We are on a quest for psycho-spiritual understanding. The realm of Soul is the New World. We are explorers on the vast Ocean in our tiny ships, landing on a new shore here and there. None of us knows that much. This blog is my rough map of the terrain. Many have gone before me and millions will follow. Each gains from the steps, or missteps, of prior adventurers. Open your imagination, for Imagination provides both the ship and the territory to be explored. https://www.michaelbogar.com/
Preface: I am not invalidating the following statement. I am providing a perspective that warns the reader to see them as proverbs, not laws.
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“Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.”
-- Sylvia Boorstein
This saying can be taken in many ways. It rightly recognizes that we have the option of nursing our pain and turning it into protracted suffering. We have the option of finding ways to channel the suffering into less painful or non painful experiences.
However, my concern is that people interpret this to mean, “If your suffering lingers, you are doing something wrong.” Or that all suffering beyond the initial moment of pain is bad, useless and ineffective.
WHEN DOES ‘PAIN’ BECOME ‘SUFFERING’?
Imagine that the Twin Towers in New York had human consciousness. Imagine the day after 9/11, a spiritual Guru standing before the smoldering rubble pile of the Towers saying, “Ahhhh, very painful, but suffering is optional.” When does the ‘pain’ end and the ‘suffering’ begin? As the fire smolders beneath the huge pile of debris for weeks, is that pain or suffering? As the firemen, policemen and volunteer workers dig through the rubble – is that pain or suffering. As construction-workers use wrecking balls to dismantle old walls, and use blow torches to cut and disassemble girders and twisted metal for weeks, is this pain or suffering? As the bull dozers and dump trucks load and haul away the wreckage, is that part of the pain or ‘optional’ suffering? As countless families, friends and citizens wait for body parts to be exhumed, and grieve the dead for weeks and months, is that pain or unnecessary suffering? Some of these spiritual maxims can come off as quite calloused and trite, dismissing the role of prolonged pain/suffering as necessary in the renovation of the psyche or soul of an individual.
A SEASON IN HELL
The Greek myth of Persephone is helpful here. Persephone was the virgin daughter of Demeter, Goddess of agriculture. One morning she strolled through a sun-bathed field picking wild flowers with her companions. Suddenly the earth shook, a chasm appeared in the ground and Dark Hades, the King of the Underworld, emerged in a charcoal chariot drawn by black stallions. He swept alongside Persephone and yanked her into the chariot, and disappeared back into the chasm. This is sometimes called the Rape of Persephone. This was a ‘painful’ event for both daughter and mother. The young girl was forced down into the dark Underworld where she ate a few seeds from a pomegranate, obliging her to return to Hades for a few months each year. What do we make of this story? Many have said this myth explains the seasons, and others say it describes the violent wedding rituals of ancient Greece where girls were forced to leave home and live with their husband’s families. But let’s look at it psychologically or soulfully.
One soul-making perspective would suggest that often painful events come upon us like a rape, unexpected and suddenly we are yanked from the sunny day into a dark depression. A painful moment becomes protracted suffering. This perspective would say it is not unusual to experience a great loss and know subsequent months of darkness as a result. Eating the seeds and being obligated to return to Hades for 4-6 months out of the year suggest that soul-making includes periods of sunny, florid days with companions, and periods of solitude and reflection in dark places. In other words, Persephone is in each of us, and suffering is not just optional, but required for depth of soul.
This is not a crusade for suffering or dwelling in darkness. It is a recognition that sometimes soul work is done through prolonged emotional affliction. Like the seasons, suffering has a course to run and work to be done; aspects of the old self to be torn down, rubble to be cleared away, renovating to be done at the invisible or unconscious levels of existence.
MY EXPERIENCE OF NECESSARY PROLONGED SUFFERING
When my son was killed in Afghanistan, spiritual platitudes about unnecessary suffering were most often annoying. The pain of Jason’s death persisted for months. The pain became suffering, pathos, prolonged agony and it wasn’t optional, unless I chose pharmaceuticals or escapist meditation techniques. There was necessary grief, anger, melancholy, apathy and a host of other emotional wrecking-balls smashing into walls of my old self that did not want to be torn down. I could feel the iron thoughts slam into my head and heart, crushing my assumptions and expectations of how life should look. You should not have to bury your twenty five year old son. I was sure I was having a nightmare and would sometimes literally shake my head to wake up. I resisted and argued with the twisted wreckage of my perceptions of ‘the way it should be.’ I sat in the debris piles of old photographs and grade school journals written by my dead boy. I replayed images of his final living moments, standing, fighting, being shot, falling – was it on his face or his back? Unsolicited images came, of him bleeding and dying in the early morning hours in a remote Afghani valley. I sorted through duffle bags and hauled away old clothes belonging to my sweet son, touching them, wearing them, smelling them, weeping over them as I put them into boxes to take to the Goodwill. Many of them I kept. After about eight months, the darkness and agony began to subside, but this is another story altogether.
Was this suffering a waste of time? Was it really ‘optional’?
No. It was as necessary as the year long demolition and clearing of the Twin Towers. It was required. In order to rebuild a new dwelling, it took time to clear away the old deconstructed Towers.
Before his crucifixion, Jesus was looking at the huge Jewish Temple and said, “This temple will be torn down and in three days be built again.” John’s gospel said Jesus was speaking of his spiritual body, not the literal temple. Soul destroys and rebuilds. “Three days” refers to the perfect amount of time of destruction and suffering, and only the one suffering destruction of self will know that. Soul often unmakes before it remakes, and this is uncomfortable for most of us.
