Getting beyond embarrassment, and pretentiousness...

It is my impression that many who have communicated their philosophy of life, have been more or less seriously impaired in this work by a kind of embarrassment: a fear of damaging their social status and self esteem because of saying or doing something.

This embarrassment leads to an attitude of guardedness, defensiveness - the embarrassed Man develops a continual self-filtering of communications to try and avoid spontaneously revealing something that might be used against him, or might lead to him being rejected. 

Such embarrassment can blend with attempts to impress others - with pretentiousness; but it can also be found in an almost purely negative form by a sense of inhibition. 

This is so common as to be normal - yet when it comes to the communication of matters of the greatest depth, embarrassment can provide a formidable barrier to generating what ought to be as clear and comprehensible as possible - or else it probably will not be understood.

When I consider some of the influencers and 'mentors' who led to my Romantic Christian perspective; I can see that William Blake was a Man who was free from embarrassment, and who communicated in a spontaneous and bold fashion - apparently without caution against being misunderstood, or mocked.

Another of this ilk was William Arkle; who seems unconcerned about making an impression, who seems unguarded in his attitude - and whose communications appear to flow without going-through a filter of caution. 

A third 'William' of this type, is Bill Ryan of Project Avalon; who is unembarrassed about revealing and discussing his strange experiences with ETs - and many other unusual subjects - without regard for how such comments will strike other people. 

Bill Ryan (although not a Romantic Christian) is helpful in understanding this, because I knew him some forty-seven years ago; and can therefore recognize that his candid spontaneity seems to have been characterological, innate - a gift of nature. Yet a gift he still retains at the age of seventy. 

And I think the same applies to Blake and Arkle - they were 'made this way', from childhood, presumably from birth - yet also they 'stayed this way', throughout the stresses and temptations of their long lives. 

Therefore; the achievement of the Three Williams has the quality of retaining that which was, in origin, a natural confident unguardedness.

There are far more examples of writers whose work is hampered by - greater or lesser - degrees of embarrassment. 

One is CG Jung; who was mostly a confident and bold thinker; but who would (again and again, as he approached his conclusions) back-away-from the direction of his reasoning and the implications of his thinking; exactly as if he had suddenly become embarrassed, and feared the effect of his words. 

For Jung; this negative tendency to take away with one hand what had just been given by the other, was exacerbated by a positive desire to impress people, a pretentiousness. He would back-away from clarity and honesty, partly so as to impress others, and gain the rewards of higher status. 

But embarrassment can impair communication even among those who are wholly lacking in any pretentiousness; such as Owen Barfield. 

By all accounts, and confirmed in his writings, Owen Barfield was a very modest man - although with a great inner strength that was generated by intellectual mastery, deep thought, and inner confidence. 

Yet I find that Barfield's ability to communicate clearly is impaired by what seems like embarrassment - a diffidence at expressing anything that might seem like boasting, a reluctance to speak simply about the deepest matters of his understandings - such as the nature of God, God's nature and purposes. 

Just as Barfield approaches his conclusions, again and again he veers off into defensive abstraction - or excessive brevity - so that his argument is set out with meticulous clarity, but the final 'answer' is ambiguous, unclear, difficult to understand.  

The writer Charles Williams was someone who was remarkably unembarrassed in all social situations - even when mixing with the rich, prestigious, and famous; but also one who pretentiously desired to impress people. 

His life and work were both impaired by this pretentiousness: because it led to a strong element of play-acting, and indeed dishonesty, in his social relationships.

While in Williams's poetry, theology and novels there is a strong element of deliberate obfuscation and obscurity - a striving to appear profound.

Well, we are what we are - at least to begin with; and only a few of us have been blessed with unselfconsciousness. 

But character is a beginning only - and innate disposition can either be corrupted by choices made and habits developed; or it can (to some extent) be overcome by effort and practice. 

For myself; I had an original disposition somewhat the opposite of Owen Barfield and more like that of Charles Williams; in that I did not suffer much from embarrassment (i.e. negatively, I did not much care about how other people might react in a negative sense); but I tended towards pretentiousness - (i.e. I positively wanted to impress people - or, at least, some people). 

This was an obstacle to communication - because anything is an obstacle to communication that interferes with the primary desire to communicate. 

On the one hand, we cannot help the way we are; but on the other hand we are here (in this mortal life) to learn. Part of this is learning about ourselves. 

Often, our strengths are the obverse of weaknesses; but by recognition and striving we can move in the right direction. 

Conversely, by failing to recognize and acknowledge our defects; the modern world has a strong and pervasive tendency to corrupt people, to encourage people to ignore their deficits and instead regard them as strengths. 

Thus (as we sadly observe among family, colleagues, acquaintances and friends), however they start-out, most people get worse.

And these applies even to those who are innately and naturally Good. 

Thus the originally confident and unembarrassed child becomes a self-conscious and peer-group dominated adolescent - and never goes beyond this... 

While the 'show-off' child becomes the pretentious adult; more concerned about the impression created and rewards obtained than making actual achievements.   

These are among the lessons of life that we need to learn - and we can learn them from our own experience, and also by sympathetic yet honest understanding and critique of the lives of others.

The waning of Original Participation in my life - the later development of Final Participation

Are we doomed to dwell always on the surface of life? 

Looking back, I can now perceive that Original Participation provided an unconscious and spontaneous direct-link with The World, and other people and Beings, until late in my twenty-second year. 

Through childhood, adolescence, and up to that point, there was a baseline (albeit dwindling) sense of 'belonging in the world' that sustained me, and enabled me to connect with nature and life; despite that I had developed extreme atheist and materialistic (scientistic, positivist) philosophical assumptions. 

But from that point I began to feel alienated, cut-off from things, trapped inside my head, unable to 'lose myself', forget myself, or stop thinking; except when intoxicated in one way or another, or passively-immersed in music or literature - which was presumably a temporary illusion... 

At any rate it could not be sustained and was incompatible with the business of mundane living 

My reaction was partly to accept the situation, and adopt an 'hedonic' approach to my life; in hope that continuous pleasurable activities (and maximum freedom from suffering) would suffice. The aim was to live well until, at some point, I died - preferably instantly, without realizing it.   

Life was something to be got-through - as pleasantly as possible. Nothing more.  

But as the years rolled-by, nostalgia for the lost Original Participation became stronger, and I developed a very powerful (including scholarly) interest in the disenchantment of life, alienation - and yearned for the immersive animism I regarded as normal for our ancestral hunter gatherers - as well as young children.

Yet such a state was seldom, and mostly weakly attainable by even my best efforts.  

In the middle of this I became a Christian; however, at first this conversion did not significantly provide an answer to the problem of alienation - because mainstream Christianity barely recognizes, and does not address, the problem. However, it does uniquely provide the potential to do so - if one is prepared to venture beyond the orthodox. 

It was not until about 2014 that I began to be aware that there was another way of organizing my efforts in life. The choice was not only between an immersive and unconscious absorption into living versus the typically modern and alienated detachment... There was also what Barfield Termed Final Participation. 

It took me a while to grasp what this meant; and to do this I needed to tackle the daunting business of reading Rudolf Steiner's early philosophical works focused on a kind of thinking in which Final Participation was (implicitly) achieved. 

I also, by providential synchronicity, rediscovered William Arkle - who approached this same matter from the different angle of levels of consciousness; and the possibility of attaining (for periods) a level of consciousness in which thinking was real and creative. 

And finally came the understanding that this mortal life was a time for learning (learning needed for our for resurrected eternal life); so that what mattered was learning-from experiences - rather than trying to attain and stay-in any particular state. 

The fact that it was impossible to live always (or even mostly) in a state of Final Participation did not detract from the value of those times when FP was possible, and did happen - so long as we learn from them. It is the learning that can be permanent! 

This is where Christianity comes in; because this mortal life is (among other things) a learning phase before eternal resurrected life - and Final Participation is the divine way of thinking and being. 

(That is why it is correctly termed 'Final' - because divine living is what is aimed-at.)  

So to participate 'finally' - in thinking - was both a foretaste and a preparation for Heaven; therefore an extremely important life-experience to learn-from. 

That is - broadly - how matters stand. Romantic Christianity has emerged as a term to describe that Christianity in which participation is regarded as crucial, and taken with primary seriousness. 

In other words, Christians need to acknowledge and overcome alienation; and work to experience the world, other people and Beings directly; in thought. And know that that thinking is reality.  

What I have observed in myself in recent years, is that the surface of thinking - with thoughts rapidly changing and lasting from fractions of seconds to a few seconds - is not much different from what it always was. There is a constant and superficial play of images and ideas - which are heavily influenced by immediate concerns, the environment, and System manipulations. 

