“The Journey –A Novel of Pilgrimage and Spiritual Quest” by Elyn Aviva (Pilgrims Process, Inc., Longmont, Colorado, 2004)
I like the fact that this book differs from the first two I read in a remarkable way: it begins at the end! That’s right, we meet our main character after she has completed the camino, or road, to Compostela and attends the mass where others are pouring out their hearts to tell of their revelations along the way. She is overcome and cries.
What great and marvelous experience affects her so? Was it the affair she had along the way? Yup. That is in part why she is crying, she ‘did it again’ –but for only a while– she gave her power and purpose to another. Then she broke away and completed the journey, realizing that she needed to take control of her own purpose and destiny. She determinedly finished the journey without repeating that error. And when she got to Compostela she felt what? Pain and emptiness. That is why she is crying, the Camino did absolutely nothing for her!
Great start! So what happens next? She is told that the real pilgrimage road is to the end of he earth, Finisterre, Before she goes there, she meets up with friends who invite her to a remarkable and mysterious ceremony that affects here in a strange way and begins to change her life. Her adventures only begin here, and cover so much territory, geographically and psychically, that the book is a delightful tour of he arcane that ranges from Koya, Turkey, to the deep woods of Brittany.
I can’t tell this story to you here, that would not be appropriate. But what I can do is relate all of the things that Aviva has brought into the mix to create her story that meant something to me along my own way to spiritual awareness.
So, you will have to take my word for it that this is a very entertaining book, and if you are interested, you can read on to see what I thought of some of the messages the books main character learns along her way to spiritual wholeness and power.
1. Somewhere before page 99 is the story of a handsome man who promises to reveal all, for a small fee, through seminars on the occult. He focuses on our heroine and she falls for him in a big way and has a very bad experience. He sought to use here, physically as well as spiritually, and also used he connections to do harm to a person this man was jealous of. The bottom line is the lesson that no one can give you what is already yours to discover within yourself, your spiritual nature and the core of your being. This is a theme throughout the book, the answers lie within and the pilgrimage is internal. Places of power and spiritual significance can help, of course, but they are only aids, not answers. An instance of this being made crystal clear is at the top of page 117: “It is often necessary to seek guidance from teachers, guides, and, yes, even from visions. But it is always necessary to check back within yourself. You must make absolutely sure that what you are being told from the ‘outside’ feels right and true from the ‘inside.’” We return to this theme later.
2. On page 102 I realized I was in for a pleasant ride: a Knight Tenplar and a Sufi from Konya, Anatolia (now Turkey) join the story. Konya is, of course, where Rumi taught, lived, loved and died. His tomb is also a pilgrimage destination. Who is Rumi, you ask? Click here to find out. For a short history of the Knights Templar, pages 136-137 tell a good version of their tale, emphasizing their open mindedness to others, like the Muslims, and they refused to take part in the slaughter of the Cathars in the thirteenth century. That contributed to their being declared heretical and being violently uprooted. Who were the Cathars, you ask? Click here to read what I have written about them (fact, Fiction, And fantasy, you decide which is which). On pages 178-179 there is an explication of Sufi belief concerning God and how their all encompassing view made them heretics to some Muslims, then there is a hint we will be going to Koya. Do we ever get there in the story? Read it and find out. Pages 340-341 cover this same theme again.
3. Another subject I have read/written about is synchronicity, the occurrence of just the right event at just the time it is needed, and associated phenomena. It explodes into the story in a most surprisin way on pages 106-109. It is mentioned several other times in the story, such as on page 320 where it is (again) declared that “there are no coincidences” . . . “only synchronicities.”
4. The theme of finding a balance between the masculine and the feminine inside yourself shows up two pages later on page 119. If these forces within are balanced, one can be very good friends with someone from the opposite sex without needing to complete oneself by seeking ones other half in that other person. The hunger to own and posses is gone, in other words. Doesn’t the Bible say (Paul in the New testament) that love is not possessive? That is my interpretation of the lesson being taught here anyway.
