Ever Forward

The tree of self grows from the humus or soil of your being: humility. In humility, the tree grows. Practically, this tree is your thoughts and behavior, the choices you make, and the situations in which you allow yourself to become involved. Once you are an adult, there is no aspect of this tree that is not your responsibility. But this responsibility is not so easy to manage. It requires a strong, clear sense of self.

The sense of self functions just like the sense of humor. A sense of humor is the ability to recognize funniness when you encounter it. With a strong sense of self you recognize yourself. You are able to find yourself at any given moment under all circumstances, manage your weaknesses, and access your strengths. You feel your way, reflexively, into the truth about yourself no matter what you feel, no matter what is happening around you. From the place of self you can endure or enjoy any situation fully.

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The Old English language used the same word for tree that it used for truth. The word was treow. The word humility shares its Indo-European origins with the word humus, soil. Taken together these facts form a useful idea: just as a tree grows from the humus of the forest floor, so the truth grows from humility, the soil of our being. 

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Humus is soil which cannot become any more basic. The corresponding state in a human being is maturity. Like humility, maturity is basic-ness. Maturity is pure self engaged without obstacles in maximum being. It's the full blending of attributes, the full integration of energies, capacities, darkness and light, into a fully functioning whole self that has itself and its relationship to the Divine as its frame of reference in relating to reality. The mature person is symbiotic with others and within herself, and functions according to the now.

But since the word mature is a verb as well as an adjective, it is a process as well as a state of being. The human experience is both. We experience and exhibit maturity in moments, and we go through it all the time, ever more deeply, ongoing. Full maturity requires exposure to more and more aspects of the self, and the acceptance of those aspects into the fold of the whole. This process, this search, is the mythic path, the road to the god self deliberately undertaken.

In maturity, no single aspect of a person is can dominate. Fear and strength work in balance, in reference to the whole. In this state, the great creative power of the universe flows freely through a person. Whether that person is angry, sad, confused, happy, does not matter. These things are felt, expressed clearly and fully, without the snags of hesitation or embarrassment, and above all without apology. The full self is present in the mature person, with all faculties and capacities at the ready. This person is part and parcel to the creative power of the Divine, capable of and inclined toward the small, daily thoughts and actions that manifest the Divine in the world.

What is often taken for maturity is merely solidification. It is acquiescence to -- even the championing of -- the status quo. But real maturity is the ability to function in the status quo while sustaining a deep, real belief in and commitment to its undoing. Real maturity enables you to work with functional hope of success toward the unlocking of magnificence, toward the transformation of the world into that venue of human greatness it is meant to be. The mature person is receptive to the clues and promptings of the Divine in his own unfolding, and through that to the unfolding of the unfinished creation.

A mature person has come from the childlike ability to perceive the world with wonder, through the trials and rigors of the status quo, full circle to wonder again, but with knowledge of the obstacles in his mind and heart that hinder the fullness of his life. This person has undertaken the mythic path. This person remains in a state of readiness for the extraordinary, even while grappling with the monsters of the status quo. To believe yourself capable of anything requires maturity, because only with maturity can we be open to possibility in a world where possibility is the enemy.

Ever forward.

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The word humanity derives from the same Indo-European origin as the word humility. Humanity is the thing most true about each of us. We are all human. Before nationalities, before politics, before religion, philosophy, or even myth, there was humanity. Humanity, human-ness, is the thing from which all these other things proceed. Underneath the things that separate us, the learned things of division, there is the thing that binds us together, the innate thing of unity.

But humanity is not a given. It exists only as seeds until we decide to make it happen, until we decide to grow it, to spread it around and remove the obstacles to its fertility. So humanity is our most basic characteristic, but without proper care, it dies. A world where humanity is dead is monstrous and cannot be managed. We are bound together by our humanity, for good or ill.

The seeds of humanity are the same for us all and by cultivating these seeds we can make a world that prospers filled with individuals who thrive. It only works when each person, each human, propagates humanity by tending the seeds in their own day to day. These seeds draw life from the soil of our being, the humus, humility, which is irrigated in the deepest, unseen strata by the Divine.