The Real Self experiences this level of consciousness as if a pond skater moving across the surface of water that is constantly changing its colours and patterns - but which can never be penetrated; can only be known indirectly and by observation and reasoning...

But as well as this there is a participative thinking, which moves more slowly (minutes, hours, days...). This is like the flow of a stream, and the thinking of Final Participation is not on the surface of, but instead a part of this flowing stream yet capable creating and of adding to the flow - something from itself.  

Final Participation is unimpeded by the surface of the stream; because it operates at the level of consciousness that includes air, surface and water - yet we, as incarnate Beings, remain many and distinct - loving and creative - selves. 

So, although surface alienation remains, moment by moment; there is an underlying direct participation which lies on the edge of my consciousness, and of which I can become aware at (almost) any time; but which, even when not actively attended-to - constitutes a healing of the rift between my-self and the world which opened up some months before my twenty-second birthday.  

The channeling phenomenon of the twentieth century

Throughout the twentieth century orientated towards the millennium, and spilling over somewhat up until the 2012 'delayed millennium', there was a significant sub-culture of 'channeling' among spiritual-but-not-religious people - those who from the 1980s were gathered under the New Age label. 

The phenomenon was essentially a development of the spiritualist mediums from the 19th century; but instead of focusing on contact with the deceased on behalf of their surviving spouses and relative, the mediums of channeling purported to be contacting what might be termed 'spiritual teachers'. 

These channeled-teachers were of a wide range; from God and Jesus Christ, through angels, down to 'ascended Masters', prophets, and famous people of the past - or sometimes named, but imperfectly identified, spiritual authorities. Others were quoting from spiritually perceived sources (e.g. "The Akashic Records").   

I would regard Madame Blavatsky (Theosophy - late 19th century) then Rudolf Steiner (from about 1900 - Theosophy, then Anthroposophy) as probably the major precursors and originators of New Age style channelers. Steiner, in particular, exemplifies both the possibilities and pitfalls of the business. 

I have been investigating the literature on channeling for about 8 years - since I became engaged with the work of William Arkle and the circles he moved in. In his later years, Arkle took a serious interest in several of the channeled books which came out from the early twentieth century, and which were especially abundant in the 1980s and 1990s (Arkle died in 2000). 

Since I respect Arkle, and have learned so much from him, I thought this phenomenon was worth a look; even though Arkle's best work (in my opinion) comes from the period before his late-life engagement with the New Age and channeling.  

I got-hold-of - or took a serious look-at - all the books Arkle mentioned; including his particular favourite from 1931, an anonymous production called The Book of El Daoud, the Father-King, Which is the Gospel of Simplicity given unto his own. 

Others books included a series from 'Lord Mikaal' (i.e. St Michael) including Winds of Truth (from 1950s onward); The Only Planet of Choice from Phyllis V Schlemmer; MAPP to Aquarius by Nada Yolanda; Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsh - still ongoing. 

I also listened-to/ watched some famous channelers in audio or video.    

To keep matters brief; I was overall very much un-interested and un-impressed by the authority and accuracy of channeling; as a way of gathering objective spiritual information for the benefit of Mankind.

There were - of course - some bits and pieces of what seemed like valid and helpful perspectives, usually of a very general (indeed obvious) nature. And there was also some indication that the process may have been somewhat helpful to some of the people involved - at first. 

But overall, teaching-channeling seemed like a net-harmful activity - especially over the longer term, and the prophecies - especially relating to the millennium - were wrong both in general and in detail. 

In particular; in the 1980s-90s; it apparently became normal in New Age circles to expect a millennial raising of human consciousness - often described as a raising of vibrations or frequency - which would raise-up the entirely of mankind; or at least those would would accept it. 

The process was primarily something done-to (rather than done-by) humans - it involved varying degrees of eagerness or acquiescence - but was envisaged as an external intervention (sometimes from extra-terrestrials, who - in this kind of scheme - took on many of the traditional qualities of angels). 

Included was a general idea of the expectation increased 'spiritual help' such as paranormal activity (or awareness of paranormal events) such as UFOs, Crop Circles, channeling itself, synchronicities etc. 

And also an increased presence-of (and contact-with) helpful spiritual beings of various kinds including ETs, angels, Masters; and the birth of a new generation of especially spiritual children (sometimes called 'indigo' children - or some other colours). At its most mainstream - in 2008; plenty of people believed that Barack Obama was an elevated spiritual guide called a Light Worker - who would lead the world into the New Age. 

In the event; none of this stuff happened but the opposite. Especially after the deferred millennium of 2012 (supposedly the end of the Mayan calendar and a new astrological cycle.  

The New Age dwindled, and Men got much less spiritual and more materialistic, this-worldly and nihilistic. 

And (especially since social media) the masses have handed-over their minds to the Global Establishment, rather than to spiritual authorities. 

So - is channeling completely bogus? No - because I know of at least one valid example; which is William Wildblood's experiences, described especially in his book Meeting the Masters. 

A comparison with the mainstream New channeling shows why. Wildblood's experiences were personal and private, and not revealed until log afterwards. The teachings were personally directed - tailored to the young Wildblood's needs and development. The teachings were also relatively low volume, and simple.   

This contrasts with the (more or less) famous channelers - who address 'the world', make everything public ASAP; and generate a large amount of highly detailed 'information' on... every subject under the sun! There is also a strong flavour of pandering to the audience about these messages - they say what will play well with the kind of soft-leftists who make-up nearly all of the New Agers. 

Furthermore, the New Age channelers/ mediums (or their sponsors) adopt a 'careerist' moeny/ status. publicity-seeking stance - and some of them also espouse and practice sexual 'liberation'/ promiscuity/ revolution.  

In conclusion; I regard channeling as probably a real thing, a kind of spiritual experience, that happened to some people in the 20th/ early 21st century; and was probably related to that particular phase in the development of human consciousness. 

But it was meant to be a personal and private type of communication and intended to be understood in a Christian context. 

Channeling was Not a kind of objective information, nor a quasi-scientific form of 'knowledge'; understandable, learnable and applicable for adoption by 'the world'. 

To return to Steiner; in his early years, and intermittently thereafter; Steiner made major contributions to understanding our situation in the world. 

But in becoming a professional, addressing 'the world', building a movement, and channeling a vast body of quasi-objective Spiritual Science (which has since been learned and - mostly - applied like cook-book recipes by his followers); Steiner became mostly (but never wholly) a producer of pseudo-knowledge - as did the later channelers. 

(Indeed; a great deal of Steiner's purported Anthroposophical cosmology, history and prophecy comes from Blavatsky's Theosophy, or is modified ad re-shaped from her - naturally, as Steiner was an official Theosophical leader for many years.) 

William Arkle - on the other hand - never seemed to go all this way. 

He was apparently misled, by the consensus of channelers, into a false spiritual optimism - and his hard prediction of a massive enhancement of human spiritual consciousness around the millennium did not happen. 

But his reading and understanding of channeled sources was so selective and idiosyncratic, that mostly it functioned as a confirmation of ideas he had already arrived-at himself - from personal and private intuition/ direct-knowing. He kept his 'teaching' simple, stuck closely to what he had tested and affirmed; and therefore it was largely valid.  

In a nutshell; I think the main value of the channeling phenomenon - as evidence by William Wildblood, was insofar as it was a direct and experiential confirmation of the reality of the spiritual. 

By experiencing genuine channeling either at first or secondhand; some people were lastingly convinced that there was more to the world than the material.  

Thus, true-channeling is probably more a matter of form than content; therefore it is best regarded as properly a transitional spiritual phase, or step towards Romantic Christianity. 

God does Not want beautiful, obedient children - just sitting around, waiting to be told what to do... William Arkle and the Prodigal Son

It’s the friction between the things we love and the things which vitiate against those things which enables us to actually grasp the value of the things we love. 

Without an ability to grasp the significance of these values we could never grow up to be as God is, to become ‘Prodigal Sons’. We would only remain beautiful, obedient children who would continually be sitting around saying: ‘Now what do you want me to do next?’ 

But what God wants is somebody out there to say: ‘ Come on God, let’s go and do this for a bit!’ 

And God would say: ‘That’s an idea! I never thought of doing that before!’ 

I know that’s looking ahead, and we haven’t got to that stage yet; but I think that’s what we’re working towards.

Commentary: The above striking paragraph is transcribed and slightly paraphrased from a recorded talk given by William Arkle - perhaps in the middle 1980s. 

Arkle is trying to explain why in this mortal life we experience vices as well as virtues, misery as well as joy, evil as well as Good. And he explains this in terms of what God is hoping for from us ultimately; what God is hoping we will eventually become. 

