1PLACESTOUCHINGSPIRIT:Gateways toDeep Reality

Tom Bender

In direct experience of primal forces,without mind,we becomeintensely and intimatelyevery fiberof what we behold.

The places we live in have potential for profoundly deep connection with the rest of nature.Experience through them, of the true realities that we inhabit, can transform our lives and bring ouractions into alignment with deep purpose.

A minimal aspect of such places is simply being with. Sharing our places with other life, ratherthan being apart. A garden to shelter and nurture our souls. The simple undemanding presence ofother richness, other magic, other unfurling of the possibilities of Creation. There is more to ourworld than just the everyday worries and events of our individual lives. Life exists, whose well-being is necessary to our own survival. There is beauty, unexpected discoveries, seeds of joy.

2Being with, we remember community,and our shared nature equally with thewonderful aspects that distinguish one part ofus from another.

3 With that, celebra-tion, honoring, andconnection to those livesbecomes an integral partof our places.

4We can also connect through places ofcontemplation. Places that focus attention onjust the reality of the patterns, processes andrelationships embodied in the garden. Theutterly simple complexity of other life living.

Problems of the day set aside,relaxation achieved, our energy restoredsomehow by this connectedness. Hints ofprinciples that underlie the unfolding ofnew possibilities.

5 A particular application of this isgardens for inner processing. The well-honedanalytic process so central to our culture is onlyone of a vast spectrum of approaches to problemsolving, to personal and cultural growth, tounfurling new possibilities.

There are particular flows and patternsthat, immersed in, can aid the absorption, diges-tion, and integration of analytic information.These can balance, improve effectiveness, andachieve results unachieveable with our conven-tional processes alone.

6There are, ofcourse, also gardensfor meditation. Mostfamiliar are the typicalJapanese Zen Gar-dens. These, andother places, are oftenenergized to enableand empower particu-lar connections on theenergetic or spiritlevels, to accessparticular realms orentities, or caches ofinformation.

Qi energy is the core interactivemechanism between the material andenergetic realms. It is a faster-than-lightstanding-diffraction-wave magneticenergy that underlies, manifests, andenergizes objects in our material uni-verse. Qi has been the core of thehealing arts, sacred sciences, and archi-tecture of more than 65 cultures world-wide.

They focus attention, exclude peripheralthoughts, quiet the rational consciousness, and openaccess to the unitary consciousness that connects all life.Those skilled in the use of such gardens can easily shiftinto states of unity with other consciousness.

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We operate in our material world and theenergetic world simultaneously, and perceive with ourrational consciousness and our unitary consciousnessin parallel. The power of our 3-D senses normallyoverpowers the quiet voices of our unitary conscious-ness. Those voices of unitary consciousness are notthe same as the intense experience of deep realitythrough silent knowing.

7Where appropriate, entire facilities can be designed to provide deep and powerful experi-ence of natural forces. Spas, for example, can be anything from pamper places for the wealthy tohealing places for illness. In Japan, public baths are a vital and ancient core-cultural tradition. Thesentos, or public baths, in every village provided warmth, relaxation, bathing, massage, herbalhealing soaks and community. Onsen, the natural hot springs version of a sento, often providestirring experience of nature as well.

How such a facility isdesigned can shape and em-power the experience. In thepreliminary design I did a fewyears ago for an onsen in thePacific Northwest, a recon-structed Japanese timber-framedminka, or farmhouse, wasplanned to provide shelteredaccess from parking to the hotsprings. But not just shelter.The dimly lighted space, filledwith steam rising from theexposed rocks below was tomake visitors viscerally awarethat this was the earths heat -water warmed by the fieryforces deep within the earth.

Other elements combined to give added dimensions to the experience:

The onsens location was an hour from the city with simple meals and lodging available,but no TV or newspapers. A break from the urban world and its electronic and dietarydrugs that keep people tied into a specific belief system and reality. Time for immersion,relaxation, rejuvenation, meditation, and inward experience.

A shrine structure, with a lighted candle visible through the steam, acknowledged andenergized a spiritual potential of the experiences offered.

The onsen site was located on abench 300' above the Columbia River -an ancient sandbar from the colossalfloods that once swept down the river.The floods, pouring eight cubic miles ofwater a minute down the Gorge, leftamazing geological artifacts through-out the region. The sand grains inthis sandbar average two feet indiameter. A meditation garden ofthese giant sand grains brought by theriver from far away places gave anopportunity to connect with the riverand the immensity of its events thatshaped the region.

8 The onsen site was across the river fromMt. Hood, one of the Cascade volcanoesthat provide silent witness to the geologi-cal forces that continue to shape theregion. Another meditation garden wasto focus on a small, somewhat non-descript mountain next to the onsen.Here meaning, not esthetics, was primary.

