Internal Relational Energies of Powerful-Play Creates the Visionary

Visionary

Energy of Powerful-Play Creates the Visionary

 

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.  T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

We continue with our story of development, moving from Lover to Visionary. We have now shifted from the external landscape to focus back on the inner domain, to know the place for the first time. This requires refocusing the energy of Powerful-Work, rechanneling the capacities of Unconditional Love and Discernment. Beyond the Child’s lovely openness, when the Lover and the Artist turn inward, we can now contemplate the enormity of all life, developing far-reaching understandings, Heart-felt musings about our relationship to something grander.

This part of our Visionaries path can be full of pitfalls and slippery slopes. She can easily lose her way or even forget Inspiration if she becomes complacent or does not continue the never-ending Work to heal and grow. But she has been the Awakened Child, the Artist, the Lover. She knows the states of Mindfulness, Flow, and Attunement . . . and now, in a contemplative life, in a state of Awe and newly arising energies, she explores the fourth and final portal to Truth and Beauty.

She does not lose any of what she has gained, since Inspiration only knows how to add, to multiply, to create something new. Indeed, she must retain her Love and Play and Work and Power to know Powerful-Play.

The true Visionary envisions, inwardly perceives and, in response, seeks to revive the Fallen world with her Power that is impregnated with Play. Once again, this is not a person. As with the Awakened Child, Artist, and Lover, the Visionary is a creation of the Inspired Self. It’s a form that can only be imperfectly constructed in human life. By Visionary I certainly don’t refer to anyone who proclaims cult-like fantasies as prophecy, describing some dark or idealized apparitions constructed out of dubious interpretations of a text or gleamed from their secret sources. If you’ve ever scrolled through religious TV shows, there are an unsettling assortment of popular figures who seem driven to portray themselves as enlightened. They describe a terrain that’s truly disturbing, a place filled with sinners and saints.

In contrast, the Visionary as embodied Inspiration recognizes the sacredness of life and intuits a unity and harmony of the world beyond her understanding. She is a conscious being in a wondrous conscious landscape, and she lives with a growing sense that she is an interconnected part of everything and something extraordinary. This is hard to affirm in our Upside-down society. Too few people seem to trek on these mountains. Of those who do, most only openly venture here in old age, when facing death, or when we’re humbled (at rock bottom). Only then, when outside constraints no longer matter, do we typically ask Visionary questions. “What makes us human?” “What is beyond sentiment and illusions? “What is centrally important?” “What do we wish to leave behind?”

Powerful-Play

Deliberate efforts to grow greater consciousness takes a commitment to mastery, but paradoxically vision cannot be willed. It comes with the innocence and purity of the Child, the Artist’s passion for Beauty, and the Lover’s gratitude for being in intimate Love. The Visionary in Power playfully handles everything lightly, flexibly. Smiling at the norms, rules, and roles, stepping in and out of other worlds. Endeavoring to see and call out false and self-deceptive beliefs, or fear-driven ego-states and to be separate from them. Imagining paths that lead to life instead of death. Conjuring alternatives that could, perhaps, awaken mankind to Beauty and Truth.

Truth Beyond the Appearance

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat

of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”

Joseph Campbell

Reflections on the Art of Living

I have thoughts about what is true beneath and below the appearance.

I remember how my half-sister (my father’s disowned daughter) dug into the family history, illuminating family branches that had been previously cut off from me. It was strangely affirming to know I was related to men and women courageous enough to meet the challenges of their time, to travel geographically with little resources and much danger. Many were artisans, boat builders, even painters, clearly creative people absorbing the world with sensitivity and grit.

From my experience with my father, I would not have guessed it. I thought my ancestors would be like him, emotionally repressed irritable engineers. So much beneath and beyond the appearance.

Seeing the Past in the Present

I’m also reminded of my college years, at Marlboro College in Vermont, where I found myself surrounded with students who were more educated than I. Most had attended private school. Most came from money. I was different in those ways. But one of the equalizing experiences was a year-long seminar on literature, religion and philosophy taught by three faculty members, all experts in their areas. The classes were small, 8 to 10 students at most. We started with Beowulf and finished by examining some early twentieth century writers. We ended the experience with a dramatic reading of The Wasteland by the resident drama teacher.

It was a true seminar, intense preparatory readings beforehand and fiery discussions in each class (three days per week). My takeaway was that I and my peers in our moment were just riding upon a surface, with a historical sea of immense depth beneath us, huge forces shaping us.

I carried this notion with me beyond the class. I could hear in the conversations around me, for the first time, echoes, age-old serious intellectual arguments, and some less rational beliefs, dangerous attitudes. I loved to go into bookstores and browse during those days, exploring the clash of ideologies, looking to understand diverse civilizations, as best I could, the heartaches of different periods and so much suffering and joy.

For years after, my eyes felt open. I felt more empowered, better able to make informed choices, recognizing what I could support, what was urgent to struggle against.

So much beneath, above, beyond appearance.

For a couple of years, I flirted with the life of a scholar. But not because there was much in that life that inherently fitted my personality. In retrospect I really wanted to chase those bright epiphanies—like I remember chasing lightning bugs across fields as a child.

Ancient Sources

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening circle of compassion and embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”

Albert Einstein

Most mornings, I experience a similar sense. The present filled with tiny sounds and sights of forest animals, Nature’s textures all around, a million gradients of colors (most not quite fitting any color I can name).

I have developed a practice on these walks, which I believe helps develop sacred perception. I open my thoughts to the unfathomable history behind each type of grass blades around us, each tree species, each bush and fern, each bug and bird. Rabbits and skittish squirrels. If not this morning, as I write this, I’ve experienced on other mornings deer flying across our yard from the deer feeder to the thick brush, several magical spotted creatures at a time soaring within arm’s length. Every creature, every being has a story that will not be told. Who is there to tell it?

I suppose, there are some breeders of horses, dogs, and cattle who keep careful records tracing an animal’s lineage, maybe in a few cases back many generations. But only for a few prized creatures that someone has determined is a worthy commodity.

My Jewel who has so often sniffed beside me, nose in the greenery, her early life is completely lost to us.

Beauty all around. But the human mind can appreciate only so little. The depth and breadth of it we cannot see. It cannot be taken in, as much as I open my heart and mind to it. I fantasize about historical struggles and golden ages of plants and animals, but it’s only fantasy.

Maybe if we could have a more extensive glimpse of the infinite eons that underpin this day, a deep reverence for all life would organically arise in humankind? Maybe we wouldn’t be so casual about what we have deemed roadkill or collateral damage. Maybe we would be less ready to slaughter what is glorious here and now.