YOUR CRAVINGS BRING PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL COMPLETION

"If you only follow your own desire according to its own indications it will never go too far, it will always lead to its own defeat." Marie Louise von Franz, from Alchemy, An Introduction

In this statement, I hear Marie von Franz saying that our incessant cravings for pleasure and happiness always contain within them an ultimate defeat. The new car, new home, new lover, yummy bowl of ice cream or a great movie I've been looking forward to--I desire it, get it, and then it's gone. Then what? Most of us simply fill the mind, heart and hands with the next anticipated desire, even when we know that it too will come and go. But then a moment arrives in life, or several moments, when we ask, "Is this it? Just one unfulfilled craving following the next?"

The conscious person is left with at least two alternatives when such questions arise: One, become really super spiritual and learn to stop desiring. Two, continue to desire while realizing that every unfulfilled aspiration is leading me toward a goal. Von Franz is recommending alternative number two. You see, her quote comes from a book about alchemy. Alchemy refers to the process of transforming one thing into another thing, an entirely different thing than the first. Her comment about desire leading to defeat is not a negative assessment, but very positive. She is not suggesting that we ought to get rid of our desires, but simply realize that they will always leave us empty and needy, but that each new desire and each subsequent defeat moves us closer to the ultimate goal--which is completion. Please do not ask me what "completion" is. I have no clue--any more than I could have told you when I was five years old what it would be like to be twenty or fifty. But I knew that such ages or "completions" existed. C.S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” I think Lewis is suggesting that every desire is God-given, but that the continual disappointments remind us that eventually the desire can and will be fulfilled by "another world". I once heard a Rabbi put it like this, "Every time we connect to something or someone that we desire, the cord is cut and we fall into disappointment. But God reties the rope, each new knot drawing us one inch closer to completion." I love that image. There is purpose in every desire, every defeat, and every retying. Enjoy your desires. Fulfill your desires. Acknowledge the defeats. Know you are moving to a goal--the goal of making your unique soul.

Government Controlled Health Care and Mental Illness

 My biggest concern over government controlled healthcare has less to do with party politics and more to do with giving any govermental body control over our minds. Once the government gets hold of the ever expanding Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR, 2000, Fourth Edition, which now has almost 1000 pages worth of mental illnesses, they hold the equivalent of The Malleus Maleficarum. This ancient text, first published in 1486-7, was the standard medieval text on witchcraft. It remained in print throughout the early modern period. Similar to the DSM it describes what is normal and what is not and the ways to "fix things" that don't fit into "normal" society. Thomas Szasz calls the modern  Western proclivity to resort to accusations of "mental illness" as being the equivalent of the Catholic Inquisition. We no longer accuse people of being possessed in order to ostracize them socio-politically, but resort to labeling them with pathologizing terminology. Szasz argues that the old religious model has been transferred to the modern medical psychiatric model. Same result: One receives an "authoritative" label, stigmatization follows, and then one is handed over to the state run institutions to be removed from normal society, treated and "fixed" or incarcerated by the new priests--therapists and social workers.

Recently, someone I know discovered who I was voting for in the 2012 presidential election and wrote me a concerned email saying, "Some of your friends think you have lost your sanity." I had to smile. The same person would mock Christians for accusing someone of demon possession, but unquestioningly resorted to the modern scientistic parallel of being possessed by "mental illness". I was clearly not in "the right, or left mind". I assured her that I was certainly insane, as the word in-sane can mean "partly there". I also made it clear that we are all somewhat insane, and thanked her for the compliment. Watch out for people who think they are sane--they are the most dangerous kind of people.

Now, back to the government controlling "mental health". Imagine either a democrat or a republican majority, or even both parties conjointly, appointing those who adjudicate what is "normal" and revising the DSM, which is done every few years, to reflect their judgments--adding illnesses like criticizing the president, disagreeing with the majority, being a Tea Party member or Occupy Wall Street member. It is a very short step to adding new mental illnesses to the "Book" and seizing control of the minds of the citizens, just as the Church tried to do in parts of Europe with their "Book" in the 15th century. I think Orwell called Governmentally run mental healthcare the Ministry of Love.

