Accepting The Discords of God

"The discords of the world are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony…"
Sri Aurobindo

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PRINCIPLES OF SUFFERING

I sometimes come across teachers who make it their goal to end suffering in the world. That is a wonderfully compassionate and noble aim. The irony for me is that those who dedicate their lives to this mission have typically been in the depths of hell like few other humans have. Most have spent years in the depths of despair, anxiety, fear and depression. Most of them have been suicidal, addicted to something or someone, in and out of institutions (hospitals, treatment centers, jails, courts, asylums) or had excruciating near death experiences. But once they came to their senses, or experienced some sort of an awakening, they sometimes think that they can spare others the same painful trip by giving them ten principles or five steps to stop suffering.

Here are my principles:

1. The Cosmos is constructed through and for meaningful suffering.
2. Suffering is necessary to make souls, sometimes called character.
3. No one else can ultimately suffer for another.
4. There are no principles to end suffering on this planet.
5. Personal suffering transforms selves into Soul.

BE WARY OF PROMISES

Yes, there are teachers who can provide teachings that guide us through suffering toward the making of our own Soul; but be wary of those who state directly, or imply that they can teach you to avoid suffering altogether. And I don’t care if they make the distinction between ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’.

You see, some might say, “Well, we can’t stop pain in this life, but we need not suffer.”

The principle is sound enough, but the practice doesn’t pan out in real life. This idea must be learned via a certain amount of suffering. I have seen this belief that suffering can be ended cause some people deep depression, and some eventually to chuck the whole spiritual enterprise. Some come to believe themselves to be failures or faithless because they can’t “apply” the principles to end suffering to their daily lives. Others will see the failures of their esteemed teachers, call them hypocrites and also forsake the so called spiritual life altogether. The fact is, soul-making requires a certain amount of suffering and you can’t avoid it!

THINKING MY WAY OUT OF NEGATIVITY AND PAIN

There will always be those optimists who will say they can mentally deny their way out of suffering by affirming calmness, turning away from negative darkness and toward the light of Spirit, reuniting with the Source of Love. They will tell you that you can short circuit suffering with positive thinking. Yes, I agree, we can…for a short time. But these folks, and I have been one of these too, will be right back in gossip, resentment, frustration, lust, greed, jealousy, anger, guilt and immeasurable suffering - sometimes within minutes of reuniting with the Source. Don’t get me wrong, I am for good tools and techniques to get one back to God, but they rarely last. They are great for a respite from mental and emotional turmoil, but they are not long term solutions. They may postpone the suffering, but they never end it. Suffering will return until it has done its work. As Sri Aurobindo says, "The discords of the world are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony…"

THROUGH DEATH VALLEY

All of the great healers of pain have had to go through their suffering to get to the other side. Even the Hebrew Psalmist said, “Yes, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.” He didn’t say he would walk around or over the painful valley, or go through a different valley; he said he would go through it and not be afraid of the tribulation found in death valley.

Jesus said, “In the world you shall suffer tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome (gone through) the world.” One can take that saying in one of two ways:

1. Jesus suffered, and if we trust him, we won’t have to suffer.
2. Jesus suffered and made it to the other side, so can I.

Given the fact that Jesus constantly told his disciples to take up their crosses and be prepared to give their lives for their brothers, I suspect that number 2 is what he meant – Jesus himself made it through the necessary suffering, so can you.

THE NECESSITY OF SUFFERING IN THE GREAT TEACHERS

Think of all the great teachers who actually practice what they preach. I am not talking about some of those those you see on TV, or read about in books, or listen to on tapes, or see at a retreat, church or conference. I am talking about those who really have something to say about healing and suffering, those who exhibit a genuine calm in the midst of life’s tempests. Without exception, if you hear their whole story, they went to Hell and back, probably more than once. Or they are the very rare soul that enters this life with most of their work completed.

Look at the life of Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha. Most see him as the compassionate, enlightened teacher who shows the way out of suffering – symbolized by chubby statues with a smiling or blissful countenance. Few people stop to look at the early years of his life. As a young man he spent many sleepless nights agonizing over poverty, old age, disease and death; he made a heart wrenching decision to leave his beautiful young wife and sweet child; he left his palatial life of wealth and ease and nearly starved to death mastering meditation techniques. Legend has it that he was nursed back to health by a young woman who fed him a single grain of rice at a time. Purportedly, in his own words, he said he could press his finger into his stomach and feel his backbone. The skeletal Buddha is a common work of art. After years of depression, anorexia, worry, stressful seeking, failure and near death - he came to an awakening. It was not in the palace, or a class on meditation, but through much personal suffering and seeking.

In Greek mythology, Psyche (soul) was one of a few mortals to be deified on Mount Olympus, but she had to go to Hades and back. Even Jesus is said to have spent three days in the underworld before his resurrection.

VICARIOUS SUFFERING

No one can suffer for you. One gets the impression from some westerners who think they are Buddhists that one can transcend suffering by reading a few books or by going to a Buddhist retreat, or by learning a few meditation techniques. Some teachers and gurus would have you believe that for only $199.99 you can buy their program or book and end your suffering.

Some Christians preach a gospel which says outright that God’s son suffered vicariously for their sins, putting an end to all suffering for those who trust Him. “By His stripes you are healed.” They say that if we accept Jesus and trust in him, we don’t need to suffer any longer. Unquestionably the Gospel of Christ provides an entrance into the life of Spirit, but neither Jesus nor any of the other New Testament authors taught that Christians would avoid suffering in this life.

I was once among those ranks, yet I could not figure out why it never really worked. I trusted Jesus’ death and resurrection for me. I shared the gospel with others. I prayed, read the Bible, wept for my sins and mustered up every ounce of faith I had – still I got angry, jealous, lustful and depressed. Every Christian I knew had no better luck than I did avoiding the usual litany of painful sins and failures. Those who were most vocal about the Savior and His Gospel were often the most cranky, vicious, back stabbing, gossiping and mean spirited of the bunch. They were in chronic pain and misery. But they excused it as 'suffering for Christ'.

SUFFERING IS NECESSARY

You cannot learn to stop suffering by another person's suffering. The theory is appealing and I wish it worked, but it’s about as logical as saying you can lose weight by reading about someone who has successfully lost weight. No one can do it for us.

Hear this well – suffering is necessary for soul-making. I am not suggesting that you go out and seek suffering or become one of those religious masochists who glorifies suffering and persecution. I am not advocating that you affirm, attract or intend suffering. We don’t need to seek it. The universe is so constructed that it will find us no matter where we hide or how often we medicate. It is part of the curriculum in the Cosmic University. Again I quote Sri Aurobindo:

"We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in His being and that so He has made it ... The discords of the world are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda (Divine Joy).”
The Adventure of Consciousness, p. 163


SPIRITUALITY OF DENIAL

There are those who will call me a pessimist and traitor to New Thought principles. I disagree. Real positive thinking affirms that we get through our suffering into greater God consciousness. Most often those who practice a spirituality of denial have become almost blissfully unaware of their own chronic suffering. Some have learned the proper metaphysical terminology and techniques to avoid or ignore their suffering which pops up like a Jack-in-the-Box all week long. I have been one of these too. They drink, overeat, stay busy with religious tasks, spend money, stuff their chronic anxiety, study books on suffering, take prescription drugs, practice avoidance meditation, memorize sacred texts, and keep the spring tightly wound - sometimes for years. Some are really unaware of the disconnect between their pretend spirituality and the amount of pain they have stuffed under the religious lid. They so want to appear pain free, and have so perfected the act of public spiritual euphoria that they aren't even aware how unhappy they are. This is the spirituality of denial. It is a very lonely place to live. I recently heard such a woman tell me that her counselor told her she was done with therapy because she seemed so happy. This woman was shocked because she was depressed and miserable. She went home and looked in the mirror and she was smiling. She said she suddenly realized that she had learned to act happy externally, but internally was filled with doubt, loneliness and sadness.

