If a GPS device could be metaphorically strapped to the “waist” of our soul’s travels in the noosphere, what would the course of the overall journey look like on a moving map?
Would it be, as is generally presumed in Western thought, a more or less straight line of progression with frequent stops, side trips, obstacles to maneuver around, and an ample mix of retrograde motion?
Or, would we instead find that the geometry of sacred wandering was more like a circle, as it is often depicted, or an ellipse perhaps? Would it be better characterized as a series of parabolic cycles with ramping up time in practice followed by a peak experience, and then a falling back toward the “ordinary-verse” of our usual routine, and the daily hum-drum?
How about a series of S-curves with a rapid stepping up of spiritual energy, then a peaking followed by a refractory plateau phase with an accompanying pursuit of the next S- curve!? So far, the S-curve image feels right as I hold the metaphor up against my own experience.
Thinking about this today a fair bit, I have actually settled, for the moment, on the image of a helical spiral. As we progress along our chosen yellow-brick road, energy generally feels like it’s mostly gently spooling up with occasional spikes up and down.
Assuming a commitment to daily practice, that energy should on average continue to move in spiraling cycles. Carrying the metaphor forward, the helical spiral doubles back toward earlier points but at a different energy level and with a different spiritual signature. We may in the spiraling process stumble upon “old” relics of meditations and ruminations past, yet see them suddenly with new eyes and as if for the first time.
Marcel Proust once wrote: ” The journey of discovery consists not of finding new lands, but having fresh eyes.”
Practically, this means that we need to keep a journal of our daily contemplative experiences, recording what happened, what we saw, what we felt physically, what was familiar, what was new, and what was familiar yet somehow new. This gives us a chance to anchor different vistas that we see from many vantage points as we spiral forward on our winding path.
Those anchor points are profoundly reassuring and remind us, in the dry periods of sameness and boredom, that every movement along the helical spiral is relevant. A seeming back-slide is just a cycle around the back side.
What’s the trajectory and geometry of your journey? How would you diagram your experience?
© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
The Harried Mystic 
Have you ever watched a fly bumbling around a room and tried to make sense of the trajectories it uses, or map them in your mind to try and make patterns? That’s pretty near to my path so far!
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An interesting model to describe your path Viv. The fly is really quite amazing.
Flight trajectories involve complex loopings and remarkable capacity, owing to muscle strength in the wings, to maneuver at great speeds relative to its size. In fact, the fly can make turns in 1/2000th of a human eye-blink (using torqueing of the body to make high speed turns rather than capitalize on friction and slowing down). So, by way of analogy to the spiritual journey, a fly-like process can be viewed as resilient, traveling along multiple and diverse paths, and traveling in loops that afford thorough exploration of any given space.
Its also worth noting that the fly, like the soul, is attracted to the Light!
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That’s a good interpretation, Br Anthony. I’m not sure I would have described it like that; but maybe you are right. I was just meaning I’d had a lot of closed doors and obstacles and dead ends and meanderings and in the end not really covered a lot of ground!
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So often the ground we cover seems meager. I am wondering this morning, on reading your post, if the treasure we seek is less about the surface area we cover in our loops of spiritual flight and more about volume.
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Brother Anthony,
My own recent writing speaks of dancing around a circle, with words that won’t let go –words like “the saints” …. “the letting go of my best dreams in order to receive whatever may come”… and then that haunting interlude in Thornton Wilder’s great play “Our Town” between Emily and the Stage Manager that goes like this–
Emily: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”
Stage Manager: “No.” (Pause) “The saints and poets, maybe — they do some.”
Yesterday I added a few more dance partners, gifts from a writer whose blog I follow — a few breaths that live in “Burnt Norton” — T.S. Eliot’s experience of the Holy– —
the 1st — “At the still point of the turning world.”
the 2nd– “…human kind Cannot bear very much reality.”
All of this to say that I dance barefoot circles around a burning bush hoping I’m tip-toeing on holy ground — I’ve described my circles not like ones in a groove of sameness but ones that inch me close to a mystical center.
Are these reverse concentric circles that I draw with my lines of words that trail my toeprints? I do not know. But around and around I go, and with each passage I see both familar landmarks and new wonders with fresh eyes.
Now to rest. And wonder. So I can dance some more.
I echo in the spaciousness of your blog — I’m glad to be found.
Janell
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Janell,
how extraordinary! Yesterday I quoted those very lines to my husband: go, go go said the bird, humankind cannot bear much reality. and today I was thinking about the approaching Solstice with hunger, thinking of the turning of the year, the still point of the turning year. In the car, I thought:
Solstice
Stillness; the year pivots,
Pirouetting en pointe
As a Dancer meets the Dance:
I am renewed.
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