Soul is Made by Love and Death: Guest Lecture

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.

YouTube - Inspirational Speech by Dr. Randy Pausch On the Oprah Winfrey Show: The Last Lecture. Dr. Pausch Passed Away On Jul..

Ravished By God: Donne's Poem With My Commentary

Poem with Michaels footnotes and commentary:

John Donne’s

HOLY SONNETS - XIV

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.

End

¹⁸Michael’s Concluding Note and Personal Summary

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.

6. ‘To another due’ refers to a town that has signed a treaty to pay taxes and give to the king what is due.

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).

‘RAVISH ME OH LORD’: John Donne on Divine Force

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 Korengal Valley 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

WAR IN THREE PARTS: A Moment in Soul

WARNING: Please do not read this unless you are ready for stark imagery. James Hillman suggests that Spirit is arrow-like, soaring into the heavens of light and life, but that Soul meanders through the labyrinthine corridors of the dark Underworld. This is an exposition, a mediation in Soul, a meditation from the Underworld, especially section III.

I. "War (Polemos) is the father of all that is."

from Heraclitus, Fragments of Philosophy

II. THERE IS A WAR
lyrics by Leonard Cohen

There is a war between the rich and poor,
a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war
and the ones who say there isn't.

Why don't you come on back to the war, that's right, get in it,
why don't you come on back to the war, it's just beginning.

Well I live here with a woman and a child,
the situation makes me kind of nervous.
Yes, I rise up from her arms, she says "I guess you call this love";
I call it service.

Why don't you come on back to the war, don't be a tourist,
why don't you come on back to the war, before it hurts us,
why don't you come on back to the war, let's all get nervous.

You cannot stand what I've become,
you much prefer the gentleman I was before.
I was so easy to defeat, I was so easy to control,
I didn't even know there was a war.

Why don't you come on back to the war, don't be embarrassed,
why don't you come on back to the war, you can still get married.

There is a war between the rich and poor,
a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the left and right,
a war between the black and white,
a war between the odd and the even.

Why don't you come on back to the war, pick up your tiny burden,
why don't you come on back to the war, let's all get even,
why don't you come on back to the war, can't you hear me speaking?



III. I look around. I really look. I have been looking for 55 years. I see war. Not war in the way you are likely thinking - not the War in Iraq, or the American Civil War, or the other wars in the history books. I see war, strife, conflict, nature eating herself. It is everywhere. My body contains antibodies fighting off 'bad' cells. Politicians and religionists have always fought over ideas. Those who are opposed to war, war against war itself. My mind wars when I am awake and when I dream. The earth clashes with itself as continents crash together, the heavenly bodies collide, waves smash into the shore, birds oppose gravity, fish swim upstream; and here I am, struggling with all of my might to find a way to discover something other than war. This is not pessimism, but submission. My fist finds fingers resisting palm when it clenches, lower teeth clash with upper teeth to chew, gastro intestinal juices destroy bits of food and my heart beats to push blood through veins that fight to keep from bursting open, as my lungs fight against expansion and my thoughts seek opposing ideas as naturally as the sun dissolves the snow. The Lion throttles the Gazelle, every myth juxtaposes Heaven and Hell, and when you are impressed by the performer, you smash palm against palm to let them know you care. Even applause arises from strife.

What do I do with war? Do I try to make peace with war, or embrace it as Nature's Way? There is no escape. If I surrender to war like Nietzsche, I go insane; if I oppose war like Ghandi, I am slaughtered. They say that even atoms are a whirling cacophony of passion. Violence. Interesting word. The lips of lovers crash together, as if to devour the object of love; limbs grope and crush bodies. People ‘fall in love,’ implying an eventual splat when they meet the ground. The penis stiffens, surges, presses and violates the labial fortress which opens willingly, or not, and the sperm are launched in D-Day fashion to assail the walled ovum - a siege of force against force, willful penetration that life may continue.

