“Love is that condition in which the
happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert A. Heinlein
We are a race of beings chronically dissatisfied,
always on the hunt for something better or different. It is an ambitious hunt where
we seek to take as much as possible, because more is always better; after all this is what our society is
teaching us, more is better, bigger is better, any peak is the best even if we
rarely know why it is best or better. And we all fall victim for this, at least
to some level or in some weak moments, we get touched by the sadness of the
world. At times we drown in that sadness of the world that seeks to veil and
shroud itself in laughter, ecstasy and fashion. We allow ourselves to drown in
hysteria, laughter and gossip because it masks our hurt, our pain to appear
smaller and softer – it gives us an island of solitude amongst the crowds. But
this solitude we experience in a world of icebergs crashing into one another is
not what most of us seek. Most of us seek to merge with those kindred of spirit
and understanding, those bound with us in love.
Some of us are perfectly fine with being blocks of
hysteric and selfish ice floating around in an ocean of ambitious aspiration.
In this ocean God is dead and spirits are merely memories of limited meaning and
no benefit. But at the moment we dare to ask the big questions concerning
purpose and station our laughter and well suited joy becomes a macabre
cacophony of restlessness and worry moving beneath the shrills of mirth and
amusement. When the big questions are posed they never leave you alone, no
matter how much you try to flee into loneliness or the ambitious crowd of
achievers. The winds bringing the big questions will always seek you after you
opened the door and find you in your hours of solitude and soberness. You will
always hear the challenging whispers that call you to be who you are. But in a
world where a common goal is equally valid for all, how can you discover the
answer to this whisper? This gentle call, this whisper is all too often
perceived as a threat.
Some seek a guru, a master, a teacher. Others seek a
self awareness born from the modern democratic ideal that we all can be
whatever we want, fitting or not, we can take what we want and by this alone we
can find purpose. Yet others seek community. They seek amongst the common to
find the herd that share their inklings and sentiments. They seek family. And
this is a good thing, but it is also here many go astray by yet another social
default. A modern community tend to be erected on basis of some cause or some
interest and often as a reaction of something of social nature. We have
communities of victims as much as we have communities of people sharing an
illness. The modern idea of community is born from a clever social mechanism
that tends to breed dysfunction as we find ourselves in a field of shared
opinion and illness. The out-group affirms the greater in-group in a sadistic
mirror play where all weakness sprouts like weed in good comfortable
weather. Many who searches community are
in truth searching a convent, an assembly of people who seek to ‘come
together’. We are speaking of finding familiarity. We speak of finding our pack,
our family. And indeed family is what people seek. A family is a collective in
a household, it includes the domus
(the master, mistress and children of the owner of the house) as well as
everyone sharing in the activities of the household, they be man or beast.
René Guénon wrote in his treatise ‘Spiritual
Authority & Temporal Power’ about how traditional governments were given
the right of ensuring a stabilizing and regulatory social order (like the domus
of a household). This right was always one given to the royal powers, but
mediated by the internal and sacerdotal order, the stillness of the world axis
that would establish a field between wisdom, need and goodness that would
ensure a society of positive reinforcements and communities of harmony where
the convent would ensure particular interests in the greater flow of a healthy
community. A healthy community is like a well oiled clockwork where the oil is
made from the juice of love.
In fact this is reminiscent of what Robert Kirk in his
treatise about the commonwealth of fairies wrote about the fey; “They are said to have
aristocratic rulers and laws, but no discernible religion, love, or devotion
towards God, the blessed Maker of all.” An aristocratic rule is a rulership
composed from those best suited to lead, the finest and most wise exemplars of
a community. Today aristocracy is at time confused with plutocracy, a
commonwealth composed of those most rich in a society. Plutocracy is the true
nature of modern democracy, where those gaining or inheriting monetary fortunes
are also those who rule the world.
An aristocracy on the other
hand is not seeing money and material possessions as a greater blessing than
any other virtue or fortune, a true aristocracy is following the model of the
fey and djinn societies where one is elected by ones fellow men. Of course
family and heritage plays a role in this, just as a family name can be followed
by good or bad reputation and as a given pedigree of dogs are favoured over
others for given abilities either useful for the pack, a community – or simply
the taste of the purchaser.
I would say that a sacred community do follow in this
vein and set for itself aristocratic standards. These standards are built upon
love and wisdom as the pillars of a healthy community. A healthy community will
hold as a blueprint for its rulership the premise that a social organism is raised
upon the skeleton of its participants, hence the number of bones in the human
body will inform the rulers about the necessity of variety and difference. But
in a world where everyone aims towards being femurs, tibias and skulls this
richness gets lost in ambition, laughter and sadness.
This is even more visible in religious, occult and
magical communities that are not about making convents of gatherings in
harmony, but about femurs and skulls debating their position. It mimics, like a
microcosmic pastiche, the corpse-world around us. In doing this the dysfunction
of our society becomes extreme. We see sacred communities consisting of people
who think spirituality is the next bigger and better they can get to solve
their crisis of identity and purpose and we have a clergy failing in seeing
that what is taking shape is a profanization of a sacred structure, the
convent. In accepting the rules of society as guidelines for helping seekers a
different vestment for the same hunt is given as the people seeking community –
while finding convent – insist on equality and respect. Sure, respect should
always be there, but equality is a term misunderstood. Equality doesn’t mean
that we have equal right to the same thing, but equal right to find our place
in the equation of equality that dresses the social skeleton with nerves,
muscles and life. In this we all have a role – and in a sacred community - even
more.
Because no goodness can exist without the stern - and
often cold - wisdom that understands the fire of passions and because of this
can call them to sizzle in their place of bounty and beauty. This makes part of what should regulate a
healthy convent, what regulates the gathering of people in the convent is love,
it should always be love. The kind of love that inspires in you the knowledge
that if the life of your beloved gets better, your life gets better. In love we
find true happiness and in taking part of the true happiness of the other we
can find true love, that condition where we seek the happiness of the other
knowing that in this act alone we will cement the first stone on the cathedral
of love and it is at the cathedral of love a harmonious gathering can take
place. It is in doing this we take the first step away from ambition and the
first step towards happiness as we open up for the discovery of Self amongst
the many and few using love as compass and fuel, always mindful that love can
be tough and at times cruel...