Hints and Guesses

In this episode, I discuss why moving to the mytho-poetic is important and how it relates to awakening to the conversation that only we can have with world.  I also discuss the tricky notion of stages or levels of consciousness we bring to our reading of sacred texts and to our spiritual lives.  I wonder what movement or growth looks like in this respect.  I look at the story of Jacob's ladder as a symbol of moving up and down the ladder of perception, a glimpse that our identity is not fixed in the way we think it is, and that our view of reality is limited but fluid.  And finally I mention a few lines from Adrienne Rich's poem Diving into the Wreck, as an image of diving into our own wreckage, the great myths and stories in hand, only to find our names are not written in these myths but can lead us to find our own true names in the world.

In this episode, I discuss why moving to the mytho-poetic is important and how it relates to awakening to the conversation that only we can have with world.  I also discuss the tricky notion of stages or levels of consciousness we bring to our reading of sacred texts and to our spiritual lives.  I wonder what movement or growth looks like in this respect.  I look at the story of Jacob's ladder as a symbol of moving up and down the ladder of perception, a glimpse that our identity is not fixed in the way we think it is, and that our view of reality is limited but fluid.  And finally I mention a few lines from Adrienne Rich's poem Diving into the Wreck, as an image of diving into our own wreckage, the great myths and stories in hand, only to find our names are not written in these myths but can lead us to find our own true names in the world.

In this episode I struggle with making any sense of the rising tide of bad news coming from just about every source.  In some ways, we are living in apocalyptic times, meaning a time of both destruction and renewal, Noah-like times.  There is so much to grieve and there is so much that makes me wonder what "slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"  It seems like we need the poets, the storytellers and the dreamers to tell us the truth, like Yeats does in this dark poem.  We need the truth beneath the truth.  We need the deeper truth in a rising sea of facts, some of which are glaringly un-factual to begin with.  In the end, I wonder what waits in each of you, what dream wants to be born, in the middle of this apocalyptic mess.