"War is the father of all." Tonight, I surrender to the father, War. I sit, and wonder - how did my boy die? Did he fall on his face, side, or back after he was shot? Did his throat rattle as the last breath exited his lungs? Did he cry out, or was he silent? Did his organs fall out onto the ground? Did they have to push his heart, spleen and lungs back inside of his body, or scoop them into a plastic bag? Was their dirt in his open mouth, or gravel pressed into his still supple cheek? Did he twitch as he died, or fall limp like the cow I saw shot between the eyes in Montana? Did he have time to think at all as his life left that body? Did he hurt? Did he regret? Did he have a last word for me, or his mother, or his sisters, or his God, or for War? There must be particles of his blood, and bits of his flesh, begotten of my blood, mixed in the dry dirt there in the Korengal Valley - walked over, co-mingled, a part of the sun-baked land forever. Will children play on that spot? Will a home or road be built over his blood one day? Macabre? Do you think? Are these horrible questions, forbidden thoughts? No, they are not. Don't try to comfort me. I am not discomfited now, I am addressing the father of all, the War behind all creation. After all, the flesh decays, decomposes, rots and becomes star dust once again. I do not know how the stars became my Jason, my dazzling little boy - how he emerged from that original Big Bang, or where he goes after the Bang has been sucked into a dark and final cosmic vortex. I can Imagine, however. I can Imagine the eternal strand of existence streaming from...well, streaming forth. And I do want to see the fountainhead, to see if there can be any Thing without war. But not tonight – I shall have to settle for a conclusion I curiously do not want to settle for, that “War is the father of all.” And the only hope I derive, is that something in me does not want it to be that way. My mind and heart battle to find a way out of war.

Self Portrait by David Whyte

This poem speaks so eloquently about the Soul-making process. Keep in mind that some of the Christian priests during the Renaissance said they were religious monotheists and psychological polytheists, hence the seamless synthesis of Classical and Christian art.



Self Portrait by David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need to change you.
If you can look back with firm eyes
saying, this is where I stand.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day,
with the consequence of love and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace,
even the gods speak of God.

What is Insanity? Am I Sane?

WHAT IS INSANITY?

The word sane comes from a root that means whole or complete. So then, sanity is wholeness or completeness. But there is the puzzle, what do we mean by wholeness? One man would say that wholeness arrives when all of my conflicts disappear, when I am no longer fragmented in my thinking and feeling. If that is true, then you cannot be whole until you have resolved all fragmentation. And some people today unconsciously or consciously pursue religion, therapy, money, success, love and other forms of assistance to arrive at that 'place' so they can be sane, complete and done with their myriad troubles and problems. On the surface this appears to have some logical plausibility; after all, fragmentation is the opposite of wholeness. Or is it?

The poet William Blake talked about having ‘double vision,’ which meant that he was able to see the mundane and the sacred in the same object or situation, that is, he had the ability to perceive a thing in at least two ways simultaneously. He wrote:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Blake wrote of looking at the sun and seeing a ‘round thing somewhat like guinea’ (gold coin named after the gold mined in Guinea, West Africa), and simultaneously seeing “an Immeasurable Company of the Heavenly Host crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.’”

Now some might argue that a man seeing angels singing praises to the biblical God in the sun ought to be committed to an insane asylum, or tolerated as long as he didn’t harm anyone. There is a kind of fragmentation in his vision. But keep in mind, Blake was not saying that was all he saw in the sun; he was quite capable of getting by in his daily activities in ‘normal’ life because he could also see the coin and use it appropriately. He might recognize the 'universe in a grain of sand,' but he also could see the sand as sand, pouring it out of his shoes if necessary or using it in concrete to pour a foundation for his home.

This seemingly fragmented ability to see the profane and sacred simultaneously alters our definition of sanity. If Blake is sane, it means that he is able to hold a single object (person or situation) as revealing more than one significance. Sanity then would be defined as having the ability to simultaneously see a single object, person or event in more than one way. That would mean that the insane person is the one who sees only one side. He sees either the profane sun as just a sun and nothing more, or he sees the sun as nothing more than a choir of divine angels. Most in our sensory dominated culture would agree that seeing the sun as only a choir of angels might qualify a man for the label of insanity, but seeing it as just the sun would be quite normal, in fact that is scientific. Really?

