Continuing downward to deeper and more and more subtle levels, we find our experience becoming more and more primordial. Moreover, we begin to notice that the earth’s primordiality is inseparable from our own. The deeper we drop into the earth, the closer we feel we are coming to who we really are. In discovering the being of the earth, we are discovering the full depth of our own body, our own self. We are, in fact, approaching the place of our origin, or perhaps of the origin, the deepest wellspring of being from which we and everything else are continually emerging.
FIFTY-FIVE: The Cosmic Body III: The Initiatory Process
The deepest, most hidden and inaccessible layer of enfoldment for modern people—and perhaps all people—is the cosmic layer of our body. This enfoldment is maintained by the continual reinforcement of our limited, habitual ways of perceiving the extra-human universe that we live in. In this part of our self-concept, we conventionalize and attempt to make familiar what we may call the cosmic dimension—a dimension that is completely present to somatic experience yet, at the same time, utterly beyond human convention and inherently unknowable in any definitive sense. The various religions and philosophies of humankind, insofar as they are relatively static and rigid pictures of how things are on the cosmic scale, represent such attempts to regularize and conventionalize. And, of course, the modern, popular “scientific” picture of the universe is a particularly extreme way of doing this.
There is something critical, though, that distinguishes most traditional religions, and particularly the indigenous ones, from the modern scientific worldview, as popularly understood: in contrast to the scientific one, indigenous approaches tend to be open-ended and facilitate communication with the living reality that lies behind and beyond the conventional picture. This open-endedness and ability to communicate with cosmic reality is brought about through initiation ceremonies.
It is the tendency of children everywhere to take the concepts of reality expressed by their elders as reality itself. In indigenous initiation, the adolescent is shown that the conventional view he or she has learned and come to take for granted is ultimately not real. The purpose of indigenous initiation ceremonies is, then, just this: to bring young people into their own contact with this living reality; only then do they understand the point and purpose of their spiritual traditions and the truth behind the cultural façade. Only then can they themselves find nourishment and sustenance from the living cosmos and thus become creative and mature adults in their society.
This suggests the huge psychological and spiritual price paid by the loss of authentic initiation ceremonies in modern culture: having separated ourselves from the “superstitions” of the archaic world of indigenous culture, we find ourselves living in a strictly dead, denatured, and conceptualized world, one completely divested of living spiritual reality. In that way, our development is impeded, we are cut off from the wellsprings of life, and we find ourselves trapped in the inflexibility, aridity, and disconnection that, in many premodern societies, are seen as the pre-adolescent mentality. Over the years, many indigenous spiritual teachers from different traditions have told me basically the same thing: that it is this lack of genuine initiation into the living cosmos that is the single and most fundamental cause of the rampant increase of psychological sickness in modern people—the basic reason why so many of us, emotionally, never get out of childhood.
This perhaps helps us understand why the body work is critically important—and so fascinating—in the modern context: once we have reached the cosmic level in our own somatic practice and maturation, we find ourself engaged, in a natural and spontaneous way, in a process that approximates the archaic initiation of indigenous societies. It is almost as if the need for the kind of initiation described earlier is implicit within us, on a genetic level, and when we are open to it and have a method for engaging it, it begins to unfold very powerfully.
More specifically, at a certain point in the body explorations, in an organic way, the “natural world” part of our self-concept, our “cosmic ego,” begins to break down. The enfoldment of our experience of the cosmos as a living reality begins to open and unfold. This unfolding takes its root in the experience of the body as, ultimately, the primordial space of the earth itself. In arriving at this perception of “ourself,” we have become aware of a level of our own personhood that is inseparable from the larger cosmos. It is interesting that in moments when we discover ourself as the boundlessness of the earth under us, we cannot really say that there is any longer any distinction between what is seen and who is looking. At that moment, we are the earth; we are the awareness of the earth aware of itself.
This standpoint, so to speak, of an experience of the earth beyond subject and object opens the way for the unfolding of a different way of being in and with the rest of the cosmos. Initially, we may begin to feel something very strong calling us—calling, calling, calling continually: a mountain we have seen, a glacier, a particular valley, an open vista, a certain hillside or place in the forest, a tree, a river, a lake. We start to sense—although we cannot quite believe it—that the mountain, for example, is alive, aware, and strongly inviting us, pulling us in its direction. There is something about it that is drawing us to it in the most compelling way. We may dream about it at night and feel its call during the day. What we feel is entirely somatic: our hearts are on fire and its call is resonating throughout our bodies. Such is the depth of somatic life, of feeling life, that is now becoming our way of being.
We have learned from our body work that such calls are not to be disregarded. The whole process of working with the personal, individual body has shown us that the body, beyond our own ideas and agendas, beckons and invites us in certain ways. Our own journey unfolds to the extent that we heed these calls, irrespective of how unexpected, strange, or threatening they may seem. As our work of unfolding extends to the interpersonal body, we find the same calls and the same need to heed them and surrender to them.
