Tend the Heart Well

The spark, the grace and the longing

Happy New Year! All good wishes to you for the coming year, from me on the southern sea edge of the Archipelago of Brigid.¹

From the beginning in November 2022, this Substack has included many letters and excerpts from letters which I have sent to my dear ongoing correspondents. I only give names or initials when I have received permission to do so. Sometimes it is correct to anonymise them. I write best by communicating with friends, the land of my home here in Wessex, with certain trees, or materials which call to me, such as ochre and chalk. I am never really thinking on my own. Who is? We are always in conversation with other writing, our culture, the past, the natural world, and everything we do not yet know about ourselves.

Today, I would like to share a recent letter to my friend, from a series which truly helped strengthen, then crystallise, a few new compounds that had previously been sloshing around only in weak solution. ²

Towards an unobstructed spring

I have been thinking about the Great Mystery, 'God' and Tao all year without much pause. It has been exacerbated by not having been able to get to Mark’s T’ai Chi classes and push hands with my classmates, where so much of my un-wording and unwinding has taken place historically. Where the knowings and un-knowings that I have come to rely on have leaned into one another in the good, yielding, four ounce pressure of the correct touch. So I have been writing to you, and a couple of other dear friends, so that I may abide in good company with matters of heart. To hold things close enough that I can look deeply at them, but with the extra care that speaking to another requires, to have the necessary distance - just less than arm’s length, I think - so that I can see clearly without being distracted by the grain. But can take in the context, the room, and be able to look up and meet another’s eyes, and laugh again at my own seriousness.

Recently, I keep feeling that people are missing the prime movement for why they become interested in / beloved of / faithful to / or dedicated to anyone or anything. People talk about the 'what' and give convincing-sounding post-hoc justifications which make claims to rationality. But you can hear the joy in their voice, the sudden expressive gesture, when one’s sincere question returns them to the kernel of their unbidden enquiry. It is unmistakable and cannot be faked. How they truly got there, (the way in which), the original spark that connected them, the small voice that drew them a little closer, the joyous bubble in the chest in that first youthful conversation - even about science, or maths, or any subject whatsoever - was a feeling, not a rational thought. In my opinion: a divine feeling. A mini moment of first creation. A tiny shard of the original fiat lux - every time we come into deep connection with that which is not-self, or indeed, even with aspects of self that have been temporarily 'othered' by wrong view or sad event. The prodigal parts, finally welcomed home.

This generative synapse, (which I think is actually something having been longed-for in us coming into being via true connexion, by the receptivity of the emptiness that invites the spark), is there in my relation to all the things I love, and all the relationships I cherish, human and non-human. It is the irresistible undertow of most great music, art and thought. This longing, as Rumi so aptly put it. I think, when we are not entirely embattled, we are in a continual process of being made long by life, and that the ability to withstand this and to allow it to shape and transform us, is a central aim of our practice. 

I think that the process that you describe beautifully in chapter 28 of The Matter With Things, and originally in The Master and His Emissary, which happens when an aspect of the present moment has presenced freshly to the Right Hemisphere (RH), is apprehended briefly and helpfully by the Left Hemisphere (LH), then returned in more fulsome knowing to the RH, is the pattern of real knowing, in the context of (even an exceedingly brief amount of) passing time. Yet I think that it also happens, instantaneously, as a form of Grace; in sudden knowing, love, the deep appreciation of arts, conversation, sometimes in our T'ai Chi or Heartwork practice and other varieties of - for want of a better word - religious experience. That one is to the other as 'gradual' and 'sudden' enlightenment are, in Classical Zen. There is 'just knowing'. And it feels to me exactly like the knowing that comes from the whole beautiful RH / LH / RH cascade. Both knowings are pure clear water in a pool, if you like. The first flows there along a short river bed, passing briefly through the soul’s landscape to arrive in the pool. The second is a spring and bubbles up straight from the rock.

Of course, it is just as good to drink from either. May we be blessed with both.

Everything for everyone and nothing for ourselves

³

This week I have mainly been feeling that 'Personal Salvation' and 'Individual Enlightenment' are oxymorons.

How it is only in the present moment that salvation or enlightenment exist. And that to seek heaven, salvation or enlightenment, (or what in Taoism is called ‘immortality’) just for oneself, is cutting off one's own roots: from ancestors, from fellows, from creation, from descendants. That it is a mis-construal of the religious urge, which is surely, to be joined again with all things, and not ‘to be right’.

That heaven is for everyone, of all eras, at all times, and is immanent.

That I would want nothing to do with a god who could choose between children, saving some and condemning others.

That there is no hard thing in my life that I will not seek to transform, as a sacred task.