I remember studying the life of one of my favorite metaphysical New Thought teachers, the brilliant Emma Curtis Hopkins. She worked with another famous spiritual teacher, Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, who fired Emma out of jealousy. Emma left and became a very successful Christian Science teacher on her own, later calling her movement New Thought. She couldn't continue using the title 'Christian Science' because Mary Baker Eddy put a copyright claim on it. Emma eventually started a seminary in Chicago. The school was in a house with about 20 women living and studying together. After a very short time, Emma closed the seminary and moved to New York to live alone. When asked why, she confessed that she couldn’t stand being around the negativity and noise of all those students. I remember feeling disappointed that Emma couldn’t seem to apply her own teachings and deny away the negativity. I realized that suffering was not an intruder or obstacle to spirituality as she had taught, but a necessary aspect that she was trying to deny away or escape. Perhaps Emma had some lessons to learn, or a soul to make by facing her irritations in the socially upsetting situation.

KEATS ON SUFFERING AND SOUL MAKING

The English poet John Keats was dying of tuberculosis at the age of twenty five. He was a brilliant writer who knew that he would not live long enough to complete the body of poetic work he longed to create. Extremely ill, financially broke and recently abandoned by his fiancé, he struggled to make sense of this thing called life and dying. In a letter written to his brother in February 0f 1819 Keats was seeking to understand a world that seemed cruel and unfair. He couldn't accept the usual Christian view which he described:

"The common label of this world among the misguided and superstitious is "a vale of tears" from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven…"

Keats suggested an alternative vale or valley:

"Call the world if you please, "The vale of Soul-making", then you will find out the use of the world."

He went on to explain soul-making as a process where the basic seed of divine intelligence which is in all humans goes through necessary experiences, especially suffering, in order to transform the intelligence into a unique Soul:

"I say "Soul making'', Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence - There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions--but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul! A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! - As various as the Lives of Men are--so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls…"

Keats recognized that this world was a place of difficulty of necessity. I am not talking about difficulties we bring on ourselves by foolish choices or pessimistic thinking, but of life as it presents itself with a plethora of trials and obstacles we all have in common - stubbed toes, tragic accidents, inexplicable diseases, the aging process, economic twists and turns, wars and rumors of wars, natural disasters and eventually death.

MY MOTIVATION

Some have questioned why I am so passionate about this topic of soul-making as it relates to suffering. They wonder whether or not I am just trying to rain on the positive thinking parade. Some call me a pessimist and cynic. Actually, I am a committed believer in positive thinking and the work of intention. I do affirmative prayer and guided visualizations for health, wealth and peace. These practices are part of the vale of soul-making as well. It has gotten lots of attention from Oprah, Depak Choprah, Wayne Dyer, Robert Schuller, Joyce Meyer and Joel Olstein – but little has really been said about the positive role of suffering as Soul-making. Eastern religions sometimes seem to imply that suffering is an illusion to be transcended, and western religion wants to be delivered from it by Jesus' sacrifice or right thinking. Might there not be an additional paradigm – not negating the others at all – but expanding our view of suffering? I think this is the paradigm that Jesus, Buddha, Aurobindo and Keats talk about – suffering as a necessary element in the school of soul making.

I am motivated from a desire to see people find a framework for living life free from the escapist religious philosophies or spiritualities of denial. Our spiritual paradigms must make room for more than the successful, western middle class American who thinks his way to perfect health and financial freedom.

Most of the world lives in what we would call poverty. Are these people living unspiritual lives because they are not healhty and wealthy? Our paradigms must account for tsunamis and the end of solar systems, cancer and war, old age and poverty, depression and death. We must account for the countless young men who have died in battle, young women who have died in childbirth, and countless others who have died seemingly senseless deaths if we live in a world where suffering can be avoided. Many western religious systems view suffering as the result of original sin, or humanly caused annoyances - humanly instigated hindrances to spiritual wholeness. The emphasis is on healing or eliminating the suffering rather than befriending it. We can do both in my opinion.

Christians come right out and say that suffering is because of our sin and that we deserve it. This doesn't explain a Cosmos rife with chaos and entropy. New Age folks often attribute pain to a sick and negative human consciousness. These folks imply that if we could all just think good thoughts and change our consciousness, the suffering would go away. This sort of approach reminds me of the school boy that said school was fun except for the reading, writing, arithmetic and homework! School is more than eternal recess; life is more than chronic happiness.

CONCLUSION

I close where I started. Remember that every enlightened spiritual teacher, let me call them teachers who have grown large souls, has suffered greatly. He or she has been to hell and back. Using Keats words, they have had their small human intelligence turned into a Soul. Such teachers may currently exude a rare peace, tranquility and calm demeanor in the face of all adversity. But they earned it. There was a time when they walked, collapsed and crawled through the valley of the shadow of death, or the vale of soul making, or the world of tribulation. It can be done. It takes work. It takes humility, patience, self reflection and surrender to a Higher Power.

You will not memorize their answers or gather the answers through osmosis. There is no technique to end suffering. You will not make soul just by reading their books or listening to their tapes. You will not arrive by the same route they did, or find a shortcut. You will be tempted to mimic them, to deify them, to vacillate between admiration and disappointment. These teachers often cause us as much pain as they give provide solutions. They disappoint us and leave us disillusioned…good for them. They are part of the vale of soul-making – proof that we have to go through it, not around it...even through our teachers.

How Does Positive Thinking View Emotional Anguish?

“Jesus said, ‘I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’” John 12:24

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GOD IS IN THE PAIN POD

Some would have us believe that Positive Thinking is eliminating any discussion of or reference to pain and suffering. This is not positive thinking, but potentially harmful negative thinking. Positive Thinking includes the realization and affirmation that all pain and suffering contain a kernel of awareness and new life. Like the seed pod containing the flower, bursting apart in the dark, dank soil, so too the soul expands by dying to the former self, often in darkness which we call depression. From the disintegration springs a completely new self, a unique re-integration of the fragments of the former identity.

In this view, our experiences of loneliness, fear, loss, confusion, sadness, depression and the like are spiritual realms that exist to reveal the failure of former patterns of thinking and behavior. These emotions comprise the soil for making soul, those experiences that take us down into the dark underworld. Then, like the seed pod, we crack apart and begin to extend roots in the dark soil, releasing the stem of the new self that gradually rises into the light. I say ‘gradually’ because it often occurs very slowly; sometimes over years, decades, maybe lifetimes.

We must remember that the potential new self always resides in the former ego-pod, or our old limited self centered ideas. This truth of gradual emergence is seen in the image of the Eastern lotus which begins its journey toward unfolding in the dark sediment of a murky pond. That is why the Buddha, from which we get our term ‘bud,’ begins his teaching system with the first noble truth: Life is suffering or dislocation. Only then does the lotus rise into the light, form buds and blossom.

I MOVE THROUGH LIFE WITH EASE

I hear some Positive Thinkers affirm that we ‘move through life with ease’. I think this is a good affirmation, but if ‘life is suffering’ as the Buddha taught, then we are actually affirming that we ‘move through our suffering with ease.’ This statement need not affirm or attract suffering! Of course there are martyrs and victims who create much unnecessary pain and agony, but that is not the intention of such an affirmation. To affirm that I ‘move through my suffering with ease’ is a positive approach to the human condition that brings its measure of grief, disappointment, frustration, anger, resentment, loneliness and fear to each of us. 

The spiritual teacher Osho writes: “This pain is not to make you sad, remember. That's where people go on missing.... This pain is just to make you more alert--because people become alert only when the arrow goes deep into their heart and wounds them. Otherwise they don't become alert. When life is easy, comfortable, convenient, who cares? Who bothers to become alert? When a friend dies, there is a possibility. When your woman leaves you alone--those dark nights, you are lonely. You have loved that woman so much and you have staked all, and then suddenly one day she is gone. Crying in your loneliness, those are the occasions when, if you use them, you can become aware. The arrow is hurting: it can be used. The pain is not to make you miserable, the pain is to make you more aware! And when you are aware, misery disappears.”

HONORING SUICIDE

This also means that feelings of suicide need to be honored and listened to. The disintegrating old life is accurately telling me that something must die – yet not the physical body as suicide victims mistakenly assume, but rather the death of the old way of life. All suicidal people are filled with agonizing remorse. This too is necessary. The word remorse is related to the words mortal, mortem, murder and mortician – words referring to death. Remorse is the act of mentally returning over and over to an actual or potential loss of something or someone valuable--usually a way of living to which we have become accustomed. The feelings of being fixated on loss is often so overwhelming that a person might feel the only way out is to kill the body and brain that contains the mind which chronically revisits the old painful loss, or potential future loss. If a person can realize that the primary purpose of life is to experience and emerge from such losses, s/he can wait for the cracking open to pass, the roots to be established, and the new life to flower. Carl Jung observed that we develop egos in order to shed them, like snakes sluffing off old skin. Some call this molting process soul-making.