Modern Evangelicalism has been seduced into secular rationalism and doesn’t even know it. When I was in seminary, an emphasis on the literal Word of God and evidentialist apologetics was the answer to the secular skeptics. Rather than argue for a middle ground between faith and reason, called Psyche, Evangelicals surrendered the soul to intellect and began to try to play the religious game on the rationalist field. Their time and energy was spent proving a literal space/time resurrection, believing the alternative was no resurrection at all. They couldn’t understand the German theologians who spoke of ‘salvation history,’ which is the realm of Psyche, the realm that Jesus and Paul spoke about. For Jesus, the Kingdom of God, or kingdom not of this world (rationalistic world) was Psyche. It is what we call today the dream world. But again, evangelicals had unwittingly bought into secular rationalism by believing Freud and other scientists who said dreams were neurologically produced. Psyche sees dreams as neurologically ‘received.’ We dwell in a Realm that exists between fact and fiction called soul. Soul is the sea in which we swim – sort of like radio and television signals are the sea in which a TV monitor radio receiver swims.
Evangelicals lost, and are losing the battle. Fortunately, by default and psychic equilibration, evangelicals are returning to soul, though they don’t realize it. The new emphasis on ‘narrative theology,’ and ‘entertainment theology,’ and other such emphases reveal the need for the middle realm of soul – the story, the myth, the truth of the Logos that can neither be proved empirically nor disproved. It can be demonstrated scientifically by the ubiquitous nature of mythologies and archetypal religious features. Evangelicals are tired of defending defenseless and senseless doctrines that produce nothing but intellectual factions and rationalist sparring. Those who are good at memorizing facts and building ideological systems are successful, but most of them have no spiritual or soulful life to speak of. How could they? They are without the Source.
Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.” Gospel of Thomas, Saying 4
Why Can Life Be So Difficult?
The first truth the Buddha realized when he woke up under his Meditation Tree was this, “Life is suffering.” This troubles many of us in the West as being far too pessimistic. We prefer to turn lemons into lemonade, but sometimes we are out of sugar. Is there are a purpose in getting so many lemons in life? I think there is – we are in a soul-making gym, and our nascent soul muscles must develop or atrophy. Infants Grow Through Resistance
The newborn infant is a perfect example. He is aggressively squeezed from his mother’s womb by powerful uterine contractions. Immediately after birth, whenever anything resembling a nipple comes near his mouth, his little head rolls toward it and his lips start smacking. Once he gets hold, he clamps down and begins to suckle insatiably. In Greek mythology, baby Hercules suckled at Hera’s breast with such excruciating force that she pulled him away and the resultant stream of milk that spilled across the inky sky became the Milky Way Galaxy.
Babies grab at fingers and strain to focus their eyes on moving objects. They wiggle, scream, cry and thrust their limbs about. They struggle against gravity, the floor, the crib and a thousand other obstacles, trying to roll over, crawl, sit up, stand, walk and talk.
Purposeful Struggles
You see, there is a purpose in these innate impulses that compel the baby to fight gravity and push against immovable forces, namely, to develop muscles, joints and a strong skeletal structure. Without his insatiable desire to defy gravity, struggle against solid objects and defy physical laws, he would never develop and grow. The word for this is isometrics. Isometric exercise is a method to increase muscle and joint strength through encountering resistance. Babies grow up by meeting and moving through the resistance of obstacles. Spiritual Isometrics
The life of soul-making is mirrored in the infant. Perhaps that is why the Gospel of Thomas says, “Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, ‘These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) kingdom.’"
These infants demonstrate the insatiable and innate human desire to struggle physically, intellectually and emotionally. In each of these arenas, there are obstacles that frustrate our desires and create chronic resistance in order to develop ‘soul-muscles.’ From the cradle to the casket, life is fraught with immovable or resistant forces of opposition that frustrate our innate desires in order to cause us to expand soulfully. Why is Life so Hard?!
I used to build houses with a carpenter, who at some point in the work day would yell out from some distant corner of the new house, “WHY!?” There would be a five second pause, and I could imagine him looking at a wall he had just built in the wrong place, or a board he had cut too short, and then another cry,
“WHY!?”
A pause…then finally the ultimate philosophical inquiry, ‘WHY DOES LIFE HAVE TO BE SOOOOOO %#@#ing HARD!” Soul-making is Done Through the Mundane
Soul-making is not done primarily in seminaries or church pews by professional clergy and the spiritually devout; nor is it done primarily by psychiatrists or philosophers. Souls are most deeply made in the daily grind of workplace frustrations, family irritations and midnight panic attacks, not the evening meditation with sandalwood incense swirling from a burning stick. Spiritual Olympics
Planet earth is a kind of soul-gym preparing us for the spiritual Olympics. Before an athlete comes to his or her Olympic event, there are a lot of boring workouts with heavy weights. There are myriad failures along the way. Yet there is a purpose in every aching muscle leading up to the grand event. The mind-numbing and difficult daily resistance of weights, of feet pounding against the hard cinder track or countless strokes in a training pool increase muscle, lung and heart stamina. And even more importantly, after the Olympic event is over, whether the athlete wins or loses, she takes her stronger body and developed character with her into the rest of life, and likely beyond this life. That is how soul-making works. Necessary Oppositions
It is likely that some who are reading this are now in the soul-gym working out. You are experiencing resistance through some kind of loss or tragedy that is producing worry, fear, frustration and sadness. Why? These emotions are normal, necessary and purposeful. They are the flaccid muscles and undeveloped soul-body encountering the weights of daily life - pressing, pushing, yielding, learning and moving us to the next place.
