I have and wear many hats, perhaps too many: husband, father of three young boys, attorney, Wisdom student and circle facilitator, member of the recovery community, Benedictine Oblate, youth coach, wannabe urban farmer-poet, reggae dance party extraordinaire etc. If we are a multitude, and we are, each of my “I’s” has a hat. Sometimes the hat wears me, sometimes I wear the hat.
There are times when I feel a bit like the Mad Hatter, mercurial and spun about by the chaos of the outside world and my internal reactions to it, a slave to conditioning, to external forces, and instinctual drives.
Work in this Wisdom lineage, has helped me find a different kind of hat, what Rumi calls “a cap to wear in both worlds.” I can wear this cap on the earth plane and in the imaginal realm, or in Ray of Creation terms, world 48 and 24. This Wisdom cap, has allowed me to see my “Mad Hatter” manifestations from a different place, without judgement (or less judgment) and attuned to sensation in the body. It provides greater access to Conscience and teaches me to discern and skillfully wield the sword of yes and no.
*Some of my hats. Note the hat in the middle with a 24 and lighting bolt going connecting the higher and lower. This was a random “imaginal gift”, the 24 refers to mile 24 of the Twin Cities Marathon, but to me it is world 24.
We are living in a restless, destabilizing and disturbing time. There is great risk, and great opportunity. In this Wisdom work, I have learned that in the restlessness and disturbance there is a capacity for something more, for Wonder, Sovereignty, Rest and ultimately Hope. See Logion 2, Gospel of Thomas.
Some of my most vivid memories as a child are of an overwhelming sense that the world would end in my lifetime. I sought and seek to prepare myself. I have come to understand that what I was sensing and feeling as a child was not the end of the world per se, but a new arising, that would come through and bring about a great upheaval on the planet and in my being.
This Wisdom work has helped me see and understand that for a new heaven, a new earth, a new consciousness and for my own sacred individuality to come into being it requires a lawful but painful process of dying and rebirth on all levels, in all worlds, and in all times. A daunting task, but this Wisdom work teaches the practical art/science needed for transformation and provides real help along the path.
The upheaval I sensed as a child has borne itself out in my life and in our world in more ways that I can name here. This Wisdom work is helping to navigate in the moment, teaching that in the upheaval there is something sacred that becomes available that I can take into my being and give back. I could list an endless stream of examples but below is a quick and dirty “field report”, from that field that Rumi writes about.
Field Report:
* 2020 – 21 An intensification continues.
– COVID and the Cave. We are cooped up by COVID. Working from my dark, cold basement. It is like the Cave of St. George’s Dragon . . . A deep depression sets in, fear and rage too. A dark night of sorts. Centering Prayer and recovery meetings via zoom provide sustenance.
– The Twin Cities burn, but WE are not consumed. We watch a man’s life extinguished as the collective knee of our disorder is coldly pressed to his neck. How many black and brown bodies must be sacrificed on the so called altar of American freedom? “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?” My belly and my city Burn! There is smoke in the yard from the burning buildings blocks away. There are constant gun shots, it feels like the edge of a war zone. We all sleep in one bed that night (and still often do). I shoved the dresser in front of the bedroom door and kept the old deer hunting rifle at the ready. There are 100 fully armed national guard troops stationed in the parking lot of the rec center kitty corner from our house. Amidst that chaos there is something more that holds and sustains us. There is sobriety. We are burned but not consumed.
– Lion eats man. A summer of tremendous violence. A young man is shot in the head on my block, other shootouts on my street. My young sons learn to distinguish between the sound of fireworks and gunshots. There is a sense of deep and timeless solidarity that feeds us. This ain’t nothing new, it’s just a taste of what many have lived and do live with, but there is deep sadness at watching the human condition, my condition, as it is when “lion eats man”. . . we were created for more than this.
– The Eye of the Heart & Experiments with Cosmic Dialysis. A clear impression. I am listening to The Eye of the Heart audiobook, receiving an introduction to the Ray of the Creation and hearing Cynthia’s call for “all hands on deck,” while walking past National Guard troops with machine guns and armored vehicles guarding the Capital in St. Paul as I walk to work. My former ways of action and activism seem less potent. They are still there, but I sense something more is needed I begin to experiment with a walking form of Cosmic Dialysis (Tonglen) in my Neighborhood.