The Chinese Tao Te Ching says it like this:

If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.

Poem 36, Mitchell translation

THE WAY THINGS ARE

This is the nature of soul-making life. We spend years developing an ego or self identify, and then it must dissolve. Dissolution is almost always difficult. This does not mean that the old ego self is bad, but that it is just too small to contain infinite joy, patience and love that we may become. My old life, like the seed that contains the flower, must break apart in the soil of suffering and grow into the light of an expanded soul. This is the way for humans on a planet of soul-making. This point of view is true positive thinking when it comes to pain. We do not deny pain, but we affirm it is a means to an end. Times of great sorrow contain the potential to be times of great transformation. But in order for transformation to happen we must go deep, to the very roots of our pain, and experience it as it is, without blame or self-pity. To know this makes the process easier than to resist it, or to think it ought be different. M. Scott Peck began his book, The Road Less Traveled, by observing that "Life is difficult," and then paradoxically adds that, "once we realize that life is difficult, it becomes less difficult."

Growing Down To Grow Up

“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 day, for darkness is as light to you.” Psalm 139:11-12

Growing Down To Grow Up

Each person, a seed of infinite potential,
Skin encircling soul, containing all essential
Gifts and possibilities, undeveloped rose,
A bundle of curious petals anxious to unfold.

Unique and wondrous flower, embryonic pod,
Drawn out by Gaia's power, fertile womb of God.
Neath the crushing earth we wait then break apart,
Alone in perfect silence, peculiar way to start.

Each seed must burst asunder, shed its fragile skin,
Lose its perfect circle then begin again.
A skein of tangled roots emerging into birth,
Threads alive in darkness on a tapestry of earth.

Embroidered by an Angel, within and out of sight,
Silence wrapped in darkness, moving into light,
Pushing through the soil, the Gardener stands above,
Sending rain and weeding, each an act of love.

Delicate nascent bud pierces the emerald lawn,
Finally rising upward, after wending down.
A shoot, a stalk, a blossom…then the full bloom,
Symphony of brilliance, supple bursting plume.


Michael

Eros to Saint Teresa

Eros spoke, "May I touch your flesh,
sear your breast with a lovely dart?
You will swoon dear one,
my poison will infect your heart
and make you forget the mundane,
those who watch your eyes roll back
will surely think you insane.
This world with all her woes will disappear from sight,
you will find ecstasy
as you slip from your body, through each kiss,
soaring into the velvet calm of the ethereal night."

Teresa whispered from her sleep,
"I have never known a man,
nor will I defile the flesh,
such love will never scorch my soul,
no palm nor lip shall cross my breast;
please take your dart and fly away,
let me wake another day
to love my God and serve my Lord,
mumble my prayers and read His Word."

Eros held his arrow aloft,
tilted his head and exposed her heart,
"Dear Teresa,
do you not understand?
Your God always comes disguised as a man,"
and drove his arrow home.

end/Michael

NECESSARY DESCENT

Desire imparts the sweet gift of expansion,
drawing me to a higher ledge
while this forbidden urge and the passing

Seasons shove me over the edge,
from summer to fall
into the Realm of Persephone’s sad call,

And my thoughts like porcelain tendrils
splinter the glassy soil
until it is time to rise…

Man is made to soar, to pierce the stratum
of the impossible sky,
to leap from the garden into the sun.

Icarus is in our blood, and his plunge
was not an end, but rather
the nudge to devise inflammable wings.

end/michael

The Organ of Soulful Perception

I have been reading a book by Henri Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, the guy who was so influential in Hillman's Archetypal psychology, besides Jung. It has been difficult-treading, but there are nuggets that have given me a much deeper understanding of what Hillman means by Psyche. This sentence in particular was very helpful,

"Such perception through the Imagination is therefore equivalent to a "dematerialization"; it changes the physical datum impressed upon the senses in a pure mirror, a spiritual transparency; thus it is that the Earth, and the things and beings of the Earth, raised to incandescence, allow the apparition of their Angels (Messengers) to penetrate to the visionary intuition."

I translate that to mean that every material incarnation is clothing worn by Psyche, adorning the Archetypes - and there is an Organ in us, perhaps the Heart, which can dematerialize and see through the clothing into Soul, or the Anima beneath all that is.

What is Real?

I was riding the ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle the other day. A little boy of about four years of age ran up and jumped into the seat of one of those car driving video games; he grabbed the steering wheel and yelled over his shoulder to his dad that he wanted to ‘drive the car’. His dad said, “It’s not a real car Jason.” The little boy looked at the machine and mumbled to himself, “But it’s a real video game.”


Reality comes in many shapes.

New Thought and Suffering

“The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

The New Thought movement originated in the latter half of the 19th century. In 1902, the American psychologist William James called it the 'Religion of Healthy Mindedness' because of its emphasis on curing disease and creating external reality through one's thoughts. At about the same time, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung referred to it in his book, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, calling it a religion whose time has come. Jung meant that modern people were abandoning dogmatic religion and seeking scientific spiritual principles based on pragmatic results. I am an unapologetic student and follower of New Thought teachings. Several New Thought principles helped me to stop being a victim, to take personal responsibility for my life and to pay attention to my thoughts as being creative or destructive. That being said, no religious movement is complete. We are always evolving or degenerating. Thankfully, his is a reognized principle of New Thought. One area that New Thought needs to address more fully, in my opinion, is that of suffering, pain and evil. The internationally recognized sociologist of religion, Peter Berger, has noted that the success of a religous venture is always measured by the way it addresses the issue of suffering.

In the following essay I will be critical of some New Thought approaches to suffering as only a devoted follower can be. Someone recently reminded me that New Thought honors suffering, and I completely agree. However, after twenty years of grateful involvement in the movement, I have noticed some discomfort around the the subject.

Yes, New Thought does honor suffering, and each church and minister has his or her own approah. However, I have experienced a general trend which sees most if not all of our suffering as unnecessarily self inflicted. This position is blatantly stated in the runaway best seller, The Secret, which I have evaluated elsewhere. There is often a tacit if not unconscious separation between God the Good and humanly caused suffering which is not a part of the ideal Universal plan. As Holmes says, "The world is beginning to realize that it has learned all it should through suffering and pain. Surely there can be no Intelligence in the Universe that wishes man to be sick, suffer pain, be unhappy and end in oblivion. Surely if God or Universal Intelligence is imbued with goodness, then It could not ordain that man should ultimately be other than a perfect expression of Life." SOM, p.107

Most New Thought teachers place a lot of emphasis on free will as the primary if not sole cause of all suffering, essentially creating a metaphysical chasm between God's Good world and humanly caused suffering. These teachers emphasized, as did Holmes, that we suffer because of free will and conscious choice. There is clearly some truth in this as our attitudes, actions and ideas bring pain into our individual and collective experiences. But is free will the solution to all suffering, chaos and destruction?

Free will never explained the chaotic nature of the wild cosmos which began with a Big Bang, and with 125 billion galaxies filled with colliding debris fields as the means to creation, or the earthly tsunamis and myriad 'natural disasters' which kill countless millions apart from any free choice. The Universal Cosmic Intelligence appears to be filled with exploding stars, meteorite crashes into planets, dark chaos and laws which cause injury or fatalities to living beings without the free will choice of those beings. The millions of dinosaurs and other species that have gone prematurely extinct were not destroyed because they had bad thoughts.

I never could accept the metaphysical speculations that people who were killed by natural disasters made a choice before they incarnated to die this way. These disasters were occuring long before humans evolved. The free will explanations for all pain and suffering seemed nearly identical to the doctrine of original sin I was taught in the Christian seminary. The Christians blamed all problems on Adam and Eve, New Thought blames it on the ego. Where did that rascal ego come from? And were there not disasters and chaos before the human ego showed up?

