The  Voice  We  Need  Now

Whitman  At  200

Herbert Levine

Tikun Magazine  May 13, 2019

Walt Whitman, born two hundred years ago on May 31, 1819, can be best characterized as a democratic thinker about the cosmos. He gave no priority to persons based on status or birth. Whitman’s poetry presents the possibilities of such democracy, using the familiar materials of his world, knowing full well that the ideal could easily be subverted by the behavior of those who bought and sold slaves and who bought and sold all the offices in the land, including that of the President.

The corporate greed that sacrifices people and environment in the name of profits was relatively new in Whitman’s America, but is all too familiar in ours. The deformation of democratic ideals that keeps rich and poor segregated from one another has gone much further in our time. Whereas a wealthy person’s home might have had a fence around it in the mid 19th century, now we have entire gated communities that keep the haves in and the have-nots out—with residential segregation by class extending to entire Congressional districts. Whitman’s era knew prejudice and discrimination directed at newcomers, notably the Irish, who came to America to escape the hunger and famine in their homeland. Today’s emigrants from Central America are greeted with tear gas and a fence that delivers the message, “Keep Out!” even as we harbor some twelve million undocumented immigrants who are doing poorly paid jobs that many Americans find too degrading to take on.

In such a world—our world—Whitman’s democratic wisdom is as relevant today as when it was written. Whitman understood well that our democracy was for sale. We are still a democracy for sale, only the scale of the mischief that money can accomplish is far greater. The Supreme Court has ruled that money, equivalent to speech and protected by the First Amendment, cannot be regulated in politics. Using money without regard to truth, corporations have paid scientists to spread disinformation about climate change, so they can continue to plunder the earth for fossil fuels, regardless of the consequences to the rest of us. Corporate lobbyists effectively control the legislation that emerges from Congress, whether for health care, energy policy or financial regulation. The greed of those who make their exorbitant salaries and bonuses on Wall Street sends our economy into periodic tailspins, effecting hundreds of millions. Our wealthiest personalities, corporate CEOs and sports and entertainment celebrities, are remunerated for their talents beyond any sense of human worth. And amidst this obscene wealth, the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. is the greatest in the world and has more than doubled in the last fifty years.

In this America, we need a healthy dose of the countervailing idea expressed in our founding Declaration of Independence, what Whitman called our “organic compact”—that all humans are created equal. Just as President and lumberjack, man and woman, black, red or white, should be equals in a democratic universe, so too necessarily, soul and body, spirit and matter, death and life, God and humans. All things in the known universe and in the parts of it that remain unknown are equal. They all partake equally in the cosmos. They are all embodiments of a single reality—the continuum of matter-spirit, body-soul, life-death, God-human, time-space—which Whitman, following Emerson, chose to call “divine.” And if all who are conscious know that they partake of this single divine reality, then how can they let the greed of a few control their aspirations and shape their political and economic destiny. The success of Whitman’s poetry would be evident, he claimed, by the empowerment of those who read and understood him.

With union as his guiding metaphor, it is not surprising that sexuality plays a central role in Whitman’s thought. Ever the biologist, Whitman understands reproduction as the key to understanding the world: “Urge and urge and urge,/ Always the procreant urge of the world.” In dramatizing his eroticized relationship with the world around him, Whitman offers us a vision of what it means to be deeply attached to both human beings and to the non-human. Night, the seashore, the pond side, the bar room on Broadway—these are all places for Whitman’s manifesting this attachment. He generally used the word “amativeness” to signify procreative sexuality and “adhesiveness” to convey non-procreative sexuality, and both are equally important to him. His “Calamus” poems, introduced into Leaves of Grass in 1860, are the boldest homoerotic statements since Shakespeare’s sonnets, but they are subsumed, like everything else in Whitman, under the single vaulting idea of democratic union; the love of comrades was a key expression of Whitman’s inner truth as a man attracted to men and of his democratic idea. Since our culture has only recently begun to think about the equality of different sexual orientations, it behooves us to learn what we can from Whitman’s celebration of attraction as a force binding the universe together.

