Soul-Making and Spiritual Cliche' Busting

Two Forms of Suicide: Physical and Psychological

2012-01-20T17:58:00.001-08:00

Psychology has not paid enough attention to death. How little literature there is compared with those earnest annotated studies on the trivia of life. The examination of death through the study of the soul is surely one of psychology’s prime tasks…If we want to move towards self-knowledge and the experience of reality, then an enquiry into suicide becomes the first step...Since we are each in silent therapy with ourselves, the issue of suicide reaches into the heart of each of us. - James Hillman

This paper will examine two kinds of death found in Virgil's Aeneid through the characters of Dido and Aeneas. I will suggest that both are self-inflicted deaths. The term for self-inflicted death is suicide, which typically refers to a literal, physical death. In this paper I mean to expand the notion of suicidal death beyond its usual corporeal denotation. I am viewing suicide from a psychological perspective as well as from the literal or physical point of view. James Hillman addresses these two perspectives in Suicide and the Soul where he speaks of the importance of distinguishing between literal suicide and metaphorical suicide, between inner and outer realities:

"The experience of death is necessary, but is actual suicide also necessary? How does the analyst proceed when the death experience is carried by suicide fantasies? How can he meet the needs of his analysand and keep separate inner and outer necessities?...The suicide threat...is a confusion of inner and outer. We suffer when we muddle psychic reality with concrete people and events...Keeping distinct inner and outer is a major task of an analyst. If he uses his tools well he frees life from entangling projections and frees the soul from its worldliness..." (77)

Hillman goes on to distinguish between inner and outer suicidal realities by calling the therapists examination of outer reality a case history and the examination of inner reality a soul history: "A case history is a biography of historical events in which one took part: family, school, work, illness, war, love. The soul history often neglects entirely some or many of these events, and spontaneously invents fictions and 'inscapes' without major outer correlations. The biography of the soul....is reported best by emotions, dreams and fantasies" (77). A client's case history is linear and chronological--he/she is identified with his/her external world. For such a person, suicidal death is logically corporeal. The solution to such external despair is to cut off ones physiological existence. On the other hand, a client's soul history is not predominantly identified with the external details of existence, focusing instead on key symbolic life experiences, life-altering crises and internal dreams and visions--sometimes described as personal vocation, destiny or fate. Here suicidal death is psychological, meaning that the self that dies is not identified with a physical body that is caught up in external causes and conditions.

My aim in this paper is to show that Dido and Aeneas represent these two types of histories resulting in two kinds of suicide. I will explore the possibility that Dido chooses a literal suicide provoked by external causes and conditions, while Aeneas chooses a psychological suicide compelled by internal images and divine Fate. Dido's self-inflicted demise is the result of her case history which is comprised of a personal "biography of historical events," especially the losses of her relationship with Aeneas and of her regal status in the eyes of her Carthaginian subjects. Dido's case history is aggravated by the smoldering embers of prior losses--her murdered husband Sychaeus and exile from her Tyrian homeland. Dido ultimately takes her life by ascending a funeral pyre comprised of Aeneas's possessions, and by plunging her ex-lover's sword into her physical heart to end her psychological and emotional pain.

On the other hand, Aeneas experiences a psychological death--a metaphorical suicide. Aeneas gets on a ship and plunges into the sea of his Fate. He too dies to his beloved Dido and sacrifices his status as the first king of the city of Carthage, but his self-inflicted demise is psychological, not physiological. He has a case history, but views it through the lens of his unique soul history or imaginal destiny. Dido's is an outer death--Aeneas's is an inner death. We will see that both go to and experience the Underworld in different ways as well--Dido by physical death, Aeneas through psychological death. Here two means of descending into the realm of death are juxtaposed.

We begin by noting that both of our characters have similar past case histories--both are the offspring of royal families, uncommonly attractive individuals, witnesses to the violent deaths of their spouses; both lose close friends and beloved family members. Dido and Aeneas each lost property and/or financial fortunes; both were wandering exiles from great kingdoms and each was responsible for scores of dislocated subjects looking for a new beginning. The losses and stresses of Dido and Aeneas were enormous. What caused one to commit physical suicide and the other to choose psychological death?

When Aeneas arrives in Dido's new city of Carthage with his twenty ships filled with men, women and children, the Queen and her people are busily constructing the great metropolis. Eventually the two regal and "beautiful people" meet. There is an immediate attraction. The allure is solidified when Venus uses her divine powers to cause Dido to fall passionately in love with Aeneas. In a sense, this falling-in-love moment is where the pertinent case history of Dido begins-- found in the first lines of chapter IV of the Aeneid:

"But the Queen--too long she has suffered the pain of love,
hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood,
consumed by the fire buried in her heart.
The man's [Aeneas's] courage, the sheer pride of his line,
they all come pressing home to her, over and over.
His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling--
no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none." (127)

Dido is suffering from the passions of her love for Aeneas. The phrase, “hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood,” might more literally be translated, “feeds the wound in her veins.” There is clearly a play on words here as veins (Latin, venenum) conjures up the Goddess Venus who had moved her son Cupid to fill Dido’s veins with the poison of love according to Book I (I, 782-86). Like an infection of the blood, love is making Dido sick. A soul history would notice here that this love-sickness is an assignment from a Goddess--not of human making. Dido does not recognize this numinous detail. The lack of recognition will be the death of her.

The next line in the above text is even more significant for our study: Dido is "consumed by the fire buried in her heart". The Latin scholar Servius comments on the phrase, "fire buried in her heart," saying that it reveals something that grows "stronger when suppressed”. He quotes Ovid to further elaborate this image of compressed passion, “The more a fire is covered, the more it heats up” (3). Dido is keeping all of her passion and pain inside, and the result is an emotional volcano seeking an outlet.

Further, this text reveals that the causes of Dido's toxic and fiery passion were external conditions. She was fixated on Aeneas's "...courage, the sheer pride of his [royal] line..His looks, his words...they all come pressing home to her, over and over...they pierce her heart and cling..." (Aeneid IV, 127). Again, she does not seem to be aware that her painful experience is not of her making, not really even of Aeneas's making--that it is divinely caused. By coming from Venus it is clear that her suffering is something like a celestial assignment that "comes pressing home to her, over and over..." The 19th century poet John Keats imagined that such earthly sufferings are sometimes given to us as personal assignments, written on the horn-book of our hearts to be wrestled with and deciphered while we are in this worldly school of soul-making (Bauld). Keats perspective suggests that one may be responsible to tackle his/her soul-assignment, or soul history, but that the actual situation is not of any earthly or human making. This is important for the suicidal person. If he/she feels any human individual or earthly condition is the source of their problems, then an external and literal solution seems logical. If the external person or condition cannot be changed, then physical death seems the only option.

Dido's curse of love, or her divine assignment, is further intensified as Juno and Venus, for different reasons, conspire to unite Dido and Aeneas in sexual union. While on a hunt together the two take shelter in a cave during a thunder storm. Juno casts her spell and the couple make love for the first time and we read, “This was the first day of [Dido's] death, the first of grief, the cause of it all. From now on Dido cares no more for appearances or reputation, either. She no longer thinks to keep the affair a secret, no she calls it a marriage, using the word to cloak her sense of guilt” (IV,213-218). At this point in Dido's story, "the first day of her death...and cause of it all" could refer to either a literal or metaphorical death. The birth of her love induced grief, the end of caring about appearances and reputation, her secrecy and avoidance of guilt through self deception are simply a reporting of the symptoms of a tragic state of affairs. While it is true that the end of every tragic and hopeless situation is always some sort of death, some sort of change, the death need not necessarily be literal. Not realizing that her problems are divinely assigned and internally resolvable, Dido will continue to focus on external causes, eventuating in her bodily suicide.

After a period of romantic bliss during which Dido and Aeneas are inseparable, it all comes crashing down. Aeneas receives a vision from Zeus, through Mercury, reminding him of his fateful duty and he begins to prepare his ships to sail for his destiny in Italy. Dido discovers his sudden plans to leave and feels betrayed. She confronts Aeneas and tells him that his choice to leave will kill her, “Can nothing hold you back…not even the thought of Dido doomed to a cruel death...pity a great house about to fall…do you leave me here to meet my death?” (IV, 383, 396, 403). Aeneas is the cause of her pain, and the solution by her accounting. She tries everything in her power to change his mind. She "resorts to tears, driven to move the man, or try, prayers--a suppliant kneeling, humbling her pride to passion. So if die she must, she'll leave no way untried" (IV, 520-230). Finally, Dido sends her sister Anna to make a bargain with Aeneas, “stay just a few months until I am done grieving” (IV, 544-46). But when every “twist and turn” fails, she decides to put an end to her self. She believes her external reality is ultimate. She loses her lover and her reputation. Her life is over. Hopeless, Dido climbs the funeral pyre made of Aeneas's furniture and clothing, then thrusts his sword into her breast. She exits the world "in a blaze of passion" (IV, 867) and Iris, dispensed by Proserpina, releases Dido from her body and sends her to the Underworld (IV, 868-74). Virgil indicates that her death was unnecessary by writing, "...she was dying a death not fated or deserved...before her day..." (IV, 866-67). This causes me to agree with Hillman when he writes, "...is actual suicide...necessary?... We suffer when we muddle psychic reality with concrete people and events...thus distorting reality" (Suicide 77).

Now turning to Aeneas, we discover that he also experiences a kind of self-inflicted death, but of a different sort than Dido's. While the sincerity of Aeneas's emotional attachments to Dido and the city of Carthage are debated by scholars, certain passages seem to make it clear that he really loved Dido and longed for a place in Carthage. After his vision from Zeus, reminding him of his duty to found Rome, Carthage is referred to as the "land he loves" (IV, 348), and Dido is the woman "who means the world to him" (IV, 360). When confronted by the sad and angry Dido, he "fought to master the torment in his heart" (IV, 415) and replies, "I...you have done me so many kindnesses...I shall never....regret my memories of Dido, not while I can recall myself and draw the breath of life" (IV, 416-20). We read further that Aeneas tries to console the heartbroken Dido, his own “heart shattered by his great love” for her (IV, 498). Yet finally, Aeneas “obeys the god’s commands and back he goes to the ships” (IV, 500). When Aeneas visits the Underworld in Book VI, he encounters the ghost of dead Dido: "...that moment Aeneas wept and approached the ghost with tender words of love" (VI, 527-28). He tells her that he left Carthage "against his will" (VI, 535), and with many "appeals, with welling tears, tried to soothe her rage...with streaming tears" he "pities her as she passes" (VI, 543-44, 553). All of these passages show us that Aeneas too experienced deep loss. His case history or biography left him emotionally disturbed and in pain. But Aeneas does not get stuck in his external conditions. Before he left Carthage for Italy, Aeneas tells Dido that his first love is to his internal call, his divine destiny, and seeks to elicit empathy by reminding her that she too once had a love greater than her passion for Aeneas:

"Grynean Apollo’s oracle says that I must seize on Italy’s noble land, his Lycian lots say ‘Italy!’ There lies my love, there lies my homeland now. If you, a Phoenecian, fix your eyes on Carthage, a Lybian stronghold, tell me, why do you grudge the Trojans their new homes on Italian soil? What is the crime if we seek far-off kingdoms too?" (IV, 431-37)

Psychologically this could be imagined as a therapeutic attempt to help Dido see that “love” has many levels and that temporal, emotional romantic love should not cloud one’s larger destiny. Italy and Carthage might represent something larger than literal geography. Like Abraham's Promised Land or Dorothy’s Kansas, these "places" point beyond to the 'inscape' of the poetic soul or Jung's individuated Self. Abraham is asked to sacrifice the life of his beloved son Isaac in order to fully realize the Promises of God and Dorothy must leave her three beloved friends in OZ to get back to her home in Kansas. While the experiences of human attachments, like love and country, are necessary experiences for expanding ego-consciousness beyond mere self obsession, such attachments are not the ultimate aim of soul-making. The soul is always in the process of poeisis, creative invention beyond the various archetypal incarnations found in physical lovers or parcels of land. That is Socrates point in the Symposium when he sees erotic love as the means to pursuing and knowing The Good. The common denominator is “love,” about which Virgil says, “Love, you tyrant! To what extremes won’t you compel our hearts?” (IV, 518-19). The temptation is always to hang onto the former, literal objects of love and security. But a soulful perspective reminds us of Isaiah's words to Israel as she grieved the loss of her tangible land and beloved temple, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland" (43:18-19).

While Dido focused on her biographical history and external conditions, Aeneas focused on what Hillman calls the internal call or 'inscape.' These individual soul 'inscapes' are known and "...reported best by emotions, dreams and fantasies" (Suicide 77). Emotions, dreams and fantasies make up the soul history. This is what we find with Aeneas. He does not rehearse the former externals of his life, but appeals to a dream from his father, “My father, Anchises…warns me in dreams” (IV,438- 441). Aeneas's soul saga chronicles the fantasy of his ancestral legacy, “My son Ascanius…I feel the wrong I do…robbing him of his kingdom” (IV,442-43). Aeneas does not resort to a mere external case history of biographical facts, but recounts a divine vision: “And now the messenger of the gods…has brought me firm commands” (IV, 446-448). He makes it clear that his departure from Carthage is not really even a choice, “I set sail for Italy against my will” (VI,451-52). The externals or 'outscapes' are secondary, significant only when in-formed by the 'inscapes'. Aeneas recognizes that his loves, reputations, emotions and external conditions are on loan from the gods, assignments with time limits and aims beyond human understanding or control. His Keatsian horn-book contains lessons that have nothing to do with his human plans. If there is to be a death or a loss, it is of the old self that had become attached to externals which no longer served his higher soul calling. His response was very different than Dido's when she focused on Aeneas's "courage, the sheer pride of his line...His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling..." (127). Aeneas's self-inflicted psychological death was to the externals--no clinging to his passion for Dido's body and emotional companionship. He detached from or cut off his role as the new king of the great city of Carthage. When he climbed aboard his ship, as Dido climbed atop the funeral pyre, Aeneas plunged his old life into the depths of the sea--a kind of baptism--and died to the man he was in Carthage in order that he might become the man he was to become in mysterious Italy.

However, it is important to see that this was not an easy experience for Aeneas. Psychological suicide is very difficult, in many ways more difficult than the quick cessation of consciousness via physical suicide. This point comes out when Jove, the King of the Gods, sends Mercury with a message to Aeneas. Mercury fastens on his golden sandals and flies to the Trojan prince and castigates him for “building your own realm, dotting on your wife. Blind to your own realm, oblivious to your fate!” (IV, 332-333). After hearing Mercury, “Then Aeneas was truly overwhelmed by the vision, stunned…He yearns to be gone, to desert the land that he loves…” (IV, 346-48). These lines are important for the exploration of psychological death. To the person in despair, it is easy to mistake the urge "to be gone" as something to be taken literally, especially when it involves losing the "land that [one] loves." This point is critical for those moments when “suicidal thoughts” seem to arrive mercurially out of nowhere, urging us to be gone. We might imagine that they come from Mercury with an “overwhelming vision” that terrifies and confuses us with an urge "to desert the land that [we] love...” It is important to remember that such yearnings need not be taken literally. Both Aeneas and Dido were overwhelmed with urges “to be gone". Dido took them literally while Aeneas took them literarily or metaphorically.

We must also explore the role of the Underworld in considering literal versus metaphorical suicides. After Iris releases Dido from her body we find the dead queen residing in Hades in Book VI. Virgil has little to tell us about Dido's experience in the Underworld. In fact, Dido says nothing when Aeneas approaches her with his desire to make things right. One psychological implication of Dido's silence suggests that our soul-making existence is done on this earth once the body is dead according to its time, its fated destiny, and the corporeal experiences of sensation and mentation are finished. This does not mean that soul-making does not go on beyond this world, but it does mean that we know nothing about that. I would even suggest that as interesting as it is, far too much time is spent speculating about what happens "after death".
In contrast to Dido's silence in the Underworld, we find that Aeneas, still in his vital body, has a very full and powerful experience of that soulful realm --one that would inspire Dante's Inferno several centuries later. Aeneas meets and resolves a problem with his former helmsman, Palinurus. He has a long and rich conversation with his deceased father, Anchises; he meets Dido and achieves a kind of confessional purgation through a reflective and penitential monologue. He seems to resolve some of his grief about the end of Troy as he views Trojan war heroes. Aeneas sees the future of Rome. Psychologically, much is done for Aeneas's soul history in the Underworld in order to complete his past that he might move freely into his destiny--his next phase of soul-making.

We might even play with the idea that Virgil's Aeneas willingly enters death and the Underworld through what Jung called Active Imagination, with a view to further self knowledge. Active Imagination is a meditative technique developed by Carl Jung between 1913 and 1916 wherein the contents of one's unconscious are translated into images, narrative or are personified as separate entities. It can serve as a bridge between the conscious 'ego' and the Collective Unconscious. Hillman makes it clear that the aim of Active Imagination is solely self knowledge, not "spiritual discipline, artistic creativity, transcendence of the worldly, mystical vision or union, personal betterment or magical effect...There is no other end than the act of soul-making itself..." (Healing 79).

We might imagine that Aeneas’s desire to enter the Underworld in this fashion honors the suicide fantasy which is necessary prior to all transformation--not bodily death, but psychological death--emotional demise and detachment from all that has gone before and held meaning. This may be what Hillman is referring to when he says:

"Suicide fantasies provide freedom from the actual and usual view of things, enabling one to meet the realities of the soul. These realities appear as images and voices, as well as impulses with which one can communicate…for these conversations with death, one must take the realm of soul—with its night spirits, its uncanny emotions and shapeless voices, where life is disembodied and highly autonomous—as a reality." (Suicide 70)

From this perspective, the Sybil is a kind of therapist or Shaman. Aeneas tells his story to the Sibyl (VI, 7-93) and like a good analyst she is tuned into both Aeneas’s consciousness and the Unconscious in the form of "Apollo who resided in her breast" (IV, 97-98). Aeneas asks to know “no more than the realm [his] fate decrees” (6, 80-81). This suggests that he sought neither eschatological speculations nor rational explanations or emotional relief, but rather self knowledge, or clarity regarding his own destined journey.

When asking the Sybil about going to the Underworld, Aeneas is told that getting there is easy—that the hard part is getting out (6, 149-155). This is a critical point. In this earthly ‘vale of soul-making,’ it takes great courage and work to enter psychological death, to disintegrate, to hear the voices in the Underworld and make the return to wholeness. This more difficult path requires the human to remain in his/her body, for as already mentioned, matter is one of three necessary elements, alongside the spark of spirit and the emotions, for soul-making according to John Keats. Again, citing Hillman, “Transformation, to be genuine and thorough, always affects the body. Suicide is always somewhere a body problem” (Suicide 71). Dido, who took the easier route, is just a wandering shade in Hades without a body. Her vague soul is bound to the Underworld. The game or journey of soul-making, which includes body, soul and spirit is over for her. Aeneas, while still in the material body, is allowed to enter and exit the Underworld, bringing with him the wisdom and transformational benefits that can come to a human only through the embodied soul. As Hillman says, "Suicide is the attempt to move from one realm to another by force through death. This movement to another aspect of reality can be formulated by those basic opposites called body and soul, outer and inner, activity and passivity, matter and spirit, here and beyond, which become symbolized by life and death” (Suicide 68-69). In this view, soul is not separate from body, but a necessary and crucial element in soul-making or “spiritual growth”. To shed the body before its time interrupts the process.

There is one final issue that must be addressed in a discussion about literal suicide compared to psychological suicide--the topic of hope. Our natural tendency as loving human beings is to give hope to the person in suicidal despair. Does this help or hinder the situation? On this topic there is an interesting comment made by Zeus as he prepares Mercury to "unseal the eyes" of Aeneas, oblivious to his destiny as the founder of Italy. Zeus says, "What is he [Aeneas] plotting now? What hope can make him loiter among the foes, lose sight of Italian offspring still to come and all the Lavinian fields? Let him sail! This is the sum of it. This must be our message" (IV, 293-97). The comment about loitering in hope made by Zeus suggests that Aeneas's "hope" was causing him to dawdle in a place where he no longer belonged. Aeneas was to release all hope and "set sail" toward his destiny. Hillman makes much of the necessity for the suicidal person to release all hope and even chides therapists to avoid providing hope for the suicidal client. While counterintuitive to the compassionate helper, the way through suicidal despair is by means of abandoning all hope--by entering fully into the despair of the not-yet-conscious, into the experience of death and the possibility of a psychic transformation which is impossible to foresee by any human being:

"The more the impulse towards suicide is conscious, the more it will tend to colour all psychic life with despair. And the more this despair can be held, the less the suicide will 'just happen'. To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair. To entertain no false hopes, not even that hope for relief which brings one into analysis in the first place. This is an emptiness of soul and will. It is the condition present from that when, for the first time, the patient feels there is no hope at all for getting better, or even changing, whatsoever. An analysis leads up to this moment and by constellating this despair lets free the suicidal impulse. Upon this moment of truth the whole work depends, because this is the dying away from the false life and wrong hopes out of which the complaint has come. As it is the moment of truth, it is also the moment of despair, because there is no hope...nothing but the experience itself...the suicide gesture [is] a 'cry for help',--but not to live. Rather it is a cry for help to die, to go through the death experience with meaning...Transformation begins at this point where there is no hope. Despair produces the cry for salvation...The cry on the cross is the archetype of every cry for help. It sounds the anguish of betrayal, sacrifice, loneliness. Nothing is left, not even God. My only certainty is my suffering which I ask to be taken from me by dying...Despair ushers in the death experience and is at the same time the requirement for resurrection. Life as it was before, the status quo ante, died when despair was born. There is only the moment as it is--the seed of whatever might come--if one can wait. The waiting is all and the waiting is together." (Suicide 88, 89, 91, 93)

When my son was killed in Afghanistan in 2008, our family had gathered together to grieve and plan his memorial service. My daughter, Micael, two years older than Jason was seated across the table from me. She suddenly started weeping uncontrollably—the kind of sobbing that won’t let you catch your breath. At one point, eyes flooded with tears, she took a deep gasp and blurted out, “I, I just want to be dead!” Of course her declaration caused me and everyone else great concern for her, but I knew what she meant. There was no hope. Nothing would bring our beautiful twenty-five year old son and brother back to us. The hopelessness and pain of such losses are so overwhelming that cessation of consciousness seems an attractive alternative. No one said anything to Micael--we too felt as she did, a desire to be dead. It seems to me now that in that moment, all of us around that table intuited what Hillman meant when he writes, "There is only the moment as it is--the seed of whatever might come--if one can wait. The waiting is all and the waiting is together" (Suicide 93). If one can wait: That is the suicidal moment. What will come next in the midst of such a hopeless moment?