 

God is hoping, and planning, that eventually at least some Men will become grown-up gods; original sub-creators on-a-level-with God the primary creator of this reality. 

Arkle illustrates this by interpreting the Prodigal Son story as a parable of God and mortal Men.   The father in the story represents God, the prodigal son represents us men who choose to be incarnated into mortal life, while the other son represents the pre-mortal spirit-men who declined incarnation on earth remained in Heaven bathed in divine beauty and exemplary in obedience. 

The interpretation suggested is that the prodigal son has, through learning from his experiences - which were bad, as well as good - 'grown-up' and become closer to what his father hoped for than has the other son. 

The other son has experienced only good things, and therefore does not know their true value. The other son has always obeyed and knows no other, and has not overcome the temptation of pride. The other son never left his father ('God') and so never chose freely to return.

It is the other son who Arkle lightheartedly caricatures as: beautiful, obedient children who would continually be sitting around saying: ‘Now what do you want me to do next?’  And the picture evoked helps make clear why this would not be a plausible goal for God to design for Man. After all; what would be the point of God creating such merely-ornamental self-reflections as these beautiful, obedient children?   

God instead created disobedient children, and a world full of temptations and sufferings; in hope that some of his children would choose to dwell in it, and would then learn from their experiences: good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant - and return to occupy a higher place in Heaven than would otherwise have been possible. 

Such grown-up children - if we choose to return to the divine plan, to embrace resurrection into Heaven; there to live and work alongside God - have the knowledge and uniqueness that they (we!) could eventually become original generative agents. 

Grown-up Sons and Daughters of God. 

And then we would be able to make contributions to divine and eternal on-going creation that could surprise and delight God. So he might say: ‘That’s an idea! I never thought of doing that before!’ 

Added Note: Perhaps William Arkle's greatest contribution to my understanding comes from his trying to understand God's motivations as creator. Arkle recognizes that, as well as the deepest explanation that God creates from an abundance of love; we can also consider what God as a divine person (or persons) would want from creation - and that is 'other divine persons' not just to love but also to work-with and 'play'-with. Arkle indeed focuses on play to a rather extreme extent at times! - but it seems an important and perhaps unique insight that (across the span of eternity) God would want not just immature children in his Heavenly family, but also grown-up children to interact with; ideally children who have developed to a level with himself. And we can immediately infer that Jesus Christ was the first of these, but that it would be hoped he is not the last.  

Ultimate justifications for eternal living

One of the great contributions made by William Arkle to my own philosophy of living is to bring to the centre of concern, the question of what we would want to do forever, for eternity - The question of what could possibly satisfy us everlastingly? 

In his writing (and art) Arkle conjures a friendly and accessible God who is a real Father (and Mother) to us, and creates with our best long-term - indeed eternal - interests in his heart. 

Arkle therefore invites us to make the thought experiment of such a divine parent who wants his children to be motivated and fulfilled in an eternal life; and to consider what kind of life that might be - what kind of life is divine creation aiming-at? 

When I make this thought experiment, my conclusion is that there are significant differences in what people want in their mortal life; and that there are also differences in what people seem to want for eternity.  

Some people have what seems like a very deep sense of fatigue about living; and seem to want an eternity of 'rest' - much like being dreamlessly-asleep - an eternity when nothing happens. 

Others seem to want an eternity of joyous contemplation; a continuous state of gratitude, worship; a perpetuation of that aesthetic arrest when we fall in love, experience great good fortune, or encounter something of overwhelming beauty... We just want to stay in exactly this state, forever. 

So both of these want an eternal state to be unchanging - although the first wants to be unconscious, unaware (or barely aware) of his own existence; while the second want to be consciously aware of his own existence - but continuously and without-fading immersed in happiness, appreciation, gratitude. 

But among those who want an active eternity; the answer probably depends on their time horizon, and their capacity for anticipating what things would actually be like. Some desire a 'paradise'-life in which they repeatedly-and-forever do the kind of thing they most enjoy on earth - e.g. eating, sex, or something sinful - but without ever getting used to it, without experiencing the 'habituation' or 'tolerance' that makes repetition so unsatisfactory in mortal life. 

This, then, paradise is an eternal present - and eternity without memory; where each 'day' (or cycle) is started afresh and unfading. 

In paradise there could be no sense of 'self', and no developmental progression; because that depends on linear continuity hence memory; so what is desired is an 'arrested development' - to be fixed as a certain type of person at a certain stage in life (child, adolescent, young adult etc), doing a certain type of pleasurable activity, again and again - forever.. but not to know that this is what is happening. It is rather like being reborn every day - but reborn as the kind of person one wants to be. 

Paradise is a life of continual play; in which the situation is one in which we and the situation are set-up such that we never get fed-up of playing - but it remains maximally satisfying.  

 

But none of the above constitute the idea of Heaven as I understand it. In Heaven, eternity is for creating; and creating is distinguished from 'playing' because creation comes from love. So the set-up of Heaven is one in which there are many people, and they are bound together by love; and this love overflows into creating. 

This vision of eternity comes from people (such as myself) who feel that the most profound experiences of life, which would never ever fail to satisfy, are those experiences of creating - in which that which is created is appreciated by those we love and those who love what we love.

'Creation' (in this sense) ranges very widely indeed, from more obvious things like creating new appreciations, understandings and insights; to making things and performing arts; to the creating involved in a continuing marriage, or in playing games with one's children... 

There is no limit to the kinds of things this involves - but in mortal life such creating is contaminated with mad motives (seeking status, power, to manipulate etc), and by the fatigue and entropy of our condition. For creating to become eternal we would need purity of loving motivation and endlessly-renewed energies from love (not from other, lower, sources) - so, it is these which must distinguish a creative-Heaven from this mortal life. 

Such thought experiments may be of great value, if one can persist with them to keep asking 'and what then?' after each answer you give yourself. 

Eventually you may work down through superficial half-answers to reach the solid ground of what would be eternally satisfying to you, personally. 

And then explore the consequences of that.     

What is God like? What does God want from creation?

I have had the privilege of reading in manuscript a collection from letters from William Arkle to a young friend and spiritual-disciple/ -colleague; spanning from the middle 1980s to near the end of Arkle's life (in 2000).  

These have provoked all kinds of thoughts on that vital matter which Arkle 'made his own': questions on the nature of God, and God's hopes and aims in creation. 

 

For all Christians; God is (or should be) a person, not an abstraction. 

We are God's children (that is related-to, descended-from God); and God loves us. 

Beyond this, there are differences of understanding; and there is indeed a difference in my understanding and that of Arkle. More precisely, in his early work, Arkle described what I believe is true: God is a dyad, Father and Mother in Heaven: God is our Heavenly Parents. 

This is also the understanding of Mormon thelogy; and it natually goes-with an understanding of each Human Being as - in his or her eternal primordial essence, and eternally in future - either a man, or a woman (never neither, nor both). 

This metaphysical reality does not necessarily map-onto what may happen to an individual man or woman in terms of biological sex and/or sexuality during this mortal, earthly incarnation - which has the nature of a temporary experience for us to learn-from. My understanding is that - whatever happens 'superficially' in mortal life - each of us eternally has been, and eternally will be, essentially (by the nature of our true and divine self) a man or a woman eternally. 

 

But by the 1980s, Arkle had apparently moved to a view of God as primarily both man and woman simultaneously (a He/ She); and this goes-with an idea of sex as relatively superficial to the essence of Human Being - and with reincarnation as potentially alternating (as 'required') between the sexes; neither being the essence of a Human Being. Or with sex (and marriage, and procreation) being 'discarded' when a Human Being has reached Heaven

(Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield also share this understanding of sex. And it also goes-with an understanding of spirit-form as both the past and future of Man: Man was a spirit, will become a spirit; and physical incarnation is an intermediate stage, for experience and learning only.)

Whereas by contrast; my view (and the Mormon view) is that physical incarnation is higher than spirit life: bodies are better. Including that God is embodied - i.e. God is physically-bounded and in the same as human form (or rather, causally vice versa); God is not an omnipresent spirit. 

So, for me, God is embodied, and indeed two bodies: God is a dyad: Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

This matter of "what God is like", whether God is One or Two, is a vital to our metaphysics; because it decides our understanding of why God embarked on creation. Our inferred motivation of a unitary, solo God is very different from that of two Heavenly Parents, distinct but united by their mutual love. 