A UNIVERSE WITH NECESSARY PROBLEMS

It seems to me that if the Universal Intelligence created math and science problems to be solved, problems which caused me no end of suffering in high school and college, then It could also create life problems for the same end - to be overcome with a view to achieving some soul-making purpose. This is the position of Sri Aurobindo, “The discords of the world are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda (Divine Joy).” The Adventure of Consciousness, p. 163

Eckhart Tolle writes that without suffering we would “not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things. Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form.” A New Earth, pp. 101-102

Jesus recognized that horrific events were a necessary part of God's world of soul-making, and people would be held responsible, "Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to fall (suffer)! Such tests must come, but woe to the person through whom they come." Matthew 18:7

Buddhism begins its whole system of teaching with dukkha, or displocation, the prerequisite for getting conscious and achieving enlightenment. This sounds a lot like Carl Jung's comical obervation that we spend the first half of life growing and ego and the second half deflating it. The Buddhist might say we spend the first few lifetimes achieving 'endarkenment' that we might seek enlightenment in the next several incarnations.

NEGLECT AND DENIAL

In some of my New Thought classes, I felt there was a neglect, if not outright denial, of the necessity and normalcy of such problems. Even Jesus said that some sufferings are not the result of any human will, but that the 'work of God' might be made manifest (John 9), and he seemed to be quoting God's words to Moses in Exodus 4:11 which say that God "makes people blind and deaf as well as seeing and hearing." And I do not believe it is true just because it's in the Bible, but New Thought teachers put a lot of stock in Jesus' teachings, as do I.

I see life as a soul-making process which includes the so called positive and negative as equally normal and necessary. That does not mean that we should seek, create, remain in or glorify pain and suffering – but neither should we deny that it is a central piece of the Creative Design for soul-making. I can agree with Holmes when he writes that there 'can be no Intelligence in the Universe that wishes man to be sick, suffer pain, be unhappy and end in oblivion,' but I see two separate ideas in his statement. No Intelligence may 'wish' for humans to suffer, just as no algebra teacher may 'wish' for her math student to agonize over the algebraic formula. But it has nothing to do with the teacher's wishes or personal feelings, and everything to do with the nature of a learning course which requires some amount of struggle in order to advance to the next level.

I see Spiritual Mind Treatment as a means to remind us of our Union with God the Good even when we feel disconnected - to *affirm healing, prosperity and wholeness – and to give thanks, then to let go of the outcome as Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane, surrendering to the perfect will of God the Good even when it meant crucifixion. Yes, the resurrection did follow - but prior to that outcome, Jesus apprehended the Good through a mind founded on faith while in the midst of unimaginable suffering. As Aurobindo says, "...it is only by accepting and proceeding through them..."

See Part II

*The word affirm is etymologically related to the Indo-European root word dharma (foundation), which morphed into adhere and eventually affirm. The idea seems to be that an affirmation is adhering, by faith, to a universal, purposeful foundation.

Soul-making is Not Learned in a Text Book

“Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world.

There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul.”
-- Carl Jung

MOVING FROM ILLUSIONIZATION TO REALIZATION

Many contemporary westerners are caught up in eastern philosophies. These folks often express a disdain for organized religion, preferring to be called spiritual. One area of fascination for these seekers is that of the eastern emphasis on the distinction between illusion and reality. They are keen on referring to the material world and mental thoughts as mere illusions. They say they are in pursuit of Reality, as if there were a clear cut demarcation between Reality and illusion. The idea seems to be that we are currently living in a world of illusion, but there exists a world of Reality to be discovered, somewhere. The goal is to meditate, find the right set of teachings, sit with an enlightened instructor and find the Realm of Reality. Etymologically the word Realm contains the root word real, implying that such an actual place of Reality literally exists. Once this elusive Reality is discovered, all worries disappear, fear subsides and one lives in perpetual peace, love and happiness. Ironically, this search for a literal Realm of Reality is little different than the traditional Christian view of a literal heaven, which most Realm seekers view with contempt. I don't think eastern religions are teaching what most westerners are seeking. I think we westerners have turned a powerful spiritual concept into a childish panacea.

It is more likely that the eastern philosophies are trying to teach that reality is an illusion, and illusion is reality. It is a soul-making idea. The ever expanding ego-self is constantly moving out of old realities and into new realities, into an infinitely expanding awareness of 'realities'. There is no literal Realm of Reality, but infinite layers of 'realities'. My current reality is the way my current ego-self sees the world around me. Soul-making suggests that old realities, like December snowmen, eventually melt into illusions under the Spring warming. Sunny new experiences always arrive to remove the old reality, bringing a different perspective to the growing ego-self. As the soul expands, former realities shift to illusions, exposing us to new realizations. Each emerging 'reality' contains the next illusion, and that illusion opens the door to a newer reality, which is destined to become the next illusion, ad infinitum. The goal is not to find the Realm of Reality, but to be present in the process of shifting from ego-self to ego-self as each new reality fades into an illusion.

I call it the move from illusionization to realization. There is no such thing as Self-Realization without Self-illusionization. There is no destination called the Realm of Reality once we shed the illusion. Those who actually think that one day they will arrive in a place called Reality will live in chronic spiritual agony, thinking that if they just try harder they will enter into the Eternal Rest Area, park their cars and relax for eternity. We are always learning, expanding, finding new 'realities' which always become illusions. The material world, human heart and mind are always shifting from event to event, person to person, thought to thought, feeling to feeling. These shifts are often tragically painful. It is difficult to see what I once thought to be secure, stable and certain fade away – moving from a reality to an illusion. Those who think they are making decisions based on yesterday's perceptions are fighting the soul-making process. There is no certainty or security from moment to moment, only the dissolution of perceived realities into the next reality.

This process is illustrated in a story told by presidential candidate Joe Biden, long time senator from Delaware, in his book Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics. Let me reproduce Biden's words about losing his wife and daughter in a car accident:

"Joe Biden was in Washington preparing to interview staff when he learned his wife Neilia and their young daughter Naomi had been killed in a car crash. Thankfully, his two sons, Beau and Hunter, who had also been in the accident, had survived. The incident was a devastating blow that plunged Biden into a depression. He understood firsthand how people could feel like ending their lives, but he knew he had no choice but to fight to stay alive for his sons. Biden didn’t believe he would be able to serve as senator, but his colleagues encouraged him to carry on. Ultimately, Biden felt he owed it to Neilia, who had worked so hard to help him get elected, to serve.

“Losing Neilia and Naomi had taken all the joy out of being a United States senator; it had taken all the joy out of life.” But Biden came to realize how lucky he was to work in a place where so many of his colleagues showed him small acts of kindness and would look out after him. There was far less partisanship back in those days and senators socialized more frequently and easily with members of the other party.

Biden tried to keep his despair at bay by keeping busy. Ultimately, however, he began to make peace with himself and God. He came to see the rage he had felt at his loss as an 'unbecoming form of egoism.' Bad things happen to people all the time, Biden realized, and it was time to get up and start living. "

Realized is a key word here. Before his realization, he had illusionized. This is a necessary step in making a soul. Biden had neither seen nor accepted the real world of soul-making which includes tragedy. His conception of reality had been an immature projection of his view of how life ought to be. The perceived reality of security, certainty and expected outcomes had to fade away. He had to fully experience the illusion of his old reality in order to move to the realization - the new reality.

I am not approaching this topic heartlessly or trivially. These deeply traumatic experiences of loss often bring thoughts of suicide, as Biden mentioned. Something in us cries out to die. But as James Hillman says in his book, Suicide and the Soul:

"A thorough crisis is a death experience; we cannot have the one without the other. From this we are led to conclude that the experience of death is requisite for psychic life. This implies that the suicidal crisis, because it is one of the ways of experiencing death, must also be considered necessary to the life of the soul…Without a dying to the world of the old order, there is no place for renewal…"

In other words, thoughts of physical suicide are not rare during such transitions through old realities into illusions, toward a new reality. The problem arises when a person mistakes the death of the external body for the death of the old internal psychic ego-self. Biden eventually awoke to see that the death he was craving was not the extermination of his physical body, but the death of his old reality. With lots of time, unimaginable agony, sleepless nights, a thousand rants at God, questions of 'what if', love from friends, and all of the normal and necessary birth pangs of soul-making, Senator Biden "came to see the rage he had felt at his loss as an 'unbecoming form of egoism.' Bad things happen to people all the time, Biden realized, and it was time to get up and start living."

Notice, he 'came to see.' In this phrase, we see the gradual emergence of the new reality. Biden's old reality of a picture-perfect family was illusionized in a car accident. Eventually, he discovered a new reality beyond the older one. Death was required, the death of the old reality. But we must remember that every reality, even the fresh new realities which emerge with supple wings from the chrysalis, will one day become a wormy illusion to make way for a newer reality and larger psychic self.

