Full Spectrum Spirituality
As I move between reflecting on the Wood Sisters Spring Equinox meditation and preparing for the Beltane one, plus writing notes for the Tree of Life School on spiritual living, I am finding myself thinking hard about the nature and purpose of meditation and spiritual practice.
An interesting question arose at the last Wood Sisters’ Day about how meditations based in creative imagination can seem to create the impression that ‘spirituality’ is somewhere else, in an imaginary other place that is somehow separate from the realities of daily life. I can understand a concern that spirituality is some kind of escape into an imaginary better world that might stop us from engaging with the need for action in a suffering world. Just as I can understand the importance of seeing our ordinary, everyday lives as intrinsically spiritual.
The relationship between contemplative and action for instance is a very old debate, certainly in the religious traditions I have a little experience and understanding of, especially Christianity and Judaism. But I can’t help thinking that it’s a debate with a built in contradiction. It seems to assume that there are two unrelated or even opposing worlds… the inner world of imagination, intuition and contemplation and the outer world of matter, action and the ‘rationality’ of what can be perceived and proved through the physical senses.
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| Somehow it’s much easier to appreciate contrast in the colours of the natural world! |
I remember having a bit of a ‘breakthrough moment’ as a young person in school studying the electromagnetic spectrum, which gave me a picture of how even at a very rational, physical level we know that there is a much broader band of frequencies than we can consciously perceive with our physical senses. It’s a picture that acknowledges difference and yet doesn’t create opposites… it’s all electromagnetic radiation after all and no one is debating whether X rays are ‘better’ than radio waves, or ultraviolet is ‘truer’ than infrared!
A few years later I was studying Kabbalah, whose ‘Tree of Life’ diagram gives a similar picture of a ‘spectrum of consciousness’…whose ‘high’ frequencies we call God and whose ‘low’ frequencies we call Earth. As with the electromagnetic spectrum, the Kabbalistic teachings as I received them, emphasise the underlying energy of the whole spectrum of consciousness and that each expression is simply a different aspect of one spiritual reality.
In this ‘full spectrum’ context there’s no need to set contemplation against action for example ….contemplation is simply waking up to the subtler forms of Divinity and action is waking up to God as World and both have their own beauty and significance.
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| Serenity demonstrates the principles of ‘full spectrum spirituality’ – by settling down with a Kabbalistic Tree of Life |
When I allow consciousness to be a broad spectrum which takes many forms, I find I can be more accepting of different aspects of myself and others. I find it quite helpful to think about the different parts of the brain and their different functions and ‘evolutionary age’. I like to imagine that when I try to be more aware of the physical present and engage consciously with the world around me, I’m using the cerebral cortex for example… but it’s just as valid to use the ‘older’ parts of our brains which respond to myth, story, imagination and emotion and which simply show us ‘reality’ from another perspective.
Many more people would be able to appreciate the spiritual depth of their Christian and Jewish heritage if they could learn to hear how it speaks through story and symbol, not through the intellectual discourses we have been educated to expect and recognise. In my early twenties I was quick to dismiss my own traditions and to turn to the clear, rational spiritual explanations that I found in Buddhism. But though I judged my religious upbringing as lacking, it was really I who lacked the capacity to see the wisdom that had already been given to me.
Working with mythic imagination through meditation gives us access to a vast, ancient pool of human wisdom, wisdom that the rational, pragmatic parts of us don’t always see… and this wisdom pool is about how to live well, how to engage with the everyday, it’s just that it’s expressed in a different language, the language of image, metaphor and symbol. When we bring all these different aspects of consciousness alive within us, life can be transformed…an inner grail becomes the communion chalice becomes a cup of tea shared with another and each perspective is enriched by the other.
So I for one shall remain a quiet champion of full spectrum spirituality. My meditation practice will continue to range from simple practices of breath and body awareness through to the intricacies of creative visualisation and mythic imagination…. and whatever the method the purpose remains the same….an ever more liberated and loving life.