*2022 – 24 – “Welcome to the Wisdom Community”- On the Ground Wisdom Schools
– A taste. I attend a mini-Wisdom School in Texas. How can I leave home to do this work with a wife and small kids? Perhaps I can bring it to Minnesota? I begin to experiment and coordinate small retreats locally. Help comes. Essence friends are found.
– A banquet feast. I sneak into my first Wisdom School at Claymont. I am new, I am nervous, but I feel at home. This is no cult. There is good food and good humans here. First time with Movements – they are prayer and medicine like I have rarely ever tasted before. Cynthia tells me, “Welcome to the Wisdom Community.” I leave with my body and heart on fire with sensation. When I get home, I tell my kids it was like Hogwarts . . . for misfit mystics. I long to return but know that my work is mostly local and at home for now.
–A local Wisdom Circle is born. I set out to find a local group. I trust my gnosis and help comes. Spirit directs me to reach out to some apparent strangers and almost immediately we begin working together as a Wisdom Circle. We are like the blind leading the blind, but our desire is pure, we receive higher help from the Wisdom Community and Beyond. We weave a Web, or the Web weaves itself into us. I am gifted with the opportunity to attend additional Wisdom Schools; I bring back what I can.
*2025 – 2026 – Warming Minnesota
– ICE descends on the Twin Cities. We have been hit hard before, but this is something different. There is more terror in the atmosphere. It is toxic. It takes tremendous Work to transmute the fear and rage, to stay sober. We practice eating negative emotions and emanating something of a finer quality. We do what we can to help those who are targeted based on their skin color and accent, which include my wife and sons, we feed, we comfort, we march, we pray, and we watch.
–Imaginal Assistance from the Wisdom Community. We received a surge of imaginal assistance. The Wisdom Community at the winter gathering at Claymont has our back. We feel it, we know it. Like Gurdjieff “warming” Paris during the Nazi Occupation, the Wisdom Community worked to warm Minnesota from all corners of the country and Beyond. It is a miracle that only two people are killed. I watch as many white people wrestle for the first time with the prospect of unchecked state violence being arbitrarily wielded against white bodies in America. The veil is lifted. The emperor wears no clothes. Perhaps it is true that “modern civilization is based on violence and slavery and fine words”, a hard pill to swallow for many that have not been under its thumb before.
–Whether I live or die. I wrestle with my response to the “surge” and turn to Howard Thurman’s, Jesus and the Disinherited, “[T]here are somethings that are worse than death. To deny one’s own integrity in the presence of the human challenge is one of those things . . . “until that center of [“not being killed”] is shifted, nothing real can happen.” . . . I hear Cynthia’s call, “all hands are needed on deck,” “whether I live or die I am the Lords” and “I am in the Ray of Creation and the Ray of Creation is in me.”
–Grateful. I am grateful for this Work and this Wisdom Community making it accessible. There is now something growing in me and in our local group that is capable of truly remaining sober in this time and discerning how and when to act, with Metis and impartiality. There is a growing trust, a growing courage, a growing power and presence, that is not mine or ours alone, it is the Web, it is the Communion of Saints, the Conscious Circle of Humanity, it is Conscience itself, it is, Lord, Have Mercy, it is Grace.
I take refuge in this field Mercy “beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing”, and I wish to grow in being and understanding so that I may be a bridge, to skillfully wear the cap given to me to wear in at least two of the worlds (but I can confirm it also travels to world 96 and below).
Author: Daniel Marx, Obl. OSB, is a husband, father, attorney, Wisdom student and active in the Recovery Community. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife and three young sons where he co-facilitates a local Wisdom Circle working with the Christian Wisdom lineage of Cynthia Bourgeault. He also has a deep experiential reverence for the ancient Wisdom lineages of Africa and the Americas, including Egypt, the Maya, and the Seven Council Fires of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota.
