by Roger Mock
Songwriter Bruce Cockburn, (who, you may notice, I have a habit of quoting) has a song with the chorus, “The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.” His song addresses the political realities that cause the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer and to remain mostly out of sight of those of us in the middle, maintaining a semblance of normalcy that keeps us from rocking the boat.
It’s a potent song, but today I’m thinking about another kind of normalcy, yet just as pernicious. It’s the normalcy of our day to day existence. It seems innocent enough, but here’s the problem: it keeps us from experiencing God. Or we could say Reality, or Truth, or the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s the mundane world of waking and showering and breakfasting and going to work and coming home and dining and watching television and going to bed. The irony is that for most of us, most of the time, the waking part never really happened; on the spiritual level we’re still asleep.
I think it is the goal of all the spiritual paths to wake us up to that deeper Reality. Most of these traditions began when someone saw through the veil and experienced the transcendent beyond it. Or maybe “beyond” is the wrong word. They experienced the transcendent everywhere in that moment as the unreal gave way to the Real. And they shared their experience. They taught others and gathered a community around the teachings. Jesus in the Jordan and on the hill of transfiguration. Buddha under the bodhi tree. Muhammad in the cave.
Because they “woke up” they understood that they had been asleep and that humanity remained in that condition of ignorance. The whole purpose, then, of the movements they began was to wake us from the deadness of the normal to the resurrection of a life lived in deep connection with Source.
This is the experience described in the Book of Revelation, Chapter 21:
Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
This is generally taken to be a description of a future heaven, far removed from this world. I think it is a description of what Jesus experienced here in this world and what Buddha experienced and what all the awakened ones have experienced. I think it is our birth right to experience being made new in every moment.
There are ways that we can begin to invite the mystical, the Divine to wake us from our sleep, to jar us out of the normal and into the numinous. Sir Alister Hardy founded the Religious Experience Research Center in 1969 to investigate the nature of mysticism. His studies revealed 21 major stimuli which can trigger a mystical experience. Of these, five are of the “crash and burn” variety: depression, illness, personal crises, grief, the prospect of death. “Crashing and burning,” I’m afraid, is the most common way of letting go of our grip on the normal enough to lead us to an experience of Truth. But also near the top of the list are things like meditation and contemplation, the experience of natural beauty, participation in worship, and engaging with the arts.
These latter examples are all ways (or can be) of “paying attention,” of being in the moment, opening ourselves with curiosity to a greater Reality.
I can recall having some close calls in the past where I appeared to be headed for a “crash and burn;” the kind of mini-crisis that makes you lose your footing for a moment and feel as though you are a passenger in a car careening toward a precipice. I remember the feelings of relief and gratitude when events resolved and the “crash” didn’t happen. But I also remember noticing something else on one occasion – I could feel myself settling back into… normalcy. The experience had brought me to a different kind of attention – and that was a good thing. I had tried more fervently to connect with God, with my faith and trust and inner strength. And now I felt that muscle relaxing as if to say, “It’s okay; just a nightmare. Go back to sleep.” No! Keep the gift of that near crisis, I told myself. Stay awake. Some words from Rumi came to mind:
The Breeze at Dawn
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep
You must ask for what you really want
Don’t go back to sleep
People are moving back and forth
Across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep
Here’s to waking up from our stubborn adherence to the sleep of normalcy and to walking through that round and open door. On that door is inscribed the words, “Behold! I make all things new.”
love and light,
Roger