There Has to Be a Bow

“Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow.”

Bill Moyers

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I have many ideas about my spirituality. I get new ones all the time, or am reminded of old ones. I’m reading Kabir Helminski’s book on mysticism, Living Presence, which fills me with ideas, a word or phrase leaping from the page and into my imagination every minute:

That it is possible to reside in the “I” at the center and recede from the “I” that is absorbed by the distractions of ego; that noise can settle like dust and allow silence to flood the room; that the state of presence is always accessible, where experience and experiencer occupy equal proportions.

I want these ideas to be more than a collection of ornaments arranged for my private entertainment. I want them to move from abstraction to actuality, to serve their intended purpose as a force for transformation. I feel their potential, humming, waiting to be seeded in the garden of my life. I need a tool to help me plant.

Moyers’ image of a bow is helpful. Raising a bow signals intent, notching an arrow the first commitment; the draw of the bow takes effort, exerting muscles in my chest, shoulders, and arms; a bow gives direction, my eyes sighting the shaft to find the goal; a bow requires patience, waiting for the stillpoint between tension and relaxation to arrive; a bow teaches endurance, the pressure of the bowstring weighted on the crease at the end of my fingers; a bow seeks timing, intuiting the moment of release; a bow manifests power, propelling its message forward with force and hope.

Breathing, sinking, pulling, holding, seeing, merging, filling up, and letting go. Calm silence and sudden action. It is all there in the bow. It sounds like everything I need for my spiritual journey.

I’m searching for a way to make this metaphor meaningful. Perhaps the bow is my worldview, the mental framework that aligns my scattered ideas into a coherent shape. In short form, my worldview posits that we come as sparks cast from the Divine and land in the world of form. We contain within us a basic goodness and all the tools we need for growth. Life presents challenges that propel us to discover and fulfill our purpose and to mature our inclinations from self-centered to other-centered to world-centered. We share this planet with many others who are also trying to survive and grow, each with their own strengths, peculiarities, and personal struggles, striving to move through their fears into the fruition of their potential.

But this mental framework is just another idea, another arrow lying on the ground. How do I launch it into action?

Maybe I’ve missed the obvious. Maybe I am the bow. Hasn’t it always been thus, that the vehicle for realization can only be the self that is seeking realization?

I like the image of myself as bow, carved from living wood, patterned in my own unique grain, my curves generating power under bend and strain. But to keep this image from being just another idea, the marriage of imagination and action must culminate in me: through my motivation to reach for an arrow, to apply right effort, to aim as best I can, to hold the bowstring taut against my lips, to let my breathing guide my letting go, to pray it lands where it can flower, and to reach for another arrow no matter how many times I miss the mark.

Photo by Mike Cox on Unsplash