I read today that three internationally recognized business men have recently committed suicide because they lost millions of dollars in the current economic downturn. Psychologists say this is ‘normal’ during such times. One might argue that if these men had simultaneously been able to see their money as something other than mundane cash and bonds, they might still be alive. If they could have simultaneously seen their wealth as chains of bondage, impediments to character development, walls to keep them aloof from family and friends, etc., they would still be alive. Their inability to simultaneously see two significances in all things left them less than whole, and their insanity inspired their suicides. So who is insane?

Perhaps sanity is being able to see all events as both sacred and profane, or as some Eastern mystics put it, “neti, neti,” which means ‘not this, not this’. In other words, all things are united - so that the whole universe is "in a grain of sand" and we "hold infinity in our hand." To lose a fortune or gain a fortune, really the same thing ultimately.

In order to function in the world of time and space (maya), we must see the objects as serving a mundane function so we can use them to live on this planet in our flesh, but on another level, the sacred level (Brahman), one object or lack thereof is no different than the other. Both are true and each is necessary for this soul-making game we are playing.

If one were to compare the sanities of the East and West, one might suggest that the East has tended to err on the side of seeing things as primarily sacred (Brahman), and the West as seeing things as primarily mundane (maya). The Eastern propensity to sacralize the Universe has 'embraced and honored Nature' as we like to say in our New Age circles, but the Western tendency to 'mundanize' reality has brought us automobiles, computers and practically all of what we call modern technology. Each is a little insane in their own one sidedness, having something to learn from the other.

Most Westerners, abysmally ignorant of our own sacred historical brilliance, do not know that the reason the early Christian church argued so strenuously that Jesus’ nature was 100% Divine (sacred - Brahman) and 100% human (mundane - maya), as reflected in the Nicene Creed, was to retain the balance of what I am calling sanity. This ancient creed and revolutionary idea gave rise to what we moderns call *science and technology. If you are of the more agnostic or 'scientific' type, then substitute the analogy of light being 100% particles and 100% waves - 'sane light' is made of up of both.

Sanity is seeing beyond duality in the midst of duality. It is not synthesizing opposites or ‘transcending’ opposites as many mistakenly suppose. Sanity on this soul-making planet requires that we see the sensuous/material side and spiritual/immaterial side as not only co-existing, but as simultaneously co-equal. The mediating realm is Psyche, Soul or what Blake and other poets called Imagination, is a third eye or organ that can hold the tension of opposites and remain in process without getting off track. Ironically it is also getting off track and seeing that you are still on track, or being on track and seeing that you are also off track.

The true artist can see her painting or his song as more than one thing, always something mundane and something divine. This perspective is called Nirvana in the East – the experience of being able to live in a world of matter and spirit simultaneously, in a world of pain and pleasure simultaneously, and have no velcro (sticky) judgment about the normal and necessary fragmentations in life. This is not learned academically, but experienced; and this soul-making universe indicates that the experience does not come easily, unless it does.

------------
* This theme is developed beautifully by former University of Washington Sociologist, Rodney Stark in his book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success

Happy New Year! I Think I'll Kill My 'Self'

“Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it cannot sprout and grow.”
~ Jesus

HAPPY NEW YEAR, I THINK I’LL KILL MY 'SELF'

A recent A.P. News story reported that between September 2008 and January 2009, three prominent businessmen killed themselves in the wake of economic losses:

1. The body of German billionaire Adolf Merckle, ranked by Forbes as the world's 94th richest person, was found January 5, Monday, night after an apparent suicide. Authorities said he left a suicide note, but gave no details. Merckle's death appears to be at least the third comparable suicide in less than four months.

2. In September, Kirk Stephenson -- the chief operating officer of private equity house Olivant -- jumped in front of a train at a rail station west of London. The 47-year-old husband and father of a young son stepped onto the tracks, was struck and killed.

3. Two days before Christmas, in New York, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, was found dead at his desk, both wrists slashed and bottle of pills nearby after his fortune and the money of his loved ones vanished along with his clients when he lost $1.4 billion invested with Bernard Madoff.

SUICIDE: WHAT IS IT?

The word suicide literally is, sui = of the self, cide = to cut off - to cut off or destroy some part of the self. Merriam Websters says, “the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally especially by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind.”