Soul-making requires disappointments, accidents and betrayals. Old realities will not become illusions containing the next reality without our 'appointments' and 'trusts' being broken. There is nothing in this world which guarantees an expected outcome. Earthly life, including all material forms and mental thoughts contain built-in obsolescence. They are innately made to dissolve and disappear.

This process of moving from illusionization to realization is retold every Easter as Jesus faces his crucifixion. He predicted that even his friends, family and followers would betray and deny him. He was not taken by surprise. People often seem puzzled when they read that Jesus predicted Judas' betrayal, Peter's denials, his arrest, trial and execution. Jesus understood the nature of life on earth. This is true positive thinking, seeing that life is rife with troubles and disappointments. The reason Jesus could go to the cross and forgive his enemies was that he knew he was primarily here to make a soul, not win friends and influence people.

Someone might read this and conclude that I am advocating some old Christian notion of forsaking wealth, health and sensual pleasure in this world. I am not. That is as much an error as saying we are here just to be healthy, wealthy and have sensual pleasure. Clearly, we are here to strive for whatever desires fill our hearts – to make money, find security, be healthy, enjoy friends and family, eat food and have sex, etc. However, these are the means to the end which is soul-making. Jesus knew that. He was accused of being a friend of drunks, went to a wedding, had an expensive seamless robe, healed people of all kinds of diseases and allowed a woman to anoint his feet with perfume that cost a years wages. He was no recluse or world hater. But he knew that every sensual moment was one blink away from dissolving into an illusion. Go live life large! Set huge goals, strive for success, marry your sweetheart, have children, become a senator – but don't forget that we are here to make souls. Never forget that a soul-making universe requires that our reality appointments be dissed (dis-appointment). Illusionization is the twin sister of Realization. Both are necessary in this world.

DOES THE RESURRECTION STORY GUARANTEE WE WILL ALWAYS LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER?

Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld, in his book Recovering Jesus, wrote, “THE GOSPEL ACCOUNTS were all written ‘on this side of Easter.’ That is to say, early followers of Jesus, including the authors of the Gospels, had the benefit of looking back on an event and seeing in it the working of God.”

This statement hit me in the face like a bucket of wet cement: ‘the benefit of looking back on an event and seeing in it the working of God.’ It is always easy to ‘get it’ when we look back. 20/20 hindsight does not do much good, however, when your hind end is in the midst of unimaginable crucifixion tragedy. Like Job we ask, “God? Where are you?”

FAITH IS NOT NEEDED AFTER THE MIRACLE

Imagine the thoughts and feelings of Jesus’ family and disciples before the resurrection miracle took place. Most of us have experienced an excruciating (a word derived from crucifixion) loss, where a few seconds felt like hours or days, our sleepless minds were wracked with despair, our emotions a tornado of loneliness, fear, grief and confusion. The only thing that sustained Jesus’ followers, and us in such times, is fellowship and the development of faith.

Faith was not needed after the resurrection. Faith was needed when the cold, bloody, decomposing corpse of Jesus was pried from the cross and laid in a tomb. When we are in the midst of such tragedies, it is nearly impossible to see the ‘working of God’.

There are two beneficial approaches to a dilemma when unspeakable tragedy arrives:

1. An instantaneous, miraculous change of external circumstances.
2. An abiding trust that somehow the devastation makes sense beyond my current agony.

POINT OF THE RESURRECTION STORY IS TO FIND FAITH

The point of the resurrection story is not to guarantee that a specific external solution will materialize three days after the disaster. The point of the story is to help suffering people see that we can tap into a psycho-spiritual reservoir of trust which exists in all of us. This trust or faith does not tell us HOW or WHEN the tragedy will end, but that there is a Power greater than ourselves somehow purposefully superintending the circumstances. Ancient Greek philosophers and Christian mystics used the word teleios which meant meaningful completion. The resurrection story gives no guarantee of a specific outcome at a certain time. There is, however, a guarantee of Divine Presence and some sort of completion {teleios}apart from any human understanding, strategizing or timing. To realize this kind of trust may take years, or lifetimes. Soul-making is not limited by time.

POSITIVE THINKING AND TRUE RESURRECTION PROSPERITY

Some comedian once said, “If you lined up all of the positive thinkers in the world today, that would be a really good place to leave them.” What masquerades as positive thinking today is sometimes really just magical thinking and fearful denial which seeks to avoid or postpone developing real faith and surrender. Some so called positive preachers seem to be well meaning spiritual co-dependents who are addicted to fixing people’s pain by jacking them up with anecdotal success stories and rare vignettes of hope. I once heard a positive thinking preacher say, “I was once a pimple-faced loser, women hated me, I was broke and homeless – but when I applied (Success System X), my pimples went away, I became a successful millionaire, found my ideal wife and family and now own vacation homes around the world.” I have no reason to doubt his story, but it is not the way tragedy is transformed to faith.

These relative anecdotal prosperity stories may motivate in the short term, but they do not create abiding faith and in fact often leave the hearer more despondent when it doesn’t ‘work out’ for him the same way. Just because one man experiences the healing of his body, finances or love life does not mean that everyone will. This is not the primary meaning or significance of the resurrection story.

RESURRECTION AND MEANING IN LIFE

Real positive thinking and resurrection faith can be seen in the life of Viktor Frankl. In his mid thirties, Frankl was a successful doctor and a happily married man. One day he was arrested for being a Jew and taken to a series of Nazi concentration camp where he would spend four horrific years. He was stripped naked and his head was shaved. His wife and parents were executed and he suffered indescribable heartbreak. Frankl miraculously survived and went on to remarry, write best selling ‘self-help’ books, achieve financial success and international fame. But he never forgot that over 10 million people died in those concentration camps and that he could just as easily have been one of them. Frankl could not write an anecdotal self help book promising worldly abundance and wealth if you applied his secrets to success. He wrote to teach people the same three lessons found in the resurrection story:

1. Meaning may be found in and through every situation, especially tragedies.
2. Meaning is not dependent on physical conditions or outcomes, but on faith.
3. You vastly increase your opportunities for physical survival and material success if you find meaning and have faith in the times of abject tragedy, but this does NOT guarantee such an outcome.

JESUS’ ASCENSION NEVER GAVE HIM TIME TO GET ON OPRAH

In the Gospels, the resurrected Jesus did not marry the perfect woman, make a million dollars and become a successful author and speaker. He did not hang out on earth long enough to get on Oprah or Larry King. He did not hobnob with celebrities and presidents. He did not have a gorgeous summer home on the Mediterranean or take expensive vacations around the world. Neither he nor his early disciples made a single nickel off of his Secret to Resurrection Living. Jesus almost immediately ascended into Heaven. Let’s drop our western propensity to literalism and get the symbol in this ascension image. Partly it meant that the resurrection success solution is not primarily played out on the earth stage.

The story about Jesus’ post-resurrection ascension tells us that the ‘results’ of the resurrection miracle were primarily experienced in another Realm, the Realm of Soul rather than the physical world. This is true for most of us. It is in the Realm of Soul or Spirit that we see the real fruit of a life lived by faith. It is in the ascension, or in the invisible realm of soul that we will experience the real solutions to our earthly tragedies.

I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE SAY, ‘YOUR REWARD IS IN HEAVEN’

Of course we can and should affirm and intend to become materially successful, wealthy and healthy if that is our desire. We ought to learn spiritual principles and work hard to achieve our full potentials on this planet. We ought to write that best selling book, record that CD, find the ideal partner and raise a nice family – but the post-resurrection ascension story reminds us that God-Reality is much more concerned about the development of our character than our bank accounts. Most of us will live average lives on this planet, or maybe even below average. But resurrection faith, developed through difficulties, makes sense of the hackneyed metaphor which says, “Your reward is in heaven.” Take heart, even though you may not see it right now, God is ‘working’ in every event in your life.

THE TRAGIC LOSS OF SOUL IN AMERICA

"He who has lost his soul will be finding God anywhere, up above and down below, in here and out there, he will cling to every straw of love blown past his doorway as he stands waiting for a sign." ~James Hillman

THE MODERN LOSS OF SOUL

Humankind has lost soul, at least the western world. I don’t mean soul in the Catholic sense – as some ethereal essence which comes wrapped in a body of sin to be released at death to reside in Heaven, Purgatory or Hell. I don’t mean soul in the materialist sense – as some neural site located in human brain.

