Sakyong.

Generally, the Sakyong’s vibe was lighter than Mother Meera’s, but just as palpable. I’ve found this lightness to be true of most people with longterm association with Shambhala. It’s quite a contrast to the gloomy, controlling dogma of most of the world’s religions. In them, you are actually taught to combat your sinful original nature, whereas Shambhala wants us to give expression to the basic goodness that is at the core of all beings.

Another aspect of Shambhala I like is its emphasis on art, considered a meditative path itself. The center is a beautiful space and it was full of striking flower arrangements — ikebana — Thursday night. In this, Shambhala is also different from many Protestant religions which often maintain a puritanical (and guilty) attitude toward the expression of beauty. As James Hillman has taught me, beauty is the soul’s primary longing.

If you haven’t visited the center, I urge you to do so. It offers free instruction in meditation every Sunday and Tuesday, along with its workshop programs.

Just shoot me. This is freaking unbelievable:

A Texas legislator is waging a war of biblical proportions against the science and education communities in the Lone Star State as he fights for a bill that would allow a private school that teaches creationism to grant a Master of Science degree in the subject.

(Hat tip, JoeMyGod.)

I listened to a “Speaking of Faith” program entitled “Biology of the Sprit,” about the work of Sherwin Nuland, today. I’ll write more about that later, but I came across this moving video I wanted to be sure I didn’t lose track of. It’s about Nuland’s experience with electroshock therapy but it’s also a story about “resurrection.”