Authority and Authenicity

Authority and Authenticity

"Our deeds remain single till they wed perseverance...."
     ____ Welsh proverb (trans CM)


    Many people seek validation for their spiritual pathway. Because we may have garnered the components of our spiritual search from many different places and traditions, we often have a feeling of fraudulence or lack of authenticity.  Our efforts to make sense of these components to make a living habitation or pathway from them, are haunted by fear of authority. We feel that if we change the received pattern, if we deviate from the spiritual tradition into which we were born, we will be punished or shunned. This has certainly been the message given by organized religion to those on a spiritual search: authority is withheld from those who heretically deviate in our society; authenticity can derive only from the centrally authorized mandate.
    No human being shares the exact same spiritual path as another. Each person constellates various elements of spirituality that speaks to him, borrowing from old traditions and new perspectives. Finding authority for what we do, who we are, cannot come solely from the human world: authenticity arrives when we have begun to move from the known into the unknown through the unique thresholds that life opens to us. Perseverance is the key.

"Answer these questions to get a sense of your own search for authority and authenticity:

* Whose approval am I seeking?
* Who encourages me?
* How do I gain vitality? What drains my vitality?
* Who.what do I need to control?
* To whom/what do I consistently relinquish power?
* What do I need for self-nurture?
* Which old  repeating patterns prevent me living in balance?
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews] 

Uninvited Guests

Uninvited Guests

"Three things that come without asking: fear, jealousy,
love."    Scots Gaelic triad


     When fear grips us, our ability to act quickly or think clearly evaporates; we may become completely petrified and powerless. Fear often skims along just below the surface of perception, ready to appear when given opportunity. Its appeasing can lead to avoidance: we can be thrown out of the house of our soul by extreme fear. Fear cannot be evicted or overcome as such, though it can be transformed. Fear holds the key to lock away our abilities. To gain access to them again, we have to grasp the key and transform fear into power, recognizing that one become the other, just as water become ice.
     Jealousy brings with it a fierce twisting of our perceptions so that everything concerning the object of our jealousy is distorted. When Cuchulainn fell in love with another woman, his wife, Emer, was consumed by a terrible jealousy that changed her perceptions utterly. "What;s red is beautiful, when new is bright, what's tall is fair, what's familiar is stale. The unknown is honored, the known neglected."  The only cure for Cuchulainn's enchantment and Emer's jealousy was for the God of the Otherworld, Mananna, to shake his cloak between them to bring them both forgetfulness. By all accounts, this is the only socially acceptable antidote to this particular guest.
      Love is not altogether a welcome guest either. Its coming is often accompanied by disorientation and upheaval. It is frequently confounded with illness, as when King Ailell took to his bed with an unspecified disorder; his doctors finally proclaimed that he was suffering from 'the two deadly pangs which no doctor can cure: love and jealousy.'   The only remedy for love is reciprocated love and nothing else ease the pangs.

"Which was the last  of these uninvited guests to visit you? How did you cope? What did you learn from its visit?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Land of Women

The Land of Women

"Do not fall on a bed of sloth,
Let not your intoxication overcome you,
Begin a voyage across the clear sea,
If you would reach the Land of Women."
   ___ Voyage of Bran mac Febal, early Irish text (trans. CM)


     These words are addressed to the Irish hero Bran mac Febal by an otherwordly woman who summons him to set forth on his quest to the Land of Women - a place that in early Celtic tradition was considered to be the abode of bliss, satisfaction and achievement. She urges him to clear his sights, attend to the task at hand, conjure a vision of beauty and delight and set off toward it. Regions of the Celtic otherworld can be reached by the voyage of the soul across the severing waters of the west, containing a series of islands that must be encountered in sequence before the traveler comes to the innermost Land (or Island0 of Women. The wisdom-keepers of the soul-voyage reveal themselves as a sisterhood of women who guard the mysteries of life. In Britain, there is the myth of Avalon being guarded by Morgen and her eight sisters; in Gaul, there are reports of sisterhoods dedicated to teaching, fostering, prophecy, healing, crafts, shape-shifting and weather magic.
     While we may not be summoned in so dramatic a way as Bran, we each have a quest to which we are called. This quest concerns the fulfillment of our life's purpose and is about using our innate gifts in the widest possible way. The inhabitants of the Land of Women have no patience with sloth. They are the energizers, keepers and empowers who maintain the dynamo of the world. To do this work, they need our assistance and application. If we make our voyage toward them, we will indeed find our way to the goal of desires.

"What gifts have your faery godmothers given you? How are you using them to further your quest?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Kindling the Hearth

Kindling the Hearth

"Mother of our mothers,
Foremothers strong,
Guide our hands in yours,
Remind us how to kindle the hearth."
   __ Caitlin Matthews, "A Blessing for the Hearth Keepers'

    The hearth is a special shrine that is still ceremonially tended in some Gaelic households. Before retiring, the woman of the house 'smoors' the fire - that is, covers any fresh fuel with ashes so that the fire is banked in and slowly burning. In the morning, the fire can then be easily woken without recourse to fresh kindling.  Three blocks of peat, (turf) are then placed in the grate, their ends touching so that they radiate out in the customary three-legged triskele symbol and a prayer is made over the fire, normally invoking Brighid as saint or goddess, since she is the protectress of the hearth. Among traditional peoples, the tending of the hearth is one of the chief duties that fall to women, who also tend to be the repositories of practical spiritual traditions. These two tasks seem to be interlinked: keeping the hearth and maintaining spiritual practice are daily habitual tasks that cannot be avoided without loss of integrity to the whole household. Today, we may no longer kindle the hearth, but this does not exempt us from kindling our spirit. Many people now incorporate small domestic rituals into their daily life: lighting a candle upon their hearth-shrine, acknowledging their guiding spirits and allies  with flowers and offerings, spending time in meditation in a quiet room, making an earth-shrine in their gardens and window boxes. As each home becomes again the focus of dedicated spiritual practice, the hearth-light is rekindled and we remember our own part in the reverence of Spirit as ancestral hands guide our unremembering ones.