5. Pages 138-139 explore the multiple symbolic meanings attached to things in the Middle Ages, in particular the scallop shell that is the symbol of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Its meanings range from the miraculous to the mystical within a semi-Christian context and to also being the pre-Christian symbol associated with Venus.
6. I have read and written much about Courtly Love, and so was pleased to see it enter the tale explicitly on pages 141-142. It had actually already entered implicitly on page 110 when Gwen, our heroine, hooks up with a man from her past for part of her journey and observes: “I think we are being given a second chance, but it’s not a second chance to be lovers. It’s something bigger, something much more important.” That is essentially my version of the ideal core around which Courtly Love once circled, like sharks around their next snack. Courtly Love was at times a cause of misery, and illicit affairs sprang from it as much as spiritual enlightenment did, but it was a powerful scheme when not overcome by hormone-satisfying actions for opening up new avenues to spiritual experience . This book by Aviva chooses to cast it a bit negatively by contrasting it with whole souled-whole bodied love between true lovers in an idealized romanticized view of marriage. The latter is the ideal, but as the story shows, in the times of Courtly Love’s reign, marriages were inter-family business arrangements and love was a rare and unexpected surprise. Not unheard of, just rare. To read my mad discourses written while intoxicated with Courtly Love, click here. Associated with Courtly Love were its itinerant poets and singers called troubadours and minstrels and other names in other languages. A secondary heroine in the story who has a discussion about Courtly Love is in fact such a troubadour. On pages 248-249 there is a good discussion of Courtly Love and its multiple meanings, including associating its ideals withe love-intoxication of Rumi. That is exactly what I do with my story of Rumi’s relationship with a man named Shams of Tabriz, who teaches him to attain God’s Love, thereby creating an ecstatic visionary out of this scholar whose revelations in poetic form are very popular today largely because of the hopefulness and inclusiveness of his deeply insightful messages.
7. Pages 146 and 147 touch on several items, like the meaning of visions, reality, symbolism, mythology? Multiple meanings are possible as well as likely. This is a theme that is returned to in the book many times. Also, multiple- dimensions has something to do with physics. True enough. Aviva doesn’t go further with this theme, she just mentions it is all, good. I didn’t want to have to call attention to my disagreement with the facile way some New Age leading lights appeal to physics as proof of some of their fanciful statements of realities and facts beyond the reach of our senses.
8. Page 148 speaks of rebirth after a near-death experience. That, too, was a milestone on my own path to the present. My discorses on that subject are heavy and not pleasant reads, but if you want to go there, click here.
9. Page 156 mentions the ley lines also mentioned in MacLaine’s book as locations where thought is deeper and clearer. Our heroine says she felt nothing while allegedly walking on them. (But later on in the book she does feel such earth-power zones, on page 170, and later and much more clearly so on pages 204-206 and 228-229.)
10. Pages 166-169 pick up on the external/internal knowing theme again, this time tying it to another theme where I have some experience that caused me to agree wholeheartedly with Aviva’s characater’s observations regarding the need to liken ones intuitive impressions to one’s life as a way to learn from that side of our being. The intellectual side is very important, you can’t be effective in the world without it, but the intuitive side is also a source of knowing and it makes for a more fulfilling and interesting life to be able to tap into it (like sight plus sound makes for a more interesting movie maybe?).
11. Speaking of these pages, they also continue to develop a sub-theme in the book that points out the influence of the ancient Celtic religion on the dominant modern day religion of the region. This is illustrated in many places, not just on these pages. In a way it is somewhat comforting that we are not as radically different from our forebears as we might (like to) think.
12. In another way it is disquieting that the revival of these old ways that this book advocates and celebrates may signal a “new age” of superstition (for some) rather than a new age of spiritual empowerment (which it is for others). I fear the potential growth of the superstition-outcome in the ‘new age’ just as I fear the growing fundamentalism in modern religions. (Part of that reaction is a response to the success of the ‘new age,’ if I understand my radio-evangelists correctly.)
