GROWING A SOUL

"Symptoms are deaths solemn ambassadors, deserving honor for their place, and life mirrored in its symptoms sees there its death and remembers soul.” ~ James Hillman

Soul does not come in this body

like a stick of gum wrapped in foil,

neither immortal nor full.

Soul becomes,

like clouds gathering

or metal shavings around a magnet,

little bits around an irksome center.

This decaying vessel

is the core for soul-making;

hungry

helpless, wailing toward a eulogy.

Each symptom shifts the gaze,

interrupts my well crafted haunt,

to the end

where it belongs.

A palpitation, the lingering cough,

a darkening mole on my arm –

could this be my last malady?

I stroll the lawn, granite stories,

a life lived in ecstasy and fears,

1891 - 1985...

soul, merely the hyphen between the years,

A little life sown, grown down, breaking

rooting, budding, wilting, breathless…

What is left? Only The Invisibles, undying

guardians chiseling soul on those

sleepless nights, as bothersome thoughts.

What proceeds? The smoothed clay

more supple than the adolescent breast,

softer than the full wet kiss; then psyche soars.

Pay attention. The gods wield the mallet

at the crucifixion of the worm, 
absent at the dissolution,

invisibly forming the nascent wings...

the end/Michael

ALTAR OF SLEEP

The Dream enters unbidden,

like a priest with his sacrificial knife,

or the Oracle with her sacred sign.

And here I lie,

a mute lamb on the altar of sleep,

or a humble supplicant

at the mercy of the Dream.

end/Michael

Poem: Something New

I prayed, and nothing happened –
Jesus did not appear,
no ‘peace that passeth understanding,’
not even a numinous chill…

I watched a teacher on TV, from the East
telling me all the religions were the same,
that the truth would set me free,
and on and ona ndon ananda ndon and on
until his droll chant ceased -
- he asked for money -
there was no truth, no peace
and he blamed me.

Then I felt…

My chest was a cavity
filled with a thousand swirling wraiths,
nondescript, terrifying in their discordant flurry,
not asking me to pray, but to enter…

I breached the mood, through my throat,
down a windpipe raw with grief –
into a claustrophobic corridor, met by
a monstrous yelping dog
nearly chasing me back to my prayers
and the chanting master. I moved past,
and there,

Across the dark cavern I saw the source,
a single shimmering wraith
held an urn aloft with a
five fingered song, and two soft eyes
brownish-black, somehow familiar…

There were no words,
but by his glance the cavern, or my mind
lengthened, and a million fathers stood around me,
and a million mothers, wives, children and
others too…

And that brown-eyed specter nodded at the horde,
saying nothing, making it clear that my hollowness
was not from his absence,
but from the presence of the empty multitude
as lost, as sad, as confused as me.

I turned back to the wraith, a wry smile,
also very familiar had replaced the dark eyes,
and slowly faded from my sight.

I returned back through the dim passageway
of groans. I felt no sweet resolution, no truth,
none of the peace I had hoped for.

But there was a slight comfort,
a solace in the necessity of my ignorance,
the brilliance of hopelessness
in order that love
might crack the angry chrysalis,
giving birth to something…new.

end/Michael Bogar/9/20/2008

Eckhardt Tolle's A New Earth Evaluated: Is My Ego Dysfunctionl and False?

"It is important to remember that my worst defects are also my greatest assets..."

A NEW VERSION OF ORIGINAL SIN

In his recent book, A New Earth, Eckhardt Tolle speaks of the human ego as being defective, dysfunctional, mad and sick. He refers to the ‘false ego’ as a hindrance to knowing your ‘true Being.’ The human ego is opposed to real spirituality, with the two fighting against each other. Tolle is not alone in his Ego Versus Spirit warfare analogy. This idea goes way back to the Bhagavad Gita as the soul’s journey is likened to a great, internal civil war. The Apostle Paul said it like this in the Bible:

“…I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin (my ego). I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do… I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the wrong I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin (my ego) living in me that does it.” Romans 7:14-20

If you change Paul’s word ‘sin’ to ‘ego,’ we find that Tolle and other modern New Age teachers agree with Paul by making our indwelling ego the arch villain in the spiritual life. In fact, Tolle calls the sick ego our ‘inherited dysfunction,’ which is just a more up to date way of saying ‘original sin.’ Tolle even goes so far as to sympathize and even agree with the doctrine of original sin when he says, “…the term (original sin), when stripped of its cultural baggage and misinterpretations, points to the dysfunction inherent in the human condition.” (A New Earth, p.9)

Is this assessment of the ego as our inherited enemy accurate and helpful? Are my egoistic defects and dysfunctions opposed to Spirit? Is the ego my ‘false being’ generated by human brain cells and and the insane human self will, fighting against my ‘True Being’?

