Читать книгу The Bright Way - Diana Rowan - Страница 14
ОглавлениеPast Wisdom + Present Illumination
As your final stage of initiation into the Bright Way, it’s time to master the philosophical basis of the Bright Way System. This sets you up with the optimum mindset, that body-mind-spirit knowing, for our journey together. It also provides a lighthouse to reorient by as you navigate the creative life’s ups and downs.
The Bright Way System is a confluence of two mighty sources. The first is what I call “past wisdom,” that vast archive we have assembled as a civilization. This Bright Knowledge is “a great treasury of learning, knowledge, and wisdom, a candle that was eternally renewed as the light passed from recipient to recipient so that a brighter light might illuminate the world.”
The second Bright Way source is what I call “present illumination.” This represents intuition, sudden knowing, sensing beyond what is rationally learned and categorized. The Old Irish word imbas (pronounced IM-bus) means “vision that illuminates” or “instant illumination.” It has parallels in many cultures and eras, such as the intense enlightenment experienced upon emerging from Plato’s Cave. In order to access intuition, we first sit in darkness, either literally or metaphorically, inhabiting the unknown. In the shadows, we wait agenda-less for whatever wants to be revealed. In this open, intuitive state, we become receptive to sudden bright flashes of insight. Breakthroughs and quantum leaps of understanding become possible. We let go of everyday consciousness, even past wisdom that we might hold sacrosanct. New ways of thinking, being, and feeling flood in, uncensored. New possibilities open up, new ideas and inspiration appear, seemingly out of nowhere.
The Bright Way respects the past, integrates the present, and calls on you to engage with the grand design.
Light and dark marry: past wisdom lights our way through knowledge while present illumination provides the fertile darkness our intuition requires to take root in. The Bright Way respects the past, integrates the present, and calls on you to engage with the grand design.
All these dimensions synergize with one another. Combining the skill of historical knowledge — not some moth-eaten museum exhibit, but a living, breathing manifestation of distilled human experience — with the magic of present-day experience, you add to the conversation as much as you listen to it and take it in.
Figure 2. The Intersection of Past Wisdom and Present Illumination
When we look back, it’s astonishing how profoundly the sages of the past understood human nature and what it takes to live a meaningful life. Aristotle’s and Hildegard’s words are as fresh to us as if they lived today, not thousands of years ago. Much of this knowledge went underground and was rarely taught in standard education forums anyway. Now is our opportunity to reclaim this wisdom of the past, grow from it, and add to it. History doesn’t simply act on us; we create it, every moment of every day. This is our moment.
BRIGHT WAY ACTIVITY
Your Hopes and Dreams
What do you dream of creating? Now that we’ve come this far together, take a moment to tap into your new hopes and dreams. What do you hope to achieve on our journey together, knowing what you know now? Write down your thoughts. They don’t have to be big, and they will not be set in stone. The intention here is simply to enter your Bright Way stream.
Past Wisdom
Tapping into these ancient wisdom traditions, I have grown keenly aware of the real people who laid the paths we walk today. When it comes to classical piano, my longest-existing passion, I connect with the souls of the great composers and to the hopes and dreams of their entire cultures. Playing the exact notes Chopin and Beethoven wrote, I commune with them mysteriously across time. These are real, tangible energies. I learn from them. They directly transmit feelings and beliefs that are still relevant today and worth remembering.
I feel Chopin’s vulnerability exposed in every song he wrote. He reminds us that when we share from the heart — even if it’s terrifying, as his early retirement from public performing attests to — our work becomes timeless and universal. Beethoven inspires me with his faith in the towering dignity of humanity. His music became increasingly compassionate as he matured, despite the fact that he was repeatedly disappointed by life and his relationships. Beethoven’s profound deafness was just the tip of the iceberg. From his abusive father to his famously unrequited loves to his former hero Napoleon trampling his dream of democracy, Beethoven was frequently heartbroken. Yet he wrote some of the most uplifting, passionate, humane, and heroic music of all time.
