Translations

Translations

As I was writing the blog post Euler’s Identity - Redefining Revolution (Jan. 27, 2015) I kept being reminded of how closely the post paralleled my decades long repetitions of a need to understand translations as they relate to spiritual life.  

Why is it I spend so much time talking about translations? About the need to understand and validate our need to create a new spiritual translation. 

And about how it isn’t surprising that each of us discovers and creates a new translation to explain exactly the same experience?

There’s a concrete example out here in our ever evolving/devolving world. As any photographer or film maker will tell you light has a color temperature. Light from the sun contains all the colors of the electromagnetic spectrum. The color of Light reflected is dependent on the electromagnetic color it is reflecting and the position of receptor. 

So anyhow, since all the color we see is from reflected light, the color, depending upon our perspective (position), is different but the light remains the same.

Our vision is different, but our experience is the same.

How unique is our position? And how does our be-ing affect our perspective?

This “Translations” post is a repetition. Been repeating it for more years than I can easily identify. If you’ve heard it before, move on by…

…

…OK. Still here.

Part of understanding a new spiritual translation that’s uniquely yours requires you to see who you really are, and to put your finite, though extraordinary, mind to the task of appropriately weighing and measuring your path. Weighing and measuring is - after all - the only thing the mind is qualified to do.

So…

Think first about what you’ve learned and understood about the universe. Think back as far as your mind can conceive. Think about how long this blink, blink moment, this ongoing moment, this aspect of the apparently eternal Rhythm has been marching forward (if you can for the moment - which is in and by itself ironic - accept the admittedly limited perspective inherent in seeing time marching in only one direction). Latest truth? 13.8 BILLION years. OK, don’t dwell on it. Accept it. 13.8 BILLION years.

Now, in your mind count off ten seconds. 1...2...3...etc. 

Ok, fast forward… 13.8 BILLION years.

Don’t try to wrap your head around it. Just accept the awe.

Now.

Project.

While you have no laws to present that insure the accuracy of what you might project, given what you know about the universe, you really can make a reasonable projection as to how long this moment, rhythm, (maybe) reality is likely to continue. May not be able to give an outside maximum, or a minimum for that matter. But it would be a safe bet to project that there is no sign that the movement, moment, progression will not continue for at least as long into the future as it has been clicking away in the past. So lets give the universe another arbitrary 13.8 BILLION years.

So.

From the start to our arbitrary stop point, 27.6 BILLION years. The awe now becomes THE AWE. Accept it. Now really don’t try to wrap your mind around it. Just feel THE AWE.

And here you are. Each beat, beat, beat, moment extending backward/outward. Here you are.

And who are YOU?

I’ll tell you who you are.

In the past 13.8 billion years, never has there been another you. And there is nothing in the universe that suggests that in the next 13.8 billion years there will EVER be another you.

Who are you? 27.6 BILLION years - never before and never again. Who are you?

You are precious beyond understanding.

Some have countered, “That’s not being precious, that’s being insignificant beyond understanding“.

You know how I know that’s wrong?

I look to the love. I open to the love I feel for and from you, and I know. 

You truly are precious beyond understanding.

While I know the preceding words are open to an almost infinite number of progressive discussions, and am willing to examine as many as are raised for as long as my mind and attention holds, for now I ask your indulgence.

If the old spiritual translations hold meaning for you, if you’ve truly fallen at the feet of your master, if you are fulfilled, I am thankful.

But if the old translations and the bureaucracies which control and project those translations do not speak to you, if the purported spiritual lessons from the past have left you with an agnosticism that accepts that you cannot know without attending to your need to experience, I ask you to open your mind and read further.

Another story I’ve told over and over - 

Back a bit more than three decades ago, when I first began to work with dying folks, I had an experiential lesson about the nature of spiritual belief. 

At the time I was a more or less active initiate of the Surat Shabd Yoga, a Sikh meditation group. As a member of a hospice team we could not project our own spiritual beliefs onto the patient and family with whom we were working. We accepted the beliefs and perspectives of the folks we were working with. Often patients and families never inquired as to the “religion” of hospice team members, assuming, I expect, that we were Christian, as were most of them.

