Interview with Emily Horn: Awakening, Contemplation, Mystery by Evolutionary Landscapes

As part of January's question for EL, I spoke with Emily Horn on living as a contemplative in a contemporary age.

I began our conversation by asking her what it meant to be a mystic; but the term mystic, like mystical, carries with it a connotation that may not be appropriate for a more pragmatic age which shuns the hocus-pocus and supernatural subtext the word may carry. It may also lose the heart of what a so-called mystic may be doing. That is, the activity of contemplation. The etymological definition of this word is:

"religious musing," from O.Fr. contemplation or directly from L. contemplationem (nom. contemplatio) "act of looking at," from contemplat-, pp. stem of contemplari "to gaze attentively, observe," originally "to mark out a space for observation" (as an augur does). From com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + templum "area for the taking of auguries" (see temple).

The contemplative, then, creates a "space for observation" and that is none other than their own lives; their mind, body, environment, experience. Out of their life they build a "temple" (con-templative) and a rigorous and challenging practice of looking at themselves takes place.

Rather than mere self-absorbtion, the contemplative unites with the world.

It is possible, Emily suggests to me, that everything in the world can be seen as sacred. We can access a method of gazing at ourselves and the world that allows us to perceive this hidden, sacred quality. In this way, we walk through the world con-templatively – "with the temple" – because the sacred space is found everywhere.

Towards the end of our discussion, Emily balanced the geeky view – of meditators embracing technology and seeing contemplative practice as a kind of parallel "inner" science – with the acknowledgment that at the heart of a contemplative practice is mystery. It is the willing act of giving up our knowingness, not for ignorance, but humility towards this existence. The healthy scientist, like the contemplative, embraces a "don't-know" mind and is thus more receptive towards understanding the world than someone who believes we have it all figured out.

In regards to the future, she suggests that geeks will play a major role, but they won't be the only ones who have a voice. Artists and poets, too, belong to the emerging world.

I hope you enjoy our discussion. It left much to ponder on being a modern spiritual practitioner, and reminded me that the sense of mystery has in no way left us in the age of abundant information.

Related Links:

Emily Horn's website

Ordinary Awakenings

 

 

by Miriam Gabriel

A poetic sensibility is a giving bud that can keep a scholar sane during the most hard-nosed of debates. I am sure that many can relate to this statement of gratitude to one’s inner poet, and I certainly declare it with a rich gratitude to wherever corners of humanity that spilled their poetics into my life.

As I discussed graduate degree options today with my beloved partner in every way Jeremy Johnson and my best friend of six years Eddie Gonzalez – the former who is studying for his masters with me, at the alternative Goddard College, and the latter who is preparing his doctorate and third graduate degree at the established Boston College and about to present for the Vatican II anniversary – I found myself torn between being engaged with the world as a contemplative and as a scholar-activist.

I am passionate about addressing the suffering of my contemporary human beings in the Liberation Theology sensibility of academe, yet – after owning up to my mystic spark, which Goddard embraces warmly and engages with critically and empathetically and in every welcoming way really, how can I ever see that as separable from the yolk and fizzle and silence and activity and signs of life that I am? And can the academic cloister ever let me in as a humble equal as such?

After taking you the reader on this brief loop of heartfelt, existential queries and puzzles about what to become, I will explain why I share this poem with you: because, throughout the night, I knew what not to become. I partook in bashing, and bashed and sneered at a clinical, categorically chaining, unaware-of-its-biases approach that I have witnessed repeated through color-coded terminology like chews on the same stale piece of integral gum, with the saliva proposed as balm for all of humanity. Does not sound very kind, doesn’t it?  

I wrote this poem to practice compassion and understanding towards even the thinkers through which, as one human being, I feel categorized and misunderstood and viewed rather than seen. My bashing was a clear seeing that I was viewing as well, and categorizing. After all of the fruits of critical thinking and soul searching, and after acknowledging that the mythopoetic story of my poem may or may never be accurate, here is to compassion.  

 

The Cartographer’s Collected Works

 

Eyes smothered by a candle light

Warm, not burning, of a noosphere,

Hands numbed treading

The blogosphere

As an effort to hold hands

With critics and conscientious objectors,

He beheld his balding head fixed

At the crucifix of shaking it

Dismally, and nodding in humility.

“Now the suffering are most lost

In my maps. When did I lead them there?”

Seas of scholars and adepts and activists

Parted before him usually,

And he walked through the aloof

Back of their neck like justified tension.

Leading… some people, somewhat… "at best?"

The women picking wheat and barley

And with their breasts nursing their muscles

And with men’s nipples piercing gender robes

Locked their souls in thousand deconstructive hyphens

Before the cartographer ever labeled their

Sensitive green ass selves.

Children tanned by their ancestors’ shores,

Danced in riots atop his psychology textbooks

Evoked spirits with a spliff and

Ravished their red consciousness with

Brown and mocha visions

That they shouted outside his window.

The purples and magentas in monasteries

Counted their sins, in communes

Moaned with every dish washed, without

Ever bothering to search for his name;

The inner map of a heart opening

At its back with etheric wings, on a bad day,

Needed a GPS at most to chart its service.

“Not a single holistic blue ever called with a congrats.

“Not a single one called me family.”

 Years of waning tendons and spilled ink,

“And still so many never made it into

“The chartings of my intellectual heart.

This is all doubt, dissent, and diddlings

Of his glands in need of further evolution.

That was his brisk mantra from dusk to dawn

And dawn to dusk. Last night, however,

He dozed off with a door left ajar for one more diddle,

Stray barley, shout, moan, phone call,

Off-stage stage of consciousness

From the big mind o’ mine:

Burn it, smell it burning by candlelight.

The cartographer must burn the map

To run on his eternal light.

 

 

 

 

Last August in 2011, I spoke with Charles Eisenstein about sacred renewal and the spiritual crisis of our times. He offers a unique perspective on the cultural challenges facing us. We discussed both of his books, Sacred Economics and Ascent of Humanity, as well as what got him started on his own personal journey into asking – and responding to these existential questions.

"In a way we're an anti-materialist culture. And that's the problem – because we're not treating it as sacred."

Podcast:

A Conversation With Charles Eisenstein by Evolutionary Landscapes

Video Interview (Please excuse the lighting):

Charles Eisenstein writes for Reality Sandwich regularly, and offers the entire book, Sacred Economics, free in serial form.

Ascent of Humanity is also available in its entirety.