In our times, the language of psychology is used to approach the soul. Psychology is a wonderful science. In many ways, it has been the explorer whose heroic adventure discovered the uncharted inner world. In our culture of sensate immediacy, much psychology has abandoned the fecundity and reverence of myth and stands under the strain of neon consciousness, powerless to retrieve or open the depth and density of the world of soul. Celtic mysticism recognizes that rather than trying to expose the soul or offer it our fragile care, we should let the soul find us and care for us. Celtic mysticism is tender to the senses and devoid of spiritual aggression. The stories, poetry, and prayer of the Celts find expression in a language that is obviously prediscursive. It is a language of lyrical and reverential observation. Often it is reminiscent of the purity of the Japanese haiku. It bypasses the knottedness of narcissistic, self-reflexive language to create a lucid shape of words through which the numinous depths of nature and divinity can glisten. Celtic spirituality recognizes wisdom and the slow light, which can guard and deepen your life. When your soul awakens, your destiny becomes urgent with creativity.
Though destiny reveals itself slowly and partially, we sense its intention in the human countenance. I have always been fascinated by human presence in a landscape. When you walk the mountains and meet another person, you become acutely aware of the human face as an icon cast against the wilderness of nature. The face is a threshold where a world looks out and a world looks in on itself. The face brings these two worlds together. Behind each human face is a hidden world that no one can see. The beauty of the spiritual is its depth of inner friendship, which can totally change everything you touch, see, and feel. In a sense, the face is where the individual soul becomes obliquely visible. Yet the soul remains fugitive because the face cannot express directly everything we intuit and feel. Nevertheless, with age and memory the face gradually mirrors the journey of the soul. The older the face, the richer its mirroring.
TO BE BORN IS TO BE CHOSEN
To be born is to be chosen. No one is here by accident. Each one of us was sent here for a special destiny. When a fact is read in a spiritual way, its deeper meaning often emerges. When you consider the moment of conception, there are endless possibilities. Yet in most cases, only one child is conceived. This seems to suggest that a certain selectivity is already at work. This selectivity intimates a sheltering providence that dreamed you, created you, and always minds you. You were not consulted on the major factors that shaped your destiny: when you were to be born; where you would be born; to whom you would be born. Imagine the difference it would have made to your life had you been born into the house next door. Your identity was not offered for your choosing. In other words, a special destiny was prepared for you. But you were also given freedom and creativity to go beyond the given, to make a new set of relationships and to forge an ever new identity, inclusive of the old but not limited to it. This is the secret pulse of growth, which is quietly at work behind the outer facade of your life. Destiny sets the outer frame of experience and life; freedom finds and fills its inner form.
For millions of years, before you arrived here, the dream of your individuality was carefully prepared. You were sent to a shape of destiny in which you would be able to express the special gift you bring to the world. Sometimes this gift may involve suffering and pain that can neither be accounted for nor explained. There is a unique destiny for each person. Each one of us has something to do here that can be done by no one else. If someone else could fulfill your destiny, then they would be in your place, and you would not be here. It is in the depths of your life that you will discover the invisible necessity that has brought you here. When you begin to decipher this, your gift and giftedness come alive. Your heart quickens and the urgency of living rekindles your creativity.
If you can awaken this sense of destiny, you come into rhythm with your life. You fall out of rhythm when you renege on your potential and talent, when you settle for the mediocre as a refuge from the call. When you lose rhythm, your life becomes wearyingly deliberate or anonymously automatic. Rhythm is the secret key to balance and belonging. This will not collapse into false contentment or passivity. It is the rhythm of a dynamic equilibrium, a readiness of spirit, a poise that is not self-centered. This sense of rhythm is ancient. All life came out of the ocean; each one of us comes out of the waters of the womb; the ebb and flow of the tides is alive in the ebb and flow of our breathing. When you are in rhythm with your nature, nothing destructive can touch you. Providence is at one with you; it minds you and brings you to your new horizons. To be spiritual is to be in rhythm.
THE CELTIC UNDERWORLD AS RESONANCE
I often think that the inner world is like a landscape. Here, in our limestone landscape, there are endless surprises. It is lovely to be on top of a mountain and to discover a spring well gushing forth from beneath the heavy rocks. Such a well has a long biography of darkness and silence. It comes from the heart of the mountain, where no human eye has ever gazed. The surprise of the well suggests the archaic resources of consciousness awakening within us. With a sudden freshness, new springs come alive within.
The silence of landscape conceals vast presence. Place is not simply location. A place is a profound individuality. Its surface texture of grass and stone is blessed by rain, wind, and light. With complete attention, landscape celebrates the liturgy of the seasons, giving itself unreservedly to the passion of the goddess. The shape of a landscape is an ancient and silent form of consciousness. Mountains are huge contemplatives. Rivers and streams offer voice; they are the tears of the earth’s joy and despair. The earth is full of soul. Plotinus in the Enneads speaks of the soul’s care for the universe: “…this all in one universally comprehensive living being, encircling all the living beings within it, and having a soul, one soul which extends to all its members in the degree of participant membership held by each.”
Civilization has tamed place. Ground is leveled to build homes and cities. Roads, streets, and floors are level so that we may walk and travel easily. Left to itself, the curvature of the landscape invites presence and the loyalty of stillness. In the distraction of the traveler and the temporary, its ancient thereness goes unnoticed. Humans only know the passing night. Below the surface of landscape the earth lives in the eternal night, the dark and ancient cradle of all origin.
It is no wonder that in the Celtic world, wells were sacred places. Wells were seen as threshold places between the deeper, dark, unknown subterranean world and the outer world of light and form. The land of Ireland was understood in ancient times as the body of the goddess. Wells were reverenced as special apertures through which divinity flowed forth. Manannán mac Lir said, “No one will have knowledge who does not have a drink from the well.” Even to this day, people still visit sacred springs. They walk several times around a well, traveling in a clockwise direction, and often leave votive offerings. Different wells are thought to hold different kinds of healing.
When a well awakens in the mind, new possibilities begin to flow, and you find within yourself a depth and excitement that you never knew you had. This art of awakening is suggested by the Irish writer James Stephens, who said, “The only barrier is our readiness.” We often remain exiles, left outside the rich world of the soul, simply because we are not ready. Our task is to refine our hearts and minds. There is so much blessing and beauty near us that is destined for us, and yet it cannot enter our lives because we are not ready to receive it. The handle is on the inside of the door; only we can open it. Our lack of readiness is often caused by blindness, fear, and lack of self-appreciation. When we are ready, we will be blessed. At that moment the door of the heart becomes the gate of heaven. Shakespeare expressed this beautifully in King Lear: “Men must endure / Their going hence even as their coming hither; / Ripeness is all.”