The general view toward suicide in this culture, whether religious or medical, is that of prevention. While there is talk and even some new laws that have been passed for physician assisted suicide, I am talking about people who are generally healthy mentally and physically. Suicide prevention is what we generally focus on in this culture. We work to stop them, typically discounting the suicidal urge completely. Is this the best attitude? Is this where ought to focus?

The answer depends on whether or not one views the basic human Psyche as having any wisdom or positive function at all. Our culture in general seems to think not, with most of the popular talk focusing on our rampant psychological dysfunctions, disorders, syndromes and that selfish old ego that is out to get us. It would seem that the ego is little more than a misinformed villain. Many of us assume that we had little chance growing up in a dysfunctional family and wicked culture of disordered people. My parents are screwed up, the government is corrupt, the church is abusive, politicians are crooked and the chant of the day is ‘CHANGE!’ With this view of the human psyche, no wonder we focus on prevention. We view the ego, or inner self, as an errant or sick system that is out to kill us even when things are going well. So the best we can do is argue with that little internal voice that whispers in times of despair and depression, “End it all, take your life!”

WISDOM OF THE EGO

But what if the ego-self has some wisdom in this little voice, a wisdom that could in fact keep us from taking our lives?! That’s right, what if the suicidal tendency is actually very healthy and normal? Most human beings, at times of great loss or change, have heard that little voice. Many of us will not admit we have had such thoughts, and few take it seriously, and fewer still act on it. But that voice arises in most humans, and sometimes even children. It is not uncommon for a little child, when he doesn’t get his way, to blurt out a homicidal or suicidal threat: “I wish I could kill you!” or “I wish I was dead!” (Note: For further reading, see James Hillman, Suicide and the Soul)

Let’s give that unsolicited internal self destructive counselor some serious attention; suppose the voice is saying exactly what needs to be said. If we spent a few moments with it, ascribed some wisdom to the ego, and actually paid attention, we might learn something that could save our lives. The voice is saying, “Some one, some thing, needs to die.” The ‘cide’ in suicide is also found in homicide, decide, and fratricide literally means ‘to cut off’. That root word is also found in incision, which means to cut. Suicide literally means that some part of one’s self needs to be cut off, excised, deleted, erased or removed.

By arguing with and dismissing the suicidal urge, with a view to prevention, we may miss the truth in the message. The Psyche is saying, “Hey! In order for your soul to expand, some part of your life is being cut off.” If we are on this planet to make souls, to form character and create something beyond the obvious stuff of daily existence, then the Psyche is the most sane voice in us.

THE NECESSITY OF SUI-CISION

The three businessmen who killed themselves were undergoing some radical financial ex-cisions in their own personal soul-making journeys; their self identities as ‘successful’ and wealthy businessmen were being cut away, and they no doubt were being assailed by that little universal internal voice that was accurately whispering, “You need to die!” It may be instructive that two of the men threw themselves in front of trains. Did they feel derailed, a need to get back on the old track?

Truth be known, part of their lives needed to be let go, cut away, let loose. “Man shall not live by bread alone,” bread being a common euphemism for money, “but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” said Jesus. And this is not a polemic for the Christian religion, or any religion in general, but Jesus’ recognition that human soul-making depends on more than the physical stuff. Humans do not live by money, food, marriage, jobs, education, children, lovers, healthy bodies, et al alone, but by invisible soul principles that proceed from the gods. And the gods will whisper, “You are dying, let it go.”

But if our sole or primary focus is on suicide prevention, then we are telling the suicidal person that the 'self' destructive voice is mistaken; just ignore it - the dysfunctional ego is trying to kill you, you are sick and need some pills. But the voice always continues, relentlessly reminding you that you might as well be dead now without the money, child, partner, job, health, youth, lover, home, etc.. And do you know what? That voice is 100% correct! The old ‘self’ that you were while attached to that object is literally no thing now; that thing or self is gone or going. And, a new ‘self’ is forming. And do not try to give instructions or predict what that new self will be like, or how and when it will emerge. Like the caterpillar that leaves its worm-world, enters into the suffocating chrysalis, you are transforming into something heretofore unknown. You must die. Psyche knows how, when and where...let go.

