Where Do I Belong?

Following is the 4th and final installment of Rick’s series, The Gate of Power and the Flame of Life.  An unmistakable energy of inclusion, cohesion, and re-creation has been unleashed–not only in the U.S., but globally–with yesterday’s presidential inauguration.  The loom is prepped for a new tapestry of participation to emerge, into which we may weave our vibrant threads of individual expression and contribution.  May you feel encouraged to pick up your thread and work (or at least playfully experiment) with it!  Life is less about ‘finding’ something than it is about creating it.  This post seems tailored to the moment.
Fertile blessings to all ~ Whitehawk 

The flame of ignition is brilliant, sometimes spectacular in its bursting aliveness, but it needs much support, not only to generate the threshold energy to start, but also to maintain itself. A good and constant supply of fuel is needed, as well as shelter from wind, rain, and other factors that may block the blissful burning. Many of these factors can translate into the power of belonging: the whole complex of interrelatedness that we bring to what we do. Belonging is not “do I belong to this club” but a deep sense of participation that is the very root of power, strength, and abundance.

In pre-industrial cultures, where a deep sense of tribal identification was the norm, the worst thing that could happen to someone would be to be shunned. When a person or people were cast out of their communities, they would not be able to physically survive. Likewise, the discussions in psychology about the differences between monkeys brought up with and without touching, affection, and the like attest to this same issue. And while belonging may indeed begin with good mothering, it continues on into the fabric of our days. To doubt whether one belongs (as James Joyce does in Finnigans Wake when he puns on his homeland Dublin as “Doyoubelong?”) is to tear the fabric of existence; and yet this is something that has happened to many of us. Perhaps it may have to happen. The tear, the rip, the fall from childhood grace, and the need to recreate a sense of belonging is one of the challenges of our post historical era, in which most people do not have table altars filled with pictures and mementoes of the last five to seven generations of ancestors. 

Of course, there are many realms of belonging. One could say, for example, that you do not belong to this society if you do not have capital, a bank account, a retirement plan, insurance, and a mortgage, and people without these things might appear to be as bereft as people who were shunned in other cultures. The popularity of television shows like “Cheers” and “Seinfeld” that model cute dysfunctional communities that somehow work, reflect the desire for a place of belonging.

Perhaps we are being asked to revision and rediscover belonging in new ways. A sense of commitment to a place, or a neighborhood is one such way, a sense of belonging to an institution was once a way in which work gave one a sense of belonging, but with athletes sold to the highest bidder and companies regularly swallowing one another, it is increasingly difficult to have a sense of loyalty to an institution. The vocational sense of belonging is a bit different; it is an inner prompting if not certitude that I am here to do something, and that path is a way of belonging in the world. And such a path flowers when connecting with a community that can mirror one’s sense of calling. 

There are those who experience a pervasive feeling of not belonging, not to a church, a family, a nation, or what have you. This level of alienation often produces marginal drifters, loaners, and the like, but it can also lead to the discovery of a deeper level of belonging, belonging to life itself: to be able to thrive in nature, to read the signs of the wind as well as one’s dreams, is to participate in a most profound way. I once attended a Native American sweat lodge in a state park. On the second day of the ceremony, a very black man appeared out of the forest, out of nowhere. I do not think he knew the sweat lodge people personally, but he had such a sense of belonging that everyone acted as if they knew him well. 

What is often dubbed “the sense of meaning” is actually a sense of belonging. It has just become deracinated from a community and its participation mystique, like the modernist detour to find meaning in literature and art without religious commitment and the post modern dissolution of meaning altogether; are we to all just go back to church? This takes us back to the “pursuit of happiness” and to the radical idea that this can occur, in its most authentic sense, through the free conscience of each and every individual.  A culture that offers you the possibility to be anything you can dream of and then qualifies those dreams according to their marketability will not sustain the flame of desire.

Belonging deeply to life, on the other hand, sidesteps the ego-inflation of needing a “life mission” and offers “the rapture of being alive,” as Joseph Campbell put it. Great ambitions, as well as great salaries, may be but literal “compensations” for the loss of this deepest sense of belonging in which nature, society, and soul weave themselves together in an offering of fullness. 

Entering this first gate is entering a precinct of power. A power emerging from the full support of nothing, from vast emptiness becoming vast openness, the world as a field of possibility, the constant, ongoing encounter with the regenerate possibility, with the greatness of the imagination. Abundance then is the natural evolution from the material of your own life as in Rilke’s letter to a young poet

“Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you without trying to interpret it.”