I first learned of my son's death on the evening of July 14, 2008 and eventually went to bed in the early morning hours. Like Aeneas, my eyes were unsealed from sleep by Hermes. His Logos was knocking at the door of my soul. Images and emotions flitted like pale sprites behind closed eye lids. At one point a stark message broke through the chaotic menagerie, “Michael, you are not the man you were yesterday. You are no longer the father of a living son. You will never be that man again.” I intuitively asked, "Who will I be?" The answer was simply, "Wait and see." Only the waiting holds the transformative seed. Many months or years later, after the waiting, people often speak of the miracles that followed such tragedies. Without hopelessness and suicidal despair, there can be no miracles. Miracles like a resurrection can occur only from such utter despondency.

Neither my daughter nor I took our physical lives, but we both experienced a profound loss of “I”. We both knew unqualified hopelessness, and each of us underwent our own unique journeys to the Underworld and returned transformed. She went on to work with the Unites States military and various groups of peace activists, often anti-military, bringing them together to talk about solutions to world conflicts. Her connections to the military through the loss of her brother allowed her to become a bridge between the two archetypal extremes of war and peace.

I too survived the psychological journey into the Underworld. For eight months I dwelt with Hades and Persephone. Like Aeneas I spoke to the shades of my deceased relatives—my grandmother, my mother and my recently departed son. The prolonged encounter with death and conversing with the shades of many past and present losses inculcated a form of compassion in me that I had never known. The old cliché, “Many tears water the flowering heart,” was no longer just a Hallmark card. Jason’s death and my subsequent psychological suicide transformed my soul and my work as a teacher. As Hillman writes, “…the suicidal crisis, because it is one of the ways of experiencing death, must also be considered necessary to the life of the soul” (Suicide 76).

In conclusion, suicide may occur literally or metaphorically, externally or internally. Having this choice of perspectives can make all of the difference in the midst of loss and despair. Ernst Becker says that holding to a psychological perspective of death boils down to the ability to forsake former values:

"In order to grow he needs to renounce precisely that form of comfort and salvation that have become inseparable from his deepest values as these are grounded in the muscles and nerves of his organism...The person has to renounce precisely that which he feels at least able to renounce—that which is as dear as life itself because it has become the indispensible condition for his life." (145)

Renunciation of old attachments comes hard to the person who believes his/her past conditions are indispensible in order for existence to continue. Such persons seem to see only two alternatives: manipulation of external conditions or death by physical suicide. We saw this in Dido. Aeneas, on the other hand, was able to die psychologically and morph into the next phase of his psycho-spiritual existence.

In this paper I have tried to do as Hillman admonishes, pay "attention to death...through the study of the soul [which] is one of psychology’s prime tasks…If we want to move towards self-knowledge and the experience of reality, then an enquiry into suicide becomes the first step...Since we are each in silent therapy with ourselves, the issue of suicide reaches into the heart of each of us" (Suicide 1-2). Will it be literal, or metaphorical?

The Relationship of New Age Spirituality to Depth Psychology

2012-01-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

The Soul of Spirituality and the Spirit of Soulfulness
or
The Relationship of New Age Spirituality to Depth Psychology

For depth psychology, a sort of working distinction is sometimes made between soul and spirit—soul takes a person into the depths while spirit raises a person into the heights. Soul is a way of referencing human fragmentation and spirit refers to wholeness. Soul takes us into the darkness of hades while spirit takes us into the heavenly light and so forth. Soul is often associated with the negative emotions of depression, panic, fear, sorrow, etc. Spirit on the other hand leads us into feelings of ecstasy, tranquility, courage and joy. Soul is often associated with death and disintegration while spirit is associated with life and integration. Soul’s depths are at the center for the depth psychologist; Spirit’s heights are at the heart of the New Age religions. Using a popular New Age bestselling book as an example, we might say the New Age is about the spiritual Law of Attraction, while depth psychology is about the soulful Law of Subtraction.

That being said, we must remember that terms like soul and spirit are symbols pointing to a slice of lived phenomena, not the phenomena themselves. There is a danger of making these two kinds of human experience, soul and spirit, too distinct and unrelated. In order to avoid a complete split we need to talk about the soul of spirituality and the spirit of soulfulness.

By the “soul of spirituality” I am suggesting that while in the heights of spiritual ecstasy, on might get a momentary hint of being too consumed by the heights, or of being too far removed from the common earthly human experience. Sometimes in the middle of ecstatic spiritual transcendence there is a moment of dread or suffocation from the light. One might hear a voice whisper things like: “This is too much for you.” “This will not last.” “You will not be able to identify with those around you.”

The “spirit of soulfulness” on the other hand might refer to the feeling of peace and familiarity that arises mysteriously while in the dark depths. Sometimes in the middle of deep murky musings there is a moment of freedom from soaring too high or a moment of profoundly valuable insight about oneself or life in general. One might hear a voice whispering, “Relax and stop trying so hard.” I recently talked with a woman in the final days of her terminal cancer. She was smiling serenely. She said, “This is so odd. I do not really want to leave this life, but I have no fear of dying. There is a sense of release and relief that I feel.”

These two realms or ideas of spirit and soul are not really radically distinct phenomena. Like the Chinese Yin/Yang symbol, a bit of light resides in the deepest darkness, while a bit of darkness inhabits the brightest light. Similarly in the Christian Gospel, the infinite divine God has united with the mortal decaying human in Jesus Christ. This is not dogma, but rather images and stories which reflect the internal human experience of us all--a dynamic flow of dark and light experiences to make each of us into unique souls. I like to imagine that the thin line running between the two realms is each person's individual soul in the matrix of diverse yet related life experiences.

Duality is a necessary requirement for the dynamic and ongoing creative process, demanding both spirit and soul, above and below, positive and negative. Yet the two are always working in tandem, never alone.

We find this inside of our own skulls: the two hemispheres of the single human brain—each side with certain unique functions, yet neither complete without the other. Just as a single light beam, we are told by physicists, is comprised of wave and particle, so the fabric of Being (God) is comprised of soul and spirit; each has a distinction set of functions, yet both work together. However, just as the naked eye cannot tell the difference between particles and waves in a single shaft of light, so most often we humans cannot discern the differences between soul and spirit in a given life experience, but they are always there. For example: A man and woman who have been married for many years are fighting again, on the verge of a divorce. Upon later reflection one of the persons may recall feeling a deep dark despair over the disintegrating relationship and the anguishing loss of love and family, while another tiny part of that same person was feeling a sense of relief and even anticipation of a brand new future life. Or conversely, one of the persons in that argument may recall feeling a great sense of freedom as the oppressive relationship was finally ending, while that same person may also have felt a tiny fragment of sadness flickering inside the joyful anticipation of release. One is experiencing the spirit of soulfulness, and the other the soul of spirituality. There is no such thing as pure light or pure darkness. There is no soul without spirit, nor is there spirit without soul. Again, as with the Yin/Yang symbol, each contains a bit of the other.

The danger lies in separating soul and spirit completely. If Depth Psychology has a fault, it is that of emphasizing the dark depths to the implicit or explicit denial of the radiant heights. If New Age Spirituality has a fault, it is that of emphasizing light, union and love over darkness, fragmentation and conflict.

This short essay is not meant to answer all of the questions. That is up to the reader. The purpose is simply to remind us that spirit and soul, while operating in different spheres with differing values and aims, are never operating separately.

Occupy Wall Street and Soul-making

2011-11-29T06:49:00.000-08:00

The late Psychiatrist, James Hillman, writes about the Greek myth of Puer Aeternus (the Eternal Youth). Hillman suggests that a psyche stuck in the mode of "staying forever young," and free from the burden of having to grow up and face failures, responsibilities, aging and death--refuses to self-reflect and learn from the inevitable shortcomings of youth.

Perhaps this observation contains one explanation of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. The puer aeternus is characterized by excessive "openness" which is really the inability to stop whining and do some personal soul-searching, disguising childishness as "truth telling" and "justice" as a cry to be taken care of by mommy or daddy.

The puer aeternus is obsessed with a need for praise and validation from the outside world. Forty-six year old Charlie Sheen is the poster-child for this Western psychic pandemic: someone who "acts or speaks without thinking, lacks the reflection needed to avoid repeating past mistakes, has unrealistic expectations about his or her own capabilities, and has difficulty in establishing or sustaining deep and lasting relationships. Instead of turning inward and going deeper into one’s own emotional soul-life, the puer aeternus spontaneously and continually turns outward, looking for praise and meaning from others and the outside world."

Perhaps the OWS, in part, reveals a festering psychic symptom of a culture refusing to grow up and take personal responsibility--looking for wealthy corporate daddies and political mommies to kiss their owies and make it
all better.

Not the complete truth, but a point of view.

Jesus Was Not Your Typical New Age Teacher

2011-11-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 contains an enigmatic and counter-intuitive saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Many modern teachers would have us believe just the opposite: “Blessed are the rich in spirit.” Why the difference? Because Jesus knew that you don’t need to teach anyone who is rich, healthy and happy to be blessed! They know it already. But Jesus had to remind those who were in abject poverty that there was blessing in the bankruptcy. Granted, this sort of teaching doesn’t sell well in our current market of consumer spirituality which promotes unceasing goose bumps and guaranteed formulas for light and love. But Jesus was not a New Age health and wealth entrepreneur; his message was radical and meant for those sunk deep in the crapper. And he didn’t try to teach them to make cake from crap, or turn lemons into lemonade. He taught them that our poverty is blessed—that the crap is crap, and is blessed. His point was not to “transform” or heal the crap, but to see the crap as crap, yet purposeful crap. Read the rest of Matthew 5—Jesus does not soften the situation for those who are poor, or in mourning or those undergoing persecution. He doesn’t promise that the poverty, mourning or persecution will disappear if they pray the secret ancient prayer or apply the secret spiritual principles from his self help workshop. He just tells them they are blessed while in the midst of their troubles. For Jesus the problem itself, as it is, represents the kingdom of heaven.

Oscar Wilde, the famous 19th century poet, was imprisoned for his alleged homosexuality. While incarcerated he had a profound spiritual awakening, and wrote: “Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of humankind…To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim…But in a manner not yet understood of the world, he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful, holy things, and modes of perfection."
~ from “De Profundis”

I am not on a crusade for suffering, nor am I pleading for Spartan self denial. NO! Please seek pleasure, prosperity and light! But mine is a corrective for the modern imbalance which equates God with feeling good and achieving success. What made Jesus such an annoying radical was his insistence that God was in the valley of the shadow of death with the lost and wandering soul. He never promised that one would even exit the valley in this lifetime, but he did promise that it is a blessed place—a place to meet and hear from God in unimaginably deep and intimate ways.

This month at the Spiritual Enrichment Center we will be looking at the life and teachings of Jesus to see how we can access that blessing and hear that divine voice while in the valley. Join us on Sundays at 10:30, either through attendance or through Direct Listening on the internet at: http://www.spiritualenrichmentcenter.org/direct_listening.htm.

Keep it simple.

Michael

Does Life Operate By Chance or Purpose?

2011-10-11T15:54:00.000-07:00

The Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote a 1st century BC poem titled De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). Simply put, he explains his Epicurean philosophy by positing a physics of atomism. The universe described in the poem operates according to "chance" rather than the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.

One has to give Lucretius credit for getting a part of the cosmic game right that is often missed--namely that life has a randomness about it and that we are too often dominated by guilt, superstition and the "gods" who are out to get us like a Santa Claus who is keeping a list to see if we are naughty or nice.

But what Lucretius misses is that his slice of the cosmic philosophical pie is just that, a tiny slice of truth--an important one, but just a small piece. Yes, one mode or phase of existence is pure chance, luck, random events colliding with us at inopportune moments.

BUT, as we develop in consciousness, moving from animal, to human, to divine--we gain this eerie sense that it all may mean something and that there is purpose in this supposed randomness. Modern Chaos Theory suggests that order is implicit in every random event.

Lucretius, like all Atomists and Materialists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens), does not adequately answer the questions:

1. "WHY do we sense there is meaning and connection to it all?"
2. "WHY do we feel watched, feel guilty and intuitively know that justice will ultimately be measured out?"

He just assumes that those questions in all cultures everywhere just magically entered our psyches for no good reason, out of the blue. He is like the little boy who grows up thinking that cookies just magically appear in the cookie jar. We are the cookie jar, and the fact that we contain a sense of Destiny, Fate, Vocation, Final Judgment, Guilt, Fear of the Holy, Anxiety about the future, a sense of Divine Displeasure, a feeling of Necessity, Providence and other related feelings is not accounted for. Just as Mother baked and placed the cookies in the jar, so some sort of Higher Consciousness placed these purposeful feelings in us. They did not just magically appear. The Chinese called it the Tao, the Hindus called it Rita and the Christians call it the Christ.

Can There Be Absolutes in an Age of Relativism?

2011-09-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

A friend from Pacifica Graduate Institute asked the question: "Is it possible to hold to a particular way of viewing the world, in our case a Jungian Depth Psychological perspective, and not be a narrow minded reductionist bigot?" This is a a great question for our modern, internet, era. We have access to so many different points of view--can we possibly choose one and stand on it solidly? Can one be a Christian, Jungian, Freudian or Buddhist, Democrat or Republican, in this pluralistic world? Here is my response:

Just because one chooses and uses a particular lens by which to view and apply the myriad phenomena of myth, philosophy and religion, does not ipso facto make him/her an ignorant ideological reductionist. It does make him/her an informed ideological reductionist, but these are two very different positions. It is my view that every human is one or the other.

The purpose of this whole reduction/irreduction discussion is to warn the uninformed bigot that he/she ought to inform his/her bigotry. As I see it, all humans are bigots by the given condition of our self-limitations: "bigot" being a derogatory term applied by the French to the intolerant Normans, coming from two words: bi = by, and got = god, meaning something like, "This is the way it is, by my god (lens)!". A bigot is one who sees the world through his/her theological or ideological lens. There are conscious bigots who see they have a carefully chosen lens, and unconscious bigots who have no desire to peer through the lens of another. I have yet to meet anyone who is not one or the other. I'm sure the French would not have considered themselves bigots, but clearly they were, to the Normans! This is true of every religious or philosophical position, no matter which side of the aisle one is on. I have personally met as many uninformed liberal bigots as I have uninformed conservative bigots. Of course I am in the middle, which makes me a superior bigot.

In other words, one may seriously examine other perspectives re. myth, religion and philosophy--and still openly hold to a personal ideational and working weltanschauung. In addition to providing a depth psych. weltanschauung, the classes at Pacifica Graduate Institute attempt to broaden our horizon of world views. By the end of the religious studies course, the student ought to know what people like Comte, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Berger and Stark think of a sociological approach to religion; how Freud and Jung view religion as primarily psychological; and how people like Kant, Schleiermacher, Otto and Eliade view religion as an experience of the sublime/sacred/holy; how Feminists, Black Liberationists and others re-vision religious phenomena, etc. But having an open mind does not preclude taking a particular position based on a persons current understanding of the material--or the material's understanding of the current person(ality). That is what makes our cohort, and life in general, so damn fascinating and frustrating. We are a bunch of expanding bigots--reduced irreductionists.

My main problem with most of the so called post-modern, academic, "open minded irreductionist deconstructionists" is their tendency to level the playing field to the point of being intellectually and practically useless and bland. We see this in the current politically correct blasé culture--an approach which is ironically very reductionist. In 1943 C.S. Lewis coined a term for the "open minded" educators who denied the possibility of finding Truth in a "reductionist" Platonic sense: he called them Urban Blockheads (The Abolition of Man). The derogatory term denoted their disingenuous crusade for absolute subjectivity (sic)--replacing True universals with personal and cultural "truths"--each to his/her own truths. They were urban (educated elitists) blockheads (brainless) because they denied the ubiquitous evidence for universal Truth. Only hicks from Bumfuck, Arkansas believe in universals. Lewis argues that humans generally intuitively gravitate toward similar epistemological and aesthetical universal Truths (like Beauty, Justice, Courage, etc.) by which to live. Jung saw himself as an empiricist in just this way, a scientist of psyche seeking universals without apology.

An archetypal perspective suggests, to me, that one ought to rigorously and openly explore each and every mythical and religious paradigm, yet not be afraid to land on Big Ideas that cross cultures--the Greek Logos, Hindu Rita, Chinese Tao, Hebrew Hokmah, Christian Christ and Muslim Sharia. The various particular systematic philosophical or theological formulations of each of these perspectives may not be 100% True, but each intuitively knows and seeks Truth as a real possibility. There is a sense in which all good science reduces research in the direction toward the "more-true" theories or conclusions through meticulous examination. Why apologize for moving from the exploration of irreducible phenomena toward truer reduced theories?, providing that one continues to re-search and re-vision.

Finally, I like the phrase, "non-exclusive particularism" which is sometimes employed by theologians when discussing pluralistic religious and mythological perspectives. This idea suggests a couple of things: first, that one may seriously examine and come to deeply understand other points of view, excluding none, allowing each to have its own clear voice and contribution to the human enterprise (informed irreduction). Secondly, non-exclusive particularism suggests the utility and necessity of consciously choosing a particular foundation upon which to stand in order to see and act in the world (informed reductionism). Jung always emphasized that good research brings one back into the world with a particular ethical view and moral position "to be lived". The notion of anima mundi recognizes the importance of taking a solid stance in the world. I think most Global Warming and non-Global Warming advocates are pretty particular about where they stand--and many in both camps are even exclusive!

Subliminal message: [Al Gore and Sean Hannity]

Hillman's Pathologizing and The Book of Genesis:

2011-08-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

James Hillman describes pathologizing as "the psyche's autonomous ability to create illness, morbidity, disorder, abnormality, and suffering in any aspect of its behavior and to experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted perspective" (Re-Visioning 57, italics mine). By viewing pathologizing as archetypal, necessary and "central to the soul" (55), Hillman expands our perceptions of suffering beyond the usual notions of anthropocentric mental illness and a sinful human will. Hillman says that suffering, revealed through symptoms, reminds us that each "I" is a "personification whose reality depends on something other than my own will and reason," and that pathological symptoms give me "the sense of being an automation, or--in Plato's words--in the hands of the Gods" (49). For Hillman, all pathologies may provide soul-making perspectives:

"Were we able to discover its psychological necessity, pathologizing would no longer be wrong or right, but merely necessary, involving purposes which we have misperceived and values which must present themselves necessarily in a distorted form." (57)

I will argue that the general biblical view of suffering accords well with Hillman's description of pathologizing, focusing especially on the story of Genesis which contains the idea of pathology as being divinely and purposefully "created". I stress the word "create" because, as we shall see, not only does Hillman use it in his description of pathologizing, but it is used in Genesis and throughout the biblical literature.

Biblically, the first case of created disorder is found in Genesis 1:1-2: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the waters" (NIV). Simply put, God created the disordered depths out of which emerged the ordered cosmos. In the biblical myth, a disordered watery abyss often precedes order: Noah's flood before the re-creation of humankind, Israel crossing the Red Sea and Jordan River into the Promised Land, and Jesus being baptized before he begins his messianic mission of the new covenant.

After the void is created in Genesis, we find an image of the Spirit of God moving over the surface of the unformed depths. The Hebrew word for "moving" is merachefet (מְרַחֶ֖פֶת), and is used of an eagle flapping her wings over a nest of eaglets, forcing them from the nest (Deuteronomy 32:11). This image implies that God scatters the contents of a pregnant shell, coaxing forth the nesting dualities of light and darkness, sky and water, fish and fowl, dry land and seas, beasts and fish, male and female—the fragments of an evolving creation. Yet the Genesis myth of creative fragmentation has more pathologizing to come, specifically in relation to the newly hatched humans, Adam and Eve.