Early Influences
Growing up in many countries, I learned that time flows in more ways than how I experience it in California now. Here time often feels concrete, forward-moving, and linear. The old is discarded for the new at lightning speed. In contrast, in my earlier years my life experiences were largely naturally intertwined with the past. In Cyprus, for example, my friends and I attended school on a colonial compound without seeing it as old-fashioned, even as we paraded around in our eighties neon garb. We didn’t bat an eye as we careened through millennia, passing a medieval Greek Orthodox church one minute, popping into classical goddess-inspired Aphrodite’s Café the next, often in hysterics while getting ready for the disco and New Wave music that same evening.
In school we studied both classics and modern English literature, Eliot and Euripides sitting side by side. We moved naturally between vast swathes of time, allowing us access to universal insights. One of the most striking spots to experience this phenomenon physically is Istanbul, where you can stand in Sultanahmet Square, turn 360 degrees, and take in more than three thousand years of human creativity, from the ancient Egyptian obelisk right up to the modern shops hawking knickknacks. I recommend taking a ride on that head-spinning carousel of time if you can. I remember my own experience there as if it were yesterday.
Greek philosophy and mythology were my everyday companions, and in these pages Plato, Aristotle, and others will speak to you down through the ages. Their voices ring out with truth and understanding, as pertinent today as they were more than two thousand years ago. Artist, scientist, software developer Keith Rowland reflects:
“Seeing the threads that have continued from past to present and are still intact helps me discern which are true. ‘There ain’t much new under the sun.’ Philosophy has helped me in my everyday life. I have been very quick to anger and say things I regretted. I tried and tried to stop that habit but couldn’t completely. I finally realized the only way was to change my attitude so that the hair trigger wasn’t there to begin with. Wisdom is the best tool with which we can change our attitude. It is applied knowledge. We have a whole encyclopedia of examples from which to learn, from others who went through great pain to acquire wisdom and teach us so that we don’t have to endure similar pain.”
The Power of Language
Language itself is a keeper of wisdom. Words, whether or not we know their roots, shape our consciousness. This is why words hold incantational, subliminal power. Tapping into the original meanings of our everyday words reveals many secrets. The word create, for instance, is related to the Roman nature goddess Ceres (Demeter in Greek mythology). Her name originates from the Proto-Indo-European root ker, meaning “to grow.” So, at its root, creativity is natural; creativity is growth! This confirms one of creativity’s great secrets, which we’ve already touched on together: creativity is a process, not a product. Creativity is growth, not just the fruit, delicious though that is. Heed past wisdom: it holds many such secrets hidden in plain sight.
Creativity is a process, not a product. Creativity is growth.
BRIGHT WAY ACTIVITY
What Has Inspired You?
What stories from the past have inspired you? Think about fairy tales, books from childhood, movies, paintings, images, song lyrics. How have these shaped and informed your real-life experiences? Great works of art touch on truth and reflect life’s meaning back to us. This is why I count even humble works as great, if they tap into universal truth.
When I was a child, I loved the Moomintroll book series by Tove Jansson. Looking back on those books, I see that many of the themes that moved me then still inspire me today. I loved the freedom, the playfulness, the philosophical asides, the drawings, everything! Once in a while I read those beloved books again, and I feel refreshed and affirmed.
What is contained in your store of past wisdom?
Past Wisdom and the Alchemy of the Bright Way
As you know, it’s not just past artworks, stories, and cultures that influence and inspire us. Ancient philosophies are also trustworthy guides on the Bright Way. Why? As Keith said, they’ve been distilled through millennia of hard-won human experience to quickly communicate our deepest truths. While you don’t have to buy into any of these philosophies wholesale (there are too many of them for that, and no guide should be followed blindly), they are sharp skill-building tools and potent symbols of inspiration.
Alchemy, for example, is a practice going all the way back to ancient Egypt and the legendary Greek-influenced Hermes Trismegistus. Alchemy’s history and impact fan out from what we now know as the Middle East to all of Europe, the Americas and Asia.
On the surface alchemy may seem to be about transforming lead into gold, an impression encouraged by those wanting to reserve this wisdom for a select few (hence the phrase hermetically sealed, referring to Hermes Trismegistus). Story and metaphor are among the best ways to communicate profound messages. As such, “lead into gold” is mostly an allegory for transformation. It refers to transmuting the heavy, dull, and toxic parts of ourselves into light, strong, bright, beautiful gold. This process reflects the grand journey of self-realization we all take and that we are walking together now. Alchemical symbols surround us, for example, heading part 1’s chapters. The circle-and-dot represents the sun (creative energy) and gold; the wheel-cross, cycles and the physical plane; the infinity sign, eternally renewing life force. These imagination-stimulating symbols also appear in many belief systems and eras, some dating all the way back to the Bronze Age.
