The Symbol of Water (#1 of 5)

INTRODUCTION TO READING 1: In last week's gospel readings, there was an appearance of the figure of Satan in the wilderness, acting as the Tempter of Jesus. Rather than understanding Satan as a literal being, many biblical scholars view its appearance symbolically, as the arising of a potentially destructive state of mind. In this week's readings, the figure of Satan is again brought into the story as the Accuser of Jesus. But this time, the reference to Satan is not understood as a state of mind that is afflicting Jesus, but Peter, who Jesus then confronts. It is interesting to note that what sparks this destructive state of mind in Peter is how Jesus is planning to deal with impending losses in his life, including his own death.

Mk 8:31-38Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get out of my way, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

INTRODUCTION TO READING 2: Our second NT reading, from the book of Romans, describes a symbolic form of death, which is tied to the sacramental experience of baptism in water. It reads as follows:

Rom 6:3-11

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we trust that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Symbols of Transformation: Water

In the symbolic world of Jewish and Christian scripture, when the action of God is portrayed as Water, it is most often connected with the washing away of something that is both false and harmful. In the poetic language of scripture, the movement of God as Water over our lives transforms us… through it we become spiritually “clean.”

To be “clean” or “unclean” spiritually – has proven to be a potentially dangerous metaphor, one that has often been associated with violence in the history of religion. Violence against people who were simply different – perhaps in their physical appearance or capacity, or in how they understood themselves and their world. The lessons of history are now helping us understand that it was essentially because of such differences that many so-called “religious” persons labeled those that were different from them as “spiritually unclean” and proceded to prey upon them in holy wars, witch hunts, crusades, and other violent forms of domination. Religious predators often justified their actions, claiming that such violence was actually helping their victims to purify their souls and become “clean” spiritually.

These same dynamics of the cycle of violence still exist today in virtually every world religion, and in many, less formally organized spiritual sects. Persons who get caught up in these dynamics often take up ancient wisdom teachings, in a literal way, unaware of the harmfulness of their own motives, and proceed to use religion as a weapon against those they seek to control, or eliminate. Raging, against women, against persons of certain races and ethic backgrounds, castes, sexual orientations, and virtually any human difference that does not conform to their established ideal.

In more progressive religious circles, such as we here seek to be, our focus is often on the need for strategic political responses to these kinds of human rights problems in our world. And rightly so. Still, there is a more subtle, spiritual response that is at least as important:

We ourselves need to understand and experience in a more pure form, the sacred truths, which these toxic religious movements are misunderstanding ...in their views of evil, sin, Satan, and the unclean, views which are bearing such tragic and terrible fruit in our world.

We need to understand and experience the reality of God as Water, washing over us, making us spiritually clean.What on earth can that symbol actually mean in our real life experience in 2009, in London, Ontario?

To find out how we can actually benefit from the symbol of God as Water, we can begin by turning in our minds to what we know through experience of literal, physical water making contact with our skin.

If you like, you can close your eyes... And imagine with me for a moment that you are in a comfortable, safe place, where you have unlimited access to the freshest, purest water on the planet. It has all of the natural properties of water. It is clear and wet. It is soothing, cleansing, and healing. It can also be startling – a real 'wake up call' – if you get a cold splash of it. And it can be fatal if you are immersed in it for long enough. And now open your eyes... and be aware that you're safely here on dry ground; you’ve only been imagining the experience of water (unless we have another leak in the roof somewhere!)

These properties of water (soothing, cleansing, healing, startling, surrounding) are not new to us. We know from experience that water has all of these properties. That kind of knowing – knowing by direct experience – gives us great confidence. No one could convince us, for example, that pure water is not wet, or not cleansing and soothing for the skin. Because these are not just our opinions, we have evidence from our own experience that they are true. We know “intimately” what water is like. And because of that, we can re-experience water in our imaginations. This kind of active imagining is not the same thing as just “thinking about” water. It takes us to a deeper level when we actively imagine the experience of water touching us.

The reason that we did that little exercise is because, actively imagining, or bringing to mind memories of experiences that we have had with these various properties of water,prepares us to begin relating to water inwardly, as a powerful spiritual symbol. Water is the typeof symbol that, in its very nature, can transmit to us something of the real nature of God.