THE EGO AS A DIVINE GIFT

While I recognize that all forays into these difficult psycho-spiritual matters can use only limited metaphors and analogies, I am afraid that we are getting too lopsided in our vilification of the ego. The ego is not primarily our arch enemy, but is a gift of God for making souls.

It is important to remember that my worst defects are also my greatest assets. Just as the seed pod is both a hindrance and a container for the roots and stem of a flower, so my ego is BOTH a container and a hindrance to my spiritual life. This is not just some cute literary analogy, but an observation gained from years of wrestling back and forth between depressing guilt and careless lethargy in my own growth process. If I get too obsessed with my egoistic defects and dysfunctional behaviors, I can become so overwhelmed with my shortcomings that I become miserable and fixated on how flawed I am. That may have been one reason so many saints and mystics experienced such deep depression and their ‘dark nights of the soul.’ They were trying, sometimes needlessly, to fight their very nature - to resist the gift of God's creative 'defects'. The other extreme is to completely ignore my selfishness and debilitating ego; then I become careless, selfish, inconsiderate, useless and unhappy.

THE FUNCTION OF DYSFUNCTION

We need to see the ego as God's container for making a large soul, defects and all. Afterall, we are the ones labeling certain traits as defects and dysfunctions. And our conclusions are based on what we, with limited knowledge, determine to be bad results. Mold on cantaloupes was thought to be defective and dysfunctional until it was discovered that they contained life healing bacteria called penicillin. Comet impacts on earth were thought to be dysfunctional until we discovered that our dry planet was probably filled with life giving water by such catastrophic 'disasters'.

Inside that pod called Michael's ego are potential roots, the stem and nascent flower of what God wants me to become. Jung called this ego-pod the dark unconscious, the container of my potential and actual wholeness. Wholeness is not just something to be realized, but is simultaneously complete and incomplete. The ego-pod is whole and incomplete, just like a flowering seed pod. In my ego I am simultaneously whole and not whole.

SIMULTANEOUSLY A BENEFIT AND A HINDRANCE

The seed pod, like the ego, is neither dysfunctional nor false at this level of the metaphor, even though it seems to be hindering and fighting against the expansion of the flower. The restrictive and suffocating husk must be cracked open and shed, and it is also the perfect container. As Jesus said, "The kernel of wheat must die that the fruit may emerge." But Jesus never disparaged the wheat seed by calling it dysfunctional or false. ‘True Being’ is going on as perfectly in the darkness as it is in the light, and if not on this planet, then on another plane or dimension beyond this life. That is a great apologetic for immortality or continuation of soul-making beyond this life.

The seed pod cracking apart in the dark soil, struggling to put down tiny roots is as much a part of the spiritual process of ‘Being’ as the seed poking its head through the soil into the light and opening its silky petals to the warm sun. James Hillman puts it like this, “We must grow down in order to grow up.” Both are normal and necessary.

The ego is God’s divine gift, simultaneously containing and hindering individual and global soul-making. Socially collective egos can be embraced as multi-cultural expressions of diversity and variety, and at the same time be opposed as multi-cultural bigotries and socio-religious obstacles to planetary expansion. Individual and communal egos must crack apart. We must put down painful invisible roots before we can grow into the light and blossom. The whole process is spiritual.

TOLLE RECOGNIZES THE NECESSITY OF EGO

In all fairness, Tolle does recognize this paradox of ego as containing AND hindering soulful expansion when he writes, 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 is a brilliant and critical observation, deserving of a whole chapter. However, I am afraid that he spends so much time discussing the dysfunctional and false aspect of ego that he may leave his readers with an unnecessary load of guilt, shame and a generally negative view of God’s amazing human ego as the seed pod of soul-making.

