Harboring Courage: Seeing What the Body Fears

“Ecco Dite” dicendo, “ed, ecco il loco,

ove convien che di fortezza t’armi.” 

“This is He” he said, “and behold the place

That calls for all the courage you have in you.”

(Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XXXIV, 20-21)

This much is clear: Not all light reflects or returns home. Reflection (in the most cosmic sense imaginable) is necessary to see the “invisible landscape” of the Real that constitutes a being-in-the-world. Logically, without this “harboring reflection,” the return, any being that emanates from the Absolute would simply “disappear into a homecoming-less ‘bad’ infinity and never return to the [center].” (P. Sloterdijk, Spheres II: Globes, p. 519).

This “chance” (if we can call it that) of cosmic homelessness provides all the more reason to flesh out the infernal zones of Life, i.e. spiritus, and the world, given also the inevitable dead ends we always and already encounter / welcome / come to know. If it is true, we may speculate, I am to descend into hell (and return?), poetically as well as practically, all the more reason I say to burn brighter, quantitatively hotter, to extend deeper roots, to become far more intense and more intimate with the secret worlds that are far and different from the center. 

How can we harbor the “right”reflection?  The Hindu word darshan is used to convey in-sight or “witnessing” in a phenomenal sense. Traditionally rendered “vision” or “sight,” darshan is an intrinsically transformative experience — a direct invitation and initiation into transcending the material limitations of perception in order to glimpse (or more accurately, experience) a deeper, ineffable dimension of reality behind ordinary consciousness. In this “moment of mysticism,” or initiation-through-seeing, the boundaries between the individual self and the Whole dissolve into an integrative, fluid, embodied existence. Ecologically, this affords or allows one to encounter the “divine” or spiritual, intrapsychic domain not as a distant, external realm, but instead as an intimate, flowing, living presence. 

Returning requires immense courage. A dose of caution: seeing is not passive. Darshan or inner vision requires both a sense of giving up the struggle and at the same time an openness to change, to new developments — classically, it involves an act of surrender and a readiness to be seized by revelation, “a free-flowing, excessive and elliptical mode of expression.” The mystic seer becomes both the beholder and a non-subjective participant in the unfolding of universal(izing) truth. Clear vision becomes a flash of direct realization, the unique experience of that supreme (im)personality of Logos. Seeing, at its highest level then, acts as a vehicle enabling one to connect with and ultimately understand the non-dual nature of being-in-the-universe. For the visionary, spirit is not a distant, unthinkable abstraction, but an ever-present actuality to be encountered / welcomed / known within as without, both as soul and in an embodied world.

Contemplation post-dream: Of course, it is less the details that makes the difference in sight, but the will to see what we will — and even more importantly (pragmatically), what we make of it — in effect creating our own mental reality / paradise / hell (as above, so below; as within, so without). 

When we face directly what is right in front of us, we either accept and “be with” it or we sweep it under the figurative rug (or at least many of us try), and in most cases confront utter futility in attempting to ignore, degrade, or flee from the here-and-now unfolding of the light. 

Is it the seen that lives or life that sees? Sometimes the body fears the spirit because the latter despises the former — to paraphrase Nietzsche’s Arch(e)aic prophet, Zarathustra: “Hardly the body is born when it begins to die… Thus does it wait and clench its teeth.” The wisdom of the body says, “Life is only suffering!” And it does not lie. “To be wicked,” says Zarathustra, mocking the preachers of death, “that would be true goodness.” Is this not the case for the so-called depressed and ill-spirited? If only I believed more in the vitality of Life, I might devote less of myself to the passing show and more in becoming who I am. Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science: “Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.” Dharma, the god of Duty and Death, teaches that if one is born to struggle, inshallah, trust in Him and struggle on. “Have courage,” says Krishna,” Armed with the sword of wisdom, stand and fight.” Zarathustra reminds us: “What warrior wisheth to be spared?”