Excerpt: BOFAW, Chap. 4, “A Class is Born.”
Therefore, the following clarifications were made:
1. The class was not a philosophy class.
2. The class was not a religion class.
3. The class was not a spirituality class.
Spirituality noun: the vital principle or animating force within living beings: breath, divine spark, élan, vital life source, psyche, soul.
When I asked the Biodesign Class of ’79, “How many of you have a soul?” every hand shot up.
“Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.” Black Elk.
Webster did an honorable job of attempting to define the indefinable. Using words to describe spirit can be as difficult as capturing lightening in a bottle. Perhaps, because of its mysterious nature, it just might be the most profound gift that was given to humans. Alfred Wallace reminded Darwin that his theory could not explain spirituality and Darwin agreed.
Perhaps the pathos of the word can be better felt by imagining what life would be without it. Therefore; Imagine what a life would be like without joy and sorrow; faith, hope or love; without values, free will and consciousness of truth, beauty and goodness. Imagine a life without peace, patience, gentleness, serenity, light-heartedness, kindness, laughter, tenderness and happiness; even anger, fear and lust (attenuated) play roles. When a person approaches a life like this due to disease, accident, or traumatic brain injury, he is often described as in a vegetative state. Tragically, there is a sever lack of spirit.
The Biodesign Class was an advanced biology class and even though we studied Black Elk:
“And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.”
And John Muir:
“Everything is so inseparably united. As one begins to describe a flower or tree or a storm or an Indian or a chipmunk, up jumps the whole heavens and earth and God Himself in one inseparable glory”:
Or the many passages from Thoreau and Emerson that speak of the power of nature to transcend man’s thoughts to the spiritual level, the focus was not on philosophy, religion or seeking spirituality directly, but on the human brain’s ability to approach such issues. In fact the word “God” rarely came up in conversations, but many students could see that, whether sitting in classroom circles, or on top of Half Dome or at Grand Canyon or Mendocino, the conversations frequently soared to an otherworldly height. Whether they identified it or not, each had the potential of becoming a beacon of light that guided and inspired the unique, collective experience of each class.
Sometimes, however, my enthusiasm (filled with spirit) got carried away. I was passionately reading a passage from an inspired writer, around a warm and snuggly campfire in Mendocino, and a skeptical, somewhat jaded student snapped at me, “You can’t force us to be inspired.” His words hung in the air and cast a cold pall over the circle. After a pregnant pause (and bruised ego) I agreed with him. He was right! I could not force them to be inspired and that is a good thing. It is certain that if I could I would have abused the practice. Spiritual epiphanies, whether personal or class-wide, were always spontaneous, and could not be planned, scripted or replicated. If they could have, they would have ceased to be spiritual.
In his book, Inner Work, Robert Johnson suggests that Carl Jung believed that God needs human agencies to assist in the carnation of his creation. Thomas Mann wrote in “Joseph and His Brothers, “God needed the ladder in Jacob’s dream as a way to come and go between heaven and earth.” The visions of human beings make such a ladder and transmit information into the collective conscious of humanity.
Another way of looking at this is that we are all capable of being little “Light Houses;” illuminating paths for fellow pilgrims to travel by. Comparing our lives to Thoreau’s walk in the woods, he felt that we should be deliberate, tranquil, even meditative. Muir “went out for a walk,” Thoreau preferred the word “saunter,” which he claimed derived from the French a’la sainte terre: “to the holy land.” [End of Part I]