Whitman’s New Religion

Whitman’s wisdom was ripe for a new continent and a new age. Whitman’s thought was adopted and promoted by a circle of disciples who were seen in their own time as pioneers of the new, whether it was environmentalism (John Burroughs), democratic socialism (Edward Carpenter), homoerotic love (J.A. Symonds) or comparative mysticism (R. M. Bucke). Whitman did not cast his lot with radical reformers—abolitionists, women’s suffragists, temperance advocates—because their polarizing and even dis-unionist rhetoric (in the case of the abolitionists), flew in the face of his project of democratic union. In this, too, he was consistently egalitarian in his thinking, laying the groundwork for a renewed and spiritualized American democracy and a new American religion of non-hierarchical spirituality.

Whitman boldly presented himself as the inaugurator of a new religion. Like his mentor Jefferson, he rejected the supernaturalism of biblical religion. Like his mentor Emerson, he found that the Christian religious framework did not go far enough—not Jesus alone, but all of us are sons and daughters of God.  Rejecting the superiority of the divine to the human and of the supernatural to the natural, Whitman’s religious claims were for one divine reality, rooted in the equality of spirit and matter, body and soul, the seen and the unseen. “Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are/… You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,/ … You furnish your parts toward eternity,/  Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.” Whitman’s soul-focused rhetoric never loses sight of materiality – his body, the slave’s body, my body and your body, the physical body of the place where he lived and where we would one day live, the appearances of things—which are the “dumb, beautiful ministers” of soul. His awareness of his soul led him to the conviction that our accumulated experience was too valuable not to continue in the life of the soul after death.

The discourse on religion that we hear today, whether of fundamentalists or atheists, does not ground us in a living reality, but rather in a dying one. The contest among the three Western monotheistic religions is little more than an echo of the ancient quarrel between Israelite monotheism and the pagan religions that surrounded it. And the fundamentalisms that appear to be thriving today are but the dying gasps of that ‘old-time religion.’ As our society has become increasingly secular over the last two hundred years, religions have tended to unravel into liberal and conservative strands. The liberal strand has tried to keep pace with secularism by demythologizing the sacred scriptures of the past without ever fully rejecting their sacredness. The conservative strand has grown ever more fundamentalist, seemingly as a reaction to secularism, but actually as the only expression possible on the small sliver of intellectual ground that secularism has allowed religions to stake out. Countering both these liberal and fundamentalist religious voices, we have an increasingly shrill group of atheist, materialist writers, who delight in rejecting all forms of belief, such as Whitman’s conviction that the soul was an ever-living reality.

Whitman as Companion, Thinker, Teacher

Whitman offers himself to us as both teacher and companion in our search for a new religion and a new politics. But putting democratic union into practice is not easy. Whitman understood that the always-uniting self would sometimes lose its balance. In ”Song of Myself,” the first and greatest of his poetic testaments, Whitman dramatizes two such crises of the self: one resulting from sensory overload and over-absorption in his senses, the other, from an over-identification with the world’s suffering, where he momentarily imagined himself as a Christ-figure, rather than as “one of an average unending procession.” In “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life,” Whitman dramatizes the alienation of the man who feels separate from the poet who writes his democratic poems of union. While he understands these crises as putting his project momentarily at risk, in the larger design of his poems, they are but phases of the self that take their place in the ebb and flow of the universal tide of life.  They do not deter Whitman from pursuing his democratic program on our behalf, as he puts before us images of who we can be as individuals, as members of society and as equal parts of the cosmos.

As a thinker, Whitman consistently expanded the idea of democratic Union beyond politics. For him, democracy was also a physical, metaphysical and cosmic reality. He claimed not only the absolute equality of persons, but also the equality of all animate and inanimate things. That is why his poetry is preoccupied with images from biology, geology and astronomy. That is why he moves back and forth between politics, science and religion. That is why he developed the long, loping line and catalogue form, which incorporates ever more of the world into his poetic statement. When his poetry is most alive, he represents abstract political terms, such as freedom, equality and liberty, in images of the personal happiness, health and satisfaction that he felt in being alive. Similarly, he represents abstractions such as soul, spirit or God, in personal narratives of his embodied soul in the here and now, in his awareness of God’s hand as a partner with his own and in his spirit’s imagined future journey.

