We are born out of nature, out of a mystery. The chances of any one of us being here is so slight as to be infinitesimal. Nonetheless we exist. Where we came from is a mystery, where we are going, the true nature of life and the universe -— where the universe ends and what exists on the other side of that boundary -— the spark that created the first life, human consciousness, human  thought and the chemical/electric interaction that determines why one thought is different than another, the leap of imagination, the creative impulse -- all the big questions are shrouded in mystery.  

Human institutions, groups, tend to be biased against the mysterious. We create institutions, in part, to make us more comfortable with uncertainty, to reassure us. Institutions tell us that we don’t need imagination, that living a sheltered life is fine, that living a shallow, empty life is fine. As long as we make our car payments on time, everything is good. When we don’t have answers, we invent them through institutions –- religions, political institutions. We can get antagonistic and even violent with those who question our belief systems, our religion, our version of the facts.

I present the ideas here in strident terms because that’s how I think of them, need to think of them, to stay true to my own path. My constant tendency is to waiver, to get distracted. So some things I say may be controversial. I’m offering what I’ve learned about my own journey. I’m open to learning from the paths and thoughts of others, and when I’m done offering my views look forward to hearing your views if you are inclined to share. Let’s learn from each other.

What I describe as the magical mystery journey is the life I’ve chosen. It is the only life for me, but I know it is not for everyone. I know that the discomfort and lack of security that is a part of this life is not what many want. That’s fine. If everyone was like me the world couldn’t function.

We need people to work at the post office too.

With that out of the way, let me state my basic premise. There is something mysterious going on out there, but we are not meant to know what it is. I offer the following two thoughts on the subject by thinkers from radically different paths in work and life, Rabin-dran-ath Tagore, an author in India who received the Nobel prize in 1913 for Literature and Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922.

First, Tagore:

The small truth has words that are clear;
     the great truth has great silence.

 Now Niels Bohr:

There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
     

There are two principal mysteries. The first is the huge landscape inside our being -— our psyche, our soul, our imagination, our inner world, our creativity -— and the second is the incomprehensibly large landscape out there -- the universe.

We exist, as humans, at the intersection, the boundary, the space where those two realities encounter each other.

A primary question is how to link up the two. How to find a peace and harmony between the two. Partly, we find that through meditation, through prayer, through our dreamworld and journaling. Partly we find that peace through how we live life, the actions we take to interact with the mysteries inside us and the mysteries that surround.

The first principle -- that important things cannot be understood, and are meant to be ambiguous –- allows the universe to offer us opportunities to grow, to discover and to transcend. If the really big questions were removed, and the mystery revealed to us, the human journey would cease to be one of growth through a succession of challenges and moral choices. Right and wrong, the mystery of life and death, would be clear.

My belief, the goal of my life, is to live in the mystery. I search within myself for the courage and faith to surrender to the call. The objective is devotion, wholeheartedness, faith in something I don’t understand and know I will never understand, until, perhaps, death opens its portal to me.

World-renowned physicist Martin Rees, in his book Just Six Numbers, talks about six laws of physics without which planets, stars and life would not be possible. These numbers represent or determine the strength of gravity, the nature of the electromagnetic forces that course through the universe, the power of stars and how they transmute hydrogen into the atoms of the periodic table, the rate of expansion of the universe and the number of spatial dimensions. If any of these were even slightly different, no life could exist, and the universe would be dominated by black holes. There would be no galaxies, no stars.

Thomas Berry, a Roman Catholic priest, student of Zen, university professor, and prolific author was one of the principal proponents of a spirituality based on the principle that the universe self-creates. His work and books –- Dream of The Earth and The Great Work -- explored the proposition that the universe self-creates from a nonmathematical perspective but came to the same conclusions as Martin Rees.

I don’t plan to quote other authors and thinkers at length –- instead will try to summarize the insights they offer that have had a major impact on my thinking -– but would like to make an exception in this one case.

I read something Thomas Berry wrote in Dream of The Earth, years before I met him.

“The human activates the most profound dimension of the universe itself, its capacity to reflect on and celebrate itself in conscious self-awareness.”

That concept – that we were created by the universe in order that it could reflect on itself – constantly came to mind over the next two or three years, and eventually led me to contact him for an interview. During that initial conversation, he mentioned to me that he had been a Heron Dance subscriber for about a year. That may be the greatest honor I’ve received in my work.

I met him at his small apartment above a horse stable in rural North Carolina. He was wearing several layers of old clothes – insulation against the encroaching October cold. I was surprised to learn years later that he was actually a member of a prominent, wealthy Greensboro family.

This is some of what he said to me.

"Dante said that human art is the grandchild of God. The human is a work of art. When we in turn create art, it is not purely out of ourselves, but out of a continuation of the creativity of the universe.

   "For a long time, there have been two major schools of thought on the universe: random and determined. Religious people think that God runs the universe. Generally, scientists believe that everything is pure chance. There is a third option. Olshansky, the great geneticist of 20th-century, said the universe is not determined or random, but created. It self-creates. Even chemical elements self-organize. They are dynamic articulations. Both individually and in relation to each other.