After the humans are created, God places them next to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "in the middle of the garden". Augustine (400 C.E.) viewed this tree as a symbol of ungodly desire to which the humans succumbed, plunging the entire human race into original sin. However, other interpreters before Augustine held that eating from the divinely created tree of opposites was a necessary experience for the initiation of human consciousness, a view supported by the fact that the crafty enticing serpent was "fashioned by God" as part of the original "very good" creation (Genesis 1:31). In this latter view, eating the fruit symbolized the onset of suffering, the painful yet indispensable educational experience of stark-naked alienation prior to maturation.

The second century C.E. theologian Irenaeus believed the Edenic fiasco was anticipated in Genesis 1:27: "God made man in His image, and in His likeness" (NIV). The Hebrew word for image implies potential while the word for likeness implies actual, hinting that the divine intention had always been to transform the potential "image" into the actual divine "likeness" through the expulsion from Eden and subsequent pathologizing, symbolized by pain in childbirth and sweaty manual labor. The remainder of the Genesis story, and the entire Bible for that matter, narrates the often painful unfolding of the Adamic seed into the Last Adam or Christ who is called the first-fruits of that original seed (NIV I Corinthians 15). Much of Jungian depth psychology holds to a similar view, summarized by Edinger: "...the first half of life [requires] ego-Self separation; the second half of life: ego-Self reunion" (5).

The central role of suffering in this process of human development is also revealed in the Genesis preface, chapters 1-11, which supplies a protracted encounter with pathologized images: The Eden characters are all alienated from one another, Cain kills Abel, God floods the sinful earth, Noah's son is cursed for mocking his drunken father, the Tower of Babel is toppled as humans are separated by language, and there is a sort of final pathologizing epithet found in Genesis 10:25: "In the days of Peleg...the earth was divided" (NIV). This preface provides the set up for Abram's call to heal the earth (NIV Genesis 12:1-3) and the evolution of human consciousness through conflict.

The idea of God-created pathologizing shows up again when JHWH calls Moses to free the Israelites from Egypt. Moses excuses himself by complaining about his speech impediment. JHWH asks, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (NIV Exodus 4:11). The Hebrew word for make is sum
(שׂוּם), which can be translated "to assign or appoint" (Theological Wordbook II.872-73). The Hebrew God gives people pathologizing assignments, recalling the poet John Keat's example of the suffering heart as the school-child's hornbook replete with soul-making assignments (Keats Letters). Jesus also taught an "assigned" view of suffering when a crowd suggested that a man born blind was in his mess because of personal or familial sins. Jesus responded, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him" (NIV John 9:1-2). Jesus knew the Hebrew Scriptures—pathologizing sometimes came from God. Seven hundred years prior, the prophet Isaiah wrote, "God says, 'I am the Lord...there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things'" (NIV 45:5-8).

Any Hebrew account of pathologizing would not be complete without mention of Satan (שָׂטָ֣ן), a word which began as a verb meaning "to oppose," referring to any antagonist, whether human or spiritual, with an oppositional and/or adversarial mission. Even the Angel or messenger of the LORD could "shatan/oppose" in behalf of JHWH (Numbers 22:22). The verb Shatan was later personified, designating a spiritual character who presented tests that could disintegrate a person with a view to future reintegration. The pervasiveness of this notion in the Hebrew psyche is evident in Jesus' words to Simon Peter: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you...that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back [reintegrated], strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32). Here Satan creates pathologizing with divine permission and with a purposeful, soul-making, intention.

It's worth noting that the word JHWH was also originally a verb meaning "to be," sometimes translated "I am". From a phenomenological perspective we may view the eventual personification of these two verbs, Shatan and JHWH, as an attempt in Hebrew culture to understand human nature as it is--one part of the psyche says, "I am" (JHWH) and another enigmatically says "I am not" (Shatan). A kind of spiritual isometrics is integral to Hebrew psychology--the name Israel means "he who strives with God" (Biblos Israel). This notion corresponds with Paul's struggle between his two natures in Romans 7:15-20, and with Freud's theory of the Eros and Death drives. The Hebrews recognized the irony of evil—with it we have unspeakable pain, without it, there is no consciousness. William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience, writes, "In the Louvre there is a picture by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan’s neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend’s figure being there—that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck. In the religious consciousness, that is just the position in which the fiend, the negative or tragic principle, is found; and for that very reason the religious consciousness is so rich from the emotional point of view." (52)

Finally, it is important to see that the Hebrews viewed suffering as necessary for the human maturation process as stated by the Apostle Paul: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose..." (NIV Romans 8:28-29). The book of Genesis and other biblical images view pathologizing, similar to Hillman, as psyche's autonomous ability to create suffering. It seems to me that a psychological understanding of the Bible, rather than sectarian theological views, can bring us to a conclusion similar to Hillman's words, "Were we able to discover its psychological necessity, pathologizing would no longer be wrong or right, but merely necessary, involving purposes which we have misperceived and values which must present themselves necessarily in a distorted form." (Re-Visioning 57)

Living in Fear is a Bitch: A Bitch is a Mother Dog

2011-08-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

A friend recently wrote regarding the contemporary western fear of Muslims in general as a result of the various acts of Islamic inspired violence in America and abroad. He went on to say, “Living in fear is a bitch and does not set us up for good mental health - or our best behavior.” He then suggested that bin Laden and others trying to terrorize the West are “winning” because they have succeeded in causing us to “live in fear”. I do not disagree with him altogether, however, as is my nature, I like to consider other ways of viewing the matter. This is my response:

----------------------------------------------------------------

Again, as I see it, "good mental health" is not only a bad metaphor, but an impossible and unwanted goal. This is another of our American unquestioned assumptions--that mental health is ideal, or that it even exists or should exist. As I see it, physical health cannot and should not be equated with the mind or soul. They are two very different entities operating by very different principles. This is true of all systems in Systems Theory; for example, a brain surgeon most likely cannot repair a car transmission, and an auto mechanic typically cannot do brain surgery. While related, the two systems function very differently and must be considered according to their own unique principles of operation. Never assume a metaphor is acurrate until you have thoughtfully examined the correspondances. Unfortunately, the late 19th century reinvention of psyche as parallel to, if not synonymous with, the body is not only wrong, but dangerous.

The mind and soul (two different but interrelated phenomena) are not identical to the body, and medical terminology must be used very cautiously. Anxiety, fear, "paranoia" and most of what has been assembled in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as mental illnesses are normal human psychological functions and responses. Just as an undeveloped baby encounters a world of troubling gravity and hard, sharp objects for the purpose of developing muscle and skeletal structure--so the mind provides all of these "unhealthy" emotions and responses for developing soul.

As you said, “living in fear is a bitch,” and a bitch is a female dog, a raging mother who gives birth. Fear is the womb or container that gives birth to an evolving psyche, and bin Laden can be seen as the "mother of new psychological development". Neurologist Andrew Newberg explains this simply and yet profoundly in his bestseller, Why God Won't Go Away. He explains the neurology of anxiety as the mechanism that drives evolution, and moves the mind/brain to seek a unitary experience of being (God).

I call these normal and necessary experiences of anxiety, fear and all so called "negative emotions," psycho-spiritual isometrics which is defined as “increase through resistance”. On the physical level, if you remove the material and gravitational resistance from a baby's life, you end up with a flaccid, atrophied, dead baby. On the psychological level, if you remove the troubling "material and gravitational" psychic resistance from a human soul, you end up with an atrophied and dead soul.

Remove pain, suffering, and difficulties from a child's life, you end up with middle class kids who kill their classmates because their peers do not recognize how cool they really are—i.e., Columbine and the rise of "well adjusted" middle class kids joining gangs. Experiencing difficulties works as a sort of psycho-spiritual homeopathy--the cure is in the dis-ease, to use a medical metaphor carefully. If you want to see a fascinating study on this phenomenon, read Allan Guggenbuhl's The Incredible Fascination of Violence, or James Hillman's The Terrible Love of War, or his Suicide and the Soul. Or click on this link and read the July/August 2011 article by therapist Lori Gottlied, "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy" which examines how the cult of self esteem is ruining our kids by not allowing them fail and feel fear, rejection and sadness.

This point was beautifully stated in a recent issue of The Week, by Katie Roiphe in The Financial Times:

"One sometimes sees these exhausted, devoted, slightly drab parents, piling out of the car, and thinks, is all of this high-level watching and steering and analyzing really making anyone happier? Can we, for a moment, flash back to the benign neglect of the 1970s and 80s? I can remember my parents having parties, wild children running around until dark, catching fireflies. If these children helped themselves to three slices of cake, or ingested the second hand smoke from cigarettes, or carried cocktails to adults who were ever so slightly slurring their words, they were not noticed; they were loved, just not monitored. Those warm summer nights of not being focused on were liberating. In the long sticky hours of boredom, in the lonely, unsupervised, unstructured time, something blooms; it was in those margins that we became ourselves."

James Hillman's View of Suffering and the Bible

2011-07-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

Hillman's Pathologizing and The Book of Genesis:
The Purposeful Creation of Suffering

James Hillman describes pathologizing as "the psyche's autonomous ability to create illness, morbidity, disorder, abnormality, and suffering in any aspect of its behavior and to experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted perspective" (Re-Visioning 57, italics mine). By viewing pathologizing as archetypal, necessary and "central to the soul" (55), Hillman expands our perceptions of suffering beyond the usual notions of anthropocentric mental illness and a sinful human will. Hillman says that suffering, revealed through symptoms, reminds us that each "I" is a "personification whose reality depends on something other than my own will and reason," and that pathological symptoms give me "the sense of being an automation, or--in Plato's words--in the hands of the Gods" (49). For Hillman, all pathologies may provide soul-making perspectives, "Were we able to discover its psychological necessity, pathologizing would no longer be wrong or right, but merely necessary, involving purposes which we have misperceived and values which must present themselves necessarily in a distorted form." (57)

I will argue that the general biblical view of suffering accords well with Hillman's description of pathologizing, focusing especially on the story of Genesis which contains the idea of pathology as being divinely and purposefully "created". I stress the word "create" because, as we shall see, not only does Hillman use it in his description of pathologizing, but it is used in Genesis and throughout the biblical literature.

Biblically, the first case of created disorder is found in Genesis 1:1-2: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the waters" (NIV). Simply put, God created the disordered depths out of which emerged the ordered cosmos. In the biblical myth, a disordered watery abyss often precedes order: Noah's flood before the re-creation of humankind, Israel crossing the Red Sea and Jordan River into the Promised Land, and Jesus being baptized before he begins his messianic mission of the new covenant.

After the void is created in Genesis, we find an image of the Spirit of God moving over the surface of the unformed depths. The Hebrew word for "moving" is merachefet (מְרַחֶ֖פֶת), and is used of an eagle flapping her wings over a nest of eaglets, forcing them from the nest (Deuteronomy 32:11). This image implies that God scatters the contents of a pregnant shell, coaxing forth the nesting dualities of light and darkness, sky and water, fish and fowl, dry land and seas, beasts and fish, male and female—the fragments of an evolving creation. Yet the Genesis myth of creative fragmentation has more pathologizing to come, specifically in relation to the newly hatched humans, Adam and Eve.

After the humans are created God places them next to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "in the middle of the garden". Augustine (400 C.E.) viewed this tree as a symbol of ungodly desire to which the humans succumbed, plunging the entire human race into original sin. However, other interpreters before Augustine held that eating from the divinely created tree of opposites was a necessary experience for the initiation of human consciousness, a view supported by the fact that the crafty enticing serpent was "fashioned by God" as part of the original "very good" creation (Genesis 1:31). In this latter view, eating the fruit symbolized the onset of suffering, the painful yet indispensable educational experience of stark-naked alienation prior to maturation.

The second century C.E. theologian Irenaeus believed the Edenic fiasco was anticipated in Genesis 1:27: "God made man in His image, and in His likeness" (NIV). The Hebrew word for image implies potential while the word for likeness implies actual, hinting that the divine intention had always been to transform the potential "image" into the actual divine "likeness" through the expulsion from Eden and subsequent pathologizing, symbolized by pain in childbirth and sweaty manual labor. The remainder of the Genesis story, and the entire Bible for that matter, narrates the often painful unfolding of the Adamic seed into the Last Adam or Christ who is called the first-fruits of that original seed (NIV I Corinthians 15). Much of Jungian depth psychology holds to a similar view, summarized by Edinger: "...the first half of life [requires] ego-Self separation; the second half of life: ego-Self reunion" (5).

The central role of suffering in this process of human development is also revealed in the Genesis preface, chapters 1-11, which supplies a protracted encounter with pathologized images: The Eden characters are all alienated from one another, Cain kills Abel, God floods the sinful earth, Noah's son is cursed for mocking his drunken father, the Tower of Babel is toppled as humans are separated by language, and there is a sort of final pathologizing epithet found in Genesis 10:25: "In the days of Peleg...the earth was divided" (NIV). This preface provides the set up for Abram's call to heal the earth (NIV Genesis 12:1-3) and the evolution of human consciousness through conflict.

The idea of God's pathology-making shows up again when JHWH calls Moses to free the Israelites from Egypt. Moses excuses himself by complaining about his speech impediment. JHWH asks, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (NIV Exodus 4:11). The Hebrew word for make is sum (שׂוּם), which can be translated "to assign or appoint" (Theological Wordbook II.872-73). This Hebrew God-image gives people pathologizing assignments, recalling the poet John Keat's example of the suffering heart as the school-child's hornbook replete with soul-making assignments (Keats Letters). Jesus also taught an "assigned" view of suffering when a crowd suggested that a man born blind was in his mess because of personal or familial sins. Jesus responded, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him" (NIV John 9:1-2). Jesus knew the Hebrew Scriptures—pathologizing sometimes came from God. Seven hundred years prior, the prophet Isaiah wrote, "God says, 'I am the Lord...there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things'" (NIV 45:5-8).

Any Hebrew account of pathologizing would not be complete without mention of Satan (שָׂטָ֣ן), a word which began as a verb meaning "to oppose," referring to any antagonist, whether human or spiritual, with an oppositional and/or adversarial mission. Even the Angel or messenger of the LORD could "shatan/oppose" in behalf of JHWH (Numbers 22:22). The verb Shatan was later personified, designating a spiritual character who presented tests that could disintegrate a person with a view to future reintegration. The pervasiveness of this notion in the Hebrew psyche is evident in Jesus' words to Simon Peter: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you...that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back [reintegrated], strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32). Here Satan creates pathologizing with divine permission and with a purposeful, soul-making, intention.

It's worth noting that the word JHWH was also originally a verb meaning "to be," sometimes translated "I am". From a phenomenological perspective we may view the eventual personification of these two verbs, Shatan and JHWH, as an attempt in Hebrew culture to understand human nature as it is--one part of the psyche says, "I am" (JHWH) and another enigmatically says "I am not" (Shatan). A kind of spiritual isometrics is integral to Hebrew psychology--the name Israel means "he who strives with God" (Biblos Israel). This notion corresponds with Paul's struggle between his two natures in Romans 7:15-20, and with Freud's theory of the Eros and Death drives.

Finally, it is important to see that the Hebrews viewed suffering as necessary for the human maturation process as stated by the Apostle Paul: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose..." (NIV Romans 8:28-29). The book of Genesis and other biblical images view pathologizing, similar to Hillman, as psyche's autonomous ability to create suffering. It seems to me that a psychological understanding of the Bible, rather than sectarian theological views, can bring us to a conclusion similar to Hillman's words, "Were we able to discover its psychological necessity, pathologizing would no longer be wrong or right, but merely necessary, involving purposes which we have misperceived and values which must present themselves necessarily in a distorted form." (Re-Visioning 57)

Myth and Science, Two Ways to Two Truths

2011-07-20T05:14:00.000-07:00

"We're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." ~ Rod Serling

African ethnographer Maya Deren's definition of myth enchanted me the first time I read it: "Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in the fiction of matter" (Divine 21). She goes on to speak of a West African elder who tells stories, "not to describe matter but to demonstrate meaning...[talking] of his past for purposes of his future...[composing] from the matter of memory at hand--from specific physical conditions" endemic to his own geography, era and race (21). This elder's culturally expressed stories arise from and gesture toward phenomena beyond the veil of empirical verification. These invisible "facts of the mind" in-form the mythical stories and fulfill a human hankering for cosmic order and meaning. Deren says, "[the human] creature contains the possibility of a mind, like a fifth limb latent in man, structured to make and manipulate meaning as the fist is structured to grasp and finger matter" (23). Deren captures the instinctive human predilection to mythologize--to speak of the, "...important aspects of reality which escape science, including those which are manifest within the perceived world.
These later [non-scientific] aspects are likely to be of fundamental importance for our primary understanding of things, just as those which are characteristic of the world of science are of fundamental importance when we seek to explain natural phenomena." (Merlou-Ponty 14)

Mythic reality points to truth beyond mere scientific rationalism and empiricism, summed up famously by Blaise Pascal: "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." Many mistakenly take Pascal's word "heart" to be synonymous with a vacuous emotional feeling, just as many take the word myth to be tantamount to illusional phantasmagoria, dismissing mythic truth as Scrooge tried to set aside his vision of Marley's ghost as "a bit of undigested beef". Not so fast--"heart," as used by Pascal, like Deren's myth, refers to perceptions that are every bit as real and "reasonable" in their own way as any empirical perception.

Lawrence Hatab argues that truth is plural, comprised of ordinary "empirical" truth and primordial "mythical" truth. This accords nicely with Deren's defintion, allowing for not only the scientific "facts of matter," but for the mythic "facts of the mind". Hatab, elucidating Heidegger's work on the philosophy of Being, writes, "Heidegger distinguishes between ordinary [scientific] truth and primordial [mythic] truth, or representational truth. In representational truth, a statement must correspond to a state of affairs. The 'tree stands in the field' is true if in fact the tree is in the field. All well and good. But Heidegger argues that before this correspondence takes effect, 'something' must first be presented, come to be, or show itself as a phenomenon. Indeed, a good deal must first show itself--the meaning of tree and field; their relation; the context of relations and meanings into which tree and field fit; statements; the relatedness of statements and states of affairs; a criterion of empirical verification; and primarily the meaning of Being itself. So before representational correspondence, before the operation of empirical verification, a primal presentation shows itself. Presentational truth refers to this primal showing or emergence, which Heidegger calls unconcealment...Such primordial truth is prior to what is disclosed." (Myth 5, italics mine)

So there are two truths: presentational truth, sometimes called presencing or prespatial by Heidegger, and representational truth. Innate mythic reason works through presencing, providing or gifting the prespatial canvas beneath the mythmaker's artistic brush. Myth is created from the primordial presentational "facts of the mind." In his lectures On Time and Being, Heidegger writes: "As the ground, Being brings beings to their actual presencing. The ground shows itself as presence. The present of presence consists in the fact that it brings what is present each in its own way to presence" (56). In what Heidegger refers to as "the fact that...brings what is present in its own way to presence," I think we find Pascal's "reasons of the heart" and Derens "facts of the mind" which prompts each culturally unique mythic narrative. These primordial "facts of the mind" are the pre-scientific and pre-human seeds which, when sown in the psyche, compel storytellers to open with, "Once upon a time".

This can be illustrated further by math and music. Like myth, these two phenomena are internal mental presences before they are external re-presences, prespatial presentations before spatial representations, or "facts of the mind" before they are made manifest in the "fiction of matter". Before the architect's blueprint or the musician's musical score are made manifest on paper, they exist in the realm of mind as archetypal "facts". Once on paper they become material fictions--fictions not because they are untrue, but because no single blueprint or musical score can contain all of the truth there is to know about math or music. Each fiction, or fantasy, presents a tiny fragment of mathematical and musical truth, but not the entire truth of these pre-human "facts of the mind". So it is with myth--each myth presents or manifests a fictional yet true fragment of archetypal reality. These archetypal "facts of the mind" incarnate as material manifestations--as spoken sound waves, ink on paper, theatrical dramas, or ritual objects and actions. They ex-press internal im-pressions or primal perceptions of Being.

