War and Peace: A Third Path Between Conservatives and Progressives

"As a connecting link, or traditionally third position, between all opposites, the soul differs from the terms which it connects...It is not life that matters, but soul and how life is used to care for soul." James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, pp. 174-175

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     I see war or conflict as a necessary and normal part of the Cosmos – whether these conflicts show up as comets smashing into planets, stars in perpetual nuclear fusion, rain eroding rocks, or time withering once smooth skin. The cosmos is a place of war and peace.

     I disagree with the sometime myopic ideologies of both Progressives and Conservatives. Conservatives sometimes see war as a solution while Progressives sometimes  see war as something that must be eliminated. I see both ignoring the evidence found in Nature and Psyche. When I see bumper stickers advocating War or advocating Peace, as though one could exist on this planet without the other, I find myself in disagreement with both extremes.

     Many in the New Age Movement suggest that we are evolving as a species into a planet of peace, while the more traditional religions often suggest that the world will get worse, eventuating in an apocalypse. I see no evidence that either trend will overtake the other. Both extreme views are missing the point of earthly existence: we are here to make souls, and all of the opposites have been built into the psycho-cosmic curriculum for that process.

This third way is not a synthesis or blending of the two extremes, but a middle path that sees both sides as normal and necessary for the game of Soul-making. The football game metaphor works well. The aim of a football game is goal-making, requiring rules that allow moments of brutal violence and moments of huddled tranquility. Now imagine a football game where the compassionate Progressives argue that the players ought to completely stop blocking and tackling each other, while a group of hawkish Conservatives argue that the players ought to be able to block and tackle each other the entire game. The game works because it has fixed rules of conflict and concord to be followed for the purpose of goal-making. Similarly, this is how the human soul making game operates—by the laws of opposites. We did not create this game, we merely play it, consciously or unconsciously. (Incidentally, this is how all relationships function in a soul-making universe).

     There is an African Swahili Warrior Song: “Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the gods….so let us celebrate the struggle.” The same notion is found in Hinduism where the Divine Lord Krishna claims that He generates little babies while He devours the corpses of dying men on the battle field. The mystical poet William Blake wrote: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.”   

     Each person is here to experience duality in order to make a deep and fascinating soul. In this view everyone is “spiritual” because souls are being sculpted in each moment, whether one is an atheist or agnostic, Jew or Taoist, church-goer or heroin addict. Like a butterfly struggling to get out of the chrysalis, each of us is struggling to emerge from the undivided into the individuated.

In this view, “spirituality” is not a little slice of life where you chant, pray and get happy on Jesus or Energy Crystals. Full spirituality is found in the clash of Contraries, in war and peace, cancer and health, loss and gain, eating gourmet food or eliminating waste. The world of Nature is our teacher: Sharks kill seals while ants organize colonies, lions kill gazelles while birds sing songs in the Spring, frost kills leaves while the sun rises over a blue lagoon, people divorce while lovers share a first kiss, and on and on…

     Don’t get me wrong, I WAY prefer peace, health and prosperity – but I also preferred to skip algebra, and to watch TV rather than memorize my spelling words when I was in school; that which is easier and preferred is not always the most beneficial.

     So with Hillman I choose the third position between the necessary contraries. And when I am ravenously tackling and blocking those I oppose, I remember that it is not personal. And when it gets personal, I eventually take a breath, reset my heart to a soul-making stance, and only then do I understand what Jesus meant when he said: “Love your enemies, and bless those who oppose you.” Our enemies are the artists of our unique souls.

Carl Jung and James Hillman: The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowing Good and Evil

I found this great quote from Tom Cheetham (in his works on Henry Corbin). I think only true Hillmaniacs can understand it, especially when we are trying to reconcile the drive toward integrative wholeness while recognizing the necessity of falling apart:

To compare Hillman and Jung in any detail is far beyond the scope of these remarks...Hillman is "a Jungian" by any standard, but rather a wayward one. Any simple contrast will be inadequate and perhaps misleading; but if Jung is the Wise Old man, Hillman is the Trickster, or pretends to be. Years ago when I was immersed in reading them both rather obsessively in the midst of the beginnings of my own psychic crisis, the difference was quite a practical one about which I thought very little. If I were feeling threatened by fragmentation, I would read Jung. If I were in terror of being bound and stifled, I would read Hillman. I still think  that says a lot about their differences. (All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings, pp. 190-91)

This contrast may help to explain and understand the juxtaposition of the Jewish tree of life right next to the deadly tree of pathologizing (knowing good and evil) found at the center of Eden. The Hebrew authors typically honor the phenomena of their observed experience, even when the phenomena screws with their received tradition. They acknowledge that humans want long life, and yet recognize that the same humans yearn to defy life by breaking the rules and challenging all boundaries. 

When the Genesis author writes that "Adam [humankind] became a living soul," he is recognizing the innate human propensity for life and survival, subsequently stating that God provides a tree of life to feed that original desire to live. But then God creates the puzzling tree of knowing evil as well as life-giving good, presided over by the divinely fashioned wise snake to give that tree of death (desire) a voice. Why? I think this image is added in order to acknowledge that there is also deep within the human psyche a yearning for something more than merely staying alive and following the rules; there is also a drive to challenge death. Humans not only desire to live and follow orders; but from crawling infancy we desire to rise up and walk, talk and act in forbidden ways. Humans have always been compelled to defy that most feared enemy of human existence, mortality. Paul calls death the "final enemy" (I Cor. 15:26). In the Eden story, by placing that final enemy in the form of a deadly tree of good and evil at the center of the garden alongside the tree of life, we see the ultimate challenge of humanity. God's good created order is made to be challenged. The purpose of life is to charge straight into the certainty of death, the real final frontier. Overcoming death is the final obstacle, the last enemy of complete dominion. The Hebrews knew this to be the final goal. In Isaiah the prophet we read of the final removal of the veil of death that encloses all humans:

And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, Even the veil which is stretched over all nations. He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces, (25:7-8) Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more; the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end. (60:20)

Paul quotes this passage in the light of Christ's resurrection: "When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory'" (I Cor. 15:54). This is reiterated in the Christian book of the Apocalypse: "Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:1-5)

The final obstacle, represented by the tree of knowing good and evil--the tree of death--has been overcome. The seed of the woman (humankind) has crushed head of the snake and his death-test. I am not setting forth a theological or metaphysical system here, though I think one can. I am merely suggesting that the Eden story posits what the human psyche intuits: humans desire both to live in order (tree of life), and we are brazenly compelled to transgress every boundary (tree of knowing good and evil) in our autonomously compelled pursuit of complete dominion, healing, wholeness, integration or individuation. 

Psychologically this plays out in everyday life. Humans are chronically discontent, simultaneously seeking order and disorder, pleasure and pathology. The single person wants desperately to be in a relationship; the married person fantasizes about freedom. The demure house wife or house husband ponders or pursues a covert tryst with a stranger. The born again Christian cheats on his taxes. The militant atheist secretly reads books about life after death. Our Jekyl-Hyde character is what makes us so fascinating. This enigmatic combination of loving peace and wholeness along with our innate compulsions to addictions, neuroses and fifty shades of gray is what makes us so damn human. After all, according to Isaiah, this is the schizophrenic or bi-polar image of God in which humans are designed: God says, "I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things" (Is. 45:6-7)

Finally, this ambiguity was not discovered by Freud. The Viennese doctor merely reinvented the Edenic wheel by restating this psychological ambivalence in his theory of the eros (life) and death drives--like it was some novel idea. This moral duplicity is also found in the Hebrew God who sent a flood to obliterate the earth that he so delicately created; and again by destroying the beautifully constructed Tower of Babel built by the very humans he created to have dominion over the earth. 

The biblical human is a delightful contradiction, intentionally. The two sides are represented in Carl Jung and James Hillman; Jungian and post-Jungian, wholeness and fragmentation.

The role of humor in soul-making

Humor always pokes fun at that which is elevated or forbidden--opposite ends of the psycho-social poles. The word "poke" is important here, since the bubble of the developing self is always in need of being poked, in need of deflation prior to re-inflation, in need of being pushed outward or of being burst asunder. Humor is a universal psychological function native to the psyche, reshaping the soul's boundaries by either pushing the gaunt soul outward, beyond it's comfortable boundaries, or alternately, bursting the rind of the inflated pompous ego so 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. Humor is a chief form of soul-making.

Why Does Shit Happen?: Addiction and Power Are Not the Ultimate "Problems"

A good friend sent me this Youtube TEDS talk titled The Power of Addiction and the Addiction of Power by the psychologist Gabor Mate. Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cYcSak6nE

She asked my honest response to his talk, and that response can be found in the blog below.

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I Mate' jumps into the middle of the problem without asking, "Why are there Problems or pathologies in the first place?". In my opinion, Mate' does not ask the more fundamental questions about Power, Addiction, Emptiness, Parental Neglect, Stress, etc.. He assumes these basic experiences of the human situation are "bad" and then launches off in a Freudian (positivistic) manner to fix them after blaming mostly parental, governmental and other social failures. I understand this approach and clearly such external causes must be taken seriously and may result in horrific social and psychological results. I am not denying what he is saying insofar as it goes, but he begins in the middle rather than at the ontological beginning.

I want to hear our thinkers ask more fundamental questions: Why is there the phenomenon of emptiness? Why is there the craving for fulfillment? Why do we come into this world yearning for mama's nipple and daddy's approval? Why do finite humans crave and seek unbounded Power, Pleasure, and Recognition? These are the three major human needs addressed in the "tests" of Jesus and Buddha--each of the teachers providing a different solution.

A positivist assumes that these pathological phenomena of consciousness arose from a Big Bang which radiated outward for 350,000 years, then forming atoms, then molecules and eventually chemical compounds which through the interaction of gravity and dark energy formed galaxy clusters filled with 2,000 billion billion stars--and at least one star with a planet we call earth which evolved an elaborate ecosystem and life as we know it. In other words, for the positivist, human consciousness entered at the end of the evolutionary trajectory rather than the beginning. This is a huge difference. If human consciousness (with the accompanying pathological experiences of emptiness, power, addiction, violence, depression, the Seven Deadly Sins,  et al) arose via the unmediated chaotic and chance "mashing" of inanimate matter--then he is on the only track left to us. He, like the Buddhist, assumes we have no ontological explanation for suffering; we must simply recognize it and try our best to solve it. If he is right, then yes, we need to empirically analyze society, mom, dad, brother, my boss, Napoleon, the patriarchy, Bush, Obama, etc. for the "original" causes (sins) of harmful behaviors and find external solutions to these meaningless pathologizings. It is up to us to simply see the horror, and to invent and implement humanly devised systems of better parenting, better politics, liberation movements and better pharmaceuticals to be ingested into our screwed up neural systems, etc. 

 But, but-----if Animated Consciousness (mundusimaginalis) actually exists, and in some curious and creative fashion interacts with and even drives this cosmic bio-psychological process--it behooves us to ask, "What larger Purpose(s) do our experiences of emptiness, alienation, power, addiction, violence, stresses, terror, bad parenting, and oppressive governments, and all of our pathologizings serve?". 

Gabor Mate' doesn't begin where I begin, asking, "What normal, necessary and purposeful roles do chaos, disintegration and pathologizings play in the development of human consciousness (and what I call "soul" or "soul-making")?" The same question may be asked and answered at the cosmological level, "What normal, necessary, and purposeful role did the countless icy comets play by violently smashing into the arid molten earth hundreds of millions of years ago?" We are pretty sure that such violent chaotic (pathologizing) periods occurred purposively, in order to provide water and eventuate in a "sustainable" ecosysyem of interconnected organisms. That is what I believe, and what I think. Mate' provides some great provisional solutions on the journey to a more thorough solution, but does not address the larger issues of why such phenomena are here in the first place, and what necessary role they might play. That is why I turn to depth psychology, world mythologies, religion and theological studies. These four distinct disciplines are not synonymous, but they all have in common an ontological basis of reality that goes beyond mere human rationality and sensory data.

Also, part of what I heard in Mate' is an approach to problems that Western culture has been "addicted" to for the past 2,000 years, in both religion and secularism. Both tend to blame the past: Adam and Eve, Karma, my parents, American Imperialism, the Tea Party Republicans, the Progressive Socialist Democrats, the oppressive Patriarchy, the fanatical Feminist Movement, etc., etc., etc. Where does the regression of blame stop? Freudians and Marxists have simply re-invented the secular version of Augustinian "original sin", locating all problems in the human being--either in the "I" or someone(s) who did it to me. At least the religionists rely on a Power greater than the human ego to help with a solution--going outside of the positivist model of reality. Simple logic ought to cause us to ask, "How far back do we go in this methodological scapegoating?" Ironically, many Westerners who have rejected Augustinian original sin have adopted Eastern Karma. That is no solution. I must ask, "Why Karma?" Those who respond, "Well, because we have free will," and I ask, "Why do we have free will?"
I am always frustrated by the postponing approaches of the historical regressionists who just keep moving the problem back in history as if there was no original reason for such problems coming into existence. Someone needs to say, "Look, pathological occurrences play a huge and purposive role in this drama of existence--cosmic and psychological disintegrations are normal, necessary and meaningful. Please stop blaming yourself and your ancestors and recognize the nature of this Cosmos--SHIT HAPPENS." The bigger question that needs to be addressed is this: "Does shit happen purposefully or by random meaningless chance?" And yes, I understand that this position is fraught with horrific implications--my son was slaughtered in Afghanistan and I nearly died twice (that I know of) from alcohol addiction. 

Mate' simply assumes that power and addiction are bad; that Alexander the Great Napoleon became a despot because he was short, and that children cry excessively because their mother's are stressed over socio-political circumstances, etc. Yes, these are actual issues to be taken seriously at the micro level of psyche, but they ultimately solve very little, in my opinion. Many of these secondary solutions remind me of the guy who continually takes aspirins after he touches a hot appliance every day. For that guy there are larger lessons to be learned than how to take an aspirin while blaming the iron or the electric company for channeling injurious energy into his home.

Bottom line, as I see it: Mate's assessments and solutions, and those of others in this blame-happy culture, provide secondary causes and solutions. Are they necessary, accurate and useful causes and solutions? Yes, absolutely. Are they causes and solutions to be minimized, ignored or eliminated? No. But they are addressing symptoms rather than the larger Cosmic and Psychological Patterns behind what I believe to be a telic universe. Such assessments clearly provide some much needed temporary solutions, but will never ultimately help the addict or suffering person fit his/her pathologizings into a larger more purposeful schemata. 

A psychologist who worked with veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan once said to me, "I have renamed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to Purposeless Traumatic Stress Disorder. Once the vet can see the role of his/her pathologies as part of a larger psycho-cosmic tapestry, many of the symptoms disappear, and the others can be weaved into his/her life story as part of his/her narrative with a plot, destiny and vocation." Hopeful thinking? The positivist would say yes. But to that positivist I would reply, "How is a therapy of victimization empowering anyone?" The man or woman who cannot locate a higher meaning in his/her suffering is at a severe disadvantage in making sense of this life.

ADDICTION, ASTRONOMY AND SOUL-MAKING: The Mysterious Role of Dark Matter

Astronomy Professor Dr. Mark Whittle of the U. of Virginia, in a lecture from the Teaching Company titled “Cosmic Acceleration—Falling Outward,” says: “Most importantly, you should understand why dark matter makes the Universe fall outward and accelerate…An important part of this account is still missing! When a sphere of vacuum expands, we’ve made more vacuum, which has mass-energy. Where does that energy come from? The gravitational energy liberated by falling outward creates this new vacuum—it creates the very space into which the Universe is falling! This is a truly remarkable mechanism. The same mechanism is also thought to drive the inflationary launch of our Universe: A very dense vacuum rapidly ‘fell outward,’ making more and more of itself, and this ultimately made our Universe.”

In other words, Dark Energy counteracts gravity. Rather than gravity pushing all of the billions of galaxies together into one unified clump, Dark Energy seems to be pushing them apart while at the same time creating new space and propelling them outward.

In 1917 Einstein introduced the “cosmological constant" which posited a long-range repulsive force that balanced matter’s attractive force” (Cosmology: The History and Nature of the Universe, Professor Mark Whittle)

At the bare minimum, biologically, that means that each of us is living in a harmonic balance between “falling outward” (dark energy) and being pushed downward (gravity)—a mysterious attraction and repulsion occurring simultaneously in order to create new space and orderly worlds! This is the image in Genesis 1 as the Spirit hovers over (presses downward) the expanding oceanic chaos, and other push-pull cosmic egg stories (see Humpty Dumpty).

If we can apply this to consciousness or psycho-spiritual development, then each personality, family unit, and national collective experiences a kind of necessary and normal “psychological or social constant” that simultaneously puts us together and pulls us apart. I have yet to meet a human or study a culture that does not know this experience, although I have met many who do not see it as necessary, normal and inevitable. We live in a time that is deliciously and maliciously obsessed with peace, equality, security, certainty and utopian ideals for all. Perhaps that is the goal on this earth--but I seriously doubt it. The cosmic/psychic design seems to require the isometrics of opposites (the tree of good and evil) and a "fall" outward from the center (symbolized in Eden and Pandora's Box).

Perhaps “addictions” are the psychological correspondent to cosmic “dark matter/energy”. Perhaps my alcoholism, and every other pathology and "disorder" is a dark/unconscious psychic energy that forces us outward into periods of disintegration in order to create new psychic space for the making of more consciousness or soul--the generation of countless new character traits in a lifetime. Perhaps when Genesis says, "In the beginning...God spoke...and there was........" is the first act of ad-diction--a "speaking toward". And from that primordial beginning, existence has been one addiction after the other, pushing us outward into new psychic space via disassembling and reassembling--dark energy and gravity.

The word addiction itself is fun to play with: Ad = toward; diction = to speak. Addiction is "speaking toward," implying that a dynamic word or idea is living and speaking in and through the addictive substance/person/situation. The word or voice of a god/dess is in the addictive process, just as the paradoxical healing was in the brass serpent in Numbers 21--the very snakes that were toxic contain the healing solution (salvation). Jesus (John's Gospel) used this very image of the serpent being raised up to portray his own "healing" crucifixion (John 3:14-15).  Eternal Life, aka God Life, is to be found in the poisonous venom, the horrific slaughter, the toxic disintegration on the cross--what Paul calls the "foolishness of the cross". That our healing is in the pathologized experience is still mocked by the "wise" pharmaceutical and political philosophers of this world (I Cor. 1:18-31). Perhaps our government needs a Dept. of Pathologizing. Then when idiotic and deadly choices are made by high ranking officials (invasion of Iran, Benghazi neglect and cover up), there is a place to deal with and learn from them.

A universe without the necessary phenomenon of "falling outward" connected to dark (unconscious) energy would result in a compressed little speck of unformed and undivided (non individuated) matter. The same is true of the human soul. Our individuation is the direct result of falling apart and being put back together again and again.
Every time my addiction appears, it is “speaking toward” my individual expansion--edging the nascent self/Self toward completion. Every time I ignore the symbolic voice (diction) and submit to the literal substitute (alcohol) in order to experience some surrogate expansion, I simply postpone the inevitable trajectory of my own soul-making course. The unveiling of the new self is located in the object of our addiction. My current state/State of consciousness (individually or collectively) will fixate on either external States (including Statist philosophies in general), or internal states.

As mentioned earlier, the “foolishness of the cross” Paul speaks about seems to point to this idea: that it is in and through our suffering that God (new consciousness or new birth) arrives. Many have understood this to mean that it is meritorious simply to suffer! No! I think Paul means that our suffering (including our addictions) contains merit because each moment of discomfort and pain is the ovum of our evolving personality. Just as Jesus' suffering preceded the resurrection to new life, so do our own times of suffering (addiction) precede a new chapter in life. Each addiction is the potential struggling sperm cell seeking to locate and unite with the egg of our personal calling and next stage of destiny. When the addictive fall outward of the anguished soul and the gravitational force of Holy spirit are working together, something new emerges.

This may help us to understand the idea of Christ's shed “blood” which is so emphasized by the Bible and Christian theology. One can either dismiss this image of shed blood, or try to understand why it has been so powerful for countless millions throughout history. "Shed" or spilled blood is a metaphor for  the “falling outward” of life--the end of a life which contains the seeds (DNA) of a new life. The Islamic Koran says, "In the name of your Lord and Cherisher, who created--created man, out of a mere clot of congealed blood..." (Sura 96:1-2). The Hebrew Bible says, "The life is in the blood," and the sacrifice of blood is the means for atonement and a new beginning. Nearly every ancient and many modern religions shed blood in some life giving and life making ritual, literally or symbolically. Some see the modern phenomena of piercings and tattoos as a new form of blood sacrifice to the gods of Beauty as a means to a new self image: "Modern Day Blood Sacrifice" by Drew Lawrence. Clearly a piercing or tattoo symbolizes a new phase or experience in one's life. Bloody tattoos and piercings typically come with the arrival of a new stage in life, or because of some life changing event. The new "life is in the blood." The shedding of blood corresponds psychologically with the "falling outward" of the dark energy of cosmological physics. Dark Matter's strange fall outward corresponds with death and disintegration prior to new life and reintegration. Christ's "shed blood" captures this idea, and for many affects the psyche in a an experience of disintegrating the old life in order to, in Paul's words, "put on the new self" (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10).

MENTAL HEALTH AND THE FAIRNESS FALLACY: RE-VISITING THE CUCKOOS NEST

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the emerging field of global mental health has defined mental health as "the area of study, research and practice that places a priority on improving mental health and achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide" (Patel, V., Prince, M. JAMA, 303, 1976-1977).

Not only do I find it troubling that a group of professionals are trying to define mental health globally, but that they are also placing a priority on "achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide". On the surface this appears to be a compassionate and well intended goal, but when we read between the lines, we find a potential Orwellian nightmare lurking in the shadows. Link this group's work with nationalized, and then internationalized "health care," and you have a professional/political power structure that not only defines who is mentally "healthy," but then has the power to enforce "equity" on the global community. If we give people like Mayor Bloomberg the executive power to tell us how much sugar we can ingest into our bodies to remain physically "healthy," it is not a big leap to imagine a psychiatric group appointed by a "governing body" that defines what ideas and emotions we can ingest and express. This idea ought to be terrifying to all political parties in favor of liberty and individualism.

Many of us maintain that there is not a one to one correspondence between physical and psychological systems. Human consciousness is much more than the neuro-chemical interactions in the brain. Those seeking psychological "equity" often view the brain as one might view a car engine or computer hard drive, assuming universal normative mental and emotional functions which can be measured and repaired by trained technicians. This "psychological positivism" would then set the standards of mental normalcy and "equity," tweaking the "abnormal" brain as they would a computer to make it operate according to the technical global standards of wellbeing. This is already being done to a large extent by the multi-billion dollar a year pharmaceutical companies selling drugs that create "equity" in the brains of children and adults

Those who have rightly condemned the religionists for past practices of zombie-like indoctrination, Inquisitions and witch hunts had better wake up to the fact that we are moving in a similar direction, but on a global scale! Emotional global equity? Really? We are not machines, and human consciousness is not synonymous with the physical brain box. Systems Theory has made it clear that much trouble arises when we try to transfer the ideas of one system onto another. For example, most of us would not want a car mechanic doing brain surgery on us, nor would we want a brain surgeon repairing our car. Both brains and cars are composed of atoms and molecules, using the positivist model, but the way those systems operate are entirely different, requiring different standards of equity and approaches to the way they function. The same is true of physical "health" and mental "health".

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[i] JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association, is a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association.

Soul-making Therapy vs. Tradtional Therapy

Put simply, the difference between soul-making therapy and traditional therapy is that soul-making therapy is about becoming emotionally and psychologically literate, traditional therapy is about healing the sick psyche. The soul-making therapist is not a doctor or healer, as in so many modern therapies. The role of the soul-making therapist/counselor is to teach one the alphabet and emotional skills so the individual can see how soul is being made in every feeling, thought, attitude, encounter and action--including sleep. That does not mean obsessive attention to every little detail in life, but rather the ability to know when an event is significant and how to read and respond to it. Soul-making therapy ought not be costly. The costly approach is the traditional therapy that makes one dependent on the therapist-as-healer/messiah. Soul-making aims at freeing you from all “professionals,” and is actually very liberating, even libertarian.

Also, a soul-making approach is about immediate action. Most traditional therapies employ an endless routine of digging up the past and gathering information for the future. Even if the action is "wrong," it is always instructive, activating the next level of consciousness awaiting the choice and deed, or misdeed. It is actually very simple. Everyone, at every moment is making soul. Most just don't know it and have not been taught to participate with it. One cannot, NOT, make soul--one can only be aware or not aware of the process--and be literate or illiterate about reading the sea of symbols in which we constantly swim.

The paradox about soul-making is that the very psyche that is confused and lost is also compelling you to seek. Just as a seed simultaneously breaks apart in the soil, and sinks roots down into the darkness as necessary steps toward unfolding the plant—so the soul must disintegrate as it reintegrates. Both occur simultaneously and are typically indistinguishable, especially in the early phases. This means there is no way to do it wrong. But as humans, we may minimize the suffering by acquiring a literacy of ideas that allow us to assimilate the insights that swarm around inside of us every minute. There will always be some amount of pain in soul-making, but ignorance increases and exacerbates the pain.

Again, this is put simply, but we must begin somewhere.

FOR THOSE WHO DON'T LIKE THE WORD "GOD", TRY "GODDING"

Words are wonderful. They allow us to know and experience so much more than we could without them. However, like plucked fruit or flowers, words nearly always go bad. That is the case with the word "God" for some in our modern world. A few of us have lost the ability to believe in or trust a particular religious depiction of God, yet we have not lost a sense of the Presence of “something” divine. We could say that we still enjoy the celestial flowers and fruit, but not after they have gone bad in the religious container.

In C.S. Lewis' book, Till We Have Faces, the protagonist named Orual comes into a temple and sees a newly completed statue of a beautiful young goddess. The priest informs Orual that the marble image represents a woman who "has only just begun to be a goddess. For you must know that, like many other gods, she began by being a mortal". Orual asks him, "And how was she godded?" The priest then tells the story of how a mortal was "godded".

I like Lewis' word, "godded". It implies the result or end of a process which we might call "godding". I find myself these days, when asked if I believe in God, saying that I trust in "godding". I then go on to explain that I view every internal and external life experience to be part of the "godding" process--of making each of us immortal, of being made into the image and likeness of God. I see "God" as a verb, a dynamic process of movement--a sacred wind (Holy Spirit) blowing across the landscape of my soul sculpting the topography from mortality to immortality, from a generic human to a unique personality.

Many do not know that all of the deities in human history began as verbs, or by godding: Zeus as thundering. Aphrodite as beautifying. Vishnu as rescuing. Kali as destroying. YAHWH as being. Satan as opposing. Allah as qu'raning (reciting). And so on. I am here imaginaing the Gods as verbs, active participants in the human soul-making endeavor. This earth is the realm of godding, with an aim toward making each human godded or god-like. That is the purpose of this planet.

I also like that Lewis' priest tells Orual "the story" of the young woman's godding process, of "how a mortal was godded" over many years of lived experience. In the New Testament Paul writes that “We are becoming God’s masterpiece...a letter written to be read by others...” The word “masterpiece” is translated from the Greek word poiema, the origin of our word for “poem.” Great poetic and artistic masterpieces are created line by line and stroke upon stroke via a skilled artisan over time. John Keats calls Lewis' "godding" process, soul-making. The Apostle Peter says the purpose of this godding process is that we "may participate in the divine nature by escaping the decay caused by selfishness" (II Peter 1:4). The godding process turns human mortality into immortality, finitude into infinity.

But how does one have faith in “something” like this? What do we call it? How do we trust it? How do we address it? Answer: As a verb. Or rather, we perceive God as divine action in every moment. The “Word” is not the audio or visual symbol, but the archetypal “___ing” -- the process, the actor, the agent of “____ing”. I can no longer merely intellectually believe or trust in “god,” but in Godding. 

Try ceasing to view God as a noun, or name. All nouns are frozen verbs, captured actions. Just as we are human “be-ings”, so to the divine is divine “be-ing”--action, process, an active Presence Who is not merely present, but presencing behind and through all that is present. Now there is a metaphysical mouthful, or maybe New Age mumbo jumbo--but you get the point. Divinity is a verb. With Lewis, I call it Godding.

Our current myth of the Big Bang may be the result of Godding. All movement is Godding--cosmic, psychological, relational, emotional, political, historical, scientific, etc. Each human is a kind of mini version of the Big Bang occurring in his/her psyche. Each soul is in the process of inventing, birthing, adventing, mating, hunting, eating, digesting, defecating, warring, thinking, feeling, willing, building, creating, living, dying, rebirthing, resurrecting. 

My primary religion then is “ingism” – or what I choose to call soul-making, psycho-poeisis, or what the Eastern Orthodox Church calls theois, the art or skill of godding. Each of us, like the deity in C.S. Lewis' story is in the process of godding with the aim of being godded, or made into a immortal be-ing.

Let me further suggest that Godding is not the same as "unicorning" or belief in unicorns. The human experience of Godding arises from an innate human compulsion--unicorning does not. Unicorning is recognized as a fantasy constructed from the realities of horses and horns, but the existence of such a creature is known to be a fairy tale. Godding is not in the same category. Just as beautying, justicing, truthing, loving, etc. exist a priori, so is the ubiquitous human compulsion toward Godding. Transcendent qualities like Beauty and Justice are ontological entities--as real and common as grass and rocks—that is why they cannot be willed away or forgotten. Justice or fairness is a good example: Crowd in front of a man in a supermarket line and he will be compelled to justicing. Truth is another: Lie to a woman about something personal to her and she will be compelled to truthing. Tell that man or woman that there are unicorns or tooth fairies, and they will think you teasing or insane. Unicorns and tooth fairies are not in human consciousness like truth, beauty, justice and godding. That is why atheists are so obsessed with un-godding--just as a criminal is obsessed with wiping out justice. These eternal, archetypal entities may be annoying, but they are not made up by the human mind.

I see godding not as metaphysics, but middle-physics—the link between physics and metaphysics—the link between nature and cultural religion. 

Godding is what compels humans in every culture to find Gods or ultimate authorities, religions, rituals, stories and other “sacred” phenomena. But Godding is different than God. To speak of God is like taking a photograph of Godding, freezing an isolated frame of the dynamic movement Itself/Herself/Himself. 

Godding is the divine equivalent of William James observation that human thought is a "stream of consciousness," always moving; Heraclitus' flowing river into which no one can step twice, always re-positioning.

Our modern world is transitioning into something not yet known--a new kind of godding. Of course many of the old frozen religious nouns and plucked religious flowers are still vibrant and thriving for many people—and will continue to be so for some time. But for those who can no longer trust or believe in a particular "God"--you might want to say you believe in "godding".

What is Soul-making Counseling?

https://www.michaelbogar.com/

A Soul-making therapeutic approach is not like typical psychotherapy which most often views the client as mentally or emotionally sick and in need of a "cure" or "restoration to normalcy". This is obviously a valid and beneficial approach. Soul-making on the other hand does not view emotional disturbances as automatically stemming from an illness, but rather as normal and necessary internal birth pangs indicating the imminent emergence of a new personality.

Soul-making does not focus on restoration but rather on regeneration. Psychotherapy seeks to go back to a prior "healthy" condition while Soul-making therapy seeks to move ahead toward a more complete self.

The goal of Soul-making therapy is not to fix, cure or change your problematic emotions, but to work with them as the containers and carriers of a new aspect of self that wants to be born. In order to do this one must become emotionally literate--to learn a new psychological alphabet that is seldom taught in this culture, enabling one to read and converse with the troubling emotions. We are not dealing with a sick brain but with a living psyche. While there are clearly times that the brain is organically damaged and in need of curative restoration, that is not our approach. We work with a wise psyche that has purpose in our fears, anxieties, failures and depressions.  

Part of what Soul-making therapy does is to set reassess the word "normal". You are not a statistic, nor are you meant to be "like" anybody else, in spite of what some psychotherapists, self help teachers, politicians and ministers might say. Soul sees all emotions as normal and necessary, especially in the midst of our messes. The soul speaks to us through our dysfunctions, addictions and disorders.

Often the intention of these disturbing emotions is to slow one down long enough to reflect deeply in order to go deeper, to wander through tangled experiences thoughtfully and meaningfully rather than unconsciously sprinting to the finish line of health and success. Soul is not primarily concerned about security, certainty or how much money you make, yet ironically people who cultivate their souls are often more likely to become more secure and successful in everything they do.

I always suggest that people continue their other therapeutic and spiritual programs which aim at bottom line results. Soul-making therapy is not meant to replace other therapies or spiritual practices. There is room for all.

Finally, I highly recommend two books: The first is by James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, and the other is a book by James Hillman, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling. These books will assist the reader in becoming emotionally literate, moving him/her toward the experience of seeing and doing life differently.

This is my approach. It is not for everyone. If interested, click on this link: https://www.michaelbogar.com/services

I look forward to your call.

206-459-4474

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.

Occupy Wall Street and Soul-making

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.

Occupy Wall Street and Puer Aeternus

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

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

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE CONFUSED AND JUDGMENTAL

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

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

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.