FOR THOSE WHO DON’T "FEEL" GOD’S PRESENCE

The modern Sufi writer, Idries Sha, notes that most modern spiritual programs determine the success and enlightenment of the spiritual student by her/his mystical experiences and feelings of bliss. To put it mildly, this is dispiriting to those who have no such experiences, or to those who have such experiences and can’t seem to find them again. Shah says this about that, “...according to Sufi ideas and practice, it is precisely those who do not feel subjective states, or who have at one time been affected by them and no longer feel them, who may be real candidates for the next stage [of spiritual development].”

In other words “spirituality” is not necessarily measured by “feelings of numinous connection”. This is a profound Sufi teaching, suggesting that advanced Truth and “spirituality” are most often experienced in the times of disconnection and feelings of ordinary daily life, or times of feeling distant from the divine Presence. Junaid of Bhagdad, a Sufi teacher who lived in 900 A.D writes: “Truth comes after ‘states’ and ecstasy, and takes its place”. Some mystics call this the “Presence of Absence,” suggesting that Absence is a living Experience that takes us more deeply into soul-making than any ecstatic sensation of bliss. The Hebrew psalmist wrote:

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

~ Psalm 139:11-13

This Psalm recognizes that the divine knitting or weaving together of one’s soul takes place in the light and the dark, in moments of numinous light and moments of murky absence. Divine activity takes place even in the darkness of the womb--every mundane moment forms a divine womb where we are being fashioned into the image of God.

Remember this next time you wish you had more mystical experiences or numinous feelings of divine Presence. Remember this when a guru or teacher tells you that ultimate spirituality is a feeling of divine bliss. Like romantic love, feelings come and go, but the Presence of the Divine and opportunities for Truth-knowing are in every moment of the day. Make yourself a little sign like the one Carl Jung had carved in Latin above the door of his house in Kusnacht, Switzerland: "VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT," which says in English: "Called or not called, the deity will be there." Jung said he placed it there for his clients to see each time they came for therapy—reminding them that the divine usually does not show up in the way one expects.

The Normalcy and Necessity of self-Annihilation

“All things in creation suffer annihilation (fanā) and there remains

the face of the Lord in its majesty and bounty.” ~ Qur'an, Sura 55:26–27

The Arabic word fanā means “to pass away” or “to annihilate," referring to the often painful obliteration of the individual human ego that keeps one from experiencing the majesty of the infinite God. Fanā is one of the necessary steps taken by the Islamic Ṣūfī adept in pursuit of union with the pure love of God, often through unceasing contemplation on the attributes of God. Most Ṣūfīs view fanā as a negative state or a first step in preparation for the positive state of experiencing the revelation of the divine attributes and union (tawḥīd) with God. This is not an easy step. It requires the dissolution of the ego-self while remaining physically alive.
I am struck by this Ṣūfī notion of fanā as it relates to James Hillman's archetypal psychology, specifically his idea of pathologizing. 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...life through this deformed and afflicted perspective... necessarily...central to the soul" (Re-Visioning Psychology 55-57). Elsewhere Hillman discusses the therapeutic process and the troublesome pathologizings which sometimes lead analysands to suicidal thoughts and urges: “Where the death experience insists on a suicidal image, then it is the patients ‘I’ and everything he holds to be his ‘I’ is coming to its end” (Suicide and the Soul 75). In other words, there is something native to the human psyche that requires the fanā or obliteration of the current "I" before new life may emerge. This suggests that all of life's experiences, especially the so called "negative" and painful, contribute to the making of a soul. The Ṣūfī poet Rumi states it beautifully:

This human soul is like a hotel.

Every morning there is a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a nastiness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain all of them!

Even if a mob of mourners arrives

who violently sweep the rooms

and destroy all of the furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He or she may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The depressed thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them all at the door warmly,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

--Rumi

If you feel like you are dying, or that an old quality or relationship is eroding, remember that such experiences are normal and necessary. Take a lesson from the Sufis--cooperate, assist and let the death take place without a struggle.

