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Diana DentonToward a Sacred Discourse: Reconceptualizing the Heart Through Metaphor

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10.1177/1077800405275055QUALITATIVEINQUIRY/October2005Denton/TOWARDASACREDDISCOURSE

Toward a Sacred Discourse:Reconceptualizing the Heart

Through Metaphor

Diana DentonUniversity of Waterloo, Canada

In this article, the author takes as her subject the lived experience of the heart. She pres-ents an autoethnographic case to examine theregionsof spiritualinquiry anddiscoursesof the sacred. In mystical traditions, the heart is often conceptualized as a site of libera-

tion or enlightenment.Enteringthis inner territoryof theheart through thetacitknowl-edge of poetics andthe body,the authorexploreshow a metaphoric turn in herresearchillumined a heart practice and discourse, how somatic images became a bridge to lived

experience.She discusses howmining three concrete metaphors, evokedby a setof expe-riences inthe field,movedherstudyof theheart.The field in whichthisprojectis situatedhas three dimensions: the authors poetry, lived experience, and images and conversa-tions arising in her teaching practice.

Keywords: spiritual inquiry; autoethnography; poetics; embodiment; metaphor

I.

I sleep on your lap, child curled to the contours of belly, flesh to skin. No

one will find me here. I am six years old. I lie in the summer grass, featherygreen flesh that dissolves into light; my own body also light. I imagine myhand moving through flesh. I let you pass through me, like the wind.

A student in a university lecture hall, and again the world couples withlight. Your warmbreath sweeps throughme. No one sees this caress. Fingersfallinglikerain, thewhisperofskinbreathingitself away. Voices andbodiesofothers in the room conspire in softness, soothing and dissolving divides offlesh. I am without skin.

Tonight, keenlyaware of your absence, andmy own claustral flesh,I wakefrantic. Skin closes in on me. I cannot breathe. I am aware of being overcome

by the hardness of bone. In my dream there was no wind.

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II.

I arrive in California in the late springof 1974. I am nineteen.Two monthsearlier, mygrandmotherdropsmeona highwaynearthe outskirts of Toronto.Leaving me at the roadside with my knapsack, sleeping bag,and thumb, sheslips me twenty dollars in change, Call home, she says. In an ashram, nes-tled in the foothills of the mountains, I am surrounded by rhythms of chantsand early morning meditations. My teacher, Baba, a swami from India, soft-ensa roomof thousandswithhisgaze.He passesthrough melikethewind.

In my dream we are dancing: hundreds joined in the swirling rhythms ofthe chant. Edging my way to the front of the crowds, I approach Baba. Hishands strokemy hair, fingers likerain, thesoftness of butterflies.Abruptly, hepushesmeaside.Iamflungtotheouterregionsofthecrowd.Abandoned,myfeet forget to dance. I stumble and am swept away in the throng of bodies.Dreamfragments come fitfully. I wake in a sweat, heartpounding,locked ina

breathless stillness.Weeks later, awake and alone, I approach Baba for a name. The Sanskrit

names he gives are said to reflect ones deepest nature. Who am I?Nearinghis chair, I kneel. I have watched others come to him, but today the wordschoke in my throat, I seek a name. The translator repeats my request. I amaware only of Babas eyes, glaring, piercing, his sudden thundering, Whyhavent youexpanded!Skincloses inonme.I cannot breathe. What I need tosay stays in me like stone:

whenIcame/withofferings/ofwater/wantingyouthirsty/youwouldnot/drink / your throat arched / inward / awkward & dry (Denton, 1977, p. 41)

Babas words ring in my breast for days. I feel judged. I judge myself. Why

havent I expanded? Witheach syllable, I contract and tighten: I am not goodenough, I am wrong. I read of how matter contracts through pressurehowpressure makes stone. I notice how impressions are imprinted on the self.Pressed into stone, defensive and small, the heart hardens; feeling numbs. Iwrite of the holding of experience: the held word.

III.

I try to edge my way to the front of the crowds. Yet always I am sent backyear after year, to my university studies, to my family, to the fires of absenceand separation. How I long for you. And how in the soft still hours of themorning youcometo me in thesilence of meditation. In these moments thereis no separation. You envelope me in a hollow of soft bone and flesh so realthat only theopeningof my eyes candispel your presence. Inthehardlightof

day your absence is poignant.Why havent I expanded?I intensifymy meditation practice.As I move away fromtheworld around

me, I am lifted out of the body. You call me into a realm of ecstatic silence. In

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the distance, I hear the voices of others: children nestling at my breast. Tornbetween worlds, I steal these dark, deep moments of stillness. As my eyesopen, I stumble into the arms of guilt, absence, and separation. Tensions of

body and spirit confront me again and again:

yourskin/iswhite/wherecolour/isthetexture/ofmylonging/over&over/ I taste you /green/ inmybody / brownroots/ tobind/ mybreasts/ in/ layhands / upon this woman / for she is sick / and colour / blind (Denton, 1977,p. 41)

My own body is thickening. I have too much skin.

IV.