Whitman is one of the most original writers who has ever written, yet he understands that in being daring, he runs the risk of being thought merely outrageous and provocative. So each time that the pendulum of his teaching and literary style swings toward individuality and originality, he makes sure to lean in the opposite direction toward the style of the common and the universal. Whitman delights in teaching through paradox, as when he claims that his verse is both “riddle and the untying of the riddle.” Accordingly, Whitman writes in two seemingly opposite modes. One is riddling, hinting, indirect, metaphoric—what we normally think of as poetry. The other is direct, explanatory, didactic—what we normally think of as prose. “Song of Myself” offers many riddling passages, often followed by explanatory glosses that seek to present the plain meaning: “the riddling and the untying of the riddle.”

Writing in the Tradition of Wisdom Literature

The great biblical books of wisdom, Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, share the ambition and style of presenting knowledge in a riddling, spiritual framework; so do the Gospels, which offer narratives to emulate and parables to interpret as pathways to wisdom. We find wisdom writing in the classic works of all philosophical and religious traditions: in Plato’s dialogues, in poems of the Sufi masters, Rumi and Hafiz, the Hindu epic, the Bhagavad Gita, or the practical lessons for living in the Tao te Ching. We find it in the naturalized religion of American transcendentalism, exemplified by Emerson and Thoreau.

Walt Whitman belongs in this company. He did not introduce himself to America as a poet like other poets, but as America’s teacher. The proof of his book would be in how his readers lived their lives. “This is what you shall do,” he told his first readers in introducing his Leaves of Grass:

“Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of them, go freely with the powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all that you have been told at school or at church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul…”

No poet had ever spoken in this way to his readers, but sages and holy men did. Over time, a circle of disciples gathered around Whitman, who recognized in him a wise sage and inspired prophet. But he challenged his followers not to be slavish imitators: “He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”

As a teacher of wisdom, Whitman expounded the meaning of democratic Union, the all-encompassing idea of America, which he foresaw would one day be the all-encompassing idea of the world. In the 1850’s when he began to write, the American Union was threatened with dissolution by the battle over the expansion of slavery and state’s rights. Between 1855 and 1860, Whitman dramatized and defended the idea of union and showed its necessary triumph. It is not surprising that the poems in which he dramatized a crisis of confidence date to the eve of the Civil War, when it was clear that this great work was beyond his capacity as both man and poet. Whitman’s choice to become a nurse to those wounded in that war was a clear expression of his continuing need to be involved with healing his nation and binding its wounds.

If a poet-thinker like Whitman were writing (or making films or graphic novels) today, he or she would be motivating us toward an ever-greater sense of union. Like Whitman, he or she would be modeling how to reject selfishness and greed, how to put aside traditions that keep us separated from one another in narrow regional and religious camps, and how to unite physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually in defense of our shared, imperiled planetary home.

https://www.tikkun.org/the-voice-we-need-now-whitman-at-200?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=9eaf59c6-1c7d-4370-8764-d575f8c0a046

Living  in  a  Cosmic  Mandala

Alan Hammond   August 9, 2009

The word mandala is from Sanskrit and means circles with centers. This motif is used in the art of various religions, primarily perhaps Buddhism and Hinduism. Often, circles are drawn with elaborate designs made within them, usually to depict the Cosmos. These works of art are produced in paint, perhaps mosaic, and sometimes in colored sand. After the mandalas are made in colored sand, they are destroyed. This in itself symbolizes the impermanent nature of the cosmic scheme of things. I thought we might look at some of the principles involved in the mandala and bring those principles more vividly to our consciousness and to our living experience. The mandala is a design that appears throughout the macro and the micro aspects of the Cosmos. We see the pattern in atoms, solar systems, and in galaxies. We can bear in mind that, although we may immediately think of the physical Cosmos, it is in fact a multidimensional entity. Consider for a moment that each living physical form and person radiates energy, so each form extends an influence into the Whole. Every form and person is therefore at the center of a radiant mandala, and each center is a focus of cosmic Being—I Am. It is astounding that this vast, cosmic, intricacy of design is intended to interact harmoniously in this living, ever-changing organism, and represents countless relationships interacting constantly in the Whole.