Preparing for the End, and the Beginning

 The Book of Revelation, also known as The Apocalypse of John completes the biblical story of spiritual development. Let's remember that the author named John was not a literalist, but a symbolist. A symbolist is one who expects the reader to see through the surface of a story to the inner personal significance. In The Gospel of John, Jesus speaks to a religious professional named Nicodemus who interprets Jesus' comment literally: "You must be born again." The perplexed Nicodemus then asks, "How can a man enter into his mother's womb and be born again?" Jesus replies, "How can you possibly teach others about spiritual things when you cannot understand spiritual symbolism?" (my paraphrase). This little exchange is a key to reading John's writings. They are to be read symbolically.

The Book of Revelation is for those spiritually advanced souls who have sufficiently experienced enough of life to see that there must be more to it than pleasure and pain, success and failure, marriage and divorce, education and ignorance, etc. All of these experiences are normal and necessary for spiritual development, but they are meant to lead us to deeper and deeper experiences leading to a more complete personality--a personality that blends the human and the divine into a new being.

The Book of Revelation portrays shocking images of the advanced soul in a state of personality annihilation, the peeling away of worn out goals and lost dreams. Physical aging forces one to look in the mirror, viewing bodies and past lives as they evaporate like a morning mist. The horrific and beatific images in the Revelation are meant to cause us to reflect as we prepare for the end of this phase of existence. That preparation requires us to obliterate the old and anticipate the new--the "new heavens and new earth". But both must be done together. Most people would rather dismiss the book or turn it into something literal rather than do the hard work of reflection that brings renewal. The Sufi poet, Rumi, put it like this:

This human soul is like a hotel.

Every morning there is a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a nastiness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain all of them!

Even if a mob of mourners arrives

who violently sweep the rooms

and destroy all of the furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He or she may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The depressed thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them all at the door warmly,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

--Rumi

Freezing the Infinite in a System: C.S. Lewis's Critique of Anthroposophy

Before C.S. Lewis made a decision to become a practicing Anglican Christian, he was engaged in thinking about spiritual and psychological matters--matters beyond objective, rational literalisms. Lewis protested the temptation to be drawn into the certainty of metaphysical and occult "systems of truth" with their established categories which froze the infinite. One might wonder if his eventual strong adherence to orthodox Christian theology belies his wariness of freezing the infinite. Here is a letter Lewis wrote in 1926 at the age of 28. In this letter he chastises Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical system of metaphysical certainty:

"No one is more convinced than I that reason is utterly inadequate to the richness and spirituality of real things: indeed this is itself a deliverance of reason. Nor do I doubt the presence, even in us, of faculties embryonic or atrophied, that lie in an indefinite margin around the little finite bit of focus which is intelligence—faculties anticipating or remembering the possession of huge tracts of reality that slip through the meshes of the intellect. And, to be sure, I believe that the symbols presented by imagination at its height are the workings of that fringe and present to us as much of the super-intelligible reality as we can get while we retain our present form of consciousness.
 
My scepticism begins when people offer me explicit accounts of the super-intelligible and in so doing use all the categories of the intellect. If the higher worlds have to be represented in terms of number, subject and attribute, time, space, causation etc (and thus they always are represented by occultists and illuminati), the fact that knowledge of them had to come through the fringe remains inexplicable. It is more natural to suppose in such cases that the illuminati have done what all of us are tempted to do:—allowed their intellect to fasten on those hints that come from the fringe, and squeezing them, has made a hint (that was full of truth) into a mere false hard statement. Seeking to know (in the only way we can know) more, we know less. I, at any rate, am at present inclined to believe that we must be content to feel the highest truths 'in our bones': if we try to make them explicit, we really make them untruth.
 
At all events if more knowledge is to come, it must be the wordless and thoughtless knowledge of the mystic: not the celestial statistics of Swedenborg, the Lemurian history of Steiner, or the demonology of the Platonists. All this seems to me merely an attempt to know the super-intelligible as if it were a new slice of the intelligible: as though a man with a bad cold tried to get back smells with a microscope."

Science and Religion: Two Instruments for Seeing Reality

Science and religion are two methods, or two instruments for looking at similar life phenomena--one is like a microscope (science) examining the details; the other is like a telescope (religion) examining the larger picture. It is very important to see that "reality" is never found by any single instrument. "Reason is the organ of truth, imagination is the organ of meaning," said CS Lewis. Both reason and imagination are equally valid and useful organs for experiencing, examining and explicating reality. Both instruments must submit their dogmatic convictions to critiques. Einstein famously said, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." ("Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium" 1941.)

