Keen - Hymns to an unknown God: awakening the spirit in everyday life

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Special thanks to

Lauiance Rockefeller, for magnanimous support of the spiritual renaissance.

Leslie Meredith,

an editor in the grand tradition.

For M\t\ \ cars I have been forgetful, e\cr\ minute, but not for a second has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed. I deserve nothing. Today I recognize that I am the guest the mystics talk about. 1 play this living music for my Host. Everything today is for the Host."

Nicholson, Mathnawi, Book I 2084

"My life has been one long song, a hymn to an unknown God."

Sam Keen

PRELUDE

The Yearning

"Any journalist worth his or her salt knows the real story today is to define what it means to be spiritual. This is the biggest story not only of the decade but of the century."

Bill Moyers

Spirit: "the animating or vital principle; that which gives life to the physical organism in contrast to its purely material elements; the breath of life."

Webster's Dictionary

Spirit.

Breath.

The animating principle.

The prime mover.

Breathing out. Breathing in. Expiration. Inspiration. Dying and borning again.

In every cycle of breath, between the emptying and the inflowing, there is a moment of absolute calm, an instant when history comes to an end. Then, the yearning begins, the divine discontent, the lungs praying to be filled, the body longing to be animated by spirit.

To catch the invisible wind, to map the itinerary of spirit, study the

outlines of longing. Just as an echo in a cave brings news of unfathomable depths, in our yearning is our nostalgia for the future. In the emptiness between breaths, we hear a whispered promise of fulfillment, we sense the redolence of a rose now only in the bud. Breathe through us, breath of God, fill us with life anew.

VOICES OF YEARNING

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."

Psalm 42

What does the concept of spirit mean to us today? Do most of us even have a sense of it anymore? And of those of us who still believe in a place for the spirit, a place called soul, a god, how many have a daily experience of it? Is it possible in this chaotic day and age to have a sense of the sacred in everyday life, or do we have to check our spirits and our god at the workplace door?

What might it mean to live in a spiritual manner in these traumatic times? Today, the reality of the spiritual dimension is most obvious by its absence. We yearn for something that will give a sense of meaning and purpose to our daily lives, something more engaging than paying lip service to the idea of God or attending worship on the weekend. We are haunted by a vacuum. Our hearts are shaped by something that hasn't happened to us yet. Multitudes of modern seekers are full of emptiness, aching to be soulful, longing for a spark of inspiration that will ignite a passion that will lift them beyond the pettiness of getting and spending, that will animate their minds, their bodies, their spirits. We are hungry to recover the sense of the sacred that is currently painfully missing from our love affairs, families, jobs, and politics.

No week passes when some friend or stranger does not speak to me about the yearning.

One night not long ago, after too much wine (in vino Veritas), an old friend fortysomething, brilliant, sophisticated, successful in her career as an event promoter, exhausted after a year of sixty-hour weeks poured out her heart to me: "None of it means anything anymore.

Nothing 1 do All 1 want is to have i few animals, grow a garden, and pea) 1 am bom the death-of-God generation. I always despised religion. My father worked on the atomic bomb, and I always prided myself on m\ scientific intelligence. I don't even have any image of God. But I cant manage my life anymore without prayer."

Another friend, a recently "discovered" artist in his early sixties, confided: "After weathering several midlife crises, I am finally comfortable with mvself, have a good marriage, and have gotten my children launched and out of the nest. In the last years I have become moder-atelv famous and financially successful beyond my wildest expectations. I have bought everything I ever wanted an elegant house, a fine car, adventurous vacations in exotic parts of the world. I have given to the charities of my choice and been generous to my family and friends. As far as I can tell, I don't have any unmet needs or unfulfilled desires. But I yearn for some kind of fulfillment I can't even imagine or name, except to call it spiritual."

A new acquaintance, a Los Angeles real estate developer just turned fifty, a multimillionaire with a taste for fast cars and Italian fashions who is at once tough-minded and generous, told me over dinner in a fine restaurant: "I've always enjoyed making money, and I've been good at it. I like the good things money can buy a Maserati and a world-class house. Money has always taken care of me. But it isn't enough anymore. There is void that money doesn't fill. I need to change my life."

In what was to have been a casual phone conversation, a San Francisco lawyer I have known for years forty-nine, quicksilver, handsome, master of puns and wit, sharp dresser, twenty-four years on alcohol and drugs, seven years sober began to talk about life rather than law: "It all began when a friend said, 'You can't keep doing all this shit, or you're going to kill yourself. Why don't you come to an AA meeting with me?' By then, I was feeling desperate. I hated myself and was filled with enormous anxiety, fear, and pain, but I couldn't imagine anything that would make me feel okay. One day I was driving down the road, and I started to cry, and I didn't want anyone to see me so I put on my sunglasses. Then I started to howl, and I had to roll up the windows so people on the freeway couldn't hear me. So I went to the meeting.

"The first thing that struck me was the faces. There were smiles. And they welcomed me. I could see that no matter what problems these people had and they had lots of them they didn't have my problem anymore. They weren't isolated, lonely, or hopeless. Their faces kindled my yearning for peace and a sense of well-being. Somehow, they made me realize that it was possible that somewhere down the road I could feel I was okay, that I could be connected with other people instead of being shut up in my own squirrel cage with my fear.