Anam Cara Read online

  Rapidity is another force causing massive stress in the workplace. Baudrillard, a French philosopher, speaks of the exponential speed of modern life. Where things are moving too quickly, nothing can stabilize, gather, or grow. There is a lovely story of a man exploring Africa. He was in a desperate hurry on a journey through the jungle. He had three or four Africans helping him carry his equipment. They raced onward for about three days. At the end of the third day, the Africans sat down and would not move. He urged them to get up, telling them of the pressure he was under to reach his destination before a certain date. They refused to move. He could not understand this; after much persuasion, they still refused to move. Finally, he got one of them to admit the reason. This native said, “We have moved too quickly to reach here; now we need to wait to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us.” Many people who are secretly weary of work have never given themselves time, or taken time out or away from work, to allow their spirits to catch up. Giving yourself plenty of time is a simple but vital reflective exercise: Leave all agendas behind you. Let the neglected presence of your soul come to meet and engage you again. It can be a lovely reacquaintance with your forgotten mystery.

  The Celtic imagination testifies to a different concept and experience of time. The recognition of presence and the celebration of nature were only possible because time was a window on the eternal. Time was never reduced to achievement. Time was time for wonder. This is still one of the charming things about Ireland. People here still have time. In contrast to many areas in the Western world, people here inhabit a more flexible and open time rhythm. The ideology of rapidity and clinical efficiency have not gained a grip here, yet.

  THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE

  Surprisingly, there is often great irony in the way the soul behaves. Sometimes in the work world a person with analytic, linear vision can miss out totally on the harvest and fruits of work. The imagination has a particular rhythm of vision that never sees directly in a linear way. The eye of the imagination follows the rhythm of the circle. If your vision is confined to linear purpose, you can miss out on the secret destiny that a form of activity can bring you. There is a lovely, old Celtic story about Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the salmon of knowledge. Fionn wanted to become a poet. In Celtic Ireland, to be a poet was a sacred vocation. The poets summed up in themselves a supernatural power, the power of the druid and the power of creativity. Poets had special access to mysteries that were not available to the common masses.

  There was a salmon in the river Slane in County Meath. Whoever caught this salmon and ate it would become the greatest and most gifted poet in Ireland and would also receive the gift of second sight. There was a man called Fionn the Seer who had spent seven years pursuing this salmon. Young Fionn Mac Cumhaill came to him to learn the craft of poetry. One day Fionn the Seer came back, having caught the salmon of knowledge. He started a fire and put the salmon on a spit. The salmon had to be turned very carefully and could not be burned or the gift would be ruined. After a while the fire went low, and the salmon could no longer be cooked properly. Fionn the Seer had no one to gather more wood for the fire. Just then his protégé, Fionn, came out of the wood, and he left him to turn the salmon slowly on the spit. Young Fionn Mac Cumhaill began to turn the salmon, but he was a dreamer and he allowed his mind to wander. When he looked, a blister had appeared on the side of the salmon. He grew very anxious, knowing that Fionn the Seer would be furious with him for having ruined the salmon. With his thumb he tried to press the blister back in. As soon as he did, he burned his thumb, then put it in his mouth to relieve the pain. There was some of the oil of the salmon on his thumb, and as soon as he tasted the salmon oil, he received the wisdom, the gift of second sight, and the vocation of poet. Old Fionn came back with the wood. As soon as he looked at young Fionn’s eyes, he knew what had happened. He sat there disappointed that the destiny he had pursued so deliberately had at the last moment turned away from him to be received by an innocent young man who had never even dreamed of such a gift.

  This is a good story to illustrate how the linear mind, despite its sincerity and commitment, can totally miss the gift. The imagination in its loyalty to possibility often takes the curved path rather than the linear way. Such risk and openness inherit the harvest of creativity, beauty, and spirit.

  Sometimes a person has difficulty with work, not because the work is unsuited to him, or he to it, but because his image of the work is blurred and defective. Frequently, such a person lacks a focus and has allowed the tender presence of his experience to become divided and split. His sense of his work as expression and imagination has been replaced by an image of work as endurance and entrapment.

  THE FALSE IMAGE CAN PARALYZE

  Perception is crucial to understanding. How you see, and what you see, determine how you will be. Your perception, or your view of reality, is the lens through which you see things. Your perception determines the way things will behave for you and toward you. We tend to perceive difficulty as disturbance. Ironically, difficulty can be a great friend of creativity. I love the lines from Paul Valery: “Une difficulté est une lumière / Une difficulté insurmontable est un soleil”—that is, “A difficulty is a light; an insurmountable difficulty is a sun.” This is a completely different way of considering the awkward, the uneven, and the difficult. Deep within us, there is a terrible impulse and drive toward perfection. We want everything flattened into the one shape. We do not like unexpected shapes. One of the essential aspects of beginning to re-imagine the workplace is to awaken the ability to welcome that which is difficult and awkward. Frequently, the actual work itself is fine, rather it is our image of it that makes it appear difficult and awkward.