Our physical memories of these properties of water, when we re-experience them within our imaginations, can guide us directly into a live experience of God in the present moment, in which God is, in a sense, behaving, like water. The experience of God as Water is an experience of being cleansed, soothed, and healed through contact with God's own presence. The experience of God as Water is also startling, awakening, and this awakening to the reality of God in our experience changes everything, because it changes our perspective of who we are. It is in this way that this experience of God as Water, when we allow it to wash over us, brings about a kind of death. But it is not a literal death. It is a symbolic death. (It is a death of something even more subtle than our physical body.) It is a death to that within us (within our understanding of who we are) which is false, illusory, nottruly who we are. To call it a “death” rings true in terms of how many people say they experience this immersion in God as water, but it is very ironic, because in this symbolic death, what dies was never really alive. What dies is something within us which cannot say “yes” to life. What dies in us is that false way of being, which imagines itself to be unlovable, and so becomes incapable of loving. What dies in us is what the poetry of Ezekiel describes as the 'heart of stone.' (Ez 36:26), the heart which has no beat, no pulse, no life force, no roots tapping into the Source of all life and love. What dies is that mysterious obstacle within us which blocks us from realizing our true potential as human beings, blocks us from the kind of vitality and connectedness and love that we long to embody in our daily lives.

The experience of God as Water is the startling discovery that something within us, something within our very image of ourselves is both false and the cause of unnecessary suffering in our lives.... and that that “something” can be dissolved, spiritually washed away.

There are some kinds of suffering in life that are unavoidable, because of our vulnerable natures. For example, if you break your leg in a skiing accident, you are going to feel pain. If you lose someone that you love, you are going to feel pain. There are just certain situations in life where, unless there is damage to our nervous system, or we are taking some sort of anesthetic, we are, inevitably, going to experience pain. (Right?)

But there are other kinds of suffering which are not at all inevitable, not at all necessary. These kinds of suffering are like adding salt to a wound. They create an experience of pain which is far above and beyond the pain of the original wound. For example, if a person who breaks their leg in a skiing accident... and then, in addition.... gets carried away by all sorts of story lines and images of himself or herself as a fool, a failure, or one who is being punished for some reason.... that person is going to suffer much, much more than he or she would from a broken leg alone. And that “extra” suffering is unnecessary suffering. It's a kind of psychological law: Any time that I inwardly take some false image of myself to be true, to be “the real me,” I suffer. And that suffering is unnecessary.

It may sound unusual that we can discover that a part of ourselves, one that we have perhaps always taken to be true, is actually false. But, if we think about it, this kind of discovery is actually quite common. Often there is a crisis of one sort or another that precipitates it. For example, someone that we love contracts a life-threatening illness. Suddenly that image of ourselves – the one with our loved one always by our side, or at least always within reach.... begins to shatter. We discover that this dreamy, gratifying image of ourselves, which may have been a key source of inner comfort and stability in our lives, is actually false. That image of ourselves as one- who-would-never-lose-his-or-her-beloved was never really true, but as long as our loved one was literally right there by our side, the truth of that image of ourselves wasn’t fully tested ....and so.... that dreamy image of ourselves as one-who-would-never-be-acquainted-with-grief... could feel like it was true.

These kinds of rude awakenings happen all the time, not only in major crisis situations. For example, when I've had a very long day, and it's 5:00 p.m., I just can't wait to get home. Inwardly, I have a wonderful image of myself arriving home, maybe taking a nice hot bath, having a relaxing dinner, and watching the 6:00 o'clock news. And it is a profoundly comforting image. I just can't wait to see it come true. But then, suddenly, I find myself locked in the middle of an enormous traffic jam, and it becomes clear that I will be lucky if I get home even by 7:00 pm, and there's nothing that I can do to change that, nothing that will make life happen in the wonderful way that I imagined it happening in my mind. In that moment, it starts to dawn on me that this image of myself that I was so enchanted with, that I was so counting on becoming true... is false. But, still, that inner image, even though it's false, can stir up plenty of trouble -- just like the Tempter in the wilderness. If I don't become aware of this subtle process that is going on inside of me during that traffic jam, I can spiral into a depressive sulking and brooding about “Why is it always me?”, or road rage toward other drivers (“It's all their fault!”), or some other kind of “extra” suffering. I need a splash of cold water in the face, so that I can wake up to the fact that I am very close to creating a big dose of unnecessary suffering in my life that will take this frustrating situation and make it much, much worse.

Virtually every loss that we experience in life – whether it is the loss of another person, or a treasured ability, situation, or object—brings about a kind of death experience within us. With that loss, a treasured part of ourselves (or, more accurately, a treasured part of our self-understanding) dies. A part of us that actively imagined that this loss would never happen to us. From the moment that the loss actually does happen, we can never again experience that naïve part of ourselves as true (and good), because our own life experience has proven that dreamy image of ourselves to be false (and untrustworthy).