It is 1987, five years after my Babas death. Your voice is faint, your touchalways an absence, even in meditation. I write of dry, cold, aching things:all night / the wind suckles / an empty sky / skin to skin / I hear her cries(Denton, 1998, p. 65). Sitting in stillness, I weep into your absence: Wherehave youbeen? Suddenly your voiceruptures thesilence,I have been withyou, butyou have notseen, in theexperience.I feel caressed by thefloor, theair, thevoices, bodies, and breathing of others in theroom.In thewords youhave notseen, I ampulledintoa suddenseeing. Formonths afterward,yourvoice stirs everyfewminutes,In this tooI ampresent. Wheredo I find you?Here, in my experiencein the bodily sensations, feelings, and thoughts ofmy inner world and in the lived events of my daily life. In this vision there isnojudgment of the seen. As the world couples with wind, I am beckoned intothe arms of experience. I enter tentatively, with all my fears of intimacy.

It is notgentle.Thescars of mybody open like half-forgottenlies. I write of

the held experience, impressions that harden, thickening feeling, of theungiven. Suppressed emotions surface with ferocity: the stone chokes herthroat and tears at her body as it rises . . . in the stone we find her feeling;ember of feeling (a heart thick with dried feeling) (Denton, 1998,p. 55). Likesome anxious animal, I dart from experience to experience. Shadows of thepast pursue me.

I wake frightened.Youcall medeeperintothe fear:Embrace thefear. I amthe fear. Calling me deeper into pain, I am the pain. I am pulled into the

body. Emotions eclipse all that I have known, splitting and tearing. The heartburns in a fury of feeling. Today I wrote, I am given to the fire. Today I feltthis in my body, nothing to hold to but fire. Nothing to be kept of the stone:soft ash, soft ember, light. Today I understood the all that must be given.

V.

Later, a small flame rises in the heart, a soft caress coupled with flesh. Thepain dissolves into rising flame, into a soft, warm wind. Your voice dissolves

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into this wind.Allbreath that I amis wind.Breathing into theheartandbreath-ing out,the longsuspiration ofsilenceandsoftness.No onecansee this caress.Thegesture spreads throughout thebody:fingers of wind.Heart, breath, and

body: all are one. I am aware of a sense of movement, sensation, a softness offeeling, anexpansivenessin the heart. In the arms of the heart, I find myself.

Years later, what remains: the heart as tenderness, fullness of feeling,movement, a deep-rooted stillness. Your body takes its own shape. My eyecaresses this movement. The world passes through me like the wind.

AN EMBODIED GROUND

As a researcherengagedinspiritualinquiry, I study mysticalexperience asit is immediately lived and embodied (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Rothberg,2000). Schooledin the philosophies andpractices of the Eastnotably tantrictraditions of Kashmir Shaivism1 and meditationI struggle with the chal-lenges of being a Western woman immersed in doctrines and practices ofanother culture and time. The rhetoric of religious dogma can solidify theexperiences of thesacred into a systemof prescribed practices, attitudes, andvalues, but spiritual wisdom across traditions has ultimately been derivedfrom the richness of unscripted human experience. As an educator, as some-onewhoseekstoteachwhatislearnedinresearch,Iwonderhowtoexpresstoothersthe livedinsightsof sacred experience ina waythat is notprescriptive.How can I speak to others from within my own skin about mystical experi-ence without proprietary claims to special authority or the imposition ofdeadening institutional regulation? What fullycommunalperformances andlanguagings of experience are possible?

The notion of spirituality in our own culture has often been conceptual-ized in terms of disembodiment andtranscendence of this world (Borg, 1997;Lakoff & Johnson,1999).The ancient Greekconcept of ecstasyas standingout of the body expresses a long tradition of unease with the physical as apossible source of sacred meaning, which has sometimes degenerated intohostility. Orphic doctrines made much of the aural similarity of the Greekwordsforbodyand tomb( and, respectively), suggesting theequationof thebodywith death. In themedievalChristiantradition, thepeni-tent wasadmonishedthat inthe midst of life, we are in death. In fact, manyspiritual traditions across cultures East and West call for a transcendence ofthebody, teaching that oneshould aspire to a state of higherconsciousness orenlightenmentseparate from embodied existence. In these traditions, theemphasis is on detachment from the material worldmaterial possessionsandworldlysuccess, butalsobodily desire,even thebodyassensation. Yet as

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1999) aptly asserted, experiences of thespiritual necessarily occurin the bodyas forms of sensation, perception, andfeeling. The living soul is always and unalterably an embodied soul.




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Inresponseto thisrecognitionof a necessarily vital andphysicalgroundofmysticalexperience, Lakoff andJohnson(1999) called foranalternativecon-ception of embodiedspirituality that at least beginsto do justice to what peo-ple experience (p. 564). The traditional emphasis on ascetic practices of dis-embodiment gives way to a passionate spirituality in which bodily pleasure,pain, desire, delight, and remorse are embraced. The central cognitive ele-ment of this experience is metaphor: The vehicle by which we are moved inpassionate spirituality and the mechanism of metaphor is bodily (Lakoff& Johnson, 1999, p. 568). In this article, I propose an ontology of enlighten-ment centered in our embodied existenceandin theimmediate experience ofconcrete metaphors, which can become in shared reflection a new discourseof spiritual experience. If, as Lakoff and Johnson (p. 546) suggested, meta-phors ultimately define the goals and methods of philosophy, our search to

discover new conditions of spirituality outside dominant traditions of tran-scendence and disembodiment must embrace new metaphors that sacratethis body and this world. It is through metaphoric innovation (Fernandez,1982, p. 557) that we will revitalize this mystical ground.