Tolle's book is a great work, even if imbalanced and in danger of leaving the reader in a state of New Age guilt and inadequacy. Christian theology has been doing that for centuries and has still brought great spiritual benefits to humanity.

CONCLUSION: WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?

Lastly, I think it is unfortunate that the word 'spiritual' is often not used these days for all of life’s experiences. We tend to think only of the ‘enlightened’ moments as truly spiritual. We need to see that being ‘endarkened’ and times of being ‘unconscious’ are equally as spiritual, containing their own kind of necessary revelations and kinds of consciousness. Depression, grief, fear, anxiety and other such emotions always contain and/or move us into soul-making awareness. Our powerlessness to addiction is spiritual, our failures and admission of such failures are spiritual moments, the process of atheistic denial and agnostic skepticism are spiritual experiences. The classical Damascus Road moment of ‘spiritual awakening' may or may not come later, but the whole process of light and dark, function and dysfunction, ‘false ego’ and ‘True Being’, is Spirit or God or Soul unfolding.

The Hebrew Psalmist beautifully put it like this:

"Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your Presence? If I go up to the Heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the Depths of Hell, you are there. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.” Psalm 139

Soul-making and the Death of My Child

A friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, who always brings brilliant observations and insightful questions, sent me an email in the aftermath of my son's death. His question is indirectly related to that event, and other moments of suffering.

He writes: As parents we are joyous at the birth of our children, while they may be experiencing physical and probably psychic trauma. I wonder if some children experience PTSD sometime during their life after they are born? We cannot know what birth is like for them. It is as remote from us as and as unknowable as are the final moments before death and any certainty of life after. Would knowledge of those moments, entering and exiting life, give us potentially valuable insights?

Response:

I think your last question about valuable insights is most insightful.

As you may know, I see this world primarily as a school of soul-making rather than a place to be happy, and chronically satisfied - 'soul' being the best inadequate term available to get close to a personal and collective creative individuation process accomplished mostly beyond the physical senses, yet intimately using these senses as the medium to the experience of turning soul embryos into mature entities. I do not see us entering this world with completed souls, or as fully developed Humans. We are not Augustine's fallen, original sinners, or Tolle's dysfunctional egos or the DSM's defective sick people. These are useful metaphors in so far as they go, but generally leave us thinking there is something wrong with us and this world as it is - and it's usually our fault, and we are left with the daunting task of fixing everything from pre-natal trauma to global warming. My my, aren't we important?

I think we arrive with soul seeds or soul potential in a Cosmos just as it is meant to be, and these physical experiences we encounter provide the soil and fertilizer for the growth of an actual 'soul.' I take the modern psychological profession as a new metaphor that has by and large lost the point of soul making. When we literalize the medical model and speak of PTSD, ADD, PMS, and a thousand other afflictions to be cured, we miss the deeper realization that these 'maladies' and horrific symptoms are the gods in disguise. As both Freud and Jung said before the medical model went out of control, "The gods speak to us in our symptoms." In other words, the point of these so called maladies, tragedies and pathologies is to bring the dark creative energies from the chaotic unconscious into consciousness; to move us from the image (human) to the likeness (HUMAN) of God as the Hebrews put it, with Jesus being a model of one whose joys and woes produced the archetypal 'completed soul.'

I see the blue states and red states, liberals and conservatives, war and peace, and all dualities as necessary and normal curricula for this school of soul-making. As Blake said, "Without contraries is no progression." And Heraclitus, "Polemos (Strife) is the Father of All. (fragment 53 - actually used on this Marvel comic book cover.)"

Jason's way of death was not what I wanted. I didn't want him in the military. I wanted him in art school. But as James Hillman argues so brilliantly in The Soul's Code, we each enter this world as an acorn seed guided by our own personal Daimone or Destiny. This reduces the arrogance of the individual parent and society which in modern times wants to take full responsibility to fix everything from our character defects, to raising 'adjusted' children or to saving the globe itself. Yes, we ought to play the game fully and with gusto, no matter what side you are on - seek to change your self and the world according to your call and conscience, but then realize, as Krishna showed Arjuna in the Gita that the gods (we call them archetypes today) are in it all, delivering at birth and devouring in battle, assigning sight and blindness (Exodus 4:11) and assigning the course each of us gets to travel for his or her own process of soul-making (Plato's The Republic, The Myth of Er).