 

(Traditional Christian theology has it that God was utterly self-sufficient, and without needs (or desires). Trinitarian theology makes the love of this unitary God also be (somehow) sub-divided into the mutual love of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But either way, the creation of Men and everything-else by God is an ultimately gratuitous act - and Not a matter of God seeking greater satisfaction, Not a matter of God needing, wanting, desiring or yearning. I personally reject this line of reasoning on the basis that God is a person, like our-selves in an ultimate sense; and that God does have passions, wishes. In particular I regard Love as the primary passion of God, and I regard Love as having in its nature many aspects such as needing, wanting, desiring and yearning.) 

Arkle's inference, based on his understanding of God as unity and a real person - is that God before creation must have been lonely and bored. God's greatest need was for things to do, and people to do-things-with. 

From this, Arkle derives an understanding that creation is essentially a matter of overcoming loneliness and boredom; of creating Beings who can develop to become like himself, and of creating many other things 'for fun'. 

Arkle encapsulates this in the ideas that in making Men who can evolve towards full-deity God is literally Making Friends; creating Beings who - it is hoped - will become 'friends' at the same divine level as God. And secondly that all the other Beings of Creation are made as a kind of ultimate 'play'. So that for Arkle life is - at its highest, most divine - created life is about play with and among friends.  

It should be noted - and this comes through repeatedly in these late Arkle letters, that loneliness and boredom are negative motivations - therefore creation is a kind of cosmic therapy for the unitary God.  

My own view, based on God as the loving-dyad of celestial husband and wife, of Heavenly Parents; is that creation is a natural consequence of the existential nature of Love. Creation is the positively-motivated overflow and expansion of spousal love. 

This is nothing esoteric, but a motivation that has been experienced (albeit perhaps partially and temporarily, as is the nature of mortal life) by countless husbands and wives through Man's history. Parental love seeks its own increase through children; and through a creative attitude to life and living.

In different words, the spontaneous expression (consequence) of parental love; is to co-create (in harmony with God's already in-progress creating) an open-ended, expanding-and-harmonious world; in which the family lives creatively. 

In a nutshell, God is like the perfection of married love, and what God wants from creation is analogous to what a loving husband and wife want, given a husband and wife who are themselves members of loving families. 

Thus (in an eternal persepctive) God wants children, and loving-developing family relations; wants new family and friends (i.e. permanent friends, maintained in harmony by analogously-familial love); wants a whole created-world of other (increasingly creative) Beings of many kinds, natures, motivations - but (ideally, and in actuality in Heaven) all maintained in Harmony by their mutual love. 

 

Is God's motivation for creation 'play' or 'love'?

If the primal reality of God is imagined before the beginning of creation, and if God is single and personal; then creation can be understood as God's 'play'.

This is made simple and explicit in God, the Player Friend; a rare 42 page booklet self-published by William Arkle in 1993, which I only discovered-about a couple of weeks ago, and which I am currently reading.


Typically (and valuably) Arkle boils it down to God alone becoming bored with a world in which everything was caused by himself; and from this dissatisfaction manifesting creation so that divine 'Friends' - that is, fully-developed men and women - could gradually evolve, and become genuinely independent sources of surprise and innovation.

As so often, much hinges upon the primary assumptions; and here Arkle makes the primary assumption that the beginning of everything - God - is a unity. When this is the assumption, then I think it is 'inevitable' that there is an 'arbitrary' quality of 'play' about everything in creation.

Reality is because creation is more 'fun' than no reality; as Arkle sometimes put it.


When creation is driven by something negative like boredom, and negativity is cured by the independent play of other agents or actors; then we get this kind of double-negative theology which I always regard as secondary.

Yet, if creation is dynamic, expansile (as I believe) then it must indeed be motivated by some kind of (negatively) discontent, or (positively) yearning.


My own understanding is different from Arkles, and is pretty-much the Mormon Christian theology; which is that 'in the beginning' God was two, a dyad, man and woman, Heavenly Father and Mother.

By this understanding there never was 'unity' - unless the unity is regarded as being divided in twain. The 'unity' comes from Love: love between our Heavenly Parents, which eternally 'binds' them (in a 'celestial marriage'). That is my primal reality.

The primal reality is therefore one that is dynamic, as love is dynamic; and it is one of yearning, as love contains yearning. By my understanding, then, creation is the result of an overflow of this yearning love; so that there be more autonomous, agent, independently-creative persons to love.

This is a familiar motivation arising between a loving husband and wife: the positive desire for children to expand the scope and possibility of love. The married couple's aspiration for pro-creation (and also to create a home, a family, ideally one that is ever-growing and inter-linking - with all that entails in terms of the context for such growth) is thus seen of a microcosm of the divine impulse to creation. 


The classical 'Trinitarian' formulation of Christian theology 'has it both ways' in asserting that God is both undivided-unity (with no sex) and hence of its nature static and self-sufficient; and also a triad of Father, Son and Holy Ghost (with no sex) - who are different enough to be bound together by love, hence dynamic and motivated to grow.

By this classical account; sexuality is secondary, temporary, inessential; whereas for Mormon theology sexuality is primary and causal; deriving from the nature of God - our Heavenly Parents. 

I can make no rational sense of classical Trinitarianism; but as a form of words, it covers all the bases!

However, for me, God must be either one or more-than-one; and my understanding is that God is (or rather was, primally) two. And these two were a man and a woman. And their love was the fount of creation.

Put yourself in God's place...

And if that very sentence sound blasphemously prideful and wicked; then such a response (from a Christian) illustrates exactly the point I wish to make.


Christians believe that God the creator is our loving Father. And surely a loving Father would not not mind at all if his children tried to imagine (or, better, intuit) what it is like to be a Father.

Indeed, children are - or used to be - encouraged to play families, to imagine being Mummy and Daddy, and to act out scenarios. And loving parents regard such games with benign pleasure.


Yet it is a solid (albeit sad) fact that for many Christians, for many centuries, God has been imagined as an 'Oriental Despot' of the kind that it is death to look-at or speak-to - a ruler who is remote, surrounded by intermediaries - a screen of guards, servants and administrators; a terrifying monarch whose glance is potential death and whose word is command.

The kind of God who is a King so high, so remote, so utterly unlike our lowly selves; that the only way to approach is on our knees or prostrated; or not approach at all, but deal with only indirectly - through intermediaries.

Altogether, such a Christian supposed God to be the kind of person who wants nothing more than to unceasingly and forever to be praised, worshipped, thanked; a God who wants nothing more from us than to be obeyed, and for us to submit utterly to what we understand to be God's will.


I think it should not need argument to prove that such a God is very far from the God who Jesus discusses and addresses in the Fourth Gospel; who is spoken of by Jesus with filial affection and warmth; and who Jesus encourages his disciples to regard as a friend, and not as a master to servants. 

But the best way to appreciate God is to imagine how we ourselves would feel (imagining, of course, our best, our, ideal selves) in God's position - how God would regard his children; how - ideally - he would want to relate to his children.

And I think it will readily be seen that a God such as we know our Christian God to be would not want to be treated as an Oriental Despot or totalitarian dictator; but would hope for a personal relationship of warmth and affection with his children, as they mature, grow-up towards greater divinity.


Such a God would not hope for the rest of creation to act like guards, administrators, servants - would not want to be the Emperor, Dictator, or CEO of creation - but would seek for 'colleagues' in the work of creation - co-workers... family.

Such a God would not want for creation to be 'organised' - not any kind of celestial bureaucracy, into which Men were expected to 'slot' - not a formal hierarchy with specialised 'job-descriptions' interacting by formal rules applicable to these categories; but on the contrary (surely?) a group of distinctive individuals, each unique; each expressing their personal differences in fluid arrangements held-together by mutual love.

Again, we should see Heaven as a family (an ideal ideally-extended family, of many related families) - not an organisation.

And ultimately, putting ourselves in God's place - but in God's place before the creation of the world and our-selves; we may see the primary reason for Creation: that such a God, a God with the nature of a loving Father, would want more than anything to have children, and for these children to grow-up.


Such a loving creator God would create such that this was possible: that his children could - if they would, if they wanted - grow (in time, by experience, through learning) to become like himself, like God, on a level with God: family friends.

What could be better?


Note: the above ideas are substantially indebted to the work of William Arkle. 

The Play of William Arkle

The Seeker by William Arkle

Foreword by William Arkle for his web site billarkle.co.uk

(These web pages were created by Michael Perry in consultation with Arkle, about twenty years ago shortly before Arkle died; and for many years this was the only significant web presence of William Arkle - and it was the source of my own informed engagement with Arkle from 2008. Sadly the site is now gone.)

**

I very nearly called this web site 'The Play of William Arkle', and then I felt that it would sound rather too casual for most people and even an insult to the endeavour that is brought to the resolving of the mysteries of life.

