A longing/proposal for Idiorrhythmic Integrality

A time to read. And it is time. 

With the failure of the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Prosperity Churches, the Republican and Democratic Parties, the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Executive Branch, the Banks, the Insurance Companies, the News Media, a vast number of Corporations, the Colleges and Universities more interested in endowments and self-preservation over essential commitment to knowledge-learning-wisdom, and, finally, Primary & Secondary Schools, Prisons, and Unions, the Police Forces, the Military, and the whole National Security State -- we have a big problem: Who, if anyone, can be trusted?

"The bulk of our knowledge -- perhaps virtually all of it -- depends on others in various ways," writes political philosopher Russell Hardin. "We take most knowledge on authority from others who presumably are in a position to know it." 

(from, Twilight of the Elites, America After Meritocracy, by Christopher Hayes, c.2012, p.106)

 Then later:

When our most central institutions are no longer trusted, we each take refuge in smaller, balkanized epistemic encampments, aided by the unprecedented information technology at our disposal. As some of these encampments build higher and higher fences, walling themselves off from science and empiricism, we approach a terrifying prospect: a society that may no longer be capable of reaching the kind of basic agreement necessary for social progress. (Hayes, p.107)

Finally:

I've seen firsthand that you can't trust consensus, because consensus can be horribly and violently wrong. You can't trust those people with the greatest proximity to the issue in question, because proximity can blind them as much if not more than distance. And you certainly cannot simply assume good faith, particularly from our pillar institutions and the powerful elites who run them.
The old methods of figuring out the world have failed us. So we turn to the new, and find they can do everything imaginable except restore to us the faith we lost. (Hayes, p.125) 

I'd like to think there is somewhere out there a viable, trustworthy, caring, effective, knowledgable resource capable of penetrating the dense wall of doubt and bad experience impeding our next steps toward sane and thoughtful living in the world. But I don't see it. Not yet.

Intelligence, thinking and reasoning in the old fashioned way, (not the secret societies snooping and surveilling our every thought and move), would be nice.

Intuition, the seeing beyond seeing, would help.

Instinct, trusting what we actually feel about persons, institutions, and situations -- would work.

Imagination, the willingness to follow a flight of fancy and formulation of fecund invitation into creative expression -- would sprinkle glory on our paths.

Interpretation and Inventiveness -- would round out our willingness to look deeply, think widely, question strongly, and care intensely.

Idiorrhythmic Integrality -- will bring us home.

Definition of IDIORRHYTHMIC 

Eastern Church : self-regulating —used of (1) monks that live separately, hold property, work individually in supporting themselves, and though members of a monastery supervised by an elected council are not under direct daily supervision or (2) of monasteries so organized.  

Origin of IDIORRHYTHMIC 

LGk idiorrhythmos (fr. Gk idio- + rhythmos measured motion, measure, proportion) + E -ic — more at rhythm 

 This word doesn't usually appear in our free dictionary, but the definition from our premium Unabridged Dictionary is offered here on a limited basis. Note that some information is displayed differently in the Unabridged.   

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiorrhythmic

I agree, that's a lot of "I's":
(Intelligence, Intuition, Instinct, Imagination, Interpretation, Inventiveness, Idiorrhythmic Integrality)

We need to contemplate and cultivate self-regulation. We need to contemplate and cultivate the whole (i.e. integrality) and not remain addicted to the partial.

Things are dire.

There is an approaching boundary beyond which no returning is possible. It is guarded by fear and agents of fear. It is ruled by suspicion, bullets, mistrust, and sneering privilage. Be wary of approaching and crossing that boundary.

Perhaps we already have, as a society, as a culture, as a country, as a civilization.

Too bad!

But here's the thing: As an individual, as a person with remaining wits and pluck and vim and keen sense of absurdity -- you are still in the clear.

Wander that freedom.

Don't cross over into that desperate terrain of deadened heart and mind.

Stay alert and vital.

Trust your-Self the It-self.

What we used to think of as "God"--out there and away-- is not out there and away. The vibrant source of integrity, self-proportion, and trusted-being, is you in concert with all that comprises and constitutes your being-at-all, especially your being-in-the-world.

Let's come home.

Let's not be them.

Let's be us. All of us within and without a them conceived in a dualistic separating mind. Perhaps, better thought, no-us/no-them, only this, being as it is, itself. 

Everything belongs to itself.

Loving.

And free.

Maieutic moment

Birthing Buddha.

Breathe.

What a sweet child!

Touch earth.

