Excuse Me While I Inhale Unity

Before you tell me just exactly who you are,
let me fill my three-inch self
with a long drag of this hookah.
http://www.elephantjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/
2010/03/Alice-caterpillar1-220x300.jpg

Elephant, what an invigorating rallying cry!  Indeed, we have come a long way—from our past lives to our reborn selves.  But I’m not just referring to crawling under desks out of makeshift classroom wombs, and being reborn and reincarnated as other spirits and species.  We have been instructed to ponder everything from trippy Wonderlandish things to things of weight, like footage of Earthlings.  Perhaps I can only speak for myself, but I feel like we have eaten and continue to eat from the mushroom atop which somewhere a hookah-smoking caterpillar sits in Wonderland; we have stretched the size of our consciousnesses, of our Selves; we have grown.  And like Alice, in Wonderland, I was taken by surprise when we were first instructed (by a Hawk and a Caterpillar) to ponder the question: “Who are you?” (Alice in Wonderland, 47). 

I seem to recall responding to the question in my blog, in an initially skeptical and somewhat sarcastic tone, “I am Spiderwoman.”  That’s right, folks, I spend my days saving the world, wearing super hot spandex, and spinning webs.  But really, I am just someone who needed at the moment, more than anything else, to reconnect with my right brain and creative Self.  Among other things, Spiders, in the spiritual realm, represent precisely this (74, Course Anthology Volume 1).

So I learned of spirit animals.  And why I should take an assignment like mediate-to-find-your-inner-patronus, quite seriously.  But as beautifully as Hopkins portrayed his Windhover spirit—“My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird… a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!” (85, Course Anthology Volume 1), I was not so eloquent in my search.  My initial attempts to cheat myself of meditations with terrifying hairy spiders—trying instead to envision only beautiful creatures—proved to be futile. Patience was never my forte, but I learned that I could not very well force a spirit into my mind without its consent: “The animal chooses the person, not the other way around” (66, Course Anthology: Volume 1).   Perhaps this was my first formal lesson in the work of relinquishing control to the cosmos or to the collective unconscious or to my own subconscious.

When I returned to the first Course Anthology for this assignment, I had to stop on page 89A.  Having moved beyond the unit on spirit animals, I reread Vulture by Robinson Jeffers.  Now, now the last words sounded so much sweeter and more familiar:  “To be eaten by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes—what a sublime end of one’s body, what an enskyment; what a life after death” (89A, Course Anthology E603A, Volume 1). The idea of reincarnation and expressing love for all beings is abundantly clear and portrayed powerfully in this line.  Even life and death emerge as brothers, not as predator and prey or as enemies.  

Reincarnation.  All the food groups represented. Just kidding.
 http://www.spiritandsky.com/images/reincarnation2.jpg

I couldn’t write about how I have come to understand spirit animals, without including this quote from Bless Me, Ultima: “When I was a child, I was taught my life’s work by a wise old man, a good man.  He gave me the owl and he said that the owl was my spirit, my bond to the time and harmony of the universe.” (78 of Course Anthology 603A, Volume 1).  To make this relevant to me, I have to echo the wisdom: “the [spider is] my spirit, my bond to the time and harmony of the universe.”  This reminds me of the Totem pole, and how it stakes a rod through generations of spirits and wisdom.  The Totem pole, for many cultures, is like that “bond to time and harmony of the universe” applied to a collective.  Totem poles “show various combinations of animal and human forms piled one on another, representing the heraldic crest of the clan or lineage.  The heraldic designs often embody the family history”(59).  Here, on this timeless pole, animals and humans have the same “family history.”  I may not even know what I am saying, as I am not a vegetarian and still continue to eat animals.  But now I am able at the very least to articulate the truth behind my carnism:  I am eating beings in my “family.”

