In dead of night I search for soul;

frozen wind clasps only flesh and bone.

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

Is the dark shadow of the ‘Antichrist’ looming? Is the spectre here already? Is the earth preparing for the second coming of the Christ? Both of these theories have been voiced by psychics, sages, religious groups and ordinary people going through near death experiences. The apocalyptic sense of upheaval commonly experienced today, through successive waves of panic, trauma and menace – combined with the instantaneity of communications – has left human consciousness in a pre-tensile state of anticipation.

So what is the reality? In order to understand the question of the ‘second coming’ – or of the arrival of the Antichrist – we have to look at things in a Christian context. The most global or cosmic context is given by the gospel of St John. There are two very significant indicators here concerning recognition. Firstly, there is oft-depicted scene where Jesus informs the disciples that one of them will betray him. ‘Who is it?’ they clamor to know. The question of identification is uppermost in their minds. Even though Jesus indicates by his actions who it is, the disciples are unable to understand. At that moment ‘Satan’ enters into Judas who then leaves the room.

The second question of recognition concerns the divinity of Christ. The disciple Philip says to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us’. Jesus replies with a question: ‘Have I been with you all for such a long time and you have not recognized me?’ He rebukes them gently for not seeing that the Father is in him. Thus in the context of one sequence in this essential Christian document there are two questions of recognition. The one about recognizing the divine is of course far greater. The other, concerning the betrayer, ends with Judas sloping off into the night, possessed by a demonic intent. In both instances the disciples are not awake enough to make the identification.

I believe that in the discussion of Christ/Antichrist the same question of identification comes down to us today. (You can use your own terms, according to your particular background or beliefs.) In the gospel Christ makes it clear that the principle of recognition is a matter of consciousness, of being awake. The recognition of the divine represents a new or heightened consciousness. The decision to oppose or betray requires a diminution of consciousness, an opening up to the demonic. The demonic demands physical entrance. The divine requires a non-physical acceptance of its own element.

From this it seems clear to me that we would be very dull in our senses or apprehension if we expected a second coming on the physical plane. On the other hand it is also apparent that the counterforce, the demonic, is constantly trying to infiltrate itself into physical thought and action. The two forces are diametrically opposed. The second one is like the force of gravity. The first is its opposite – the force which attracts life upwards. It doesn’t cajole, or attack or persuade – it just asks you to see, to recognize. It precisely doesn’t need a physical form.

When the light is strongest the shadow is darkest. The second coming is an overwhelming inner sense of the way forward, of the validity of existence and the permanence of the inner being. Those things are the answer to the trauma and panic of our times. The light of the world is present in us and around us now. Its menacing counterpart, the dark shadow, is also stalking the earth, urging itself into physical manifestation. The brighter the light shines, the harder the shadow becomes until it is there – walking among us. Again it’s a question of recognition: Satan went out the door with Judas but he comes back in again in his own form.

We may expect to see him as an ‘Antichrist’. But isn’t this looking too far from home? Isn’t he present in a more immediate way? He is. He is present in the forces which are anti-christ in us. Thus he is present particularly in hatred and vengeance. When we give way to hatred and vengeance we are anti-christ. These are not merely feelings – they are forms of possession. And the possession grows rapidly more present in our ‘apocalyptic’ times. Love and forgiveness are the opposites of course.

An actual incarnation of the Antichrist? Perhaps. Who and when? Well, to know the sun is to know the shadow. Learn the form, the being, the deeds of the Light – recognize them truly, come to them in yourself – and you will be in no doubt about the identity of evil: in yourself and in the world, in human shape.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

©landar 2011. All rights reserved

Modern science and contemporary patterns of thinking have obscured the fact that for a long time people navigated through life by quite different beliefs. They lived in what I would call a completely different soul-scape. Some of these points of navigation can shine through again if we let them. I believe that the Four Cardinal Virtues were essential experiences at one time and that even uneducated people breathed them in, more or less unknowingly, as part of the cultural atmosphere. Today we breathe in completely different things. At the pinnacle philosophers like Plato strove to identify and regulate life by these virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Justice and Temperance. Have they vanished completely, these lights we used to live by? Do they have a broader significance than merely personal or social functions? It’s hard to imagine how much these things used to matter, whereas today they are simply words, with more or less shifting values.