The reason that the word 'play' suggested itself is that the journey of understanding seems to lead from the level of human survival as a personality in this world, through to a spiritual view that takes survival of our spiritual self for granted; and then on again into the appreciation of the all-encompassing smile of our Divine Creator.

This Divine Smile says a very simple thing, which is that the everlasting nature of its Spirit can have only two options: either it remains in its Absolute condition of Blissful non-action; or it can engage in action through the creation of play-grounds. This means creating theatres of time, space and lots of things - from a condition of no action or time or space or things.

Our Creator felt that the first choice of 'no action' could becoming boring because there was no adventure, surprise or growth involved. The livingness of The Spirit felt itself to be in need of such adventure as an expression of joyful love and fun. So the second choice came about purely for the exercise of joy and love and fun.

The only word I could find to cover the activity of joy and love and fun was the word play, but unless it is approached in the right way the word does not carry the correct significance. And thus the whole of this web site is a journey into the understanding of The Creator's view of the word play.

You will find that my own earlier understandings moved gradually into this way of talking about our reality. It seemed to become more and more light-hearted while being able to sympathise with all the conditions of growth which can feel to be the conditions of fear and anxiety. Thus the big game of life at play has conditions within it which can descend to the very opposites of its initial intention.

These opposite conditions are the result of our Creator deciding to give us the Gift of being able to become real players in our own right at this adventure which is being undertaken. This is why the picture book was called The Great Gift and why the writings in it referred to God as being our friend in this one life endeavour. Later on this was changed to the expression God, The Player Friend.

As for me, I have kept the name William Arkle. I like the name because it implies that my Will is doing its best to be a small expression of the Ark of Life, The Heart of the Creator Friend.

However my close associates now find me calling myself Billy The Kid.

**

Here Arkle is saying that the first and deepest question about divine creation is why did God do it? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there action rather than stasis?

And Arkle is saying that this is to do with the nature of God, the kind of person that God is. Like a young child; God has an enjoyment of play.

(With 'play' Arkle, very typically, chooses a simple and 'childish' word for the most profound of his metaphysical beliefs - 'friend' would be another example.) 

As a child's favourite activity is to-play - rather than do-nothing; so with God.


So God made things happen. For a while, perhaps, God 'entertained himself'; and thus will presumably soon have discovered that solo make-believe does not satisfy for long (too predictable) - and soon one craves 'playmates', people like oneself to play with.

Play needs other-people. In this instance, other gods. Thus the whole purpose of creation.  


Of course a child does not want to play always; and wants to eat, rest and sleep from time to time - but these are mainly in order to prepare for more play.

The same with our reality, this creation. There are some persons (and some religions or ideologies) that focus upon 'eating' (sensual gratification - e.g. sexual gratification, euphoria), and others that focus on the hope for rest/ peace/ sleep (Nirvana).

But for most people, most of the time; play is the primary thing - if, by play, we ultimately mean the only endlessly rewarding 'play' which is the divine work of loving-creation in heaven: the Great Gift of Jesus.

(Which we sample and approximate in mortality in the life of loving families; and in the life of human creativity (experiencing, learning, doing, making) in its multitude of individual types - games, sports, pastimes, hobbies, arts and crafts...)


Arkle - shortly before he died, tells us here that called himself Billy the Kid. Why?

My guess: because a free, conscious, chosen return to the basic situation of the child is the purpose of life. Life is a cycle, but not a recapitulation.

To become again As a child (which Jesus is said to have commanded us); 'as' a child means not to be a child, but to live as grown-ups, as a child live (and as we ourselves once did).

For instance: a child cannot plan - adolescents plan with obsessive self-consciousness - the spiritually mature human adult chooses Not to plan; but again to live spontaneously and as improvisation.

And in perfect love (which casteth out fear).


(And, thereby, at the last moment - unpredictably, unstoppably - to thwart all plans and schemes of evil! Evil is beaten by Not plotting-against evil, but by doing Good; as a child.)

What shall I do today? (William Arkle)

Monsieur Hulot serves in the game of life...

What shall I do to-day? What will to-day do with me? What will I do to to-day? What will we do to each other?

Hello, play-friend day, here we are so wonderfully arranged, each on our own side of the tennis net of life, neither of us concerned to win but only to be the best companion in the game. 

...Play is play and one thing leads to another, but there are times when I wish that your fever of dominant self-wilfulness would subside, with all its contrary forms of unplayful activity, for these confuse you and you don't realise that life is meant to be an opportunity for you to live out your best joys with as much definition as possible...

From A Cup of Day by William Arkle 

Arkle wrote the above shortly before his death at the age of seventy six. It seems to be about that feeling which we often get at the beginning of each day. Of course, the day may be filled with work and chores, and we may feel we have no scope for exerting any control upon it. Or - even at weekends, day's off, or during holidays - we may have pre-filled our day with a busy-list of fun activities; so that there is neither time nor energy to ask 'What shall I do today?'...

Nonetheless, it is a real question. And - contrary to appearances - each day is unique, and brings us unprecedented experiences - our personal interaction with the world is never repeated nor is it repeatable (even when we try to make it repeat).

And - since God, as well as our personal agency, is ultimately responsible for each day - we may assume that each day is an interaction, a 'tennis match' between us and God.

Perhaps the 'game' of the day begins with God serving-up some stimulus - some event, stress, good news - for us to respond to; so we return it across the net as best we can. Perhaps we make the serve, and begin with some act or thought or intervention in the world; and God smashes or lobs it back to us...

The metaphor breaks-down if we regard tennis as merely a means to the end of determining a winner; because the game of life is not a competition but a training. It is a learning experience; and because no two bouts are identical, there is always something to learn.

This means that - in an ultimate sense - we can relax and enjoy the day's game, however it turns-out. The only total failure would be a failure to learn from the day's play.

And this insight leaves us free to play the game of life joyfully. 

God does not 'need' Man, but has a definite purpose in creating Man - from William Arkle

My own understanding is that the Creator, who is also God, is self sufficient in a sense. That is to imply that, although we need God, in every meaning of that term, God does not need us in the same way.

Against this we have to set the understanding that if God didn’t have a purpose which included us, no doubt He would not have gone to all this trouble of bringing us into existence. But to have a purpose in which we can play some part is quite a different thing from having an absolute need of us in the way that we have an absolute need of God.

In the way that a child needs its mother and father, we need God for sustenance and support of our own reality because our own reality rests upon the reality of God, and all our sustenance comes from that reality. But in quite a different way, I believe, our God wishes us to come to life, to come to a full expression of our potential, our Divine reality, and that must be for a purpose which is not essential to the Being of the Creator, but which may be essential to a particular longing and delight in the heart of the understanding of that Creator.

In simple words, I think that the Creator wishes to have other individual divine Beings who can be His friends with whom He can share the content of His own reality, with whom He can enter into conversation, understanding and discussion about possible experiments in living, in trying to go beyond the understanding that God has already, which to us, at our stage of development, seems infinite, but this is obviously only a relative term, and is not infinite to the Creator’s possible understanding.

Therefore we can suggest that it is within our understanding that the Creator wishes to go beyond His own highest qualities. It is not outside the bounds of possibility that this is a fact, and the Creator is aware of His desire, of His longing, not only to share His understanding with friends, but also to enter into life and living experiments with those friends, in such a way that their collective understanding can go beyond the qualities which the Creator has within His understanding already; qualities of beauty, of virtue, of character, which the Creator already knows about but which, in the depth of His spirit, He will never be satisfied to rest in.

An extract from the essay The Nature of God, from The Great Gift by William Arkle, 1977 

The all encompassing smile of our divine creator - analysing the last words of William Arkle

 A late painting by William Arkle including his favourite subject matter of the divine smiling face

Throughout his life (1925-2000) the spiritual philosopher and artist William Arkle developed and lived by a type of esoteric Christianity which has become one of the great influences on my life. His last published words are therefore of particular interest.

But not only the words. What was special about Arkle is that he lived by his beliefs. Colin Wilson described him as one of the half dozen most remarkable men he had met; precisely because of the harmony between his ideals and his lived consciousness. I have confirmed this by discussions with several people who knew him, including his son Nick.

In some ways Arkle's beliefs were stable from the 1950s through to his death in 2000; and this stability can be seen both in the writings from his first pamphlet (The Hand of God, in 1960) via his two books (A Geography of Consciousness, 1974 and The Great Gift, 1977) to the last writings published on the internet; and by the themes, and recurrent symbolism, of his mature paintings (despite many varieties of style).

In the paintings; as well as sea shores, mountains, skies, rivers and the like; there are specific distinctive subjects - such as teapots and cups, or small boats. But most characteristic is the large smiling divine face - hovering above the picture, implicitly unseen by most people - sometimes with nurturing arms and hands, but most often variations on the theme of of that enigmatically-smiling face.