   "Since the universe began, its three major tendencies have been differentiation or articulation, the bonding of different parts, and spontaneity. The universe is divine precisely because it is composed of parts. All creative realities are composed of parts. They constantly combine in new ways to create something new.

    "The tendency towards differentiation is counterbalanced by bonding, or, in the physical order, gravitation. No one knows what gravitation is. An attraction between bodies. Newton knew how it operated but he said he didn't know what it was. And we still don't. But it is why the Earth must be round. The bending back toward each other, the spherical shape, allows things to be. Otherwise there would just be an endless proliferation.  

    "Anyway, the two forces of difference and bonding mean several possibilities. If the differentiation is stronger than the bonding, then the universe would explode and drift off. If the bonding overcomes the differentiation, then it collapses. One more possibility is equilibrium but if there is equilibrium then there is fixation. Nothing happens. There is only one possibility of having a universe. That is a creative disequilibrium. The process by which the universe self-creates.

     "Art emerges out of a disequilibrium in search of a new equilibrium. The creative act itself is the emergence of something new. That is why it is so important to create. That is why the artist is always at the margin. Nothing creative ever happens at the center. The artist revels in the ultimate disequilibrium of things. Monet's impressionistic art was something new. He blurred the outlines and expressed something that couldn't be expressed any other way.

     “Artists have something in them that is wild, something guided and inspired ultimately by imagination. The universe from the beginning has been poised between the expanding and the containing forces, and no one knows if this creative balance will collapse or will continue indefinitely.”

Again, that was from my interview of Thomas Berry, author.

As an aside, can you imagine meeting someone for the first time, sitting down with them, and having them say what I just recited to you without notes or prompting? He retreated inside himself and offered that perspective basically word for word.

Purpose

We now know that every element on Earth and in our bodies that is heavier than hydrogen and helium was created in the bowels of a supernova that blew up in our sector of the galaxy some five billion years ago. We humans are reconstituted stardust.

Why do we exist? Fifty trillion cells make up the human body. Each of those cells, in turn, consists of atoms —  countless millions or billions of them —  depending on the function of the specific cell. And the atoms? They consist mostly of empty space —  protons and neutrons surrounded by electrons. Empty space, just as the universe is mostly empty space.

The atoms in each of us existed before the human body they make up existed, and will be here after the life has gone. In the meantime, in the short interval, the atoms are held together by an indescribable, unknowable force.  That unknowable force has a purpose, has a path, a destiny. It may be a destiny denied, but there is a reason for the unity. A life force exists on borrowed energy. A life force is energy captured, for a brief while, from the surrounding world. Then it goes back into the surrounding soup. For those atoms to come together at random, without purpose, and then dissipate into emptiness is, I think, life without meaning. Destiny denied. 

It is difficult to talk about the mystery directly. As humans we tend to talk about the deepest mysteries in terms of myths, including religious myths, fables, mythic poems, through song and fiction and art. We walk around the block and come in the back door in our efforts to come to terms with the mystery. The specifics differ culture to culture, but there are common themes: good, evil, life, death, birth and re-birth.

I’ve read that in fiction all stories are a derivation of one of two themes: a stranger comes to town or a protagonist goes on a journey. Joseph Campbell, in his books, interviews and presentations addressed the latter – the protagonist goes on a journey to understand the larger potentials of life and its meaning. He called that the Hero’s Journey. I call it the magical mystery journey.

Campbell, in his book The Hero with A Thousand Faces, described it this way:

Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. . . The goal of the journey is a transformation of consciousness through trials and illuminations. 

It is a solitary journey. Just as an acorn contains within itself the dream of a mighty oak tree, there is something in you that is seeking to manifest. So the magical mystery journey is the journey we embark on to manifest a beautiful life, beautiful work. To contribute to the lives of others and to the positive energies of the soup that surrounds us, the universe.  

Everything sacred requires sacrifice. You can’t serve certainty and security while simultaneously living in the mystery.

Crossing the threshold, stepping out of your comfort zone, outside your support system, is a surrender to forces larger than you are.  It is a surrender to the call. Surrender in the sense of wholeheartedness. Surrender in the sense of devotion, faith. Faith in the magic and mystery. There are few clear answers. It is a search for core, underlying truths that can be sensed but not fully understood. Faith in truths just beyond your grasp is the first sacrifice and it must be made before you embark on your journey.  

It is all about energy flows. Those flows seek growth. The magical mystery journey is the journey on which you are a conduit for positive energy forces. It is a search for new combinations that multiply energy, where one plus one equals three. Some paths, some work, some people multiply your energy and some take it away. The path of the magical mystery journey is the path where your energy links up with the energy of the universe and those energies feed off each other.

Your path may make no sense to me; or my path to you. It is very individual. I don’t know or understand your part in the orchestra. I don’t need to understand it. I have enough trouble understanding and staying true to my own part. You embark on a path that is yours alone. As you journey, you will be confronted with forks, with openings. You take one, and then new openings appear —- openings that exist for you and do not and would not exist for anyone else. You strive to find the life that is waiting for you. You move toward the transcendent.

