Time and Being. Plotinus and Forgotten Western Enlightened Seers

Common folks tired with traditional Western spirituality often look to the East--to Buddhism, Vedanta, or forms of Yoga--for more expansive takes on the spiritual and mystical. Or else they (more commonly nowadays) submerse themselves in eclectic mixes (or mishmashes) of various New Age, New Thought, and/or Neopagan hybrids that draw from Eastern spirituality, pop culture, folklore, and fakelore. Mysticism and spirituality focused on nondualism and self-actualization, however, is hidden as it were, in the Western Mystery Tradition and dates back to at least the time of Pythagoras, who lived about the same time as Buddha. A strand of the philosophy and mysticism of the pre-Socratics, including Pythagoras, carried over into Neoplatonism, a type of thinking first attributed to Plotinus, who lived in the third century of the common era (about the time that Christianity started to gain legitimacy and become standardized). With the rise of Christianity, however, the work of Plotinus and those who followed him, such as Iamblichus, was sidelined to be picked up and reframed centuries later during the Italian  Renaissance.

I came across this insightful YouTube presentation of Plotinus' discourse on Time and Being. Truths spoken by a largely forgotten Western seer thousands of years before Buddhist or Vedantist thought hit this side of the globe.

At Peace in the Maw of the World

From the unreal, lead us to the Real

From darkness, lead us to Light

From death, lead us to Immortality

Reach us through and through ourselves

And evermore protect us by Thy sweet, compassionate face.

                                                      --Vedantist prayer derived from the Vedas

Master Peace Sigil September 11 2015

In my last post, I shared how a Hindu spiritual philosophy called Advaita Vedanta and floating in an isolation tank inspired an image about capturing the original self. I’m still on a Vedanta roll. Probably because, after letting go of the trappings of spirituality several years ago, I got curious and accompanied friends to a week-long satsang to hear a teacher that they’ve been following.

Although the satsang took place on a campgrounds, I roomed on a compound that was part Buddhist abbey, part Druid sanctuary, and part organic farm with a fabulous view of Mount McAdams and the Clackamas mountain range. I would’ve been happy enough to just meditate and muck-about at that place, but I did sit through about 28 hrs of lecture/discussion (the satsang) that didn’t need to be more than 3. Still, it was insightful, and I think I returned home a little changed. A bit more dispassionate, temperate, and observant perhaps . . . reflective of what spaciousness is like and what the imposition of a middle-aged human body and its personal circumstances is like, too.

I came home to the 9-11 anniversary, the Syrian refugee crisis, a media circus surrounding a serially adulterous Christian fundamentalist anarchist “martyr” who refuses to do her job and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, conflagrations across the US West Coast, and the usual morass of American anarchy, zombie apocalypto, and anti-intellectualism. 

I got the idea to make an image of being at peace in the midst of the horrific mayhem we too eagerly like to remind each other that life is—even when it is not in our personal world sphere.  

I pulled out my tin of Caran d’ Arche wax crayons and had a little fun building the image. Then I goaded some friends who follow a kind of New Agey, Wicca lite, manifestation spirituality into building a Chaos Magic-type sigil with me by embellishing the crayon sketch with stickers and cabochons. I then made a series of digital and painted images of the sketch.

Digital version of  my sketch (upper left) and two versions of being at peace within that ferocity. Images print as 18 x 24 Copyright Dee Rapposelli 2015

At Peace in the World Maw Acrylic on stretched sail cloth 24 x 36 copyright Dee Rapposelli 2015

Seeking the Original Self

I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made.  WB Yeats

Although I’ve spent the past several years delving into folk magic, Neopaganism, and the Western Mystery Tradition, my primary spiritual orientation is Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta is a form of Hinduism that I was introduced to nearly 40 years ago. It is a system that dates back to about the 6^th century CE and is primarily founded in the Upanishads.

The spiritual journey in Advaita Vedanta is a reclamation of the atman, a philosophical term that is translated from Sanskrit to English as “The Self.” Finding Self is realizing who/what you really are. That Self is not your body or personality or “baggage” or the drama of your life. It is also not what you want to become, spiritually speaking. (See my blog entry on my Spiritual Ideal project for more on that). The Self, in Vedantist philosophy, is the mechanism out of which all these interdependently arising things express themselves like suds on the surface of water or a movie against a movie screen or dream in the REM sleep of a dreamer.

The question is: What is it to wake up from the idea of yourself?

Becoming truly real, conscious, and capable of free will begins by realizing the whimsical and fabricated nature of one’s own being—the idea of self—and then detaching from the automaton (the robot) of its personality, habits, and conditioning. Then the person who is the life beneath the mask of selfhood opens her eyes and watches herself reveling through the motions of daily life like a dreamer reveling in lucidity. The dreamer is pristinely aware of what she and everyone and thing around her is and has the ability to truly exercise free will within the field of consciousness and experience. Spiritual types call this “enlightenment.”

This past summer, I became an isolation-tank enthusiast. Yes, a few times a month, I enter a pitch black and virtually soundless chamber and float on my back in buoyant saline for an hour or so.