I regard William Arkle as a genuinely advanced spiritual soul; and therefore it was a fact that he was trying to communicate his vision across a great gulf to reach the rest of us - aspiring perhaps, but ourselves not very far along that path. 

This, I think, is the core reason why his paintings and words both tend to strike people (at least initially) as simplistic and naive: too much 'sweetness and light' and too little of that corruption and darkness which modern materialist Man seems to want in his art and literature.

Arkle was perfectly aware of this, but would not compromise on what he saw as the truth about reality. And through his life into old age, his 'vision' became more and more positive, optimistic and serene.

Anyway, in Arkle's 'last words' - published as the Foreword to a large web site made for him by Michael Perry (no longer available); he wrote a characteristic short essay that - as so often - implies a great deal more than seems.

I analyse the whole thing below. My comments are in italics:


I very nearly called this web site 'The Play of William Arkle', and then I felt that it would sound rather too casual for most people and even an insult to the endeavour that is brought to the resolving of the mysteries of life.

The reason that the word 'play' suggested itself is that the journey of understanding seems to lead from the level of human survival as a personality in this world, through to a spiritual view that takes survival of our spiritual self for granted; and then on again into the appreciation of the all-encompassing smile of our Divine Creator.

Arkle describes a three-step progression: 

1. Human survival as a personality in this incarnate, material world.
2.  A 'spiritual' view that takes for granted that the 'soul' survives death, and makes this a solid basis, a metaphysical framework, for living. 
3. An interwoven understanding of the 'all encompassing smile' of the divine creator; 'our' creator because we are true children of the divine creator. 

In other words; after we cease to push-away knowledge of our own soul, and the pervasive presence of our creator, we can begin to understand the implications and begin to live by them.

This Divine Smile says a very simple thing, which is that the everlasting nature of its Spirit can have only two options: either it remains in its Absolute condition of Blissful non-action; or it can engage in action through the creation of play-grounds. This means creating theatres of time, space and lots of things - from a condition of no action or time or space or things.

The divine smile - in its divinity, and its love for us as men and as individuals - gives us two positive options; plus a negative alternative which Arkle only obliquely implies. What is important is that these two options were the same as confronted the creator. The first in a path of pure 'static' contemplation in a state of bliss. (That is, the state of Nirvana.) The second is the one which God actually took; which is to engage in loving, creative action: creation of The World, of reality - with its time, space, matter and differentiation into many entities including persons. 

Our Creator felt that the first choice of 'no action' could becoming boring because there was no adventure, surprise or growth involved. The livingness of The Spirit felt itself to be in need of such adventure as an expression of joyful love and fun. So the second choice came about purely for the exercise of joy and love and fun.

This explains why God made the choice of action and creation. Arkle intuits that it was the preference for change, including unpredictability. This is a statement regarding the deep and intrinsic nature of God as a person. The fact is stated in a typically down-to-earth way ('boring', adventure', 'fun' etc. and 'play' coming up next) that is shocking, or banal, according to taste; and which I regard as expressive of the difficulty of communicating across a spiritual gulf - because there really is no way we can fully understand what is being said unless and until we our-selves attain such an intuitive and direct knowledge of the nature of God, as a real and living person.  

The only word I could find to cover the activity of joy and love and fun was the word play, but unless it is approached in the right way the word does not carry the correct significance. And thus the whole of this web site is a journey into the understanding of The Creator's view of the word play.

You will find that my own earlier understandings moved gradually into this way of talking about our reality. It seemed to become more and more light-hearted while being able to sympathise with all the conditions of growth which can feel to be the conditions of fear and anxiety. Thus the big game of life at play has conditions within it which can descend to the very opposites of its initial intention.

God has taken the second option of action and creation; but we - as agent persons - are free to disagree with God's choice. There are two possible ways of disagreeing - the first is to reject personhood and prefer the bliss of Nirvana - to return to the immersive static-state of absorption in which everything began. 

But it is the second freedom to which Arkle refers when he mentions 'the opposites of the initial intention'. We are also free to disagree wit the whole scheme of creation and of love between persons. We are thus free to be anti-creation, anti-love: instead of creating in harmony with divine creation we can destroy-creation, and instead of living by love for the divine plan and other persons we can live from-and-for our-selves in fear and resentment of other persons - the state called 'pride'...

When we understand that God's disliked loneliness and boredom and sought 'fun' and 'friends' with whom to share creativity; we may regard this either as generous sharing; or we may regard it as selfish and exploitative of God. The latter inference is what leads to the many of the aspects of the world in opposition to the intention of God.       

These opposite conditions are the result of our Creator deciding to give us the Gift of being able to become real players in our own right at this adventure which is being undertaken. This is why the picture book was called The Great Gift and why the writings in it referred to God as being our friend in this one life endeavour. Later on this was changed to the expression God, The Player Friend.

We are 'real players' in the 'adventure' of mortal incarnate living. Within creation, there are those who are free to regard loving creation as wrong, and to work against it. It is part of the plan that those who decide to favour option one (Nirvana) or to oppose option two (to act against love and creation) are allowed to do this, and to 'put their case' to others. For God's hoped-for friends to be real they must positively understand and agree to the divine plan; including that they need to understand and reject the alternatives. 

Such a situation is allowed-to work-itself-out in the world for the simple reason that it is the only way that the ultimate aim can be achieved. Nobody is compelled. Indeed, the nature of love and creation is such that nobody can be compelled.  

Arkle's concept of 'play' is the experience from-which we may learn; but what we learn is up-to each individual. All options are 'on the table'. The possibilities are known, and competing - even fighting. 

We must and will, all of us, take sides - because there is no neutral ground. We may change our minds during mortal incarnate life, and perhaps after - but at any given moment we are on one side, and not on the other two sides. This is the nature and purpose of the play of our lives.

As for me, I have kept the name William Arkle. I like the name because it implies that my Will is doing its best to be a small expression of the Ark of Life, The Heart of the Creator Friend.

However my close associates now find me calling myself Billy The Kid.

Thus Arkle closes his valedictory with a modest and whimsical set of puns...

The (apparent) wastefulness of Life... Steiner and Arkle

It is important to realize that much of what may appear unnecessary in a human being for outer life, nevertheless, plays an important part — similar to the way we see outer nature. 

Just compare the infinite number of herring eggs, distributed all over the seas, with the number of herrings actually born , and you could easily reproach nature for being tremendously wasteful. 

However, this could only be the opinion of those who do not know of the powerful spiritual effects the dead herring eggs have on the growing herrings. A certain number of eggs have to die so that a certain number of eggs may thrive. 

These things are all interconnected. 

Rudolf Steiner.
https://www.rsarchive.org/Download/Childs_Changing_Consciousness-Rudolf_Steiner-306.pdf

GOD: You simply cannot do everything all of the time. Experiment and waste go together and lead to discovery, so don't become anxious about results. 

Try to enjoy the process itself which allows for lateral thinking and lateral diversions. The new things are not found where you expect them to be. We can't live "new beginnings" without letting go of the "old beginnings" and allowing them to slip away. All that is really valuable will come back to you when it is needed. 

This is part of The Game of life which requires forgetting and letting go with good grace and a sense of non-importance of ones valuable Self. 

Do not fear to waste your time and energy, you will never run out of them and the "Crisis" in the World is only solved by those who follow the best instincts of their Spiritual Nature. 

As these work out all together, so each one of you finds yourself holding and demonstrating a bit of the necessary jig-saw puzzle of life coming into a new and better expression of itself, Myself-Ourself. 

Be with the big, fearless love which smiles on everything from its sense of Everlastingness and the Completeness that lies behind all Living Reality. For Reality is complete in one sense although it strives to play at Itself in another sense. 

Life Games are set up for playfulness and not because our being nature is frightened of losing anything. We think we can lose but we can't. There are safety nets around everything since all comes from perfect Love, Joy, Fun, Bliss, Wisdom and Humour! 

What you see as misery in the World is what you see in your child as it lives from crisis to crisis each hour of the day with each one being "the end of the world" in severity. Your world is like this child, it is the way young things grow...only the scale is different. They will both grow out of it.

William Arkle.
http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/late-prose.html

 

The music of creation, and our part in it - from William Arkle

The writer is our Father in Heaven addressing us, his children, by means of an imaginary letter ...

Another question you would surely like to ask me, is why I should need so many children around about me in this creative scheme of mine. Why would not, say, twenty or fifty be enough?