Compassion and forgiveness are the seeds. The general act of planting them is called love. These seeds lie dormant until we cultivate the soil in which they grow, humility, our most basic state. If we do that, humanity is the harvest. This harvest nourishes a flourishing world of creativity, prosperity, communication, mutual benefit.

By cultivating humility we begin to contend with the grubs and nettles that stifle humanity: our lack of compassion, our lack of forgiveness. In the absence of humanity, fear and judgment grow instead. These things hinder fullness of life, dream building, satisfying relationships, a prosperous world. But the interesting thing about the seeds of humanity is that by planting them, we transform the soil in which they are planted -- namely ourselves and therefore the world. The grubs and nettles of fear and judgment find no nourishment in tilled humility sown with compassion and forgiveness. They whither and disappear, leaving room for humanity to take root and grow.

The alternative is the world where the seeds of humanity are not planted, the soil of humility not tilled. In that world we are cut off from that deepest strata of our being, the layer where the Divine first mingles with us, first begins to reveal itself to us by giving us the being through which we perceive it. In a world where there is no humility, there can be no humanity, and God remains invisible.

Ever forward.

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The word humility is often taken to mean something like submissiveness, subservience, or low self esteem. Maybe passivity, not standing up for yourself, holding yourself back, or even self negation. These are distortions, misinterpretations of the outward appearance humility can sometimes present. Humility is seldom recognized for what it really is -- a state of pure possibility, of receptivity to true creative power.

The word humility shares its linguistic origins with the word humus, as in earth, soil, the forest floor. Humus is more fully defined as soil that has so decomposed that it can't break down any further. It is the most mature, most basic soil. This is the true nature of humility. Humility properly understood is the soil of who we truly are, our most basic state, the place where possibility lives. To be humble is to have access to the ground of your being. To cultivate humility is to cultivate that ground. The more humble we are, the richer that ground will be. It is the soil from which the god self grows.

Humility is the attitude, the mental and emotional orientation that accompanies and makes effective the practice of the present moment. To practice the present moment is to tend the soil. Humility is the state of mind and the necessary posture for participating in the creative power of the Divine. It is the state of connectedness to your own potential, and the state of readiness for the action of the Divine in your life. There is no delusion in humility, no avoidance, no self hate, no judgment of self or others. There is no room for these things. Humility is perception cleansed of these distortions, and action purified of the falsifying effect these things have on our motives. To the mind characterized by humility, everything simply is. Humility is a state of undistracted consciousness. And that is the most powerful thing in the world.

The power of humility is in its practice. The practice of humility brings release of the self from the prison of ego, preconception, judgment, delusion, hesitation, fear. Humility is the basic human orientation of cooperation with the Divine, and provides the basis for all patience, kindness, love, compassion, forgiveness. These things are all emanations of divine power. It is only through humility that we become capable of them, and through their practice, capable of manifesting God, of unleashing the god self on the world.

And humility is the mental state most receptive to reality and to extraordinary possibility. So, it is humility that makes possible the realization of our dreams. It enables cooperation with the Divine in their achievement. Humility is the ability to let your dream be shaped according to what is, and to be joined to the great dream that is everything. In humility you can find your true place, your true expression, free of ego-driven demands on what those things should look like. Humility is the ability to respond without resistance to the role of the Divine in your unfolding.

Ever forward.

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The Boyne Valley, north of Dublin Ireland, is home to a place called Newgrange. There, in the middle of a field, stands a tumulus. At two-hundred and fifty feet across, and forty feet high, it spans an entire acre and is thought to be at least five thousand years old. On the southeast side an entrance opens into a sixty-foot passage that leads to a beehive shaped chamber, twenty feet high, at the heart of the mound.

Each year at the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year, the first rays of dawn strike a specially crafted window above the entrance, and the stones shape the light into a point on the ground. As the sun rises, this pointed band of light grows longer and longer, creeping along the floor of the passage until it reaches the chamber, sixty feet inside. There it proceeds to drive out the subterranean darkness with light bright enough to read by, and sustain the light for more than a quarter of an hour. Then, the chamber fades to darkness again, and the line of light recedes back down the passage just as it came.

To see the event on the day of the solstice you literally have to win a lottery. But I've twice been to Newgrange, twice followed the sixty foot passage to the chamber within to see the electric-light simulation. It makes the point and it leaves the imagination to feast on what the real event must be like.