It is at these junctures in life (our losses, great or small) that we encounter great possibilities – possibilities of both spiritual decline, and spiritual growth. On the one hand, the temptation is to make the inevitable pain of the loss much worse... by refusing to let go, refusing to accept that this beautiful, loss-free image that we had of ourselves is no longer believable (trustworthy). The growth opportunity, on the other hand, is to open our hearts and minds and bodies to an experience of God as Water. Allowing that Divine Water to wash over us, letting it wash away all that is false. Letting that image of ourselves which we may have clung to very tenaciously for a long period of time... to submerge and be laid to rest... to be “buried” (symbolically) in the Divine Water that is God. Emerging from this experience of God as Water, we still experience the inevitable pain of the loss, but we experience it in a clean way, without the unnecessary suffering that comes from clinging to a false view of ourselves.

The experience of God as Water is necessary, because loss is not optional. Loss is an inevitable part of life. And it is painful. Life has its inevitable “ups” and “downs.” They happen to us all, and they convey no real truth about who we are as persons.

So, if we are clinging to an image of ourselves that imagines that our life really is (or should be) like this:

then we are in for a dose of unnecessary suffering... because, in reality, we just don't have that kind of control over life's vicissitudes. We we may often enjoy the fantasy that we could have that kind of control if only we had the right kind of know-how.... (“ye shall be as gods...” Genesis 3:5), but that is not the good life. The good life isn't about running from the truth of the way things are. Life's “ups and downs” really are not optional.

On the other hand, the spiritual experience of God as Water is optional. It doesn't “just happen.” We have to open ourselves to it. We have to invite it into our particular experiences of pain over loss. And it is not a ‘quick fix.’ It is not something to do lightly, because the experience of God as Water really is the acceptance of a kind of dying process. It is a surrendering, over time, of what grace has enabled us to see is a false view of ourselves. It is, in the words of Saint Paul, our baptism into Christ, our baptism into his death (Rom 6:3-11).... because the death he died he died to all that is false. And following his Way we die the very same death in our experience of God as Water.

Sometimes we have false views of ourselves that are very longstanding (“chronic”) – they may have been with us, taken to be true and acted upon, for such a very long time, that they have actually become part of our character. For example, I grew up in a context in Detroit, where I learned that people, other than family, were basically not to be trusted. In context, that was often true, because it was not a safe neighborhood. But you can guess what happened; that mistrust of people became very natural for me. So for many years, long after I left the context I grew up in, it still seemed to be just a natural part of who I was that I didn't likepeople very much (which is different – more upsetting – than just having an introverted style, which many people do.)

I was being quite “honest”... in a sense. I honestly didn't like people very much. I preferred being on my own. But what I didn't realize was that this self-that-didn't-like-people-very-much was false. It was not the real me at all. It was based on a lie, which, because of the crazy context I grew up in, I had come to regard as true: that people are no good; that they just can't be trusted. So they need to be kept at a safe distance.

Now, of course, sometimes that is true... for some people, some of the time, in some situations. But it's certainly not always true for all people. For this false, unsociable self of mine, though, it was true about everyone. And, as you can imagine, that created a lot of unnecessary suffering in my life, because it left me with no way to meet my genuine needs for friendship and closeness to others. This seemingly 'natural' part of myself was preventing me from developing close relationships with people.

Over the years, that experience of myself in relation to others has changed a lot, so that now, I actually do like people, and can enjoy being with them. But that has taken a lot of water! A lot of experiences of God as Water, showing me, in those difficult moments, that I can let go of this self image that for so long had kept me away from others. I discovered that, in a kind of wordless prayer, I could just let that liberating water that is God wash over me and let that false self begin to dissolve, and nothing terrible happened. In fact, wonderful things happened. I began to discover the joy of just being with others as I am.

So, even longstanding patterns of character can be changed over time, when there is some openness to the experience of God as Water. The subtle choices that we make—often automatically, which hold us back from growth, which deny our true nature and potential as the (natural) offspring of God—are really not irresistible or inevitable, as long as we can call upon the liberating experience of God as Water.. The water that frees us from the ego's lies andprepares us to understand our true identity, which is hidden, within God.

This gracious experience of God as Water is always awaiting us, in every moment, even now, in as much intensity as we are able to take in—whether that is a drop, or a stream which only flows over the parts of that we feel save exposing, or a gentle, all-pervading mist, or full immersion into the depths of grace. Waiting to liberate us from those states of mind and heart which lock us into harmful patterns that create suffering in our lives and the lives of others. (When we are feeling that something harmful to ourselves or others is natural... that is a sure sign of a need for water.) It sets us free.

