At a recent gathering I was asked,
"What do you do?" My answer surprised even me. I said,
"Nothing." What I meant, really, was that I don't do
anything in the ordinary sense of what the world means by
that question. What I do do is somewhat difficult to
express in a sentence, or two.
I guess the more meaningful
question, one that is rarely asked, is "Who are you?"
This is the question that is always asked of the deities,
hero(in)es, and bards of sacred literature, and answered
in great detail in the seemingly antithetical "I
am" responses; the two most well-known being, "I
am that I am"(1)
of the Old Testament, followed by, "I am the alpha and
the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the
end,"(2)
in the New.
Thirteen hundred years earlier, the
Celtic bard had perfected the response to "Who are you?"
into a series of poetic clues by stating who he had been,
where he had been, and what he had accomplished, the
cumulative effect of which revealed the essence of his
being. Additionally, the answer cryptically incorporated
the marking of the passing seasons of the sacred "year
and a day" and the realization of the unending
circularity of time. We are meant to understand in the
recitation of the sacred Druidic incantation, that the
combined attributes of valour, sacred knowledge, clarity,
and inspiration are what is needed to resolve the
questions of the universe.
Contrasted with this surety is the
failing Lear, the self-deposed king, god of thunder and
storm, who, being no longer the image of his former self,
asks, "Who am I?"(3)
Shortly thereafter, his Fool, who has not heard the
question, but who knows the answer, instructs his master
in the lessons of foolishness by declaring, "I am a
fool, thou art nothing."(4)
And again, the King asks, "Who is it that can tell me
who I am?"(5)
And his Fool responds, "Lear's
Shadow."(6)
If mere mortals are to ask of
themselves, "Who am I?", it is not out of arrogance, but
out of necessity. If, by shinning example, we adopt the
Eastern attitude of greeting, the gesture of the hands in
an attitude of prayer, accompanied by a reverential bow,
then we shall understand that it is the god within that
person to whom we thus bow. And it is the god in all of
us whom we honor by asking the question, "Who am
I?"
I am a seeker, a thinker, and a
mystic, exploring the wonder, the mystery, and the
meaning of the universe. My journey has been interrupted
often by circumstances that demanded my attention
elsewhere, but this is the place to which I always
return. This is what nourishes me.
I have spent the better part of my
life searching, and researching, whether in the more
mundane world of such practical pursuits as law and real
estate, or in the sacred realm of the spirit. My
interdisciplinary research, which formed the basis for my
many years of teaching, has incorporated studies in the
fields of comparative ancient religions, archetypal
literature, and ancient art. This pleasurable work has
yielded more than several lifetimes of compelling
material from which to draw. I have written thousands
upon thousands of pages detailing my findings, and yet,
there are always more questions. One path inevitably
leads to another; each road taken unearthing an infinity
of connection and discovery. So the windings and
unwindings of the journey meander, with purpose, and yet,
are purposeless. This, they say, is the secret to finding
the "wondrous isles,"(7)
the place where your heart resides.
I have experienced the ecstatic
euphoria of near-death, not once, but twice. Floating in
that liminal place that is neither here nor there, I have
seen that immeasurably bright idyllic paradise whose
bliss is irresistible. Whether in deep meditation or in
death, hearing is the last sense to go out into the
universe. (8)
And it was the faintest sound of loving voices circling
around and around, calling my name, that brought me back
to earth. The second time, it was the Bodhisattva,
herself, who must have heard the stilled voice that
couldn't call her name.
For days, as I wove in and out of
consciousness, I was periodically awakened by a gleaming
golden aura of light emanating from a sunlit bronze
statue of Kuan Yin, 'She Who Hears the Cries of the
World'. It is said of the Buddhist Goddess of Compassion,
whose presence graced an altar directly across from my
bed, that the mere calling of her name in times of
distress is sufficient for her to intercede to save your
life. I couldn't even do that, and yet, I was bathed in
the bliss of her light, under her protection. It was she
who brought me back again and again. And I have no doubt
that it was Kuan Yin who placed me in the very capable
life-giving hands of a hospital nurse who was a secret
practitioner of the Eastern healing art of the laying on
of hands. They had written me off for dead when she
stepped in to watch over me. And then, one day, as though
a bolt of lightning-like energy had struck me, I was
suddenly alive.
. . . "I am
Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
(9)
I have always been susceptible to
states of reverie induced by things of beauty, found
refuge where harmony and order reign. Music has often
been the door to these states of ecstasy; that unbearable
perfection of a beautiful voice or a sonorous passage,
which makes the soul swoon almost to fainting.
(10)
Perhaps, too, it is the transcendent circularity of
music, the perfect resolution of the eternal return that
carries the soul into that state of bliss. Or maybe it is
the effect of the rhythms on the heart.
And to poetry I return, again and
again, to the euphoric waves "At the still point of
the turning world"(11)
where "the dance is" ;
(12)
to the elegiac angels, "unable to tell whether they
move among living or dead" ;
(13)
to the unbearable despair of a king who rages at the
storm of his making; to the tribulations of Odysseus, and
the mindful unravelings of Penelope. I stand, at the
urging of the King, to pay my respects at the singing of
the Hallelujah. (14)
I stand, too, shoulder to shoulder with Sir Bedivere,
King Arthur's sole surviving knight, transfixed, as the
mournful barge dissolves into "one black dot against
the verge of dawn."(15)
And on that shore, I, too, watch and wait to witness the
return; to hear the timbre of a long-missed
voice.