TOWARD A SACRED DISCOURSE

In explorations of consciousness, mystics have long engaged in practicesof inner inquiry such as meditation, prayer, and contemplation. These inqui-ries have inspired insights and understandings that illumine varied facets ofhuman experience, from the workings of mind and body to the subtler inti-mations of the soul. In the face of scientific rigor and objective frames ofknowledge, therichness of these insights has often been lost to contemporary

researchers.Recently, however, we havebegun to see anopening in thehori-zons of knowing(Hart,Nelson, & Puhakka, 2000, p. 2).YvonnaLincoln andEgon Guba (2000) suggestedthat we may be entering an ageof greater spir-itualitywithin researchefforts,whichmaypermit ustoreintegrate thesacredwith the secular in ways that promote freedom and self-determination(p. 185). Lincoln (2002) observed that sacredness is emerging as a viablecriterion for qualitative research. As research perspectives and practices

become more tenuous and fluid, admitting expression of alternative non-rational modes of knowing, we may replace truth posits with lenses ofunderstandinglenses that offer the world means of comprehending in adifferent way(Gergen, 2002, p. 187). Witness therecentsurge in interpretive,phenomenological,andautoethnographicresearch thathas opened opportu-nities for subjective approaches exploring the researchers lived experience(Bochner & Ellis, 2002; Ellis & Bochner, 1992; Ellis & Flaherty, 1992; Richard-

son, 1992). As we begin to see with the subtle shadings of embodied experi-ence, we are released from the constraints of Western dualisms of body/




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mind, heart/intellect, matter/spirit into renewed poetic, intuitive, and per-sonal knowing.

Theorists from various academic disciplines now emphasize the impor-tanceof easingthegapbetweentheresearcherandthe researchedas a precon-dition of integrative understanding and practice. Paul Muller-Ortega (1989),inhisexploration ofthetantric vision of theheart,hasrecognizedthe limitsofscholarly methods that objectify the phenomenon of study, and Paul Stoller(1997) has rightly called for asensuous scholarshipthat involves a mixing ofhead andheartan opening of ones being to theworld (p.xiii). Yet thefieldofspiritual inquiryremains largely untapped. Spiritual experience has beenrecentlycharacterized as transrationalor postconventional (Hart et al.,2000),an attempt to situate these phenomena away from the self-authorizing stric-tures of scientific objectivity and value-free rationalism. Researchers in the

transpersonal field increasingly draw on mystical literature to characterizetransrational consciousness, but as Hart et al. (2000) observed, firsthandinvestigations of the phenomena of mystical knowing are lacking. The auto-ethnography of spiritual experience is still rare. Nelson (2000) describedmys-tical or transpersonalknowingas anintegrativeepistemicframe thattend[s]to highlight different aspects or perspectives of reality and carries with itan inclusiveness regarding the self-other dichotomy whereas our ordinaryframe gives rise to a knowing in which self and other are exclusive (p. 70). Itmay be that entirely new modes of inquiry are necessary to explore andexpress spiritual inquiry in a contemporary way (Rothberg, 2000). External,consensually validated standards may offer some guidelines and criteria forassessing various documentary records of spiritual experience but cannotregulatethe experience itself. Forimmediate revelation,we mustseek aninte-rior view of this knowing. This may require the use of yogi-scientists as

research practitioners (Walsh, 1995)researchers actively engaged in medi-tative, contemplative, and imaginal forms of inquiry. Mystical wisdom can-not be mediated in traditional observer/observed models.

Thesegregationof researcher from research, which has proved intractablyproblematic evenfor understanding externalcultural forms in anthropologi-cal and sociological investigation, cannot possibly access interior experi-ence without co-implicative participation. The scientific purity of Westernresearch methods is a repetition of disembodied ascetic practice in the realmof knowledge, and the embodied knowing of mystical experience activelyembraces the impurity of our lived and felt awareness. As we dialoguefrom within an interior perspective, we may inspire others to trust and givevoice to their own knowing.

Narratives of thespiritual are risky. Notonly are experiences of theineffa-ble difficult to convey through language but also, as H. L. Goodall (2000) put

it, finding thenerve (p. 188) poses an even greater challenge. The spiritualnarrative is a transgressive act, treading provocatively within and across




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taboo territories of traditional research, coming and going without properdisciplinary supervision. Much of the datageneratedin these studies are notobjectively verifiable, including inner somatic states, interior voices, and feltpresences. In engaging spiritual inquiry, we enter thedifficult territoryof theinvisible, unverifiable, and unreplicable. Often, the divide between pathol-ogyandmysticismis obscured. Forsome, the lackof immediatelyperceptible

boundaries means there are none. Christina Grof and Stanislav Grof (1993)noted that

traditional psychiatry does not recognize the difference between mystical andpsychotic experience. All unusual statesof consciousness are essentiallyseen aspathological. There is no acknowledgement that any dramatic experientialstates involving changes of consciousness could be potentially therapeutic andtransformative. (p. 138)

In his discussion of mystical experience, Nelson (2000) suggested that wemust understand mystical encounters as the remaking of . . . epistemicframe[s] of reference (p. 64), as a radical transformation creating a newstyleof knowing.Thesetransformations are ontic shifts (Nelson,2000), allowing usto leap between and across epistemic boundaries. As researcher, I enter thisterritory tentatively.