I mean soul in a sense that has been so lost that we don’t even understand it when it is being described, let alone active in us each day. Soul is so lost that it may take a miracle or the end of western civilization to rediscover it. If there is an apocalypse of the conservative or liberal variety, it will be Soul forcing the human race to see its forms and necessity.

We are so devoid of soul that we don’t even recognize that it is missing. We have substituted matter and spirit for soul, and neither of those works. Matter works well for the material part of us, and spirit fills the spiritual part of us, but neither fills the role or work of soul. Modern medicine offers us an array of pharmaceuticals and statistical manuals, and modern religion offers us an array of old and new gods and goddesses. That is why James Hillman says, “He who has lost his soul will be finding God anywhere, up above and down below, in here and out there, he will cling to every straw of love blown past his doorway as he stands waiting for a sign.”

To rediscover soul is to rediscover our darkness and depths. Soul is what leads us into the unavoidable void, tricks us into conflict, startles us through unplanned infatuations, snares us by resentments, haunts us by unsolicited thoughts of illness and death, sweeps over us with irrational jealousies, and surprises us by a hundred forms of fear, anxiety and self obsession.

Soul most often shows up when life is good and clam, whispering that something is missing or quietly asking ‘what if?’ Souls causes us to wonder and wander down paths into fantasies which sometimes shock us. Soul shows up in what we call symptoms, problems and other annoying irritants which get in the way of ‘living’. These irritants of soul remind us of Gandalf’s request to Bilbo Baggins to accompany him on an adventure. Bilbo replied, “Adventure? Nasty, uncomfortable things, make you late for dinner.” Soul makes us late for dinner, and almost every other appointment we think life owes us. A major role of soul is to disrupt, annoy, confuse and bring dis-ease. This notion of soul is antithetical to the whole western attitude toward existence which seeks to create a life free of all problems and deny suffering. Like the aggravating grain of sand in the oyster, soul inserts itself into the shell of our everyday lives in order to make pearls.

If oysters were modern Americans, and could write diagnostic manuals to assess abnormal psychological conditions for all of oyster-kind, I am sure you’d find P.T.S.I.D. listed on page one, Post Traumatic Sand Irritant Disorder. Never mind the damn pearls, oyster life would be better without the particle of sand. Similarly, we humans are largely ignorant of the necessary and normal grains of sand which will inevitably show up in our little shells called human existence. No matter how hard we try, soul will never cease doing what it does. Humans are here to make pearls, soul is here to bring the irritants.

SOUL IS NOT THOUGHT OR FEELING

Many have mistaken eternal soul for our thoughts and emotions. Soul is neither human thinking nor human feelings. Soul does incarnate in human thoughts and feelings, but it is neither of these. Soul existed before there were human bodies with brains and nerve endings - and soul will continue to exist long after the human species is extinct. Soul does not depend on human organs or emotions. A smile may incarnate on human lips, but that does not mean Joy depends on human lips for its existence. What we call ‘thoughts’ and ‘emotions’ are archetypal energy patterns that show up in many forms, thoughts and feelings being only a finite manifestation which we have turned into soul. One might as well exalt the Mona Lisa over Leonadro da Vinci. The form is not the source. The reason humans have turned soul into thoughts and feelings is to give us the illusion that we can control it. If I am the source of all my ideas and emotions, then I can control them. But I am not the source.

THE TURBULENT NATURE OF REALITY

Soul cannot be controlled, but it can sometimes be placated as long as it is recognized and heeded. As long as I think I am controlling ‘my’ thoughts and feelings, I will continue to be estranged from soul. Soul will not disappear. Soul will always master my thoughts and feelings until it is done with me. Soul will not be overcome by human programs to make life free of suffering. These programs can be extremely beneficial, but they will never trump soul. We should not ignore or acquiesce to suffering, but our best programs and pharmaceuticals will never end painful thoughts and feelings. Suffering is soul expanding human consciousness – perhaps we can use the metaphor of psychological growing pains. When we solve a particular kind of suffering, something else will replace it. Suffering, like bacteria, will always morph into new forms in order to move humans into deeper experiences of soul. Soul operates the same way in the animated material Cosmos, as a tumbling universe of tumultuous galaxies and swirling debris fields forming elaborate designs and subsequently disassembling into chaos. Recognition of this cosmic and psychic phenomenon provides an ironic relief of some sort to the turbulent nature of reality.

We are enamored by modern physical science just as our forefathers were enamored by metaphysical spirit. Quantum physics is all the rage, being used even by spiritual teachers everywhere to ‘reveal the true nature of the universe,’ or to demonstrate that their New Age deities have superseded the old traditional religious gods. We have tried to turn science into religion, buying into the fantasy that science is better than religion. Science and religion, and religious science, all serve a function – but none of them is soul. The old age and new age have both neglected soul – focusing instead on spiritual or physical wholeness as the aim of existence. The old priests believed they could save our spirits, the new priests believe they can save the globe. Neither seems to recognize that these temporal vessels are just that, temporal vessels for soul making.

This may come as a shock to the religious conservatives and secular liberals, but nothing around us will be saved – prolonged possibly, but never saved. Soul is using these vessels.
Soul is in our symptoms and pathologies, in our irritations and insanities, in our addictions and dysfunctions – in the nuisances we are trying to solve and get rid of with medicinal physics and metaphysical spirit. Neither allopathic nor homeopathic medicines will stop the affects of soul. Soul will assail us no matter what we try to avoid it. These daily irritants which we dismiss with labels like fear, projection, dysfunction, death, disease, problems, etc. will never go away.

Books and seminars proliferate promising to solve our myriad problems, never stopping to look at these problems as the critical and wondrous vehicles of soul. Psyche is the ignored invisible realm in our culture. Soul has been relegated to some spiritual substance which gets released at death if you are a good Christian, or transmigrates back into another physical body to work out that horrible old karma accrued from our bad and selfish past deeds. Soul is neither spirit nor matter in any form.

People are frantic to get rid of their problems through spiritual and material solutions, frantic to relieve stress and banish all painful thoughts and feelings – and I understand it completely. Part of being human is to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. The tragic irony is that without the awareness of the role of soul, no matter what programs we use to relieve pain, the pain will not go away. Soul will not be pushed aside. If I use alcohol or enroll in meditation school, I may experience some temporary relief from my painful thoughts and feelings, but what I have really done is sublimate soul’s work. The symptoms may disappear for a time, but they will resurface, usually even more severe. Roiling molten lava can be held under the surface for only so long.

The AIDs virus is soul telling us we will never develop an ‘immune system’ at the physical or spiritual levels to fight off psychological disease. The depression and suicide epidemics reveal soul shouting to pay attention! The proliferation of eye and hearing problems in our culture are directly related to our inability to see and hear soul. Soul’s work will not be eradicated no matter how clever we get with our spiritual and so called psychological solutions. I constantly hear New Age adherents talking about the illusions of fear, or saying that Fear is false evidence appearing real (FEAR). Fear is no more an illusion than love or peace. For the human to think he can banish death, fear, resentment, illness and other unpleasant experiences to the metaphysical category of illusion is the puny ego trying to build a modern tower of Babel to reach and control the gods. We will always fail and be scattered like a ripped bag of marbles. Often, those who cry most loudly against the illusion of fear enter into the most palpable experiences of fear to see that it is no illusion, but a symptom of soul utilized to bring deeper awareness.

Some will hear me saying that we should not try to overcome pain, but that is not the point. I am saying that pain is most easily overcome when we see the normalcy and necessity of suffering. Just monitor your own life and watch soul. You will notice that when you have gotten a handle on one problem, two more pop up like the Hydra-headed serpent of Hercules. And often, the old problem which we thought we had ‘overcome’ returns twice as ugly.