Some years ago we devised a seminar process designed to actively engage with these cosmic principles and to let them become more vivid in our awareness and in our living. In this seminar experience, the thirty-five or so participants would sit in a large circle, and then were invited, as the Spirit moved, to individually stand up and move in the circle. Now remember, each person is a center of unique radiation. Someone would start the process and, after they had been in the circle for a moment or two, someone, moved by the current of the Spirit, would feel related and would stand and join them in the circle, seeking to find the right distance from this other person. Then others would join, and their task was to find their appropriate position and relationship to the others already moving in the circle. I trust you can imagine this experience. It is fairly easy to relate to one other person in a circle, but as more bodies are added it becomes more complex to sense exactly where one should be in relationship to them all. There was, of course, no coercion involved. Everyone had to let others behave and express their sense of relatedness, and then move relative to them.

We recognize that proximity to different sources of radiation affects our experience. On the macro scale, proximity and movement of other planets affect us. Here immediately on Earth, the presence of other forms affects us. It could be the ocean, a mountain or a forest. Of course the proximity of other people affects us. I am sure we have noticed that if there is a group of people, the arrival of one other person changes the experience of the whole. This may be, and usually is, an unconscious process for all concerned; nevertheless, the total constellation of vibration changes when the other person appears.

Going back to the people in the circle, I remember on one occasion a lady came close to me in this process; she apparently felt she should be about a yard away. I didn’t feel too comfortable with that. I thought it was a bit close and blocking other lines of energy that I felt were appropriate. So I took a step back. She took a step forward! We did this a couple of times and I thought, well, this is getting nowhere! But then, in the current of the Spirit I realized I could modify the situation if, instead of facing her, I turned obliquely away from her. Apparently she felt all right at that distance, and I felt relieved.So there are ways, you see, of deflecting radiation, with which we are not comfortable. You might say that I changed my physical attitude to her. As we shall see later, it is also possible to change our mental and emotional attitude to people, forms and situations that we deem to be too close, and perhaps uncomfortable.

Our whole experience of life, and therefore of relationship with everything and everybody, is really this process of feeling right with the distance, the intensity of the current felt, and the actual interaction with the forms and people in our worlds. Without having the time to examine this too thoroughly now, we can appreciate that the optimum distance between all the objects and people in our world would be optimum for our experience of creativity. So we are considering the art and science of Being, and of creative relationship in Being. We cannot always choose the forms or the people that appear around us in our world. We must remember, after all, that the Cosmos does not exist simply for our comfort. There is work and creative challenge present with us. Sometimes, perhaps we criticize others in our mandala-world because they irk us. But maybe the problem is our inability to adjust accurately and finely to their proximity. The finer our spiritual substance, the finer will be our ability to adjust to all the relationships in our world, and therefore bring greater harmony into that mandala. Another person’s physical proximity is not necessarily the criteria for their vibrational, or spiritual, proximity to us. We can be at quite a physical distance from other people, and yet know within ourselves a vibrational and spiritual closeness, and therefore experience an ongoing creative relationship. What I’m going to say next may sound a little esoteric. But there are human beings in the Design who we never see at all, and yet we are connected to them through fine vibrational substance. This can facilitate a creative relationship.

The relationships of atoms, molecules, forms, solar systems, galaxies, are constantly changing—and so are our personal relationships with everything and everybody. The experience on this planet depends on the relationships of many heavenly bodies. This includes not just the physical relationships, but there are also other dimensions, of which the human consciousness is now unaware. These larger patterns of relationship are, in principle, the same as we know in human relationships. The Earth can only have its right relationships in the Cosmos, and therefore the right experience, if its radiation is on Tone. And we well know that its radiation is not now on Tone, primarily due to the state of human beings.