ENTERING THE HEART

In this article, I discuss an immediately experienced transformation, anontic shift, metaphorically instantiated as the lived experience of the heart.Events in our recent collective past make this project more poignant. As we

attempt to reintegrateand rekindle ourenergies throughmystical knowledgeand practice, it may be in the experience of the heart that we find wisdom forcompassionate action. Laura Rendon (2002) wrote of a sentipensantepeda-gogyathinking/feelingknowledgethat invokesthewisdomoftheheart, inwhich teaching becomes an act of love for the world (p. 13). Entering theinner territory of the heart, I explore the selfs attempts to free consciousnessthrough an examination of the tacit knowledge of poetics in the body. I con-ceptualize this heart experience as a sacred space, providing what LincolnandGuba(2000) calledan authoritativesite forhuman inquiry(p. 169).Myreferences to the heart do not denote the physical organ nor any anatomicplacement or delimitation but instead, evoke and echo descriptions of theheartchakra in mystical traditions of the East. The heart chakra has beendescribed as theseatof thesoul, a placeof compassionandlove, anembodiedawareness of the Infinitethe very core of being (Maharshi, 1972/2001,

p. 80). This chakra is linkedin experience to somatic sensationbut notreducedto eithermindor body. Recentstudies invoking theconcept of theheart attestto its significance in the constitution of human knowledge. Contemporary




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neurobiological research suggests reason is impaired without emotion, thatreason may be better understood as a co-form of emotion (Damasio, 1994;Greenspan,1997). In yogic literature, theheart is often identified astheseat offeeling. OurEnglish word emotion stems from theLatin(e + moveretostir, tomove, todisturb),and ancient Sanskrit notions ofmovementastheessence oftheheart maybe preserved in theLatinroot. Thereare possible links with thetantric conception of liberation or enlightenment as hrydayangamibhuta, aterm commonly translated as become something that moves in the heart(Muller-Ortega,1989, p.2).The movementof theheart is linked tofeeling andsensation, describedas a vibration which is a slightmotion of a special kind,a unique vibrating light . . . the wave of the ocean of consciousness, withoutwhich there is no consciousness at all (Abhinavagupta as quoted in Muller-Ortega, 1989, p. 118). This awakened heart is nota finitecondition of individ-

ual being but a coparticipative involvement in an ever-unfolding process ofawakening andmovementaphenomenologicalshiftin experience andper-ception at both poles of subject/object. From this perspective, we can em-

brace the paradoxof an embodied transcendence, a condition of ecstatic partici-pation in the mystery and wonder ofthisimmediate and material world.Here, transcendence no longer hangs over us: We become strangely, itsprivileged bearer(Merleau-Ponty, 1964,pp.70-71).Withinthe somaticmeta-phor of the moving heart, we make a metaphoric shift from movementout ofandaway fromthe body to a movementwithinandtowardthe body.

Inthe beginningof this article,I describedmy ownexperienceof theawak-ening heartinsight that illumined and altered my perceptual field andoffered a deepening sense of inner wholeness. This experience occurred in amoment of emotional wounding, a dramatic inner stirring and move-ment where the fabric of my being seemed sunderedas if the heart had

split. Much of the literature on mysticism acknowledges that sudden rup-tures in consciousnessoften experienced as painful or rendingawakennewdimensions of knowing. This awakeningof theheart could be describedas an extraordinary experience registered bothwithinandaroundmy bodyan event in which I was so profoundly absorbed that I had no interpretiveframework for making sense of it. This epiphany, embodied viscerally andemotionally, remains the pivotal point in my research. My experience is con-sistent with Lincoln andGubas(2000) assertion that newparadigm researchis frequently concerned withthe single experience, the individual crisis, theepiphany or moment of discovery, with that most powerful of all threats toconventionalobjectivity, feeling andemotion(p. 179). Throughthis awaken-ing,my assumptions about the nature of spiritualliberation were irrevocablychanged. Transpersonal crises of this kind (Grof & Grof, 1993) are similar tothe ritualistic shamanic or initiatory illnesses that Holger Kalweit (1984)

described as being characterized by sickness or sufferinga sacred illnesswhich makes mystical and metaphysical insights possible (p. 89). I havedocumented this awakening of heart more fully inPresence(Denton, 1989), a




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phenomenological and poetic rendering of an experience for which thediscourse of Western rationalism has no words.

