Genius

There are individuals gifted with particular brands of genius: musical genius, artistic genius, scientific, even philosophical and religious, I believe. And certain cultures, and certain times in history, saw a flourishing of one or more of these. I will not here speculate on how this came to be. But mere biomass is not enough. You cannot assure that a new genius will be there to continue a tradition. An era draws to its close, and the geniuses dwindle and are gone.

Modern society is shaped by an era of unprecedented scientific genius. Even today knowledge increases exponentially. But it seems to me that much of it is ordinary workers picking up the fish killed by the explosive depth charges of genius already gone. And we know not which type of genius will erupt next, or where, or when.

It is easy to get puffed up and identify with the genius whose coat tails we ride. The spirit of democracy says that we are all the same, but that would ensure a hasty decline. As Frithjof Schuon says, the purpose of a civilization is to produce saints. I would say more generally, genius. Those who can directly perceive the crack in the Cosmic egg, where the Light gets in. No quantity of mass produced doggerel can substitute.

Scripture

To argue whether Holy Scripture contains contradiction is like arguing whether a picture is flat. They are both representations, pointing beyond themselves, like the proverbial finger pointing at the moon. If you cannot look through the picture or the Scripture to the higher-dimensional reality it represents, you are merely critiquing art.

Again for the first time

When I was a teenager, my older (and more saintly) brother joined a small Christian church which was rather disdained: The worldly mocked it for being overly conservative and pious, fellow Christians were bothered because of the repeated preaching of victory over sin and the belief that Jesus had been tempted like a human (except for the differences that came from never sinning). I found however that these people had become good from the teachings, and that they had an amazing ability to open the Bible pretty much anywhere and find something useful from it. Eventually I also got that spirit and the Scriptures were opened to me.

A lot of things have happened and that church has changed, and I have also changed but not in the same ways. I set out on a different sort of discovery, learned about different religions and philosophies and the history of human civilizations. I realize that there have been many wise men through the ages from whom I could learn much.

Yesterday I picked up a book I have brought with me through all these years, a collection of articles or very short essays written by the "founder" of that particular church - the guy who managed to irritate the established churches so much that they threw him out. I am not sure how to put this. The clarity of his understanding, and the ability he had to draw from the Bible insights that are applicable regardless of religion, culture or time in history. Of course he frames it all in distinctly Christian words, but it is definitely the perennial religion.

For some of us it is a necessity to learn about different religions and spiritual traditions. But I now also realize that this is not necessarily true for everyone. That one could with just the Bible find all the wisdom in the world. I am not the right person to say whether you could do that with the sacred scripture of other faiths as well. It may well be, what I mean is that it is not for me. The thing is, it is not the letter but the spirit. The actual text is only a container for a spiritual fountain that cannot be exhausted, not in a single lifetime or even by a single church throughout the ages. But without the right spirit, the text will lead one into utter madness.

They say that you do not know what you have until you lose it. But I have now come to believe that you do not know until you find it again.

Valley of humility

St Teresa is awesome as usual.
"One fall is not sufficient for a person to be lost, nor are many, if he loves You and not the things of the world. He journeys in the valley of humility."

That's an amazing visual. The prideful walks on the ridge, where a single misstep can send him tumbling downward. But he that walks in the bottom of the valley, even if he stumbles, he only falls to his knees.

On the nature of nature

"If we were to present to an aboriginal tribe a portable computer without giving any explanation of it, the men and women could handle, touch, shake and visually examine it at great length and yet could reach no knowledge of computers in general or of this one in particular. Because they have no idea of its origin and purposes, they are almost completely ignorant of its actual reality, So also, if we know creation only on a natural level and aside from its divine Author and purpose, we are next to totally in the dark about it."
-Fr. Thomas Dubay, Fire Within.

The Power of Now (and then)

I think this Tolle guy has understood something with his idea of living in the Now, rightly understood. So, it is kind of amazing that this just suddenly was revealed to him after just sitting around. It is also kind of amazing that he didn't know it already, since it's been part of any number of religious traditions - even in the wider sense of religion - for thousands of years. But such are the times. I guess you really can reinvent the wheel of Dharma.

We can see how unfamiliar this is when we are in any social gathering (of non-Raccoons, obviously). There will usually be one or more or a whole lot of people who are not quite there. Or rather, you are not right there in their mind. Instead, the room is populated by that person and any number of cardboard signs depicting types of humans. They are the only person that is really real. And because of this, you just cannot connect to them. You are not really there to them, even if you are right there. That is why there is no connection, no matter how much you'd want there to be. You are there, listening to them talk to those cardboard signs. It is an unsettling feeling.

(I am pretty sure I was one of those guys when I was younger, by the way. I guess people just took it for granted, because I don't think anyone ever told me. Or perhaps I just did not notice.)

This is what happens when people are not really present in the Now. The pinprick size of their Now has dwindled to near extinction.

The opposite happens through spiritual growth, or the influx of eternity into mundane time, creating sacred time, which is both personal and at the same time freely shared, wide open. As the "bubble" of personal Now-time increases, a person becomes ever more present. So someone who is spiritually advanced, even if it is in a different tradition than yours, will be almost disturbingly present. Even ordinary people will notice it.

I believe that the greater someone's presence, the less presence does it take to recognize it. So if a person was filled with unimaginable amounts of eternity, even the complete amateur in all things spiritual would be able to connect to them even thousands of years later. Well, that is easy for me to speculate since it already happened. ^_^

Saying grace?

Do Americans still say grace at meals? My guess would be not, since I notice that the average American has grown a lot fatter over the last generation. This has happened here in Norway too after most people stopped saying grace. Saying grace was a common behavior when I was a child; in Norway it was called "praying for the food", which caused some confusion since a) the food was already there, or alternatively b) the food was probably beyond rescue. In any case, already in my teens this practice was growing rare outside small conservative sects. And not long after, Norwegians began to grow fatter and fatter until this day.

I am not sure about cause and effect here, actually. I think if I was obese from overindulgence, I might find it hard to commune with the Light at mealtime. Kind of like it is hard to pray before going to bed if there are steadily new people in your bed. But also the other way around, it is probably hard to get ever new people into your bed if you keep praying there. So again, cause and effect is a strange couple. It would be kind of interesting to gather a bunch of obese people and record them saying grace on a regular basis and see what happened to their weight and general health. But I suspect the current government would not fund the research. So how are things over on the west side of the sea?