Mystic Musings: Lent 2/24
“One regret that I am determined not to have when I am lying upon my death bed
Is that we did not kiss enough.”
The famed anthropologist and mythologist, Joseph Campbell, was asked by Bill Moyers on the Power of Myth if what the myths are all about is seeking a meaning to life. Campbell responded, “People say what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that is what we are really seeking. What we are really seeking is an experience of being alive…so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That’s what it is really about.”
Photo by Olivier Guillard @olivier_twwli
Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Some say that human beings are moral thinking creatures, but at a more basic level we are sensing creatures. We experience life through our sense of touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell. We may think about whether to criticize a friend, but our choice is based on the pain or joy that person may feel. We feel first. We think second.
Hafiz’s playful little poem is not an invitation to a life of orgiastic pleasure, but a counter to moralistic impulses that cut us off from the experience of being alive. We are feeling creatures. That is how we connect with the world around us and with each other.
Sit quietly. Breathe. Notice the sensations in your body. What are you feeling? Are any of your senses being activated? Touch, taste, sight, hearing, or smell. Simply notice them. Ponder these questions:
Do you have a favorite meal or food? How does it make you feel to slowly savor it?
What music and sounds bring you alive?
What kind of touch opens you up to others? What kind of touch shuts you down?
If “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, what is most beautiful to you?
What experiences are still left undone in your life?
What would it mean for you to “make love to life”?