It is crucial to remember that no myth can ever completely depict or contain the whole primal showing or emergence. Every myth borrows from the humanly constructed props endemic to a unique culture in order to stage its representational cosmology. Nor can humans fully exist without expressing and impressing these innate inklings--we require stories to communicate experiences that cannot be contained by material factoids or chemical analysis. The compulsion to discover and express imaginal beginnings, values and beings is the "fifth limb latent in man, structured to make and manipulate meaning as the fist is structured to grasp and finger matter" mentioned by Deren (Myth 21). Humans must create true fictitious responses that co-respond with and to the "ground that shows itself as presence". In this view all anthropic mythical systems are provisional fantasies, including post- modern science, as admitted by many physicists who are questioning the old Newtonian myth of pure materialism, "In breaking with Newtonian materialism we must accept that the objects of our theoretical models and the real entities of the external world bear a much more subtle relationship to each other than was assumed hitherto. Indeed, the very notion of what we mean by truth and reality must go into the melting pot...In quantum field theory, for instance, theorists often refer to abstract entities called 'virtual' particles. These ephemeral objects come into existence out of nothing, and almost immediately fade away again...So to what extent can they be said really to exist?" (The Matter Myth 18, 20)

In this new quantum mythology the old rejected religious myths are not only being revised, but invited back for a second look. Take for example the Buddhist idea of reincarnation and other ubiquitous religious accounts of post-mortem consciousness. Even the skeptic Carl Sagan in his book, The Demon-Haunted World, wrote that arguments for reincarnation may have some support: "...there are three claims in the [paranormal] field that deserve serious study...[one being that of] young children [who] sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation." (282)

Sagan's comment also suggests that the line between empirical and mythical realities is fading. Consider the Tantric Buddhist bardo doctrine which teaches that people experience their own harmful mental projections in the intermediate states between life, death and rebirth. Some good research by neurobiologists like Dr. Andrew Newberg suggests that the human brain may have the capacity to access a level of reality beyond the empirical world—to actually enter into the archetypal realm of the mythic "facts of the mind". Brain scans of meditators reveal that all deeply mystical experiences are preceded by the diminishment of sensory stimulation. Newberg says that in deep meditation, "something" other than sensory objects is encountered. He makes it clear that neurology can neither prove nor disprove a non-material dimension, however, it is entirely possible "that the brain is truly in contact with some divine presence or fundamental level of reality" (NeuroTheology 145). Physicist Frank Tipler suggests that seminaries, and I would add mythologists, had better start studying physics as a prerequisite for doing serious theology and mythology.

Thank you Maya Deren for providing such a simple yet incredibly complex description of myth. This perspective allows for what James Hillman calls psychologizing or "seeing through," permitting us to see why humans have always been compelled to make manifest the archetypal “facts of the mind in the fiction of matter”.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE BEATLES

2011-07-20T04:58:00.000-07:00

The Beatles and The Four Stages of Psycho-spiritual Consciousness

“The more I go into this spiritual thing, the more I realize that...something else is doing it.” ~ George Harrison

Nearly 2,000 years ago, four Gospels named for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John changed the course of human consciousness and history. Fast forward almost 2,000 years to twentieth century Europe and America--a time of dehumanizing technology, world wars, political tyranny, religious decline and civil unrest. This soul-malaise moved Carl Jung in 1933 to write about Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Less than thirty years after Jung's assessment, four young English musicians named John, Paul, George and Ringo took the world on a psycho-spiritual magical mythical tour of soul evolution. With their lives and music the Beatles would penetrate a rigid Western consciousness, expanding it like a Rubber Soul.

In their early years, the four teens were influenced by what had been dubbed the Beat Generation, a term coined by a group of American writers, artists and rebels like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The term beat connoted being "beat down by the establishment," but Kerouac added the paradoxically optimistic notion of restoring a new "upbeat and beatific” vision of consciousness. The four English musicians liked the symbolism and called themselves The Beatles. John Lennon felt "beat down" by life, and with his assertive rhythm guitar caused the band to explore all human emotions. Lennon said, "My role in society...is to try and express what we all feel...Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all" (Beatles Biography 83). James Paul McCartney, undeniably the most musically balanced of the four, added stability and an almost naive "upbeat" optimism. Paul Vallely said of McCartney, "Paul McCartney is one of those people who has represented the hopes and aspirations of those born in the baby-boom era, which had its awakening in the Sixties" (The Independent). Add the slaphappy no-rolls drumming of Richard Starkey whom Lennon called "quite simply the heart of the Beatles," and the shy spiritually minded George Harrison with his rockabilly guitar style, and you have what drug guru and Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary, in his book The Politics of Ecstasy, called, “The message from Liverpool...the Newest Testament, chanted by Four Evangelists-saints John, Paul, George, and Ringo" (134).

It is my contention that this Beatle "message" corresponds very nicely to what some have identified as archetypal stages of evolving consciousness. Stages-of-growth theory is founded on the Freudian depth psychological work of Eric Erickson and developed at the spiritual and moral levels by James Fowler, Lawrence Kholberg, M. Scott Peck and many others. Jung refers to four universal stages of individuation in his work, Man and His Symbols, citing Paul Radin's study of the heroic cycle in the Winnebago Indians mythology(112-114). These four stages are also found in the Eros and Psyche myth, the Hindu stages of life, the phases of the Buddha's awakening, the Epic of Gilgamesh and in the evolving God-image of the Bible. I will utilize the four stages as developed by Scott Peck in his book, The Different Drum, (186-200). After a brief description of each stage, I will give parallels found in the Beatle's biographical and musical career which animated, evoked and altered the consciousness of Western civilization.

Stage one is the ego stage, or what Scott Peck calls the Chaotic-Antisocial phase, "…a stage of undeveloped spirituality [during which a person is] incapable of loving others...[and] relationships with fellow human beings are essentially manipulative and self serving…, [eventuating] often…in social difficulty" (Different 188-89). This describes the early years (1959-62) of the ragtag band that would become The Beatles. They described themselves as Teddy Boys, the equivalent of American Beatniks, with skin tight jeans, leather jackets and ducktail haircuts. They smoked, drank, did drugs and fornicated. Their early music was little more than dissonant shouting and bizarre theatrics. McCartney was arrested and deported from Hamburg, Germany for setting fire to their apartment located in a porn theater. Their first big hit song written by John, Please Please Me, was covertly sexual, admonishing the prudish English lassies to please their lads like the carnally enlightened German Fräuleins.

Eventually such pathological behavior breaks a person down, preparing them for stage two--Formal-Institutional--which provides necessary structure so that social skills might be acquired. The ego expands to embrace some "other" person, idea or tradition. Falling in love, getting a job or finding an ideological stance is common. In 1962 the Beatles, demoralized by their chaotic German gigs, met their manager Brian Epstein who encouraged the group to assume a more mature social attitude. John Lennon recalled Epstein's words, "Look, if you really want to [succeed]...you're going to have to change—stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking" (Anthology 67). During this period they donned suits, wrote formal love songs and focused on the institution of romance with lyrics like, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and "She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah." They guided a generation of young men and women, providing both with permission to fall insanely in love and attach to the idealized "other".

This second stage also comes to an end, always painfully, as the evolving consciousness tires of symbiotic enmeshment with the "other". Stage three arrives--the Skeptic-Individual phase--wherein one becomes an "active truth seeker" (Different 192). Confused and questioning everything, a person begins to discover who lives at the core of the self. This stage of consciousness overtook the Beatles shortly after achieving success in 1964. Neither stage one hedonism nor stage two institutional stardom had worked, so they shed their conformist suits and began using drugs to expand their individual awareness. Their albums changed tone, calling out for HELP! after experiencing too many Hard Day's Nights. They longed to escape from the socially restircting box they were in. Suddenly their songs were about failed love, domestic abuse and evil taxmen. They felt torn to pieces and expressed it by releasing "The Beatles Yesterday and Today" album with the Butcher Cover displaying dismembered babies. After an initial release, the record jacket was immediately recalled and replaced. The second image was less macabre yet still showed them emerging from the conformist box as individuals bent on differentiating "yesterday" from "today". In his book, The Beatles and Philosophy, Erin Kealey writes: "Beginning in 1965, the Beatles take a philosophical turn from singing the romantic songs that brought them early popular success to scripting more profound and critically acclaimed lyrics that probe the human condition…[exploring] such issues as getting lost in the crowd, alienation, self-deception, and the call to a better way of life." (109)

Scott Peck notes that stage three typically ends in hopeless exhaustion accompanied by spiritual curiosity, leading to the dawn of stage four--Mystic-Communal. Shattered by the in depth analysis of stage three, stage four results in an emptying out of the self and an increasing awareness of an "invisible underlying fabric that connects everything" (Different 193). During this period the Beatles went on meditation retreats and produced Sgt. Pepper's in 1966 with an album cover sporting such psycho-spiritual luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Babaji, Yogananda and an image of the Hindu Goddess Lakshmi. The album also included Harrison's Krishna inspired song, Within You Without You. The stark White Album was released in 1967, a symbol of emptying out the past and the future. The Beatles were helping a whole generation move through stages of development, regaining the lost soul Jung had written about in 1933.

Their first and last album covers taken alone demonstrate how the Beatles symbolized and galvanized the evolution of Western consciousness through the 1960s. Their initial album showed the four in complete conformity with no distinctions between them. Their last two albums revealed four unique characters walking away from the "institutional" Abbey Road studio, and then a final Let It Be cover that was similar to their first album with all four guys together, except that now each Beatle had acquired his own distinct look and individuated quadrant. The final message was clear: Be yourself, things change, move on and let it be.

The Beatles knew there was something mythical occurring during those years together. George Harrison said in 1967, “The more I go into this spiritual thing, the more I realize that...something else is doing it” (Gospel 194). Paul McCartney agreed, “We just happened to become leaders of whatever cosmic thing was going on. We came to symbolize the start of a whole new way of thinking” (Gospel 194). After they broke up John Lennon said, "The Beatles were a kind of religion" (Gospel 11).

Jung, in Man and His Symbols, says that the four stages of evolving consciousness found in every culture "provides a clear demonstration of the pattern [of individuation] that occurs both in historic myths and in...modern man" (114). The Beatles provided that archetypal pattern for many in the twentieth century. They became the living symbols of individuation, motivating scores of people to march forward in the messy yet magical, mythical soul-making processional.

Is It Really a "War on Terror"?

2011-05-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

I want to question the accuracy and value of the phrase, War on Terror. I personally do not see the war as really being against "terror". It is more accurately a war against inhumane ideas that lead to bondage. Therefore, it is a War On Ideas, or a War Against Bondage. I believe we should not fight an emotion. No human emotion is evil or abnormal. The feeling of terror is a normal and beneficial human feeling. I’d like to look at this beneficial view of terror from two perspectives.

First, from a practical socio-political perspective:

The Week magazine, and other sources, estimate that up to 10% of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world are actively engaged in spreading some form of the old Sharia laws of Islam to all seven continents. My focus is on the most harmful and inhumane laws of Sharia, like stoning gay people, honor killings of women, limiting education of females, enforced clothing laws, teaching young boys to grow up and die for Allah, taxation of non-Muslims, religious intolerance, etc. I will not call them Terrorists. They are ideologues. It is their ideas that are dangerous and worthy of fighting, not their terror. This war that threatens the world is neither against Islam nor terror—but against ideas that lead to enslavement of the mind and body. So at the socio-politcal level, we are in a War Against Inhumane Bondage. The emotion of terror is actually very beneficial because it awakens, motivates and activates free people everywhere to do something to stop the infectious spread of enslaving ideas. We will never win a war against terror. We might as well fight happiness or grief. Terror, like all emotions, is a normal and beneficial human experience that moves people to transform intolerable situations.

Secondly, from a psychological perspective:

Psychologically, the emotion of terror is a very normal and beneficial human experience. Terror awakens the complacent human soul to the larger issues of existence—like one's core beliefs, values and priorities in life. Terror makes us conscious of suffering and injustice, of death and a host of other experiences that cause the soul to come up against something other than work, food, sleep and collecting more stuff. This psychological perspective is seldom taken into account by our politicians and by our culture in general. I am not talking about the “psyche” that is discussed in cognitive, behavioral and pharmaceutical psychologies. While there is a place for all of these approaches to human problems, they have virtually nothing to do with the soul per se. These therapies treat brain function, social behaviors and other assessable “scientific” phenomena--stuff that can be statistically quantified, measured and fixed with some technique or drug. When I use the word "soul" I am referring to that vague but very real "aspect" of sentient existence which moves us from our current level of consciousness to the next. This distinction between "soul" and most modern therapies reminds me of David Chase’s award winning HBO series, The Sopranos. In the pilot episode, mob boss Tony Soprano goes to a psychiatrist and receives a lithium prescription to treat his panic attacks. His wife Carmela finds out and is elated, saying to Tony, “Psychology doesn't address the soul--that's something else--but, this is a start.”

Soulful experiences of terror work on the complacent, unconscious static human being. Terror is like a hair or speck of dust under your eye lid, creating concentrated focus. Terror moves one to know him/her core self. Most of us want the "self" to have experiences of life, but few of us want to experience the life of the "self". Few people take time from their busy schedules to know their inner self and its judgments, motivations, worries, pleasures, inclinations, fantasies, dreams and behaviors. This is not bad--in fact I highly recommend being unconscious as long as it works! Being unconscious is a very pleasurable experience, but it almost always comes to an end, and most often that end comes through feelings of terror. The stark and icey feeling of terror has a way of moving one inward toward the core self. In the midst of a terrifying situation the really important things of life rise to the top and seemingly evaluate themselves while we feel like a mere spectator. It is as though someone is playing a scary video for us, revealing thoughts, feelings and points of view we didn't know we had. The soul expands at such times and psychic tsunamis rearrange our whole personality. To fight against this experience of terror is to wage war on the soul.

The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron tells us that terror and hope are wonderful feelings because they both push us up against the limitations of our current ego consciousness. The moment we are feeling terror we can be sure we are trying to flee from our current self, to leap over the present soul-making moment. To get rid of terror robs us of the opportunity to follow that emotional trail into the rabbit hole of consciousness and find the culprits that are keeping us from expanding. When terror is examined as an ally of psyche, and the disintegrating and reintegrating work of terror is realized, most often the terror will evaporate--its work is done.

That is why I don't like the phrase, War on Terror. I see the world fighting a War Against Bondage. I suggest that we stop fighting the terror, and instead, we should openly feel the terror and explore our unconscious assumptions, values, projections, prejudices and actions. Psychological iconoclast Thomas Szasz says, “There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.” Through terror, you can come to know your self in ways you never could without the experience. Let's fight to keep our American freedoms, but cease fighting the soul-making experience of terror.

THE SOLUTION IS IN THE DIS-EASE

2011-05-07T00:14:00.000-07:00

As modern westerners have increasingly dominated nature with technology and great inventions, making external life easier, safer and more secure—we have concurrently neglected the soul, the internal life, or character. The neglect of the internal for the advancement of the external requires a compensatory response from the psyche. The internal will find a way to restore balance. The inner and the outer, spirit and matter, like the electrons in an atom, always work in tandem and dance together to make a whole. Psyche will restore balance through dis-ease—allowing the external phenomena to proceed to their logical conclusions that those ends might complete their arc and swing back the other way like a pendulum. Internal psyche will call us back. How?

Addictions, disorders and afflictions arise from Psyche, outside of and apart from human will. These dis-eases serve to turn us back to the internal life, to attend to soul. Pandemic obesity caused by external consumption is making us sick, depressed and miserable—forcing us to abandon external concerns and to examine and feed our malnourished souls. A heart attack has a way of rearranging priorities in a literal heartbeat. Rampant drug use (legal and illegal) and ubiquitous alcohol consumption give us external chemical highs, but then force us into the depths—hitting bottom, to see our neglected souls. Greed and obsession with money, career and stuff result in recessions and depressions which leave us bankrupt and depressed—forcing us back into reflection and soul-tending. Relationship and sex obsessions leave us eventually alone, insatiate, and often bitter-- forcing us to look inwardly. Our American political process has gradually abandoned soul along with religion, calling for external solutions through rational policies and messianic politicians—and we are all raging at the other party. Psychotherapy focuses on statistics, diagnostic manuals and averages, assigning labels and standard treatments that “reprogram” the brain or body—and few are much happier. Even our western spirituality often turns to a kind of external solution as we look to theological systems, metaphysical techniques, spiritual books, seminars, teachers and intellectualized quick-fix “scientific” religions that leave us shallow and dissatisfied--forcing a spiritual crisis which drives us back into our own neglected souls.

The solution is in the disease. Each of these external failures, mostly unconsciously, are forcing us back to the radical or root source—our own bereft self or soul in need of care--not a cure. The care must come from powers that were prior to all externals, and greater than all human inventions which make life easier, safer and more secure. There is no quick fix or herd solution. Decades of soul neglect have left an overgrown internal topography. Most will not hack their way through, but return to the food, drink, relationship pursuits, technological distractions and other external answers. Most prefer the disease itself to the hard work of self knowledge--not self obsession, but deep self knowledge. But can't we change? Can't we decide to fix the problem and change our individual life?

The bad news is that this is primarily a collective problem afflciting the entire western psyche. While most of us think we can solve our problems with the right effort, maany are finding failure after failure. When individuals try to “overcome” their particular problem--which we call addictions, neuroses and afflictions--they do not know that their struggle is against a larger psychic assault on western externalized values. The neurotic “onslaught” by a compensatory psyche is not personal, but exists in pandemic numbers for the corrective of the collective soul. The corrective is bigger than the individual's obesity or drug problem, bigger than the democrats or republicans salutary policies to fix the economy. The psycho-emotional epidemic in America is from a cultural neglect of soul. Some sort of larger "victory" will arrive when a significant number of people learn that self knowledge and character need attention—that the soul must be seen, heard and attended to on a scale that will shift the western soul. Technology, industry, herd solutions, statistical and formulaic social agendas and all of the great academic rationalisms must learn to co-exist with and even surrender at times to psychic agencies which operate inwardly, individually and apart from external human consciousness.

However, if one does per chance work to achieve success, recovery, and “healing” in his/her area of addiction or affliction--it almost always requires much time and attention put on elusive and enigmatic self knowledge, and always a compassionate return to society with a message of soul over stuff. If these two criteria are not met, the successful changer will inevitably return to some external solution--and lead the proverbial life of quiet desperation.

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE CONFUSED AND JUDGMENTAL

2010-12-21T22:02:00.001-08:00

After the death of my son, Jason, in 2008, someone sent me some words from the teacher, Byron Katie. Katie wrote this about her experience of loss when a brother died. Following is my response. I will warn the reader, I did not find Katie's response very helpful and describe why. You decide. Seek, and you shall find:

Reality is always kind

"If my daughter (or brother in my case) dies, I realize that there is no self to be affected. It's not about me. This is about her life, my child's life, and mind --the unceasing bodiless mind that is finally awake to itself, the mind that never existed as a her, and the her that can never die. In this, we are never separated. And that's just a beginning: it gets even kinder. I get to see what my child's children grow in to because she was not there to teach them differently. Whenever I lose something, I've been spared. Every loss has to be a gain, unless the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world cannot decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any better, it has to. That's the law."

~~ by Byron Katie

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BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE CONFUSED AND JUDGMENTAL

from Michael Bogar

I can certainly find some wisdom in this quote containing Byron Katie's current soul-story about death, loss, judgment and confusion. It evoked this long response. I certainly don’t expect you to read it to the end. But it is my interaction with her quote, my current soul-story about Jason's death and my judgment and confusion around it. And I do know that blogs are often like watching other people’s vacation slides.

My concern with this quote is the assumption that 'judgment,' 'confusion' and the suffering they cause are unnecessary experiences, and are best gotten rid of. Just because something is undesirable doesn't mean it is unnecessary. Often teachers who compassionately seek to end suffering imply that there is no cosmic necessity in the suffering created by a judgmental and confused mind/brain. Perhaps there is another way of seeing this. Perhaps the Universe is a wondrous place for the eternal experience of 'Confusion'. Perhaps the mind/brain are made to judge and to be confused. Perhaps there is great purpose in such emotions, as painful as they are.

PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL ISOMETRICS

Isometrics is the increase in strength as a result of the necessary and normal fusion (co-fusion) of joint and muscle with the hard objects of resistance. Without gravity and solid matter, humans would be limp noodles. Babies emerge from the womb kicking against uterine walls, swinging their arms, inhaling and expelling oxygen for the first time, grabbing fingers, fighting gravity, pushing against hard surfaces and screaming against the resistance of a very 'oppressive' (to press against) world. Without these resistances, or oppressing co-fusions, they would never develop. The body would grow flabby and atrophy without continued resistance against immovable or reluctantly movable objects.

I call this Spiritual Isometrics. I call this soul-making. The soul is in some ways analogous to the human body. It is not made of matter, but like the body it must encounter continual resistance in order to develop. The propensity for mental and emotional conflict is built into the mind/brain, or psychic world, to provide a force of resistance that increases soul. This is important--the propensity for conflict, resistance and co-fusions are built into the process.

Mind/brain, as a vehicle of soul, functions like joints and muscles to expand through resistance. We know this to be true of neurons, that they increase and multiply through fusion with (co-fusion or con-fusion) crossword puzzles, college exams or arguing and trying to figure out ways to prove we are right to our partners, even when we are not. All great inventions and adventures are the result of meeting and fusing with resistance in order to expand beyond the current state of mind and soul maturity.

Resistance and confusion are native to Reality. At the cosmic level, the Big Bang is an act of creative resistance as once unified mass explodes into bits and then co-fuses back into new phenomena. This has a fancy name, the Nebular Hypothesis, where stellar debris falls together and co-fuses into planets and stars, etc. The recent Membrane Theory which attempts to explain the Big Bang says, “Spontaneous creation of matter seems to be possible, because the resistance of the existing matter inside the membrane is producing a great amount of energy.” One physicist oversimplified it by saying, “The universe appears to be made up of quantum membranes, like vast cells, and when two or more collide, they con-fuse and there is the birth of a universe.” Humans call this con-ception, a co-fusing of a sperm cell and egg to make a new creature. From inception, cells split, multiply and fuse into tissue, organs and organ systems, con-fusing to make a single body.