Science typically utilizes rational and empirical approaches yet borrows heavily from imagination; religion typically utilizes intuitive and emotional approaches yet borrows heavily from reason. It is not an either/or situation, but rather one of emphases. There are as many dogmatic scientists as there are dogmatic religionists. There are many brilliant scientists who experience a rich religious life, and many spiritual theologians who experience a rich rational life. The famous philosopher Alfred North Whitehead shocked his rational audience in the 1920s when he told them that modern science would never have come into existence without the Christian theological cosmology which began with the idea of a reasonable Creator in His rationally ordered universe. (See chapter 10 of Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas). Whitehead noted that the vast majority of the early great philosophers and scientists were practicing Christians who sought to understand the mind of a reasonable deity. This idea of a reasonable deity is not and cannot be found in the Eastern religions which worship Nature as divine--one does not experiment on or question the Natural Gods. And of the Western religions, only the Christian religion stresses "orthodoxy" (ideas) over "orthopraxy" (actions) as in Judaism and Islam. In other words, the Christian emphasis on beliefs and ideas provides a matrix for evolving thought and a rational exploration of a reasonable material universe, even if the ideas develop slowly and receive censure or resistance from the ecclesiastical powers. The Christian "system" of orthodoxy (right ideas) has a built-in default setting that returns it to conversations about beliefs and ideas.  That is why Communist, Islamic and other ideologically frozen territories have been and continue to be terrified by the Bible and free theological/religious discourse. Whitehead makes it clear that one's mythology sets the trajectory of cultural consciousness, discoveries and inventions. This is also significant for politics--something which our Western international policy makers ought to take into account before they try to export democracy or import socialism. 

Our modern academic ignorance of religious, philosophical and psychological big ideas are the bane of our Western education and social institutions. Politicians, journalists and business owners once had an education in the Humanities. Now they learn techniques without the examination of philosophical foundations or an exploration of meaning.

It is important to remember that both science and religion appeal to the innate human compulsion toward certainty, security and order. Every human child is born with equal drives to suckle, walk, talk and seek self-, social- and cosmic-assurance in a world of chaos and fragmentation. The human psyche naturally and autonomously requires and is motivated to acquire assurances of security and order internally and externally. Humans are congenitally meaning-making creatures in a world without human meaning. "Culture" is the result of this congenital condition. 

Such psychological assurances are most often pursued, defined and defended in human personalities largely unconsciously and uncritically during the first 20 years of life. These assurances are acquired ideological stances that meld with the personality and become what seems an unalterable identity of security in a hostile and dangerous world. Many in the West have called this acquired secure identity the "ego". This compulsion toward the solidifying of a specific self-identity most often occurs in the late teen years, but it is not uncommon to experience radical ego-shifts as one matures--sometimes quickly as in a conversion experience or gradually via a lifetime of assimilating new experiences and ideas. The most intractable are those who cannot or will not openly examine a perspective outside of their current secure "identity-stance". This inability or unwillingness to seriously consider differing points of view is often complicated by perceived or real threats to tangible aspects of ones identity—like losses of vocational livelihood, peer bonds, family connections and a sense of internal cognitive harmony. Change feels like death. Tolkien captures this experience in The Hobbit as Gandalf the Grey tries to enlist Bilbo Baggins in an adventure to other worlds outside “The Hill”. Bilbo, seated on his porch, blowing smoke rings, ensconced in his cozy hobbit hole in the ground replies, "Adventure? Nasty uncomfortable things, make you late for dinner."

Religion and science are frequently hobbit holes. Leaving them, seriously leaving them, in order to deeply explore other worlds causes distress and discomfort—making one late for the usual ideological dinner they have been eating for decades. No wonder Jesus said, “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, and there are few who find it.”

Progressive or Conservative?

     I see the terms progressive and conservative as neutral, each having a light and shadow element. I see conservatives as those holding to the Hellenistic Apollonian wisdom tradition, embracing really smart archetypal ideas and ideals that work over time. In the Helios/Apollo myth, the Greeks realized there is a wise conservative path for the sun to travel each day--to change it is to invite disaster, as seen in Phaeton's mistake. The Founders of America enshrined many of these Apollonian truths in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The conservative weakness is in getting stuck in areas that require development. That is why I had to leave the dogmatic wing of the evangelical residence years ago.