This point of view is not literal dogma, but a way of seeing through the literal and visible world into the metaphorical and invisible. Politics, religions, economics, nations, families, bodies, et al are wonderful and precious experiences into which we must throw ourselves with gusto, but they are a means to an end. Jason's course is done, in that body. He played the game with passion, as did the person or persons who killed him. He got to feel fear, camaraderie, loving community, valor, hatred, insanity, support, and a million other soul-making experiences. I think the Koran and Islam contain inferior values, and will voice that opinion strongly in my politics - and I also think they are as necessary on this soul-making planet as the opposing team on a football field. My own post-Jason inconsolable weeping and days of depression are part of my own soul-making course. These various emotional events are more than 'clinical' maladies which must be cured or endured until we get back to where 'we ought to be.' They are hard experiences, and they are normal and necessary in a soul-making universe. The best modern illustration of this for me is the movie Pan's Labyrinth; in that movie one gets to see the individual, socio-political and invisible soul-making levels all played out together like a Star Trek three dimensional chess game. I feel too many of us see the game at only one or two levels.

Poem: There is No Cellar, There is No Door

There is No Cellar, There is No Door

I am a strand, a speck
or a thread knotted
or a micro-filament
on the backside of
an invisible needlepoint…

And a little boy with a hole in his skull whispers,
“You make it too complicated,
dad,
and,
it is complicated,
more so than you will ever know.”

“Stop calling it time,
it is so much more,
stop calling it space,
there is no cellar, there is no door;
and music, well,
only a simple clue
to an impossible riddle
that will always get away from you.”.

“And those angelic voices
haunting you in your sleep,
those are real; the stars are deep bells
and the slight strings humming
across the moon,
you ought to listen to them."

“I will unravel this thread
only one more time,
and you will not know when, so
don’t wait. Live. Live daddy,
and maybe one day you will
see a little more,
but don’t forget, there is no cellar,
there is no door.”

end/Michael/9/10/2008

Something Only A Man Can Understand

Clearly there are some things only the Feminine can understand, the ultimate love of her child over any and all other. And there are some things only the Masculine can understand, the ultimate love of devotion to a cause bigger than himself over any and all other. The 17th century English poet, Richard Lovelace knew this well.

Dedicated to my honorable son, Jason Michael Charles Bogar, who died on July 13, 2008 while protecting his fellow soldiers and defending his country and the world from inhumane tyranny.

Off to the English Civil War

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To warlike arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I serve
The first foe in the field
And with a sterner faith embrace
The sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As thou too shalt adore.
I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honor more.

Richard Lovelace

Aphorisms

What was called catechism and confirmation in the Middle Ages is now called college and and a bachelors degree.

THE SELF MADE MAN DID NOT BEGIN WITH BARACK OBAMA

WHAT IS A 'SELF MADE MAN'?

In 1832, founder of the Whig Party, Henry Clay coined a new term never heard before, ‘the self made man.’ Eleven years later, this term was applied to a tall, poor, self educated farm boy who had struggled to become a lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Senate. He eventually became the sixteenth president of the United States. That man was Abraham Lincoln.

This blog is not about Lincoln, but about the phrase, ‘self made man.’ Like all original terms, it has become buried in decades of overuse and misuse. In Lincoln’s day, it was a fresh, unique and meaningful label.

Keep in mind that Lincoln was born in 1809 into what we today would call poverty. His birth was twenty eight short years after the end of the America Revolution in 1781. The American Constitution was ratified in 1788, twenty one years before Lincoln’s birth. The first ten amendments of the Bill of Rights was ratified by three-fourths of the States in 1791, just eighteen years before Lincoln was born.