I’d like to introduce a Platonic allegory here: the Allegory of the Candle. I see a candle being lit at both ends at once. This normally wouldn’t happen but in a world where things really matter we might allow it. The candle burns, wax melts, light and heat are produced. There are four elements: the lights at either end, the body of the candle, and the process of burning. The elements are related through their very being. The body of the candle is the fuel for the flame, the light arises through the action it performs, the burning must be steadily maintained for the candle to perform its function. I’d like to name the parts now: the body of the candle is Justice, the burning is Temperance, the lights at either end are Wisdom and Courage. The lights are both the powers that burn and the source of illumination. The body is the given, it is right in itself, it can’t be contradicted. The process of burning must be regulated, or the candle will not perform its function.

For me, wisdom and courage are like gods. They are powers which burn and illuminate but which only arise through living. In a sense, justice is a given. A just man – a just person – is someone who has created himself in the image of Justice. Life itself is justice, though we rail against it. Every single part of life is just – a fact which is impossibly hard to understand. It is the given, it exists to let us find the image of justice which is hidden, like a picture of a second human being, inside us. The act of living is temperance: it is the single most human part, the part of freedom. The way we live determines how much we make use of the true human being in us. It decides how much the virtues of courage and wisdom will arise. The light and heat of courage and wisdom are needed to live rightly but they are also the products of that living.

The purpose of all this is the idea that life really does matter. The way we live matters. The outcome of our lives matters. This idea has to be resurrected. It has taken a severe battering in our times. In some ways the ideas of the ancients were more refined, more discerning – they upheld life in a way that our present cultural atmosphere does not. Ultimately, I would say that Justice, Wisdom and Courage are real beings – I would sculpt them if I could. Temperance would be in the skill of my hand.

I am my shadow – he, the one behind,

confers reality, walks into me

until we step as one – one heart, one mind,

and eyes of light the inner world to see.

And wisdom is a gift too long held back,

which wants to match the pace at which I walk -

it bears the shape of everything I lack -

its words so light they’ll shine before they talk.

Two ends of one candle: the wise the brave,

and life must burn them both, its sense unseen.

Yet my existence is the fuel, to save

me from extremes, where darkness still is queen.

For wisdom might be carried by a fool

and never quite delivered to its goal,

and courage just an ever-bluntened tool,

unless my life becomes their heart and soul.

Life itself is justice, time its measure,

and living is the temperance we seek -

storms of shame and tempers raised for pleasure

will hid the strength of truth behind the weak.

Courage and wisdom pull at either end,

like gods who speak into our sleeping ears -

the wrongs of life they resolutely mend

and wrestle us away from all our fears.

*

I walk, and all the virtues walk in me

when my own highest self keeps step with mine -

then I become a sky, a starry sea,

unclouded luminosity benign.

What are those points of light but gods within

which track and trace our movements on the earth?

They navigate by us and long to win

dominions first established by our worth.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

You can also find me on:  Evolver  and  PageLight 

©landar 2011. All rights reserved

The Four Cardinal Virtues

There comes a point in life when you realize that everything that’s been given is not made to endure. The talents you were born with, the early loves, even your bodily wellness and strength – none of them have permanence. All of these things are contained in the word ‘nature’ – or ‘Mother Nature’ if you prefer – and sooner or later nature, the mother, will withdraw and perish. Symbolically, then, one is left creeping towards the tomb, questioning, questioning. Is there anything left for me? Do I have to wait until the end to find out why I was here? What was it for? The temptation, the overwhelming desire, is to prise open the lid a little bit and see what the body – already stretched out there – has to say. Is there anything that can raise it up? Because the raising has to happen now.

In the old days there was hierophant and neophyte. The hierophant, or officiating priest with his helpers, would put the neophyte, or prepared pupil, into a deathlike trance. He would be literally laid out there in the sarcophagus, dead to the outer world. And then the hierophant would lead him inwardly to an experience whereby the meaning of the cosmos was imprinted on him. And then, after three and a half days, he would be raised from the dead, a new man.