We as individuals can only know right relationships in our lives, in our mandala, with anyone, with anything, if the radiation coming from us is of Love, Truth, Life—the Tone. Our central relationship (speaking now of the outer consciousness) is with our true spiritual Identity. Once this true Identity is established, all other relationships emerge from this. In this unified Identity, we can accurately sense what fits with Self. We sense what fits in quality, in proximity, and in role. The Cosmos and all therein are composed of these constantly changing relationships. And underlying every single relationship is Love. This is worth remembering. In our every relationship we have opportunity to discover the experience of a unique nuance of Love. We do not impose on others or their space. I suppose the exception to this statement would be with children, or with severely distorted people who need drastic guidance. But we are not particularly speaking of those sorts of relationships now. Of course, we know that Angels, the true Identity of all human beings, can be trusted to behave as they should in the shifting Design. We also know that in the world the way it is now, discernment is needed, and some caution, because human beings often use freedom for license. We are not foolish in our initial patterns of relationship.

Let’s consider for a moment some of the forms in our worlds (which are, remember, forms of radiation) that don’t seem creative to our experience. We can’t eliminate them all. Some we may move further away from, but others, because of the complexity of the Design, are close to us. So let us consider utilizing them creatively. We’ve previously mentioned people who criticize us. Most people don’t like being criticized, but we take a different attitude. We may not like criticism either, but we listen and see if there is any justification for their observation. If there is, then we are delighted and remedy our behavior or change whatever is needed. Many difficult situations, if dealt with in a creative spirit, can make our expression clearer, more refined, stronger. We can, by our attitude to any form or situation, turn these things into positive creativity. We can incline our attitudes at every level away from the negative and hostile elements in our mandala, and let our creative Spirit, radiation, modify everything in our worlds.

Each of us is at the center of our personal world, circle, and we may experience an exciting, personal, living mandala. A large part of our mandalas are not created solely by our own radiation; there is the radiation from everybody else too. But we should consider the quality of our radiation, because we know that this invisible power attracts and repels objects and people in our world. We can, by our radiation, modify the effect of absolutely everything in our world. Now obviously not all of our radiation is conscious, but we can intensify our creative intent. Our own distortions often cause us to mistranslate the radiation coming from others and from circumstances in our worlds, and this just adds to the world chaos. But if we persist with the intent of on-Tone expression, then patterns begin to emerge in our lives that have cosmic Identity, and science behind them. Actually, of course, everybody’s mandala and everybody’s world has appeared and will appear on the basis of Divine science. However, we are concerned with changing the quality of our radiation back into the pure Tone of Being. The Tone then places us where we should be and allows us to be aligned with the larger Archangelic action. At the core of such a vast process are the intelligence, the power and the purposes of the Cosmos.

Human beings use physical objects as symbols that can be used in various ways to bring invisible, vibrational factors to consciousness. There are many religious symbols utilized in this way. For example, the Christian religion evokes such factors with a cross; Buddhism with statues of the Buddha. And there are a myriad other such symbols. Symbols are used by human governments—flags, for example, may represent a nation. Symbols can be used to bring vibrational factors to consciousness and focus to be worked with, as is done at weddings. In the Western world, the exchange of rings is symbolic of the exchange of eternal love. Thus, in many ways, symbols bring qualities of radiation to focus in our worlds. This, however, may be seen as a somewhat elementary view of symbolism. The truth is that every physical object is a symbol of spiritual and vibrational factors, present to be portals for radiation and work. When we express our energy, our Spirit, toward any object, we are releasing our radiation into the Cosmos, into the Whole. It is worth remembering that we cannot skip over those people and things that are closest to us in our worlds, in our mandalas—imagining we are going to offer something magnificent to the world at large, to God and the Cosmos—yet neglect the quality of our interchange with what is immediately present with us in the Design of Being. We simply cannot skip over it. Radiation moves from us into the Cosmos through those people and objects closest to us. Also, the radiation from the Cosmos comes to us through these same portals. Each person and form in our immediate world is our connection into the larger Whole. What a marvelous arrangement this is! It makes something so vast very manageable to us in our creative work.

archangelicbody.org

Vibrational  Action  Achievement  Ministry

Yujin Pak   May 11, 2019

Seoul, South Korea

click this link and it will take you to the Garden of Light YouTube video

The invitation is to spend some time with this transformative Service-lecture by Yujin Pak — an eloquent and radiant video-teaching conveyed through fine substance and words spoken in Korean and in English. Presently, there is no transcript, so here are a few Core ideas and principles as conceived and outlined with authenticity and originality by Yujin.