Most people who go back to church do so because their life is falling apart, not because they are in pure bliss. Those who buy self help books, start therapy, begin reflecting over their lives, start donating time and money to charities, and get involved in recovery groups do so because they are in pain. Like newborns, their frustrated desires compel them to seek resolution as they encounter pathological resistances. Like newborns, their strength comes BECAUSE of their weakness, as the Apostle Paul said in the New Testament. The 'dysfunction' is divinely functional!
Some teachers will tell you that your problems are the sole result of your sin or dysfunctional ego, or that you are spiritually ignorant and need to get with it. They may give you a pep talk, chastise your ignorance or pass on some 'secret' formula to transcend your problems.
And yes, some of our problems are caused by us, and some of these teachings can be extremely helpful to get us out of ignorance. But not always. Most of us have had the experience of the applying these mystical teachings with rigor, only to find the same obstructions and negative emotions coming back again and again. We then add guilt to failure and despair to our perceived dysfunction and inability. Keep in mind that a developing soul caught in pathology is no more dysfunctional than an infant that cannot sit up without toppling over. Isometrics! The resistance increases strength. That is how it works. God help us when we see Childhood Toppling Over Disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual!
There is no shortcut to soul-making! Difficult emotions are as normal and necessary as the flaccid muscles of a baby. Like weak muscles, our ‘bad’ feelings are our purposeful resistances that come to build soul. That is why every sacred text, including Homer’s Iliad, the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Koran and The Lord of the Rings is a story of war and resistance. Every so called 'bad feeling' is an amazing soul-muscle waiting to be built. And you do not have to seek out or pray for experiences of resistance, because day to day existence will bring plenty onto your path! Let me repeat, that is why we are on this planet!
I am not advocating for self induced or unnecessary distress. I am not teaching poverty, sickness or pessimism consciousness. I suggest that you awake each morning affirming ease, order, health, wealth and the Good. But don’t feel like a failure when the soul-making emotions and thoughts of resistance come flooding in. These fears, depressions, conflicts and anxieties that ‘pop into’ the mind and heart are normal, natural and instinctive obstacles that build soul muscle and spiritual character.
There is Nothing Wrong With You!
Yes, life can feel very wrong, and we can even call it ‘wrong’ or ‘bad,’ but it is not Cosmically Wrong. Again, watch a newborn baby desiring and struggling, and you will see the way life on this planet works. Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.” {Saying 4} Soul-making takes place by going through these life exercises. Find good trainers, teachers, spiritual exercise manuals, effective soul workout routines, helpful churches, conscious therapists, positive prayer and everything you can to build soul. And please, become like an infant, and meet the resistances as a necessary part of the process.
Every religion recognizes humans as being curiously constructed of various ingredients not quite stirred together and cooked yet. These include the physical body which I see as a kind of playing field where the game of making a Human takes place. The human spirit is the rational part, or mind that strives for unity, wholeness, health and continual joy. Finally, soul is the illogical, insane, fragmented, dark part of us that leads us into thoughts of fear, anxiety and pathology.
SPIRITUAL GYMNASIUMS OVER HOSPITALS
Spirit is compelled to light, joy, peace, compassion and dreams of world peace. Soul is compelled to darkness, turmoil, terror and nightmares. Spirit pulls us straight into the heavens, soul plunges us into the meandering dark depths. We all know both realms of experience. But modern psychology minimizes the necessary work of soul by telling us that we are disordered as bi-polar, manic-depressive, schizophrenic, having multiple personalities and a host of other disparaging terms that often cause more harm than help. We don't need so much to 'cure' these dualities as see their psychic function in making us into Humans. We need to shift our primary focus away from curing unnecessary conflicts, to caring for necessary spiritual isometrics that make us into Humans. Our spiritual churches and psychiatric centers need to resemble gymnasiums rather than hospitals where we treat sick people. Clearly there is room for both metaphors, for sometimes we break spiritual bones and need cures, but the emphasis ought to be on training rather than illness.
The following excerpt from the gifted teacher and author, Byron Katie, was sent to me by a friend in light of my sons death last July. My response follows, which essentially agrees, yet with a strong warning that the human experiences of judgment and confusion are perfectly normal and necessary in a soul-making universe. The deep serenity of the mystic doesn't enter the psyche through osmosis, but via inconvenient archetypal experiences native to the en-Humanment process. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, "An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." - On Running After Ones Hat, 1908
"If my daughter (or brother in my case) dies, I realize that there is no self to be affected. It's not about me. This is about her life, my child's life, and mind --the unceasing bodiless mind that is finally awake to itself, the mind that never existed as a her, and the her that can never die. In this, we are never separated. And that's just a beginning: it gets even kinder. I get to see what my child's children grow in to because she was not there to teach them differently. Whenever I lose something, I've been spared. Every loss has to be a gain, unless the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world cannot decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any better, it has to. That's the law."
