Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II
I’ve been meaning to lay down some tracks for a while. Not sure I have a whole album yet, but here’s a start.
I’m a Tao de Jew. With a strong measure of Paganism, or what Reb Zalman called Gaia consciousness.
Yes, I suppose in our own journeys we will often become syncretists even though syncretism itself gets no love from religious folks or scholars.
Can I unring the wu wei bell now that I’ve converted to Judaism? Can I eliminate my full body immersion in the Arapaho National Forest? Can I set aside the teachings of Jesus about the oppressed and the stranger? Or, in its metaphorical grandeur the notion of resurrection?
No, I cannot. Why? Because these and other ideas have found roots in my psyche, helping to shape my nefesh as it provides a link between the inner world of my neshama and the world, the One, of which it is an inextricable part.
I see the neshama as helical strands of dna connecting all life to its distant origins in the evolutionary story. I see the neshama as a vital, vibrant link with what Jung called the collective unconscious, the deep well of human experience available to each and all.
The neshama links each of us to the One through depth and purity, retaining a clarity of purpose unsmudged by the conflicting tensions of the yetzer hara and the yezter hatov.
Wu wei offers insight into the movement of chi, of life force through the One. It flows in and out of the neshama, in and out of all things, while never being separate from any of them. The vitality of the One moves through and with the ten thousand things. If we stop and listen, stop forcing matters, we can follow chi with ease by attending to wu wei.
When I look out the window, wander in my yard, drive among the Mountains, the Creeks, and the Forest and breathe in Treeness, Creekness, Mountainness, feeling my temporary porous barrier, my skin, blend into this Mountain world and the Mountain world blending into mine, I follow the pagan path which nurtured me and nurtures me.
This is nefesh, that link between the desires of my neshama and the aspects of the One in my immediate life. The One is one. Not two, not three, not many. One. This is why transcendence as an idea, one shaped by the notion of a three-story universe and Whitehead’s fallacies of misplaced concreteness, makes no sense to me, in fact repulses me as a spiritual goal.
What I do understand about death. That resurrection is real and total. That no bit of matter or energy gets destroyed. Whether we resurrect as a spray of molecules or a somehow intact consciousness, I have no idea. Will find out myself someday. As will you.
Luke 4:18-19
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captiveand recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Whether I find this passage formed me or guides me, I don’t know. I do know that the essence of this bit from the Gospel of Luke has informed my life from a time before I had become fully aware of it.
How do I understand it now? As a statement of the One, igniting in all a sense of responsibility and care for all. I often tell the story of the Iroquois medicine man who prayed for the winged ones, the four leggeds, the Waters, the Trees and the Mountains, those who swim in the water, and all those who live in the soil.
He never mentions the two-leggeds. When I asked him about that after he had planted a Pine Tree as a symbol of peace, he said, “Oh. We two-leggeds are the most fragile of all creation. In order for us to survive we have to ensure that all the others on whom our lives depend thrive. So we pray for them.”