Just building the tumulus was an act of mythic magnitude. There are ninety-seven stones surrounding the base of the mound, and each would have required a separate adventure just to find it, never mind bring it back. Each one weighs about eighteen tons and came from as far as twenty miles away. The quartz that adorns the entrance (literally tons of it) probably came from Wicklow, seventy-five miles to the south. All this at a time when Ireland was a vast primeval forest and it was dangerous work just hiking to the next village. And it would have taken at least three generations to plan and build the tumulus, so the visionaries never saw the completed project, and the people who finished it may never have known the visionaries.

All that effort. A one hundred year project that must have impacted the time and resources of an entire society, in a world where time was precious and resources hard won. Just to fill an underground chamber with light? I don't know what they meant by it, but Newgrange remains the greatest symbol for the mythical nature of human experience that I have ever come across. Better than any actual myth I've read. So simple, as basic as it gets, and yet so complete. There is no human situation for which the illustration is not relevant. Light literally penetrates the earth and fills the darkness with illumination. It is us. By taking the mythic path we enact this process in our own lives. We allow light to flood the inner self and bring into view that which was before hidden in shadow. And so much remains hidden.

Earth, stone, light and darkness. Human striving. Myth itself caught in the act.

Ever forward.

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Fear and judgment surround us like a fence. We live inside this fence, in seeming safety, keeping the fence itself at a distance. This is the Cult of the Known. We revere the known and stay inside it because the only way to go outside it is to venture through our own fears and move counter to our own judgments. We are all priests in the Cult of the Known, and we construct worldviews in homage to it, in hopes it will keep at bay the forces beyond the fence.

But any world view is just a set of opinions. These opinions may be shaped by experience or preference, maybe by example or pressure from others. But opinions they remain. No matter how progressive or expansive the worldview, it's still a closed system ultimately surrounded by the fence of fear and judgment. In the end, it's fear and judgment that give shape to any worldview. 

Some of us are very good at accepting others. And it's a good thing to constantly expand your world view. But even better is to dispense with it altogether, to stop looking at the world through a lens and just start looking at the world. If we had no fear or judgment we would have no worldview. We would have only an adventurous spirit and a tendency toward acceptance and compassion. All we could do would be to reside in the now, take situations as they come, and respond from the heart.

That's why the masters have always warned us against opinions. "Do not judge," Jesus said. It's one of the few commands he actually gave his followers. He recognized the human cult of the known and knew it had to be dismantled. This seemingly simple command, so easily reduced to a mere nicety, carries in it all the power needed to transform the individual and the world.

Fear and judgment prevent that.

Once you recognize your fears and judgments, you recognize the edges of your perspective. This recognition often happens through disturbance. When our boundaries are assailed by something challenging, a religious or moral difference for example, we can feel disturbed. Very often this awakens fear and we resort to judgment. Not discretion, not compassion, but self-preserving rejection of the thing causing the disturbance. Also known as judgment. Judgment is simply a technique for dealing with fear. It doesn't cause growth or healing, it just takes the edge off and in the end it helps fear to grow, or worse, converts it into hatred.

By pushing through fear and judgment we push our own envelope. We reject the Cult of the Known in favor of adventure beyond the fence. By embracing the disturbance and upheaval of challenge at our borders, we evolve our worldview into obsolescence. The best world view is not to have one. Without it acceptance of others and self is inevitable. Without it we can exist in a state of constant surprise. We can live here, now, and manage the details as the heart commands.

Ever forward.

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The sense of possibility is one of life's major gifts. It makes all the struggle valuable. But striving for vision will bring a form of madness, a level of focus that helps you keep going in the hard times. A willingness to endure, to continue, after a rest perhaps, but always to continue. This toil leads somewhere. It is the mythic path.

But its nemesis lurks: the madness that accompanies lack of vision. This madness dulls the sharpness of being, results in the status quo, and puts a negative, hopeless connotation on the word "dream."

It may have been mad of Odysseus to leave Calypso's island. The struggle ahead of him was epic. But his vision would not let him rest. And the alternative was worse. The alternative was madness combined with stasis, resulting in a world of shrinking possibilities.

Ever forward.

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