The Land of Mystery

We live in a Land of Mystery.
We know nothing about it.
We don’t know where we have come from.
We don’t know where we are going.
We don’t know where we are.
We are newborn babes.
We have never been here before.
We have never seen this before.
We will never see it again.
This moment is fresh,
Unexpected,
Surprising.
As this moment moves into the past,
It cannot be fully remembered.
All memory is a creation of our minds.
And our minds cannot fathom the Land of Mystery,
much less remember it.
We experience Mystery Now
And only Now.
Any previous Now is gone forever.
Any yet-to-be Now is not yet born.
We live Now,
only Now,
in a Land of Mystery.

The River of Consciousness

Within the Land of Mystery
flows a River of Consciousness.
Consciousness is a moisture in the desert of things,
an enigma in the Land of Mystery,
Consciousness flows through body and mind.
Our bodies are pain and pleasure,
desire, emotion, stillness, and passion.
All these are but rocks in the water
or on the banks of the River of Consciousness.
Consciousness is not the body,
but a flow through the body and with the body.
Consciousness is an alertness that is also
a Freedom to intend, to will, to do.
The mind is a tool of consciousness,
providing consciousness with the ability
to reflect upon consciousness itself.
But consciousness cannot be contained
within the images and symbols of the mind.
Consciousness is an enigma that mind
cannot comprehend – even noticing consciousness
is an act of consciousness using the mind and
flowing like a River in the Land of Mystery.

The Mountain of Care

Within the Land of Mystery
rises a Mountain of Care –
care for self, care for others,
care for Earth, care for the cosmos,
care that we exist, care that we suffer
care that we may find rest and fulfillment,
care that we may experience our caring
and not grow numb and dead.
It takes no effort to care.
It takes effort not to care.
Care is given with the Land of Mystery.
Care is part of the Mystery of Being.
We care, we just care, we are made of care.
Care is a Mountain because care is so huge,
so challenging to embrace, to climb, to live.
Care is a demand upon us that is more humbling,
more consuming, more humiliating,
than all the authorities, laws, and obligations
of our social existence.
Care is a forced march into the dangers
and the hard work of constructing a life that
is not a passive vegetable growth
nor a wildly aggressive obsession.
Care is an inescapable given, simply there,
yet care is also an assertion of our very being.
It is compassion, devotion, love for all that is given
and for all parts of each given thing, each being.
Like Atlas, we lift the planet day-by-day,
year-by-year, love without end,
in the Land of Mystery.

The Sea of Tranquility

In the Land of Mystery
there is a Sea of Tranquility,
a place of Rest amidst the wild waters of life.
The waves may be high, our small boat tossed about,
but there we are with a courageous heart.
It is our heart that is courageous.
We are born with this heart.
We do not achieve it.
We can simply rest within our own living heart,
our own courageous heart that opens vulnerably
to every person and all aspects of that person,
to our own self and every aspect of that self,
to life as a whole with all its terrors and joys.
This is a strange Rest, for no storm can end it,
no challenge of life defeat it,
No loss, no death, no horror of being, no fear
can touch our courageous heart.
We live, if we allow ourselves to truly live
on this wild Sea of Everything in the Tranquility
of our own indestructible courageous heart.
To manifest and fully experience this Tranquility
we only have to give up the creations of our mind
that we have substituted for this ever-present Peace.
We have only to open to the Land of Mystery
flowing with a River of Consciousness
and containing a Mountain of Care.
Here and here alone do we find the Sea of Tranquility –
Here in the Land of Mystery that our mind
cannot comprehend, create, or control.
Here beyond our deepest depth or control
is a Sea of Tranquility in the Land of Mystery.

If you resonate with any of this poetry it is because you have also experienced these same aspects of this inescapable, but often fled, Land of Mystery. Perhaps you prefer other poetry: “The Reign of Reality,” “The Commonwealth of Awe.” Yes, even “The Kingdom of God” was good poetry in those strange centuries long ago when “Kingdom” still meant something positive and when “God” was only a word of devotion for The Final Reality of Infinite Wonder. We have to use words. We have to have poetry, and yet the words do not finally matter. Poetic images are just creations of some tiny little finite human mind. Our religious poetry is just figures of speech that point beyond themselves. “Land of Wonder” is just poetry for the WHERE that all religious symbols point.

If you want to explore Wonder still further, here is my more expanded discussion:

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/Consciousness/3WhatIsWonder%3f.pdf

And if hearing, rather that reading, is a mode of communication you prefer, please listen to this brief radio interview on Wonder.

http://www.realisticliving.org/radio.htm

Also, I intend these monthly “Pointers” to create discussion, perhaps among you and your friends, perhaps with me on any topic of Realistic Living. Here is my email: jgmarshall@cableone.net

The post The Truth of Wonder first appeared on Realistic Living.

