Art, Faith, and The Koko Lion: Digging Out the Well of Our Self

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Digging Out the Well of Our Self

"He who drinks from my mouth will become like me, and I will become like him, and the hidden things will be revealed to him."

Yeshua, The Gospel of Thomas, 108

A group of people stand looking down into a dry well. They complain about their thirst, about their withering gardens. One man, driven by desperation, at last steps up and climbs down into the well. He begins to dig, at first resenting the work, but then finding an easy rhythm and satisfaction in the effort, until finally he removes that last obstructing bucket of dirt, and breaks through to the great aquifer that flows underneath and through everything. The source that infuses and enlivens everything. The well begins to fill again with cool water, and bending over, still digging to assure the steady flow of this renewed life, he sees his own reflection in the source. He is this. What he thought he was, who he thought he was is only a reflection of this source.

And when he climbs back out of the well and meets with the various responses of the others—the heartfelt thanks, the casual acknowledgements, the proud dismissals; he carries with him that source reflection, only vertically now, so that wherever he goes he's looking into that. He sees his own reflection in the the faces of everyone that speaks to him. Their eyes are his eyes. Their fears and foibles and joys and realizations are his own.

"Thou art That"

Chandogya Upanishad, 6.12-14

So our very own form can provide us with the entry to that new, relaxed, and naturally productive way of seeing the world. Infused and enlivened by that flow. We are all the same thing. We all think the same thoughts and feel the same feelings. And where we used to entertain those cruelties that defined us—the harsh comparisons, snap judgments and righteous justifications, there now lives an easy sense of compassion—the door to source. This sweet and sustaining flow of source that is available to everyone is absolutely free, and totally liberating. It just takes a bit of humility, of "digging"—the honest self-examination that allows us to truly see ourselves. To learn who we really are meant to be, as opposed to who we think we're supposed to be; how did those psychic obstructions to source and purpose get put in place, and how do we remove them?

The most critical facillitating aspect behind discovering this freedom, the metaphor of "going down into the well" (in the prophet Yeshua's story), is finding your inner place of silence where you can gain the calm perspective on who you really are. Your own personal well, where the deepest obstructions between you and your source are hidden.

"In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness."

Mahatma Gandhi

By finding the silence within ourselves, we can individually defuse the demanding inner voice that provides life's running commentary, and then perhaps we can collectively turn off the delusional egoic "reality" that drives our species in ruinous directions. By becoming aware of it, we can strip away the obsessive "story of our life, our country, our people," etc., the delusional view of life that the Hindu call maya. Christians misinterpret it as sin (in the original greek of the canonical gospels: amartia, meaning "to miss the mark"). Buddhists call it selfish craving.

That silence resides in The Tao, The Brahman, The Kingdom of Heaven, in Emptiness, in Source Energy; and in us—within and without us. In that silence, in the absence of anything personal, that power lives. Then we find it's all personal. And we are all that person.

"The Kingdom is inside you, and it is outside you."

Logion 3, The Gospel of Thomas