I have walked the hallowed grounds,
danced with the fairies under the hill, and in the
mountaintops have I danced with the dancing bears of
Artemis. I have entered the forbidden sacred grove, met
the Erinyes face to face, and propitiated their rage. I
have trod the smoothed marble floors, weaving my way
through Ariadne's labyrinth; and have traced the tangled
silken skeins of Maeve's indecipherable web of sleep. I
have been touched by Hermes' s magic wand, enchanted by
the Druid's spell, have watched the wise Teiresias as he
gathered wisdom from the whirling of his birds, and
pondered the messages of the murmuring doves in the
whispering leaves of Diana's wind-blown oak. I have heard
the mysterious music rising over Gaia's oracular peaks,
and have soared through that rarefied air on the wings of
hawks who traced the sounds like so many ribbons in the
sky. At the rising of the dog-star I have followed the
path of he who leads the way through an endless confusion
of spiraling whiteness to a stardust realm beyond seeing,
beyond hearing, beyond imagination. And I have dreamed
dreams.
I have known "the silence that
is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is
frequent", (16)
have heard, in the silence, the sound of the breath
moving upon the face of the waters, seen the silent
waters moved out of their absolute stillness by the
infinite reverberation of rushing wings. And I have lain
in the arms of Aphrodite, and looked into her eyes,
and asked her with my eyes to ask again yes and then I
asked her would she yes to say yes... and first she put
her arms around me yes and drew me down to her so I could
feel her breasts all perfume yes and my heart was going
like mad and yes she said yes I will Yes.
(17)
And this is as it was in the beginning, is now, and
ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
(18)
All the more, have I felt the bitter sting of the
inextricable arrow and the pain of its irretrievable
extraction; all the more wept, as I watched the swan
maiden find her feathered cloak to dance the sky with the
sun.
The mudra of the Buddha's
hands composes itself into contemplacency. My eye is
distracted from its re-weaving of the the meandering
pattern of a tribal rug as the thunderous call of the
wave is echoed in the voices of a radiant orange
crescendo. There is the faintest smell of the sea in the
lingering after-notes, and then there is silence. From a
distant mind, arises the far-off tinkling of bells; then
thunder, deepest droning of deepest sound, unheard,
reverberating in the hollow passages; deeper now, deeper
yet, deeper yet again. Deep in meditation, layer upon
layer of harmonic wave rises toward audible infinitude.
As if suspended in more tranquil air, the notes cease
their outpouring to await the arrival of the moment. And
then, with one unhesitating sweep of the arm, a Messiah,
disguised as a "simple
monk,"(19)
disperses an incalculable number of grains of sand to the
mandala's edge for their return to the sea.
Breathless, I bear witness to a lesson in the
impermanence of all life. The solemn chanting begins
again. AUM MANE PADME HUM.
Over this, I hear the bellowing
voice of the Druidic priest intoning The Song of
Amergin to announce the essence of himself, the
secret of the mystery of the universe. "I am a stag of
seven tines," he begins, "I am a wide flood on a
plain, I am a wind on the deep waters, I am a shining
tear of the sun, I am a hawk on a cliff, I am fair among
flowers, I am a god who sets the head afire with smoke, I
am a battle-waging spear, I am a salmon in a pool, I am a
hill of poetry, I am a ruthless boar, I am a threatening
noise of the sea, I am a wave of the sea. Who but I knows
the secrets of the unhewn
dolmen?"(20)
Through each successive
transformation I mark the passage of time on the palm of
my hand in the ancient Ogham alphabet of the
trees, noting the comfort of being so grounded in nature.
I muse that the riddle of the bard reveals the total
essence of his being, not just within that world, which
is the only world, but as that world. Surely, this
is the quintessential resolution of the mystery and the
meaning of the universe enshrined in the passage of the
year. And in this one turning is contained the totality
of all that exists from every turning of every year from
the beginning of time until the end. And in the turning,
do I now know that the awareness of time shuts out
eternity, that the eternal is beyond time, that the
experience of the eternal is here now.
Oh, hear the sacred vowels,
unspoken, reverberating in space, encapsulating the
infinite, sounding the silent movement of time. Amen.
Allelujah. AUM. Hymn the gods. Enchant the stars.
Sound the seasons. Howl the moon. Sing the stones. Hear
the harmony of the spheres.
This is what I do. This is who I
am. (21)
NOTES: WHO AM I? (NOTES TO
MYSELF)
1. Exodus 3:14.
2. Revelation 22:13.
3. King Lear, I.iv. 85.
4. Ibid., 215.
5. Ibid., 252.
6. Ibid., 253.
7. Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage:
Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1961), p. 346.
8. see: Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration
of Consciousness with The Dalai Lama. Francisco J.
Varela, ed. (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1997), pp.
191-92.
9. T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock",
1917.
10. There is a famous photograph of Leonard Bernstein in
exactly this attitude of delirious ecstasy, which
visually describes what I mean. It is etched on the CD:
Bernstein, Reaching for the Note: His Life in
Music. Deutsche Grammophon 289 459 553-2.
11. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, "Burnt Norton" II.
62.
12. Ibid.
13. Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, The First
Elegy, 1912. 81-82.
14. Of Georg Friedrich Handel's Messiah.
15. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Morte D'Arthur", 1842.
16. Douglas M. Parrot, ed. "The Thunder: Perfect Mind"
VI.2. in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, p.
298.
17. A re-arrangement of the last lines of James Joyce's,
Ulysses, 1934.
18. Found throughout The Book of Common Prayer of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, old version.
19. This is who H. H. The Dalai Lama says he is, and it
is he who performs this Kalachakra Mandala
rite.
20. Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical
Grammar of Poetic Myth (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1974; 7th printing of Amended and Enlarged
Edition of 1966), pp. 207-08, reciting The Song of
Amergin, 1268 BCE.
21. You will find these stories told, here and there, in
these pages.