In other words, America was literally in her infancy. This new democratic republic was what historians unanimously call, ‘the great experiment.’ People would actually govern themselves without a King, Queen, Pope or Sultan. By virtue of circumstances, young Abe Lincoln just happened to be on the ground floor of this ‘great experiment.’ Up until this time, universally men and women were primarily, if not exclusively, ‘made’ by the circumstances of their birth. The wealthy and powerful gave birth to offspring who became wealthy and powerful, the poor and powerless were forced to remain in their place. This was true not only of women and other so called ‘minorities,’ but of all people, including men. Wealthy elitist women may not have been as involved in roles of political or religious power, but they were far better off than 99.9% of the males born into lower classes, which was the vast majority of males in Europe.

The new American republic ‘began’ to change all of that. ‘Began’ is a key word, because this radical new idea did not arise perfectly formulated and executed. With a constitution granting the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ a new climate had been initiated. Any man, primarily because they were the soldiers who gave their lives to the revolutionary cause, initiated this new process. Political and religious freedoms and new economic opportunities opened the doors for almost any man to arise from the bottom and ascend to the top, politically or economically.

Few today have little idea what a radical idea, let alone reality, this was at the time. Humans had lived by roles for literally thousands of years, and suddenly they were in a new land where they could potentially transcend all limitations. Of course those with wealth and power had the advantage, but they were not guaranteed these prime roles automatically. Men like Lincoln now had the opportunity if they had the vision and persistence.

It is easy in the 21st century to complain that ‘white males’ have had power for most of America’s history, but our history is not that old. This great experiment, largely gained by the blood shed and minds exercised of these farsighted white males, opened the door for what we see today.

As Joshua Shenk says in Lincoln’s Melancholy, “The dream still eluded women, Native Americans, and African-Americans; many minority ethnic groups had to struggle for their own. Such shortcomings, though, must not obscure the boldness of the country’s basic proposition. To say that ‘all men are created equal’ – even when the phrase, in practice, applied only to white men – and that they could do what they wished, unfettered by church or crown, was to go further than any nation had gone before.”

When Barack Obama was sworn in as the first African-American presidential candidate, the news reporters at the democratic convention acted as if this were the first time in human history an underdog had climbed to such heights. While not detracting from this noteworthy event, I found their rhetoric hollow and ignorant of America's history. Less than two hundred years ago, a poor, undereducated, non-elitist white farm boy became the leader of the United States of America. Historically, this was arguably far more shocking to the world than Obama’s current rise to his position. He was raised by middle class grandparents and has a degree from Harvard. Certainly congratulations are in order for Senator Obama, but let’s not forget that the evolution into such incredible success stories did not begin in Denver at the Democratic Convention. Hopefully, the evolution of these principles will continue their meteoric rise into other cultures and civilizations.

When Henry Clay coined the phrase, ‘self made man,’ it was a first. These amazing, brave, bold and heroic men of his era opened the door for all those who have followed – going against millennia of political and religious precedent.

For Jason Bogar: Who Loved the Flag

THE MYSTERY OF HEART-URGE
For Jason Bogar

A woman has her baby, and her heart-urge,
another word for courage
to sacrifice,
to love something
more than friends, country or companion.

A man has his flag, his heart-urge
to sacrifice,
to love something more…

He has no bloody cord to cut,
no baby suckling at his breast,
but only a square quilted cloth,
symmetry, color, texture
snapping in the wind of some geography,
a land to be conquered,
or defended
with other men -
his comrades,
loved more than friends, wife or children,

He has
that same biological urge to union,
conception, gestation
and the interminable wait…

To wait for the pains,
the contractions,
for the enemy to appear on the horizon,
to threaten the lives of his beloved companions,
to test his ability to sacrifice his all
under the colors
snapping in the wind.

And when the moment arrives,
he does not give birth,
but death, or a limb, or a story
to those he leaves behind
as he cuts the bloody cord -
his own
in the puzzling cycle
where Love and Death meet,

And those who do not understand
the woman, or the man -
must invent terms: Hormones, Biology,
Maternal, Patriotism,
Destiny –

And perhaps the later,
Destiny
comes closest. It is not logical,
unless measured by the standard of heart-urge,
that incessant compulsion toward
learning to love another
more
than the expendable, anxious, weeping mess
we call,
self.

end/Michael/8/19/2008

The Necessity of Losing Your Head

Have you ever said, "Sorry, I lost my head for a moment?"