"Create your own hearth-shrine and make it the kindling point of your spiritual practice every day."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

Sacred Encounters

Sacred Encounters

"A sacred being cannot be anticipated; it must be encountered." 
    ___ W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Head


   Many people who are about to embark upon their spiritual quest come to consult me (Caitlin Matthews). They are curious about what they will find and who they will encounter. They have high expectations about the spiritual beings they are going to look up and 'work with'. As gently as I can, I try to explain that though they may be interested in encountering particular gods or goddesses, animals or heroic characters, they may not necessarily find the ones they hope to. Sometimes, it is true, there already exists a special relationship between a person and a spiritual being - a strong, enduring bond that takes no account whatever of the kind of spiritual discipline practiced or quest undergone. Whether that person treks into the realms of Christianity or the regions of Buddhism, the same being will turn - sometimes baffling out of place, sometimes very much at home - to her meditations and dreams.
     The most potent spiritual help may come from nameless and sometimes unknown figures who appear in meditation, soul-flights, dreams and visions. Occasionally, however, our helpers are well know - great figures of history, myth or religion. At those times we may feel humbled or overwhelmed by the sacred encounter, as well as suspicious that we may have made up the encounter from an overactive imagination. Listen to the advice and wisdom that these figures give you, if they come to you; see if it works practically, if it is trustworthy. If everything checks out, you may be privileged to be accompanied by a sacred being who is known and loved by many. But remember that our spiritual guides and teachers often take forms different from the ones we expect. Do not reject their teachings simply because their appearance may not accord with your expectations. If the help is good, then so is the teacher.

"Who are your spiritual friends and teachers? Visit one today."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

October

Month of October - penetrable is the shelter;

Yellow the tops of the birch, solitary the summer dwelling;

Full of fat the birds and the fish.

 ___anon. Welsh poem

October sees the last days of autumn and the presage of winter. The themes of this month are the ordinary and the extraordinary, conflict and consensus, adaptability and renewal, combat and competition, the work of women, the reality of joy.





Enemies of Wisdom

Enemies of Wisdom

"There are three things that spoil wisdom: ignorance, inaccurate
knowledge and forgetfulness."
  ___ ancient Irish triad


    Wisdom supports and maintains the universe in every place. Although we now feel that ignorance is largely conquered in our world by better education, it still holds sway in many areas especially where people are purposely kept away from sources of spiritual wisdom by experts and professionals who prefer to keep them ignorant.
   We live in a world of easily coined and readily accessible facts, a world where true wisdom is contaminated by or mingled with wild supposition, doubtful hearsay, and poor research. Inaccurate knowledge arises when people are keen to get the meat but lack the patience to capture, kill or cook it. A remarkable number of books appear yearly, for example, claiming to teach the reader everything about a subject in a month or even a week! It is hard to know where most censure should be heaped: on the hubris of the writer and publisher or on the credulity of the reader. Inaccurate knowledge will not connect us with the living roots of wisdom; only precise knowledge wedded to practical experience can do that.
     But a far greater enemy of wisdom than either ignorance or inaccurate knowledge is forgetfulness. Wisdom has been warped by forgetfulness, because we have lost both wisdom's context and its application as our traditional guardians have virtually died off. Few alive now have access to anything more than the theoretical structures of spiritual wisdom. Now we must urgently bring wisdom out of its academic closet, putting theory and practice into harness together so that the living power of wisdom may be restored to our world once again.

"What are the characteristics of wisdom by which you steer your life? How are they manifest in your actual practice?"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]

The Fruit of the Otherworld

Fruits of the Otherworld

"Every high and lonely thought that thrills my spirit through
is but a shining berry dropped through the purple air,
And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere."
   ___ A. E. (George Russell), "Connla's Well"

    Over Connla's Well grow the nine hazelnut trees of wisdom that drop their nuts into the water. The salmon of knowledge eats of the nuts and is found by Fionn mac Cumhail (FINN mak KOOl), who, like Taliesin (Tal-eeESSIN), becomes omniscient. This experience changes the very nature of pereption, returning the ordinary senses to perceive in more subtle ways.
    This story in its various permutations, stands as an explanation of how the fruit of the otherworld comes to ripen in our world. The fall of the hazelnuts into the waters of Connla's Well is an image of the abundant generosity of the otherworld to our world. The ideas that come to us in moments of inspiration arrive in our heads so instantaneously that we may be tempted to give credit for their arrival to ourselves. The generosity of inspiration is frequently seen precolkating throughout the world. When the nuts of the nine hazels fall into our world, they fall in many places simultaneously, ensuring that the fruiting wisdom will germinate in at least one location in our world. This explains the seemingly coincidental discovery of inventions or the realization of ideas in several places at the same time: the same idea is in the air, ready to be pulled out of the ether. Only the most promising, dedicated, and attentive become the stock upon which the otherworldly fruit is grafted, for the benefit of all.

"Give thanks for the fruits of the otherworld that you have received and helped ripen. Be aware when the nuts of wisdom are falling into your lap; run with the inspiration!"
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]