  During a phase of my study in Germany, I became acutely aware of the impossibility of my task. I was working on the Phenomenology of Spirit. Anyone who knows Hegel will readily admit that this long text is magical but difficult to penetrate. My sense of the difficulty of the project began to mirror itself in my attitude toward the work. Later I began to paralyze myself, and soon I was not able to work at all. As the Germans so beautifully say of such a blockage, “Ich stehe mir im Weg”—that is, “I am standing in my own way.” I would go to my desk with great commitment, believing that I was going to break through this barrier, but I could not concentrate. The image that kept haunting my mind was the impossibility of my task. Each day I would try anew, but I was totally blocked.

  One day I went for a long walk in the forest near Tübingen. In the forest, it suddenly occurred to me that Hegel was not the problem; rather, it was my image of the task that obstructed me. I came back home immediately, sat down, and quickly jotted on a page the image of my work that I had constructed. I recognized the power that the image had. When this became clear to me, I was able to distance the image from the actual work itself. After a couple of days, the image had faded, and I was back into the rhythm of the work.

  Some people have a lot of difficulty at work, even though the work is a genuine expression of their nature, giftedness, and potential. The difficulty is not with the work but rather with their image of the work. The image is not merely a surface; it also becomes a lens through which we behold a thing. We are partly responsible for the construction of our own images and completely responsible for how we use them. To recognize that the image is not the person or the thing is liberating.

  THE KING AND THE BEGGAR’S GIFT

  A difficult or unwanted thing can turn out to be a great gift. Frequently we receive unknown gifts in disguise. There is a wonderful old story told of a young king who took over a kingdom. He was loved before he became a king, and his subjects were delighted when he was finally crowned. They brought him many different gifts. After the coronation, the new king was at supper in the palace. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. The servants went out to discover an old man shabbily dressed, looking like a beggar. He wanted to see the king. The servants did their best to dissuade him, but to no avail. The king came out to meet him. The old m
an praised the king, saying how wonderful he was and how delighted everyone in the kingdom was to have him as king. He had brought the king the gift of a melon. The king hated melons. But being kind to the old man, he took the melon, thanked him, and the old man went away happy. The king went indoors and gave the melon to his servants to throw out in the back garden.

  The next week at the same time, there was another knock at the door. The king was summoned again and the old man praised the king and offered him another melon. The king took the melon and said good-bye to the old man. Once again, he threw the melon out the back door. This continued for several weeks. The king was too kind to confront the old man or belittle the generosity of the gift that he brought.

  Then, one evening, just as the old man was about to hand the melon to the king, a monkey jumped down from a portico in the palace and knocked the melon from the old man’s hand. The melon shattered in pieces all over the front of the palace. When the king looked, he saw a shower of diamonds flying from the heart of the melon. Eagerly, he checked the garden at the back of the palace. There, all the melons had melted around a little hillock of jewels. The moral of this story is that sometimes awkward situations, problems, or difficulties are really disguised opportunities for growth. Very often at the heart of the difficulty, there is the light of a great jewel. It is wise to learn to embrace with hospitality that which is awkward and difficult.

  My father was an accomplished stonemason. I often watched him building walls. Frequently, he would choose a stone that was completely round. A round stone is useless because it cannot be bound into the structure of the wall. Yet with a little tip of the hammer, my father could transform the stone. Something that looked unformed and awkward would fit into the wall as if it had been made specially for it. I love, too, that image of Michelangelo finding in every stone, no matter how dumb, awkward, or blunt, a secret shape waiting to emerge. Michelangelo’s wonderful Prisoners in Stone illustrates this. The human figures have almost emerged from the stone, yet from the waist down, they are still trapped in the dull unformed stone. It is an incredible image of arrested release. Very often in difficult work projects, there is a secret shape waiting to emerge. If you concentrate on releasing the hidden possibility within your project, you will find a satisfaction that will surprise you. Meister Eckhart speaks beautifully about the way one should be toward what one does. If you work with a creative and kind eye, you will bring forth beauty.

  HEARTFUL WORK BRINGS BEAUTY

  When you consider it, the world of your action and activity is a very precious world. What you do should be worthy of you; it should be worthy of your attention and dignity, and conform to your respect for yourself. If you can love what you do, then you will do it beautifully. You might not love your work at the beginning; yet the deeper side of your soul can help you bring the light of love to what you do. Then, regardless of what you do, you will do it in a creative and transforming way.