That peace is the moment of forgiveness. That there are no ongoing or permanent 'states' of peace, forgiveness, blessedness, etc. One must renew them daily, as one would bestow a kiss upon the beloved’s head, upon waking.

That love (philia, agape, eros and infinitely more loves than these), like water, outlasts and wears out all other things, that connection is the conduit and only needs the clearing of obstructions. It doesn't need building, as connections between all things already exist, like channels in porous rock, if we only looked closely.

And when we do look closely, in every sphere of science or philosophy, at whatever scale, we see the fallacy of separation, of atomisation, for what it is: a cheap trick of false accounting in the dodgy double-entry ledger of the Left Hemisphere, (who is ruinously currently employed by the over-culture as the chief arbiter of value.)

That the channels available for connexion are often most abundant in the pumice-like soul-rocks formed in life’s volcanoes. That the heart’s caldera is where the trace elements needed for true psychic health⁴ are brought to the surface - the sulphur of determination, the mercury of adaptability, the lead of faith. All of which must sometimes periodically take the place of joy, until the steaming slopes cool enough for it to grow green again in every super-fertile new cleft.

That if we do not say ‘no’ to it, then we are instantaneously already interconnected, and that this is the most radical act possible, as love cannot be legislated for and is not manageable.

That it is entirely possible to love those who have gravely wronged us, and to wish them peace and liberation, without constraint, whilst still knowing that their actions were ill.

That this also applies to ourselves.

That the subversive energy of love is the greatest threat to the machine, as it defies all boundaries and classifications. This is why all current systems of oppression, including many governments and giant technologically pervasive corporations, seek to control, manipulate and reduce for whom we may feel love and care.

That this will never work, as we have evolved for and from delight.

The 'Kingdom of Heaven' is absolutely within all hearts, and does not require fixed beliefs. It is instead an ongoing living practice, like true wildness, of not seeking to control or dam one's native flow of goodness.

So, I am thinking about what a well-tending of the heart might look like.

A ragged shawl

I would love to belong within one canon, an extant orthodoxy, to have a readymade cohort of likeminded souls, with whom I could adhere to what wise words had already long been written. I am lucky to have stumbled early into a couple of wonderful wisdom traditions, via T’ai Chi and via my good childhood schools and churches. Lastly - yet also somehow foremost - the foundational school of embodiment in and as nature, through working with its wild materials, always to hand.

I have periodically genuinely tried to fit my soul into prior-named shapes. But it is always a Procrustean bed⁵, from which I awake the next morning, not only spiritually footless, but with a longing the size of an ocean bed, parched, and sending me crawling towards that which pulls me forwards - the Great Mystery. I find a similar yearning in your writing, and in the words and actions of those strangers and friends to whom I am drawn. It is part of my work to attempt to pull on all our dangling threads, to gather something together somehow, if only to make a small bright scarf to wear against the chilling winds of the machine.

These are the latest few lines of weft. I hope you recognise the pattern.

This week’s good thing: Community-owned hydro electricity, appropriately-scaled wind turbines, particularly offshore, and other ‘renewable’ energy sources, if agreed upon and genuinely beneficial to a local community and not enforced by government or absentee landowners, can sometimes be a good thing. There is an excellent document looking fairly at all sides of the issue, by author of Soil and Soul, Alastair McIntosh, click here. However, the huge cash crop of proposed giant 200m tall turbines planned for the Isle of Skye are neither locally wanted, nor will the energy or monetary benefits of them accrue to Skye itself. Most shockingly, they will desecrate what is to many people the wild jewel of the whole of Scotland. Skye is one of the last remaining places where the native peat bogs and rich wildlife remain. The Cuillin Mountains, wild coast and ‘fairy pools’ are renowned for their grandeur and beauty, and draw tourists and nature lovers from the whole world. More importantly, they are beloved of the Indigenous Hebridean people of Skye.

Iain McGilchrist spoke movingly at Perspectiva on 19th December 2023 at an online event with Alastair McIntosh, about the need to combat the industrialisation of wild places. The opposition is widespread and cuts across all sectors of Skye society, according to this report in the West Highland Free Press. If, like me, Iain’s work has meant a great deal to you, and if you would like to support genuine local opposition to the proposals by huge multinational companies to destroy Skye’s beauty and autonomy, then here is a link to a recent article and the campaign site which Iain has sent me: Change.org. It only takes one minute to sign the petition online. And here is more locally gathered information at: Skye Windfarm Information Group

1. The British Isles

2. All photos this week are from a visit to to Skye in 2012.

3. Subcomandante Marcos Our Word is Our Weapon

4. Of both individuals and of the collective culture of a place.

5. Procrustes