13. Fairytale descriptions of ‘reality’ that become challenged by careful observation (science comes to mind here) lead to those whose vision is so challenged to take action to protect their version of the universe: change curricula, stop funding research into certain areas, and even violence. Just because in the past it was religions that did this sort of thing doesn’t mean that any strongly held belief isn’t capable of fostering the same reactions, the same reactionary mindsets, in today’s ‘new age’ devotees of whatever stripe. Secular belief systems are also good at oppression if they hold political power. It is human nature at work. The brand-name of the belief to which someone pledges near-absolute devotion is immaterial. I think the book “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer makes this point very convincingly. OK, back to the book.
14. On page 170 the book’s heroine has a revelation, she feels the holiness and power of a spring that has become part of legend. She feels the sun and wind, but also another non-sensate stimulus, the concentrated power of the earth. On page 171 she closed her eyes “and went within” and received supplementary knowledge through her intuitive faculties. This is a triumph for her. It added several levels of potential meaning to a symbolic object for which, intellectually, she knew one meaning.
15. Pages 178-179 have a second heroine in the story learn about the God within from a Sufi Muslim. Aviva is a student of Sufism and lectures on its teachings. Of course she is very much aware of and enthralled with the writings of its mystics. Me too. The teaching includes one of the Sufi ‘heresies’ that Christ is God. But not in the way many Christians believe. Christ is God, and so are we all. Blasphemy? It is a legitimate observation on or interpretation of the mystical experience that has one become one with God, as decribed by both Christina and Sufi mystics and others from Eastern traditions as well).
16. Let’s move to page 318 where there is a lively discussion of a particularly vivid dream or vision with troubling implications. The old, experienced person says to our heroine: “I have spent many long years journeying on the confusing, maze-like path of dreams and visions, learning to separate rare truth from facts like wheat from chaff. . . . You mustn’t get stuck on facts, Gwen. They are both limited and limiting. Truth is what you must look for.” Gwen is told she will receive instruction in how to do this sifting for herself. This is another variation on the intellect/intuition theme. However, it goes a bit further than usual and I was surprised by it because I have been told the same thing, near verbatim, regarding my turning my back on my former religious beliefs [another digression follows]:
17. Upon falling away from belief, I was told to empty my mind of all facts that made me disbelieve and start over seeking to know the truth of a very simple proposition, the truth of which can only be revealed, by God, and seeking to hold onto facts will prevent that revelation from coming. But I am only to let go of facts, I am to formulate in my mind a question to which I will seek an affirmation. It has to be sought with total trust and deep longing and with a mind emptied of fact-based doubt. There is a masterful short statement of this ‘principle’ in the book of Moroni in the Book of Mormon: “ ”. I placed ‘ ’ around ‘principle’ because it works, it really does, you experience what you really desire to experience. You receive the confirmation you are looking for, hoping for. But that is why it is so unreliable as a test for ‘truth.’ You are doing the opposite of emptying your mind and letting yourself be totally open so that truth can distill into your mind from the intuitive, spiritual side. Instead you are taking a preconception and seeking its confirmation. Since you have purposely mingled the two, there is no way to divide your inner desire from your inner voice. And your inner desire is suggested by the verse that tells you to ask and you will receive. There is some circularity in all of this, and it works, perhaps because of that circularity? Gwen, our heroine, is not being taught what I was taught, but it comes precariously close in my opinion. It takes us back to the wheat from the chaff sifting discussion just before page 99 mentioned in the first numbered comment above. There the key to separating wheat from chaff is how you feel about it inside. This assumes you have a key to truth inside you. So we have just discussed the same issue and phenomenon from a slightly different angle is all.