  There is an apposite story about a Zen monk in Japan. The emperor had an absolutely magnificent vase that was ancient and intricately beautiful. One day someone let the vase fall, and it split into millions of fragments. The fragments were gathered up, and the best potter in the land was called to reassemble the vase. He came but failed. He paid for his failure by losing his head. The emperor ordered the next-best potter, and he also failed. This continued for weeks until, finally, all the best artists in the land had died, having failed to reassemble the broken, beautiful vase. There was only one artist left, an old Zen monk who lived in a cave in the mountains. He had a young apprentice. The monk came and collected all the fragments himself and brought them back to his work shed. For weeks and weeks he worked until finally the vase was there again. The apprentice looked at it and thought how beautiful it was. The two of them made the journey to the city and brought the vase into the palace. The emperor and all his courtesans beamed in admiration at the beauty of the reassembled vase. The old Zen monk was graciously rewarded. He and his young apprentice went back to their cave in the mountains. Then, one day, the young apprentice was looking for something and unexpectedly came upon the fragments of the vase. He ran in to his master: “Look at all the fragments of the vase, you never assembled them all. How did you make a vase as beautiful as the ancient one that was broken?” The old master said, “If you do the work that you do from a loving heart, then you will always be able to make something beautiful.”

  A Blessing

  May the light of your soul guide you.

  May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.

  May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.

  May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.

  May your work never weary you.

  May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration, and excitement.

  May you be present in what you do.

  May you never become lost in the bland absences.

  May the day never burden.

  May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities, and promises.

  May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.

  May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected.

  May your soul calm, console, and renew you.

  FIVE

  AGING: THE BEAUTY OF THE INNER HARVEST

  TIME AS A CIRCLE

  The human eye adores gazing; it feasts on the wild beauty of new landscapes, the dignity of trees, the tenderness of a human face, or the white sphere of the moon blessing the earth in a circle of light. The eye is always drawn to the shape of a thing. It finds some deep consolation and sense of home in special shapes. Deep within the human mind, there is a fascination with the circle because it satisfies some longing within us. It is one of the most universal and ancient shapes in the universe. Reality often seems to express itself in this form. The earth is a circle; and even time itself seems to have a circular nature. The Celtic world was always fascinated with circles; they are prevalent in so much of its artwork. The Celts even transfigured the cross by surrounding it with a circle. The Celtic cross is a beautiful symbol. The circle around the beams of the cross rescues the loneliness where the two lines of pain intersect and seems to calm and console their forsaken linearity.

  For the Celtic people the world of nature had different domains. First, there was the underworld of nature below the surface of landscape. Here the Tuatha Dé Danann—the fairy people, or the good people—lived. The human world was the middle kingdom between the underworld and the heavenly world. There was no closed or sealed frontier between each of these three worlds. Above, there was the supersensual, or upper, world of the heavens. Each of these three dimensions flowed in and out of each other. Indeed, they participated in each other. It is no wonder, then, that time could be understood as an inclusive and all-embracing circle.

  The year is a circle. There is the winter season, which gives away to the spring; then summer grows out of spring until, finally, the year completes itself in the autumn. The circle of time is never broken. This rhythm is even mirrored in the day; it, too, is a circle. First, the new dawn comes out of the darkness, strengthening toward noon, falling away toward evening until night returns again. Because we live in time, the life of each person is also a circle. We come out of the unknown. We appear on the earth, live here, feed off the earth, and eventually return back into the unknown again. The oceans move in this rhythm, too; the tide comes in, turns, and goes back out again. It resembles the rhythm of human breath, which comes in, fills, and then recedes and goes back out again.

  The circle brings perspective to the process of aging. As you age, time affects your body, your experience, and above all your soul. There is a great poignancy in aging. When your body ages, you begin to lose the natural and spontaneous vigor of your youthfulness. Time, like a bleak tide, begins to indent the membrane of your stre
ngth. It will continue doing that until gradually it empties your life completely. This is one of the most vital questions that affects every person. Can we transfigure the damage that time does to us? Let us pursue this question by first exploring our kinship with nature. Because we are formed from clay, the rhythm of the seasons outside in nature is also active within our own hearts. We can learn much, therefore, from the people who constructed and articulated their spirituality in sisterhood with nature, namely, the Celtic people. They experienced the year as a circle of seasons. Though the Celts had no explicit psychology, they had implicit intuition and great wisdom about the deeper rhythms of human belonging, vulnerability, growth, and diminishment.

  THE SEASONS IN THE HEART

  There are four seasons within the clay heart. When it is winter in the world of nature, all the colors have vanished; everything is reduced to gray, black, or white. All the visions and beautiful rich coloring of nature thin out completely. Grass disappears from the land, and the earth itself is frozen and perished in a bleak self-retraction. In wintertime, nature withdraws. A tree loses all its leaves and retires inward. When it is wintertime in your life, you are going through pain, difficulty, or turbulence. At such times it is wise to follow the instinct of nature and withdraw into yourself. When it is winter in your soul, it is unwise to pursue any new endeavors. You have to lie low and shelter until this bleak, emptying time passes on. This is nature’s remedy. It minds itself in hibernation. When there is great pain in your life, you, too, need sanctuary in the shelter of your own soul.