All of us in the U.S.
are part of neighborhoods, cities, counties, states, the US and the world.
The Internet
Connection…
Y2K connecting us…life
is connecting
Broader Range of
connections---With life we have the sense of a broad range of connections.
·
Leaves
blowing in the wind
·
Flock of geese flying uniformly over a lake
·
Deer and children running through the forest
·
Dolphin swimming in the
ocean
Life is our connection…. Part of it is just our sense of awe of
life… could you imagine how different the world would be if it was just rocks
and us…like being on Mars-desolate….life and the sense of life enhances our
own existence.
Process of
connections….by starting to look at humans…. Within man/woman… and I’ll
use an illustration which is more familiar to me---you may imagine your own….
I’ll use the basic definitions in the JudeoChristian bible with variations of
my own for purposes of illustration….. I’ll start with the Greek words,
pneuma, psuche and soma…. Spirit, soul and body..
·
Body---the judeochristian definition---- blood,
flesh and bone
·
Soul--- mind, will, emotion
·
Spirit---conscience, intuition, fellowship
connection(is this all that survives of self…
Survive Death-spirit
Connections
· Body
Ø Touch
Ø Smell
Ø Feel
Ø See
Ø Hear
· Soul
Ø Mind
Ø Will
Ø Emotion
· Spirit
Ø Conscience
Ø Intuition
Ø Spiritual Connections
·
Physical Life-body---soma
·
Psychological Life----pysche
·
Spiritual Life----------zoe
Now How would you define the Spiritual Life….?
·
The loss of self
·
Increased Knowledge of self or others around you
·
The finding of self
·
The sense of adventure
·
Holding up in a monastery alone praying to increase
your own awareness or praying to God…
·
Public service
Nana and I were in Peru---
· Shaman—pouring part of the wine on the ground--giving life back to its origin
· Peru trip—Also, as I think back about our Peru trip it wasn’t just the mountains that we climbed in the Andes…it was the people, the animals, the life…
When our sense of
community is enlarged ---we are enlarged…
v
Spiritually
connect through the use of myths… if you have read anything of Joseph Campbell
you may have read of his definition of a myth….
And this is from his
later writings… “Mythology is an organization of symbolic images and
narratives metaphorical of the possibilities and fulfillment in a given culture
in a given time. Mythology is a
metaphor. God, angels, purgatory,
these are metaphors.“…the function of mythology is to help us to experience
everything temporal as a reference..and also to experience the so called eternal
verities as merely references. Mythology
opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond
speech, beyond words—in short, what we call transcendence…Any system of
thinking, ideologies of one kind or another, that does not open to transcendence
cannot be classified or understood mythologically….The mystical function is
opening the transcendence, opening the heart and mind, pointing out that the
ultimate mystery that we all try to solve lies beyond the range of human thought
or naming. When you have given it a
name and a thought—you have fallen short.
You’re no longer in the mystical tradition.(The Hero’s Journey -
Joseph Campbell on his life and work—p 139 and pp 161-163)
I provided a handout
which includes some JudeoChristian scriptures…from Genesis and Reveleation….
Let me read the first of them f
Genesis…
Revelation…
This mythology is only a metaphor to transcendence… to a realization of
our connectiveness…
We are connected to this world on many planes or levels…
On the physical level
there are only other people who look different and may be very different…
On the mental level we may form various organizations of ideas to relate
and connect with others….
On the emotional level we may share emotions with others
But on the transcendent level we connect our spirit so to speak with all
life….we connect with all life… this is not just a mental exercise.. it is a
transcendent experience….one we cannot explain… and our explanation just
falls short…
As many of you know… I was in Christianity for many years… the problem was not the transcendent experience that I shared with others… my problem was the reference….Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”… my problem was referencing Jesus as the way, the truth and the life… I took the myth as the reality rather than as a reference.. to the ultimate truth that we each are the way, the truth and the life….in our own transcendence. In a sense we are all Jesus’ or all Buddhas’ and our connection to the world is within that realization…