(Greek maieutikos, from maieuesthai, to act as midwife)

sealing the tomb

In thinking about encounter, we might have to face such words as written by novelist David Zindell:

He hated himself. All women and men, of course, being human beings find some part of their all-too-human selves to hate. But he took this hatred further; he made an art of hating himself. His pride, his anger, his aloofness from the sufferings of his fellow man - he hated these weaknesses just as he hated his lack of imagination and failure to prove the Hypothesis. And more, he hated himself merely for having weaknesses of any sort. I watched him place his white, blistered lips above the rim of his mug and blow on his coffee, and it occurred to me that he hated being human. He, that broody, inward-looking man who had so often ventured down the dark icy glidderies of his soul, had discovered that we define our humanity - our very selves - more by our weaknesses than by our strengths. And there was the trap which held him like the enclosing freeze of the winter sea: He loved being human as much as he hated it because it was the only thing he knew how to be. The greater Soli, the Soli who might someday emerge from the flawed, bitter, old Soli if only he would relinquish his icy grip upon himself, this Soli he feared (and therefore hated) above all things. And he knew all this. He saw himself more clearly than I ever could through my naive cetic's eyes. It was this self-knowledge and self-vision which sealed the tomb of his self-hatred. If he could really see the spiral of hate and fear binding him, shouldn't he be able to break free? No, he could not. He was only human, after all, wonderfully, tragically human. Human beings, he had tried to tell himself for three lifetimes, must accept their own humanity. 

(p.418, in Neverness, A Novel, by David Zindell)

All of it.

Encountering.

good words

Pope Francis speaks about a culture of encounter -- (encounter, i.e. "unexpectedly experience or be faced with {something difficult or hostile}: an unexpected or casual meeting with someone or something.")    (definition from apple dictionary)

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”   

http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/22/pope_at_mass:_culture_of_encounter_is_the_foundation_of_peace/en1-694445

His words are a good place to meet.

uncertainty of this-and-that

Rain falls opening seeds.

The hidden unmanifest comes to surface, buds, breaks open, flowers.

Leaf brings green. Petals hue color spectrum. Inner becomes outer. Spring!

We read Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) at practice, on Nothingness and God. Centrifugal movement from God once considered evil. Centripetal movement toward God once considered good.

Spring moves outward. Autumn moves inward. The manifestation becomes the un-manifestation. Coming out is going in. We are the exchange between what has been called good and evil, God and Satan.

It is the exchange.

The movement between desiring what is good in the midst of what is evil.

The movement toward God is passing glance at what moves from God.

There is only God.

And the movement to and from is what the mind imagines it is doing as it follows urge and impulse, thought and intuition, swirling the seasons marked by time and history.

Nothing changes.

And this movement from one to other, back to one, off to other -- is the exchange of existence caught between the uncertainty of this-and-that.

Christ is accompanying emergence in our pilgrimage between this and that. Christ is the awareness of compassionate presence traversing the timeline narrative and historical evidence wherein one thing follows and replaces another thing in the stretch of inner becoming outer.

But soon enough, outer falls away -- leaves fall to earth, petals tumble to ground -- and everything begins to deteriorate and transform into source of hibernation hidden within itself.

Winter and summer harmonize. Autumn and spring articulate. The enormous cosmos pulsates heartbeat of emergence and convergence.

This morning it rains. Cats climb and knock over anything teetering.

This 53rd day after will reveal narrative of hematological neoplasms during falling rain.

So it is May rain will June explain.

Is this What-Is heard

Staying with the theme, water flows down Ragged Mountain as Christ flows through this apparent existence -- here, and at same time, everywhere passing through.

As I come to recognize both particularity and peculiarity, I sense a curious possibility, namely, everything is changing, nothing remains the same -- while, throughout, the originating élan vital moving all-which-is remains the same, or perhaps, constant, perduring, that is, moving through, lasting through.

                                            

This perduring Christ, this movement of change with its constant invitation to choose to enter its stream watering life enroute, neutrino-like and phoneme-full, is Sruti perduring Smriti.*

For Christians, whatever form their belief takes, "Christ" is the word-concept used in their formulation. And yet, "Christ" is not a last name, not a singular persona, not an objective being, not a composite systematic theology for which the sole cultural response is "amen, thank you Jesus!"

This Sruti, this perdurance, this Christ -- is the sound of what is being said, as it is being said, with attentive, listening, watchful, presencing awareness.

To choose, to enter the course of action, is to release oneself into the diverse difference of what is appearing to be, an infinite becoming seemingly situating itself ephemerally in what we call true here and now.

Everybody hurts, nothing lasts, all shall be well. And even these words, the attempt to concretize the evanescent, these too shall pass.

What are we left with?

If you find an answer to that question, put it down, let it, too, go.

It is all meant to go.

So, throughout, comes love!

                  

* The Sruti and the Smriti are the two authoritative sources of Hinduism. 

Differences between Sruti and the Smriti: 

Sruti literally means what is heard, and Smriti means what is remembered. 