So from the structure of the cosmos, to the energy of the atom, through every phase of evolution, to muscle development, to pounding my fingers against this plastic alphabet on the computer key pad, through grappling with Jason's death – “Reality” always expands by meeting immovable or reluctantly movable forces, colliding, fracturing and refusing or co-fusing. These experiences are uncomfortable and cause “negative emotions”.

So called ‘negative emotions’ exist for that purpose, namely, expansion of soul. Fear, grief, confusion, anxiety, panic, depression and so forth are forms of normal, necessary and creative thoughts and emotions that expand and empower soul to grow bigger than it was yesterday. These amazing perceptions, feelings and mental formations are as much a part of a loving Reality as joy, peace, clarity and ecstasy. That’s why the Hindu mythology, and all mythologies, depict a Mother Goddess (Kali) as simultaneously the giver of new babies and the decapitating demon. The Celtic equivalent is Morrigan. That is why Nature slaughters her population every Fall, and regenerates them each Spring.

Katie says, "Every loss has to be a gain, unless the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world cannot decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any better, it has to. That's the law."

I would change three words in her statement, "Every loss has to be a gain, because the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world must decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any bigger or different, it has to. That's the law."

Our “confused judgments” are the means to, or cause of all new gains, rather than useless obstacles. This is a huge difference. The “confused judgment” is a fusing of obstacle with solution, of pain with the next stage of development. “Confusions” are the building material or cause of soul-making, just as the weight in the gym is the building material or cause of muscle increase. The obstacle, then, is the cause of the expansion, not unless “the loss is being judged by a confused mind.” BK runs the serious risk of trying to manipulate reality to serve her system. Does she know better? Are her 4 questions superior to the way the human mind naturally works? Does she know that confusion is not doing an amazing work of making soul? Her “unless” implies that what the mind does naturally, namely gets con-fused with the material it encounters, could be improved upon by her system of The Work. We humans do that--we are always making “Nature” better because what Nature does is sometimes annoying and uncomfortable. And trust me, I prefer a warm house with centralized heating over a frosty cave. But, we would not have invented the centralized heating without our co-fusing human discomfort with natural freezing. This reminds me of what Bilbo Baggins said to Gandalf when the wizard invited Bilbo to go on an adventure. Bilbo replied, “Adventure? No thanks, nasty uncomfortable things—they make you late for dinner.” Well, as the story unfolds, Bilbo goes, is late for several dinners and comes home with a hoard of treasure and much more.

I see the mind/brain as being wonderfully constructed to include the capacity and necessity of confused judgment - and thereby create the needed space and the new material for the myriad gains that will come with each of our many experiences of judgments and confusions in a lifetime. Just as the foot is constructed to press against the pavement in order to generate movement, or the finger to pinch and squeeze a piece of food in order to hold and eat it, so my mind must grasp or press against each loss 'in order' to acquire the gain. The foot and finger are 'confused' or fused together with the objects of resistance (pavement and food) in order to increase strength to take the walk or get the food. Likewise, my mind must encounter resistance and ‘suffer’ internal and external oppositions to acquire the invisible stuff that will create my unique soul. It is what mind/brain is made to do as much as the foot and finger, and the co-fusing are always purposeful.

We encounter these mental ‘fusings’ all day long with thousands of subjects and objects. The mind/brain are in a chronic state of judgment, fusing or combining with more objects and situations than we could ever count. And in each blending or co-fusing with these things, we are thinking thoughts such as, “I like this or I don’t like this.” We don’t consciously do this, it just happens. Mind/brain automatically fuses with life events, just as the lungs automatically fuse with oxygen, inhaling and exhaling without conscious thought. Attraction and repulsion are the two autonomic states of mind/brain for making unique souls.

When we begin to grow up and become conscious, there is a gradual awareness of this judging process and soul is made more consciously and often with less struggle and pain. Our innate judgments and con-fusings are seen as normal and necessary, and we learn ways to care for and work with them as allies rather than enemies.

That is where I find Katie’s method helpful in not getting stuck in a single, myopic state of con-fusion. Her questions can help me shift the fusions – I can refuse them, literally re-fuse them, or in-fuse them, sometimes de-fuse them, or ex-fuse, or inter-fuse them, etc. But the Psyche is always fusing with the objects and subjects of existence, always creating more anxieties and con-fusions to stretch our souls. Most of these fusions are subtle, some are catastrophic. To fuse with life’s tragedies and blessings is as instinctual as the baby seeking to fuse with a nipple, or to squeeze a finger. Humans are fusing, blending, mixing and mingling creatures. These fusings cause us to expand physically, emotionally, mentally, economically, socially, creatively and soulfully. This universe is rife with the normal and necessary objects and subjects of co-fusings for soul-making.

I must admit that I do find Katie’s language to be quite instructive when she says, “I come to see…” The ‘coming’ process is just as normal and necessary as the goal of ‘seeing’. Sometimes we minimize the ‘coming to’ process. “Coming to’ entails going through all of the painful and confusing thoughts and emotions. “Coming to” alludes to a mystical awakening, or enlightenment experience. But never forget that there cannot be a human mystical awakening or psychic integration without first experiencing emotional and mental disintegrations—usually many. I know of no mystic who has not fallen completely apart before coming back together as a “guru”. We know of no galaxy, solar system, star or planet that did not develop without the fragments of a flaming debris field. Psyche's nature is a 'coming to'...and then the 'seeing.' The goal requires the process. The process requires many fusions, co-fusions, con-fusions.

“I come to see…” teaches me that the serene mystic mind is ontologically no greater than the confused judging mind, anymore than the fully blossomed rose is ontologically greater than the little root system in the dark soil from which it sprang. Souls, like flowers, are made progressively and processively. Just as the root system must co-fuse with the dirt and darkness to result in the budded (Buddha) lotus, so the human soul must co-fuse with many experiences of death, darkness, disagreement and a thousand ego related conflicts to reach full enHumanment. ‘Coming to,’ is a necessary process for ‘coming to see’.

Wholeness is not attained when one 'sees'. That may be the biggest error of much New Age teaching—that “wholeness” means health and peace. Real wholeness, “Complete Wholeness” includes the dirty, confusing process of coming to as well as the result of the final “seeing” or awakening. This assumption that Wholeness is the just the awakened mind is a mistake made in many New Age circles to the peril of all humans who think there is something amiss until they 'see' the Light. The flower is Whole from the seed pod buried in the dirt, to the roots going down into the dark earth, through the stalk poking its head out of the soil, to the full blossoming, all the way to dead and wilted heap.

This process of spiritual isometrics grows soul, or some would say 'increases character.' This is what the poet William Blake was conveying in his opus, 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell', summarized by his proverb, "Without Contraries is no progression." The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said it like this, "Strife (confusion) is the Father of all." And the Geek philosopher Homer Simpson who said, "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel."

There is a danger, an immense danger. Confusions can sometimes strain and break us beyond earthly repair. Not all isometric exercise strengthens joints and muscles. Sometimes we break a bone or damage a joint and need healing. Sometimes we break the mind – what we call 'emotional or mental breakdowns.' I see Katie's process and other mental healing tools as beneficial when the mind is being 'over-exercised' or at the breaking point. The Work can move you into and through the resistance to develop soul, unless you use it to escape. Exercises are only as good as their proper execution. Carl Jung, in his biography, said he used Hindu meditation to take a rest from exploring the messy and troubling unconscious world. He noted that most Hindus used meditation to escape, or transcend samsara, to get off the wheel of painful life, but that he used it to take a break from working his way through the soulmaking material of a painful life. Jung’s use is very different, and more correct in my opinion.

Let me reiterate, to imply that judgmental confusion is unnatural, unnecessary, abnormal and needs to be gotten rid of is a very dangerous assertion. It is tantamount to saying that just because physical exercise is difficult and uncomfortable, it must be stopped. Or that algebra causes me to suffer, therefore algebra is bad for me and must be ended. If my musculature did not daily fuse with the many objects of resistance in my path, I would atrophy and die. The mind/brain are not doing something 'wrong,’ 'alien,’ 'abnormal' or 'unnecessary' when it judges and gets confused. The mind/brain is doing what it is supposed to do, fuse with objects of resistance, and judge them in order to grow a soul.

I already mentioned the human fertilization process. Let me expand on that example. It is natural and necessary for a hundred thousand sperm cells to assail and crash into the citadel of the solid and resistant membrane of the ovum. These microscopic crusaders batter the impenetrable shell until one finds the open gate and enters. Then the 'fusing together' begins. The sperm cell and egg cell fuse together (con-fuse) and a new life begins. This is the microcosmic snapshot of the making of an individual soul, and I think also the collective Soul of the Universe. These collisions, confusions, divisions, multiplications, additions, subtractions and all that is done in the depths of a dark womb make a new life. The creative chaos in the womb is the way mind/brain works too.

The night I heard Jason died, I was fused with unimaginable loss. It would have offended me as immoral and inhuman if someone had said, “that there is no self to be affected.” I know there was a self to be affected because it was. That self was, and still is, being dismantled by these affections. There may be a stage in the process of development where the soul ceases to be so affected in the enHumanment journey, but the necessary beneficial experiences of traumatic self -‘affection’ must not be discounted or avoided. Such experiences are not “unless,” but “until” the need for such experiences have passed. I meet too many people in my work who have a kind of subliminal assumption that ‘someday,’ when they are truly spiritual and enlightened, suffering will cease. One might as well wait for the trees to stop shedding their leaves or the universe to stop expanding toward extinction. To negate or minimize the experiences (Gods) that we don’t like because they are troubling is what the Greeks called hubris. Humans are in a process of infinite expansion, and humans will never trump the work of the Gods in soul-making. The Gods, including confusions and anxiety, will return until they are heard and/or honored.

There will be days of pleasure and days of pain, days of loss and days of gain – and perhaps, as we enter the process fully and encounter our sufferings as normal and necessary, we may achieve some measure of consistent serenity in the midst of the myriad co-fusings on planet earth. M. Scott Peck said, “Life is difficult. But when you see that life is difficult, it becomes less difficult.”

Tolle said it well when he wrote that without the suffering caused by ego we “would not evolve as human beings…Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form AND (my emphasis) erodes identification with form…eventually suffering destroys the ego – but not until you suffer consciously.” (A New Earth, p.102)

This observation from Tolle should have been developed and turned into a whole chapter to help people see the necessary role of the egos and its more negative aspects as tools of creative soul-making. The poor old ego has come on hard times. It is the seed pod of soul, containing the blossoming of our completed Humanity (divinity).

Since Jason died, I have been fused together with loss, sadness, fear, remorse, resentments and a thousand other forces of affective or emotional resistance. I have been falling apart. I have curled up in bed and slept, dreamed, wept, prayed, cursed and experienced affections I didn't know existed – but unlike experiences of past personal disasters, I could more clearly see my falling apart and confusion as normal and necessary, not as a mental illness, not some alien intrusion, not due to original sin or the fault of my selfish ego which was trying to ‘Edge God Out.’ I see the work of Ego now as ‘Edging God Outward,’ or Onward.

There have been times the emotional isometric resistance I have encountered with Jason's death has debilitated and broken me - but even those contained the elements of expanding my soul. There have been times I have allowed people to carry me when I was so broken I could not walk, and the bones now are mending to become even stronger. Like Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord, I will always have a dislocated hip, but the soul blessing is mine as a result of the crippling struggle, not in spite of it. Soul-making gives us wounds and scars. What better way to be reminded that the amazing character we are developing is not self-generated, or from my mystical mastery, or the result of some self righteous morality or spirituality? It is sacred work. It is the grace Christianity speaks of. The result of these past months has been a gradual increase in heart and mental strength; a greater love for my children, my parents, my fellow human beings - and this new love continues to grow. I have never in my life wept so much as I have over Jason’s death, and my heart has never been more broken and enlarged. I have never been so co-fused with loss and darkness, and my heart is now opening to levels of abundance, love and light I could not have imagined. One night, Jason came to me in a trance (dream) and gave me his large red heart. It encompassed my puny black and blue heart, entered my chest and Jason said, “Dad, this is one reason I died, to give you a bigger heart. You will need it for your work.” This is grace. It had nothing to do with my spirituality or my self.

Finally, I do not think that reality is always 'kind'. That implies that there is little or no reason or room for 'unkindness' apart from human failures or sins. Experiences of unkindness, like war, are archetypal, universal and provide us with the opportunity to grow souls of kindness. The experiences of heartless cruelty from mean people provide the resistance a soul needs to individuate, to grow and clarify values, to draw personal boundaries and form deep compassion for other wounded human beings. That is why Jesus told us to bless our enemies - they provide the isometric resistance against which our souls press in order to increase spiritual muscle and stature. Bitter resentment teaches the soul to release hatred. Grief expands a tiny ego-pod into a greater capacity for joy. Cynicism, criticism, hatred, anger and sarcasm give us the experience of hellish isolation and self absorption, moving us like Scrooge into an experience of bleak misery that presses us down (depressive resistance), forcing us to brood over the past, present and future. It is during such broodings that Psyche, like the Spirit of God hovering over the Cosmic egg in Genesis one, may hatch from the ego-egg the light of consideration, acceptance and compassion for others.

We live in an odd universe, because within the human psyche, infinity has been mixed with finitude (con-fused), and it is through the daily interactive resistance of mind, body and spirit that we grow invisible souls.

The Myth of Mental Health: We Need Psycho-spiritual Isometrics

2010-12-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

A friend who is a college instructor recently asked me if I thought college professors were responsible to promote "good mental health" in their classrooms by not exposing their students to uncomfortable truths about politically incorrect topics. He pointed out that "fear is a bitch," and disturbs our peace of mind. Here is my reply:

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As I see it, "good mental health" is not only a potentially dangerous metaphor, but an impossible and unwanted goal. This is another of our culture's unquestioned assumptions--that mental health is ideal, or that it even exists or should exist. In my opinion, physical health cannot and should not be directly and literally translated to the mind or soul. The late 19th century materialist medical model has wrongly and dangerously been applied literally to the human psyche. We should be asking ourselves, "What is health, and when are we healthy?"

The mind and soul (two different but interrelated phenomena) are not exactly like the body. Granted, as far back as the biblical Hebrews and ancient Greeks, the ideas of health and healing have been applied to the mind, but not as literally and all inclusively as in the modern world. The Greeks had their healing Asclepius, but they also had myriad monsters and villains to shake things up. Health does not necessarily mean absence of malfunction or disorder. For example, a football team can be very healthy and complete, but that does not mean that fumbles and off sides are abnormal or unnecessary. Should we consider the Cosmos unhealthy because it began with a cataclysmic explosion and continues to form and reform through chaotic collisions? A bigger view of "wholeness" allows for the chaos as well as the order. There is no creativity and development without both.

Anxiety, fear, "paranoia" and most of what have been labeled mental illnesses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are normal and necessary human psychological functions and responses. The human mind autonomously produces abnormality and disorder purposefully--to grow, expand and develop into a full human being. Just as an undeveloped baby encounters a world of troubling gravity and hard, sharp objects for the purpose of developing muscle and skeletal structure--so the mind provides all of these "unhealthy" emotions and responses for developing soul. Fear is a bitch, and a bitch is a mother who gives birth. Fear gives birth to an evolving psyche, and bin Laden is the "mother of all psychological development". Neurologist Andrew Newberg explains this simply and yet profoundly in his bestseller, Why God Won't Go Away. He explains the neurology of anxiety as the mechanism that drives evolution, and moves the mind/brain to seek a unitary experience of being (God).

I call these normal and necessary experiences of anxiety/fear, and all so called "negative emotions," psycho-spiritual isometrics--increase through resistance. On the physical level, if you remove the material and gravitational resistance from a baby's life, you end up with a flaccid, atrophied, dead baby. On the psychological level, if you remove the troubling "material and gravitational" psychic resistance from a human soul, you end up with an atrophied and dead soul. Remove ritualized or creative forms of violence from a child's life, you end up with Columbine and the proliferation of gangs. It is a sort of psycho-spiritual homeopathy--the cure is in the disease. If you want to see a FASCINATING study on this, read Allan Guggenbuhl's The Incredible Fascination of Violence, or James Hillman's A Terrible Love of War, or his Suicide and the Soul.

This notion was wonderfully stated in last weeks issue of The Week, by the younger generation feminist, Katie Roiphe in The Financial Times:

"One sometimes sees these exhausted, devoted, slightly drab parents, piling out of the car, and thinks, is all of this high-level watching and steering and analyzing really making anyone happier? Can we, for a moment, flash back to the benign neglect of the 1970s and 80s? I can remember my parents having parties, wild children running around until dark, catching fireflies. If these children helped themselves to three slices of cake, or ingested the second hand smoke from cigarettes, or carried cocktails to adults who were ever so slightly slurring their words, they were not noticed; they were loved, just not monitored. Those warm summer nights of not being focused on were liberating. In the long sticky hours of boredom, in the lonely, unsupervised, unstructured time, something blooms; it was in those margins that we became ourselves."

Mystical Narcissism: The Law of Attraction Meets the Law of Opposites

2010-11-05T12:56:00.001-07:00

MANIPULATING REALITY

In the Middle Ages, the Roman Church sold Indulgences or spiritual insurance policies created by the clergy for a profit. People were absolved of Purgatorial punishments by paying money to the Church. The more they gave, the more time off from bad behavior they received. They could even pay to release their deceased relatives writhing in the woes of Purgatory. The bottom line was that one could manipulate God.

The movie, The Secret, reminds me a little of those old Catholic Indulgences. Both teachings ignore or play down co-creative soul-making by placing humans solely or primarily in control. They ignore or forget the realm of Archetypal Intelligences that work on, in and through humans to guide their destinies, create Character and make Soul. Both forget that there is an unseen drama at work beyond human understanding. Both views cross over into spiritual narcissism, a state of mind that really believes the individual creates ALL reality and is at the center. This is normal and fun for small children, but emotional suicide for adults. Mysticism is 'being one' with all, but mystical narcissism is 'being the only one'.

THE THREE LEVELS OF LIFE

Like three dimensional chess, the game of life is played on at least three levels:

1. Solo-making: Working on myself; realizing my potential; all self help and most individual psycho-therapy programs.

2. Social-making: Working on my relationships; realizing union with others; community building, relationships and group therapies.

3. Soul-making: Being worked on by Invisible Guides; character is being built in every circumstance of life and death.

At the first two levels we are the creators, exercising freedom. At level three we are the created objects of a Soul-making Universe. The Secret beautifully addresses level one, Solo-making, and touches on level two, Social-making. But The Secret virtually neglects level three, Soul-making.

THE OTHER SECRET

There is an Invisible Universe called Soul which co-creates, sometimes applying 'Laws' that seem to contradict the Law of Attraction. I understand that the aim of The Secret is to focus on realizing personal potential and success, but to ignore Soul-making can have severe consequences for the person thinking that life occurs only in the first two dimensions - especially those who can't quite seem to apply The Secret and turn their lives around like all of the glowing anecdotal stories in the film.

In my opinion the real forgotten or lost Secret in this culture is that of the Soul-making dimension. At that level, there are many Archetypal Intelligences (plural) that arise from The One Mind. These Presences are making Soul in addition to, or sometimes in spite of, our positive or negative thoughts and intentions. We cannot ultimately manipulate these Energies to give us what we want by thinking or feeling.

SOUL MAKING AND THE LAW OF BALANCE

The Law of Attraction (I call it the Probability of Attraction) can work to change our external circumstances, to a degree – but it is not the only Law in the Universe. The Universe primarily conspires to make souls, not wealthy and healthy egos. We must not forget the Law of Balance, or Law of Opposites.

To make souls requires both the positive and the negative poles, which means that soul requires going into the dark depths and divine chaos as much as it requires rising into the light and divine order. We see this equilibrating principle at work in the world of physics with electricity and magnetism. There is no power (empowerment) without negative and positive currents; you do not have light (enlightenment) without negative and positive poles. You do not have Soul-making with only the Law of Attraction.

Another example is the Law of Gravity. As an only law, gravity would leave birds and humans grounded. Fortunately, for birds and those of us who benefit from air travel, there are the corresponding Laws of Aerodynamics to expand reality beyond a one dimensional grounded experience. These other laws ultimately do not contradict the law of gravity, but work in conjunction with it.

Similarly in psychology and metaphysics there is a Law of Balance which works with the Law of Attraction. The Law of Balance teaches that the Universe always seeks equilibrium. Over 2,000 years ago, Plato wrote in the Phaedo, "Everything arises in this way, opposites from their opposites" (section 71a). Prior to Plato, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that "cold things warm, warm things cool, wet things dry and parched things get wet" (Fragment 126). He used the analogy of the strings stretched on a bow and lyre when he wrote that many people "do not know that the differing or opposed thing agrees with itself; harmony is comprised of reflexive tension, like the bow and the lyre" (Fragment 51)).

The ancient Chinese Tao Te Ching, Poem 77, states the same idea:

As it acts in the world, the Tao
is like the bending of a bow.
The top is bent downward;
the bottom is bent up.
It adjusts excess and deficiency
so that there is perfect balance.
It takes from what is too much
and give to what isn't enough.