To begin with you do not yet know the depth of my nature. You do not yet know just how much I have to give. If what I had to give were just a simple thing it would not require an elaborate situation to give it in, but what I have to give is most elaborate, and so, to create the necessary width of understanding, I need to find expression for all my qualities, and lay them all out for you to see.

As many of these qualities have to be lived, so I need many different children to live amongst one another.

My plan of creation is vast in your sight because my being is vast also, but do not let that be a cause to think that any of you do not matter to me; you matter to me all as individual children and also as players in my play. If you do not play your part, who is to do it for you? No one can, and it thus leaves a gap.

You are all players in my orchestra, and I cannot make the sounds I had hoped for if any of you are unable to play the individual parts that make up the whole piece of music.

But my orchestra is not like yours. In my orchestra no two parts are the same but they are all needed to make up the true beauty of the sound I have visioned.

I need a large family because I need to express a large number of characters, so do not think only of rushing to my heaven, for it is not necessarily in heaven that you will be able to learn the part you have to play.

When you think of my music, try to remember that it is a continuous creation and not a single piece that is to be repeated. I have no desire to repeat my music, rather do I spin it newly all the while, so what you add to it now, and at any other time, is continually affecting the performance.

You and I are making this music now, and each of your sounds is valuable to the effect, and I am the one who all the time gathers them in and weaves them together into a whole of constantly changing music.

Thus I even make use of the discordant sounds since they all express in some way the reality of the complete situation.

Not that I would have you think that I sit back and coldly 'conduct' this music, or feel any pleasure from discordant notes. I am doing many things at the same time in ways that you would not yet understand, and each discordant note pulls at my heart and my sympathy.

My music is not made to entertain, it is the expression of our endeavour, and effort, and suffering, woven together with the beauty of the beginning and the end.

It is this very music that I use to order and adapt my school of living to the needs that I sense in it. The music reports to my sensitive ear the exact condition of my whole work and my nature responds to its beauty and its needs.

Edited from Letter from a Father (1973) by William Arkle:
http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/letter-from-father-by-william-arkle.html

The Nature of Wisdom - by William Arkle (1976)

Wisdom - Bill Arkle, August 1976

Wisdom has to start with our ordinary understanding of the term 'wisdom' which we know is a relative term, in the same way as we know the term 'beauty' is a relative term - relative to the attitude and the perception, as it were, within the eye of the beholder. And so wisdom also is relative to the perception and the eye of the beholder of actions and responses which are measured in terms of being more wise or less wise. But, behind the ordinary terminology of wisdom, we may suppose that there is a deep absolute form of wisdom which is in line with, and in tune with, the absolute level of our being and the absolute creative intention behind the manifestation of the universes at all their levels, from the most ethereal level, which we call the heavenly levels, down through the more and more dense levels to the most dense and concrete, which we call the earthly levels.

My understanding of this absolute form of wisdom depends on an ability I believe we have to resonate with the deep heart of our being into the deep heart of the Creator's being and feel, with that very deep sense of in-feeling, how the Creator felt towards creation before it began. In other words one can learn to feel what it was that the Creator was longing for, aspiring to, or simply desiring, from the great work and the great effort that he has engaged in in what is known to us as creation. Now, if we can feel with all our deepest understanding, our deepest intelligence and our deepest perception, what it was that the Creator looked for, above all else, in creation, then, and only then, shall we be close to the absolute point of wisdom which I believe is in the absolute point of deepest desire in the heart of the Creator's being.

As I myself attempt to do this, I come away with the understanding that the greatest longing that was in the Creator's heart before creation, and which brought about creation and brought into existence the individual beings, who each of us is in the Creator's eyes and to one another, was the desire to have real individual friends, in the deepest possible meaning of that word. Friends to share his understanding, his joy and his wisdom within the context of real friendship, which creates a vital relationship between each friend and the other friend, from which ever-renewing possibilities and responses can grow. My feeling is that the Creator first of all wished to bring into existence real and individual children, whose nature was based on a part of his own divine nature, but the characteristics of which were to be developed by each of those individual children as they grew up in the universes, or the universities, of his creation. They would develop in the nature of their own individual spirits, so that each of those children would become a unique individual child and then, hopefully, would become more than a child - would wish to grow into a mature condition which was not as a child to the Creator, but was as an individual being to the Creator. Thus all these beings could each have creative relationships of friendship and gladness with one another and with the Creator. Not with the Creator as a special 'God' individual, who was not approachable as other friends are approachable, but He himself wanted to be able to befriend us and have a creative friendship with us as we befriend one another and have a creative friendship with one another.

In the heart of the Creator's being we find all manner of wonderful things; but we find, above all, great love, great affection, great beauty, great sweetness, great gentleness and great strength. We find all the great qualities, such as courage and devotion, which to us become deeply valuable properties of our most valuable relationship. Now, the nature of wisdom as we will try to define it, is something other than the nature of love.


We can understand that the Creator's nature is, as it were, all love, but wisdom is the application of that love to the purposeful aspiration or desire which emanates from that love which, in the case we are talking about, was to bring into existence real individual children who have unique characteristics of their own and who were truly separate and autonomous beings. These would learn to live and grow amongst one another according to the specieshood of the divine nature, but within that specieshood, would develop the ability to express their own unique characteristics and express the initiative and spiritedness which emanates from any healthy spiritual being. Thus they would be able, as they gained more strength, to stand apart and upon their own feet, in a metaphorical sense, in order that each of these individuals could be a unique polarity to which other individuals could relate, and between which living polarities, new, ever growing, vortices of creative potentiality would develop.

Now wisdom, as I would understand it, is the appreciation of the value that comes out of the effort, and the means to bring about this great desire, as the means become available in terms of this created universe at all its levels. We understand that, after the universe was created and prepared, the spirits, the particles of the Creator's being, which were individual units of his own being nature, were sown into this universe as pupils are placed in a university. In it they work from the lowest level of the university up to the highest level of the university and, eventually, learn to appreciate the nature and value of the university as a whole, from the highest level to the lowest level. Wisdom begins by understanding that these potential children cannot become real, in any sense of that word, if they are prestructured or pre-programmed in such a way that their individuality and their sense of selfhood cannot be properly developed and appreciated by them.

If the Creator in any way subverts the processes which maintain the individual autonomy of each of these children as they grow and mature, then the Creator is allowing the desire and longing to slip away from the possibility that the universe contains for the bringing about of that great longing. So, from the beginning, the Creator had to work with wisdom to create processes which would allow for the potentiality of each of these Divine particles, who were individual children in a potential condition, gradually to become aware of the structure of values and relationships that it was living in with regard to nature and to other individual beings. And this had to be brought about in such a way that at no time was the individual overawed or over-dominated by the too great nearness or presence of the Creator's own personality. For, if that occurred, then the dominance of the Creator's personality would stamp itself completely upon the individuality of the individual child and prevent that individuality flourishing in its fullness; which it must do if it is to carry any real value as a real child in its own right.

So we can understand that, from the beginning, a great wisdom was needed which understood that, although the Creator was longing that each of his children should understand the value of, and the nature of, each of the Divine qualities, these children could not have an objective understanding of divine qualities if they were not able to experience them in a condition which would allow for the opposites of those qualities to be experienced at the same time. Thus to enter into the judgement of the value of the qualities which each of them must learn to apply for themselves. It would have been very beautiful and very happy for us all to have been born into a perfect and heavenly environment, perhaps close to the person and, shall we call it, the home of our Divine Creator, but this would not have produced in us the qualities which the Creator's heart most longed for; which was a longing for the quality of unique individuality which each of us longs for in a friend.

A friend is one who can stand apart from us in strength and values us in freedom as we would value them in strength and freedom. We value our friends not so much in terms of their cleverness or their special abilities, but for their profound uniqueness of characteristics which they exhibit towards us as completely separate autonomous individuals.

Now wisdom has to learn to discriminate between the lower forms of love and affection and the higher forms of love and affection. The lower forms of love are not true forms of love at all, but are the desire and the need for one another to supply the gratifications which are necessary to the outer forms of our being nature and the appetites which go along with the outer forms of our being nature. The deeper and real forms of love and affection are not based on the desire to use individuals as a source of gratification of needs, but rather we are very deeply glad about the existence of the other individual in an entirely undemanding way. The basis of the friendship is nothing other than the deep and instinctive recognition of the divine individuality in that other being, and all that divine individuality implies in terms of potentiality.

So real friendship and real love is a very creative, purposeful, ongoing situation, which desires that new things, new possibilities, new responses, should forever arise from that friendship. Wisdom is that knowledge which recognises the nature of true loving relationships and true friendships, and recognises the way that the individual children of God have to be brought in a very slow and gradual state to a condition of self awareness, through which their individuality will receive the greatest encouragement to grow and develop without being overshadowed and overruled by the potency of the Creator's own being and characteristics.