In the tank, all there is to do is watch the mind as it sinks into a theta state. Ontological thoughts emerge during these sessions—thoughts about being and meaning. And I sometimes think, “What is it to wake up from the idea of myself?” Who am I when I am not the circumstantial preferences, habits, and conditioning the world made into me? In the words of poet W. B. Yeats, what is “the face I had before the world was made”?

In working through how to express this in my art work, I found, in a box of old photos, an elegantly brooding picture of myself at age 3. Its background depicts Christmastide, and there I am standing with a gift-box bow on my head, like a grumpy house cat on the head of which an ornament has been unwantedly placed.

I excised, cleaned up, and colorized the figure in the photo but then opted to use it in monochrome to better convey the brooding composure. The child here is contemplating all those questions raised in that Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime:

And you may ask yourself 

What is that beautiful house? 

And you may ask yourself 

Where does that highway go to? 

And you may ask yourself 

Am I right?...Am I wrong? 

And you may say to yourself  

My God!...What have I done?!

That image is juxtaposed with a stairway to heaven where perhaps those answers reside ....

Favorite quotes on "Self-Realization":

“If you dissociate from the body and rest in consciousness, you will be happy, serene, and free from bondage.”  --Ashtavakra Samhita 1:4

“He sees the totality of objects appearing and disappearing in the space of consciousness, like reflections in a mirror. Suddenly, all of his thought constructs are destroyed through the recognition, after a thousand lives, of his true, essential nature, which surpasses ordinary experience and is replete in unprecedented bliss. He is struck with awe, mouth gaping. Upon attaining the experience of spaciousness, his true essential nature comes forward. –Spandakarikas, from section 1, verse 11 (from the advaitic Kashmir Shaivite tradition)

Visualizing Your Spiritual Ideal

In traditional religion, the spiritual ideal is the hallowed ideal or personage that a spiritual aspirant wants to emulate or otherwise identify with: Jesus, a saint, a bodhisattva, an avatar, a holy guardian angel, the “higher self” …

(Check out my essay on the Chosen Ideal in a separate blog) For the intellectually geekier among you....

That ideal is usually something treated as “other” although the point is to realize that we are or at least are meant to be that ideal. Most folks opt to idolize their ideal through religious posturing and devotional reveries rather than do the work to really “get,” integrate, and act from their spiritual ideals.

In any case, I tended to think of a “spiritual ideal” in the conventional sense—something having to do with God or angels, devas, avataras, bodhisattvas, or spiritual heroes. My Spiritual Ideal Project was even spurred by an image that popped up during a meditation sit in which I saw myself as a heavenly being—a graceful female entity clad in pink and lime green garb, festooned with flower garlands, sitting on a moon disc and glowing in a sun disc. I began to contemplate what it “feels like” to be that in hopes I could hardwire the thought form into my consciousness. To help solidify the image, I made a picture of it. Then, I began to ask friends what their spiritual ideal was and how I might portray it in portraiture.

I was surprised and impressed by how different folks interpreted the question. Presented here are the first few images of this Project.

My friend DT as The Goddess of Sensual Desire. I was kind of  surprised when DT's response to "What is your spiritual

ideal?" was "I want to be the goddess of sensual desire" because, before beginning this project, I equated "spiritual ideal" with some ethereal lofty religiously spiritual concept. But she honestly really does value the "good life,," and her response helped me get my feet back on planet Earth.  My first thoughts were to work her image into a Babalon Rising type of motif, but I wanted to convey the  luxury, joy, and hospitality that reflects her ebullient personality. I constructed this from freehand drawing and photo manipulation in PhotoShop Elements. It prints as a 24 x 24 inch glicee.

My good friend EC, author of the blog Neognostica's Book of  Thoth--A Modern Translation Ed is into planetary magic inspired by work developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His response to my question was to say that he wanted the wisdom of the cosmos to be reflected in his actions--like the famous Hermetic adage:  As above, so below. H suggested I make an image of a fellow  walking on a lake in which the planets are reflected. This image, is constructed from freehand drawing and photo manipulation in PhotoShop Elements. It includes pics of planets and landscape from NASA.  It prints as an 18 x 24 glicee.

SS is the head steward of the Scalzi Riverwalk Nature Preserve in Stamford, Connecticut. She intrepidly went into a neglected, overgrown, roadside riverwalk that had become a haven for drug activity and illicit loitering and cleaned it up for safe and thriving community use. Together with a band of volunteers and folks training to be gardeners, horticulurists, and land managers, she is restoring the area to its natural habitat--on a shoestring budget: weeding-out invasive species, planting and protecting native plants, and helping to restore native wildlife to the area.  When I asked her what her spiritual ideal was, she simply replied, " When I die, my remains must be placed in an oak grove." She proceeded to tell me that oak--and trees in general--do not naturally grow as singular plants but grow in groves where their roots intertwine so that that grove is actually one single organism. Her spiritual aspiration is to be one with that. This was the first image I ever made that is completely constructed from photo manipulation (no drawing) in PhotoShop Elements. She would never go for that glam shift I put her in--but I figured she could look a little sexy if she were an oak-grove sylph.  It prints as an 18 x 24 image on paper.