18. Black, powerful-looking Madonnas and their linkage to ancient goddesses are discussed along with sacred geometry and telluric currents, all to do with the cathedral at Chartres (pp. 186-194). Sacred geometry is a major theme throughout the book. I have not called attention to it. It is of little interest to me. Sorry. But I was gripped by the outcome of some sacred geometry related and telluric current related experience on pages 204-206. Our heroine has an overpowering love experience worthy of Rumi and afterward falls into the embrace of her non-lover: the perfect outcome of idealized Courtly Love. Courtly Love was a stylized romance of devotion without explicit sex (but lots of implicit sex, the spiritual and sexual meet within our systems and are easily confused). Page 289 actually touches on this theme when discussing the ecstatic energy of creation being experienced among a group of women as a result of a ceremony designed to put them in touch with this inner manifestation of God. Afterward our heroine was confused about her experience and felt attracted to the one who had brought her to this ecstatic state of awareness. This gets straightened out by page 296 when she realizes that the divine feminine archetype that attracted her because of the way her teacher embodied it was also within herself, and the point was to learn to draw on that aspect of the divine within, not to seek it in another. But, returning to page 194, here we have two spiritual lovers, of God (Rumi-type lovers) who are seeking to raise and ennoble each other to bring the experience of God within to each other and themselves. She has finally experienced the love that consumes and they finally embrace, celebrating the experience of Divine Love within themselves.
19. A minor discussion of the importance of Mary in terms of answering an archetypal need occurs on page 213. I have read Jung on this topic too, along my own path. Learning to value the feminine at a very deep level as being as wholly human as the masculine was my key to personal wholeness and enlightenment (limited as it may still be). Religions with all-male deities and priesthoods did not help me get there, it was an intuitive unveiling that led me to a new vision of love, and god as Love, of being, and god as Being, without any regard for sex or species or anything else. All that is, is God, and God is all that is. The book speaks of a longing for our roots, and that we are rooted in God. Enlightenment is coming t that realization. That is all it is. Then, as the Hindu sage has said, before enlightenment we work hard for our sustenance, and after our enlightenment we work hard for our sustenance. But now, as Rumi would say it, we work hard while intoxicated with Love! Back to the book.
20. Scattered throughout the book, and especially around pages 271 and 300 are discussions on the Tarot. The Tarot is a tool for opening the intuitive faculties. For some. Not for me. It simply is of no interest to me.
21. Celtic gods, legends and even unicorns get into the story at several points, with a discussion on pages 314-315 that caught my attention more so than previous mentions. Why? Because two other ingredients were added to the mix here: shamanism of only mild interest to me) and the Great Rite of Beltane involving ritual sex to symbolize the gods entering mortals and promising fecundity for all life. This is the same as the ancient Hieros Gamos or sacred marriage rite, of which, of course, I have also written.
22. The very ancient and fascinating city of Catal Hoyuk in Anatolia comes into play on page 355. It is a site used to argue for the existence of a golden age without wars when cities did not have walls and the Mother God was universally worshipped. Others disagree with this idealized picture of the past. In Aviva’s story it is only mentioned as dating to 8,000 years before present and its rich display og goddess figures in its preserved art.
23. Pages 356-369, again noting that nothing happens by chance, cover the nature and history of the sema, the Whirling Dervish ritual to reach ecstatic states, from Rumi to the present. Also describes the Rumi-Shams relationship much as I have described it. Very interesting.
24. Page 385-392 almost serves as a recap of some of the story’s main themes. Page 85 surprised me because it advocates prayer as a tool to aid the journey of spiritual self-discovery. Page 387 racapitulates the relationships bettwem Muslim Sufis, Christian Knights Templar, Medieval mystics and Courtly Love.
25. Page 398 has a thought provoking quote by Krishnamurti:”There is no path to truth. Truth must be discovered, but there is no formula for its discovery. . . . You must set out on the uncharted sea, and the uncharted sea is yourself.”
26. On page 406 Gwen receives her true name, which I will not disclose here but already have, stealthily, somewhere above.
27. Going back a little, and illustrating the true nature of the journey of spiritual discovery, Gwen declares a premature degree of maturity on page 323: “I gradually learned to access my inner sight, to tell the difference between normal reality and the reality of my visions, and not to confuse truth with fact.” On page 398, however, she is admitting she was “a wreck” and is full of doubt and spending her time agonizing over past actions. After being comforted by her spirit guide’s wisdom, assuring her this was part of the path, Gwen says: “I had no idea it would be this hard, and I’ve only just begun.” At the end of the book (which comes just a few pages later) she is confident again, has triumphed, and to tell more would spoil your reading.
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