This rooting of the flame, this abundance of acceptance, is the direct opposite of speedy acquisitiveness. What you can do better than anyone else is to be you; but since you don’t know yourself, the only alternative is to constantly surprise yourself. Here, the first gate, the struggle of the individual is to emerge out of the matrix of the collective, and the willingness of the individual to continually morph and integrate into new form.

The Individual

This is part 3 of Rick’s 4-part series, The Gate of Power and the Flame of Life.

Freedom of conscience is a form of liberty that moves beyond a distorted sense of individualism. And this liberty does not have to cut back against the grain of the world, for desire is itself the source of virtue, which has the strength to take one to the heart of the wheel. The heart of the wheel is not so much a place of magic, as it is a place of virtue, virtue in the sense of its etymological derivation from the Sanskrit root √vira or heroism, virtue that need walk hand in hand with pleasure and happiness to reveal the good life.  The hero is born through her struggle for liberty, and without the challenge of genuine struggle there is no initiation, no rebirth into another way of living.

 One important challenge for the emerging individual is the demand driven desire of the collective economy. The structures of power, be they religious, political, economic, media driven cultural, or what have you, work by siphoning of desire. This is initially accomplished by not allowing one the self esteem to desire anything that does not fit into a greater social agenda. Then, as economies develop and more people have “discretionary income,” people are encouraged to be impulsive consumers, or to go into greater and greater debt, rather than taking stock of values and ideals – of what is actually worth living for.  The heroism of the individual is to develop an agenda that is more than a survival strategy: this means not just envisioning having enough money for retirement, but rather having enough money for enlightenment. This is more than being cute; in a capitalist matrix, enlightenment takes money, money to secure a foundation that will allow one time to meditate, to work with teachers, to follow one’s own genius. And there is so much fear around this, not only from the religions and governments, but also from a society that confuses the empowerment of the individual with a “debased sense of self expression” that acts only out of impulse. But impulse must be present to develop into virtue that can overturn the commodification of every desire, the idea that the “perfection of desire” is to turn it into a product.

When I speak of “the individual” here, I am not merely referring to the singular person apart, but rather to the fully developed, differentiated person who still lives in light of others, but who does not amputate him or herself in order to fit the expectations of others. Such a challenge is encoded the very mission statement of free societies, “the pursuit of happiness” for example, which, as Barbara McGraw has discussed, had a much greater resonance than the individual pursuit of pleasure.  

More often than not in recent Western history, rebellion has characterized the individual, not because it must be so, but because the social order remained organized under roles and specialization that have not taken into account the realization of self, which is the greater pursuit of happiness. The apex of the individual is the heritage of the West, versus collectivist notions in “communist” countries for example. And although there is always a play between individual and community, the way this is played out becomes crucial.

Through the emergence of individual you come to intention. I prefer intention to mission or mission statement because of its more generalized applicability. One can have an intention, but may still go on detours, and the detours are crucial. Intention is all too often exterior, or too conscious or too easy. The detours, on the other hand, reveal the secondary process, the unexpected meetings and revelations that can deepen and enrich intention, and that can forge it into the burning direction of Spirit.

A detour is different than an escape route. A detour is part of the ingenious practice of building; it might help one find a new way. There are some whose flame gets snuffed out very easily if there is no clear sense of direction, but we have already stated that to lose the way is to find it. So what we want from intention is the stimulation for vitality as opposed to the control of details. Moreover, an individual cannot flower alone; just like a flower needs sunlight, water, bees, etc., other flowers to reveal it beauty and glory. Likewise the individual is fulfilled through relationship and through commitment to something greater. This was the understanding of the pursuit of happiness, that is was found in the greater whole, not through self denial and groveling, but through full development of whatever one has to offer.

Coming next, part 4:  Where Do I Belong?

The Voice of Scarcity

This is the second of Rick’s 4-part series, The Gate of Power and the Flame of Life.

The Convolution of Desire: The Voice of Scarcity

Scarcity as a voice is neither an enemy nor an illusion; there are very real things to consider, to fear, and to prepare for. The Greeks referred to Ananke, the Gods of necessity, as a terrible but durable force; not to honor such a divinity would be tantamount to catastophe. The sense of there being a problem is not scarcity per se, but rather when the voice of scarcity takes over to such a degree that it becomes the singular voice, the only voice, the voice of fear then overrides all other possibilities and life is played out in a defensive mode.