     I see progressives as being delightfully Dionysian, not afraid to look at new ideas and new ideals, to make changes where they are clearly better. They see the developmental nature of the psyche and society, and are bold enough to oppose old worn out views and laws. However, their weakness is in mistaking "change" to be a virtue--not all new ideas and ideals are clearly better just because they are novel. As C.S. Lewis has written, "We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."

     That is why I am an independent, attempting to choose the best of both parties and avoid the worst of each. I do think that both are far too black and white in their thinking--the republicans in morality issues like homosexuality and and sex in general, and the democrats with their tendency to divide the country by class, gender, race, and religion. I understand that much of this either/or thinking by both parties is due to the need of their respective politicians to acquire votes, and for the media news networks to attain commercial ratings and make money. Conflict has always been effective for power brokering and economic success. However, psychologically it is also important to see that such divisions serve a useful purpose. The natural and necessary condition of the human psyche is innately binary and oppositional, which is a requirement for individuation or soul-making. Humans must have choices and conflicts to evolve psycho-spiritually. This began in Eden with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Humans need conflict to develop into the image and likeness of God, or if you prefer a secular view, Freud wrote: "Psychoanalysis early became aware that all mental occurrences must be regarded as built on the basis of an interplay of the forces of the elementary instincts." Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/dualism#ixzz259PM2gMU

     These days I can see both the buffoonery and wisdom of both parties. Neither is sacrosanct and both are, in my opinion, necessarily in bed with corruption. The choice for me is of the lesser of two evils, choosing to align with the ideas and candidates which best support the freedom for personal soul-making--recognizing that this world will never become heaven or hell, but the playing field for each soul to be formed into unique selves.

Confessions: Toward a Personal Political Position

A couple of people have asked me for my political views. I have hesitated because I fear that few will actually read what I say with an open mind and read all of the way through. I know this because I am like them, typically forming my opinions on partial arguments. I am working on reforming that bad habit. I ask you to read the whole blog. I will try to keep it short at the risk of over simplifying.

First off, I have been a kool-aid drinking conservative and kool-aid drinking progressive, ensconced within each group for about 15 years each. Currently, for lack of a better term, I am an independent / libertarian (independertarian?). I find value and non-value within both the progressive and conservative traditions. I confess that I am more sympathetic with the new batch of conservatives because of their return to constitutional govt. and fiscal responsibility--containing what I consider to be a more exceptional political philosophy and psychology of human nature and nations. The bold print underscores where some will now draw their stereotyped conclusions about my politics. Please read on. My evolution through conservative and progressive systems is nicely summarized by Greg Gutfeld's comment: "I became a conservative by being around liberals and I became a libertarian by being around conservatives. You realize that there’s something distinctly in common between the two groups, the left and the right; the worst part of each of them is the moralizing." I concur. Both liberal and conservative groups tend toward "puritanical" moralizing and ideological triumphalism. I know. I have been both, and can still be a moralizing puritan and triumphalist know it all. I am working on reforming these bad habits as well--not very hard, but I am aware of them.

However, the issue of values is up in the air for me. I find both Democrats and Republicans holding to both useful as well as dangerously useless values. By that I mean that as a nation we cannot return to the old conservative absolutist Christian value systems, yet the liberal Secular value systems are even worse, a la Marx, Mao, Stalin, Castro and most other forms of socialism. Both basic liberal and conservative value systems require individuals to conform to the collective dogma of the ideological mechanism --one a religious machine and the other a secular machine--both machines ultimately neglecting the individual human being in his/her unique psycho-spiritual development. Carl Jung addressed this by writing: "Both [religious and socialist institutions] demand unqualified submission to faith and thus curtail man's freedom, the one his freedom before God and the other his freedom before the State" (Undiscovered Self, p. 38). Both the religious and socialist moralizing-Enforcers quash the human soul while claiming, ironically, to set it free. Equally ironic is the fact that the religious collective sets humans free from State dogma, while the State collective sets humans free from religious dogma. As the founders of our American republic knew all too well, we must find that "narrow gate" that passes between these two extremes. That is the number one challenge for America and the world at this juncture in history--how to reconcile the above and the below, the human and the divine, the material and the spiritual, the scientific and the soulful.

