Love, Deities and God:
Redemption and The Numinous Way
For many months, I have been seeking answers to questions such as - "Is
redemption, and thus genuine personal, spiritual, change and
development, possible without a belief in God, deities, Buddha, or a
belief in some personal reward - such as Heaven, Nirvana, Paradise?"
For there is a great need - or seems to be great need, as personal
experience reveals - for such a personal redemption when one is aware,
or becomes aware, through empathy and compassion, of how one's own
actions have caused suffering in the past.
One great benefit of conventional religions - which posit a Deity or
deities, a personal reward, or some kind of intercession - is prayer.
That is, a personal placing of the individual in perspective: there is
or can be a personal dialogue which provides, or which can provide,
comfort and reassurance, and sometimes even a feeling of love, of what
has been called spiritual
"grace". This is and can be cathartic, healing. Thus, there is or can
be personal redemption, or at the least the hope of redemption. Even
the old pagan religions, with their many gods and goddesses, allowed,
at least in some degree, for a personal supplication - for an
individual, private, communication with a deity or deities - which
supplication thus gave the individual, or could give to the individual,
that feeling of connectiveness, of belonging, which engendered hope,
and the prospect of a personal change of fortune, for the better.
One of the joys, the beauties, of a religion such as Christianity is
that it allows for and encourages such a sacred, numinous, catharsis
and healing: that is, there is grace and personal redemption, through,
for example, the private Catholic sacrament of Confession, the public
and private prayer of Anglicanism, and the quiet, inner, discovery of
The-God-within that lies at the centre of groups such as The Society of
Friends. Indeed, one might consider that it was and is the feelings of
love and hope and of redemption that arises or which can arise through
such prayer, through such a sacrament, through a belief in a divine but
personal Saviour, through a belief in The-God-within, which is one of
the great strengths of Christianity,
and which enabled Christianity to not only survive, and flourish as it
has done, but also become a great force for noble personal and social
change.
But, lacking such personal supplication - a belief in a Saviour -
lacking such a catharsis, such redemption, such as religious ritual,
prayer, and belief provides from Buddhism to Christianity to paganism
to Islam, what is there in respect of redemption for The Numinous Way:
for those individuals, such as myself, who cannot for a variety of
rational reasons believe in a supreme all-powerful Deity, in a personal
Saviour; in olden, ancestral, deities; in dogma; in the concept of
"sin"; or in following the teachings of some Master, or Buddha, the
following of which, it is claimed, will lead us to Nirvana?
Where can we find the joy of a supra-personal love? The gift of
spiritual grace? The redemption for deeds past? The warm hope that is
as the warmth of Spring Sun following the dark cold days of Winter? For
we cannot pray to God, to some deity, to some Savour, we cannot ask for
guidance - all we have is a
wordless feeling of empathy; what seems to be sometimes a slender
connexion to Nature, to the Cosmos, to all Life. There is no one to
hear, to whom we might go, for we have done away with deities, with an
all-powerful God, a Supreme Being, Who can forgive and show mercy and
Who decides our Fate. Thus there is, or can be at times, a certain
impersonal bleakness; almost a melancholic acceptance that is several
levels below the natural, spontaneous often joyful wu-wei felt in the past.
How, thus, to presence the Numen in the moment - beyond the olden forms
of personal prayer, supplication, and that forgetting which is the
basis
of techniques such a Buddhist meditation where there is a seeking of
no-thing, an intimation of Nirvana, but which just seems to be a
negation of that personal joy of life, that empathic, accepting,
living-in-the-moment-without-causing-suffering which is the essence of
The Numinous Way itself, and which wu-wei
points us toward?
For it is such a presencing, in a moment, which reconnects us to the
matrix of all Life: which strengthens us, within, bringing forth again
that silent wordless knowing - beyond concepts, ideologies, dogma,
faith - which is or can be both joy and hope, and which thus in a
natural way eases our burden of remorse and guilt, as wakeing on a
warm, Sunny, morning in Summer eases the burden of a night of restless
sleep: for there is the potential of joy there, in such a new morning;
the potential to be again the joyful, playful, child-within which we
have somehow lost.
How thus to presence the Numen in a moment for those who, as I, find
some answers in The Numinous Way? I admit I do not fully know. But I do
feel that it can be presenced in a variety of ways - through such
things as a personal love, a personal sharing, with a person, a
companion; through compassionate, empathic, deeds done; through
creation, artistic, or musical or even scientific (in the sense of the
observing and deductions of Natural Philosophy rather than the now more
common overt sometimes hubris-like interference); and especially be
presenced through a being-with-Nature, where one can - in natural, or
wild, or isolated, or quiet places on this planet (such as even a
garden can provide) - become aware again of our own human fragility and
smallness, and aware again of the beauty, the Numen, of Nature and of
the Cosmos, beyond.
David Myatt