On our Bright Way journey, we’ll work through the Operations of Alchemy. These processes, to put it briefly, initiate us with fiery ego-taming and conclude with a celebration of our integration as a body-mind-spirit. This evolution becomes a way of life as we spiral through this healing, creative process over and over, reclaiming our internal gold. As Plato reflected, “Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of the two and heal the wound of human nature.”
Whether you are spiritual, scientific, agnostic, or not involved in any of these perspectives, the tenets of alchemy can be stalwart supports. You already encountered As Above, So Below, one of the principles of alchemy, which is the observation that the big picture reflects the little picture, and vice versa. The meaning above the surface mirrors the meaning below the surface. Our inner mind reflects our outer life, and the reverse also holds true. Your creative life reflects your whole life, and your whole life reflects your creative life. Understanding this principle alone can give you great control over your life, allowing you to become its director instead of a passive watcher.
BRIGHT WAY ACTIVITY
As Above, So Below
Start noticing the coincidences, synchronicities, and connections in your daily life, reflecting the concept of As Above, So Below. For example, how does your approach to learning reflect your approach to doing? How does your health affect your thinking? How does your mind affect your body? How does a painting or a piece of music affect your mood? These are all examples of how As Above, So Below can play out in your life.
You don’t have to be an alchemist to walk the Bright Way. On this journey you are simply borrowing these time-honored tools and concepts to heighten your learning and creative experience.
Likewise, when you harmonize with yourself in step one (much more about this later), you might recognize centering and meditation techniques used in many Asian cultures. You don’t have to take up Zen philosophy or start practicing Hinduism to benefit from the process of centering. This tool and others that you’ll encounter on our journey have corollaries across many cultures and time. All are chosen to be flexible enough to fit into your belief system, whatever it may be. Some of these tools are so common that we find them used in everyday life. I initially heard about centering through sports psychology and was charmed to unearth its ancient roots later!
As Above, So Below
Along your Bright Way journey, work with and morph all terms and symbols to fit your personal ethos. Your heart-centered truth, the purpose that you’ll uncover during step one, will be your ultimate guide. Father of modern physics and dedicated alchemist Isaac Newton said, “Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.”
Present Illumination
As you know, your direct experience is key to your Bright Way journey. It’s now time to go deeper and connect your direct experience, your “instant illumination,” to mysticism. Mysticism is a direct connection with source energy, no intermediary required. Mysticism is heart- and spirit-knowing, intelligence that can’t be captured by rational terms alone. It is intelligence of such depth that it is indispensable to leading engaged, creative lives.
Each person experiences mystical energy differently. It runs the gamut from religious experiences to a deep respect for life, from the humanist perspective to psychedelic encounters. You cannot understand this energy simply by reading about it, attending a lecture about it, or hearing someone else’s story about it. You can only feel this energy by living it. You must engage directly in life by opening your heart in order to experience what I call present illumination. The mystery will only be revealed to you through your direct participation in life.
I have experienced mystery in the form of direct insights such as when I found my internal flame and when I realized how interconnected everything really is (first I had to connect with myself before I could connect with everything else, a theme you’ll find throughout our journey together). I’ll be sharing more experiences with you on our path. I rely on intuition to make daily decisions, ranging from artistic choices to whether or not to send that email. Some things can only be decided by the heart, not the head; this is mysticism. As pioneering seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. . . . We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.”
The mystery will only be revealed to you through your direct participation in life.
Mysticism is close to the ground and happens in everyday life. It’s not some flighty, detached state. Quite the opposite, as Sigmund Freud agreed: “When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.”
BRIGHT WAY ACTIVITY
Mysticism in Action
Thinking back on the major decisions in your life, such as getting married or changing careers or taking up your art, was it your heart rather than your head that led you? If so, you were experiencing mysticism in action. Write down some of these memories and how you felt about them. How did you trust your intuition? How much do you rely on your intuition right now?
Strengthened by your Bright Way foundation of past wisdom and present illumination, let’s now preview the steps you’ll soon be walking.