Those who try to control,
who use force to protect their power,
go against the direction of the Tao.
They take from those who don't have enough
and gives to those who have far too much.

In the modern world, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called this phenomenon 'enantiodromia," the notion that the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite. For Jung, this referred to the tendency of the unconscious mind to introduce material into the psyche which would balance out the conscious mind. These opposites or balancing events often show up externally as well in people and circumstances in ones daily life. The man who is hyper-sensitive continues to meet domineering women, the child who is timid is fascinated by outspoken people, the demure religious woman who loves to read stories about serial killers, etc.

The universal recognition that Nature is in a state of constant homeostasis, balancing one extreme with its opposite, is a critical "Law" to recognize for mental well being. When things go "wrong," these opposites provide the necessary and normal conditions for making a soul or developing a full character.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PREJUDICE

It is also important here to remind the reader that we must be careful to avoid the usual attitude taken by some when they say, "Oh yes, we have to go down in order to grow up, we must have the bad to see the good." This subtle distinction prejudices the scales--making it sound as though growing up is the real aim of all negative experiences. The danger in this attitude is that we are always waiting for the negative experience to end so we can get to the "real" experience of the beneficial outcome. As much as I do not like to say this, the fact is that sometimes people spend many years or a whole lifetime in circumstances that are less than beneficial. The 10 million people who died in Nazi Concentration Camps did not get to see the "benefits" of their nightmarish ordeal. The millions of young men who died in war did not get to see the "good" in their sacrifice. The soul does not distinguish "good and evil," as our metaphysical and psychological systems so often do. It is true that we often do get to see the "good" or beneficial result, but not always. Even so, all experiences are purposeful.

These opposites are not on a horizontal, hierarchical scale of good and evil, but rather on a vertical scale of negative and positive--looking much like a teeter-totter going up and down rather than a thermometer escaping the cold basement. On this teeter-totter, the unifying principle is purposefulness rather than good feelings or happily-ever-after outcomes. It is great to hope, pray, hold mental equivalents and intend the Good outcome, but that is no guarantee that the circumstances will automatically and always change. This realization, at first, will be very depressing for some who live in a child-like fantasy world. But as time goes on and all of the "laws" of existence are realized, there is a kind of peace that transcends good and evil, dark and light. We do not have to enjoy the negative experiences, but we can have faith they are purposeful and containers of profound meaning if we embrace them and open our eyes and ears.

HERESY!

Those of us who appreciate The Secret need to be cautious. We are perilously close to heresy. I am not talking about the heresy of believing in the wrong religious dogma, but the original meaning of the word heresy. Heresy means 'to choose'. Real heresy is choosing one side of a Truth-paradox to the exclusion of the other side – it is choosing up over down, the masculine over the feminine, or particle over wave in the realm of physics. Heresy forgets paradox and denies wholeness. Some see wholeness as perpetual health, happiness, order and success. Soul-making wholeness is embracing the opposites, all aspects of the complicated and fascinating multi-verse we call a Universe, the good, the bad and the ugly.

A GRANDER PLAN

We Westerners sometimes take too much credit for our successes and abundance. That is not to say we have nothing to do with our prosperity, we often do. I enthusiastically teach classes on the amazing Law of Attraction; I use the principles daily. Clearly our mental attitudes affect internal and external circumstances. An optimist is more likely to be happy than a pessimist. We hugely increase our chances of health and wealth by thinking positively.

However, there are poor optimists and wealthy pessimists; there are sick optimists and healthy pessimists. The simplistic one to one correlation of positive thinking to wealth and health cannot be demonstrated. I know lots of 'positive thinkers' and most of them have life experiences that are pretty much the same as 'negative thinkers' – both groups are comprised of folks who are concerned about money, holding their marriages together, raising troubled children and staying healthy. The one difference is that the positive thinkers find meaning and soul in their daily challenges, even if they can't manipulate these problems away with happy thoughts.

Soul-making recognizes that there is a grander plan in the Universe than attracting perpetual success and happiness through some thought manipulation. This formulaic approach can easily degenerate into a kind of New Age legalism, a sort of optimist's version of the Ten Commandments.

HUBRIS

Occasionally we see some of the most optimistic celebrities and greatest advocates of Positive Thinking leveled by horrific disasters. Health and wealth teachers get caught in financial scandals, optimistic celebrities end up in rehab, politicians and televangelists have sexual affairs. This is the Law of Balance at work - the Universe is not being controlled by humans alone. These disasters make Soul as well or maybe even better than all of the successes.

The old Greek gods would not tolerate human hubris – translated arrogance. The brilliant classical scholar Elizabeth Vandiver of the University of Maryland tells us that the oft quoted phrase from ancient Delphi, 'know thyself', was to remind those entering the Greek temple of Apollo that they were not a god. 'Know thyself' was not used the way it is often used today, implying that we ought to do some self introspection in order to discover insights about our interior mental processes. The phrase at the Delphic Temple door was there to remind the entrant seeking a prophecy that he/she knew nothing when compared to the soul making gods.

DID JOB VIOLATE THE LAW OF ATTRACTION?

A similar notion is found in the dramatic Hebrew story of Job. He was a righteous man; dare I say a positive thinker that knew and used The Secret. He did everything right. His consciousness was perfect. He obeyed God's Law, loved his neighbors, cultivated prosperity thoughts, fed the poor, encouraged his children and was an all around optimist and philanthropist. You know the story – he loses it all in one disaster after another. Most of the narrative is spent explaining how he defends himself against his three friends who tell him over and over that he has sinned, or to put it in modern terms, how he had been thinking negative thoughts.

Some Bible interpreters have even dared to blame Job from his own words, "That which I have feared has come upon me." But Job defends his pristine consciousness to the end. Finally, God speaks. The essence of God's message is similar to the slogan at Delphi. God says, "Ultimately Job, you know nothing compared to the Almighty." Prior to that lesson Job thought he had God under control. Job thought he knew 'The Law' and how to use it. He was sure he had reality harnessed and could control exactly how it worked. But the ancient story reveals a Universe that is vastly more complicated. At one point Job considers that he may be undergoing a soul-making experience when he says, "I have been tried and will come forth as gold."

GANDALF GETS THE LAST WORD

In the very last paragraph of Tolkien's book, The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is wondering out loud about his crucial role in changing the course of events on Middle Earth. He wonders whether or not there were other invisible Powers and Prophecies at work in some grander plan.

Gandalf the Wizard answers, "Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

"Thank goodness!" said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.

The Role of Humor in Soul-making

2010-11-04T23:07:00.000-07:00

Humor always pokes fun at that which is elevated or that which is forbidden--attacking opposite ends of the acceptability poles. Either pompous or important people or ideas are mocked, or base and forbidden people and ideas are mocked. All humor is aimed at what is elevated, or what is vulgar. Why has this always been, and why do we laugh when the mighty are lampooned, or the vulgar exposed?

As with all emotions and psychological phenomena, there are good reasons for their existence. Just as in the physical world, a sneeze expels some irritant in the nasal passage, or a cough removes a foreign object from the throat, so too laughing serves a great function. What is it?

Humor is a universal psychological device that rearranges the soul's boundaries and dynamic makeup. It is significant that we speak of "poking fun," or "sticking it to him." This imagery suggests that some sort of membrane or boundary is assailed. Let's imagine the personality or individual self as something like a bubble. Each of us is a bubble filled with conscious contents, including a name, education, experiences, identity, etc. We sometimes call this self an ego which really just means "I". One school of thought suggests that the ego or self is always in need of deflation or inflation, in need of being burst asunder, of being pushed ever outward. That is how humor works.

Humor either pushes the tiny self outward, beyond it's comfortable boundaries, or alternately, humor bursts the rind of the inflated, pompous ego that it might deflate in order to re-inflate. Both experiences allow for the infinite contents of the Unconscious to flow in and transmute the self into an increasingly different and enlarged soul.

HUMOR AS DEFLATION

Imagine two fellows: each has a serious attachment to his particular political point of view; one is a republican and the other is a democrat. Each is quite serious and always ready to fight for his party, despising those who disagree. This is actually all too common. It could also be differing religious points of view, including a somber theist and zealous atheist. Now imagine someone telling a joke that mocks the republican's ideological identity. People all around begin to laugh as he fumes quietly or out loud. Or imagine the joke is told against the serious democrat's positions or candidates, and he too feels very upset and angry that his cosmological security has been "poked". The result is deflation of the ego, sometimes called humiliation.

HUMOR AS INFLATION

Imagine another scenario--a nun in a convent. She took vows of chastity at the age of eighteen and is now twenty-five. She has lived each day a virginal bride of Christ. This is her eternal, frozen identity. One night, after her prayers, she turns on her little radio and finds a station playing some of Eddie Murphy's old vulgar stand-up comedy acts from the 1980s. She is appalled and switches stations, but guiltily keeps coming back to the vulgar jokes. She finds herself giggling. She listens a little longer, and is simultaneously disgusted and amused. Her old identity bubble is being poked, being "poked fun at," and as it erodes, psychic rearrangement is taking place. She may remain in the monastery in a life of celibacy, but her psyche will either become more understanding or rigid.

CONCLUSION

In each scenario, humor as deflation and humor as inflation, the old selves are being assailed. The internal anger or glee, as well as the external anger or laughter, are eroding the old self. It is not obvious, after all, it is "just" entertainment. I once heard a public speaker say, "I love to tell funny stories, because when the audience has their mouths wide open in laughter, I shove my point down their throats!" Humor breaks the psyche wide open. Our reactions to humor, as to all emotion, releases the dynamic psychic energy that rearranges the personality. Humor, or Trickster in many mythologies, is the conduit between the conscious self and the Unconscious Source of Soul.

Next time fun is poked at your exalted ideas, or some joke exposes something you consider forbidden and/or socially unacceptable, pay attention to your response. Like it or not, Psyche is rearranging your soul, either deflating your pompously inflated ego, or pushing the boundaries of your puny limited self beyond the correct strictures. The Soul cares little about politics, religions, social conventions or any of those things we make ultimate. Soul uses all of life to keep the dynamic of soul moving. Soul wastes nothing--it recycles everything for its purposes.

Lighten up.

THE GREEN KNIGHT AS TRICKSTER: Soul is Made by Death and Sex

2010-11-04T14:25:00.002-07:00

This paper was written for Makita Brottman's class, European Traditions, at Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2010.

_________________________________________________

SYNOPSIS OF THE STORY

(If you know the story, you may skip to the paragraph, A Lens By Which to View the Story)

The story commences in King Arthur's Camelot on New Year's Day. After the ritual of Mass had been sung and presents exchanged, the feast was about to begin. All was in perfect courtly order:

Then they washed and sat at that stately table,

The noblest nearest their lord, and his queen,

Guenevere the gay, seated in their midst...

Arranged around that priceless table...

Gawain the good sat beside Guenevere,

and Agravaine of the hard hands on her other side,

Both Arthur's nephews, faithful knights

And Bishop Bawdune at the king's right

And Urian's son Ywain with him.

This central table sat high in luxury

And around them the lesser knights in rows.

~ Sir Gawain, Raffel 50-52

Suddenly a large Green Knight armed with an axe rode into the hall on a green horse, asking for someone from the round table to strike his exposed neck with his green axe. But there was a condition to this request--that the Green Knight would return the blow to the neck of his challenger one year later if he were able. Sir Gawain, the youngest of Arthur's knights and nephew to the king, accepts the challenge. The Green Knight kneels and Gawain cuts off the giant's head with a single stroke. Everyone thought the bizarre game was over, but then the headless body of the Green Knight rises, retrieves his severed head, reminds Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel in a year and rides away on his green charger.

Nearly one agonizing year later Gawain sets off on his horse Gringolet to locate the Green Chapel and fulfill his pact with the Green Knight. None of the other knights expect Gawain to return from certain death. His difficult journey takes him deep into the wilderness mountains to the borderlands of northern Wales:

And he rode through England, Sir Gawain, on God's

Behalf, though the ride was hardly a happy one.

He was often alone, at night, in places

Where the path ahead of him could please no one.

Only his horse rode with him, through woods

And hills, and the only voice he heard

Was God's, until he reached the north of Wales.

~ Sir Gawain, Raffel 70

After the long journey Gawain enters a beautiful castle where he is heartily welcomed by Bertilak, the lord of the castle, and his beautiful wife. Gawain tells them he cannot stay long due to his New Year's appointment at the Green Chapel. Bertilak explains that the Green Chapel is less than two miles away and proposes that Gawain remain in the luxury of their castle for Christmas festivities. Bertilak then suggests a holiday game to Gawain: Bertilak would go hunting over the next three days, giving Gawain whatever he bagged on the condition that Gawain give him whatever he might acquire during his restful days at the castle. Gawain accepts. Early the next morning, after Bertilak left for his first hunt, the gorgeous Lady Bertilak visits Gawain's bedroom to seduce him. Despite her best efforts, Gawain surrenders nothing but one little kiss. When Bertilak returns he gives Gawain the deer he had killed and the still chaste knight responds by returning the lady's kiss to Bertilak. On the second day the lady comes to Gawain's bedroom again, but he resists once more, giving her two innocent kisses. On his return from the second hunt Bertilak exchanges a lifeless wild boar for the two kisses. The seductive lady arrives again on the third morning, but this time Gawain accepts a green silk girdle which the lady promises will keep him from all physical harm. They exchange three kisses. That evening, Bertilak returns with a fox which he trades for the three kisses--but Gawain secretly keeps the green girdle which he believes will protect him from death.

Finally Gawain leaves for the Green Chapel wearing the girdle and finds the Green Knight sharpening his axe. As agreed, Gawain kneels to receive his death blow. On the first halted swing, Gawain flinches and the Green Knight belittles him for his weakness before death. The Green Knight swings again, but intentionally misses--Gawain does not flinch. He swings a third time, leaving a harmless nick and scar on Gawain's neck. The Green Knight then reveals himself to be the gracious host, Bertilak, lord of the castle, explaining that the entire adventure was a game arranged through the magical manipulations of Morgan le Fay, Arthur's malicious sister. Gawain is ashamed of secretly taking the girdle and of flinching like a coward. But the Green Knight commends his bravery and Gawain returns to Camelot wearing the girdle in shame as a token of his failure to fully follow the rules of the game. It is decreed that the Knights of the Round Table wear the green sash of human imperfection in recognition of Gawain's adventure.

A LENS BY WHICH TO VIEW THE STORY

In his 1975 Terry Lectures, the founder of Archetypal Psychology, James Hillman, spoke of "psychologizing" as a way of "seeing through" the literalness of any image portrayed to the mind:

"Psychologizing goes on whenever reflection takes place in terms other than those presented. It suspects an interior, not evident intention; it searches for a hidden clockwork, a ghost in the machine, an etymological root, something more than meets the eye; or it sees with another eye.[i] It goes on whenever we move to a deeper level...We see through the logical by means of the imaginal...look at conscious events and intentions from the unconscious, from below. Look at the daylight world from the night side, from fantasy and it's archai." (Re-Visioning 135, 139)

Hillman suggests that we do not focus on explaining a story by asking what it means, but rather focus on exploring the original patterning images behind the story by asking, "Who [which Archetype] are you and what do you want me to know?" (Re-Visioning 138-139; Healing Fiction 93). In order for the images to enter into psychic life, or for the word to be made flesh, we must realize that "...the Who refers to a living archetypal figure within the complex, the dream, the symptom...(Re-Visioning 139)", and I would add, or within the story. This means that the mythical tale of the Green Knight, to be of value to an individual psyche, must be seen through. In other words, the literal narrative armor must be pierced with the lance of insightful investigation. "With slow suspicion or sudden insight we move through the apparent to the less apparent. We use metaphors of light--a little flicker, a slow dawning, a lightning flash--as things become clarified (Re-Visioning 140)."

After much reflection and patient consultation with the committee of archetypal personas in this Arthurian story, I found the Trickster image[ii] calling to me over and over. I now turn to that reflective exploration process.

TRICKSTERS ROLE: TO DISSOLVE AND REARRANGE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL ORDER

As many Arthurian scholars have recognized, Camelot and the Round Table symbolize order and wholeness. Joseph Campbell writes, "The Round Table stands...for the social order of the period..." (Creative Mythology 454).[iii] We see this organizing motif in Raffel's translation as he describes the hierarchical court gathering for the New Year's celebration:

Arranged around that priceless table...

Gawain...The good sat beside Guenevere,

and Agravaine of the hard hands on her other side,

Both Arthur's nephews, faithful knights

And Bishop Bawdune at the king's right

And Urian's son Ywain with him.

This central table sat high in luxury

And around them the lesser knights in rows.

~ Sir Gawain, Raffel 50-52

The old year had passed and the new year was arriving. Each character had his or her assigned place at the round table. Psychologically, this may refer to the neatly ordered self or society. Most humans assume that the new year will continue much in the same fashion as the old year. Life does not work that way.

One of the central roles of all tricksters in the world's mythologies is to disturb the social and personal order with a view to expanding the shape of existence itself. The Green Knight plays[iv] just such a character in this story. Robert Pelton writes about the symbolic role of tricksters in myths from many cultures, using the West African Yoruban example of Eshu:

"Eshu is agile: he is moving always to challenge, break open and enlarge every possible structure and relationship... the world comes into being and life achieves wholeness through conflict, disorder, and even death, as well as through obedience, harmony, and birth… life itself is a continuous threshold through which man ceaselessly passes from dissolution to order…" (The Trickster 161, 205).

Some versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight suggest that Arthur's court had become complacent, sated, fat and static.[v] There was a need for something or someone unusual to enter the static circle, shattering it that it might open out beyond its sluggish complacency. What better symbol than decapitation, of losing one's head, losing one's mind or changing one's mind, to portray a socio-personal transformation?[vi]

TRICKSTERS: TRANSFORMATION THROUGH DEATH AND DESIRE

All ancient trickster myths and folktales center on creating mayhem that aims at transformation toward a new social or personal order. Sexual desire and death[vii] are often the most frequent and effective means the trickster uses to produce the various destabilizations that precede the new orders.

"If he [trickster]...causes pain and death to enter the world, spoiling primordial bliss, his quarrel is not with the divine order as such, but with a false human image of the sacred, one that cannot encompass suffering, disorder, and the ultimate mess of death...Thus it is that so often the trickster's actions make death part of human life...In this metaphysics the trickster is...an exemplar of wit in action, the most practical joke of all as he pulls the chair out from under the system to keep it moving...In the trickster's myths this energy appears as a passion for intercourse that likes like lust...Freud knew what this force was and how it alone could wrest life out of death's grasp, and his word, Eros, describes well the trickster's seizure of life." (The Trickster 282-83).

Gnostic and Jungian scholar Stephen Hoeller believes that the Green Knight represents "the greenish [viii] color of the corpse after death" (Arthurian Legendry, lecture 301104). Green is also known to have signified witchcraft, devilry and evil for its association with the faeries and spirits of early English folklore. In the Celtic tradition green clothing was avoided because of its superstitious association with misfortune and death.[ix] Alice Buchanan contends that the color green is incorrectly attributed to the Green Knight as a mistranslation of the Irish word 'glas' which could mean either gray or green. She believes gray is a better translation, signifying the pallid color of death.[x]

The color green was also traditionally used to symbolize nature, fertility and rebirth.[xi] Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von-Franz write that green is the "colour of vegetation and, in a wider sense, of life" (The Grail Legend 165).

I don't believe we have to choose between life and death--the Green Knight can symbolize both. The trickster archetype cannot be collapsed into a single category since his/her intention is often to create dualities in order to synthesize a new union of opposites.[xii] The Green Knight may represent death and resurrection, beheading and "re-heading".

In addition, given the 14th century Celtic context where this story was composed, it is very possible that it is an amalgam of traditional Christian theology and old British Paganism, unapologetically weaving together death, resurrection and fertility themes.[xiii] However, death is not the only tactic used by the trickster to foment social and personal dissolution. Sexual desire was also a common ploy.

Erdoes and Ortiz write about the Native American Tricksters sexual deviance:

"Of all the characters in myths and legends told around the world through the centuries...it's the trickster who provides the real spark in the action...always ready to lure someone else's wife into bed, always trying to get something for nothing, shifting shapes and even sex, getting caught in the act, ever scheming, never remorseful." (American Indian 12)

Robert Pelton also writes about the provocative sexuality of the African trickster, Legba:

Legba can roam as he chooses...to bring men to their destiny...never ceasing to widen their path for them...He is always ready for intercourse...the master of sexuality...and his penis, symbolizing...a life-giving transformation, that life itself is a continuous threshold through which man ceaselessly passes from dissolution to order..." (Trickster 119, 124) [xiv]

These images are reminiscent of the Greek Hermes with his phallic pointer swaying like a dancing compass needle at transformative thresholds and intersections. There is also the deconstructive-reconstructive erect lingam of Lord Shiva.[xv] Schopenhauer and Freud make it clear that the sexual drives wreak havoc on an otherwise orderly, sane existence.[xvi]

It would be a mistake to take these sexual images too literally, seeing them only as revealing Gawain's failure and weakness. By "psychologizing," or seeing through the literalness of sex, lust and desire, we find that these images can also signify the energies of introspection concerning ones convictions about Ultimate Concerns. In Plato's Symposium, Eros or Desire is seen by Socrates and Diotima as the basic energy of longing for union with Eternal Beauty Itself.[xvii] All shadowy objects of lust and desire reveal a personal value system, the character-to-date of the soul in a state of unsolicited craving.[xviii] These revelations are important as they shine a light on the true state of the soul.

