The Art of Living: A Meditation Service
Comments By The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
February 27, 2005
LETTING GO
Hymn 188: “Come, Come, Whoever You Are”
Reading:
Eternity is a dimension of here and now.
The divine lives within you.
Live from your own center.
Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss.
The society is the enemy when it imposes its structures on the individual.
On the dragon there are many scales.
Every one of them says “Thou Shalt.”
Kill the dragon “Thou Shalt.”
When one has killed that dragon, one has become The Child.
Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place,
starting your hero journey, following your bliss.
You throw off yesterday as the snake sheds its skin.
(--Joseph Campbell, from Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion, ed. By Diane K. Osbon, p. 21)
Comments on “Letting Go”:
Joseph Campbell encouraged his students, and all of us, to “follow your bliss.” His invitation is exciting. Would that we could really step out of our skins formed from a lifetime of “Thou Shalts” and follow our bliss! Sometimes I think Campbell could say that because his students were young and without responsibilities, but I know that isn’t so. I was reminded of that just yesterday listening to a radio story about a woman who had majored in theater but ended up teaching instead. At first, she kept up with her dream of being an actress by participating in a few plays. Then she had her daughter and did no acting at all for seven years. One day, she took off to a movie by herself and saw “The Rookie.” She cried and cried at how she had left her dreams behind. And then she decided that she really must pursue her dream, so she started a theater group and just DID IT – like the Nike commercial.
How many of us have dreams unfulfilled? All of us, of course. The question is whether we can find, buried somewhere within the lives we now lead those seeds of THE DREAM, the one that sits closest to our hearts. Finding your bliss, as Campbell puts it, is about finding the center of our being, what we care most deeply about, similar to the point of our Finding Heart groups, believe it or not. So how can we delve deep beneath the duties and responsibilities of our lives, the busyness and hectic patterns we have adopted, to find our center once again?
Campbell tells us that ancient traditions such as Yoga help us to find the still center of our selves. Here is an analogy he uses:
The mind is likened…to the surface of a pond rippled by a wind….The idea of yoga is to cause that wind to subside and let the waters return to rest. For when a wind blows and waters stir, the waves break and distort both the light and its reflections, so that all that can be seen are colliding broken forms. Not until the waters will have been stilled, cleansed of stirred-up sediment and made mirror-bright, will the one reflected image appear that on the rippling waves had been broken; that of the clouds and pure sky above, the trees along the shore, and down deep in the still, pure water itself, the sandy bottom and the fish. Then alone will that single image be known of which the wave-borne reflections are but fragments and distortions. And this single image can be likened to that of the Self realized in yoga. It is the Ultimate—the Form of forms—of which the phenomena of this world are but imperfectly seen, ephemeral distortions: the God-form, the Buddha-form, which is truly our own Knowledge-form, and with which it is the goal of yoga to unite us. (–Ibid, p. 109-110)
Finding our true selves isn’t just about dreams once yearned for, but about seeing clearly who we really are right now. To do that we need to let go of much of what is in the way—that very busyness that consumes us, the cacophony of daily life, the structures of society that keep us imprisoned in the “shalts.” We need to let go of all that and step away in order that the winds can be stilled and the pond settle so that we can begin to see clearly what lies in the depths of our being.
Guided Meditation:
I invite you now to
Be as the water of the pond,
Allowing yourself to be stilled.
Place your feet flat on the floor,
Back straight.
Find the tensions in your muscles and let them go.
Breathe in calm,
Breathe out stress and tension.
Let go the frown on your face,
Relax your cheeks, your jaw,
Drop your shoulders.
Let the half-smile come to your lips
Bringing the peace of the Buddha.
Breathe in calm,
Breathe out stress and tension.
Feel the stillness flow over and through you.
Let the stillness carry you deeper into your being
To your center, your essence, your harmony.
Just breathe in and out with the stillness.
(3 minutes)
(Ring Bell)
APPRECIATING
Hymn 83: “Winds Be Still”
Reading:
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of
What you are looking for.
The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.
You find the jewel, and it draws you off.
In loving the spiritual, you cannot despise the earthly.
The purpose of the journey is compassion.
When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.
The goal is to bring the jewel back to the world,
To join the two things together. (–Ibid, p. 24)
Comments on “Appreciating:”
Joseph Campbell studied mythology all over the world. Applying Jungian psychology, he arrived at some observations about the ways human beings move through life and find actualization, or bliss, or spiritual fulfillment. The hero journey is one of the most common myths and the one for which Campbell is most well known for pointing out. Such journeys can be physical, psychological, or spiritual. In order to know oneself and be fulfilled, one must leave the old behind and go off to find one’s true being. Finding oneself is the journey, and part of that journey is learning not only to see oneself clearly, but to appreciate who one is and the world around.