So we can see that wisdom is that understanding which realises the value of the means, and every moment that those means are striving to achieve the end, which was the initial desire for divine children and divine friends to share divine life with. We are saying that wisdom is that understanding which realises that you can only have a deep friendship with an individual who has a deep set of experiences and characteristics; who has deep awareness, which is supported by strength and integrity, of the objective significance of each of the divine qualities which are exhibited in the university, the universe, and which come to us through the activities that each of us play out for the other in the processes or life.

Wisdom will therefore be at great pains to draw out the potentialities and the benefits from the rich mixture of spontaneous responses that all of the individual children of God produce for one another. So far as those responses are unique and individual, then so far do they carry the possibility of producing some spontaneous mixture which did not exist before, and, upon which, other spontaneous mixtures and responses may be built, to produce new possibilities for new understandings and new growth, not only in creation but in terms of eternal purpose and eternal value.

So we can see then that wisdom is that ability in us that can stand back and, through its knowledge that you can only have a thin relationship with a thin personality, can appreciate the thickening of the characteristics of individuality which occur in a very rich and spontaneous and uninhibited form of existence, which is full of initiative and spontaneity. This is the spontaneity which makes mistakes and realises, through its own sense of responsibility, the fact that it has made mistakes, and, through its own sense of responsibility, wishes to put those mistakes right again and correct them. Now this sort of richness can only come to those individual children in a level of the university in which mistakes can occur. My own feeling is that these mistakes can only occur at the lower end of the university, and, as our nature gravitates to a more and more ethereal level of experience in the university, so does the possibility of creative spontaneity and endeavour become less and less.

Whereas, at the higher levels, the enjoyment and adoration of the beautiful divine qualities, that are not only in the Creator's being but present as potentialities in our own being, absorb our whole attention, the desire to use our initiative and the desire to enter into creative and exploratory forms of life, disappear. We can understand that if our educational processes at the lower end of the university were perfect as they are in the higher and more heavenly level of the university, then the initiative to make mistakes and correct them again may be lacking. We would be unable to experience the opposite of all the values of the divine nature, such as love being experienced against the quality of hatred, and kindness being experienced against the quality of cruelty, and weakness being experienced against the quality of strength, and beauty being experienced against the quality of ugliness.

Now this ability for us not only to see and feel and experience the qualities which we come to value most deeply in terms of their opposites, but our ability to get into situations, through the use of our own initiative, which have to be corrected and thoroughly understood before we become clear of those situations again, does not occur at any other level than that of the most concrete and separate forms of creation, which the physical level of creation represents. It represents the most crystallised form of the Creator's spirit in action and therefore, at this level as in no other, are we able to define the specific significance of all the divine potential qualities which exist in our nature and in the Creator's nature; through perceiving them and understanding them, being involved with them, having to use them, having to use them correctly, and correct them when we use them incorrectly.

This sort of experience produces true wisdom and true understanding, and produces in us a deep awareness of the significance of the Creator's great work on our behalf. This attitude towards the significance of wisdom helps us to understand why it was, in the allegorical sense, that the Creator allowed us to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and yet, at the same time, warned us that it would be a thing which would cause us pain. The Creator knew that in order to fulfil the great longing in his heart to produce craggy, leathery, strong individuals, who had deep characteristics of individuality in them, we would have to enter into a level of experimental living in which mistakes occurred and which pain would be felt as a result of those mistakes occurring. As the source of love and affection, the Creator himself could not force us into that situation; he could not place us in that place in which pain must come to us. But on the other hand, he could Go straight to large imagetake us close to the door which led into this field of experiment and pain, and hopefully wait for our initiative to become strong enough to take us through that door. So that we, from our initiative, entered into the realm of pain and suffering through the spiritedness of our spirit and the desire to know all things; to register the true value of ourselves in a deep sense and to register a sense, which is very strong in us, of being the arbiter of our own actions and the carrier of responsibility for those actions.

In other words, it was the deep, instinctive sense of the godlike creative experimental and responsible individuality which led us through that door into the world of the knowledge of good and evil, and caused us to be engaged with good and evil in a way which we were not engaged with them before. Because, before we entered that door and experimented unwisely with the forces of our own being, we were not engaged with the processes and the qualities of evil, we were only engaged with the processes and the qualities of good.

Although we may have chosen to remain on the good side of that door and not pass through it, if we had done so we would have lost the potentiality of growth and development which can only come to us through the deep, tragic, heroic and painful experience which comes to us through the misuse of our godlike abilities, but which also registers in us the godlike remorse and the godlike desire to correct the mistakes we make as we make them.

So that great wisdom, whereas it will not force people into situations which it knows are incorrect and painful, at the same time will learn to wait for the individual to work out the results of such wrong engagement in life. Because wisdom knows that it is only through the wrong engagement in life that some greater value than obedient perfection can arise, which is not an ability to be in perfect harmony with all the beautiful qualities of the divine nature, but is, in fact, the ability to know on its own account, to know for itself, to know objectively within its own experience, why the divine values are divinely valuable, and what the values are which detract from and destroy those divine values.

From that type of knowledge arises a great strength and a great wisdom and a great love, which cannot arise if that spirit has not passed through the gate into the world of knowledge of good and evil. It is only on the other side of that gate that great strength will be required to recover from mistakes, and it's only on the other side of that gate that great mistakes will be made and great understanding developed in order to recover from those mistakes.

So we can see that great wisdom is not engaged in interfering with the processes of life in order to tidy them up, in order to do away with disharmony, in order to do away with the crosscurrents of life which stir the pot of experience and produce a rich soup of opposing currents and values and desires and attitudes. Yet, at the same time, wisdom is certainly not indifferent to suffering, and it is not indifferent to the fact that continually the experiences produce a stumbling and a faltering, and mankind has to be rescued and brought back to a reasonable level of buoyancy again from which further movements and further experiments can be made.

In a sense, although wisdom does not interfere, wisdom is always on the lookout for a situation which has gone too far, and become so negative that nothing of value can arise from the situation anymore. Then wisdom will try and suggest to an individual who is stuck in such a situation that there is a way out which that individual hasn't yet seen.

Thus, the way out will produce a form of recovery which will lead to the individual realising why he has fallen, why he has got stuck in a situation which has stopped life happening to that individual, stopped experience growing and developing, stopped understanding and awareness growing in the individual.

Wisdom, while it will stand back and allow people and individuals to make mistakes, will equally engage in rescuing people from mistakes and from over-stressed situations, from which those individuals cannot rescue themselves. We can see that wisdom is a very deep awareness which is continually balancing out all the processes engaged in building deeper and deeper characteristics into the individuality which exists in each of the divine children of the Creator.

Wisdom is encouraging each of those divine children to grow into a level beyond childhood, which is more mature than childhood is, which is a level of growth in which divine friendship can occur between the individuals and their Creator.

Wisdom will forever be observing the balance occurring in experience, particularly at a physical level, in order that this absolute value can be extracted and made use of in every situation. So that wisdom is not so much engaged in easing the burden of life, as it is engaged in the harvesting of the fruits of the burdens of life. Wisdom develops an ability to see that the harvest in life is not at the level of ease, happiness, bliss and joy, but exists in a level of beingness in our nature which is at a very deep level of strength and integrity and selfhood which, while it is being autonomous and highly individual, is also becoming aware of its unity and loving relationship with all other forms of selfhood.

So we are saying that the deep wisdom which exists in the Creator's nature, and which we can learn to understand, is a deep wisdom which values not only the individual who is a friend to each other individual, but values the depth of character and strength and integrity, the leathery, craggy, strong, warrior-like toughness and individual responsiveness that each individual can develop in their own right. And wisdom recognises that individuality which doesn't have strength and doesn't have deep experience, is less valuable.

Although all the divine qualities of heaven are something we must have an experience of, and a taste of, wisdom recognises that, if these qualities are not understood arid lived at this outermost physical level of the universe, they are not fully appreciated in terms of their opposites, and therefore do not produce the deep understanding, the objective valuation, and the deep strength which can support them and which is needed in any true individual.

Wisdom recognises that there are three things that we need to achieve. First of all our unique separate beingness, then the objective understanding of values, which produces the ability to understand the real quality and value of all things, and then the strength and integrity which is necessary to support the being and the understanding; and it is on earth that these experiences have been made available for us, to a degree which they may not be available for us in any other form of experience. That is why there is a wisdom that is able to grow from the earth which is so valuable.


The essay Wisdom, published in The Great Gift, by William Arkle - 1977