But I must return to the topic of relinquishing control, as this is something I am just now beginning to sort through.  It is not unlike the end to Siddhartha’s soul-searching quest and spiritual dilemma about his son.  The idea is that you cannot always choose when and how you will learn the secrets of life—“understand many other things, many secrets and all secrets,” or discover answers that have been troubling you (Siddhartha, 96).  Siddhartha had suffered great blows to his spirit in his life because of his attachments to the physical and material world.  He wanted to spare his son this pain and suffering and aimlessness.  This was perhaps Siddhartha’s final attachment, which he ultimately severed.  So in our discussion the question was raised, “If you knew a friend was making a mistake, would you try to get her/him to stop?”  Some said yes; I probably would say yes.  But what about letting everyone find their own way; about relinquishing control; letting people wander through uncharted territories at their own pace and make mistakes? 

This reminds me of the power of simply listening and being present—like the omnipresent river: “Everyone has their own wisdom, their own answers within them.  It is wonderful to empower another person by facilitating them to find their own path by giving them your full, undivided attention as they speak” (89E, Course Anthology 603A volume 1).

This is soul-searching (well, according to google images).  This is the om.  This is pretty beautiful.
http://wallpaper-nature.com/wallpaper/Soul-Searching/

While I am on the subject of Herman Hesse’s masterpiece, let me just say that for me, Siddhartha is the cornerstone of spiritual literature.  I read it for the first time as a senior in high school—a time when, let’s face it, we’re not the most spiritual of beings.  Suffice it to say, I felt like I had been radically reborn.  The summer following my senior year, I had planned to do a 10-day retreat in the wilderness (the hard part was taking a 10-day vow of silence, for the purpose of meditating 24/7 literally).  I thought that in that summer before going to college, I would figure myself out.  That I would find the answers I was looking for and that everything would suddenly make sense.  Well, I wasn’t quite man (woman?) enough to commit to 10 days of silence and introspection; instead I went to Mexico, as I’m sure, shouldn’t come as a surprise.  It took me traveling on my own through Mexico to find that soul-searching wasn’t a one-time thing, nor that it functioned on an “on demand” basis.  I had to learn the hard way that I couldn’t learn a lifetime’s worth of experience in a summer.  Herman Hesse has taught me the most sound and valuable wisdom: sometimes it takes succumbing to superficiality, materialism, and selfishness, to find clarity and peace of mind. 

And while my road map video hasn’t included my abyssal trenches, I have had my fair share.  And I now know that the ups and the downs, the deaths and the rebirths, and the growing and shrinking are precisely what give spiritual road maps their unique topography.  Like I said, “To draw a map of our spiritual journey is to look for the experiences and changes, the turning points, triumphs and crashes, dark nights and mountain peaks we each have traversed to become the kind of person we are….” (179, Course Anthology E603A, Volume 1). 

“This is another teaching that you will laugh about: love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all….I’m only interested in being able to love the world, not despise it….I want to be able to look upon it and myself and upon all beings with love, admiration, and great respect” (Siddhartha 137).  This is the wisdom I wish to better understand.  After all, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, who like Herman Hesse (and Siddhartha) I hold in the highest esteem, once said: “Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”  At this moment, I will try to truly believe that omnia vincit amor.  And while this seems like a good note to end on, I must conclude by finally “hammering my thoughts into unity.”  Borrowing words from Herman Hesse, Siddhartha’s soul-searching, his “goal was nothing more than a readiness of the soul, an ability and secret method of thinking the thought of unity every moment of his life, and being able to feel and inhale the unity” (122).  

This is our logo.  "In unity, there is
strength" is our motto.
http://www.unionjobs.com/images/wdp-logo.jpg

And as I spend nearly a third of my waking hours at the Workers Defense Project (Proyecto Defensa Laboral, or PDL), I can't help but connect all this to PDL's motto: "La union hace la fuerza." (In unity, there is strength).  In a sense, I am learning to "inhale the unity" as an activist, as a spider, and simply as a being.