Metal Music in Ukraine
"My Nation is on Fire, Feel the Burning"
Is it spiritual to feel the burning? It's not pleasant or consoling. It is not happy. But it is intense and truthful. There is, after all, burning in the world today, at so many levels. Openness to burning is one way of knowing the truth of things. Without such openness, spirituality is narcissistic and anesthetic: a mere pleasant sensation for the comfortable.
In the spiritual alphabet of humanity, “O” is for openness.
It is important in the spiritual life to keep an open mind, open to ideas, experiences, people, the world, and the Sacred. Openness is an ability to go with the flow, as Taoism puts it, without expecting predetermined outcomes. It means being receptive to new possibilities, without prejudging them. It is an ability to make yourself available to out-of-the-ordinary opportunities. Indeed, openness to the unknown, the exotic, and the bizarre is usually seen as the mark of a free spirit. (Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice)
One way to practice openness is to be open to pain: to hear it, touch it, taste it. To know it from the inside. If the pain is your own, this openness is inescapable. You work through it, if at all, through the knowing. If the pain belongs to others, this openness is a context for empathy: for feeling the feelings of others on their own terms, for their own sake. Metal music in Ukraine today is an invitation into this kind of knowing. It is a way of saying "My nation is on fire, feel the burning."
- Jay McDaniel, 5/1/22
In the spiritual alphabet of humanity, “O” is for openness.
It is important in the spiritual life to keep an open mind, open to ideas, experiences, people, the world, and the Sacred. Openness is an ability to go with the flow, as Taoism puts it, without expecting predetermined outcomes. It means being receptive to new possibilities, without prejudging them. It is an ability to make yourself available to out-of-the-ordinary opportunities. Indeed, openness to the unknown, the exotic, and the bizarre is usually seen as the mark of a free spirit. (Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice)
One way to practice openness is to be open to pain: to hear it, touch it, taste it. To know it from the inside. If the pain is your own, this openness is inescapable. You work through it, if at all, through the knowing. If the pain belongs to others, this openness is a context for empathy: for feeling the feelings of others on their own terms, for their own sake. Metal music in Ukraine today is an invitation into this kind of knowing. It is a way of saying "My nation is on fire, feel the burning."
- Jay McDaniel, 5/1/22