A realization slowly emerged, viewingthis mountain, that it was the basalt neck like the Devils Tower in Wyoming of afar more ancient volcano, with its ashslopes eroded away. This was the motherof Mt. Hood. And another mountainfurther away, the grandmother of Mt. Hood.The visceral experience of the immensityof geological time and the history thatflooded a person in this garden wasenough to tear away the blinders of con-ventionally that keep us focused on themundane everyday events of our lives.

A simple meadow-grass covered hillside invited people to sprawl out their hot-springs-relaxed bodies; to let energy flow through them from the earth and sky, unblocked by ourusual bodily tensions. Overhead, the sky-rivers of clouds or thevast wheeling of the stars usually blocked outby urban lights and distractions. Beingtouched by more dimensions of the whole-ness that truly constitutes our interwovenlives.

The dark and unassertive coveredbathing pools of the hot springs were designedas a framing and focusing mechanism, bring-ing full attention to the exquisiteness of eachtree and rock and sky and water; their reflectedbeauty, and their invitation to join together.

9 Finally prepared,a guest would emerge intothe outdoor onsen pool,and turn to see the settingof which it was part - adramatic sunset viewdown the river.

Understating, rather thanpromoting, a spectacularsetting allows us to openour hearts, slip into beingpart of it, and part of theawe-inspiring interwovenbeauty and consciousnesswe are feeling.

A visitor to theonsen is now physicallyrelaxed, shaken loosefrom everyday moorings.Visceral awarenessemerges of the immenseand unfathomableinterweavings of time,process, and relationshipupon relationship whichtruly constitute a realityextending far outside ourfamiliar 3-D world.

It then becomespossible to hear the quietvoices of the unitaryconsciousness throughwhich we know, and canexperience, the simulta-neous truths that consti-tute our universe.

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There are other ways, through their energeticdimensions, for our places to enable deep touching of spirit.Places can enable and enhance profoundly different waysof knowing and experiencing reality, our own nature, andthat of the rest of the realities we inhabit.

ENERGIZED GATEWAYSIn almost every culture are found examples of what

are called living statues, portals to the spirit world, orsimply sacred places. Some are inhabited by deities, somegive connection to ancestors, or various aspects of the spiritworld.

In the Haida tradition in the Pacific Northwest, wefind entry to the clan houses through the beak of Raven, orgiant carved Bear posts holding the roof beams, whichare energized to connect to the clans protective and guid-ing totem spirits. In Egypt we find both healing statuesand statues to connect with deceased Pharohs. In Maya communities we have whole temples andplazas energized to accomplish similar goals.

What these all have in common is that through intention of the inhabitants, through thegrace of the spirits, or through what we might from the outside call mere circumstance, they havedeveloped energetic linkage to particular aspects of the spirit realms. To those of us who cling tothe belief that our world is only a material one, this makes little sense. To those who have, likeother cultures, experienced some of these other realms, it explains the true purpose, function, and

importance of many important architectural and gardenachievements of other cultures.

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Some energized gateways are geologically-caused. In the Yucatan, many Mayan cities containsacred places called cenotes. There are more than 3000 ofthese sinkholes in the limestone rock, often accessing theonly dependable water supply. What is unique to manyof these cenotes, and the cause of their sacredness isthat they appear to be alive. Winds pour in and out ofthem in six-hour-long inbreaths and outbreaths, like thebreathing of some giant being. The water levels rise andfall in tune with the inbreaths. The air has strangesmells. Some cenotes moan and make strange sounds.The impact of such behaviors provides the emotionalenergy to activate intention manifesting things in ourworld.

The cause of these strange effects is definitelyotherworldly. They arise from an ancient meteoricimpact that shattered the limestone crust in the area,

establishingand linkingwhat evolvedinto a net-work ofundergroundwaterways.

Muchof this net-work wasconnected withthe ocean, thetidal rise andfall of thewaters com-pressed the airin the under-ground cav-erns, forcing itin and out ofthe openings.

Understanding the cause of these phenomenain no way decreases the emotional impact of theirexperience, nor their ability to impact the activation ofqi energy-related events.

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A different example ofgeologically-influenced energizedgateways is Machu Pichu in Peru.Crustal compression of a giantfaulted granite batholith causesconcentration of magnetic ener-gies beneath Machu Pichu. Theseare accentuated at the peaks ofgiant granite needles on the siteof the city. This empoweredritual and access to the spiritworld at those places. Much ofthe physical form of Machu Pichiis terracing to access and usethese sites.

Other sacred rocks were ener-getically linked to the apu, or spirits ofthe powerful surrounding peaks.

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SHAMANIC EXPERIENCENatural and altered sites are used worldwide to

learn to break free from our sensory- and belief-trained self-limitation to the physical dimension of the realms weinhabit. Kivas dug into the earth in the Pueblo traditions,cave temples in India, caves in the Incan world, power spotsin Hawaii and around the world have all been used for thispurpose. Ive discussed some of the techniques used toempower such places in my Cave Temples of India DVD.