Critical to this story is another fact about working with someone whose death is close. If you go into the experience open hearted and openhanded it's astounding how quickly you can become intimate with them. If they accept you into their dying, barriers and differences fade. Connection deep and profound happens. Not often, but it happens. Looking back now on those precious moments I realize that they have become an essential part of the spiritual foundation of my life. When I think there is no hope in speaking out, that there is no one left to hear, when I feel foolish Telling Telling Telling into the hurricane of noise out here, it’s their sharing that reminds me all I need do, is say it again.

On those rare and precious occasions when someone who had allowed me to connect, whose spiritual path had led them to a state of acceptance, invited me into their spiritual practice, into their prayer, I learned one of the great experiential lessons of my life.

If I opened myself to their prayer, and if I opened my heart to my own meditation practices, if I stepped just inside the dogma and the “practice”, I experienced with my dying friend a shared transcendent experience. The experience was exactly the same. Only the words and the practices were different. Only the translation differed.

So lets get back to you. You know. The unique one.

A Buddhist teacher once told me that if you open to the moment and are willing to take the next step on your path, the way will be shown to you. He said that the truth will whisper in your ear.

And it will have two primary characteristics -

1. It will be FREE. Truth and transcendence doesn’t want your stuff, doesn’t want to control you. It’s FREE.

2. It will sound familiar. That’s because you’ve heard it before. Only now, NOW, you can hear. All the repetitions were necessary so that you could hear now.

So our path, our translation - love centered and based in reality - becomes an unfolding.  A translation uniquely yours. As unique as you are. 

Why should it surprise us that in order to relate and connect to our path the translation needs to reflect the uniqueness of our be-ing. 

In this time, in concert with 7.2 billion of us, in the face overwhelming potential for both disaster and possibilities, does the timing seem, well…appropriate? You decide.

And if it is, and if we were to carry this forward (in our limited conception of which direction forward is) what would happen?

A Revolution.

Starting with your heart. A true, new re-volution beginning with your heart. It will change you. And it will change the world around you. A revolution from the inside out. 

It will change the way you live.

Paradigm. A new paradigm. 

And it will change the world.

With all our advances, for all the technological wonder, for all the billions of words spewed about equality, justice, and democracy, real change depends upon our ability to overcome greed.

And that was another experiential lesson I learned from those folks who, as they were dying and had come to acceptance through their uniquely individual spiritual translation, they had overcome greed.

We know what needs to be done. We know it’s time for world change. We know the reality of world community. 

There are no problems that can’t ultimately be solved if the revolution begins with your heart.

With the recognition of your path.

The path is love - opening, examining, sharing - not owning -  the temporal, not denying the darkness but passing through together. In the balance, the middle way, we can experience the endless facets of transcendent love. 

Your Translation…

love,

bill

P.S. If you’re new to the blog and might be understandably unclear how this all ties together, here is a list of earlier posts that, read in order, might give some clarity. In this age of say it all in under a minute, I know just reading the posts is an investment. I wish I could say it in less words, could be clearer. But this is what I got -

Quicksilvertimes Blog Intro Posts


1. Here We Begin

http://quicksilvertimes.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html


2. Nuts and Bolts

http://quicksilvertimes.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html 


3. Audacity

http://quicksilvertimes.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html


4. Reality and the Nature of Sesame Noodles

http://quicksilvertimes.blogspot.com/2012/11/reality-and-nature-of-sesame-noodles_1.html 


5. What To Do, What To Do?

http://quicksilvertimes.blogspot.com/2013/02/what-to-do-what-to-do_1.html

6. Outline - From Inner Understanding to Activism

http://quicksilvertimes.blogspot.com/2013/02/outline-from-inner-understanding-to.html

7. “More!” How Deep is the Dysfunction?

http://quicksilvertimes.blogspot.com/2013/03/more-how-deep-is-dysfunction.html


8. Hard Words - But hopeful

http://quicksilvertimes.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html



There are other posts, some personal and intimate, some poems and pictures that relate. Look around. Assuming my mind and body hold true, I’ll be glad to hear any comments or discuss any idea.

love,

bill