In the years following my experience ofawakening, an interpretive framebegan to emerge. Turning to traditional Eastern texts of Kashmir Shaivism, Ifound manyresonances.Several recent translations allowedfor a closer read-ingof these primarytexts,and I discovered inthem a sense ofcompanionshipin terms of shared awareness. In these ancient texts, theself is describedas anundivided consciousness (Muller-Ortega, 1989, p. 212) and an unbroken

body (Bailly, 1987, p. 44). The emphasis is on integrative awareness of mindand body or of mind and body as unified aspects of a single awareness.Despite these welcome similarities with my own experience, there werepoints of tension. I noted sadly that few womens voices spoke in these texts.These writings came laden with a historical/cultural significance that was

notmy ownand didnot translateeasily to my contemporary experience. Thetruthsmightbetimeless,butthebodywasintime,andmyneedfortruthsthatcould be embodied was paramount.

After thedeath of my meditation teacher in theearly 1980s, I drifted awayfrom the spiritual community that had formed around him. Yet now Ireturned to this community to share my writing and insightsto explorewith others who shared a common commitment to expansions of conscious-ness.I broughtmy research tomyteachers successorawoman from India. Iwasquicklyherded aside.The onlyresponseI receivedwas thecaution that ifI used my meditation teachers name in any of my writings I would be sued.His name was now copyrighted property. The heartfelt recognition ofauthenticexperiencein themidstof a community of shared practice hadbeenreplacedby an impersonal bureaucracydominated by veryWesternconcernsabout intellectual property. I wasthrust fromthenest. I found myselfalone

adrift in a sense of otherness.Turning to current transpersonal research, I was troubled by dualisticframes that tend to fragment the selfmodels that commonly addresssharply demarcatedlevelsof consciousness (Wilber, 1993). I wondered, in-stead, how I might express mystical experience in a language and practicedesigned to awaken the embodied sensual experience of the heart forotherstheunbroken bodyof the self. I was searching for a sacred discoursethat could maintain what Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (2000), in

Handbook of Qualitative Research, described as the unity of the self in its rela-tionship to the reconstructed, moral, and sacred natural world (p. 1052).Only by rejecting the hierarchical and divisive disjunction of experience intohigherandlowerlevels,andonly by rejecting theconcepts of ownershipand property, could I arrive where our flesh is inseparable from the flesh oftheworld (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Formanyyears,I offered workshopsand

retreats that soughtto facilitate this awakeningof theheart.In these contexts,I explored with others connections and resonances that occurred in imaginalandsomaticexperience. I wascuriousto learn howthecondition anddisposi-




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tion of the body itself might assist this process of awakening. In meditation,somatic states are achieved that influence the generation of concepts andimages. How does themusculature of thebodyandits changingphysical dis-positioninfluence theproductionof imagery?I wasdiscoveringthatthe bodycould be the source of images. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) supported this:Our conceptual system is grounded in, neurally makes use of, and is cru-cially shaped by, our perceptual and motor systems (p. 555). Their researchconfirms for me that the properties of mind are not purely mental: They areshapedin crucial ways bythebody (Lakoff & Johnson,1999,p. 565).I contin-uedtofindthatkinestheticresponsehelpedtogenerateconcrete imagerythatinformed understanding. The insights generated in these contexts inspiredthe writing of my dissertation (Denton, 1998)a phenomenological analysisof the heart.

A METAPHORIC TURN

The voice of the heart is intuitive, metaphorical, and feelinged. Myresearch and practice led me to explore how a metaphoric turnmight fur-ther a new practice and discourse of the heart. Sara Dexter and DonaldLaMagdeleine (2002) noted thatmetaphors in qualitative research afford twosignificant opportunities. They are reflexive of researchers experience andworldview andgenerative ofnewlines of investigation. Inmystudy of mysti-cal knowledge, somatic metaphors became a bridge to lived experience. Thepower of the metaphor is that it lifts us out of conventionalized cultural, rhe-torical conceptions andoffers a return to an essential humanexperience,intowhat Michael Jackson (1998) has helpfully characterized as a poetics of

intersubjectivity (p. 13). The metaphorical mode creates an arena in whichone is both invited and challenged to engage an aspect of reality that is tosome degree alien to ones usual patterns of thought and life (Gill, 1991,p. 138). InhisethnographyBwiti, JamesFernandez(1982)explored howmeta-phors movethe spiritualseekerfrom theneedfulcondition of isolation tothespiritual unification of oneheartedness (p. 562). Concretizing the inchoate-ness of experience, metaphors reveal associations that spur this affectivemovement. In my own teaching, I sought metaphoric performances(Fernandez,1982,p. 561) that could stir and awaken theheart. What emergedwas a root metaphor (Pepper, 1942; Turner, 1974) and three related concretemetaphors, each evokedby a set of livedexperiences derived from my study,and communal practice, of the heart.

My findings come from personal meditative and contemplative experi-ence and from ongoing exchanges and discussions withvarious respondents

in settings ranging from university courses in communication, performancestudies, and holistic education to meditation retreats and workshops. Towork effectively with metaphor in these contexts, researchers and respon-




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dents must be prepared to speak a common language; to risk exchange andmodification of metaphor as it occurs. It is this impulse to progressivetrans-formation of metaphor (Fernandez, 1982, p. 562) that revitalizes spiritualimaginationand experience. We authorize metaphoras a languageof knowl-edge by using it actively in our research, and our methodology must partakeof the cognitive forms it seeks to understand. Only with and through meta-phor can metaphor be fully understood. Metaphor provides resources ofpoetic speech to ordinary life and becomes a vehicle for freeing us from theconstraints of mind/body dualism. The mystical autoethnographer is acoparticipant in the exchange and re-visioning of metaphoric knowledge.The materiality of metaphor, its implication in the sensuous, maintains theunity of physical and mystical experience in the feeling body.

TOWARD A ROOT METAPHOR:AN INWARD TURN

In exploring the emergence of the root metaphor, an inward turn, Ireflected on early shifts in perceptionon an opening or unconcealment inthe visual and somatic field that led to an awakening of the heart. My child-hood experience of an enveloping oneness and loving presence could bedescribed as a prototype of insight or inspiration. In inspirational knowing,the subject/object dichotomy is replaced with the intimacy of contact(Hart, 2000, p. 34). As I grew older, immersed in practices of meditation, Icame to believe that enlightenment involved a distancing from phenomenalreality. The visceral images in my poetry were often met with disdain fromothers in my spiritual community: You are such a spiritual person. Howcan

you write like this? Jackson (1998) noted that

disturbances in the field of interpersonal relations will register as cultural con-tradictions, as well as show up as knots and binds in the field of bodilyintersubjectivity. Such interconnections between cultural, bodily, and interper-sonaldomains find expressionin therootmetaphors ofa culture,and disclose . . .the points at which the habits, idioms, and stratagems of intersubjective life

become introjected as intrapsychic defenses and projected as transpersonaldefensesthatgovern what canandcannotbe said anddonewithinthe groupas awhole. (p. 13)

The feeling body became something to be disciplined, restrained, and con-tained. Movement wasawayfrom the body. This perspective is consistentwith Vedantic traditions that regard the phenomenal world as illusory. MarkDyczkowski (1987) wrote that the vedantin . . . seeks to understand thenature of the absolute by excluding every element of experience which does

not conform to the criterion of absoluteness, until all that remains is theunqualifiedBrahman (p. 38). From this perspective, self andpresent experi-




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ence are seen as imperfections, something to be distanced and suspended, ifnot discarded.

In my experience of the inner voice, this perception was dramaticallyaltered. My longing for this presence became the affect bridge to a newepistemicdomain. As I embraced theerotic quality of experience, tensions ofsubject/object dualism eased. The root metaphorthathaddefined my earlierspiritual experiencemoving out of the body, being lifted up to spiritualheightswas now eclipsed by themetaphor ofa movementwithintheflutteror throbof an embodied Presence. From this root metaphor three subsequentconcrete metaphors emerged. Each of these facilitated an understanding ofthe intimate movement within the heart and between the heart and theexperienced phenomenal world.

Thesethree metaphors aremapped here phenomenologically, in the order

they were brought to consciousness: self/experience as the beloved, thestone heart, and the pillow. However, in the exploration of new ground,unexpected pathways emerge. In my performance of these with others, thesequencing shifts to allow emergent qualities (Fernandez, 1982, p. 557) to

be embodied. The sequencing of these metaphors is a sequencing of atten-tion (Fernandez, 1982, p. 559) on both primary corporeal experience andsocial experience. The metaphor of stone, an image of visceral and psychiccontraction of the heart, evolves into the pillow metaphor. Contraction dis-solves into a relaxed expansion. The primary attention in both these meta-phors is on corporeal existence, but each is implicated in the social fabric oflifeasa contraction fromor expansion into the experienced other. Throughthesemetaphorswe relax intothe third metaphorthearmsof experienceacom-munion with the seen. The stone andpillow metaphors work to bring toconsciousness a visceral awareness of the heart. The self/experience as the

beloved metaphor furthers this awareness by illuminating a practice ofthe heart. It is the movement from one image to another that gives eachmetaphor and the sequence of metaphors their power (Fernandez, 1982,p. 561).

THE FIRST METAPHOR:SELF/EXPERIENCE AS THE BELOVED

Things attract my look,my gazecaresses. . . things. (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p.76)

Inmyexperienceof theinner voiceand inmysense ofbeingheld, I discov-ered the first fully concrete metaphor ofself/experienceas the beloved. Bringinganintimateattentiontomythoughts,feelings, bodilysensations andthe lived

moments ofmy life,I beheldthebeloved inall that I saw. DavidMichaelLevin(1988) wrote, To behold is to be held by what one sees (p. 257). The move-ment toward an expansion of vision occurred as I allowed myself to be held




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by the seen, to be open to what was seen, to rest in what was seen. This shapeof the beloved (experience) returned the lover of experience to her own feel-ing. These feelings took her to the heart. Here the lovers dilemma wasresolved, forthe beloved was notout thereto be sought. Thelover, this unify-ing wholeness of love, was in the heart. The lover who was responsive to thegestures of experience found each experience returning her to the feeling of

being loved. There was less need to control, to hold onto experience, to main-tain balance. There was stillness in the heart (Denton, 1989).

As I translated this perspective intomy teachingand researchingpractice,I found writing and teaching from the heart required asofterway of being. Icouldnotinhabita linear, rational,tight,or defended place.I could not controlexperience. I could onlylistento itsmanymovements. Viscerallyand psycho-logically, I neededto beinwhat I describedas a fluidstate.Communication

of this awareness required openness,a sensitivity to themysteryandpotencyof each moment, an intimacy with theseen. Here everyperception is a com-munication orcommunion. . . a coition, so tospeak, of our body with things(Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 320). I wondered what metaphors of eros, of experi-ence as lover, might awaken in others? What powers of the heart might bestirred?

In workshop contexts, I explored with participants this metaphoric im-ageof self as beloved. Meanings were woven collectivelyin our dialogue.Wedid not speak of the lover as a New Age dictate to love the self. We ex-plored something deeperthe way one enters slowly into relationship withanotherfeeling the rhythms, voices, and gestures of the other, savoring thedeepeningof knowledge that occursin intimate contact over time. This expe-rience was described by participants as freeing, spontaneous, warm, a light-ening of body, gentle, and tender. Conversely, it was also painful, thorny,

dark, forbidding. We were approaching the self with our many fears of inti-macy. I came to speak of this practice of erotic knowledgeas a relaxing into theself. The metaphor of self as lover was evocative of compassionate attentionand a return to feeling.

In this gesture, the interplay of lovers is witnessed in the dance betweenself andthe phenomenal world. Experience awakens theselfs feeling in sen-sations of pleasure and pain. Each lived experience offers an opportunity toreturn to feeling. The meaning of the experienced/phenomenal world lies inthis gesture of allowance. As I relaxinto experience, I allowmyself to feel therhythms,gestures, andmovements of space, people, andlived events towardand away from me in the environment of sensation. Returning to inner feel-ing, the heart is stirred, moved, disturbed, and sometimes ruptured into anew state of being. Feeling and sensation in the somatic domain of the bodyawakens and enlivens this movement of the heart. The divide between inner

and outer worlds is attenuated. Levin (1988) described this relationshipbetween self andworld as an intertwining, deepening their original contactand expanding the existential meaning of their reciprocalpresence (pp. 210-




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211).Relaxinginto experience allows me to feel the touch of experience. Here,sensation is literally a form of communion (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 212).

The heart that moves is a heart that isresponsiveto experience. I begin tohonor the seen and felt for what it is. A concrete example elucidates thisunderstanding. Conjuring a picture of fire, a campsite in the woods, I notethat inhonoringmy own nature and thefiresnature I sitbeside thefireandamsoothed byits warmth.Tosit in thefirewouldbeabetrayalofmyownbeing,asubmission to the terror of the fire. Honoring the nature of the seen and myownnature, I moveinto sacredrelationshipwith allthat surrounds me.I learnhow tobewith what is.

In workshop sessions, I found myself encouraging students to relax intoexperience, to listen to experience, to respond to experience. In the armsof experiencewe were recovering an awareness of the intimate relationship

between self andthe seen. James Hillman and Michael Ventura (1992) wrote,I am not caused by my historymy parents, my childhood and develop-ment. These are mirrors in which I may catch glimpses of my image (p. 63).Attending to feeling, we begin to see theissuesof the heart. It is experiencethat offers this vision. In moving close to theseen, as we look into ourselveswe seemoreclearly our unexaminedconflicts andfears, our frailtiesandcon-fusion (Kornfield, 1993, p. 72). It is experience that brings the unconscioustolight. This feelingheart,theheartthatmoves withtheintimacy ofcontact,isa heart moved by what it sees: Experience as the loved body arouses(Denton, 1989, p. 26).

This movementof theheart is characterizedby responsiveness to thefeel-ing-tone of experience. Describing this awareness, Katsuki Sekida (1975)observed,A blade of grass,even a stone at theroadside, beginsto shine withthebeauty of itsessential nature. Youare inclosest intimacywiththeobject

(p. 42). Sekidas observations here recall Lakoff and Johnsons (1999) notionof imaginative empathic projectionthe ability to feel with the other, toembody imaginatively the experience of all that surrounds us. It is this aes-thetic attitudeto theworld thatis central to self-nurturance,to thenurturanceof others and to the nurturance of the world itself (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999,p. 566). As Lakoff and Johnson noted, Embodied spirituality is more thanspiritual experience. It is an ethical relationship to the physical world(p. 566). The heart that moves, that isable to respond, is a heart that has aresponsibility to care for all that it sees.

THE SECOND METAPHOR: STONE

In my teaching practice,as we explored themetaphoric sensationof relax-

ing into the heart, another concrete metaphor surfaced. In a workshop, awoman shared an image from meditation: It felt as if her heart was a stonehard and tight. She could see the gray solid contours of rock encircling her




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breast. I suggested she relax into the feeling/imagethat she bring to it alovers attention. As she did this during a period of weeksthe heaviness inher heart eased and softened. She felt an interior lightening (Denton, 1998).The metaphor of stone was significant to me because it recalled my ownembodied awareness. It offered a means of grasping an inchoate trouble(Fernandez,1982,p. 557). Asenseof heaviness, tightening,andconstrictioninthe chestwasa frequentphenomenon among workshopparticipants.Imagesof stone, wood, and ice were often shared. This sensation of density is com-monly reflected in the psychological and bodily defenses erected by the psy-che in themidstof challenging experience.We become hardenedand defend-ed. The heart tightens like a fist. The heart of stone signified the contraction ofconsciousness. The image of stone inspired new imagesflame that meltsand water that erodes the stone. Increasingly, in my meditation workshops, I

found myself speakingofrelaxing into theself, into theheart,but therecurringimage of stone raised questions: How was the heart deadened, hardenedturnedto stone? What Medusa ruledhere? These questions eventually ledtothe emergence of a softer more pliable metaphoran image that inspired anembodied practice and attention.

THE THIRD METAPHOR: PILLOW

Themetaphor of thepillowhasbecome a core concept inmyphenomenol-ogy of the heart (Denton, 1998). Emerging in an early meditation workshop,themetaphoric useof thepillow offers a concretesymbolfor thehearts lithiccontraction. Theresponse of othersto theimageis visceral and immediate. Ina workshop, I am seatedon a large black pillow. Students are struggling with

the tantric conception of the contraction of consciousness. Ks7

emaraja,a 10th-century teacher in the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, wrote that individ-ual consciousness becomes contracted in conformity with the objects ofconsciousness ( Ks7emaraja as quoted in Singh, 1990, p. 55). In a moment ofinspiration, I take the pillow into my hands. I ask others to imagine this softpliable form as the self. I remind them of the softness seen in the face of aninfantthe tender, expansive skin of early childhood. Gradually, I begin toclutch together pieces of the pillow. With each contracting gesture, I offer anexample of some defeatingexperience in my own life.Others sharetheir ownnarratives of impressions gathered in a lifethe objects of consciousness,impressions that undermine the natural expansiveness of a self. With eachadded experience, each impression internalized, the pillow begins to con-tract.Soonit is a hard, tight thing.In this I amremindedof howthe influencesof others are impressed on our pliable consciousness. Holding these impres-

sions, the self begins to contract. It is a tendency to judge experience thataffects these contractions. In this simple image, we see the holding of experi-ence,the hardeningofexperiencethehardeningof theheart, thestone heart.




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Now grasping this concrete image of constriction and compression, myhands beginto gentlystroke thetightplaces of thepillow. As thecontractions

beginto ease, the pillowsoftens into its originalform. I pass the pillowaroundtheroom aswedialoguearoundthis image.Others caress thepillowwith vis-ceral attention. We can feel the corresponding contractions and softenings inour own bodies. Approaching the self with this same gentle awareness, wenotice the tightened places of consciousness begin to release. Relaxing intothe moment, intoexperience,movement is restored. Here thecompassionate,loving eye of the heart offers healing.

CONCLUSION

With the emergence of these metaphors, I discovered a discourse thatcould awaken and convey an experiencing of the heart. Collectively, in myteaching practice, students and I have exchanged these metaphors as aground of discussion about embodied heart experience and new insightshave been generated. In another workshop, I used a crumpledpiece of paperto describe the process of contraction, wadding the sheet into a tight knot.Later, as I smoothed the surface of the paper, a woman remarked that thepaper was now softer than it was in its original state. We followed this newmetaphoric link to recognize how experiences deepen and soften the heart.

Thestateof enlightenment or liberation that is coveted in so many Easterntraditions cannot be solely an individualistic pursuit. It mustbe grounded incompassionate acts predicated on an awareness of the intricatewebs of lifetherelationalrealityof human experience. Spiritual liberation is anactof rela-tionship, a sharing in community by one for all. In this web, we must use

our freedom to help others flourish or we deny our own well-being(Christians, 2000, p. 144). The ground of mystical knowing is bodily, and theboundaries of embodied knowing embrace the body of others.

As we enter the territory of spiritual inquiry, metaphors and images,rather than definitions, are guides to understanding. Following the traces ofimaginalandreflective experience, we can moveaway from abstractionsandtheoretical ideologies toward our own felt perceptions. Inquiring into anembodied spirituality, we must find metaphors that allow us to express andencourage the goals andpractices of spiritual lifemetaphors thatreveal thevisceral immediacy andsimplicity of lived experience. Ourquest is forempa-thetic knowledge not domination, participation not subordination. This is aspirituality embracing the textures, sensations, and emotions of the humanand more-than-human world (Abram, 1996). This understanding is vital sothat we may embody images awakening in us a new range of movement and

response. This body in this world is the site of knowledge.




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NOTE

1.Kashir Shaivismis a major nondual Hindustream centered onthe worshipof Sivain Kashmir. Dyczkowskis (1987)The Doctrine of Vibration: An Analysis of the Doctrinesand Practices of Kashmir Shaivismprovides an excellent analysis of this tradition.

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Diana Denton isanassociateprofessorof communicationintheDepartment ofDrama and Speech Communication at the University of Waterloo, Ontario,

Canada. She teaches courses in leadership, communication, spirituality, andperformance.Her publicationsinclude In the Tendernessof Stone: Liberat-ing Consciousness Through Awakening the Heart (Sterling House,1998) and two coedited collections, Spirituality, Action & Pedagogy:Teaching From the Heart(Peter Lang, 2004) andHolistic Learning andSpirituality in Education: Breaking New Ground (State University ofNew York Press, 2005).


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