Partnership

I am Dr. Matt Miller, PhD in Medieval English Literature, poet, composer, wood-carver and practicing mystic. 

In the mid-1990’s I began a prayer dialogue with the Holy Spirit that still continues. In our exchanges She has patiently taught me seven universal truths about human life, by showing me how they are at work in each life situation that arises. Using these seven steps to direct experience of the Sacred has turned my life around from bitterness and anger to peace, acceptance and an unquenchable desire to help others who suffer. 

She has told me that She came "from the volcano on Kauai," over 60 million years ago when it was still active. Her first people called her Hina. But many thousands of years ago She moved across the world and came to be known in many places by many names.This extraordinary mythology is combined, in the seven verses of this poem, with the seven great Teachings that guide the human soul to inner peace and deep pure experiences of bliss. 

The second verse concerns Her second  Teaching: Partnership with the Holy Spirit in all things.

2. Partnership

And now the darling of the Unknown One, the Holy Spirit

That moves upon the waters has sent forth Her heart,

Burning, from Kauai’s flowery gala

Across the world where She has many names. 

Yet She is known through them, and they reach to Her airy

Effortless perfection, to Fruit that cannot fall or fail,

The Holy Spirit, Word spoken on the waters in the dawn

That brings the blooming, buzzing world to being. 

She is the Partner of our secrecy

The mother of all known Divinity.

To shape a people, let Hina come forth

From ancient memories that the wise have heard,

They who sat at Her feet in time’s beginning

They who shaped their lives around Her words.

Now understand: the core lies in one Thing,

One Thing pervading all, so all the fighting

Working sharing loving quarreling people

And the people of the sea, the air, the earth,

All join into a single shining ring

Of fellowship, for though many paths run

All lead to the same peak where all are One.

Choose the partner of your ancestors,

And by your partner we shall know your truth.

Centering Prayer: Step 1) on the Path to Direct Experience of the Sacred

This begins our review of seven states of consciousness which lead like a Path to healing, anesthetic bliss, with an account of the first state of consciousness, Centering Prayer.

The first state of consciousness is generated by a process now called Centering Prayer (Keating Open Mind Open Heart), although in centuries past its name was contemplatio. This is a Christian form of meditation, which entered Christianity from the 6^th c. Syrian writings of Pseudo-Dionysius. 

The process of Centering Prayer is quite simple. Find a place of stillness and peace; a forest glade, a garden, a silent room after midnight when the world sleeps. You can have gentle music playing if you like. There sit comfortably so your body does not call out to you to move.

Then listen to your own inner talk. It is composed of thoughts and thoughts about the thoughts. Here is how you short-circuit it to reach inner silence. You will have a thought. Do not think about that thought. Don’t follow it up or explore its implications. Don't reject it or start thinking about how you don't want to think about that. Just accept it and let it float away.

There will be a moment of stillness. Then another thought will occur to you. Handle it the same way. Don’t follow it up. Don't fight it either, because resisting requires other thoughts. Just accept it and let it float away.

Reduce your mental activity to that one repeated act: just accept it and let it float away. The repetition has a lulling, hypnotic effect on the brain.

If a thought is particularly persistent, repeat a prearranged word mentally to drown it out. The word can be anything that has a peaceful, safe affect for you – Abba (Father) or Love are good words to use, but in fact the repetition of any word will short circuit the thinking process so your brain lets the thought go. The peaceful affect just helps the brain relax and stop babbling.

As you keep doing this, gradually your brain will catch on that you aren’t interesting in thinking right now; that it can rest. The flow of thoughts it generates will slow down, and then stop altogether. You enter a place of silence, in which you are still perceiving the world around you, but not reacting to your perceptions. Reality just flows through you like an empty channel.

You have entered a state of Empty Mind, the second of the seven states of consciousness leading towards bliss. Hold on it for a while. Keep your eyes open, so you still perceive the world. But do not react to it. Just be there. Feel the tensions flow out of you when you do not maintain them by constant mental commentary. It is a peaceful garden within yourself that you can enter any time, even for a few minutes at work. It heals stress, renegotiates anger, makes you stronger for grief. 

Without tension, stress, anger and grief,  you are much less aware of the separations between objects, people and places. In the Empty Mind state of consciousness generated by Centering Prayer, a shadowy new way of seeing the world seems to drift in and out of focus -- as if it were all One Thing, not many things. You have a strange sense of belonging to a great Community which includes all things, through which whether living or dead there penetrates a living, sentient Spirit. The closer your Empty Mind takes you to this all-penetrating, angelic Presence the sweeter and more blissful your Emptiness becomes. But thinking brings up separations, and the sweetness fades away.

This is the gift of Centering Prayer -- not only the inner peace it brings, but also this joyous, oceanic sense of the cosmic Oneness of all things. Men such as Richarde Bucke, Gopi Krishna and Ravindra Kumar believe that the human species is evolving into a type of being that can connect with that healing Oneness at will. By practicing Centering Prayer you are evolving yourself into a higher being with that angelic power, right here and now, rather than waiting thirty thousand years for Nature to do it for your distant descendants.

Check out the next blogs, which will review Empty Mind, the second state of consciousness on the path to bliss. For more detail, my book What Happened to Happiness?, refers the seven states of consciousness to their descriptions in thirteen ancient traditions.

Community

1. Community

Kauai rose from the sea, volcanic, in a dawn

No human eye can know. What colors were the sky

Five million years ago? Against that nameless pyre

The great vent billowed sputtering from the cry

Of violated ocean, hiss and spit of water meeting fire.

There in that ancient dawn, unknown to other

For no other was there to be known, a great

Spirit rose from the water in gouts of fire

Smoke formed wavering into towering shape, a

Woman of Fire, Water and Earth, clad in the Sky.

She spoke the great sizzling hiss of creation’s song

And from the water rose a smoking land, to dry

In shades of black against a blackened air, veined

With red. It loomed and bulged against the sky.

Then from Her hands grew vivid ecstasy and pain

The little forms that birth and fight and die,

The spirochetes in their watery home

Amphibians that master double worlds,

The farmer seeking life within the loam

And fishermen that fish upon the foam.

Kauai bloomed in the sea, blossomed in a dawn

That looks like dawn to us. Familiar as the touch

Of lovers’ hands, the font of all creation flowered

Over like a boiling pot, so rich were her ridges and vales

With the juice of raw Creation and its life-producing power.

Her first people came from the stars to stay in this place

Where Being first found its birth, to know Her where

She lingers still here in Her place of Making.

They worshipped Her because they were human there

In that place of worship, true humans without faking.

Kauai, place of powerful prayer, in later years recalled

Was said to be the home of the high goddess, said to be

The child of Hina. But let those who later come to Her

Know there is only one God, but She may take many

Forms, the Spirit in deities and dogs, feldspar and fir.

The missionaries with their trunks of books

Knew Her stern face, because they needed sternness;

But these people knew Her in Her flowers and fruit,

Ripe rain that hangs forever in the air, earnest

Music of the rainbow’s colored lute:

Community with the Oneness of all things.

by Dr. Matt Miller