I understand the need to apologize since we may have been inconsiderate or unkind to someone, but losing your head is archetypal, a universal experience, a normal and necessary part of growing a human soul. Most of us do not go through life with just one head.

You may remember Ganesh, the Hindu God with a human body and an elephant head. He was the son of Shiva and Parvati. In a fit of anger, Lord Shiva decapitated his son. He immediately replaced the human head with the head of a wise elephant who had large ears and a broken left tusk. This symbolizes the necessity of having one's old head or way of thinking and seeing removed by the gods so that a new, wiser head with larger, listening ears can replace it. The broken left tusk is a symbol of a humbled ego.

Next time you 'lose your head,' pay attention. The head that is being lopped off, most often manifested by a discharge of emotions, is the result of the swift blade of a paternal god. Pay attention to the discharge, the words, the behaviors when you are 'losing it.' Carl Jung said that the 'gods speak to us in our symptoms.' James Hillman says, 'if you want to know your current value system, pay attention to your most explosive emotions.'

John the Baptist was decapitated to symbolize what he predicted before he baptized the Christ, “I must decrease that he may increase.” The first thing a conquering ruler does is to decapitate the prior ruler, or deface any images of the king or his god, symbolizing a new way of thinking.

A 'science of mind' principle is that the head I have today will not be the head I have next year at this time, the mind or consciousness I am operating through today will either be different, or is in the process of changing. I am always having a head removed and a new head attached. I will cooperate by losing my head with awareness, or I will be resisting through a stubborn ego, often fortified by religious justifications. The most emotional and most difficult heads to lop off are religious heads. Second are political heads. Put the two together, and you have a very hard head to remove.

When we resist decapitation, we ask for a sharper sword and more vicious blow. Sometimes we avoid losing the old head and the arrival of a new head through acts of psycho-spiritual denial; we employ meditation or various therapies. The head doesn't need to be replaced, we reason, just fixed or healed, or prayed for.

Pay attention to words, they are living things. Soul inhabits our idioms and terminology, often giving us more truly therapeutic insight than the various academic manuals of herd psychology or pat religious answers and self help books. So go a-head, move a-head, lose your head. Surrender.

Look to Ganesh. Ask him how it felt to have the old head whacked off, and then ask him if he would take it back after receiving the new head.

Where are you currently 'losing your head?'

Death, Loss, Humility and Soul-making

"I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said - 'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.'"

"But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility."

"It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh development. It has come to me right out of myself, so I know that it has come at the proper time. It could not have come before, nor later. Had any one told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had it been brought to me, I would have refused it. As I found it, I want to keep it. I must do so. It is the one thing that has in it the elements of life, of a new life, VITA NUOVA for me. Of all things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it."

"Now I have realised that it is in me, I see quite clearly what I ought to do; in fact, must do. And when I use such a phrase as that, I need not say that I am not alluding to any external sanction or command. I admit none. I am far more of an individualist than I ever was. Nothing seems to me of the smallest value except what one gets out of oneself. My nature is seeking a fresh mode of self-realisation. That is all I am concerned with. And the first thing that I have got to do is to free myself from any possible bitterness of feeling against the world."


Oscar Wilde

For Jason

YESTERDAY

Days go by,
routines expected
nothing neglected,
and I am the same as yesterday,

Perhaps a little glitch here or there,
traffic jammed
some god is damned,
and I am the same as yesterday.

The same air, same scenery
and around the wheel spins
again,
and again
and again…

Then a car crunches the gravel
as I sit upstairs, wondering
who might be coming at this hour.

Down the stairs to the knock,
familiar faces
and everything goes still at the sight
of eyes,
mouths
and souls
frozen in pain,
and I cry “no!”

Reality recedes and a little ghost
flickers like light caught in a tear,
too small to make much difference,
trying to reassure
his father…
to no avail.

There is no deeper place to fall
than the ground,
collapsing is it’s own kind of song,
and I come to
screaming at the empty night sky,

The same sky
holding the same sliver of moon
that witnessed the slaughter
of my beautiful boy,
yesterday.

end/michael - 8/7/2008

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