My 'concern' with this excerpt is with the possible assumption that 'judgment' and 'confusion' are unnecessary experiences, and to be gotten rid of. Just because something is undesirable doesn't mean it is unnecessary. I realize that Katie doesn't say that, but so many current teachers of consciousness who are compassionately seeking to end suffering imply that there is no cosmic necessity in the suffering created by a judgmental and confused mind/brain. I see the Universe as a wondrous place for the eternal archetype of 'Confusion'. The mind/brain are made to judge and be confused.
Isometrics is the increase in strength as a result of the necessary and normal fusion (con-fusion) of joint and muscle with objects of resistance. Without gravity and solid matter, we would be limp noodles. Babies come from the womb kicking against uterine walls, swinging their arms, inhaling and expelling oxygen for the first time, grabbing fingers, fighting gravity, pushing against the floor and screaming against the resistance of a very 'oppressive' (to press against) world. Without these resistances, they would never develop. The body would grow flabby and atrophy without continued resistance against immovable or reluctantly movable objects.
SPIRITUAL ISOMETRICS
I call soul-making Spiritual Isometrics. The soul is like the human body. It must encounter resistance in order to increase strength. The proclivity toward mental and emotional conflict is built into the mind/brain. Mind and brain function like joints and muscles to expand through resistance. We know this to be true of neurons, that they increase and multiply through the con-fusion of cross word puzzles, college exams or figuring out ways to prove we are right to our partners. All great inventions and adventures are the result of meeting resistance and expanding beyond the obstacle.
Resistance and confusion are native to Reality. At the cosmic level, the Big Bang is an act of creative resistance. The recent Membrane Theory which attempts to explain the Big Bang says, “Spontaneous creation of matter seems to be possible, because the resistance of the existing matter inside the membrane is producing a great amount of energy.”One physicist oversimplified it by saying, “The universe appears to be made up of quantum membranes, like vast cells, and when two or more collide, they con-fuse and there is the birth of a universe.” Mothers and fathers call this conception.
So from the structure of the cosmos, to the energy of the atom, through every phase of evolution, to muscle development, through grappling with Jason's death, to pounding my fingers against this plastic alphabet on the computer key pad - Reality always expands by meeting immovable or reluctantly movable forces.
So called ‘negative emotions’ exist for that purpose, namely, expansion of soul. Fear, grief, confusion, anxiety, panic, depression and so forth are forms of normal, necessary and creative thoughts and emotions that expand and empower soul to grow bigger than it was yesterday. These amazing affections are as much a part of a loving Reality as joy, peace, clarity and ecstasy. That’s why the Hindu mythology, and all mythologies, depict a Mother Goddess (Kali) as simultaneously the giver of new babies and the decapitating demon. The Celtic equivalent is Morrigan. That is why Nature slaughters her population every Fall, and regenerates them each Spring.
Katie says, "Every loss has to be a gain, unless the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world cannot decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any better, it has to. That's the law."
I would change three words in her statement, "Every loss has to be a gain, because the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world must decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any bigger, it has to. That's the law."
Confused judgment is the means to or cause of the new gain, not an obstacle. The confused judgment is the building material of the gain just as the weight in the gym is the cause of the muscle increase. The obstacle is the cause of the expansion.
I see the mind/brain as being wonderfully constructed to include the capacity and necessity of confused judgment - and thereby create the space and the material for the myriad gains that will come with each experience of judgment and confusion. Just as the foot is constructed to press against the pavement in order to generate movement, or the finger to pinch and squeeze a piece of food in order to hold and eat it, so my mind must grasp or press against each loss 'in order' to create the container for, and to acquire the gain. The foot and finger are 'confused' or fused together with oppositional gravity and material resistance in order to increase strength to take the walk or get the food. My mind must encounter resistance and ‘suffer’ internal and external oppositions to create my unique soul. It is what mind/brain is made to do, and is purposeful.
I once spoke to a group of New Age devotees about the necessity of judgments to make soul. One participant spoke up, obviously upset, and said that he was sick of all these theories, debates and arguments about spirituality. He proceeded to go on and on about the serenity and joy he had attained by giving up judgments. After he finished, I hesitated, but couldn't resist, and said, "It sounds like you have some very strong judgments about people with judgments." Truth is sometimes inconvenient. You see, we cannot live without judgments any more than a baby can live without trying to walk. To be human is to judge. It is our nature, and it is purposeful. One could liken our propensity to develop judgments which we will later try to release, to a child who labors ceaselessly to develop muscles in order to grow up and invent machines to minimize the exertion of muscles! We develop judgments in order to release judgments, and thereby grow a soul. Soul is made in the process. Growing egoic opinions, beliefs, prejudices and judgments and then learning to surrender these opinions and judgments is a means to an end. And that end is not even serenity, but soul-making. Serenity is a wonderful by product.
We encounter these mental ‘con -fusings’ all day long with thousands of subjects and objects. The mind/brain are in a chronic state of judgment and con-fusings, chronically thinking, “I like this or I don’t like this.” We don’t consciously do this, it just happens, like a baby exerting his muscles. Mind/brain automatically con-fuse (combine) with life events, just as the lungs automatically fuse with oxygen, by nhaling and exhaling without conscious thought. Attraction and repulsion are the two autonomic states of mind/brain for making unique souls. Our automatic innate judgments and con-fusings must be seen as normal and necessary. Then we can learn ways to care for and work with them as allies rather than enemies.