DON'T KILL A STRANGER

In the world of drug and alcohol recovery, thoughts of suicide are common. There is a proverb in many recovery groups, “Don’t kill your self within the first five years of recovery or you will be killing a stranger.” The point? It takes time for the new ‘self’ to come into being after the old ‘self’ is ‘cided’ or cut off. You may feel like dying because you are in fact dying, but NEVER mistake what is going on at the soul level to be solved at the physical level. Our culture of journalistic and prosaic literalism has a hard time reading the symbolic and mythical alphabet of soul. It is NOT your physical that needs to be released by you, but your attachment to old people, objects and situations are leaving or being removed.

Incidentally, the Psyche also brings us other instructive metaphors, “I feel like I am losing my head.” “I am going out of my mind.” “Stop it, you’re killing me.” “This experience is killing me.” “I feel like the walking dead.” “I’m dead on my feet.” "I feel like I'm jumping out of my skin." Listen to these symbolic voices - they are very instructive in caring for your soul.

In conclusion, respect that internal voice which tells you that you must die, but don’t mistake it for physical death! You do not need to destroy your body, but cooperate as areas of your old life are being cut away to make room for the new self that is emerging. Talk to people you can trust, share your story of loss without becoming identified with it, confess your suicidal thoughts with someone who understands, and develop patience as the soul-making process progresses.

The Soul of Video Images: Why We Love Films

O memory! thou mid-way world

'Twixt Earth and Paradise,

Where things decayed, and loved ones lost

In dreamy shadows rise.

by Abraham Lincoln

AN IDEA IS A VIDEO

I do not love film because it captures and freezes images, but because it evokes in me that part of knowing that realizes Reality as Eternal Process; the film is a moving image, an ongoingness that mimics the Reality under reality. At one level a film or video is obviously 'less real' because they cannot be tasted, touched and experienced as this current moment in my body, but on another level a moving video image is more than a mere fleeting moment. The video reminds me that the traits and actions of John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe are an eternal process of Psyche, Infinite Ideas or Images which underlie this world; the celebrated (celebrities) individuals or heroes we have named and known on this planet are eternal manifestations of Infinite Archetypes. In fact, the very word 'video' is etymologically related to the word 'idea'. A video is an image or idea - and invisible Ideas are the foundation upon which material existence is built. Humans live by these archetypal Idea/Videos. That is the essence of Jesus' saying, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word (Idea/Video/Image) that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

When I am truly caught up in a film, especially what we call a 'classic,’ I am not cognizant that the actors may be long dead and buried. I am engaged at the Imaginal level which knows Process – which knows, craves and lives by Love and Beauty, Truth and Action, and a thousand Eternals as always Existing. These Images feed me. The Hebrew prophet Amos, in 800 B.C., said, "There is a famine in the Land, not for bread, but for the Word (Images) of God."

The ancients fed this human need through ritual. Their dances, re-enactments, sacred ceremonies and stories accomplished what our films do today. The so called modern "decline of religion" is really just a disinterest in old methods of evoking the archetypal Invisibles in the soul. To see a film is a religious or numinous act, whether we know it or not. Most people in ancient cultures did not fully understand the numinous significance of what was happening in their ritual dances; they just knew that ‘something’ necessary for existence was happening. This religious impulse for Images is autonomic, like breathing, occurring beyond our conscious awareness. The times we are most aware is when they are interfered with, like breathing, drinking or eating. If you place your hand over a man’s nose and mouth, he will become acutely aware of his need for oxygen, breath, spiritus, air, pneuma; similarly, if you remove ritual or theatre from a culture, people will feel something has gone terribly awry. We must find some way to participate in the Eternal Process, to know at some level there is more to existence than one moment passing into the next and disappearing forever.

Many of America's great early film directors and actors came to this country in the 1930s from Germany as the Third Reich restricted the Images of artists in an effort to control the souls of the German people. Billy Wilder, Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre and many others fled Germany and came to America where they could freely follow the impulse of Psyche to display the complete archetypal pantheon of Video Ideas for the starving human soul. The soul craves these Eternal Ideas. lives by these words from the gods.