Chinchero, inthe SacredValley ofPeru, is asingle lime-stone boulder some 50' indiameter setamongst thefields of thevalley. Its

top is eroded, and carved for ritual purposes. Its undersideis coated with an incredible patina of limestone. Steps havebeen carved part way around its outermost edge, and theinterior contains cavities larger than a person. Such sites areenergized, and used for specific training rituals to breakpeople loose into their deeper levels of existence.

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INITIATORY REALMSThe Temple of Sobek at Kom Ombo

in Egypt is dedicated to the crocodile god.Part of the initiatory ritual in the templesupposedly involved diving into a subterra-nean tunnel, connected to the Nile, whichled to a crocodile-occupied undergroundchamber, and then by another water-filledtunnel back to the surface inside the temple.If you had favor of Sobek, you wouldnt beeaten.

This is as true a shamanic process aswalking barefoot on 1200 degree burningcoals, deep meditation, or going face-to-facein the jungle with a jaguar. If our intentionis clear and positive, we are honored andreceived, and blessed. If not, we probablyhesitate and pull back from doing what isasked. What is involved is initiation intoworking with realms outside of our familiarthree-dimensional material world.

Those realms exist - even our phys-ics now has to acknowledge that. KomOmbo is an architectural setting for findingcourage to let go of the props of the materialworld and leap the chasm to the realmswhere we can experience and learn directlyfrom trees, rocks, and all that occupy theenergetic and spirit realms.

Initiation toexperience of deeperreality does not al-ways require settingssuch as Kom Ombo.The initiatory sitesused from tribal Africato Tibet employ avariety of energizednatural features - trees,caves, pools of water,and also constructedstructures, sites, andtemples.

There are many routes to connection with ourdeeper realities. Our focus here is only to realize thespectrum of experience possible through the places weinhabit.

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Malidoma Som talks inhis autobiography, Of Water andthe Spirit, of a few of the experi-ences in African tribal initiation hewas permitted to speak of. Hespeaks of a process of reconnect-ing with his center, The center isboth within and without. It iseverywhere. But we must realizeit exists, find it, and be with it, forwithout the center we cannot tellwho we are, where we come from,and where we are going.

In one initiation experi-ence, he was set before a sizeabletree, and asked to look hard at it.A day later, he let go of his rationalmind, his pride, his fear of vulner-ability and humility, and mergedwith the tree on a deep, wordlesslevel, experiencing the expressionof immeasurable love that unitedthem. That deep, wordless know-ing is core to the tribal experienceof the world, giving a fullness,knowingness, and security that ismissing in our cultural experience.Overcoming the fixity of ourconventionally trained experienceof the body and material world isthe hardest part of initiation.

Traditional education, he explains, consists of three parts: enlargement of ones ability tosee, destabilization of the bodys habit of being bound to one plane of being, and the ability tovoyage trans-dimensionally and return. Enlarging ones vision and abilities has nothing super-natural about it, rather it is natural to be part of nature and to participate in a wider understand-ing of reality.

This is the realm of primal unity with the rest of nature that is our heritage and grounding a heritage essential for our survival and for truly experiencing the multi-dimensional reality weinhabit. All these gateways to deep reality are tools to help us reach and sustain that connection,which nourishes the deep parts of our nature and opens the true potentials for growth andachievement as individuals and as a culture. It is a vital and core part of reconnection and sustain-ing connection with our deepest nature and that of the rest of reality.

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What we are talkingabout here is not landscaping, orbuilding design or conventionalart or connection with nature.

Primal exprience is not arational thing, and those build-ing arts are approached asrational practices in our culture.What places touching spiritentail comes from somewhereelse.

Places touching spiritcome from the realm of love, notof rational consciousness. Itcomes from the realm of integralconsciousness that connects us with all Creation, not from the mental consciousness that we use inanalytic processes. It comes from the primal urge to Oneness inherent in the nature of all life.

Rational talk about love is not the same as experiencinglove. There are ways of being with our places and the lifesurrounding us that arise out of the heart, not the mind. Theseare ways of being which bring into existence profound ongoingconnection, awareness, and understanding. This in turn trans-forms us, releasing us from the separation and isolation fromthe rest of Creation which has been inherent in our culture.

Placemakingcoming from thisrealm produces placeswhich are literallyalive, and which inturn enliven andnurture us in our useand being with them.

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Such living architecture gives a newsense of fullness and joyful abundance to bothour places and our lives.

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2006 * Tom Bender * 38755 Reed Rd. * Nehalem OR 97131 * 503-368-6294 * tbender@nehalemtel.net * www.tombender.org

Exerience of deep reality opens avenues for others toexperience the dance of creation and the realms of spirit,empowering new opportunities for growth in our lives andour culture.