The seductions of Bertilak's alluring wife reveal to Gawain his earthiness, allowing an opportunity to explore his own high psycho-spiritual theories and convictions. By accepting the Queen's intimate green girdle,[xix] Gawain realizes that his spiritual quest and manly courage were not as strong as he had originally assumed.

In all of the various trickster stories, including the Green Knight, there is the idea of personal and social boundaries forming, dissolving and reforming. Edinger writes, "Many myths depict the original state of man as a state of roundness, wholeness, perfection, or paradise" (Ego and Archetype 8). The original roundedness must break open in order that new creative ideas and materials may enter in. Sometimes, the circular image of a great spiral[xx] is utilized--symbolizing the dynamic movement inward, then outward, ever expanding beyond the former circle in a vital cosmos. Just because something begins in wholeness does not mean that it will remain in that condition.

DESIRE, DEATH AND THE LIMINAL MARKS

After his encounter with the Lady Bertilak and the Knight, there were two enduring effects on Gawain's body--the green sash and his scarred neck. These may be imagined as liminal wounds demarking Gawain's newly discovered psychic residences between desire and self control, and between death and life. Prior to this he may have thought himself beyond such contradictory poles. The permanent neck wound was etched between his head and his body, a common symbol for the above and below, the spiritual and the material. [xxi] Gawain would live the rest of his life reminded that he was always just a few inches from death at any given moment.

The green belt around his waist was a voluntary liminal reminder of always residing at the crossroads of lust, desire and avaricious greed waiting to take him off of his purposeful spiritual course. Prior to his three days in bed, being caressed and romanced by the gorgeous Lady Bertilak, he would have likely thought himself invincible to lust. Now the sexy sash reminded him daily that the distance between his head and penis was not so great. He was just one choice away from abandoning his knightly code and call. This was such an impressive and important educational reminder that his fellow knights also wore the sash after Gawain's return to Camelot.

THE KING AND THE GREEN KNIGHT: I AM AND I AM NOT

There has been a lot of discussion about the role of the Green Knight as both the benevolent king Bertilak and the agent of terror and death. In these "contradictory" images, I see the paradoxical nature of reality itself, what Pelton calls an attribute of the trickster's "doubleness of reality at every level" (The Trickster 209).[xxii] This character seems to be both good and evil, sacred and mundane. Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von-Franz comment, "In ecclesiastical symbolism green is a color of the Holy Ghost...and in the language of the mystics it is the universal color of divinity" (The Grail Legend 165). The Green Knight/Bertilak is both the trickster-devil and comforting God. It would appear that we see not only the combinative ideas of Paganism and Christianity in this story, but also of good and evil working together for a greater purpose. Perhaps this had something to do with the historical situation of an outbreak of the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, and internecine wars. [xxiii] Maybe the author was trying to reassure the readers of Nietzsche's oft quoted maxim, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT SEEN IN THE STORY

Whether intended or not, the order of the deer, the boar and the fox are perfect symbols for the idea of psycho-spiritual stages and processes--the regal deer being a symbol of the orderly Arthurian court, the wild boar signifying Gawain's disintegrative trek through the wilderness, and the fox as a common representative of tricksters[xxiv] portraying the pathologizing[xxv] and reorganizing affects of desire and death under Bertilak and his wife. These images seem to intimate the four stages of spiritual growth suggested by Erick Erickson,[xxvi] M. Scott Peck,[xxvii] Robert Pelton[xxviii] and my own work on stages of consciousness.[xxix]

PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STORY

In 2003, my son Jason was sent to Iraq with the Stryker Brigade's 181st Infantry based at Fort Lewis, Washington. My most vivid memory of that time was a daily sense of angst at the prospect of my young son's death on the battlefield. It was as though the Green Knight had charged into my otherwise ordered, round-table life and challenged me to a game of decapitation. I was allowed the first blow. I took the green axe of time and waited. Eighteen months later my son came home alive and well. Jason returned for a second deployment, and returned unharmed. I had beheaded Death, yet Death always rose again and kept making appointments with me.

In 2007 Jason was on his third deployment--this time to Afghanistan. At 10:30 P.M. on July 13, 2008, an Army chaplain knocked on my door to inform me that my precious twenty-five year old boy had been killed at the Battle of Wanat. This controversial battle is still in the news.[xxx] Part of the storm surrounding this particular skirmish was the fact that the young men who died there knew they were facing almost certain slaughter. A few days before the tragedy, many of them made telephone calls, sent emails or wrote letters telling family and friends that they were entering into a suicide mission. Here is a part of the last letter my son wrote a few days before he was killed:

TO MY FAMILY

I feel my days are numbered, so I want to say all this while I still can. I pray to God no-one will ever have to read this, but as death is all around me, if it falls upon me, you will understand my recent feelings on this madness we call life...Never have I felt as strong as I do about what I am doing here in Afghanistan as the right thing for me to be doing, and as understood and accepted by God. As a result of that, death is easier to accept....Know that you all are the reason I am here to give my life, for that is nothing to me. My love for every-one of you is what drives me and brings me comfort under stressful situations. Carise and Jesse [Jason's sister and husband], let your child know of me, and that even though I was never able to see him grow up, I love him more than he could imagine.

My son was dead. Death invited me to its green chapel. For the next several months I rode off toward the borderland of Death, into the mountainous wilderness. I know Gawain's experience:

And he rode through England...

though the ride was hardly a happy one.

He was often alone, at night, in places

Where the path ahead of him could please no one.

Only his horse rode with him, through woods

And hills, and the only voice he heard

Was God's, until he reached the north of Wales.

~ Sir Gawain, Raffel 70

This was the wilderness experienced by Jesus, Dante, Bilbo Baggins and all other mythological adventurers who face self-dissolution mediated by trickster-as-death. For such appointments, one has to "ride through England," "through the valley of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23)--there is no "going around" for soul-making, it must be gone through. Like Gawain, "often alone at night, in places and on paths that could please no one," I too heard only the voice of "God," and sometimes that voice was not present. It was a descent into Hell, into the Underworld, into the depths. It was a prolonged encounter with Death, and Desire.

Desire came to me in the seductive guise of escapism, whispering, "Go unconscious, come to bed with me; you are depressed and need pharmaceuticals, diversions, anything to avoid the unhappy places and lonely nights. Go comfortably numb." You see, I have been in recovery for ten years and this was my particular seductress. I repeatedly said to Desire, "No," but then I would indulge in a few innocent kisses in the form of over-the-counter sleep aids. On one occasion, I gave her two kisses, doubling up on the "innocent" non-prescription sleep aids for about one month. There was a short period where I tripled the doses, wrapping myself in her green girdle to deliver me from Death. It was a partial failure, but I stopped and willingly went to Death's green chapel on the border lands of my soul. It was Death's turn to take a swing at my vulnerable neck. This took place in dreams, visions, reflections, memories--too numerous to recount here.

In Sophocles' play, Oedipus at Colonus, the Chorus calls the chapel-grove of the Ocean-Lord Poseidon," the green depths." It was in that green ocean chapel where Theseus was sacrificing an oxen at Poseidon's altar (Sophocles 373). The Greek tragedians often call Poseidon's numinous depths, "green". This image gave meaning to my own entrance into the Green Chapel of Death--a submersion into the overshadowing and re-vivifying deep waters of the unconscious. After her life threatening brain injury, Ginette Paris observed:

"Dangerous voyages...seem to open to us a treasure chest of endless surprises: the unconscious...When the unconscious opens, it disturbs every routine and life takes on a surprising quality. Madam Death insists that surrender be absolute." (Wisdom xii)

I heard Death sharpening his axe, a symbol of separation and decapitation--the loss of not only some "one" or some "thing," but of the former ego-self. Early that first morning after I learned of my son's death, a voice spoke to me through my intermittent sleep, "You will never be the same man you were yesterday." The old round table was broken, the old ego-self was wounded, making room for some new order. Death did not take my physical life, but it excised a part of my soul. My neck was nicked, and the old life bled out of me. For the past two years I have had innumerable experiences which have expanded my heart, deepened my psyche and changed my life. Like Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord, I received many hard won blessings, but I walk with a limp. I bear the educational scars of Death, "For a man may hide an injury to his soul/But he'll never be rid of it, it's fastened forever" (Sir Gawain, Raffel 124).

I have since returned to "Camelot," my world. Through the brokenness, I have changed and those around me have noticed it. Some people have actually donned their own "green sash" as I have shared my meeting with Desire and Death. I have met with the Green Trickster in his chapel, he has taken several swings at my neck and broken "open and enlarged every possible structure and relationship... through conflict, disorder, and even death..." as I passed through "dissolution to order" (The Trickster 161, 205). HONY SOYT QUI MAL PENCE [Shame to him who finds evil here] (Sir Gawain, Raffel 125).

End

FOOTNOTES:

[i] The Greek word for "idea," (eidon), refers not only to the object but a way of seeing. In other words, an idea is not just comething to be observed or considered, but is a means by which we observe things. Re-Visioning Psychology, p. 141.

[ii] Robert Pelton rightly warns about reducing the tricksters many meanings to only one, "...be it Prometheanism, protognosticism, psychic growth, or symbolic exhaustion." (The Trickster in West Africa, p. 12).

[iii] Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz write, "As a 'round thing' the Round Table expresses totality. The circle is indeed described as the most complete of all forms." The Grail Legend, p. 386.

[iv] The word "play" is used here intentionally since the word "game" is used over and over in this story. The trickster plays games, hence the name trickster.

[v] This is the attitude portrayed in the movie, Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, starring Sean Connery as the Green Knight.

[vi] Some Christian interpreters "...see it as a story of the apocalyptic fall of a civilisation, in Gawain's case, Camelot. In this interpretation, Sir Gawain is like Noah, separated from his society and warned by the Green Knight (who is seen as God's representative) of the coming doom of Camelot." from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. "In his depiction of Camelot, the poet reveals a concern for his society, whose inevitable fall will bring about the ultimate destruction intended by God. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Gawain_and_the_Green_Knight#Gawain_as_medieval_romance)

[vii] In the ancient Gnostic literature, Death and Desire were seen as two Archons or personified obstacles that blocked the psyche's ascent to the Pleroma or Fullness of God. We find this in the 2nd century A.D. Gospel of Mary:10) And Desire said to the ascending soul, “I did not see you coming down from the Higher Realm, but now I see you ascending. You were never ‘up there’. Your true nature is material. Why do you lie since you belong to me?” 11) The soul answered and said, “Well, I saw you and now know that you are not my true nature. I wouldn’t expect you to see me or recognize my True Heavenly Nature. I served you as a garment and you did not know me.” 12) When it said this, it (the soul) went away rejoicing greatly. 18) When the soul had overcome...it went upwards and saw the fourth Obstacle, which had seven voices. 19) The first form is Darkness, the second Desire, the third Ignorance, the fourth is the Terror of Death, the fifth is the Kingdom of the Flesh, the sixth is the foolish Wisdom of Flesh, the seventh is the Wrathful Wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath. (Gospel of Mary 10-19)

[viii] "Physically the Green Lion was usually a name for vitriol, or the sulphuric acid created by distilling the green crystals of iron sulphate in a flask. Iron sulphate was formed when iron ores rich in sulphides were left to oxidise in the air, so was readily available to medieval alchemists. The sharp penetrating sulphuric acid could create major chemical changes in many materials even to the extent of dissolving metals like iron, and copper. The Green Lion could also be the nitric acid formed from heating saltpeter or nitre and iron sulphate. Nitric acid when mixed with the acid derived from common salt, hydrochloric acid, produced aqua regia, a greenish tinged liquid that could dissolve even the noble metal gold. The Green Lion devouring the sun is a famous image in alchemy being depicted in many manuscripts and engravings, and can be thought of as aqua regia dissolving the solar gold and forming a solution which could readily tinge metals with gold" http://www.nachtkabarett.com/babalon/topic/1426---Spit-Vitriol-Not-Swallow-Green-Lion

[ix] Actor Bela Lugosi wore green-hued makeup for the role of Dracula in the 1927–28 Broadway stage production, and Boris Karloff's Frankenstein corpse was lime green. A green tinge in the skin is sometimes associated with nausea and sickness. A physically ill person is said to look green around the gills. The color, when combined with gold, is seen as representing the fading of youth. Green is thought to be an unlucky color in British and British-derived cultures,[42] where green cars, wedding dresses, and theater costumes are all the objects of superstition.[43] Spider-Man villains were often colored green to represent a contrast to the hero's red.[44] In some Far East cultures the color green is often used as a symbol of sickness and/or nausea;[45]

[x] In the Death of Curoi, Curoi stands in for Bertilak, and is often called "the man of the gray mantle". Though the words usually used for gray in the Death of Curoi are 'lachtna' or 'odar', roughly meaning milk-colored and shadowy respectively, in later works featuring a green knight, the word 'glas' is used and may have been the basis of misunderstanding.Buchanan, Alice (June, 1932). "The Irish Framework of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". PLMA 47 (No. 2): 315–338. In the 15th-century Saint Wolfgang and the Devil by Michael Pacher, the Devil is green. Poetic contemporaries such as Chaucer also drew connections between the color green and the devil, leading scholars to draw similar connections in readings of the Green Knight. (Robertson, D.W. Jr. "Why the Devil Wears Green". Modern Language Notes. (November 1954) 69.7 pp. 470–472.) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Gawain_and_the_Green_Knight#cite_note-38

[xii] This is the image mandorla, which is the Latin word for "almond," signifying the almond shaped center of two overlapping circles.

[xiii] For an exceptionally researched presentation on the common vernacular of an English Christian-Pagan combination, see Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, especially chapter 1 titled, "European Legacies". She examines the art, architecture and literature of the day to demonstrate what she calls Christian-Hermetic spirituality that predeeded and seed the American phenomenon of metaphysical and New Age religions.

[xiv] "The trickster speaks--and embodies--a vivid subtle religious language, through which he links animality and ritual transformation, shapes culture by means of sex and laughter, ties cosmic process to personal history, empowers divination to change boundaries into horizons, and reveals the passages to the sacred embedded in daily life." The Trickster in West Africa, Robert Pelton, p. 4.

[xv] In one Hindu myth, a group of bickering gods fill the heavens with their noise. Lord Shiva, disturbed from his peaceful Himalayan meditation session, shoots his cosmic erection through the atmosphere, scattering the gods like marbles.

[xvi] Introduction to Philosophy

[xvii] Von Franz discusses the alchemical symbols of sizzling Sulphur and other "drive" or "craving" images in the bottom of the heated alembic, signifying the role of libidinal energies which are necessary for the process of transmutation. Alchemy, An Introduction, pp. 126-131.

[xviii] Both the Rig Vedas, Book 10, 129, and Genesis 1-3, make it clear that Desire is the germ or seed of all creative development. The Vedas say, " Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.” Genesis 3 says, "The woman saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she desired the wisdom it would give her.” In the so called Gnostic Gospel of Mary, Mary preaches a sermon to a group of distraught disciples, teaching them that Desire must be moved through before the soul can return to the Pleroma or Fullness of God.

[xix] The green sash worn around Gawain's waist may reveal the ubiquitous amalgam of Pagan nature religion with its divinations and magical cures with traditional English Christianity. Catherine Albanese cites the "combinativeness" of the two systems:

Despite official church censure...."it is possible that some of the country clergy more than tolerated them [benevolent witches or cunning healers]; they may have even been seen as godly parishioners." In one instance...George Clifford [a Medieval writer said], "The Communion cup was stolen: the Churchwardens rode to a wise man, he gave them direction...and certainly they had it again." In fact, one churchwarden was himself a cunning man, and another visited a cunning man to gain some information regarding his landlord's lost horse. (A Republic of Mind 62).

[xx] In Dogon the Dogon cosmogenesis, the High God Amma "sets in motion the spiral of life and ensures its final establishment" by utilizing the disordering and dissolving influences of the trickster Ogo-Yuruga. Pelton, The Trickster in West Africa, p. 215. The poet W.B. Yeats used the interlocking spiral as a symbol of existence which simultaneously moves in and out, up and down, side to side in order to describe his images in the poem, The Seond Coming.. http://www.yeatsvision.com/Geometry.html

[xxi] See Santeria, Murphy, head (ori) over body. p. 10 Christ and church. Kephalos.

[xxii] In Hebrew mythology, it is often overlooked that King JHWH and the adversarial Shatan are aspects of the same Godhead. (see many references). A simpler way to see this is by remembering that the name JHWH comes from the verb Hayah which means "I am," or "to be". It is the affirmation, or "yes" to life. However, the word Shatan means "to oppose". It is not too far off base to say that Shatan is the counterpart, meaning "I am not," to JHWH's "I am".[xxii] When we can move away from theology and literalism, and hearken back to the phenomenological origins of these mythical characters, we see that the Hebrews were just trying to deal with the daily reality of life as a kind of psycho-spiritual isometrics. Life is always a series of oppositional encounters, and it is from these resistances that emotional and soulful muscle is built.

[xxiii] See Clark, S. L., and Julian N. Wasserman. "The Passing of the Seasons and the Apocalyptic in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". South Central Review. (1986) 3.1 pp. 5–22

[xxiv] Ogo of the Dogon people is portrayed as a fox. Pelton, The Trickster in West Africa, pp. 207, 221

[xxv] James Hillman re-visions pathology as "...the psyches autonomous ability to create illness, morbidity, disorder, abnormality and suffering in any aspect of its behavior and to experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted perspective." Re-Visioning Psychology, p. 56.

[xxvi] Childhood and Society, pp. 65-72, 269-74.

[xxvii] Scot Peck's book, The Different Drum

[xxviii] Pelton, The Trickster of West Africa, pp. 168, 171.

[xxix] Paper for Approaches to Mythology class, Eros and Psyche, The Bible and Stages of Consciousness.

[xxx] On June 27, 2010, Dateline NBC did an hour long story on this battle, including my son's role in it (http://www.clicker.com/tv/dateline-nbc/A-Father-s-Mission-967259/). One June 23, 2010, I and several family members of the nine deceased soldiers attended a briefing in Atlanta, Georgia to hear the results of an eight month independent investigation by Marine three star Lt. General Natonski. He concluded that three Commanders involved in sending the Platoon, "Chosen Company" of the 173rd Airborne, on that particular mission were guilty of dereliction of duty. Retired four star Army General Campbell exonerated the three Commanders, shocking the families and General Natonsky. As a result, Virginia Senator Webb and Senator Patty Murray of Washington State are pressing for a senate hearing.

The Hymn to Demeter: The Roles of the Gods in Soul Making

2010-10-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

This paper was written for Chris Downing's class on Greek Mythology, 2009, at Pacifica Graduate Institute. It is drawn from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

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The Hymn to Demeter: The Roles of the Gods and Events in Soul Making

At 10:30 p.m. on July 13, 2008 I received the news that my 25 year old son had been killed in the Battle of Wanat in Nuristan province, Afghanistan. The emotional floor dropped out from beneath my feet as I plunged into the darkest and most hellish experience of my life.

As I contemplated a topic for this paper, the Hymn to Demeter kept calling to me. I resisted mightily, telling myself that the subject was overdone--I wanted something fresh and original. Yet, like Hades grasp on Persephone, it would not let me go. After many readings I have come to identify with the various characters and events in this story, many analogous to my own nightmarish journey into soul making. I will explore those characters and events.

The stated purpose of the first Homeric Hymn to Demeter was to inform the Greek audience that it was possible to have a visionary experience that allowed one to rise up after going “down into the squalid darkness.”

Happy
is that man,
among the men
on earth,
who witnesses
these things.
And whoever
is not initiated
in the rites,
whoever
has no part in them,
he does not share
the same fate,
when he dies
and is down in
the squalid darkness. (Boer 160)

The word translated ‘witness’ (horao) is significant as Kittel points out in his Theological Dictionary of the New Testament:

"…the Gk. language has for the concept of hearing only "akouo" and its compounds, whereas for seeing it has a whole series of verbs at its command. This interrelation show us already that seeing was more important for the Gks. than hearing. The individual words for seeing…denote different kinds of seeing." (Kittel V, 316)

Horao and its derivatives often emphasize personal experience—seeing an image in a dream, an apparition, or receiving a dynamic spiritual insight. It implies far more than seeing with the mere physical eye. The stated purpose of this hymn and the subsequent Eleusinian ritual was to facilitate a witnessed experience that would open the psycho-spiritual eyes to images below the level of ordinary everyday consciousness.

In addition, horao is etymologically related to eidon, the Greek word for idea or image. From eidon the name Aidoneus or Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, is derived. Westerners typically associate the sky Gods with glorious new ideas of life, but the Greeks saw Hades also as the God of new ideas or insights that can be gained only by a descent into the depths of a darkened imagination. When the lights go out, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone swallows us up as we enter "into another dimension; a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind; the middle ground between light and shadow.” This is the imagistic realm of soul making.