Your path is often scary. You generally don’t have to risk life or limb, but you have to put yourself where the unexpected could happen and sooner or later will happen. You learn to get your fear under control. Without faith you can’t tolerate the uncertainty or weather the storms, the setbacks. You need to have faith that spring will follow winter, and once it does it will be more beautiful than you remember.

There will be setbacks. You will make mistakes. You will bump up against your old negative patterns. Others will disappoint you. Worse, you will disappoint yourself.

The magical mystery journey requires that you keep seeking the best that is in you. You serve the larger positive energy forces of wisdom, truth, beauty. Behavior and even thoughts that were good enough last year, last month, are no longer acceptable. You need to keep upping your game. There are no easy answers. Wonder takes the place of answers and certainty. Failure follows success and then success follows failure.

Your journey requires a belief in the beauty within. That belief needs to be nurtured. It is about linking the inner beauty with the beauty and mystery of the larger existence, and using one to serve the other. One feeds off the other. There is a wisdom inside each of us that cannot be put into words but can, with practice, be accessed to guide and shape our lives and our work. It has elements of the holy about it. 

. . .

Creativity

In the words of Bill Evans, pianist, composer, jazz musician:

When you play music you discover a part of yourself that you never knew existed.

The journey of artists is one branch or manifestation of the magical mystery journey. The role of the artist is to explore the mystery, to increase our awareness of the mystery, to increase the appreciation of the vastness and beauty of the mystery. A great work grows out of the pre-verbal, the half-understood, the subconscious.

The ancient roots, the etymology, of the word “art” has to do with connection. Art, at its best, is our connection to the mystery, to the parts of ourselves that are deeper and truer than the day-to-day world. Art connects us to our dreams, to the things that can’t be explained with words, to the things that have touched our core, to our imaginary worlds, and even to our  personal chaos. Art has something to do with the part that doesn’t want to be tamed, that can’t be tamed. It is the path of creative disequilibrium.

Art searches for truth and finds part-truths. Artists stand in opposition to institutions that perpetuate feel-good falsehoods.

Yes, the artist’s role is to work in the land of mystery where things aren’t clear, but however uncertain an artist is, the work needs to be executed with conviction, with certainty. Wishy-washy, cautiousness, makes for weak art. Bob Dylan sings about things we can’t quite understand, that he probably doesn’t understand himself, but he does it with conviction.

Conviction takes courage. We need to assert our vision, even if we’re just as uncertain and scared as the next person. Which we often are.

If it was easy to express the meaning of the mystery through art there would be no point to art, or at least art would lack power. The artist who embarks on that journey is honoring something that is asking for a voice. That voice led Mozart to write music and Picasso to paint.

Our challenge as artists is to muster the vision, the persistence, and emotional cour­age to explore what means most to us. Also the technique. You need to persist with developing your skill, your technique. You need to put thousands of hours into developing your technique, otherwise you are a poseur, a dilletante, an amateur.

. . .

Death

After the mystery of life, the mystery of death. Good health, and life itself, are temporary. Recognizing that the ultimate reality is death makes life precious. It guides us to make the most out of life.

When we pretend that death doesn't exist, that there is a technological fix, that death is something that happens just to others, or that will happen to us at some date in the very distant future, we are free to put off living, put off courage, for tomorrow. The other path, living a full life, pursuing our dreams, pursuing our potential, manifesting the goodness that is in each of us honors both life and death.

When I think about my life, where I want to be in its final years, it is living in a way that touches that mystery daily. Ultimately, I want to dwell inside that mystery. That seems like the ideal way to transition into death.

. . .

The practice

What practice do I adopt to stay on my path? What practice inspires me to create the most beautiful life, the most beautiful work, I am capable of?

There are five main practices that I have found to be important:

First, time in wild nature. Almost every day I walk for between half an hour and an hour in the woods. I mostly daydream. I don’t pay attention, but somehow it is restorative.

Next, meditation and prayer. And daydreams. I pray for guidance, for wisdom and discernment. I pray for the financial resources with which to live a simple life and do my work without worry.

And I journal almost every day. I look for patterns in my life, both those that are positive and helpful, and recurring negative patterns that have been associated with setbacks. I imagine myself ten years from now, having realized my dreams and having lived a good life, and ask that person –- my future self -- for guidance. I imagine conversations with people I’ve known whose integrity, insight, courage and basic goodness inspire me, and ask them for guidance.

Next, I nurture friendships with kindred spirits – people I respect and like who enhance my life and energy, and who tell me that I enhance and add to theirs. I particularly like to cook for them and share meals together.

Next, rest, restoration, downtime. I tend to overwork. That is counterproductive. Making decisions, creating work with a rested, relaxed mind is crucial to this journey I’m on. I’m learning that the first priority when I’m tired is to sleep regardless of the time of day and or other commitments. I will cancel appointments and modify plans if I’m overtired because I’ve learned that not doing so is not helpful to anyone.

Finally, I read the memoirs, autobiographies and journals of others who embrace the gift of life and who strive to add to the lives of others. I learn from their failures, and gain energy and inspiration from their successes.

To sum up, the magical mystery journey is all about contributing to energy flows. Living in the mystery is the ultimate experience of life. It is deep and wonderful.