Sruti is revelation and Smriti is tradition. 

Sruti is direct experience. Great Rishis heard the eternal truths of religion and left a record of them for the benefit of posterity. Smriti is a recollection of that experience. 

Sruti is eternal and Smriti is man-made.Sruti is primary authority and the Smriti is secondary.Sruti is the final authority. If there is anything in a Smriti which contradicts the Sruti, the Smriti is to be rejected.

Sruti commands nothing. It gives direction only. Smriti commands and give punishments if not followed in the form of prayachits. 

Sruti never becomes obsolete but a part of Smriti may become obsolete and require modification or amendment. 

Sruti is never changing and thus permanent. Smriti followed at a given time has necessary changes as required. Smriti is thus dynamic in nature.

Srutis are the four Vedas, Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva Vedas and 108 Upanishads. Manu, Parasara, Yajnavalkya, Gautama, Harita, Yama, Visnu, Sankha, Likhita, Brhaspati, Daksa, Angiras, Pracetas, Samvarta, Acanas, Atri, Apastamba and Satatapa are the eighteen sages who mastered the Vedas with their superhuman power and derived the Smrtis from them. Their works are known after them like Manusmrti, Yajnavalkya-smrti, Parasara-Smrti and so on, and they contain all that we need to know about all the dharmas to be adhered to.  

:http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090505122542AA8IHwO

                                 

There is something about "this."

" I say this because the world as we know it is passing away.” (1Cor7:31, Universalis)

"For this world in its present form is passing away. " (1Cor7:31, NIV)

You must remember this. 

"Truth," the Zen Master said, is "just like this."

Collation and recollection helps.

caesura

 Sitting in loft of cabin, window to right of me, chapel/zendo down to left.

Woman comes in. Lights incense stick. Sits. She sits with new knowledge. A new message. A hermeneutic specific to her. An interpretation only she can decipher. A boundary marker has been identified.

When Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you,” he was newly present to the eyes and ears of those in the room. Something was being communicated that had not been understood before.

Some of us live in the before, some in the after.

And then there are those who live in the during.

Jesus is this during.

He is that comma, between the phrases.

The before people wait for something. The after people are full of certainty.

I prefer to dwell with what is during, with the between, the unknown name sounding Neti-Neti: not-this/not-that. 

It is, I'm willing to admit, a curious place.

Raimon Panikkar died in August, 2010. This is from his website under "Christophany":

- Christophany “suggests that the encounter with Christ can not be reduced to a mere doctrinal or intellectual approach”; it wants to elaborate a reflection on Christ and the human being with clear reference to the Trinity: “The logos is also the Logos of God, but the Logos is not “all” of the Trinity, and the Spirit, although it may be inseparable from the living Christ, is not subordinate to the Logos”. The Christo-phany does not take anything away from the Christo-logy, but shows itself opened to the reality of the Spirit.  

- This contemplative, mystic attitude situates christophany in a more receptive posture, in contrast to the more aggressive search on the part of reason.  

- This notion of Christ must include both the figure from the historic past as well as the present reality. Panikkar does not dispense with the historic Jesus, but Christ is not reduced to him (“Christ does not belong only to the past”). Christophany is a reflection opened to the Christian scriptures, but is in dialogue with the other religions; opened to dialogue with the past (even the pre-Christian) and with the present (even the non-Christian) and in particular the contemporary scientific mentality.  

- Christophany, therefore, does not exclude a priori any epiphany of the sacred or the divine when searching for an integration of the figure of Christ in a more spacious cosmovision.”  

 http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-christophany.html

During, and between, a caesura, a cutting, a decision, a choice.

No intellectual conclusion, no emotional embrace, no rote formulaic utterance.

Nothing excluded; wholeness healed.

And just as suddenly, phrases from childhood Brooklyn streets return to chastise:

Stai Zitto!  

Silenzio!

Receive... yourself... the holy. One breath after the other!

The words of John need new hermeneutic.

‘Receive the Holy Spirit.
For those whose sins you forgive,
they are forgiven;
for those whose sins you retain,
they are retained.’ --John 20:19-23

He, Hermes, god of transitions and boundaries, alludes, is pointing out the emergent freedom with each one. This freedom says: You -- you -- are now free to choose the world you wish to live in. No longer are you pawn of destiny and fate, whim of gods or godhead, slave of conditioning or programming, no longer province of priest or imam, not puppet of passions or thought.

If you choose, there is a world of compassion and forgiveness. If you choose another direction, there is a world of cynicism and hostility. The holy, the breath of creative becoming intimacy, is emergent within you and all beings.

No need to justify.

Choose.

From explanation to embodiment:

Breath...partner to vibration...allowing sound...becoming word...moving with spirit.

                  

Breathe...connect...listen...become intimate...be free.