That is where I find Katie’s method helpful in not getting stuck in a single, myopic state of ideological confusion. Her four questions can help me shift one kind of fusion to another – I can refuse them, re-fuse them, in-fuse them, sometimes de-fuse them, ex-fuse, inter-fuse them, etc. The mind must fuse with something - it simply must and always will unless your brain is organically diseased, you get a lobotomy or enter into an altered state through medical or meditational escapisms. The Psyche is always judging, always creating more anxiety and confusion to stretch our souls. Most judgments and con-fusions are subtle, some are catastrophic. It is as instinctual to judge and fuse with people, situations and ideas as it is for the baby seeking to fuse with a nipple or squeeze a finger. These fusions jump start the expansion process. And this universe is rife with the objects and subjects of the necessary judgments and fusions for soul-making.
I do find Katie’s language to be quite beautifully instructive when she says, “I come to see…” The ‘coming’ process is just as normal and necessary as the ‘seeing’ goal. She nearly went insane and ended up in a halfway house before 'coming to.' Sometimes we minimize the ‘coming’ process that entails going through all of the painful thoughts and emotions of judgment, worry, fear and grief. There is never human mystical integration without emotional and mental disintegrations (plural). I know of no mystic who has not fallen completely apart before they surrendered. Science knows of no galaxy, solar system or planet that did not develop from a flaming debris field. Mythologies from Jesus' resurrection, Osiris's reassemblage, the rise of the Phoenix from the ashes and Humpty Dumpty's crash are all archetypal indicators of Psyche's nature as a 'coming'...and then a 'coming to' and finally the 'seeing.' And 'coming to' implies a 'going out' or crash and disintegration. The goal requires the process.
“I come to see…” teaches me that the serene mystic mind is ontologically no more necessary or important than the confused judging mind, anymore than the fully blossomed rose is greater than the little rotting seed in the dark soil from which it sprang. Souls, like flowers, are made progressively and processively. Just as the seed must die, crack up and con-fuse with the muddy loam in the murky pond in order to bud (Buddha) into the flowering Lotus, so the human soul must fuse with many experiences of death, darkness, disagreement and a thousand ego related conflicts to reach full enHumanment. ‘Coming to,’ is a necessary process for ‘coming to see’.
Wholeness is not attained when one 'sees'. Wholeness includes the dirty, con-fusing process of coming to as well as the result of seeing. The tacit or explicit assumption that Wholeness includes only the awakened mind is a mistake made in many New Age circles. This wrong assumption is to the peril of all humans who think there is something amiss until they finally un-fuse with their problems and 'see' the Light. The flower is Whole as the seed pod stuck in the black pond sediment, through the cracking open and extension of roots downward, to the full bloom under the sun and all the way to wilted heap.
Our confusions, judgments, fears and all so called 'negative' emotions are normal and necessary, not to be tolerated and gotten rid of as secondary processes. These innate mental and emotional resistances are allies to soul-making via their nature as painful obstacles. This process of spiritual isometrics grows soul, or some would say 'increases character.' This is what the amazing poet William Blake was conveying in his opus, 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell', summarized by his proverb, "Without Contraries is no progression." The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said it like this, "Strife (confusion) is the Father of all." And the Geek philosopher Homer Simpson who said, "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel."
And of course confusions and judgments can also sometimes strain and break us severely. Not all isometric exercise strengthens joints and muscles. Sometimes we break a bone or damage a joint and need healing. Sometimes the mind and heart are broken, suffering compound fractures – what we call 'emotional or mental breakdowns.' I see Katie's process and other mental healing fantasies as VERY VERY beneficial when the mind is being 'over-exercised' or at the breaking point. The Work can move you into and through mental resistance in order to develop soul, unless you use it to escape. Exercises are only as good as their proper execution.
But to imply that judgmental confusion is unnatural, unnecessary, abnormal and needs to be gotten rid of is a very dangerous assertion. It is tantamount to saying that just because physical exercise is difficult and uncomfortable, it must be stopped. Or that algebra causes me to suffer, therefore algebra is bad for me and must be ended. If my musculature did not daily fuse with the many objects of resistance in my path, I would atrophy and die. The mind/brain are not doing something 'wrong', 'alien', 'abnormal' or 'unnecessary' when they judge and get con-fused with life events. The mind/brain are doing what they do, fuse with objects of resistance, judging them in order to grow a soul.
THE CON-FUSION OF CONCEPTION
Another natural example is the necessary collisionS and confusion of a hundred thousand sperm cells into the citadel of the solid and resistant ovum. The microscopic crusaders batter the impenetrable membrane until one finds the open gate and enters. Then the 'fusing together' begins. The sperm cell and egg cell fuse together (con-fuse) and a new life begins. This is a microcosmic metaphor for the making of an individual soul, and the collective Soul of the Universe - collisions, losses, confusions, divisions, multiplications, additions, subtractions and all of these done in the depths of a dark womb. The creative chaos in the womb is the way mind/brain works too.
The night I heard Jason died, I was fused with unimaginable loss. It would have done me no good, and does me no good now, to hear “that there is no self to be affected.” I know there was a self to be affected because it was. That self was, and still is, being dismantled by these affections. There is very likely a stage in the process where the human soul ceases to be so affected in the enHumanment journey, a 'coming to see,' but the necessary experiences of traumatic self‘affection’ must not be minimized, discounted or avoided. I meet too many people who have a kind of subliminal assumption that ‘someday’, when they are enlightened, suffering will cease. One might as well wait for the trees to stop shedding their leaves or the universe to stop expanding toward extinction. Soul is infinite. To negate or minimize the Gods that we don’t like because they are troubling is what the Greeks called hubris. Humans are in a process of infinite expansion, and humans will never trump the work of the Gods in soul-making. The Gods will return until they are heard and/or honored, and their returns we often call re-sentments. That is why Jung counseled, "Always look for the God in your symptom."