There appear to be two really beneficial ways of approaching soul suffering:

1. First, we must realize that the problem or symptom will run its course, taking us as far into the rabbit hole as we need to go, and will not let go of us until it is done with us. In this case, yes, we are victims of soul. As hard as it may seem for modern Americans to see, we are not the ultimate masters of the universe. I do not completely create my reality. I may have some say in my response to what soul brings to me, but I do not control soul. We are the block of unformed marble at the mercy of the sculptor. This option does not bode well for those of us who have been taught that we create our own reality. Soul will have its way with us. Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl realized this as his new wife was wrenched from his arms and marched off to a Nazi death camp. Frankl waited in a line of Jewish males to be stripped of his jewelry, wallet, briefcase filled with important papers, clothing, eventuating in a shaved head and eyebrows. Lastly, he received his new identity, a number tattooed into his arm. Naked, branded, humiliated, socially and personally bankrupt, Frankl had a flash of insight that – that in order to survive, his old life had to be completely forgotten. He was now entering into a new way of living and was at the mercy of his captors. If he clung to the past and dwelt on what once was, he would lie down and die and as so many others would eventually do. To survive, he would submit to the necessity of the horrific ordeal. Soul would have its way.

I know that this approach flies in the face of our American positive thinking and can-do optimism, but it is the only solution to such situations. Let me emphasize: IF YOU CAN CHANGE THE SITUATION, FOR GODSAKE CHANGE IT! I am speaking here of those situations in life which keep bringing the same symptoms back again and again. Most of us continue to encounter the same kinds of jobs, friends and partners because soul has work to do through them. No matter what we try to do to solve this, these people and situations will arise again and again until the ‘awareness’ occurs. Once the awareness occurs, we may kick ourselves at how simple the lesson was and how we should have learned it years ago – but we didn’t. Soul does not relent.

2. The second approach is to learn to shut up, quit fighting and to listen to soul. Every addict is likely sitting face to face with soul and not stopping to listen, or even realizing that there is that option. Soul comes disguised as heroin, alcohol, Vicodin, work, food or relationships. Soul begins by whispering to us through some substance, and then shouting as the substance becomes a symptom and ends up killing us as the unheeded symptom becomes lethal. We will listen or die. Soul is not concerned about the mortal body or about social prestige or morality. Instead of listening, we often fight, hate, work against, seek solutions, ask for God to deliver us and live in anguish over our ‘unfortunate’ dilemma. We do not realize that what Jesus said to Simon Peter was soulfully insightful, “Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat that you may return and be of help to the brethren.” This metaphor, Satan, is soul coming as a hellish onslaught into the routine of daily life to sift the chaff away in order to make a larger soul. To honor soul is to set the rational mind aside and simply ask, “What are you telling me?” To honor soul is to quit staring into the pond of narcicisstic feelings and ask, “What is the new myth?”

That is why Freud called his therapy a ‘talking cure’. Freud was recovering what many ancient cultures knew and we moderns lost, namely that soul has a voice and wants to make us conscious of deeply creative psychic material. The Hebrew prophets did this in their writings, but we moderns have negated the therapeutic value of soul-expression by calling it prophecy and raising it to the level of revelation from a God. When soul is turned into spirit, it ceases to be a source of consciousness raising metaphor and becomes a set of dogmatic laws to be believed. Jung called this approach ‘active listening,’ watching hundreds of clients experience psychic shifts by paying attention to soul speaking through the symptoms.


AN EPILOGUE ON SPIRIT

This essay has been about the modern neglect of soul. This soul-focus does not negate the orderly, beautiful, wholistic nature of Spirit. Spirit is what many call ‘God the Good’. Spirit calls us to health, abundance, life, hope, happiness, success, victory, peace and bliss. Spirit works in conjunction with soul as we live in a material body and world. Body, soul and spirit all work together to make the complete Human.

I include this little concluding caveat because our monotheistic culture is plagued with mono-vision. We are monogamists and monopolists. Duality drives us a little nuts and we have to integrate everything - seeking the number one football team, the number one candidate, the number one beauty contestant, the unifying principle in physics, the top song or movie of the year, etc. We usually feel there is only one interior power. We usually conflate soul into spirit because we see only one side to the interior life and it must be spiritual. Consequently we turn soul into an empirical science and label it Cognitive psychology, Behavioral psychology or handily place the psyche into some other medical category.

The Renaissance writers often called themselves spiritual monotheists and psychological polytheists, recognizing the diverse roles of soul and spirit in the complexity of the so called interior life. Making a full human includes soul and spirit, pathologies and salvations. The Roman Catholics called it the Via Negativa and the Via Positiva; the Chinese call it the Yin/Yang; the Hindu’s call it Brhama the Creator and Shiva the Destroyer.

Some will read this essay and think that I am saying life ought to be painful and problematic. I am NOT saying that it SHOULD. I am saying that it IS. I don’t care who you are or how enlightened you may be, soul will knock on your door and introduce another symptom of insanity when you least expect it. It is normal. In fact, if this essay has troubled you at all, look behind you right now - you just may see Psyche disappearing out the door with a little grin on her face.

The Function of Dysfunction

DYSFUNCTION HAS A FUNCTION

The universe into which we are born is intentionally unfinished and 'dysfunctional'. That means that dysfunction has a function. Self centered survival instincts like defensiveness, rationalization, fear, greed, war and jealousy are part and parcel of the normal human condition. It is from this base which we get to develop souls and grow character, just as a kindergartener begins her learning with math and reading problems. She has to learn the times tables and alphabet. Misspelling words and getting math sums wrong are normal and necessary for the learner. The infant must stumble before he can walk and stutter before he can talk. As one learns, awareness, choices and responsibilities increase with regard to geometry and literacy. One is enabled to take the newly acquired knowledge and choose to do harm or good.

Soul too must grow. We are always developing, whether we are conscious of it or not. We are learning the soul’s alphabet and math equations, how to spell and how to do sums. It is the purpose of existence. Humans are born with innate soul potential; internal categories or archetypal seed pods which are capable of being cultivated by the water of time, through failure, under the sunshine of Spirit and the fertilizer of life struggles. Life is a kind of kindergarten. Teachers come along every second of the day in the form of internal thoughts and feelings, and external people and situations. Often these teachers are seriously ‘dysfunctional,’ or our responses are less than ideal. Being conscious that this is the nature of life makes it much less painful and easier to care for the soul.

We often speak of being raised, or ruined, by a dysfunctional family. All parents did what their spiritual development allowed them to do at the time. Each of us, no matter what our chronological age, is a kindergartener of sorts. I believe that the Universe is a school of soul-making which includes dysfunction and what we have labeled abnormal behaviors. This means that the insanities of my parents, their parents, the parents of their parents and as far back as theologians or geneticists can conjecture or trace DNA, are part of the 'way it is'. Why can we accept the insane chaos and collisions throughout the physical universe as being cosmically beautiful and normal, and then turn around and call our own psychic relational collisions and life chaos abnormal and wrong? Is it because we want someone to blame in this school of soul-making? Is this the psychological equivalent of 'the dog ate my homework'?


DYSFUNCTIONAL MOM, OR SOUL-MAKING MOM?

My parents functioned at the level to which their souls had advanced when I was born and growing up with them. Since I have become an adult, I have watched them continue to grow up – to observe their souls becoming richer and deeper. A few years ago, I watched my mother die a slow, soulful death as she withered away from colon cancer. One day, with tumors filling her abdomen, she said to me, "Mike, I look back at the way we raised you kids and I am so sorry. We were obsessed with success, work and being successful. If I could go back I would…".

I don't remember all that she said at that point. I do recall seeing the kind of reflective regret that only adversity and imminent death can bring. I saw and felt her remorse and sadness coming from tearful eyes and trembling lips. I now know that I was not looking at a dysfunctional parent, but at a beautiful soul blossoming through the life she had lived, and was about to finish.

PERFECTLY IMPERFECT

It is possible to live in the tension or paradox of seeing the world perfectly imperfect, and to hold conscious human beings accountable for their actions, words and attitudes. The Chinese Tao Te Ching says that 'before one can become perfect, he must be imperfect.' Jesus said the same thing, "The first shall be last and the last shall be first."

HOW TO READ WITH THE SOUL

In our culture, we have been taught one perspective when it comes to reading – to add one line to the next and climb the stair of reason or ride the roller coaster of emotion to a conclusion. Either way, we are on a linear journey to a goal, either rational understanding or emotional reaction. We read a text book in order to learn to know or do something; we read novels and the like to have a certain kind of feeling – love, lust, excitement, fear, etc.