This ancient experience isn’t open to us any more. We have to be hierophant and neophyte in our own self today. We have to cross the murmuring border between death and life on our own, often not knowing which is which. In a sense this means we have to push back the circumference of the known world and go beyond it. This is the great adventure of our time, our age of exploration, where freedom begins. But we have to accept the challenge of going beyond the physical. Science has mapped out – or is mapping out – every inch of the physical. The accepted wisdom is that the boundaries of this physical are the outer limits of existence. That death is the end. It takes a fling of courage to know that that is not true – the stubbornness of Columbus to go beyond the kings and queens who say ‘no’ until you find the one who says ‘maybe’. And on the way there may be no sight of landfall, no creature to bring comfort.

So where does nature end? Does it end with the falling away of the ‘given’? Or is there a limitless invisible to explore, in which nature becomes the very ship we set sail in? Questions, questions – with, thankfully, no fixed answer.

Neophyte

Each day I inch towards the secret tomb

and recognize that I’m already there -

my form before it ever leaves the womb

is mausoleum to my spirit’s flair.

Each day like Ephesus I burn it down,

by night the gods will grant it a respite -

and gliding through it, robed in shining gown,

the self is hierophant and neophyte.

Sustenance

The sole endeavour of my hidden heart?

To reach the flame that burns in spite of death,

the sun at midnight piercing like a dart,

the body that still breathes without a breath.

And does my open self acknowledge such?

It hardly knows it, scarcely knows it lives,

but sealed within its hours it loses touch

with its own core – the sustenance it gives.

Sum of Joys

For everything that’s given lies stretched out -

talents, loves, wellness and bodily strength -

prepared, corpselike, with neither sigh not shout

and left to the cold world’s width and length.

Why am I here? Why contemplating this?

Because there’s nowhere left to go?

The sum of joys lies in that freedom’s kiss

which flies through darkness learning how to grow.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

©landar 2011. All rights reserved

You can also find me on: Evolver  and  PageLight 

We’re in the tomb before we’re in the tomb, and that’s a fact. Human beings are the giants of the earth – we have reason, sensibility, pride, anger, vengeance and all the feelings under the sun – but with all that power and strength at our fingertips we are unable to prise open the lid and discover the secrets within. In a sense we are obliged to seal our last hope, like a pressed flower, in that cavernous space. We may search the world through for precious gems to line the lid, to let it sparkle and shine, but really nothing can alter the doom it contains. Everything made of earth has to go that way. I may stare my giant’s stare at the tomb or try to break its stone with force of mind, but in the end I have to laugh at the fact that what its chamber hides is greater than the greatest of my kind. And what does it hide? My own body.

And this fact tumbles quite naturally into another. Why are there no answers? We live in an answerless universe with death all around us and can only peel one question after another from our minds. Why is this? Is knowledge not the answer? Apparently, in the Garden of Eden, fruit from the Tree of Knowledge was forbidden. Surely, if the fruit was tasted, answers would come? Something did come: child-bearing, scratching in the earth for existence, death. What kind of question gives that for the answer? But it wasn’t a question, it was innocence. Therefore, the answer to innocence is life. Here’s a proposition then: if answers were consistent with human freedom, God would have had them hanging on every tree. But they’re not – life is consistent with freedom. No one had to eat the apple.

Is there anything in this parable that deals with the question of suffering now, that sheds light on the big issue: death? No. Well, that’s a pity. But I’m still asking. And I don’t intend to ever stop. And the questions are going to become furnaces. They’re going to burn like suns until, one day, the tomb is going to light up, and in my freedom I will see if there is anything – anything at all – that is capable of raising that body. That is my birthright as a human being – not to force my giant strength on the world, but to ask, ask, ask.

Tomb

And even as the darkest thunder rolls,

the brightest stars prepare the light at dawn -

though earth, a gloomy giant, seals his goals

in caverns where the seed of hope has gone.

Now hearts and hands receive no help from thought,

which finds the universe a sullen tomb,

and never can the priceless gems be bought

to line its lid with something more than doom.

Mortice

With giant’s stare I seek to pierce that lid

or try to break its stone with force of mind -

I’d laugh to think that what its chamber hid

was greater than the greatest of my kind.