In this life, there will be and equilibrated measure of days of pleasure and days of pain, days of loss and days of gain – and perhaps, as we enter the process fully and encounter our sufferings as normal and necessary, we may achieve some measure of consistent serenity in the midst of the myriad con-fusings on planet earth. M. Scott Peck said, “Life is difficult. But when you see that life is difficult, it becomes less difficult.”
Tolle said it well when he wrote that without the suffering caused by ego we “would not evolve as human beings…Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form AND (my emphasis) erodes identification with form…eventually suffering destroys the ego – but not until you suffer consciously.” (A New Earth, p.102)
Tolle’s observation should have been developed and turned into a whole chapter to help people see the necessary, purposeful role of ego and its more 'dysfunctional' aspects as crucial and functional experiences for creative soul-making. My suspicion is that Tolle is trying to remain religiously neutral and spiritually detached to reach a larger secular audience. But that is like trying to teach someone to learn the alphabet without telling him that the goal is to read and write. The ego is good. The ego will meet much resistance - the result is soul-making, which cannot be taught without the Gods.
Over the past few months since my sons death I have been fused-together with loss, sadness, fear, remorse, resentments and a thousand other forces of affective or emotional resistance. I have been filled with judgments. I have been falling apart. I have curled up in bed and slept, dreamed, wept, prayed, cursed and experienced affections I didn't know existed. But from a soul-making perspective I could more clearly see my falling apart and confusion as normal and necessary, not mental illnesses or inherited dysfunctions, not some alien intrusion, not due to original sin or the fault of my selfish ego which was trying to ‘edge God out.’ I see the work of Ego now as ‘edging God outward.’ The ego-seed pod must burst asunder, shed its fragile skin, lose its perfect circle, then begin again.
There have been times the isometrical resistance of Jason's death has debilitated and broken me beyond human comprehension. I have learned to allow people to carry me when I was so broken I could not walk, and the bones are mending to become even stronger. Like Jacob, after wrestling with the Angel of the Lord for his blessing, I will always have a dislocated hip. But the soul blessing is becoming mine as a result of the crippling struggle, not in spite of it. Soul-making gives us wounds and scars. What better way to be reminded that the amazing character we are developing is not auto-generated or self righteous morality? Scarred work is sacred work. The result of these past months has been a gradual increase in heart and mental strength; a greater sense of call, a larger ability to love my other children, my parents, my fellow human beings - and this new love continues to grow. I have never in my life wept so much as I have over Jason’s death, and yet my heart has never been larger. I have never been so fused with loss and darkness, and my heart is now opening to levels of abundance, love and light I could not have imagined.
REALITY IS NOT ALWAYS KIND
Finally, I do not think that reality is always 'kind'. That implies that there is little or no reason or room for 'unkindness' apart from human failures or sins. Experiences of unkindness, like war, are archetypal, and provide us with the opportunity to grow souls of kindness. The experiences of heartless cruelty from mean people provide the resistance a soul must feel in order to individuate, determine values, draw personal boundaries and form deep compassion for wounded human beings. That is why Jesus told us to bless our enemies - they are the force against which our souls push to increase spiritual muscle and stature. Bitter resentments act like beneficial mold on cantalope - destroying the more lethal bacteria of self obsession. The more deep and powerful the resentments, the more we see how self obsessed we really are, and seek ways to escape the pain of self obsession. Grief expands a tiny ego-pod into a greater capacity for joy. Cynicism, criticism, hatred, anger and sarcasm give us the experience of hellish isolation and self absorption, moving us like Scrooge to a misery that presses us down (depression), forcing us to brood over the past, present and future. During the miserable brooding, Psyche, like the Spirit hovering over the Cosmic egg in Genesis 1, may hatch the light of consideration, acceptance and compassion for others.
We live in an odd universe. In the human being, infinity has been mixed with finitude, the two are wonderfully con-fused, and it is through the daily interactive resistance of mind, body and spirit that we conceive and grow invisible souls.
Dr. Randy Pausch died a few weeks after he gave this 10 minute talk. He knew he was dying. I rarely watch or listen to anything on YouTube over 2 minutes in length. I couldn't stop listening to this one. It is soul-making at its best.
In some ways it reminds me of my son Jason who died defending human dignity and freedom in Afghanistan on July 13, 2008, but almost everything reminds me of Jason these days. He has become my master teacher. Jason never once showed me that he looked at life as something to preserve. He lived it as his heart called him to his next mission.
The Greek word Psyche, or Soul, means night moth. Love and Death are the twin flames that draw our Psyche forward into soul-making. One draws us into the heights, the other into the depths. Love draws us by pleasure, extroversion and attraction, Death by pain, introversion and intrigue (often terror). As you will see in this brief farewell lecture, Death makes souls expand in ways Life never could.
