A virgin forest blossoming
Virgin forest symbolizes the original untamed, undifferentiated nature of reality and awareness: the lushness of diversity within the omnipresent act of creation; the womb of life, overflowing with opportunity for all. Blossoming signifies the spontaneous, uncontrived, self-generated bursting forth of creation: the thriving of beings when left to their natural course of development; the creative activity of noninterference. This aspect is a sign of the beauty, elegance and charisma of the spirit in its natural glory and ecstatic being as expressed in untouched living sites of nature—also, the corresponding refuges of pure intention within the imaginal realm of objective psyche.
EXOTERIC. Certainty is the tip of the iceberg of living truth: savants avoid the pit of enlightenment. When interpretation becomes dogmatic belief and the search for truth becomes certainty, then conflict and confrontation with others follows close behind. When glimpses of The Beyond are taken for direct experience of the whole of Creation, then misinterpretation has pulled the ego-identity into the trap of conceptualization—ideas about awakening are barriers to awakening; mistaking conceptualization for enlightenment is mistaking a mirage for the oasis. Savants dwell in the Great Mystery, allowing the natural course of the Void to renew the creative activity of the living universe.
ESOTERIC. The lineage of teachers and students spans a single generation: the forest of trees is no different than the alliance of souls—the single generation of seed-souls is everywhere the same. Existing in cyclic time, the seed-tree-seed cycle of birth-growth-birth, is no different than the birth-death-rebirth cycle of reincarnation: trying to conceive of the underlying reality is like the drop of the ocean trying to swallow the ocean. Yet, the drop of the ocean is in the state of at-one-ment with the whole of the ocean; it is just that there is an unpassable abyss between belonging together with reality and forming concepts of reality. Savants gauge every understanding within the context of an eternity of ongoing revelations.
William Douglas Horden: Shapeshifter’s Almanac
From time to time will include excerpts from William Horden’s Toltec I Ching and related writings. This excerpt is from his ‘Shapeshifter’s Almanac’ which provides a one-page text to contemplate for each day of the year. This particular one resonates with Buddhist doctrine in that it elegantly elucidates the difference between the concept of emptiness, realization or enlightenment versus actual experience and/or underlying reality.
When glimpses of The Beyond are taken for direct experience of the whole of Creation, then misinterpretation has pulled the ego-identity into the trap of conceptualization—ideas about awakening are barriers to awakening; mistaking conceptualization for enlightenment is mistaking a mirage for the oasis.
…
Yet, the drop of the ocean is in the state of at-one-ment with the whole of the ocean; it is just that there is an unpassable abyss between belonging together with reality and forming concepts of reality. Savants gauge every understanding within the context of an eternity of ongoing revelations.
I especially sat up with the opening sentence of the Exoteric section: Certainty is the tip of the iceberg of living truth: savants avoid the pit of enlightenment. This is basically the same as the famous ‘Kill the Buddha!’ admonition from the Zen tradition. When I was an active eager student during the days when my guru-teacher was alive, there was hardly ever a mention of ‘enlightenment’ or ‘realization.’ It must have come up from time to time but I cannot recall a single time. No doubt this was the case because the more one talks about such things, the more one tends to get trapped in various types of conceptual hell from which one cannot easily extricate.
‘Nuff said!
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