Lastly, the verb meaning to witness, horao, is in the perfect tense and denotes a past action that produces ongoing results, indicating that the vision at the end of the historical nine day Eleusinian ritual would last a lifetime. This ancient Greek religious initiation, corroborated by historical testimonies, notably changed one’s life.

At least twice the hymn states that the result of the seeing or witnessing would produce "happiness…on the earth." The Greek word for happiness, olbios, connotes external physical prosperity as well as an internal or psychological state of contentment. In other words it is possible to undergo, or more accurately "to go under," a terrible ordeal and rise up into a condition of well being. The sled ride down into dark Hades is not the end of the trip.

The main characters of this drama are introduced at the outset: Demeter, her daughter Persephone, Aidoneus, Zeus and Earth. Curiously, Persephone is referred to only as "her daughter" and not formally named as are the other deities, perhaps because Persephone is not yet a ‘completed’ or fully grown deity. She must first be taken into the Underworld, rooted and only then ascend to Olympus and receive her name. This may signify that we as humans are not really substantial until we have undergone experiences of loss and darkness.

THE NECESSITY OF DESCENT AND ASCENT FOR THE SOUL

It seems that the natural cycle of descent and ascent was as necessary for the gods as it is for our human psychological development. In fact from an archetypal perspective it would be more correct to say that natural and human evolution mirror the eternal Gods. This developmental idea is also found in this hymn in the image of Gaia’s beautiful narcissus, a thematic symbol of movement from root, to stem, to the many buds on the stem and finally the fragrant bloom that causes the sky to smile:

From its root
it pushed up
a hundred heads
and a fragrance
from its top
making
all the vast sky above
smile. (Boer 111)

This organic developmental process of soul is reminiscent of Jesus’ parable in the New Testament Gospel of Mark:

"This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-29)

The two most popular death and resurrection rites in the ancient world were found in the Eleusinian and Christian stories. Both emphasized ‘night and day’ as central features. Many Christians forget that the arrival of the kingdom of God, like the Hymn of Demeter, requires the descent into the dark before moving into the light of day. This natural process of psycho-spiritual expansion conflicts with the usual orthodox Augustinian Christian teaching that says suffering, darkness and death are the ‘unnatural’ results of human original sin. This can set a person up for psychological despair when tragedies and losses occur. Both the hymn and Jesus' parable recognize both dark and light forces that are prior to and foundational to human existence and development. What Bruno Snell says of the Greek mind is true of the universal psychological process, “Every human act betrays the vitality of the ultimate cause behind it” (Snell 25). This means that loss, grief, desperation and all such descents into darkness and their subsequent ascents are not just human but mythical in proportion and somehow connected to a larger cosmology. Humans must experience the depths as well as the heights in order to know "happiness".

The seed metaphor is important for soul making. Putting roots down into the dark soil is as fundamental as rising up into the light. This point is part of the significance of Persephone spending one third of the year in Hades ‘growing down,’ and two thirds with her mother on Olympus, or ‘growing up.’ One third, or the number three, is a universal, archetypal indicator of an accomplished process with a beginning, middle and an end. The number is not to be taken as any kind of literal chronology for emotional development, but rather as a symbol of the inevitable polarities of life and the emotional cycles for psychological completion. From a depth psychological perspective, the psyche is moving toward what Jung referred to as the “homo maximus” (completed human) or the mature Anthropos (Jung, CW XIV, 400).

Examination of the Individual Mythical Characters for Soul Making

If the main purpose of this hymn is to initiate persons into a deeper and broader experience of full human consciousness, including darkness and death as well as light and life, then it is important to see each character and event in the Hymn as aspects of an individual’s soul making process. Christine Downing summarizes this point well when she writes,

"I have come to understand, also, through my involvement with this myth, the difference between relating to a myth and relating to a mythological figure. It seems vitally important no longer to identify only one character in the myth, Persephone, nor to focus on one episode within the story, Persephone’s forced abduction by Hades…I now see that the myth is the mythos, the plot, the action, not the figure abstracted from it." (Downing, Long Journey 219-220)

In each story, every character plays some role in us. In a similar vein James Hillman reminds us, “…if our aim is psychological – that is connecting what happens with soul – then we will search for the most fundamental significance of the events in their archetypal or mythical patterns” (Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology 176). Notice that Hillman writes of ‘events’ and ‘patterns,’ plural. Every character and each event in a myth presents images which are pregnant with potential insights and in-sites into each person's soul making. It is up to the reader to turn the kaleidoscopic tube containing the various shards of the myth and see what new perspectives tumble into the reflective mind.

Demeter’s Role in Soul Making: Matter Matters

After Demeter discovers that her daughter is missing, she despairs. This is psychologically instructive. Her grief of loss actually receives more attention than Persephone’s sadness over being abducted into Hades! Demeter literally means ‘Earth Mother.’ It is importan to note that 'mater' means 'mother' which also means 'matter' or the stuff we are made of. Hillman says,

"The great mother…is our materialism; the common derivation of both matter and mater (mother) is neither an accident nor a joke. She is that modality of consciousness which connects all psychic events to material ones, placing the images of the soul in the service of physical tangibilities." (Hillman, The Dream 69) This means that matter, matters; the physical body is important in soul-making.

This insight reveals that loss takes place in 'da mater' or in the solid earthly realm. While grief may be experienced as taking place in our shadowy inner psyche, practically it is intimately related to what occurs in the material world, in the flesh. Soul-making requires that the visible and the invisible realms work together. In the invisible, interior sphere, symbolized by Persephone in Hades, we experience loss as a feeling of invisibility, of being insubstantial. We are John Lennon’s, “Nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” It feels like Hell.

However, in the visible sphere, symbolized by Demeter (matter), we see the role played by the acquisition and loss of materiality. Persephone, the substantial daughter, is an explicit symbol of familial and relational connections. As the Greeks knew only too well, life involves many personal physical losses and earthly attachments. There could be no better symbol than a child who had been tethered to her mother by an umbilical cord to portray separation and loss. The evolution of consciousness requires both the material and immaterial experiences of loss.

After my son was killed in Afghanistan, I had both of these experiences simultaneously. There was a profound sense of his continuing, invisible psychological presence which brought me peace and comfort, yet I wept over his physical and visible absence. I could find comfort in his post mortem existence in some invisible realm, but overwhelming grief filled me when I recalled holding his solid body in our last hug, running my palm across the stubble of his military haircut and feeling his warm cheek on my face. What has sustained me through this nightmare is the awareness that soul is made by the connection of “all psychic events to material ones.” The external material loss of my son and the subsequent emotional plunge into the internal ‘squalid darkness’ worked together to create a more conscious soul. M. Merleau-Ponty summarizes this point well, “Meaning is invisible, but the invisible is not contradictory of the visible: the visible itself has an invisible inner framework, and the in-visible is the secret counterpart of the visible” (Merleau-Ponty 54).

Merleau-Ponty is referring to the important confluence of the physical and non-physical. This point was recognized as being central to soul-making by the second century Christian theologian Irenaeus in his opus, Against Heresies. His copious arguments against the matter-denigrating heretics, whom modern academics call Gnostics, were philosophically and psychologically motivated. According to Irenaeus, the evolution from the ‘likeness of God’ into the ‘image of God’ required the interaction of a physical body with an immaterial soul and spirit. This ontological intermingling of the material and immaterial elements for making soul was further developed by the later Nicean and Chalcedonian councils when they affirmed the notion that Christ’s nature was homoousia -- equally matter and non-matter. In other words, matter mattered as much as soul and spirit.

This means that the objective, material world is very important to soul making. Demeter’s grief did not arise because of the annihilation of her daughter’s existence, but because of her child’s invisibility through the loss of sight, touch and the sound of a living person. The rite at Eleusis would provide a new kind of sight--in-sight as the initiates would enter into the world of Hades.

A Divine Conspiracy

From a limited perspective, the Hymn of Demeter might seem to be little more than an etiological myth explaining the origins of the earthly seasons, or the horrors of Greek mothers and daughters enduring covertly arranged marriages. But if we consider this hymn psychologically and primarily as an initiation myth designed to help people move through loss and darkness, we can see a larger soul making plot involved.

The text says that "Zeus allowed" the abduction of Persephone, that he "had planned it," and that he actually "gave her (Persephone) to Hades." Earth (Gaia) is also complicit in this abduction; she helped trick Persephone by creating the beguiling narcissus flower "as a favor for" Hades. In addition, after Persephone reached for the flower, the earth "opened wide the road" for Hade’s escaping chariot. It seems the Gods were working together in this horrific event. This notion of a divine conspiracy is further corroborated when the hymn says that none of the immortals “heard her (Persephone’s) voice…” They played dumb. But later the text states that none of the “gods nor mortal men… wanted to tell her (Demeter) the truth.” Clearly they knew about the abduction, which is especially evident when we read that Persephone’s terrified screams "echoed across the mountain peaks and through the depths of the sea." It appears the gods were part of the divine scheme to keep the secret from both Demeter and Persephone.
There is a New Age expression that says, “The Universe is conspiring for your good.” An archetypal perspective would agree, yet remind us that the "good conspiracy" may require some pretty awful moments, if not years or decades. It takes time for a soul-seed to germinate, take root and move from the dark soil into the light of day.

Hecate and Helios: The Roles of Night and Day

Only Hecate, the personification of the moon in her dark sky cave, and the Sun in his dawn dome admitted that they heard Persephone’s cries of terror and were willing to help. Hecate, holding a light in her hands, led Demeter to the Sun, Helios, who told her the truth about the abduction.

On that dark night of July 13, 2008, after I was told that Jason had been killed in the early dawn hours, 4:00 a.m., in a remote village in Afghanistan, I lapsed into what can only be described as a 2-3 minute walking blackout. I came to, standing outside of my house, a tight fist raised to the heavens, screaming, “Fuck you God!” As I returned to consciousness, the glowing white moon on a stark black sky filled my vision. My very first thought was, “You are the only one here who saw my boy this morning when he disappeared from this earth.” There was a queer moment of comfort and connection with my son in seeing the familiar lunar witness. Hecate was my sole companion at that moment.

The next morning I awoke after a night of indescribable grief and troubling visions, and an imagistic voice whispered, “Michael, you are not the man you were yesterday. You will never be the same. You are being dis-integrated. You will be rebuilt. Be patient.”

I spent the next eight months wandering through a labyrinthine Underworld of mourning, seclusion and outrage. My entire self was being demolished; I was no longer the father of a son. What was I? What would I be? Only from an archetypal perspective combined with faith in a soul making cosmos did I know that something entirely new would emerge from the experience.

Several months after his death, in March of 2009, I awoke one memorable morning. Sunlight was streaming through my bedroom window, and I heard a by-now familiar voice which whispered into my semi-conscious waking mind, “Dad, the sun is back, get up; the time in Hades is over, for now.” I am neither exaggerating this quotation nor adding the word ‘Hades’ for dramatic effect-- the voice let me know that the period of groping through the oppressive abyss had come to an end. Since then I have had moments of deep grief, but nothing like those eight months.

Demeter’s moon and sun images have now become my own, bringing to mind a joining together of the Yin/Yang energies--of night and day, above and below, masculine and feminine, working together in that twilight or middle ground where new ideas emerge and souls are made. James Hillman reminds us, “The word eidolon relates with Hades himself (aidoneus) and with eidos, ideational forms and shapes, the ideas that form and shape life.” There are images and perspectives to be gained while in Hades that cannot be gained in the light. This is nuanced beautifully by Christine Downing's comments:

"But time spent in Hades that is not spent trying desperately to get out also leads to discovery of the power and beauty of the dark moments in our life, the real confusions and desolations. Fear is so different when one does not have to fear fear but can simply fear; incompleteness and hurt are also different when one sees them not as something to get beyond but as something to live." (Downing, Long Journey 231)

The Role of Zeus in Soul Making

As mentioned earlier, Zeus permitted the abduction of Persephone “far away from Demeter.” Without consulting either Persephone or Demeter, the cloud-secluded ruler of Olympus gave his chthonic brother Hades permission to seize and ravish this young and vibrant girl. Even the great Sun, Helios, defended the wisdom of Zeus’s action to the inconsolable Demeter by saying, “He (Hades) is not an unworthy son-in-law among the gods…” The sun seemed to know something Demeter did not. But Demeter would have none of it. After her conversation with Helios we read, “Yet sharper pain, more savage even, struck her heart…outraged with Zeus…” (Boer 119)

This part of the story suggests an occasional psychological disconnect between the heavenly Father and the earthly Mater. It seems that there are those wonderful times in our emotional lives when the above and below are mysteriously conjoined, but then there are those moments when the heavens seem to mercilessly assail the earth and her inhabitants, reminiscent of the Hebrew Book of Job, resulting in material and emotional disaster. The Gods seem to clobber us from above. Few of us voluntarily go down into the depths. It takes Hades’ forceful chariot abducting us with a phone call, a medical diagnosis, divorce papers served or some other horrific onslaught--quite often when we are picking flowers, like Persephone, at sunrise in a serene field with friends.

I must confess that the Zeus character is the most difficult for me to comprehend. The notion of an almighty God allowing or planning my abduction into Hell is troubling. Yet I must also admit that there is a part of me that wants “to go deeper” no matter what the cost might be. Several months ago I was contemplating John Donne’s fourteenth Holy Sonnet. Donne actually asks to be ‘ravished by God’:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. (Donne XIV)

(Click here for an examination of this poem with commentary)

The word "ravish" in the last line comes from the Latin word rapere and gave rise to our English words ‘rapid’ and ‘rape.’ It means to abduct, seize, carry off by force and was originally used to describe the work of pirates and raiding armies. Only later did it develop the sexual connotation we most often associate with it today. Donne's is a bold prayer--a petition to be assailed, conquered and raped by the deity. He seems to understand that such experiences are not only normal to human existence, but necessary to make whole person. Psychologically, this indicates that there are seasons in life when it feels like we are being taken against our will, times of being conspired against by the Gods. Life itself seems to drag us into the depths when we least expect or deserve it. Donne’s prayer recognizes that there can come a point in the evolution of consciousness when a person actually prays for his or her fortress of ego to be assailed, razed and governed by the Holy One.

Conclusion

The loss of my son has taken me beyond a theoretical approach to this ancient mythical Hymn. I have experienced the physical and psychological devastation that comes with being stripped naked and emotionally raped. One is never entirely ready for such tragedies. I cannot say that I have experienced ‘happiness’ subsequent to the loss of my son, but I can say that I see a new creation rising from the crushed and disintegrating seed buried in the soil of soul.

Nearly one year after Jason’s death, his face and hands appeared to me in a meditation. He extracted a large, glowing red heart from his chest and held it in both palms. From my own chest emerged a discolored, shriveled heart. His bright organ, which reminded me of the paintings of the Sacred Heart of Christ, was slowly extended toward my tarnished heart, gradually surrounding it and finally absorbing it completely. In the trance I communicated to Jason that I could not accept his heart. He smiled and conveyed, “Dad, the work you are going to do will require more compassion than you currently have; this is one reason I gave my life.”

When I emerged from that moment, I felt I had my son back in a way I never had. We were together again in a manner I would never have imagined—in a way impossible to tell, or even fully understand except through myth. The realization that material bereavement facilitates soulful expansion will not necessarily make our losses any less painful, but it can make them purposeful. Only persons initiated into such an awareness are likely to emerge from the "squalid darkness" with some sort of happiness or psychological well-being. Obviously we do not literally get our dead loved ones back in this life, but Psyche, symbolized by Persephone’s eventual ascent, blooms and creates a new life as she returns from the dark soul-soil of the Underworld.

I will end simply, with my paraphrase of the hymn’s concluding lines:

Come Demeter and Persephone,

come Hades and Zeus,
I enter willingly into the depths of los,

reassemble what you have dissolved,

and in exchange
for the loss of my son,
give me the kind of life and character
that will fulfill my soul’s calling.

The Cure: "Where the Birds Always Sing"

2010-10-23T02:25:00.000-07:00

To my son Jason Michael Charles Bogar who was killed in action at the Battle of Wanat, Afghanistan, July 13, 2008. "Cpl. Jason Bogar fired hundreds of rounds from his automatic weapon until the barrel of his weapon became white-hot and jammed and then tended to Pfc. Stafford’s wounds. An RPG wounded Sgt. Ryan Pitts, who was also tended by Bogar with an tourniquet around Pitts’ leg before switching to another gun. Bogar was eventually killed and his body was recovered uphill, evidently dragged there by an insurgent. Bogar was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star with a "V" for Valor, the fourth highest medal awarded by the U.S. Military."

This world is neither fair nor unfair--but some intuitive hunch tells me that it is somehow purposeful.

WHERE THE BIRDS ALWAYS SING
(click to play)

The world is neither fair nor unfair
The idea is just a way for us to understand
But the world is neither fair nor unfair
So one survives
The others die
And you always want a reason why

But the world is neither just nor unjust
It's just us trying to feel that there's some sense in it
No, the world is neither just nor unjust
And though going young
So much undone
Is a tragedy for everyone

It doesn't speak a plan or any secret thing
No unseen sign or untold truth in anything...
But living on in others, in memories and dreams
Is not enough
You want everything
Another world where the sun always shines
And the birds always sing
Always sing...

The world is neither fair nor unfair
The idea is just a way for us to understand
No the world is neither fair nor unfair
So some survive
And others die
And you always want a reason why

But the world is neither just nor unjust
It's just us trying to feel that there's some sense in it
No, the world is neither just nor unjust
And though going young
So much undone
Is a tragedy for everyone

It doesn't mean there has to be a way of things
No special sense that hidden hands are pulling strings
But living on in others, in memories and dreams
Is not enough
And it never is
You always want so much more than this...

An endless sense of soul and an eternity of love
A sweet mother down below and a just father above
For living on in others, in memories and dreams
Is not enough
You want everything
Another world
Where the birds always sing
Another world
Where the sun always shines
Another world
Where nothing ever dies...

WAITING FOR THE SUN: SUFFERING FROM A.S.S.

2010-09-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite songs is by The Doors, Waiting for the Sun. Jim Morrison woefully sings:

Waiting for the sun…Waiting for the sun…
Waiting.... waiting.... waiting.... waiting....
Waiting.... waiting.... waiting.... waiting....
Waiting for you to - come along
Waiting for you to - hear my song
Waiting for you to - come along
Waiting for you to - tell me what went wrong

Recently, I have discovered that I am 'Waiter.' I am often unconsciously waiting for the sun - waiting for things to line up, or postponing enjoyment until the good outweighs or eradicates the bad. I am reminded of Woody Allen's role as Alvy Singer, the neurotic romantic, in the movie Annie Hall. There is an interaction between Alvy (Allen) and his ex-girlfriend Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton, at an outdoor restaurant. Annie suggests they go somewhere and have some fun. Alvy declines:

Annie Hall: Alvy, you're incapable of enjoying life, you know that? I mean, you're like New York City. You're just this person. You're like this island unto yourself.
Alvy Singer: I can't enjoy anything unless everybody is. If one guy is starving someplace, that puts a crimp in my evening.

ALVY SINGER SYNDROME

I think I have spent too much time suffering from A.S.S., the Alvy Singer Syndrome. Like Woody Allen's character, I have often seen the world through the lens of ubiquitous suffering and universal darkness, "If one guy is starving someplace, that puts a crimp in my evening."

And lest you think you are an immune optimist, consider this cultures chronic obsession with Global Warming, scanning food labels before eating, chronic dieting, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the latest fashions, wrinkled skin, not having a 'healthy' relationship, recycling and bicycling, frequent urination and the unemployment rate. I am all for taking care of our bodies and the planet, however, sometimes we are unconsciously "waiting for the sun--to come along," or for someone, or something...to come along.

After the death of my son in 2008, my emotional descent took me a long way from the sun. I found little joy in much of anything. I was in the winter of grief. It was normal, necessary, infinitely valuable and purposeful. For about eight months everything was viewed through the lens of my boy being shot and dying in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. I have never known such darkness.

About eight months after Jason's death, I was walking along a quiet shore oon Bainbridge Island, praying, crying and waiting for the sun. I glanced up and saw a Heron gliding high above the water. He tilted his wings downward to slow his flight and regally settled on the bouncing branch of a tall Douglas Fir. My heart spontaneously swelled with joy for this surprising moment of Beauty. The setting sun was radiating a pinkish-orange crown along the horizon behind the bird. I thought my heart would burst. My joyful experience was caught by the thought, "I can't enjoy this, my son is dead." Just then some inaudible voice whispered, "When the moment of Beauty arrives, enjoy it fully."

DANGER OF THE WHOLENESS DOCTRINE: WAITING

One of the dangers in all of our talk about 'wholeness,' saving the earth, the second coming and our American perfectionism, chronic seeking, seeking, seeking and waiting is that we find ourselves always waiting.

Waiting for you to - come along
Waiting for you to - hear my song
Waiting for you to - come along
Waiting for you to - tell me what went wrong
Waiting…waiting…waiting…waiting

What are we waiting for?