1Batter my heart, 2three-person'd God; for you
As yet but 3knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
4That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an 5usurp'd town, to another 6due,
7Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
8Reason, your 9viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved 10fain,
But am 11betroth'd unto your enemy;
12Divorce me, untie, or 13break that knot again,
Take me to you, 14imprison me, for I,
15Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever 16chaste, except you 17ravish me.
1. ‘Batter my heart’ declares the theme of this whole poem, namely, to be completely disassembled and made new. This is an admission of a once lovely little ego that had hardened into a fixed adult persona. This old self or heart no longer worked and it appeared that it was coming down only by force.
2. ‘three-person'd God’ is a reference to the Christian Trinity (God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit), probably using the plurality to admit the necessity of more than one being needed to enter his stubborn heart.
3. Donne felt the gentle knocking of God at his heart to enter and make him a new man. The whisper of a breath, a gentle shining light, and mending of wounds are all wonderful, maybe even preferred experiences by most spiritual programs. But it is not enough.
4. The aim of this ‘breaking and burning’ is that the poet may ‘rise and stand’. The poet brilliantly states the aim of rising and standing again and anew at the beginning of this line as if to let God, and the reader, know he is not a spiritual sadomasochist. The imagery of the incinerated Phoenix comes to mind, or the crucified Christ, or the dismantled Osiris, or the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi, or the humiliated Watergate criminal Chuck Colson – each rising from the heap of debris to become a new Self.
5. “Usurp’d town” is a poetic version of ‘usurped’ which means to seize, commandeer, grab, or capture. This is an image of a large, fortified city being assailed by a powerful king who uses all weapons.
7. ‘I labour to admit you’ suggests that the town (man) works to do the right thing, to surrender, pay taxes, etc., but finds his natural inclination is to keep it all for himself. ‘To no end’ means he has seen over and over that human effort to surrender control has not worked.
8. ‘Reason’ should understand and defend God as the true Ruler. But Reason all too often becomes the ego’s rational mind which justifies rebellion, excuses selfishness, blames others for problems, justifies inappropriate behaviors and uses all sorts of mental chess to avoid surrender is the King of the city (ego). In a soul-making paradigm, this is exactly what Reason is supposed to do. This rational resistance against the Higher Self creates a Being, a Human Being, that cannot be created in any other way, producing a unique creature in the cosmos that wills to power, and then expands by surrendering that will. It is a sort of spiritual isometrics – the power of the joint and muscle are increased by working against an immovable force or opposed by resistance.
9. A viceroy is a royal official who governs a country or province in the name of and as representative of the Monarch. Donne recognizes that he is not the King of the city, but an appointed caretaker who rules under the authority and guidance of the Monarch. But even as the viceroy, Reason fails to defend and submit to God.
10. ‘Fain’ is an old word that meant gladly willing, eagerly desirous, happy to comply. In this line he acknowledges the psychic paradox of wanting to rebel and have his own way while simultaneously being deeply desirous of receiving and basking in the love of God. Traditional Christian doctrine of Original Sin explains this by the Fall of Adam which made humans entirely responsible for this innate rebellion. Soul-making and Depth Psychology explain this innate human resistance and struggle as a normal, necessary developmental feature of the human psyche. As another Romantic poet, William Blake wrote, “There is no progression without opposites.”
11. Betrothed means engaged to be married, and in some cultures is practically a synonym as it seems here. Donne recognizes he is wedded to his ego, in love with his own self obsessed, self centered ego-persona. This enemy was also symbolized by the Christian images of the power hungry Devil, the World of prestige by appearances, and his own fleshly sensory drive for pleasure.
12. Using another metaphor for capitulation to becoming his whole Self, he begs God to divorce him from the enemy. He recognizes that he is not capable in his own strength to effect such a break. He must have God’s grace and power to escape the allure of the old persona. Psyche can confuse humans because we often simultaneously seek security and renovation. This is normal.
13. This cutting the thread has happened more than once. Donne recognizes that we keep going back to that old, abusive lover. There is a Jewish proverb that says, “God ties us to Himself by a very long string. We keep cutting the string, and he keeps retying it. Each time we cut the string and he reties it, we get closer to Him.”
14. He uses two metaphors here, ‘imprison’ and ‘enthrall’. They are similar in that each conjures up the image of being forced to remain in place. But enthralls, appearing as a sort of correction, amplification or modification of ‘imprison’ means to mesmerize, enchant, charm, seduce and fascinate. He asks God to make Himself more alluring than self obsession and self centeredness. This is what happens in spiritual evolution – we move from knowing what is right, to loving what is right.
15. ‘Except you shall enthrall (seduce) me’ recognizes the irony of wanting God and yet avoiding God. True freedom is in God, not in self. He has already recognized that Reason and will power will not work. The human psyche has been given the experiences of the God qualities of power, prestige and pleasure contained in a little ego-self. They are deliciously enjoyable, but apart from the Source, there is never complete freedom and satisfaction.
16. Chastity is purity or virtue. Here it is way more than sexual. It is what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
17. This idea of being ravished by God is very Rumi-esque, if you are familiar with the Persian poet. Donne knows that chastity or godly virtue is impossible without being ravished or seduced by God’s larger Reality. The word ‘ravish’ is etymologically related to the word ‘rape’, hearkening back to the original motif in this poem of God’s battering, breaking down the walls, burning the old city, overthrowing, laboring, divorcing from the old partner, and imprisoning the poet. This image brings up the Greek Rape of Persephone which is often viewed negatively. However, as with all morally neutral myths, the symbology may also remind us that sometimes the God/Gods (Psyche) take us from our field of flowers and sun by force, plummeting us into a dark Underworld where we make larger souls through what we call depression, sadness, loneliness, alienation and the loss of people, places and stuff.
