Drinking From the Source: How People of Different Faiths Can Get Along.
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“The highest result of education is tolerance.” ~ Helen Keller
“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again.” ~ Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī
“Truth is a pathless land.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
1.
Imagine a host of people of all times and countries seeing a wonderful mountain peak in the first shimmer of a bright dawn; they are watching the mountain peak from afar, and longing to be there, from different points in space.
Each in their own right decides they have to reach that glorious peak, where villages and cities down there in the valleys will finally look tiny, with clear-cut paths and streets. From that vantage point, whatever happens in the valley will be self-explanatory, so they set out, alone and in groups, starting from whatever path is closest and open to them.
As they walk up the spiraling path, winding around the mountain, many stop even before they get as far as halfway through and decide that what they see from there is all they need. Only a few solitaries, walking through snow and tempest, heat and cold, reach the mountain peak.
And when they do, they meet their fellows coming up from the other side of the mountain and ask what it was like on their sides of the mountain, and they listen to one another.
Then they stand up and approach the precipice, the vast vista opening all around down below the mountain peak, and they marvel at the land stretching as far as the eye can see and beyond. They understand what a wise man once said: there are many paths to approach the mountain peak, yet the land of plenty is beyond all paths.
2.
Religious faiths are like layers of a huge cosmic onion. On the outside you have the historical and institutional aspects: temple, priests, religious laws, properties, customs and traditions.
As you peel yet another layer, you come closer and closer to the inner core through the experiences and accounts of the mystics of all spiritual traditions, till you reach the very center, the cosmic heart, and you are left with an Inner Space.
Yet, contrary to what may seem, this Space is not empty: it contains the innermost fragrance, invisible and intangible, yet vividly sharp and alive for whoever has mystical or metaphysical leanings, or an unspoiled sense of wonder for the riddles of the universe.
All great teachers of world religions agree that the pulsating inner sanctum, where cosmic creative power dwells, can only be pointed at, all words ultimately fail to convey its experience appropriately.
Down here, in the narrow valleys of human interest, suffering, excitement, greed and respite, we are still arguing and making war with one another: individual against individual, groups against groups, nations against nations, individuals against corporations, on and on, day in, day out.
We watch, half-dazed, half-resigned, occasionally with disdain, more often with a shrug.
But how can we get along with our neighbors, starting from our own daily circumstances?
My suggestion is to drink from the Source, where the eternal stream of all wisdom traditions originates, and not where the stream turns into a big river, crossing cities and countries and getting polluted in the process: let us go back to the mystical teachings of our respective faiths and let us change our static view of religious faith.
There is a tension inherent in the realm of religion.
On one hand, religions are an endeavor of inspired human imagination and creativity, our yearning for truth, peace, love, meaningfulness and our search for wholeness. On the other, religions are also a product of historical factors and are embedded in institutions enforced by power relations, through rules, customs and legal binds of various sorts.
My best guess is that if we stopped considering religion as an immutable set of rules, principles and beliefs, we would be on our way to building a peaceful world. The problem is that we mistake the map for the land. An evolutionary view of religion would be really useful to humanity’s spiritual quest: true religion is always evolving, the way human ethics, knowledge and understanding evolve.
3.
It is often said that if we followed the golden rule of all religions — treat others as you would like others to treat you — our cohabitation would be informed by tolerance. Yet, tolerance is not enough, when based on moral rules and precepts only; we need an imaginative spark to lead us through the gate of empathy and respect.
This can be achieved only if we bring the imagination in the religious realm and feed our spirit with reinterpreted and new stories, myths, legends pertaining to the spiritual quest. We still need the old stories, but with an imaginative spin.
The imagination is our most underrated faculty when it comes to faith. If we only stopped considering faith as something fixed, an arrival point, and realized that it is a starting point, a map of uncharted or tentatively sketched territories, we could not only tolerate one another for our diversity, but actually love such diversity and feel all the richer for it.
It is hard to go beyond the literalness of tenets, creeds and precepts because we have been raised in them and they have become second-nature to us. Yet, the effort is worthwhile. Spiritual storytelling is a great resource for fostering interreligious dialogue and peace.
This is so because the metaphors of story speak to our heart and intuition, before they reach the intellect, and bypass our prejudices and defenses, in order to bring about a felt realization of our common humanity. In other words, story can go beyond abstraction.
On a practical level, spiritual storytelling can be implemented in schools, community libraries, and other public and private spaces. We could give the gift of story to one another, each from our own standpoint, and be grateful for such an enrichment.
We need both roots and wings: to be grounded and to soar beyond what is given in our own lives, in order to explore new dimensions and be able to see new horizons.
4.
Imagination is an enlivening faculty. It can be used for good or for evil. Why not harness its enormous potential for the good and let its powers inform all human endeavors, including ethics? Indeed, spiritual storytelling is such an imaginative heuristic tool: as we tell and listen to stories, our intuition and ability to think and find new solutions to old problems are stimulated.
Thus, storytelling can be much more than a tool for instilling moral rules in the young. It can be a research tool for working towards a shared ethics, a practice of continual dialogue and close listening to one another and to the vast imaginative realm beyond our little selves.
Henry Corbin, the great scholar of Islamic theology, used the expression “mundus imaginalis” to designate the realm of cognitive imagination, a faculty that leads to perceiving what is intangible and invisible to ordinary sense perception and yet is real.
Traditional religion is stuck in the literal and in a sense of self-righteous exclusivity.
If people of good will following different spiritual traditions developed their sense of the symbolical and imaginal reality of their own faiths, religion and life on earth would evolve. Truth pertains to the imaginal even more than to “hard facts”. The imaginal realm is not imaginary, it has to do with a kind of truth which is not literal, yet is altogether real: invisible and intangible, yet essential like the breath of life.
The mystics of all times and spiritual traditions developed their ability to attune to the imaginal dimension, and often risked, and still risk, being considered heretics for it. Institutionalized religion often forges psychological chains to keep us bound and in subjection, to keep us separate from one another.
Let us drink from the Source, let us go to the mystic teachings of all religions and bring them out of esoteric practice, let them be accessible to all who seek in earnest.
Let our spiritual traditions cross-pollinate and bring about new understandings and beauty.
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Francesca Aniballi is a teacher, creative facilitator and writer who brings her love of story, narrative and poetry in her work with adults and adolescents. She believes that story holds magic and has the potential to bring about healing, empowerment and reconnection to one another and to our common home: the earth. You can contact her at Creative Vision Quests, where she writes and shares her creative tips and ideas.
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