Humans are ritualistic creatures, precisely because we must participate in the eternality of the Process or wither up in some version of a meaningless temporal existence, usually taking the form of some sort of addiction to transient people, substances or activities in our western world. Films and Video Ideas are like dreams which are autonomically generated as little Night Rites or nocturnal theatre which reflects the Eternal Process or Reality underneath our transient daily undertakings. The kiss I shared with my lover yesterday is an Eternal Kiss, never ending, just as when any number of romantic films light up the screen with some magical kissing scene. That kiss on the screen is symbolic of The Kiss, the Connection between man and woman, Divine and Human, Soul and Spirit. War movies and rituals allow us to experience Eternal Justice, Compassion, Honor, Courage; the political conflict between Liberals and Traditionalists are Eternal themes. These archetypal themes are many and must be expressed, impressed and in-pressed on soul.

The reason humans are so drawn to television, film, video and computer images is not because we are lazy and ignorant, but because we are unconsciously drawn into the need for the evocation of the Eternal Process we know to be under, through and behind the mundane moments which pass into history. History, on the film and video game, might be call ‘is-story,’ or The Story that always is. Each story is my story, our story, the never ending story. The existence of Epics in each culture, from the Bible to the Iliad, from the Mahabharata to the Simpsons, continue the story that began before there ever an earth or a human being. We do not invent these stories, we embody them, and they will continue long after this planet is dead and every human body on it mingled with star dust in some cosmic implosion.

This craving for Images is also the basis of a universal and ubiquitous recognition of some sense of and defense for immortality in some form. We intuitively know that Living does not end, that Love does not disappear, that Courage and Justice will not go away just because a human body, spherical planet or precious culture does go away.

And Time is more like a projector light than a measuring device. Reality and in particular our daily lives are more like video clips than a photo album. The frames are strung together continuously like a strip of film, and Time is a sort of projector light that shines through a given frame from one second to the next, revealing one after the other in progression. We measure these frames by a clock and call it past, present and future – as if the Process stops for our puny analyses. Just because Time has moved her projecting light to the next frame does not mean that the frames that have passed are any less real or any less present. The video is immortal; only the revelation of each frame is mortal. Death is merely the passing of the light from one frame to the next.

That is why we love films. They are inadequate containers of the way Reality works.

SMUDGE

You know that smudge
that comes after you erase a word,
resembling the scene of an accident,
where birth and death collide
just before the emergence
of the unwritten idea?

That is what I have felt like
since July 13, 2008

end/michael bogar

Soul-making and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Soul-making and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post = prefix meaning "after"

Traumatic = to rub away, grind away, crush

Stress = force, pressure, oppression

Disorder = to destroy the order or regular arrangement of

PTSD is the name of a condition in which the regular order of life is destroyed as the result of being ground away under relentless pressure.

PTSD is another name for soul-making. While the modern medical model would put it under the study of ‘Abnormal Psychology’, there is nothing abnormal about it.

This is not meant to minimize the condition or symptoms, nor dismiss the medical guidelines for treatment. My aim is to help us see that there is more to the condition than just the medical metaphor.

There is often a lot of grief, depression, anxiety and anger in the person who has been ground down under some sort of very intense pressure, resulting in what has been labled PTSD. But the difference between seeing it as ‘abnormal’ psychology and an advanced course in soul-making is the difference between seeing it as purposeful and unique, compared to seeing it as some sort of mental illness or aberrant human condition that has no place in life. It is possible to feel like everything in your world is wrong compared to what you want it to feel like, and yet not have anything cosmically or ultimately Wrong. If you are suffering what has been called PTSD, there is nothing weird, odd or strange about you.

It is critical to seek treatment in order to move through it, but don’t add to the situation by thinking your condition means you are sick and abnormal. The word trauma comes from an Indo-European root that means to grind or whittle down. PTSD is a clinical name for a crash course in the destruction or grinding away of the old self you were before the traumatic events came upon you. It is a technical name for what we are on this earth do - namely, grow a self, shed it and grow another as we evolve toward our full Humanity.

