Hiking: Essay on the Commonality of Self-Interest

Temptress Redeemed over Time

Temptress of a Time

Make These Many Words Into Treasure-Pictures©

All the spiritual traditions teach that they hold the keys to realization, and yet still there is conflict and violence as a consequence of their attempted interactions in practice. These keys have been cut from the same match and steel, but still the lock does not turn-- so that Peace, the goddess form Eirene, is far away over there, on some distant obscured vista of dashed aspiration. When many of these keys do not work well enough, and we know this is so because the common inheritance and legacy of the generations is a relentless cycle of promise crushed by oppression and intolerance, perhaps the key that fits is simply hiding in plain sight. And so, unsatisfied with poor results, we might dare to try another less parochial, less prescriptive approach.

If we examine the landscape of the lock, noting every notch and spring, each slide and climb of the metallic surfaces that both bar and allow passage through the door--then we might possibly fashion a more perfect key, one fashioned assiduously with humble unbiased concentration, and thereby produce a key skillfully molded to fit exactly our most benign desires. And finally, each in our own time and station, we may gladly toss aside the counterfeited keys that have proven over the ages to be unsuitable for achieving the noble purposes of common faith.

The Order of Life is sublimely reflected in the working of the lock and key:  both are systems that successfully realize intent through the agency of a multiplicity of Principles. The commonality of traits within these Principles can be distilled to essential parts by the concentration of our attention. All these enduring Principles contain the elements of Coherency, Symmetry, Balance, Economy and Elegance. These are the components of the lock and therefore to obtain satisfactory results for opening, our keys must be refashioned with the same guidance .

Coherency: Sameness in interaction and application from one part to another, so that non-complementary conflicts are avoided. For example, Yehoshua benYosep : “Turn the other cheek, forgive your enemy”-- and the sorry application of many faith-based structures that have, from time to time, supported and conducted genocide, oppression of knowledge, and civil warfare and division. The above indicates an example of the antithesis of coherency.

Symmetry: Likeness in direction, degree and orientation of forms and forces, including many recognized forms of inverse and other analogical speculations. For example, Hermes Trismegistus: “As above, so below.” And, “What goes up must come down.”

Balance: The pervasive current which maintains the web of Life in time and space. It is evident in all that the senses record to our awareness: the once green and growing maple leaves, now orange and rust-colored scattered randomly to replenish the fertility of the soil; the ugly duckling that turns into the graceful swan; the chase of the Moon for the Sun; the rise of personal intelligence in minute discrete packets, coupled with the long slow decline of physical aging.

Economy: The vision of accomplishment achieved most efficiently with little or no waste in the transformations expressed as a result of the operating system. Bees make their honeycomb cells in hexagonal shape, a structural form both strong and most efficient in space conversion and material usage. Conservation of energy is a corollary to economy.

Elegance: The end result of the interactions of the above elements. The efficacy of the working system meets all needs of the users with the total cost of conversion being within the temporal comfort zone of the participants. The form of the system seems to stand out against the mundane backdrop, a muted glowing beacon that generates confidence and real self-esteem in both leaders and the led. Eiffel Tower; Jacqueline Kennedy as the Lady of a nation, and in mourning.

So: our key must be conceived, formed, proven and corrected by the same elements that constitute the lock, if we hope to recommend it to the various spiritual organizations and mundane leaders for wholesale delivery to all who seek to open a temporal door to the Divine.

Coherency, Symmetry, Balance, Economy and Elegance: we need for each a more graphic image or symbol to make an impression on personal understanding which can be retained and practiced willingly in daily life. Perhaps this could be a person, place or thing that would correspond to the element in a concrete way that can be readily assimilated. As in:

Coherency: Like a guy not cutting the tree limb that he is standing on.

Symmetry: Like the dull thud of a blind-side epiphany revealing that the redeemer and the tempter are two sides of one coin, as in: “the Devil made me do it” and “the Lord died for my sins”. Both might be understood as subtle rationalizations, as less-than-mature flights from the priceless gift of accepting responsibility for the consequences of our own actions and thereby learning, through aversion and deserved shame, to do better than we have done before.

Balance: Looking into the eyes of the one in front of us and recognizing ourselves, only in a different coat of skin.

Economy: Using a fly swatter to remove that annoying buzz, rather than dousing the kitchen or basinet with DDT.

Elegance: During a break in the pomp of a State Dinner, secretly silently slipping off stiletto heels to follow the color and flutter of a butterfly into the White House Rose Garden.

If the keys to Harmony are Coherence, Symmetry, Balance, Economy and Elegance-- would it be worth the trouble to plumb the pool of your own fertile imagination for living pictures of each of these elements which excite ardent longing, vigorous aspiration and the reasonable expectation of accomplishment in your own heart? Or would it be less trouble to settle for the standard version of a disappointing authority figure’s chain of pre-ruminanted rhetorical platitudes-- and to take things as they have been found, time after time after time? To choose well, one might try concentrating on the relationship of unvarnished history to our shared status quo, and use those trusty keys that have worked well with natural elegance, across dogma, to loose the lock on Eirene’s door. And to make your own treasure-pictures of her sublime features, well- polished for gleaming.