And yet it holds my body while I live,

for nothing made of earth escapes the lime -

so if its mortice grip will only give,

I’ll pit my thoughts against the seal of time.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

©landar 2011. All rights reserved

Are we nature or nurture? A question we love. But the answer goes down to roots and up to the tips of branches. It goes into the mind’s eye of the child you were and asks, ‘How do you feel about being here with the universe beating against you?’ For this is the question in truth: is there something in me which is a pavement back into the cosmos or am I merely a made thing?

As you can see, there is quite a lot of feeling attached to this question. Picture yourself as that little child with the universe gleaming in your eye. Does it close on you or open? Such a lot depends on nature and nurture, the attitude of those around us. As parents and teachers do we let the universe have a heart? Or do we close its doors and let our offspring go into the world as ‘made things’?

And at the foot of one of these roots we must follow – just as Odin had to follow the root of the world tree down to the well of wisdom – lies another question. What am I – where do I find myself? Am I the thought creeping through my brain, am I the chemical in my understanding? Am I that, is that me? The churchmen of the middle ages devoted a great deal of time to the question, where is the soul located? Today I would say we have to go back to that early childhood experience of being ‘I’. Everything proceeds from there. A small, vulnerable point, but the seed of all things. ‘I’.

So was I born a clean sheet to be written on? Was I formed by life as rock is formed by the igneous forces around it? Who is asking? Whose small voice peels answers like a bell with its questions?

Did nature chop me from her boughs and plant me here, a new sprout from an old strain? Did laws and schooling, customs, observations, parenting, nurture me to be as I am?

I can only answer in this way: for a heart that would pave the cosmos with its gold, I’d give a lifetime’s breeding.

Questions

A thought creeps in through the human brain – is

that me? A slow vapor in the mind, a

chemical in the understanding – is

that me? Am I cemented in my past?

Was I born a clean sheet to be written

on? Am I made as rock is made by life’s

own forces? Who is asking, whose small voice

peels answers like a bell with its questions?

Pave

Did nature chop me from her boughs and plant

me, new sprout of an old strain? Or did laws

and schooling, customs, observations, church

turn me out as I am, a man of questions?

I thank the stars that answers as are eyes

and ears to me, a being made to think.

And for a heart that would pave the cosmos

with its gold, I’d give a lifetime’s breeding.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

It doesn’t take too much imagination to realize that life is beset with tests and trials. Hardly ever is it the smooth, untroubled water we would like it to be. In our better moments, during the hours of daylight perhaps, we can take a certain relish in these problems, and feel that our strength is equal to them. At other times, for example during the darker hours of night, we might feel overwhelmed and beaten down by what life throws in our direction. It feels sometimes as if there are hidden hands conspiring to hold us down, as if life wants to bind us to the earth, perhaps to teach us that, despite everything, what we have is bountiful and dear, while pain is just a passing tear or frown. In the long run it might become clear to me that these hands are no one’s but my own, that I myself long to crowd my days with test and trial – that I am alone the author of my own destiny and denounce myself if I declare it bad.

The complexities of life are like spokes in a wheel which spins round so fast that it’s no longer possible to see them separately. And then life becomes a matter of perplexity, its individual elements lost in the blur of movement. Yet watch the wheel closely and you might see the spokes return again. It comes with the realization – which you can also reach with imagination – that the Maker of life is equal to the made. That it also takes up its place – a place of honor – inside us. The Maker of all our trials – and joys – is in us as an equal partner. If life’s signature is challenge, our own hand is in it. Complexity and perplexity then dissolve into something with a higher meaning: Mystery. The Mystery of what we are, the Mystery of what lies in us. Ultimately, this is what it is that smoothes or troubles the water, calls upon our imagination and confers understanding. The Mystery at our heart.

Trial

The signature of life is written here

where hidden hands conspire to hold us down,

to teach that earth is bountiful and dear

and pain is just a passing tear or frown.

The hands, I see, are no one’s but my own,

I long to crowd my days with test and trial.

I am the author of this life alone,

and doom myself if I pronounce it vile.

Mystery

Like spokes within a wheel complexity

spins round till individual needs are lost.

So life bestows its own perplexity

while all its single lines are spun and tossed.

Yet watch the wheel and see its spokes return

when life the Maker equals life the made

and takes its place of  honor as you learn

that in yourself a Mystery is laid.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved