Praying to an Empty Chair: Your Imagination Does Not Belong to You

MOTHER'S EMPTY CHAIR

A dying woman's daughter had asked the local minister to come and pray with her mother. When the minister arrived, he found the woman lying in bed with her head propped up on two pillows. An empty chair sat ready beside her bed. The chair made the minister think that the woman had been informed of the visit as he said, "I see you were expecting me."

"No, who are you?" said the mother.

The minister told her his name and then remarked, "I saw the empty chair and I figured you knew I was coming."

"Oh yeah, the chair," said the bedridden woman. "Would you mind closing the door?"

Puzzled, the clergyman shut the door and sat down.

The woman spoke, "I have never told anyone this, not even my daughter. All of my life I have never known how to pray. At church I used to hear the pastor preach about prayer, but it went right over my head. It sounded so complicated that I never tried it much, until one day four years ago."

"What happened?" asked the minister.

She continued, "My best friend said to me, 'Betty, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus. Here is what I suggest. Sit down in a chair; place an empty chair in front of you, and imagine Jesus sitting in the chair. Then just speak to him in the same way you're doing with me right now."

"And did you try that?" asked the minister.

"Yes I did," she said, "and I've liked it so much that I started doing it a couple of hours every day. I'm careful though. If my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair, she'd have me in asylum for lunatics. She's college educated."

The minister was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the woman to continue talking to Jesus in the chair. Then he prayed with her, anointed her with oil, and returned to the church. Two nights later the daughter called to tell the minister that her mother had died that afternoon. "Did she die in peace?" he asked.

"Yes," the daughter answered, "when I left the house about two o'clock, she called me over to her bedside, told me she loved me and kissed me on the cheek. When I got back from the store an hour later, I found her. But there was something very odd about her death. Apparently, just before Mother died, she leaned over and rested her head on the chair beside the bed. What do you make of that?"

The minister's eyes welled with tears and he said, "Mysterious, isn't it?"

THE IMAGINAL REALM VERSUS HUMAN imagination

Many moderns might find this story quaint. Condescendingly, they may grant that such tales can be quite soothing to the uneducated, usually from the Red states. They will tell you that the human brain has evolved in order to conjure up all sorts of illusory fantasies to help the dying. I personally find that theory odd since the less evolved animals, which seem to have evolved no sense of immortality, have a much easier time accepting death and dying. That theory seems to be another example of unquestioned faith in 'science'.

Nevertheless, we moderns assume an anthropocentric point of view of the imagination. We are told that the human brain creates all thoughts and images from neural connections. We are the sole thinkers and our brains are the solitary image factories. That poor deluded, hallucinating and dying woman in the above story saw nothing more than a humanly fabricated image made of nothing substantial or 'real'. It was all in her imagination.

WHAT IS 'THE IMAGINATION?'

Yes, it was in the imagination, but what is 'the imagination?' Let's not just accept the assumed modern dogma that imagination originates in the human brain. Perhaps the human imagination arises from the pre-human Imaginal Realm. The Imaginal Realm precedes and fuels all images which we assume that the human brain originates. It seems more accurate to theorize that the human brain badly mimics the Imaginal Realm. Human beings may mentally construct unicorns, tooth fairies and fire breathing dragons through imagination, but such images are created from bits and pieces that exist in the Imaginal Realm.

Santa Claus, Hobbits and Mermaids are not just invented by the human brain, but rather they are also discovered, or formed because they are made of 'stuff' from the Imaginal Realm that is very Real. One might as well say that Mozart invented musical notes, or that Einstein originated mathematics. The human imagination did not invent or originate the Imaginal any more than Mozart invented D minor or Einstein created E=MC2. These were discovered, not invented. The reason literary images from Gilgamesh to Homer and from Genesis to The Sopranos always and everywhere contain the same basic stories or 'notes' is that they were discovered, not just invented. Authors and artists may arrange the pieces, but they did not create them from scratch. These three areas, math, music and myth arise from a Realm that precedes and will outlast human brains and bodies. The basic elements of each of these three (numbers, notes and stories) preceded human form and will continue after this planet becomes a sunless lump of rock and dust.

SOME IMAGES ARE MORE REAL

And of course some imaginary humanly discovered creations will be closer than others to the Original Images from the Imaginal Realm. Let's suppose a random group of people was placed in a room with a Rembrandt painting and asked to copy it to the best of their individual abilities. The results might range from comedic to some of the facsimiles being quite good. That is the relationship of the Imaginal Realm to the human imagination Some humanly discovered and concocted images are quite accurate representations - we call these Laws or Classics - but none is the Real Archetype or Original Pattern.

WHY RELIGION WORKS AND ALWAYS WILL

Many have attempted to declare religion dead or dying. But all around us we see religion not only alive and well, but thriving and morphing into new forms. They might as well try to eliminate math and music, which some despotic regimes have actually tried to accomplish. Mythologies, prayer and rituals show up in every human culture because the Imaginal Realm bubbles up from within and below the surface of human consciousness. We moderns call it 'the arts,' as though we invented it, even pontificating on why the Egyptians and other primitives did what they did. My sense is that those primitives knew more about 'art' than we will even begin to know.

In the Imaginal Realm, Jesus actually sits in chairs and carries on conversations - perceived by an organ little known, yet intuited, by many modern westerners. This Realm is neither literal nor hallucinatory, it transcends liberal skepticism and conservative dogma; it is a third Realm between fact and fiction. One fellow has called it 'faction.'

In this Realm, people saw and still see the resurrected Christ. In this Realm, the dying woman of our story placed her head in the lap of Jesus. Pull up a chair, try it, you might be surprised. Just don't tell your daughter.

CREDULITY

What is this fire in me that rises,
compels me to climb
like a rebel against gravity?

…and that incessant down draft
pressing me back to earth
like a rebel against ascension?

Sweet angel,
I am crushed by a holy contradiction
pinching me between the palms of paradox.

Perhaps I am meant to squirt through some seam
yet unseen. Do I have the eye to see that crevice?
Give me vision, and courage.

I admit the unorthodox,
I release the assumed alternatives
and surrender to the option
of having neither to climb nor crash.

I am cared for in hell
or, choose to believe I am.

end/Michael 7/8/2008

SHE AWAITS ME

She awaits me,
she is the flower beneath the hedge
unseen by the strolling dilettantes.

Her bloom is not yet glazed,
still wrapped in raven silence,
waiting for me to lift the shrubbery
and bathe her virgin petals
in the wild, gorgeous moon.

end/Michael 7/8/2008

Interviews from Beyond the Grave: Kurt Cobain and Norman Vincent Peale

Interviews from Beyond the Grave

brought to you by

The Academy of the Dead

Michael: Today from the Imaginal Realm, we have two guests, rock musician Kurt Cobain and positive thinking guru, Norman Vincent Peale. It seems this unlikely duo has teamed up to sell their new book, Change is Not a Virtue, being hailed on Earth II as the best book since Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s, Holy Crap, Was I Ever Wrong. I’d like to welcome you both to our program.

Peale and Cobain in unison: Thank you.

Michael: Let’s begin with Doctor Norman Vincent Peale. You say in the preface of your new book that you regret writing all of those other books on self help and positive thinking. Why?

Norman Vincent Peale: I don’t regret writing everything I wrote. There were helpful ideas in all of them, but they focused too much on self.

Michael: Your new book seems to question the importance of change. Don't we need to change?

Norman Vincent Peale: It doesn’t question the importance of change, just the role and purpose of change. Transience and transformation are part of life. All things blossom and dissolve within the flow of time. But change for change-sake is not a virtue. Sometimes, the desire for change is a symptom of avoidance, a ploy to go unconscious and avoid my restless self.

Michael: But we are all excited about a presidential candidate who believes in change.

Norman Vincent Peale: It seems to me that the current political obsession to ‘believe in change’ may be a symptom that you are becoming a nation of addicts.

Michael: That’s a controversial statement, meaning?

Norman Vincent Peale: After you are dead, nothing is controversial, just clearer. I’m going to let my co-author, Mr. Kurt Cobain, address this; it is his area of expertise.

Kurt Cobain: The word 'addict' comes from two Latin words meaning 'to speak toward.' The addict is always speaking toward, or affirming whatever helps him/her avoid pain and discomfort. When I was with the band Nirvana, even after getting rich and famous, I lived for change; I couldn’t sit still. I hated the way I felt and wanted to change it. Sadly, people stereotype addicts as those abusing drugs and alcohol. Look at how people on Earth I are living in chronic state of trying to change everything!

• Change the TV channel – channel surfing
• Change the music – songs must be no more than 3 minutes long
• Change my wardrobe – shopping for more, something new
• Change of scenery – traveling
• Change of diet - eating
• Change my physical appearance
• Change relationships – serial monogamy – sexual conquests – falling in love again
• Change my car
• Google, google, google
• Change video games
• Change my career – moving up the ladder
• Change my bank account and investment portfolio
• Change sinners to saints
• Change conservatives to liberals
• Change liberals to conservatives
• Convert people to my religion
• Change people’s minds by criticizing and arguing
• Rearrange my furniture
• Rearrange my garden
• Buy more art
• Take more classes, read more books
• See new movies
• Gather and hoard more, look at it, count it
• Change my electronic gadgets for newer ones

Michael: Doctor Peale, you were known for Positive Thinking. Kurt’s evaluation is pretty negative.

Norman Vincent Peale: None of these activities is bad. They can be very healthy and beneficial. But when done to fill the empty hole in a self centered soul, they become pathways to mental and physical disease - insanity, heart attacks, depression, joint pain, anxiety, cancer or suicide. Fortunately, self obsession is a recognized disease here on Earth II, in fact, the Mother of all diseases. But it is treatable.

Michael: When you speak of Earth I and Earth II, what do you mean?

Norman Vincent Peale: Earth I is what humans call 'Earth.' It is where we began as baby soul seeds, as little nascent egos; a sort of psycho-spiritual kindergarten (child garden). Except for a few rare exceptions, most of our Earth I ancestors spent their days in survival mode, gathering food and preparing shelter, taking care of crops, animals, children and each other. That went on for hundreds of thousands of years. Then a shift took place around 600 BC, people became more self conscious and began to develop much more quickly over the next two thousand years. Lots of new ideas and inventions popped up.

Michael: So Earth I is where you lived before you died and came here to Earth II?

Norman Vincent Peale: Yes, and on Earth I, another shift took place when Jesus’ teachings about universal compassion and equality caught on. A new world slowly evolved, initiating the gradual abolition of Greco-Roman slavery, capricious Paganism, and the rigid class distinctions. Countless monasteries were founded, inventing humane labor saving technologies, capitalistic economics and universities which studied the nature of God and His logical universe. Over a period of about 1,500 years those ideas and actions flowered into what Earth I people called the Modern scientific era.

Michael: How was Jesus' God better than the Pagan or Eastern Gods?

Norman Vincent Peale: I never said 'better', just different. The Pagan Gods were unpredictable and their universe was beyond figuring out. These Pagan Gods were just to be experienced mystically, never understood, and their world was cyclical like the seasons - nothing could be changed. Jesus presented a God that was not only personal, but loving, logical and linear. His universe could be studied, laws found and progress made. The Pagan Gods had little concern for humans and would just as soon kill them as look at them. Jesus presented a God-image that loved the whole world and wanted them 'saved' from their errors and sins.

Michael: That contradicts most of western history which calls Christianity the 'Dark Ages.'

Norman Vincent Peale: Yeah, dogma comes in many forms, the Imaginal Realm allows more perspective. Anyway, with the advent of the modern world, suddenly people had lots of spare time since most of their basic needs were met through myriad labor saving devices. And they had more time to do what comes naturally, think about their selves and their natural desires. There was time to get bored and wonder. Days were no longer filled with the necessary requirements for staying alive, but with hundreds of options for gratifying physical and emotional longings. The longing greatly increased emotional pain as so many desires went unfulfilled. There was lots of time to compare and judge what they didn't have or were afraid of losing. The idle desiring human mind becomes a starving, omnivorous predator.

Michael: So, back to the book. When does change become bad?

Norman Vincent Peale: When change itself becomes the focus. Restless, desiring minds must be filled or constantly seeking. If something isn't 'working,' change is required. Change has become the number one aim of the modern world on Earth I - the focus of everything from advertising to religion. Many spend their evenings changing the channels on their televisions only to find some commercial telling them to change their hygiene practices or car insurance. They are always coming up with new words for change, like ‘make-over’ and ‘design’. Talk shows from Dr. Phil to Oprah draw millions daily who are bored and looking for change. The American Medical Association makes billions of dollars yearly by developing pharmaceuticals which promise people changes in emotional and mental conditions. Therapy and self help programs earn millions by teaching them how to change their relationships, jobs and most importantly, feelings! Religions promise them they will change their lives, and millions respond. And yes, of course some of these changes do improve our lives, but for how long? People often find themselves excited by the change, but a few minutes, hours or days later they are in search of the next change.

Kurt Cobain: I can speak from experience. I learned here on Earth II that my soul will never be content when focused solely upon me and my desires. I wish that were not true because my natural propensity is to focus on my empty and needy little self, even here on Earth II - the musical notes are clearer, women more gorgeous, food tastier, wine more intoxicating and money more plentiful. This place can be either Purgatory, Hell or Heaven depending on how clearly you see the problem and the solution. Whoever put these Earth-schools together knew exactly now much poverty and prosperity to place around the growing souls.

Michael: I recall C.S. Lewis writing a book about that called, The Great Divorce.

Kurt Cobain: But the irony is that the more I try to meet my needs through chronic change, the more needy I become. In other words, I seek the very thing that kills me. It is by chronically obsessing on how I can distract and divert myself that I create a larger hole to fill, an expanding sink hole which feeds on itself and can never be filled. On Earth I, the day I put the shotgun in my mouth, I had a wife, a new child, cars, new guitars, more money than I thought I would ever see – I was known and sought after on every continent, women adored me, men envied me. I had unlimited access to drugs and alcohol, and then it dawned on me - I had never been more empty and miserable. There was nothing on the planet that could make me happy.

Michael: So what have you learned here?

Kurt Cobain: I gradually came to see that at any given moment of the day I am seeking either self obsessive distractions, or ways to really serve others in making souls. The only time I am really, really content is when I am helping, or after I have helped, another human being without the expectation of a certain outcome or reward of any kind. Anyone who has been caught in a flood or other communal disaster knows the natural high that comes from being out of the self and into helping others in need.

Michael: I read that Bill Gates recently retired as the CEO of Microsoft in order to devote his efforts to philanthropic enterprises. He said that giving away what he has gained is more rewarding these days than making more.

Kurt Cobain: Smart guy.

Norman Vincent Peale: I am still a positive fellow, you know, so let me say that changes or 'distractions' can be very beneficial when we use them to refuel for the next round of service. Distractions and diversions are like roadside rest stops, places of respite, not the ultimate destination.

Michael: But there are a lot of very serving and loving people on Earth I.

Norman Vincent Peale: Of course! But be careful! Some of the most self obsessed people are those who think they are serving and loving others. They often do not see their own self obsession. They are public servants who are always bemoaning the problems of the world; they are the wives and mothers who are always complaining that their husbands and children do not appreciate them or cooperate; they are the men who work their fingers to the bone for their families and justify the little sexual affair on the side or the alcohol and drug abuse to help them unwind.

Michael: Can you give an example?

Norman Vincent Peale: In a remedial soul-making class last year, what the Catholics call Purgatory, I met a very self effacing and giving woman who boasted about her service to her family when she alive on Earth I. She had three children, a husband, a full time job and attended church every Sunday. She served as a community volunteer and attended every PTA meeting, took her kids to soccer practice after work, cooked dinner most nights and ran herself ragged until she dropped into bed at night, exhausted. Even in our class, most considered her a saint and the perfect wife, mother and citizen.

But as the weeks went on, most of her ‘sharing’ was about how no one recognized or appreciated just how much she gave. She spoke incessantly of her husband who never helped clean the house. She whined on and on about how the kids weren’t grateful for her superhuman dedication, how people at work took advantage of her kind heart, how her mother in law was too critical, how her friends were never there for her, and on and on and on she went. One night, after about her twentieth time saying, “No one ever appreciated me,” she went stone silent and turned a little more pale than usual, and whimpered, “me.” Then again, “me,” “me,” “me,” – I swear, for a moment her face looked cat-like. She slowly rose and moved over to an open couch and curled up, whispering, “me,” “me,” “me,” over and over. This may be the most insidious form of self obsession – selfless self obsession. There is no more pathetic disguise for self pity than when passed off as, 'see how good I am and how no one appreciates me.'

Kurt Cobain: These people are addicted to self obsessive change as well; they are hiding their selfish selves by hanging on crosses for people to see and pity them. They laud themselves for being such ‘good’ people. Yet many such people are no more content than the heroine addict seeking his next fix. They use martyrdom instead of a chemical to distract themselves from their selves. Their lives may not deteriorate as fast as the drug addict, but their emotional state is similar – restless, irritable and discontented, always in search of the next distracting whine session, complaint or subtle display of superiority.

Michael: But what about religious people? There are a lot of good servants of God on Earth I.

Norman Vincent Peale: I wonder. As a minister, I used to get calls from people seeking a new church – they’d tell me of all of the churches they had ‘sampled’ and where those churches fell short. These people were always seeking a change, desiring a place to be fed and made happier, wealthier, healthier and more abundant. They’d come to a church to be served or saved. But over the years I saw that such people were never content, and rarely found the health and wealth they thought the church ought to give them. They almost always left to find a better church to fill them up. I now see that they were religious addicts, often disguising their self-centered lives in a metaphysical or biblical ideology. I have been such, and still fall back into that mindset.

Michael: So you are saying it is better to give than to receive?

Norman Vincent Peale: Better? No, just more practical. It simply works to bring serenity and joy. Our book never tells people what they ‘have’ to do. It simply points out that self-obsession in any form never leaves one content or happy. Find what you have been given, and share it with others.

Kurt Cobain: This is important. We can give only what we have. It is not my responsibility to help those where I have no experience or means. But I can help others with the gifts, experiences, strengths and talents I have learned from living.

Michael: Let me see if I can summarize what I’ve heard: Change alone is not a virtue. The desire for change is sometimes just the self obsessive need for a new distraction, the addicts pursuit of escape from chronic desire and discontent. Be wary of those promising ‘change’ for change sake. If you are chronically discontent, frequently restless, obsessed with not being loved enough, not having the right partner or lacking in any area - consider reversing the order from self to other, of helping another human being without the expectation of a certain outcome or reward of any kind.

Norman Vincent Peale: Positively thoughtful summary.

Kurt Cobain: Yep, that is the way to Nirvana.

Michael: We have gone over our allotted time, so a heartfelt thanks to Doctor Norman Vincent Peale and Kurt Cobain. Their new book, Change is Not a Virtue can be purchased on Imaginazon.Com. Until our next interview, from Beyond the Grave, good night.

From the Medieval Rack to Medical Prozac

OBSESSED WITH WHOLENESS AND CONSISTENCY

Our monotheistic, monogamous, monopolistic, mono-psychological West does not typically like the heresy of anything poly (many). We will not tolerate polytheism, polygamy or polyamory. We focus on integration and wholeness. We emphasize law, order, consistency and integrity. We want complete equality between races, genders and religions. There is an unquestioned assumption that union is the supreme virtue. Even our professed love of multi-culturalism would have us wrongly believe that all humans and human organizations are basically the same. Unity, united, union and unification are the aims of this culture. Abraham Lincoln sacrificed the lives of over half a million men to keep these states united. G.W. Bush Jr. fancies himself a sort of modern Lincoln, using force to unite the world under American democracy.

We will not tolerate any loose ends or losers. Being number one is admired in sports and business, all the rest are second or worse. Any hint of non-cooperative dysfunction or fragmentation is immediately a disorder. You are a team player or a trouble maker. We consider insanity (not being whole) the worst fate to befall a human being. Marx’s Commun-ism was a secular and modernized version of Catholic Comm-union-ism – uniting all into one body. Anything bi-, poly-, schizoid or multiple is the modern scientific equivalent of old medieval heresy. We don't put our fragmented heretics on the rack to bring them around to religious unity, we put them on Prozac to make them socially and statistically 'normal'. Medical and Medieval are closely related etymologicaly and ideologically. Both are 'medi' words - the middle, transitioning from darkness and fragmentation to healing and wholeness. Both provide robed clergymen with the elements to fix all brokenness.

These are noble aspirations, but only part of the human condition.

The Chinese Tao Te Ching says, “If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial. If you want to be united, let yourself be fragmented.” (Poem 22)

Human fragmentations, ‘abnormalities’ and break downs are as necessary as human wholeness and integration. And we must avoid the subtle trap set by the psychology of the human potential movement which graciously ‘allows’ fragmentation as a secondary, inferior and mediatorial process, always trumped by and inferior to one’s ‘full potential,’ whatever the hell that is. Honestly, none of us reaches his or her ‘full’ potential, until he or she is emptied out completely. This is attested to by all spiritual teachers; we must give up ourselves in order to find them. To be a servant through selfless surrender is the way to serenity and contentment. This often comes by fragmentation and disorder. Show me a man or woman who is frantically seeking to be integrated, and I will show you a man or woman on the verge of a major catastrophe. Striving after such spiritual wholeness is admirable, but this one sided pursuit will always result in complementary action. This is a soul-making Universe, which is also a Poly-verse. We need the One and the Many. You might as well try to start a car without the negative pole on the battery, or light a home without the negative outlet. Empowerment and enlightenment, of necessity, include the negative and positive, both integration and fragmentation.

HITTING THE BOTTOM, HITTING THE TOP

This culture is very familiar with the phrase, ‘hitting the bottom,’ which refers to the addict who has sunken into the depths of his or her destructive habit, and is now ready to rise up to wholeness. But we need to recognize that there is also something called ‘hitting the top,’ the addict who has achieved so much success, abundance and notoriety that they are now ready to fall apart and crack up. Both are necessary for soul-making, or spiritual growth. We see it happen with celebrities all of the time, and many of us get some sort of vicarious satisfaction, just as we enjoy seeing the loser climb to the top. The Tao Te Ching says it like this:

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.
What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
you position is shaky. (Poem 13)

If we pay attention to our normal lives, we will find a curious pattern emerging. We enter into a crisis of some sort – something is threatened or taken away - a job, a precious relationship, health, or finances. We fall apart to some extent, worry, fear, obsess, cry, pray and focus our attention on the crisis. There is always a conscious or unconscious assumption in the midst of such times, “when this is resolved, I will finally be happy!” We really believe it. When this failure is resolved and ends successfully or just runs out of gas, we sense that life will finally be alright. Well, the crisis is resolved, in a hour or a decade, and there is a sigh of relief, serenity revives and relaxation reigns. What then happens? We always, either immediately or within a relatively short time, find another crisis, or a crisis finds us. It may be an old secondary crisis that we had shelved, or a new one that comes up. But another always arrives. Yes, there may be periods of absolute or relative calm - when life, love and circumstances are heavenly. All is well, God is good, and it is as it ought to be. Then....the next crisis. Until we see that these two poles are normal, necessary and endemic to the soul-making regimen, we will labor under the delusion that SOMEDAY, I will be crisis free! Wholeness will always be followed by fragmentation, and fragmentation by wholeness.

CAN WE EVER ACHIEVE CONSISTENT PEACE?

So does this mean we can have no lasting peace of mind? That depends on how we define peace. If by peace we mean no more crises, no, there will be no peace. But if by peace we mean that we can gradually learn that positive and negative events work in tandem to make souls, it is possible to experience joy and peace in any situation. But it is not easy. It will likely take years, if not lifetimes. Jesus encouraged his followers, people just like you and me, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." Notice, you will have trouble in this world, but take heart. Jesus does not sugar coat it or hint that it can be learned at a seminar or by watching Oprah. He had given up all of his possessions, prayed for his enemies, loved his friends who betrayed and denied him, and forgave those who tortured and crucified his body. If you think it is easy to achieve such peace, please, by all means do it easily! But pay attention to how you react when the next crisis, or success, arises and what follows. Be encouraged, it is possible - but be realistic, it may take a while.

The Tao Te Ching verse I just quoted ends like this:

When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance. (Poem 13)

In other words, one foot on the positive pole, the other on the negative pole; one foot resting in success, the other in failure. One foot recognizing that we are on this planet to experience wholeness, the other foot recognizing that we are here to experience fragmentation. Typically, we will find people, and be people, who stand with one foot on the ground. We will tend to view life as completely positive, or negative; we call these people optimists or pessimists - both are immersed in delusional thinking. The balanced person learns through trial and error, successes and failures, insanities and integrations, that life is an eternal interplay of dualities on the stage of the human body. The aim is to make souls, and teach us to live in the flesh as it is assailed and decays. Another section of the Tao Te Ching says it like this:

As it acts in the world, the Tao
is like the bending of a bow.
The top is bent downward;
the bottom is bent up.
It adjusts excess and deficiency
so that there is perfect balance.
It takes from what is too much
and gives to what isn't enough. (Poem 77)

Course of the Phoenix

Part I

Ashes spread, mend in flight,
rise above the steepled night,
soar beyond totems carved from creeds
and the fires of aimless greed,
slowly circle Wittenberg's idle stone,
wing past the towers of sleeping Rome.

Roost not in the tree of thy neighbor's deity,
perching always limits what you see...

Glide eastward wounded bird,
have you not heard
that we feed children smoke in place of bread,
make them drink bullets from fiery breasts,
swaddle them in icy skin,
prefer babies with missing limbs.

Missiles are often launched
from the holy waves of baptismal fonts,
as compassion comes to US easily,
watching the atrocities on color TVs,
yet more often grieved it seems
because we don't have larger screens.

Part II

I traded my bottle for a cross
giving thanks for the painful loss,
knelt at the altar to pray for more,
but the preacher bolted Heaven's door...

The Phoenix screamed from his tented cloud,
thunderous rage shocked the crowd,
"Grind marble and oak into a poultice,
sell your Bibles, feed the homeless."

Mutinous fowl, chose a bastard for our sage,
locked him in a gilded cage,
laid him in a tome bound in leather
written by a broken feather.

Last Sunday some mystic hijacked the book,
orange-red words erupted, the building shook,
an ink soaked man left the pages, rung the bell,
each pew was purged by holy hell.

Part III

Ashes spread, mend in flight,
rose above the steepled night,
From the Phoenix, the voice of Spring
"Finally, a living requiem.”

end/michael

“There is nothing more fundamental than I; all worlds, all beings, are strung upon me like pearls on a single thread.” ~ Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-Gita

PILLAR OF CREATION

St. Ignatius throw away your rosary!
St. Hubble has spilled a million pearls
across the sky,
strung them on the thread of night.

New beads polished bright
dwarfs me under the southern arc of Serpens.

Eagle Nebula, hovering like Shekinah,
spawning a skein of eggs in her galactic draft,
stellar incubator hatches such faith, such astonishment…

Suddenly, something bigger than the galaxies rises,
a column of thunder like muscled fist,
Lord Shiva’s angry erection
pierces the haggling pantheon of sixty million deities
scattering them like marbles
before the shaft of superiority.

Modernity has joined the dark ages.
Observatories are cathedrals, and with my sacred eyes
I worry each giant bead in prayer
between doubtful gazes,
and sleep under a newer testament

end/michael

Poem: God is My Emerging Insanity

Religion is “the feelings, acts, and experiences
of individual men in their solitude…”
~ William James

GOD IS MY EMERGING INSANITY

They swarm, whirring insanities
nesting inside of me - yet I welcome
the godless angst, and I am stung
as only one can be in solitude.

I fight for calm, steadying the fish bowl
as the building shakes, wondering why
no one seems to care, or analyze
the civilized globe every time it quakes.

I am no saint, but my role requires
the ultimate pretense; I must conceal
or surrender. Am I weak? Am I wrong?
Is it normal to comply, or right to resist?

I shall pray, not because I believe in God,
but because I am obliged. Perhaps I am
entreating the bundled insanities,
here in my solitude, inviting one to emerge.

end/Michael/6/24/2008

Talking to My Selves in Dreams

WE ALL HAVE MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES

Thesis: Dreams are the voices of our multiple personalities.

Rita Carter’s book, Multiplicity, The New Science of Personality, Identity and Self, presents evidence that we all have multiple personalities, or more than one self or identity. We are actually many selves, each slightly or radically different. Her work provides an excellent balance to Eckhart Tolle's popular book, The New Earth, which speaks about *'the' ego. I appreciateTolle's valuable observations, however, am troubled by the mono-psychological cul de sac he leaves us in when he implies we have only a single self.

Carter says that most of us have a Major or central personality that we display publicly, and 1-20 Minor personalities who emerge in various situations and with different people. The advent of the Internet age - with email, instant messaging, dating services, role playing games, and camera phones has allowed people to experiment more with their various minor personalities. Carter also suggests that we may have one or several **Micro personalities – a self or selves which hang in our consciousness by a thread and barely exist, yet have the potential of becoming a thriving Minor personality, or less likely, a reigning Major personality. She says that some people have no Major, but rather several Minor personalities which they switch between all day long. We usually call such people ‘moody’ or unpredictable.

The dissociative disorder called MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) is neither minimized nor dismissed by recognizing that we all have multiples. Multiples are considered a ‘disorder’ when they don’t communicate with each other and cause harm to the life of the inflicted person or those around him/her. In other words, the demure third grade school teacher who comes home from class and goes online to become the sensual Madame QueenDom does not suffer from MPD as long as she switches back to the elementary teacher when the phone rings and it is the parent of one of her students. So called normal people’s various selves know each other to at least some extent, and have some control over when and where they emerge, and do little long term damage. They may feel guilty, confused and hypocritical, but such emotions may be the result of the assumption of our mono-obsessed culture which views a single consistent 'self' as the goal of all healthy psyches.

NOT A NEW THEORY

Multiple selves is not a new theory. It has been around for ages. The ***Jesus of the ancient Gospel of Thomas suggested this in saying #84, "When you see your likeness (self), you are happy. But when you see your images (selves) that came into being before you and that neither die nor become visible, how much you will have to bear!"

Goethe, the German philosopher and poet said, “Two souls, alas! reside within my breast, and each withdraws from and repels its brother.” Saint Paul confessed that he had one self which wanted to love God and mankind, and another personality that sought to satisfy only selfish desires (Romans 7:15-20). Carl Jung spoke of discovering two selves early in life; he referred to them as Number One and Number Two. Later Jung would speak of the many ‘little people’ inside each of us. Mike Meyers addressed this humorously in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, through the character of Mini-Me. Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, comes to mind as well, and Walt Whitman who wrote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am complex. I contain multitudes."

FROM THE MEDIEVAL RACK TO MEDICAL PROZAC

Our monotheistic, monogamous, monopolistic, mono-psychological West does not typically like the heresy of anything poly (many). We will not tolerate polytheism, polygamy or polyamory. We focus on integration and wholeness. We emphasize law, order, consistency and integrity. We want complete equality between races, genders and religions. Even our professed love of multi-culturalism would have us believe that all humans are basically the same. Unity, united, union and unification are the aims of this culture. Abraham Lincoln sacrificed the lives of over half a million men to keep these states united. G.W. Bush Jr. fancies himself a sort of modern Lincoln, using force to unite the world under American democracy. Being number one is admired in sports and business, all the rest are losers. Any hint of dysfunction or fragmentation is immediately a disorder. We consider insanity (not being whole) the worst fate to befall a human being. Anything bi-, poly-, schizoid or multiple is the scientific equivalent of medieval heresy. We don't put our fragmented heretics on the rack to bring them around to religious unity, we put them on Prozac to make them socially and statistically 'normal'. Medical and Medieval are perilously closely related etymologicaly and ideologically. Both are 'medi' words - the middle, transitioning from darkness and fragmentation to healing and wholeness. These are noble aspirations, but only part of the human condition.

Carter’s theory suggests that our obsession with The One may be out of step with the facts about the human Psyche. The recent rise in interest toward mythologies, via people like Joseph Campbell and George Lucas, portends a new awareness of our multiple selves. Most ancient cultures were polytheistic because the Psyche ex-presses what it is, multiple. This modern rediscovery of myth is not about religion per se, but about our frantic human Psyche trying to recover our many hidden and neglected selves! There are many ramifications to this theory, and I would like to touch on one: the role of dreams as they relate to our several selves.

DREAMS AND OUR MANY SELVES

It seems to me that this idea of having multiple selves may explain the primary purpose of dreams. Perhaps dreams provide voices for the various personalities. James Hillman, writes:

“Dreams tell the soul’s tales in persons… psyche is using a particular metaphorical language system which is very detailed and concrete and seems to accomplish a specific end….” Re-Visioning Psychology, pp. 82-83

If you substitute the word personalities for ‘persons’, then dreams become a means for our various selves to communicate while they have our focused attention during sleep, and upon waking. We ought to pay special attention to those dreams which cause us to awaken with deep emotions. Hillman says that certain dreams cause us to be “afflicted [and] haunted through the day, psychologically on edge. The pathologized images have moved the soul in several ways.” This is reminiscent of Jesus saying, “But when you see your images (selves)… you will have much to bear!" Gospel of Thomas, saying 84

Perhaps our dreams are therapy sessions from and between our various selves on the nocturnal consulting couch. Each person is me. Even the animals and geography are metaphors for my various selves. We most often identify the observing character in our dreams as The self, as me. Perhaps that observing person is just the Major personality, while the other persons and places are the Minor or Micro selves trying to get some attention. They have some important information disguised in bizarre behaviors and symbols to really elicit attention.

Is it possible that some Minor personality is begging to be noticed in our dreams? Maybe the dominant Major personality is asking for a little time off. Perhaps an imperceptible Micro personality is asking to be developed. The human Psyche, like the malleable earth, is always shifting, eroding, dissolving, and reforming. Religions have always recognized and sought such **shifts through rituals and ceremonies.

DREAMS AND EMOTIONS

We need to pay special notice to those recurring dreams or themes, especially those evoking strong emotions. Hillman suggests that we rightly understand the guilt and shame which are inevitably induced by certain dreams, “We can let go of this style of guilt, seeing through it as a defensive business that prevents archetypal fantasies (images) from coming through. For from the archetypal point of view, the matter is less that one feels guilty than to whom: to which person (personality) of the psyche and within which myth does my affliction belong, and does it bespeak an obligation? Which figures (personalities) in which complexes are now laying claim? From this perspective the guilt brought by pathologizing (emotional suffering) takes on radical importance. It leads out of the ego and into recognition that through a pathologized experience I am bound to archetypal persons (personalities) who want something from me and to whom I owe remembrance.”

It is interesting to me that I may have a very weird dream and feel fine until I wake up, and the Major ego personality hijacks the dream. The Minor or Micro is shamed and silenced. Instead of listening, I try to get beyond my pathology and heal the aberrant images. I think this is partially what Hillman is suggesting – that we move past the guilt heaped upon us by the Major personality (Freud’s Super Ego), and ask the question, “Who are you and what do you want?”

I recently had a dream where an attractive young married woman was in love with me, and then suddenly changed her mind. She, husband by her side, nonchalantly told me that she was going back to her husband and had no feelings for me whatsoever. I awoke devastated. My Major personality told me I was a covert adulterer and a loser to boot. Then I applied Hillman’s advice and asked, “Who are you? Which neglected self is emerging? What do you want me to know or remember? What do I owe you?” Immediately, my perception shifted. It was not a dream about me, it was an aspect of me. I was not having a dream, the dream was having me. I saw that one of my feminine minor selves is an aloof lover who runs roughshod over the feelings of those close to me, rejecting them when they get too close. It was a sobering revelation. In the dream she was asking, "How do 'you' like that? That is how others feel when 'you' do that."

If you find this idea interesting, read Carter’s book, Multiplicity, The New Science of Personality, Identity and Self.

http://michaelbogar.com/pages/home.php
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Footnotes:

*Tolkien's book, The Hobbit, takes a poke at our western propensity of mono-ism when he puts the definite article before The Hill and The River where Bilbo lived, thinking there was only one location on Middle Earth. By the end of the story, with Gandalf's help, he discovered many places, and many other selves which he didn't even know he contained- a thief, a warrior, coward, etc.

**This paradigm helps to explain the phenomenon of 'conversion' or radical psyhic shifts which some people experience. A Minor or Micro personality suddenly acquires 'the straw that broke the camel's back' and like a techtonic continental shift, replaces the old Major personality. This gives hope to those of us who would like to experience such a shift, though it is most likely to take place gradually through re-education and psycho-spiritual practices. (cf William James and Big Book of AA)

***One Bible translator suggested that the metaphorical meaning of Jesus’ saying in John’s Gospel, “In my Father’s house are many mansions…” may refer to more than one reality or self. The word mansion is used in other ancient sources to refer to a teacher’s classroom; perhaps Jesus was suggesting that this life contained a number of classrooms or selves, each bringing a different lesson to the growing soul. Keep in mind that those who took Jesus literally in John’s Gospel were considered spiritually ignorant (John 3, et al).

IS THE MEDIA THE NEW CHURCH?

THE BIRTH OF A NEW RELIGION

I am reading a most fascinating socio-religious assessment that rings true to me on many levels. The title of the book is Entertainment Theology by Barry Taylor, and the author suggests that we are in the midst of a nascent, barely perceptible new religious institution in the making. Yes, institution.

It is easy today to observe the huge Catholic Church or Muslim Community, each claiming over one billion adherents; but there was a time centuries ago when each was growing incrementally and would not have been seen for what they would eventually become. Taylor suggests that a new religious movement is growing up around us right now, a whole new organization is forming one little cell at a time which will become a sort of global equivalent to the Catholic Vatican or Muslim Caliphate.

Most of us can't see it because this new movement is not overtly religious, not local, not limited to one culture nor using the usual forms and content of the standard religions. Ideas and forms from all religions and no religions are being utilized. Taylor sees the media as eventually becoming the main pulpit/classroom for teaching the new spiritual ideas. The current sessions with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle foreshadow this new edge approach. The other day, while waiting at a bus stop, I saw a guy reading Tolle’s book, The New Earth. People who have never been to church are tuning into the internet sessions to hear Oprah speak with Tolle about the role of ego in mental suffering.

Mike Meyer's new movie, The Love Guru, was inspired by his attendance at a Depak Chopra seminar after Meyer's father died - and Meyers now values Chopra's teachings, enough to veil the spiritual truths he has adopted in his whacky brand of comedy. Comedian Jim Carrey has become a very strong advocate for a spiritual approach, using comedy to teach universal truths. See Jim Carrey's Secret: Less Prozac, More God By Todd Peterson

A 2005 Barna Research Project Confirms This:

"The reshaping of Americans’ lives is evident in various facets of their life, including the spiritual dimension. A new nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group indicates that while 56% of adults attend church services in a typical month, a much larger percentage is exposed to religious information and experiences through various forms of media. Radio and television are the most popular Christian media, but faith-related Internet sites as well as religious magazines, newspapers and books also enjoy significant exposure. Although these religious media are a supplement to a church experience for most people, millions of individuals rely upon one or more of these media as their primary source of spiritual input."

I AM SPIRITUAL BUT NOT RELIGIOUS

There has never been a time in human history when there has not been some sort of mainstream religious organization. Many people today like to say they are ‘spiritual but not religious.’ I fully understand this phrase, yet what it really means, when translated, is “I don’t like any of the narrow, boring organized religious groups I have experienced or stereotyped so far.”

Humans organize. That is what we do. As long as there is the spiritual impulse, we will create organizations with places, principles and people to facilitate helpful spiritual experiences. In the emerging paradigm, such experiences are increasingly being mediated via movie theatres, the internet, concerts and other such events. Eclectic spiritual media teachers are gradually rivalling television evangelists. People like Wayne Dyer, if not replacing, are reaching as many as Billy Graham once did.

THE NEW FUNDAMENTALS

Aldous Huxley touched on the future need for focusing on the universal basics of the spiritual life in his book, The Perennial Philosophy, where he enumerated the fundamental global religious truths. We might call this the emerging ‘New Fundamentalism’. Fundamental means foundational. It is a beneficial word when seen in context. It is time to develop a religion which captures the foundational spiritual truths for all humans.

Carl Jung predicted the need for such a new religious shift in his 1933 book, Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Jung rightly pointed out that fewer and fewer modern people are finding the experience of spirituality in their churches. Bill Wilson was a prophet of this new edge spirituality, founding Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935 as a movement which focused on the basic building blocks of a spiritual life without creedal tests and theological union cards for belonging.

We are in the midst of a religious birthing. We are on the edge of something powerful. It has the potential to become very beneficial, or very evil, as with all religious movements. Many will oppose it as the one world church predicted in the Book of Revelation; others will see it as the universal spiritual body predicted by Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Many will not even notice it since the shift is so subtle. Others will perceive it, adopt the universal principles of spirituality, and find creative and personally unique ways to spread the experience of Spirit wherever they are. These people may or may not currently be in traditional churches which will not be going away anytime soon. In fact, the traditional religions will play a huge role in birthing this new religious order, just as Greco-Roman paganism played a huge role in assisting the nascent Christ movement.

The biggest challenge in this new religious movement will be to find personal connection with other people. The media and internet cannot replace the interface of human spirits face to face, eye to eye. Perhaps movie theatres will one day add Conversation Rooms with a Starbucks to their buildings where people can meet after a movie and discuss it, or hear someone speak about it.

Imaginal Realm

The Imaginal Realm

The Imaginal Realm is the region of pure Forms located between the region of pure spirits and psychological archetypes, totally unconnected to matter, and ordinary physical reality.

Concerning this Imaginal World, Muslim Suhrawardi's commentator Qutbuddin Shirazi says:

"It is there that the various kinds of autonomous archetypal Images are infinitely realised, forming a hierarchy of degrees varying according to their relative subtlety or density....On each of these levels species exist analogous to those in our world, but they are infinite. Some are peopled by Angels and the human Elect. Others are peopled by Angels and genii, others by demons. God alone knows the number of these levels and what they contain. The pilgrim rising from one degree to another discovers on each higher leveel a subtler state, a more entrancing beauty, a more intense spirituality, a more overflowing delight. The highest of these degrees borders on the intelligible pure entities of Light and very closely resembles it."

Interviews from Beyond the Grave: Jesus and Jim Morrison

Interviews from Beyond the Grave
brought to you by
The Academy of the Dead



MICHAEL: Good evening, I am your host and welcome to another edition of Interviews Beyond the Grave from The Academy of the Dead. Here, we are limited by neither space, time nor geography, and able to access the Imaginal Realm without the forms required by the usual sensory organs. We always bring you some of the most unlikely match-ups imaginable.

Tonight we have Jim Morrison, a co-founder of the popular 20th century band, The Doors, and Jesus of Nazareth who needs no introduction. Let’s begin with Jim, welcome to Interviews Beyond the Grave Mr. Morrison, or should I say Mr. Mojo Risin?

JIM MORRISON: Thank you, great to be here, and I just wanna say how privileged I feel to be hanging out with Jesus, the original Door, the real Mr.Mojo Risin, if ya know what I mean.

MICHAEL: I don’t know what you mean, unless you are referring to the resurrection.

JIM MORRISON: Yep, that’s the risin I’m talking about.

MICHAEL: So Jesus, welcome, and let me ask you about this controversial miracle of the resurrection; we moderns aren’t too keen on this idea that dead men come back to life – did it really happen?

JESUS: Good to be here, and yes, it did happen.

MICHAEL: Can you prove it to modern readers who have evolved beyond the fairy tale mentality of gullible primitives?

JESUS: They are reading an interview with a couple of dead guys aren’t they?

MICHAEL: I see, but they will say that this is an imaginary interview.

JESUS: I prefer the word Imaginal.

MICHAEL: Meaning?

JESUS: Imaginary assumes we made it up and that it never existed apart from our brains; Imaginal recognizes a Realm that actually exists beyond normal space and time – you know, like dreams.

MICHAEL: But could people have touched your body in the first century, was it real?

JESUS: Are your dreams real?

MICHAEL: Yes.

JESUS: Can you touch them?

MICHAEL: Well, not really, but they do touch me.

JESUS: Exactly…the resurrection really happened.

MICHAEL: But Jesus, come on now, we all know now that dreams are just biological burps in the restless brain during sleep, or, how did Ebeneezer Scrooge put in when he saw his first ghost, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than grave about you, whatever you are.”

JESUS: Have you never wondered why so many people who wrote about seeing me experienced the same biological burp simultaneously? Do you suppose that they all ate from the same underdone potato?

JIM MORRISON: Whoa! Dude! See why I say he is the Original Door!

MICHAEL: Jim, say more about that, why do you call Jesus the original door?

JIM MORRISON: Well, the door metaphor comes from the Gospel of John, as I recall. I was reading it the night I accidentally overdosed in the tub in France - John 10:9 in the King Jimmy Version where Jesus says, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” At that point in my life I knew I was no door, more like a bloated alcoholic boor.

See, originally I thought Aldous Huxley came up with the door idea when he was writing about mind expanding drugs and his 1954 book, The Doors of Perception, which by the way is where we got the name of our band ya know – well, actually Huxley borrowed if from the mystical poet William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

In 1965 I was reading Huxley’s book one night, trippin out on Mescaline, looked up at the television, and that funky door from the Twilight Zone came spinning onto the screen and Rod Serling was sayin, “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound... a dimension of sight... a dimension of mind. You are moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... The Twilight Zone.”

I think that is the Imaginal Realm Jesus was talking about – it’s not imaginary, or a figment of human fantasies, but an actual realm that is seen with an organ most modern people don’t even know about.

JESUS: I called it the Kingdom of Heaven.

JIM MORRISON: Sounds about right…so I just wanna say I know more now what those guys were sayin, about doors to infinity, narrow chinks in the cavern, other dimensions and crossing over and stuff like that. Jesus was talking about that door a long time ago, and he wasn’t even trippin!

MICHAEL: Jesus, anything to add to that?

JESUS: Not really, it is good to be here, but I do want to take issue with one thing you said in the beginning of the interview…

MICHAEL: Please do.

JESUS: You said that I needed no introduction, well, that may not be so true.

MICHAEL: Meaning?

JESUS: After 2,000 years, there are a few misunderstandings about me. People assume that I was always some sort of mystical do-gooder and lover of humanity - that I dropped from my mother’s womb turning water into breast milk. Nope, I had a very human life before I became Jesus ‘the Christ’. People forget that to become a mature Human or Son of Man and Son of God is to experience the process of going through real life stuff.

MICHAEL: Tell us more about that.

JESUS: Well, Jim Morrison and I are not so different in some ways. I was also pretty wild in my teens and twenties. I have read all those modern books that said I went to Babylon or Egypt and studied with great spiritual masters - one book said I practiced Buddhism for twenty years and another said that I was abducted by aliens and taken to a planet in the Pleides and instructed in esoteric interplanetary wisdom. Nah, all false. I was actually, how do the modern kids say it, ‘partying hearty’ for a number of years. That’s why the Pharisees were always accusing me of hanging out with drunks and hookers; I was.

JIM MORRISON: Whoa! You serious man?

JESUS: Very serious. Remember the parable of the prodigal son? That’s autobiographical – that’s why there is so much detail in that story. I spruced it up a little bit since my father Joseph didn’t have that much money, but I took what he had saved and went to Sepphoris near Nazareth and raised holy hell for a few years. That's where I met Matthew, the drunken, cheating tax collector. He still laughs when people call him Saint Matthew!

I was pretty wild, but always interested in God, and I hated religion! I partied until I was physically, financially, emotionally and spiritually broken in spirit - literally ended up in a pig pen, feeding and sleeping with the hogs. The only thing I had left of any value was a pearl ring given to me by mother, which fell off of my finger into the muck; a herd of hungry pigs knocked me over to get to it and swallowed it before I could pick it up. That’s why I later told people to never cast pearls of wisdom before swine; don’t waste your time on people whose egos are still in tact, especially some religious people. Many of them couldn’t have seen the truth even if God had showed up in the flesh, which is what God always does by the way.

MICHAEL: This admission is not going to be received too well by most of your loyal followers. They say you were sinless; in fact, I am more than a little shocked and disappointed myself.

JESUS: My followers? My followers are those who do the will of God, those who have experienced ego deflation and a broken and contrite heart. That rarely comes to a man or woman without some sort of personal crisis. What kind of Savior would I be if I hadn’t suffered like other ordinary people? Many of my followers are stuck in religious and theological egoism, the most insidious and most difficult egoism to overcome. Those people would rather worship and read about me than examine the demons in their own souls. And let me just add, not every one needs to end up in a pig pen to wake up…but it sure helps.

JIM MORRISON: Amazing! That’s exactly where I was when I died in France. Dude, I was so depressed, discouraged, deflated and in deep despair, but couldn’t kick the smack and Jack Daniels habit. I had tons of money, but my soul was in the pig pen, and I was praying everyday. Why did God fail me?

JESUS: Your death Jim, like mine, did more to move people to God than if you had lived.

JIM MORRISON: Huh?

JESUS: John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens and thousands of people read the headlines the day after you died and looked at their own hearts and behaviors in ways they never had before. Evangelism, as some call it, happens in many fascinating ways on planet earth. Every single action is either an expression of Spirit or a motivation toward the Holy Spirit. You motivated people to evaluate their paths Jim. Your life wasn’t a waste. Everybody is a door for somebody in one way or another. That’s what I meant when I said the ‘first shall be last and the last shall be first.' You got more me people through the Door than most preachers!

JIM MORRISON: So is that what Blake meant when he said, "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom?"

JESUS: Partly, yes, but he forgot to add that the road usually contains hospitals, jails, courts, treatment centers and morgues. It’s not the road I’d recommend.

JIM MORRISON: Modern versions of pig pens...

JESUS: Potentially, yep.

MICHAEL: Well, our time is up for today’s show. I want to thank you gentlemen for a most fascinating conversation from the Realm of the Imaginal.

JIM MORRISON: My pleasure.

JESUS: Me too, and I was wondering Jim, could you play that ‘Jesus is Just Alright With Me’ song?

JIM MORRISON: That’s the Doobie Brothers, but I can play 'The End'.

JESUS: Cool.

[Overheard as the credits roll:]

Michael: So I understand Janis Joplin and Mary Magdalene are in the Green Room, perhaps the five of us could go out for a bite to eat after the show.

Jesus: Great idea. My friend, Peter, runs the To Hell and Back Hard Rock Café.

Jim Morrison: Cool, is that the place across from the Next Whiskey Bar?

[End of Credits - Screen Freezes]

In truth, all modern education consists of conversations with the dead from the Imaginal Realm. Every eternal Idea or memorable Deed originates from this Realm and is recorded, bound in a tome, and exhumed or resurrected by somber seekers, otherwise known as grave robbers...

Prayer for My Damn Enemies?

One of the most difficult obstacles to peace is learning how to deal with difficult people, also known as enemies. This is especially true when they are family members. Someone recently asked me for advice about how to deal with family members who are abusive and inconsiderate. I am able to share only what I have experienced in this arena. I never claim to have solutions for anyone but myself. If they help another, I am glad.

I once spent years telling horror stories about my members of my family, and I actually believed them all; I had facts to prove my accounts were true. I had the evidence. However, as my personal pain and misery escalated, I eventually learned through various teachers and hard lessons to release the anger, sadness and justified resentments toward these people. This was not easy, until carrying them around year after year became more difficult than letting them go. These incidents, when held in mind, will destory our bodies and souls.

PRAY FOR THEM?

My suggestion, which will initially sound ludicrous, is to pray for them. Even typing it looks like such a religious platitude that I want to erase the suggestion and find a more profound response. But returning to my personal agonizing experience, this has been the key solution. When Jesus, and Ghandi were assailed by enemies, they prayed. We are familiar with Jesus telling us to pray for our enemies and those who persecute or abuse us; and we recall his words from the cross to those who were executing him, "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing."

Ghandi said:

"I had attended the Christian service in South Africa, but it had failed to grip me. I could not join them in prayer. They supplicated God, but I could not do so, I failed egregiously. I started with disbelief in God and prayer, and, until at a late stage in life, I did not feel anything like a void in life. But at that stage I felt that, as food was indispensable for the body, so was prayer indispensable for the soul. In fact, food for the body is not so necessary as prayer for the soul. For starvation is often necessary in order to keep the body in health, but there is no such thing as prayer-starvation.... "

"In spite of despair staring me in the face on the political horizon, I have never lost my peace. In fact, I have found people who envy my peace. That peace, I tell you, comes from prayer; I am not a man of learning, but I humbly claim to be a man of prayer. I am indifferent as to the form. Every one is a law unto himself in that respect. But there are some well-marked roads, and it is safe to walk along the beaten tracks, trod by the ancient teachers."

"Prayer has been the saving of my life. Without it I should have been a lunatic long ago. My autobiography will tell you that I have had my fair share of the bitterest public and private experiences. They threw me into temporary despair, but if I was able to get rid of it, it was because of prayer."

"Now I may tell you that prayer has not been part of my life in the sense that truth has been. It came out of sheer necessity, as I found myself in a plight when I could not possibly be happy without it. And the more my faith in God increased, the more irresistible became the yearning for prayer. Life seemed to be dull and vacant without it."

PRAYER IS NOT EXCUSING BAD BEHAVIOR

There is much more to dealing with abusers, but praying for them is a good beginning. That does not mean excusing them or pretending they did not hurt us or do wrong. It does mean that we begin to see how sick, miserable and terribly wounded they are, and we begin to express compassion for them in their chaotic and miserable lives. They may seem happy at times, but they are soul-sick and on the verge of despair. We pray for their recovery, for their eventual happiness, for their peace of mind, for their addictions, for their wounded childhoods and dysfunctional adulthoods, for their antisocial behaviors, etc.

THREE RESULTS OF CONSISTENT PRAYER

The irony is that if we consistently pray like this, three things will happen: First, what we request for them, we gradually begin to experience for ourselves. Second, we may actually see changes in their lives, suddenly or over the years. Thirdly, if we faithfully do these prayers every day, after a month or so the resentments melt away and peace reigns. This is the power and necessity of the kind of prayer that Ghandi learned through trial and error.

Lastly, keep seeking. This essay is not a band aid or quick fix. Soul-making requires time, many failures, openness, willingness to try new approaches and humility. Ghandi and Jesus both loved and served people who treated them like crap - however, they didn't keep a list of the sins and failures, and they were able to love them as they were. In other words, they held no resentments for being taken advantage of. Most of us are not there yet. In my opinion, it is best to avoid such abusive people and simply pray for them. As our hearts soften and bodies heal, then we may expand to be of more service to those who are ungrateful and very seriously ill.

Really Good Quotes That Apply and Brief Comment

DISINTEGRATION

Referring to the settling of the American western frontier, one old timer said, "It's big and pretty and I helped make it; but by damn, wouldn't it be fun to tear it down and build it back up again?"

The Universe is so constructed that our various selves over the course of a lifetime, whether in minutes or years is a process of building and tearing them down to build them up again.

JOURNALISM AND THE NEWS MEDIA

GK Chesterton said, "Journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord Jones died' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.”

Most news has nothing to do with us. I remember visiting my grandmother when I was about eighteen. She let me in her house and then placed a chair in front of the door with the back wedged under the door knob. I asked her what she was doing. She told me that she had just seen a news report about a rapist who had escaped from a mental institution in a town over 100 miles away. She didn't want him getting into her house. Most news creates unnecessary fear and anxiety. It keeps us externally focused so we don't have to deal with the most significant news - the news going on between our own ears and in our hearts.

True Understanding Means to Stand Under: The Ego Surrendered

DANCING SHIVA AND THE CRUSHED DWARF

You may have seen the statue or picture of Shiva, the Hindu God dancing in a circle of fire with one foot firmly pinning a tiny dwarflike creature to the ground. This is often interpreted as the struggle between divinity and the heroic ego self, with divinity eventually conquering and burning away the rascal ego.

This same archetypal image is found in the biblical story of a terrified and subdued Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the LORD in the dark of night.

1,000 FORMS OF MANIPULATION

Jacob means deceiver or manipulator in Hebrew. The name was assigned to him at birth as he emerged from his mother’s womb holding onto the heel of his twin brother, Esau. Jacob the ‘tripper’ or manipulator of men and God would spend his life in one scheme after another, conniving through force or kindness to get what he thought would make him happy. For twenty four years Jacob was very successful - amassing wives, concubines, wealth and children. That is what the ego does; it complains like a sinner or compliments like a Pharisee to get what it wants.

Jacob is an archetype of the inflated heroic ego which runs on self will. This is not the evil ego of so many Christian and New Age harangues, but the normal and necessary ego of human soul-making. Carl Jung said, “We spend thirty five years acquiring an ego and thirty five more getting rid of it.” We are each born with our inner Jacob and a certain amount of conniving and manipulation. No human is exempt, though those who fancy themselves 'nice people' often have a difficult time seeing their subtle forms of manipulation. These folks are frequently in emotional pain, but unaware that they are causing it through self centered 'love and kindness'.

THE TWO COMMAND CENTERS IN THE PSYCHE

The LORD said to Rebekah, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger." Genesis 25:23

In addition to the ego-self, there is a second Self or center in us. Some call it conscience, some call it the social gene and others call it the God gene. Whatever it is, it whispers or shouts through our increasing discontent that something is missing.

Our self obsessive anxious thoughts, fearful life problems and manipulative behaviors come into conflict with that other internal Higher Self - the dancing Shiva or Angel of the LORD which calls for our surrender. This is not some God ‘out there’ who wants to obliterate our existence and rule over us with religious laws or self help formulas, but rather a second command center found in every normal human psyche. That is what Jung meant when he said we must experience ego inflation before we can experience ego deflation. Just as the garden seed must swell and crack apart beneath the dark soil, so the swollen ego must eventually crack apart and bring enough pain into an individual’s life so he/she can evolve spiritually.

Eckhart Tolle writes, “Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of ego.” [Without suffering we would] “not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things. Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego – but not until you suffer consciously.” A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, pp. 101-102

THE NECESSITY OF WOUNDS

Look again at Shiva dancing on the ego-dwarf which is being burned away, and you will have a visual of what Tolle is talking about. This is a painful process.

Jacob falls to his knees after his hip is wounded. He is then able to ask for and receive the blessing of peace of mind. A new creation came into existence. His name was changed from Jacob (ego manipulator) to Israel (overcomer of ego). The story says he ‘wrestled with God and man and overcame.’ In other words, the lifelong struggle between the two centers of self, ego-self and Divine Self, has been resolved in that moment. Those who understand this image find the process ongoing throughout life. A few rare souls, like the Buddah, seem to fully 'bud' with their ego-self continually under the Higher-Self.

UNDERSTANDING IS STANDING UNDER

True understanding is the experience of ‘standing under’. The dwarfed ego ‘stands under’ the almighty Shiva. The manipulating Jacob with the displaced hip ‘stands under’ the God-Self. When we have genuinely understood or stood under the Higher Self, we existentially know peace and joy in the midst of any situation, especially anxious and fearful situations. This is infinitely more than intellectually 'understanding' the spiritual concept of surrender; this is gnosis. The will of my little dwarf self stands under the Wisdom and Will of the Higher Self. Freedom from fear, resentment and anxiety result, always.