It is the exactly the same process with our more extensive “body,” the body of the cosmos. We understand that we must heed the call that our heart hears, no matter how it does or does not fit into any ideas we have. In the case of our mountain, we must let in its insistent and incessant and compelling pull. Letting the call in will mean, most likely, spending time in the precincts of the “sacred other” that has become such a living and even commanding presence for us.
In doing so, we are making an important offering. This offering is all the greater, given that, especially for us modern people, heeding such a call is often in such complete contradiction to anything that we or anybody else conceives reality to be. In doing so, we are affirming the immediate somatic experience of our body and our heart; we are placing it above whatever we may think. We are letting go of our rigid hold on our restricted, impacted “cosmic” self-concept. We are opening to the cosmic body, the cosmic reality, that lies beyond.
When we are willing to take this leap out of our mind, out of our cultural conventions, the cosmos responds by showing itself in new, ever more primal ways. In relation to our mountain, for example, we begin to discover that it is, indeed, a presence, a towering, living force—not just an intelligence, but immensely powerful, immaculate awareness itself—how can one say it?—so much more potent and all-pervasive and pure than what we have known of our own awareness up to this point. In knowing the mountain as a subject, in opening to its wild, incredibly deep, primal energy, we may find ourself swept clean of any vestiges of ourself. In meeting the mountain, we meet ourself in an entirely new way; we find out, at a much greater depth and reality, ourself discovering the truth of who we are.
The journey of cosmic unfolding may occur in relation to one phenomenon, as in the case of the mountain, or it may occur through a succession of “meetings” with different “others.” In either case, over time, we find that the entire range of our perceptions of the world is undergoing a shift. We realize that it is not just this mountain or this tree that is alive. Rat
her, the entire cosmos, as it shows itself to us in each moment, is alive—each river, each hillside, each cloud, each starlit sky, each glimpse we have of the moon, is abundant with its own unique and individual being, the living reality, that it is showing us at just this moment.
We see especially that the idea of any perceptual object being the same from one moment to the next is simply not true to life. We can think that the experience of this mountain, this tree, this vista, is the same over time only because we haven’t looked closely enough; or maybe because we haven’t looked at all. Mesmerized by our own thoughts of how things are, we have not bothered to attend to what we actually perceive and experience things to be. When we do, we see that each moment—even with the same rock, day after day, year after year—has its own unique being, its own living reality, and its own “message” to us at that moment.
But what kind of message could a rock have? When we open our perceptions to a tree, a rock, or a mountain, or to anything else, there is a kind of weightiness, a gravity, an intensity of presence, an abundance of meaning, a “beingness” in what we experience. The rock is so there, so immovable, yet so still and peaceful. So heavy, so much itself, yet also, when we open our awareness into it, so open, not bounded, utterly spacious and free.
We find ourself so deeply touched and affected by how this rock has given itself so completely to us in this moment. We realize that our relationship with this rock, at just this moment, is completely and utterly personal. What is being communicated, what we are receiving, is so completely and exactly what we are thirsting for, just now, though we didn’t see it until this moment. The rock is literally bringing us our very life. Moreover, in meeting this other, this living being of the world, we find revealed to us some primal depth of ourself. What is communicated to us touches the very depths of our being and changes us.
Being touched by the world in this way and to this depth, moment by moment, there is a gradual dissolution of the “cosmic ego” aspect of our self-concept. This process, we discover, fantastically accelerates our journey of self-discovery, of finding out about and becoming who we ultimately are. As so many of the indigenous, earth-based spiritualities express it so well, “This world holds our very life.”
FIFTY-SIX: The Cosmic Body IV: Until the Very End of Being
The experiences of our life that open up through increasing embodiment, and particularly our experiences of the nonhuman, natural world, are not metaphors referring to something outside of themselves; rather, they are immediate, direct, primary realities. Such experiences of the natural world are also not peripheral to our spiritual unfolding; at a certain point, they become absolutely central to it. And, finally, they are not about something else, something separate from us; they are ultimately about us; they are unlocking us, who we most fundamentally are. In some deep and always mysterious way, the living cosmos is us; who we are, at our deepest levels, is it.
In our modern world, most of us think of our “embodiment” as being strictly concerned with our immediate physical bodies. Most people approach somatic work with the impression that the scope and limit of this work is defined by the circumscription of their skin. Work at this level is, of course, profound, powerful, and transformative. But the point I want to emphasize here is this: as we progress more and more deeply into our physical body, as long as we don’t hold back, we find ourself voyagers, not only into it, but through it into vaster and vaster realms of being. We discover first that, at a deeper, more embodied level, our true body is actually an interpersonal body, and finally, that it is nothing less than the cosmos itself. And, something that cannot be said too often: this is not a matter of theory, but of direct, personal experience.