When one observes this voice, however, one sees the convolution of desire, the sick rose. Fear often arises out of a desire that has fallen back on itself, that is not in contact with fresh vibrant energy but one stale story upon another, moving into hardened patterns of conditioning. 

There is a significant difference, in this vein, between limitation and boundaries as opposed to repression and fear.  One is sensible–don’t jump off the ninth story of a building thinking you can fly; the other is mythological–“Jews have horns and you had best stay away from them.”  To the degree that repression and fear harden into belief systems, “facts,” and institutionalized practices, the case is closed, life has become circumscribed, and breakthrough is no longer possible. Desire knows this and is offended, angry, disillusioned, hence the origins of destructive behavior in hopelessness and despair. A society that offers no divine vision can compensate with goods and entertainment, but human life has become hopeless. The other offered compensations are usually some projected “ego-elongations” such as “history,” or “the nation,” but this does not change what is deeply wrong with materialism, which at its best it offers but comfort unto death. The flame of desire then recoiled in anguish, seeks sensation ad absurdum. This flame needs to be fanned so it may flourish and spread its wings. Hence, the first movement of bhavana, the cultivation of being or in the words of Maslow of “Being-Cognition” versus “Deficit Cognition,” is to open to the possibility of meaning, of nobility, of glory, and beauty of the Spirit. In Buddhism this is called the awakening of the bodhicitta, the “mind of enlightenment,” which is a grace that imparts the self-esteem to follow one’s star.

The Hunger of Wanting

Blessed New Year to you.  

Following is some writing of Rick’s that has been ‘in the wings’ for some time, that he has given the green light to post here.  Today’s piece is the first of four “Gate of Power and the Flame of Life” segments.  If memory serves, this material is part of a book that has yet to gel… so perhaps readers of the AoA blog are previewing excerpts from a future volume.  The rest will follow in increments.   ~ Whitehawk

The Gate of Power and the Flame of Life

I. The Hunger of Wanting

Hunger is so basic, so primal, and so fundamental: it literally moves us into consumption. Hunger is natural, but civilization has made it embarrassing, humiliating even. We are ashamed of our hunger and disguise it through politics, rhetoric, and rationalization. But it remains, underneath as the raw animal that is always active. You can smell him. This is the root, what the tantrics called the mula, and to hold the root in place so that it may flower is indeed the task of culture.  But as Freud noted almost a century ago, the process tends to become convoluted. In the name of culture and order we try to crush and pulverize the animal of desire, to live a pretty picture unto death do us part.

It has not worked, it has never worked, and it can never work. This denial of the animal that Nietzsche railed against has taken on new forms through the surreal disembodiments of the media. Whereas Villiers de l’Isle could say “as for living our servants will do that for us,” an entire culture is moving towards abdicating life in the raw, to let our machine made fantasies do it for us. If you can capture and control someone’s desire you not only civilize him or her, you rob them of their wellspring of abundance. For the source of power, is the vital stirring of creation, the tension in the mulch of early spring trying to push through the crusted earth of the past, the truth of death and failure as an intrinsic part of this process. Birth is dreadful as well as awesome. To reclaim vitality, to own the passion of evidence, to feel with the breadth of the air and slope of the mountain, to rush forward like a river, and pull deeply inwards like the sweeping undertow: these are more than poetic similitude’s, this natural power and glory is our heritage, our source, and our destiny. But our faith and indeed our very confidence have become colonized by societies of all kinds. Now, we are taught and told to settle for civility, for survival mediocrity. And it is a huge conspiracy; the banks, insurance companies, supermarkets, news magazines, and the rest, all support the consumer. But the desire of the consumer is no longer one of vital hunger; it has been perverted, channeled into check out lines and video stores, made usable, marketable, but at what price?

It is the careful, loving, and skillful tending to hunger that can take one toward the heart of the wheel. And this is why true hunger, our genuine wanting, is our authentic abundance. It is the sacred ground of conscience, of marshaling the energy to want not just to survive or maintain, but to live more than a simulated life, a life we are meant to live in face of the overwhelming presence of the Almighty, revealed in every moment to the individual. 

This abundant hunger is not a theory