18. The goal of this poem is a prayer to be made new by whatever means possible (lines 3-4). I could and probably should stop there, for that is the point. But I, like most writers, rarely stop where I should.
This poem captures me at a time in my life where I am genuinely tired of the old ego citadel which once gave so much pleasure and satisfaction, and was simply familiar and comfortable when it was giving me misery and despair. As Donne says in line 11, this citadel has been captured, or old lover divorced, many times over the years, but I keep going back. That is normal and part of the process in a soul-making universe. Donne recognizes that life on this planet is so arranged that these old selves rarely disappear without a struggle. He, unlike the Hebrew Job, is asking to be dismantled, willing to lose fortune, family, health or whatever it takes to know the Infinite. This is not easy stuff or to be taken lightly. Few of us are in this place. My twenty five year old son was killed in Afghanistan as a soldier on July 13, 2008. I was not ready or willing to be so devastated, assailed, raped and violated by life, let alone ‘God’. Oh well. These sorts of tragedies, and some far worse, happen every day somewhere on this planet, and have since the beginning of time. From the first Big Bang that destroyed the initial Cosmic Egg, sending forth the shrapnel of what we now call the Universe, to the bang that exploded in my son’s chest, disintegration has been the emoting force of Creation. There is nothing odd or abnormal, nothing sick or neurotic about this cosmic process of disintegration and integration followed by disintegration and reintegration, unless you are a Gnostic, and that is another story altogether.
The goal of this poem is a prayer to be made new by whatever means possible (lines 3-4).
Donne's Poem is followed by an Essay on The Spirituality of God's Violence -
HOLY SONNETS – XIV by John Donne
Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
End
English poet John Donne’s fourteenth Holy Sonnet speaks to those of us who feel we have been, or need to be, ravished by God:
“Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
The word ‘ravish’ comes from the Latin word rapere and gave rise to our English words ‘rapid’ and ‘rape.’ It meant to abduct, seize, carry off by force and was most often used to describe the work of pirates and raiding armies. Only later did it develop the sexual connotation we most often associate with it today.
I call this poem the antidote to Job because Donne begs to be Divinely violated, ravished and abducted that he might escape the Hell of his own ego. Job was ravished and wanted to know 'why?' This poem conjures up the image of a forceful intervention, rescuing someone from a dark delusion that has ensnared him/her by a certain enchanting allure that simultaneously is killing him/her. Today we call this addiction, codependence or ‘making a living’. Donne prays to be delivered from whatever keeps an infinite soul trapped in a finite existence. This poem is not for the faint of heart, or those who see spirituality as light and goose-bumpy moments smelling of sandalwood. The images are not ‘spiritually correct' and may shock, as was intended by Donne. Jesus once alluded to something comparable when he said, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing…” (Matthew 11:12)
The goal of this poem is a prayer to be made new by whatever means possible as seen in lines 3-4:
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
The line might make more prosaic sense if you read, “In order that I may rise…overthrow me.” I could and probably should stop there, for that is THE point. But I, like most writers, rarely stop where I should.
This poem captures me at a time in my life where I am genuinely tired of the old ego citadel which once gave so much pleasure and satisfaction, and was simply familiar and comfortable when it was giving me misery and despair. As Donne says in line 5, this ‘usurped town’ or citadel has been captured, or the old lover divorced many times over the years, but I keep going back. That is normal and part of the process in a soul-making universe. Donne recognizes that life on this planet is so arranged that these old selves rarely disappear without a struggle. The resistance and struggle make the soul.
Donne, unlike the protagonist in the Hebrew Book of Job, is asking to be dismantled, violated and broken; he is willing to lose fortune, family, health or whatever it takes to know the Infinite. This is not easy stuff or to be taken lightly. Few of us are in this place.
The aim of this ‘breaking and burning’ in lines 3-4 is that the poet may ‘rise and stand’. Donne brilliantly states the aim of rising and standing anew at the beginning of line 3 as if to let God, and the reader, know he is not a spiritual sadomasochist. The imagery of the incinerated Phoenix comes to mind, or the crucified Christ, or the dismantled Osiris, or the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi, or the humiliated Watergate criminal Chuck Colson – each rising from the heap of debris to become a new Self.
My twenty five year old son was killed in Afghanistan as a soldier on July 13, 2008. I was not ready or willing to be so devastated, assailed, raped and violated by life, let alone ‘God’. Soul does not await my consent. These sorts of tragedies, and some far worse, happen every day somewhere on this planet, and have since the beginning of time. From the first Big Bang that destroyed the initial Cosmic Egg, sending forth the shrapnel of what we now call the Universe, to the bang that exploded in my son’s chest in the KorengalValley near the border of Pakistan, disintegration has been the emoting force of Creation. Soul-making images a universe where such a process is not odd or abnormal, there is nothing sick, sinful or neurotic about this cosmic process of disintegration and integration followed by disintegration and reintegration. But it is rare and odd for a man to openly ask God to do whatever is necessary to perfect his soul.
I conclude by repeating: The goal of this poem is a prayer to be made new by whatever means possible (lines 3-4). If you would like to read the poem with my line by line interpretive footnotes, please click here ----> Poem with Footnotes