There is a third kind of reading that we have not learned, though we do occasionally encounter it, and that is learning to read soulfully. This is reading which appeals to the neglected Psyche; not the psyche of modern material, diagnostic and statistical psychology, but the Psyche of ancient wisdom and modern Depth Psychology. This kind of reading does not present a linear argument or straightforward narrative leading the reader into an emotional or rational cul de sac. This sort of approach to literature does not aim to find the meaning or significance of something. This type of reading is not for the mind or the emotions, but for the neglected soul. Billy Collins touches on it in his "Introduction to Poetry":

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

A book or article written soulfully need not be understood or felt in a predictible way. When we are ‘done’ reading it, we may wonder what in the world we have read. It may seem to be full of some sort of sense, but we did not absorb any of it, yet we want to go on reading. This type of encounter changes or rearranges us soulfully. It is not spiritual. Spiritual always takes us higher, “into God”. Soulful reading takes us deeper, causing us to wander and wonder as we do in a dream. In fact, we need to allow the material to read me as a dream dreams me.

Dreams are often quite pleasant and entertaining until we wake up and the ratio-emotive mind takes over. That is when we tie the dream to the chair and beat the meaning out of it. Such an approach loses soul and puts the human mind and emotions back in control, trivializing and limiting the effect of the dream encounter. Soulful reading is like looking into a kaleidoscope. At first, the mind wants to find meaning in the cylindrical tube filled with bits of broken glass seen through the twisting kaleidoscopic lens, but then we relax and realize there is nothing to make sense of - and we see only the parade of chaotic images which somehow captivate and fascinate.

The soul-filled literature is not taking us anywhere, yet in some way it is taking us everywhere. Certain phrases and ideas may cause our hearts to soar, only to be followed by a line that leaves us utterly baffled. We may finish a paragraph and wonder what we have read, then read it again feeling that some elusive meaning is right in front of us. The experience of being lost, befuddled and frustrated is the meaning, yet there is a kind of psychological knowing (gnosis) that some thing is being grasped beyond the rational and feeling levels. It might be more accurate to say that some thing is grasping us, but we are not quite sure how, where or why. I personally believe that it is at this level where most of our so called 'development' or psychic rearrangement takes place.

One such author for me is James Hillman, especially his book Re-visioning Psychology. He says, ''The call of soul convinces; it is a seduction into psychological faith, a faith in images and the thought of the heart, into an animation of the world.''

This quote from Hillman is a statement I am tempted to tie to a chair and beat with a hose, try to extract meaning and in fact I do. There is nothing wrong with chewing on and trying to ‘see the meaning’ in such writings or having a visceral response, but one will most often feel like he has ‘not quite gotten it’; again, much like a dream. That is where faith in the dynamic Psyche enters, causing us to trust that there are personifications and soulful entities in this animated cosmos which operate beyond the ego mind and emotions. We are pulled into the depths, beyond logic, feeling overwhelmed by what we do not and cannot know.

I think the ancient Christian Gospel of Thomas touched on this when Jesus said, "When you see your likeness, you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before you and that neither die nor become visible, how much you will have to bear!" Gospel of Thomas, saying 84

It is bearable to see our likeness which can be digested by reason and emotion, but it is excruciating to encounter images which transport us beyond rational explanation and emotional categories. Another author who does this for me is Nietzsche, and Lao Tze of the Chinese Tao Te Ching. This experience may also occur in movies, music, true science, math and other mediums.

I am not talking here about literature that is just poorly written, or rotten movies and bad music. There is plenty of that around. I am speaking about that experience which draws some part of me into the depths while leaving me intellectually and emotionally baffled, frustrated, angry and feeling just a little or a lot stupid. It is that encounter that teases the ego and requires the momentary suspension of the intellect and emergence of imagination.

I encourage you to read soulfully. Find some artist or author who acts as a soulful catalyst to rearrange your psyche like the shards of colorful glass in a twisting kaleidoscope. Without this experience we become boring intellectuals, shallow emotionalists or angry ideologues.

The Four Stages of Mysticism

I often refer to the four universal stages/cycles of psycho-spiritual growth, first brought to my attention by the work of Dr. M. Scott Peck. I have found these four stages in every one of the world’s religions. This paradigm for developmental spiritual growth recognizes that humans are on this planet to grow souls. Just as nature operates by moving through stages and cycles, so does the invisible human psyche. We grow from self centered egoism to an expanded awareness of the other, and from other-centeredness to skeptical individuation, and from individuation to mystical union. Scott Peck calls the stages:

1. Chaotic-Antisocial: The world revolves around me and my pleasure.
2. Formal-Institutional: As self centeredness brings increasing suffering, I discover the ‘other’ – a person or ideology which makes me expand beyond narcissistic self obsession.
3. Skeptic-Individual: Eventually the ‘other’ no longer fills me up, and I fall into a period of disillusionment and seeking, asking ‘who am I’?
4. Mystic-Communal: After a period of seeking, sorting, wondering and wandering I come to some sense of who I am without being completely self centered or by finding my identity in the ‘other’. I surrender to a Higher Power, discovering purposeful peace of mind and a sense of mystical connection in a universal communion.

Recently, I have come to see that each of the four stages can be divided into sub-stages by the stages preceding each. For example, the Mystic-Communal stage actually has four sub-stages:

1. The Egoistic-Mystic
2. The Otheristic-Mystic
3. The Sketpical-Mystic
4. The Mystical-Mystic

Why would we not need to grow through each stage? One does not become a full blown mystic overnight! After all, we never really jettison the prior stages, we just haul them along into each successive stage slightly altered.

1. The Egoistic-Mystic has experienced a state of personal surrender to a Higher Power. This person is moving from a life of victimization by troubling external circumstances and people. I begin to realize that my mind has the ability to affect my perception of reality. I see that I have personal choice and must take responsibility for all situations in my life. However, I am still self obsessed. In this infant stage of mystical awareness, I really think that the Universe exists primarily to serve me. I begin to focus on my mental, emotional and material prosperity. Spirit exists to make me healthy, wealthy and whole, most often at the external levels.

This is a normal and necessary stage for growing an infant soul, but those of us who have been raised in consumeristic America are especially susceptible to getting stuck in this stage. The recent book and DVD, The Secret, reveals a nation of nascent baby boomer mystics who have awakened to spirituality of the egotistical mystical variety. If you have been critical of The Secret, take heart; we are seeing a host of baby mystics awaken to a Source beyond the ego alone.

2. We eventually graduate into the Otheristic-Mystic stage. In this phase we align ourselves with some mystical teacher or organization which we think is going to enlighten or save the world. Personal prosperity is subjected to a larger vision of mystical awareness. It could be Al Gore’s mission to stop Global Warming, a recovery program like Alcoholic’s Anonymous or the Pro-Life campaign to stop abortion. It could be devotion to a particular spiritual path like Buddhism or Scientology. We often find a particular teacher, minister, guru or cause with which we passionately identify. This too is normal and necessary as a phase. But it will grow old.

3. It is not uncommon for a person to eventually burn out in this phase and become a Skeptical-Mystic. The fizzle is often related to being let down by the cause or teacher. Sometimes we feel it's 'just not working.' The ex Beatle, John Lennon, wrote the song Sexy Sadie about the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when Lennon heard a rumor that the Indian guru was a flirting with a female devotee. Disillusioned and cynical, Lennon left the ashram and wrote the song. He later found out that the rumor was unfounded. The point is that we must lose our mystical ‘other’ and learn to trust completely in Spirit. Jesus pointed out that none is good but God. In this phase, one can never really abandon the original blissful mystical experience, but one can become a very cynical, miserable and bitter sage. But it need not end here.


4. Finally, there is the Mystical-Mystic stage. This is when one is really surrendered to a Higher Power. Peace of mind does not depend on divine physical healing, a huge bank account, the ideal relationship, an enlightened teacher or set of teachings. We come to see the mind, emotions and body as necessary but temporal instruments of soul-making. We are at peace with the fact that everything on this planet is designed with flaws and built in obsolescence so we can learn to let go. Like Jesus, one can face his death, no matter how horrible and painful, with tranquility and forgiveness toward all who have harmed him.

Remember, these are normal and necessary stages. There is no skipping over them, however, there does seem to be the possibility of getting stuck in one. We must pay attention to the progressive nature of soul-making. Take stock. If we have been in a stage which no longer serves, it may be time to get on our knees and ask God to help us move forward.