All of that being said, as a political citizen I will support an antiquated and very fallible "basic Christian" value system if forced to choose between that and a secular anthropocentric system elevating human saviors with their narcissistic dogmas derived from the "sciences". At least the former acknowledges that human beings are not the center of the universe, and that our scientific technological advances must be balanced by ideas and values that derive from something other than human instincts, emotions and logic. Let me emphasize--I choose the "basic Christian" value system in its most broad definition without the theological accretions that have gathered over the centuries. By Christian I mean a philosophy that recognizes a rational Higher Power, a blending of the visible and invisible as equal and necessary elements for existence, and the humanization of the divine along with a divinization of the human. The Christian philosophy makes central the notion of a reasonable and purposeful God, Being, Transcendent Agents and Agencies underlying existence in some mysterious fashion. The paradigmatic strength of reasonableness found in the Christian philosophy was addressed by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, shocking the academic community in his Lowell lectures at Harvard in 1925, when he said that Western scientific methodology arose "from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God as conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher" (Science and the Modern World, p. 12). On this point I am more in line with Thomas Jefferson than modern evangelical Christians. I should also add here that I find the Christian-invented tradition of theological dialogue to be both fascinating, fruitful and worthwhile. This tradition at its best generates ideas and creative thought, sometimes called orthodoxy which, when separated from those who use the term pejoratively simply means straight ideas or teachings. This is important since the other world religions tend toward orthopraxy, or right actions and rituals. This theological tradition, at its best, has given rise to the ideas of Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, John Milton, Newton, Copernicus, Martin Luther, Dorothy Sayers,  Martin Heidegger, Gabriel Marcel, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and many others.

That being said, I would rather not have to settle for any antiquated religious system. Ideally we as a nation and international community must build upon what has gone before and forge a new and larger psycho-spiritual narrative and value structure based on some sort of trans-sectarian version of Natural Law, Analytical Psychology, Archetypalism and spiritual neuroscience (See also the N.P.R. program, This is Your Brain on Religion).

I think all four of the forementioned areas ought to be studied in tandem. I will not explain what I mean by this, except to say that the religio-politcal question as it relates to the entire human community, cross- and trans-culturally, will occupy center stage over the next few decades if not centuries, likely yielding results that we cannot now even begin to imagine. Sadly, it also seems to me that liberals and conservatives both are incredibly ignorant and regressive on the role and significance of this religious issue with regard to politics--both groups largely still stuck in their myopic mytho-ethical dogmas of days gone by. The liberals may have a slight lead here, but I have met few progressives or conservatives who even know what Natural Law, Analytical Psychology, Archetypalism and spiritual neuroscience mean. 

In my opinion, I and an increasing number of independents and libertarians represent a kind of hybrid: neo-progressive conservative, or neo-conservative progressive, yet being neither, but an amalgam of both and then some beyond both groups. This position is really beyond stereotyping, but most liberals and conservatives in these days of stark political warfare cannot or will not comprehend such a slippery fish, and will feel that they have no choice but to lump independents in with the group that most resembles their vile "enemy". It seems increasingly that both republicans and democrats require vitriol in their emotional engines in order to fuel their drive to ideological conquest of the "Other". Each must vilify their archnemesis Sarah Palin or Nancy Pelosi, G.W. Bush or B. H. Obama.Both groups live in their tiny ideological ghetto of fundamentalist security.

It has become a cultural cliché--but as with most good cliches, apparently unheeded--that what we need is genuine dialogue between political parties--not some new age broadmindedness without substantive content, nor a polite veneer that keeps us from really knowing what the "other" is saying--but an authentic, honest  conversation which explicates deeply held convictions and the reasons for those positions. I want to know what you REALLY believe and why. That is more important to me than you sparing my feelings or injuring my self esteem. I may indeed go away wounded, offended or upset--but past experience has taught me that those experiences that disintegrate my old world in order to construct the new one are most beneficial in the long haul. I am not advocating cheap shots, ad hominem arguments or mean spirited debate--but honest, passionate exchanges salted with respect and interest toward the "other". From such interactions will come understanding and the sacred third position that neither person in the debate is capable of discovering without the "other".

An Assessment of the Law of Attraction from Oprah's Interview with Larry King

A friend just sent me this video clip of Oprah speaking about her experience with the Law of Attraction (LOA). These are my comments following her remarks: http://www.mindmovies.com/inspirationshow/index.php?episode=10002

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Oprah is one of the few promoters of the Law of Attraction I have heard who seems to recognize that the so called "Secret" is just one psychological or spiritual law among many--not the only or even the primary law. As she said so well in the interview, "I think that the mistake that was made with The Secret was that they tried to let that be the answer to all questions."

I think some advocates of The Law of Attraction run the risk of cherry picking a particularly memorable event that happened to coincide with the fact that they had been thinking about it, and then taking complete credit for "creating it" or causing it solely by their own thoughts and intentions. The ancient Greeks called that hubris, which is defined as "an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power." For the ancient Greeks, hubris was the ultimate sin--ignoring the roles, powers and influences of the Gods. Do we really have that much to do with "attracting" the event or object?

Let's consider an alternative or more complete possibility that some Higher Power (or Powers) has a larger role to play, beyond my own thoughts. Perhaps this Higher Power, working in alignment with my soul's unique destiny, plants that particular idea and feeling in me because the idea holds soul-making power for my individuation. The "event" or manifestation may indeed be coming my way, but I am not at all convinced that I alone created or attracted that event without divine influence, or what William Blake called "divine influx". It appears to be more true that we humans are allowed to co-participate in a coming event because that particular event furthers our soul-making destiny. It is more like a prophetic image or idea that is given to me, or Oprah, than a thought I, or Oprah, alone decided to make come true. 

One ought to ask why that particular book, The Color Purple, seized Oprah's notice so deeply. Surely it wasn't her doing. She had likely read hundreds of books before that particular book, none of which seized her with such intensity. Do we think that we are the sole instigators of our obsessions with certain ideas or desires? Do we think that certain movies, people, places, and fantasies recur in our imaginations for no good reason? I doubt it. Contrary to popular science, the mind does not just out of the blue create thoughts and feelings from chemicals leaping across synaptic reception sites in the brain. And to say that my so called "ego" manufactures all of my thoughts is just as arrogant. "Something" more than neurons or tiny egos are at work in our thoughts and feelings. "Something" or "Someone" whispered to Oprah through the Color Purple, "Your soul-making is somehow tied up with this story. These impressions will not leave your mind until they are done with you." Getting the role in the movie was a very tiny part of the whole process. Taken in its entirety, Oprah's process caused her to face her food addiction and problems with self will. Those of us who fixate on the human role in manipulating the Universe by the Law of Attraction run the dangerous risk of taking credit for a small slice of a much larger spiritual enterprise. The Gods are at work in our souls--the external manifestations are a distant second to the work done on our internal psyches.

The key to Oprah's interview comments is in her song where she finally "surrendered all". The subsequent phone call from Stephen Spielberg didn't show up because Oprah was repeating her Color Purple affirmation during an ecstatic moment at a meditation retreat, but when she was depressed and miserable, surrendering her hopeless situation on a jogging track on a Fat Farm. She finally realized that she was powerless over her addiction to food and finally recognized her need for Help. Her mental obsession about the Color Purple movie role was nothing but an avenue to her surrender, facilitating the more important project of soul-making. If the Law of Attraction attracted anything to Oprah, it was her need to relinquish control, and to surrender to her destiny which is creating her. To believe that my puny little mind discovers and creates my reality based on my desires is extremely dangerous, in my opinion. The message that we are being created is much more significant than the message that we create our realities. Both are true, but the second is infinitely dwarfed by the first. But in this culture, hubris is the rule rather than the exception.

Those of us who think our thoughts alone create reality, without any inspiration from a Higher Authority, remind me of Bilbo Baggins comments at the end of Tolkien's book, The Hobbit. After his battles with Orcs, the slaying of the dragon and his gold gathering adventures, Biblo asks Gandalf how much he, Bilbo, had to do with bringing the whole affair to realization. Gandalf wisely replies: “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!”

The way the Law of Attraction is often presented runs the risk of making us, like Bilbo, over estimate our roles in the soul-making endeavor. We are very fine people, and people to be fond of, but we are quite little follows in a wide world after all. Before you start "attracting," find out which God is whispering to you, acknowledge that divine voice and move out of the way.

A SOLDIER’S DHARMA: The Death of My Son in Afghanistan

The Bhagavad Gita is a book of War, as nearly all sacred scriptures are. Puzzling to some, it was the favorite text of Ghandi and R.W. Emerson, both avowed pacifists. Dharma is the topic, specifically as it relates to Arjuna whose dharma or call is to be a heroic warrior. But Arjuna is a hesitant warrior, doubting his call. Lord Krishna, God incarnate, convinces Arjuna that it is his duty to kill the enemies of justice, even his own family members in the great civil war of the Mahabharata.

In September of 2007 I took my twenty four year old son, a member of the 173rd Army Airborne, to the airport for his third deployment to Afghanistan. We knew he was heading into a bad place. During the weeks leading up to that departure, his mother, two older sisters and I begged him not to volunteer to be reassigned. We were Jason’s Arjunas, saying with the Arjuna of the Gita, “Our limbs sag, our mouths feel parched, our bodies quake…our minds are in a whirl.” Don’t go to war!

The night before our trip to the airport, I tearfully embraced Jason in the driveway. For the last time I held his six foot tall frame, his broad shoulders and rubbed my right palm across the back of his buzz-cut scalp. I wept as he whispered, “Dad, I know you don’t understand, but this is something I have to do.”

I thought of Krishna’s conversation with the hesitant Arjuna, reminding him of his dharma, his duty, his vocation. After much instruction and a soul-altering vision of Lord Krishna, Arjuna concludes, “O Krishna, my delusion has gone. My faith is firm. I am aware of my true Reality and committed to my dharma.” The soldier is called to fight for justice, to protect the innocent and uphold civilization. Jason sent home many pictures of children living in intolerable situations.

No other human can understand another person’s call to make soul. Dharma transcends family ties, and religious and political ideologies. James Hillman observes, “…soul knows neither morality nor mortality."

After Jason was killed in the infamous Battle of Wanat, July 13, 2008, we received this letter that he wrote a few days before his death:

TO MY FAMILY

“I pray to God no one will have to read this, but death is all around me in this madness we call life. Never have I felt as strongly as I do that I am doing the right thing. It is understood and accepted by my God - thus death is easier to accept. To prepare myself to take life without hesitation has been a very difficult thing. To take away another woman’s son or husband - a man’s son or brother has always bothered me, but through my eyes it is understood by my God and I am forgiven. The man that may take my life likely feels the same way. My love for you motivates and brings me comfort. Carise, my dear sister, let your new baby son know of me, and that even though I was never able to see him grow up, I love him more than he could imagine.”

At the Memorial Service, my second daughter Micael, a progressive Democrat completing a masters degree in Conflict Resolution said this:

"I didn’t want you to go Jas. I told you not to go. I am proud of you. I know you were a damn good soldier & fighter. We had lots of practice. You have just the right mix of heart and guts. You went to war, not to blindly fight but to learn and grow and help. You knew the world was a much bigger, more complicated place than the stretch between I-5 and I-405 -- and that while war is not the ideal solution to our problems, you sitting in Seattle installing electrical cables and drinking beer wasn’t getting us anywhere."

At Jason's service, I met and talked with over twenty other soldiers -- companions and brothers who had served beside my son. The list of honorable warriors enumerated by Sanjaya in chapter one of the Gita came to mind.

Dressed in mottled Army fatigues, berets in hand they lined up, many with tears, to express their condolences. They were the most compassionate men I have ever met – yet men whom, like ‘lion-hearted Arjuna,’ would fight mightily for the welfare of others.

This reflection is neither a justification for war nor a call to pacifism. It is the recognition that through personal and social action souls are made. That is what I see in the life of Arjuna and in my son’s willingness to follow his heart’s call. The French author Camus said, “If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.”

With love, pride and admiration for Jason Michael Charles Bogar
K.I.A. July 13, 2008
Wanat, Afghanistan
Click for: NPR Report on Jason's Life
Click here Seattle Times story: Corporal Jason Bogar
Click for book about the battle: The Chosen Few