When the sun sets, as dusk deepens further and further into darkest night, if we are open to it, we will find ourself making a journey from the known quantities of the daylight world into the much larger, mysterious, fecund presence of the unknown darkness, with all it holds for us. When we open our heart to the mountain before us, if we are willing to let go into it, we discover the profundity, imperturbability, and strength of our own heart. But it is not personal: we discover that our heart is the mountain, the mountain is our heart. When we round a corner of a trail in the woods and come suddenly upon a stag, standing uphill, fierce, proud, and fearless, we are meeting invincible courage and dissolving into it. And when we surrender to ravens playing in the wind above a mountain crag, we enter into the utter joy and freedom of being itself. It is truly this way: at those moments, there is no separation, none whatsoever.
It is not that such experiences reflect what we already know of our heart, our courage, or our joy. Instead, it is as if—through the depth of our perception of the natural world—we are discovering a new depth, a never-before-seen primordiality to our own state of being. It is also not that we are finding an extension of our already existing body. Rather, such experiences break apart anything we have previously thought about our body, even at the interpersonal level, and reveal our embodiment to be of a truly unimaginable, universal scope. Such is the unfolding of our cosmic body. This unfolding, then, represents entry into a new, fabulously primal level of our own embodiment. It is a very real and, I think, very, very old initiation. It is—as are all true initiations—a unique, joyful, fiercely and decisively transformative stage on our journey.
We have seen how the interior of our physical body unfolds first as more open than we had suspected, then as the space of our own awareness itself. In our further unfolding, again as we saw, we discover that this “interior space” is not limited to our body at all, but is to be found “outside” of us, as a cosmic reality, in the earth beneath us; in this unfolding of our cosmic body, we discover an increasing boundlessness to our own awareness. In other words, the presence and reality of the earth is not a limitation to our awareness as we might have thought but, quite to the contrary, an extension and further expression of it. In the somatic unfolding, the next stage is to find this limitless space and primal presence, not only in the earth beneath, but all around us, in every direction and to the limits of what is.
Such discoveries, when we first come upon them and every time thereafter, are more than surprising; they are extraordinarily astonishing and astounding. At the same time, we feel we have finally and fully met ourself: “This is who I truly am. How could there be anything more, anywhere under the sun or anywhere else in the universe, than what is right here, right now?”
And yet, there is more: there is the further unfolding of the journey itself. For, as we have seen, as long as our relative world remains to any degree enfolded, our awareness, however boundless it may seem at present, is still limited. It has not reached its fullest unfolded extent because, until the very end of being, there remains further to go, more to unfold.
At this stage in our journey, we have largely unfolded our immediate physical body, and we have begun opening our interpersonal body. Now, we find ourself in the process of addressing our cosmic enfoldment directly. With each experience of the external world, we are invited—in fact, we find ourself compellingly called—into its unlimited, universal depths. As we do so, the unfolding process continues and our awareness is further freed. Each fresh encounter with the world is thus a further discovery, a further opening, a further letting go into the boundlessness of what is.
Have you ever been present to a raindrop falling on a window sill, watched its great globule tumbling into sight, splashing on the sill, spreading out in slow motion, and exploding into a thousand specks of light? Have you ever gazed into a campfire, suddenly finding yourself within it, discovering your own state of being as nothing other than the raging inferno, burning, burning, burning, fueled by all it meets? Have you contemplated a lake and then suddenly found yourself lost in its endlessly wet and watery world? Have you ever looked at a strangely shaped boulder on a trail and found its clear, uncompromising, ancient awareness holding you? Have you glanced up into a great tree only to meet an ancient presence looking back at you with
immense understanding and care? Have you ever, one day, looked up at the sky and realized with a sudden, electric shock that courses through your body, that you are meeting a vast shimmering awareness, incredibly alive, that is watching you, utterly seeing you through and through, holding you within its boundless love? Such perceptions are not hallucinations, concocted experiences, or drug-induced states. They are natural and spontaneous perceptions of the world when awareness is open, free, and fully grounded in the body. They are nothing other than our most fundamental human birthright.
What is important about such experiences is that, through them, we are undergoing the deep initiation into who we ultimately are. Now that longing that so many modern people feel for naked, unbounded experience of the natural world makes sense. We long, sometimes so intensely, because we are longing for our own fullest embodiment, our own ultimate being: we are the earth; we are the water, the fire, the air, the space. The mountain is our heart; the running streams, our blood; our mind, the limitless sky; our thoughts, the small passing clouds. Ultimately, we are nothing other than these. And so we come upon our own deepest being, our own most primal self. We arrive at the astounding realization that, finally, we are the cosmos, and it is a process of discovery: as we journey through life, we are literally finding ourself, at deeper and deeper levels, in everything we meet.
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