And yet... as we continue in this series, we will see that the experience of God as Wateris not enough. This symbol reveals only a partial truth. One facet of the whole. If we were to take in this one symbol as the whole of our symbolic life, we could become quite imbalanced. We could easily become preoccupied with the false and the harmful things that we discover – in ourselves and in others – and even try to forcefully get rid of them. We can start waging our own little holy war against the things we don't like in ourselves and others. But that doesn't work; it only makes matters worse. The symbol of God as Water reveals just the beginning of the program of Christian spirituality. That initial experience of God as Water will safely carry us, if we want to go along for the ride, into a still deeper experience of God, the experience of God as Spirit. Working together, the symbols of God as Water and God as Spirit are the symbols of initiation into the Christian way of life, the symbols that we find at the center of the sacramental experience of baptism.

And so, next time, we will continue on, out of the Water and into the Spirit.

Comments

Dr.Time

Posted on: 05/31/2009 23:51

Greetings:Is this picture asking one to go a bit further and explore?In religion-is it`s meaning to review?Certainty being an uncertainty is always in review.Spirituality is giving reality a try,being free so to speak.Is religion about being free or about being devoted to a certain principle and society directed set of regulations?

Is God the devotion of religion or spirituality?

Does God have a set of regulations?

Does God ask for anything other than to *believe and follow that belief*?

Does God say there are right and wrong ways to destiny or just follow your belief?

Is the O.T.-K.J.V. so reliably written as promotion of God and love and speaks that God does not promote killing ?Shouldn`t it have been written with better stories about God using characters such as Moses and David to change and save in non-physical violence tactics?Does the true God have to kill physically to make the required changes of a Heaven to Earth transformation reality-no God does not!?

God is the word and the word is God.The pen is mightier than the sword.What does the phrase,*That being needs to have the fear of god put into them*? I really like this concept**Sin and you will go to hell,die and you will go to heaven** Did Moses,David or Paul kill or ask God to help them kill,physically? Did they sin? Did they go to heaven or did they go to hell? Is the names God and Jesus mixed up-backwards so to speak in principle teaching? Caain killed Able-Caain being the son and Adam being the *father* of humanity,Spiritual or Religion?

True reality-very difficult to explain,isn`t it? Does it take a religious book or a spiritual-psychic(mental)telepathical(mental)internal visual(mental)or just belief to know the truth?

or a combination of all there is along with experience and open mindedness to converse with GOD?

Just thinking:I really must be as crazy as they say I am.

Posted on: 06/01/2009 00:09

P.S.::: That meeting place between the water and land and the sky_+Could that be said as the *fine line*one is so said to be walking on as WORD useage?

The truth is said to scare the hell out of oneself.Would one use words and vision or a sword to do so in a non-physical-violent action?Ask God to personally put the fear of God into oneself and find out the truth what procedure God does use.One will without a doubt be in for the surprise of their life.

WaterBuoy

Posted on: 06/04/2009 09:16

Is God a crazy idea without a controlling factor for that burning bo^sh (fiery chaos, 'she' in old Hebrew). Does it take a whole array of materials for the ancient fire carrier to contain and control the emotions that that one does not injure self or the significant "other" (now that's a stretch for a mortal)?

I repeat an earlier comment from either Louis Buscalia (spelling?) or Robert Fulgum:

"A man that talks to God is holy ...

A man that God talks to is crazy ..."

Consider this plaguerism of ancient words where: "a man that declares God in the latter days will be considered a fool" Should, perhaps in his latter days he should be revealing some emerging wisdom instead of teaching more greed ... unbound love ... jealous Love?

To shed wisdom, would one have had to learn something in life about life's mistakes? Then how does one get around this with the don't look, don't listen and don't tell simian attitude where no errors could ever be corrected. It is a sacred trust like bam bi D'eire on the ice ... if you don't have a pleasant story to tell ... shut up ... the shadow created by an enlightened mind, or is that upside-down ... reciprocal? Consider injuries perpetuated by authorities of the church (blind to Light leadership) that bury all injuries of physical, mental and spiritual nature by means of the covenant of the story ... it is there but you have to dig for it, if you tell we'll get you and send you to hell ... an enlightened pool in the pits of the soul? If you look into the bore is there a face returning the stare like a conned science, omnisceance? OOOOO that's dark!

Is the soul complex, like the deeps spoken of in the beginning of Genesis ... T'home as spoken of in another Blog by mice elf? One needs Light to probe the depths but use prudence deire .. learn something about what's coming ... it's in the books ... err ... tome? Odd thing that many people never crack ID! To them means, medium of thinking is the devil when countered by blind desires ... love dies becoming aware and a true Paris (pairs) emerges! It is an odd process in space this gathering ... Go'de, or is tha Qo'de with a slip of the penne in the shadows of miz-taken spirit of word?