Campbell said that “Myth makes a connection between our waking consciousness and the mystery of the universe.” (p. 56) In myth and ritual lie ways to understand ourselves and bring ourselves back to ourselves. That self may be the realized state of human being, and/or may be the god-state of world mythology or reality, depending on your own point of view. In any case, it is the place out of which one can appreciate life as it is.
There is a tradition of chanting meditation which aims to bring oneself into alignment with self and life and the mystery of the universe. Campbell describes it this way:
According to the Mandukya Upanishad, the world of the state of waking consciousness is to be identified with the letter A of the syllable AUM; that of dream consciousness (heaven and hell, that is to say) with the letter U; and deep sleep (the state of the mystical union of the knower and the known, God and the world, brooding the seeds and energies of creation: which is the state symbolized in the center of the mandala) with M. The soul is to be propelled both by and from this syllable AUM into the silence beyond and all around it: the silence out of which it rises and back into which it goes when pronounced—slowly and rhythmically…as AUM—AUM—AUM.
If you want to hear AUM, just cover your ears and you’ll hear it. Of course, what you are hearing is the blood in the capillaries, but it’s AUM: Ah—waking consciousness; ou—dream consciousness; and then, mmm-the realm of deep, dreamless sleep. AUM is the sound of the radiance of God. This is the most mysterious and important thing to understand, but once you get the idea, it’s very simple. (–Ibid, p. 122)
AUM Meditation:
For this meditation, I invite you once again to find your place of stillness. Breathe in and out a few times, relaxing with feet flat on the floor. Now I want to hear everyone chant the sound for waking consciousness: Ah… Don’t be afraid to make a loud noise. Now, let’s try ou, the dream consciousness: Ou…. And now let’s make the sound of deep, dreamless sleep: Mmm…. Now we’ll try AUM, holding each sound and blending each into the next until you run out of breath. Then do it again. Everyone will run out of breath at a different time, so just keep with your own pattern while listening to and appreciating the sound we all make together.
AUM…
LIVING BLISS
Reading:
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.
Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen, but experienced,
Unity and identity in us all.
Today, the planet is the only proper “in group.”
You must return with the bliss and integrate it.
The return is seeing the radiance everywhere.
Sri Ramakrishna said: “Do not seek illumination unless you see it
As a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.”
If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you,
But you must be ready for it. (–Ibid, p. 25)
Comments on “Living Bliss:”
I noticed when I went walking in Ramsey Canyon yesterday that when I was walking, I was seeing many, many things. I was doing many things as well, keeping my eyes on the ground so I didn’t trip and trying to look for birds at the same time and take in all the beauty there. When I stopped moving, though, I could see better. I wasn’t distracted with having to protect myself or with trying to take in everything at once. I could look at one thing, and in looking at it, I could see what I would never have noticed while I was moving.
The juncos, for example. They’re a little blue-gray and rust bird that I couldn’t see until I stopped because they blended in so well with the leaves on the ground. But when I did see one, it was sort of pecking the leaves, and as I watched it, I suddenly realized the area was covered with them – maybe twelve in all were there where I had noticed only one. Standing still, I could see their bright yellow eyes, and love their beauty.
That is the reason we need to step out of our hectic lives to allow the pond to settle so that we can see clearly what is in our own centers. But when we have found ourselves, we then must come back into the world. One can’t stand still on the trail forever watching the juncos peck at the ground. As Campbell says, “We must return with the bliss and integrate it.” We come back from the hike refreshed and ready to work. We come back into our lives prepared to make some changes and get better aligned with those DREAMS we once held, or maybe not. Maybe we come back ready to move ahead, having let go of what no longer is meaningful. Who knows what we will find in the deeps of the pond and what changes that will bring to our lives.
The final meditation is a meditation in silence. Please join in silent meditation.
Silent Meditation:
Offertory:
Closing Song 318: “We Would Be One”
Closing Words:
Joseph Campbell says, "The secret to having a spiritual life as you move in the world is to hear the AUM in all things all the time. If you do, everything is transformed. You no longer have to go anywhere to find your fulfillment and achievement and the treasure that you seek. It is here. It is everywhere." (Ibid, p. 125)
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson