Adam Blatner

It’s Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, one of the highest holy days, a time to contemplate the year past and the year forward. My wife went to the services, and I stayed home and contemplated events.

I cultivate a deep spirituality of creativity, one that even as I settle into certain mythic theme keeps a frontier of the possibility of revision. This edge opens into new learning, exploration. I’m less wide open to other approaches on one level—really, less interested—but on another level I continue to be somewhat open. I’m open more to the deeper metaphysical themes, the frames of reference that lift people, even as I’m less enamored of the forms that lift them.

I’m both spiritual on one level and wary or skeptical of the forms that work for other people. I’m reading a book by Huston Smith, Tales of Wonder, an autobiography, and realizing that while deeply respecting and resonating with him, I’m also in some ways not aligned fully with him.

The vertical dimension—Prof. Smith describes his live sequentially and in ordinary life roles—the horizontal dimension: but then he goes on to describe his deepening of interest and understanding, the vertical dimension.

Interestingly, his journey is close to what I’d want for myself, and yet not: I take it more in the direction of integrating psychology and science. I’m not as interested in experiencing the insights and depths of religious experience—some, yes, but not as much—and more interested in trying to stimulate the exploration of the cosmos on a mixture of the horizontal and vertical – a diagonal? —mental dimension.

I imagine the cosmos as multi-dimensional and every shade expresses a different sensibility, a different “take” on the what’s it all about question.

I realized that I don’t want and probably wouldn’t appreciate an uncritical disciple. My own message is becoming clear, but I value the continuing aforementioned edge, so it’s not finished, clear. I like creating, revising, re-thinking. And my myth is that my set of guardian angels really like my aligning with this ongoing process—one that well may continue to my death.

I feel my myth deepening; I’m less into the casting around and seeking role. I’ve been narrowing and deepening this path for a few decades, I now see. I value that, but I couldn’t preach what I value because words can never capture the process.