I count this as a profound theological statement, applicable to the Final Reality. Reality is not wrathful or angry with us. Reality only tells us the truth, and we think it is hell. Any experience of a fuller truth is always one hell of an experience, because it challenges some lesser truth to which we are still clinging, and which we are still using to organize some portion of our living. Furthermore, there is the humiliating fact that we never know the full Truth. Truth with a capital “T” is a mystery, an almighty unknown that is pushing against us, but is unknown by us – not only for now, but forever.

The more we know, the more we know we don’t know. However smart we become, we are still profoundly ignorant. This is a hard saying, for it feels like hell to anyone who is clinging to what they currently think.

Let us not give up, however, on the quest for Truth; it is also true that there are valid approaches to Truth. In terms of these approaches to Truth, it is true that some statements about Realty are more true than other statements. This is true about the scientific approach to truth. And it is also true about what I will call “the contemplative approach to truth.”

The Scientific Approach to Truth

Seriously considering a topic like “wonder” or “religious practice” is impossible for those who are too tightly locked in the box of the scientific approach to truth. The truth with which religion deals does not appear in the scientific box. The nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman is a philosopher of science that I deeply admire. Here is my summary of his colorful description of the scientific approach to truth: (1) you guess a new “law” of nature; (2) you devise a test for that guess that can show to a community of observers in an outwardly observable fashion a “Yes” or a “No” to that guess; (3) if that test says “Yes,” the law stands for now until some test says “No”; (4) if that test says “No,” you guess again and continue this process. Furthermore, if there is no test that will test your guess, you are not doing science; you are doing speculation.

If we accept this definition of the scientific approach to truth, we find that scientific truth is both approximate and progressive. It is approximate, because scientific truth is never more than a human guess that works well for now. It is progressive, because once a “No” has been observed to a previous guess, there is no going back. For example, once the Einsteinian guesses were documented by the community of physicists, there was no going back to the Newtonian guesses as the normative postulates of physics. The science of physics goes forward, guessing and testing new guesses on the foundations that the Einsteinian revolution established.

The just stated philosophy of science reveals to us the limitations of the scientific approach to truth. Science can only test guesses about objective observations. Science cannot test guesses about subjective topics like human consciousness. It can make guesses about the reports and behaviors of conscious humans and other living beings, but it cannot test guesses about consciousness itself. Why? Because the tests of science are about objective observations made by conscious persons who are being silent about their subjectivity. That subjectivity is not under discussion in the scientific approach to truth.

The Contemplative Approach to Truth

Human subjectivity is what is under discussion in the contemplative approach to truth. Some people pretend to be scientific about the contemplative approach to truth, but they are not clear about what science is. Science does not look inside the subjectivity of humans or other living beings. The word “contemplation” is pointing to an entirely different approach to truth. So what is contemplation? It is the conscious person being conscious of his or her own consciousness. There is no direct consciousness of another person’s or animal’s consciousness. We can observe another person’s behaviors and reports and guess something about their consciousness on the basis of what we have “seen” directly about our own consciousness. But we cannot “see” directly and thereby test our guesses about another person’s consciousness. The only valid test for our guesses about another person’s consciousness is to ask that other person to look inside their own consciousness and tell us what they see. This process of guessing and testing truths about consciousness is not the scientific method. It is a different method, and it has a different method of truth testing. The contemplative approach to truth can be communal only in the sense that each member of the communal effort is looking inside his or her own solitary being and comparing notes with the others who are looking inside their own solitary being. This is not science, it is something else. I am calling it “the contemplative approach to truth.”

Now I realize that there are many meanings being given to the word “contemplation,” and I also realize that many persons prefer the word “meditation,” for which there are also many meanings. So, let us attempt to see through this variety of definitions and methods to that which unites them all – namely, a single person’s consciousness concentrating upon that single person’s consciousness and attempting to put into words what they see. This is a process being done by every great poet, novelist, painter, sculptor, song writer, musician, dramatist, architect and even a psychologist who has transcended the narrow box of behavioral psychology. Contemplation, so understood, is an unavoidable human activity. But it is not science. It is another approach to truth. And this approach is important not only for clarifying the truth of art, but also for clarifying the truth of wonder, awe, and religious practice.

If you want to know more about the contemplative approach to truth, here is my more elaborate discussion of it.

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/Consciousness/1WhatIsTruth.pdf

And if you want to pursue the topic even further, Ken Wilber is a helpful source. He calls the scientific method “the It-approach to truth” and contemplative inquiry “the I-approach to truth.” See his Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. Such insights on these topics are core for a 21st Century epistemology. Such clarity on the quest for truth is basic for understanding the place of religion in human society and for developing a fully lucid social ethics. And these general understandings of religion and ethics are essential for a viable resurgence of Christian theologizing and practice.

The post Contemplative Truth first appeared on Realistic Living.