Yujin speaks of what he and his colleagues in South Korea call the Wonderful Meditation and he introduces

The Cone Dialogue Process

Participants in a dialogue circle, in a heightened vibrational state of consciousness, ask the question, and then listen: What does Source, or Heaven, desire to bring forth in this moment? This question, Yujin emphasizes, is the central responsibility or anyone who is conscious and awake on the planet now:

What does the highest consciousness of Being desire to bring forth through us in dialogue now?

Yujin outlines the Five Steps of the Process, and he emphasizes that the Cone Dialogue Process is a method of arriving at higher Wisdom together. The process leads to the Essence of being conscious in the world. A key aspect of being Conscious is being with this question, always:

What does Source want to bring forth in this moment?

And there are many more specific instructions, insights and gifts coming through Yujin in this delightful video — much radiant substance is made freely available. Enter into it, blend with it, generate within it, contribute to it, explore it and above all  send much gratitude to Yujin and his colleagues for it. And express much gratitude to the Source of All Being for Yujin and his colleagues in South Korea, and for this instruction — this High Vibrational Teaching and High Vibrational Radiation. Enter into it with enthusiasm and joy and gratitude, and Let Love Radiate.

Here is a way that is at once both serious and joyous. Stay with it from beginning to completion, through the Korean words and the English words, and great blessings will be known in personal experience — and, most important, released in vibrational radiation into the world consciousness of humanity.  david barnes

© Garden of Light

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKtqCa7xmBNbFDNnlaLdqHg

radiant  face  of  me

rivers of golden light stream down this sacred valley

a freshening welcome in the winds spiraling down the pathways of my soul this morning

reaching deep to lift my spirits high

i love this valley  these swelling hills breathing deep the blessings freely given

my heart too swells

in oneness with the tonal rhythms of the mother’s generous heartbeat

intercourse of light and sound bring forth the sweetness of this morning

the beauty of this sacred silent earth

oneness is the given gift

oneness is the blessing received

in thanksgiving to the Creator

of every dawning day

yesterday afternoon tea and quiet conversation

a little laughter

generous tones of welcome

gratefulness for many simple gifts

delicate patterns which display

the weave and dance  of light and sound  in flesh and blood

grateful

grateful for knowing the majestic way of life which brings all things to pass

in perfect rhythm

the sacred silent seasons of the soul

now each day

i hear that thunderous voice

speak clearly

and show the way of oneness

and when I look at you

i see my own reflected brightness

streaming from your eyes

radiant face of me shines back from you

friendship is good

welcome

welcome the original face

welcome the radiant dark intensity

the little ones

the laughter

and the golden light

db

Trampolines

by

Ren Lincoln Gidlow

Trampolines are like home

When I bounce I am free

I step on

and my scene shifts

Nothing else matters

I soar like an eagle

there is really nothing hidden here

i am a simple man

like the ancient forest is simple
(do you know it?)

and we all love (don't we?)

its elegance

and zany grace

and its simplicity of gesture at being-in-this-world

that alone is grand
(think about it!)
that alone is enough

that

alone

is

enough!

being-in-this-world
i too am that

i too am that

it too is what i am
it too is what i am
(there is no getting around that!)

i too am that simple

(ahhh! but that’s so fuckin' complex
to comtemplate
and then to publish papers!
but your ideas are interesting.)

i hear that response continually through your false face mask

it's hopeless

i've already forgotten all the rules!

there is really nothing hidden here
i am a simple man
and all i ask

is

when

will you

let go?

(it is really that simple)

for Friends of Clayoquat Sound

david barnes 2-2-95