The Apostle Peter went through an ordeal of seeing Christ arrested, whipped and killed, and living under the stress of being arrested and crucified himself. He was a fugitive and lived in perpetual terror. Jesus had earlier said, “Peter, the Shatan has asked permission to sift you like wheat (perfect illustration of trauma) in order that you might strengthen the brothers.” Jesus was referring to an experience that we might today call PTSD. The fact is that life on this planet is filled with the PTSD experiences. However, there is a difference between seeing the events as experiences to grind away a former layer of the self in order that a new self may emerge, and seeing the events as ruining your life and chances for happiness. The worm that finds itself pressed tightly into a cocoon is a PTSD candidate. Yet the aim is not to get therapy in order to return to the old worm self, but to move into the new butterfly self.

The Psyche sees what we call PTSD as a way to grow a soul – a very distressing and troubling course. The goal is to release the old self that you remember before the trauma, then experience the trauma within a caring community, consistently praying for God’s will to result from the morphing into a new person. Most PTSD ‘victims’ tend to blame the people who did it to them rather than see the doing as part of their soul-making journey.

As babies, we all enter this world through PTSD – a little fetus floating in a nice sack of water, being fed through the umbilical cord, soothed by the beating heart and swaying walk of the mother – and then after 9 months, contractions press the child down a narrow canal, through a tiny opening and into the cold, bright, noisy world called human life. This is trauma – the grinding down of the old womb-self in order to become the post-womb self. The aim is to move through the trauma and become the next self, the post-fetal self. This birthing process occurs many times throughout one’s life, and very likely after this life.

In the movie, The War at Home, Emilio Estevez plays a Viet Nam war vet who returns home very troubled. He has seen death and mutilation; he was forced to execute a Viet Cong soldier. He is a mess of a human being around his family and friends. At one point his sister asks her distressed brother to explain what happened to him ‘over there.’ He says very succinctly, “I died over there.” That is exactly what happened. The young man that went to Viet Nam may have never been shot or physically wounded, but that person no longer exists, and never will.

I remember the night I heard that my 25 year old son had been killed in Afghanistan. The grief was inexplicable. I do not remember the next five minutes as I sort of went into a Zombie trance, screaming over and over, “No! No! No!” I remember coming to, standing outside in the dark of night, looking into the sky at a bright yellow moon, suddenly aware that I was outside screaming at the sky. The nightmare bgan. After a sleepless night, I remember the thought coming with the morning light, “Michael, you will never be the man you were yesterday; you have changed forever.” This initially terrified me, but I knew that I could either try to return to the old self which existed prior to the traumatic crushing and grinding down, or grieve the loss of my son and my old life, and patiently (pathos – suffer) await the new self that would emerge. Depending on the trauma, that new self could take years to emerge. But having a perspective that sees the event as part of the soul-making experience minimizes the need to try and return to the old self, or blame myself and others in a state of eternal resentment. I am now the father of a dead son; no longer the father of a living son and all that implied for the future.

In the movie, The War at Home, the traumatized young Viet Nam vet sits down to play a classical tune on the piano. His relieved family, thinking he is becoming his old self, smiles as they watch and listen to him play so beautifully. As he completes the last line of the music, he stops and never plays the last note. As I watched the movie, I felt the frustration of him not finishing the song. His family looked troubled and puzzled as the vet rose from the piano bench and walked past them, silently. The point was stunning - life has no end…the last note is never played. The guy that played that song years ago, always finishing it, exists no longer. We are forever morphing from one self into the next.The soul-song is never complete...get used to it.

Experiencing joy in life, and recovery (perhaps discovery is a better word) from PTSD are directly proportional to ones ability to move through the creative emotional upheaval, stand in the chaos, excavate the darkness roiling below the psyche in the unconscious realms, and observe the new dwelling that is being built from the crushed rubble. Within each of us is ever-blossoming soul material, emerging from the dirt and fertilizer of the old self. This is the archetypal myth of Phoenix rising, the reparation of Osiris and Dionysus after their violent dismemberments, and the resurrection of the traumatized and crushed Christ. That is one reason so many vets and trauma victims find succor in religions with a myth of reconstruction after dismantlement.

PTSD may use the medical metaphor, but I think we must be careful. We are not sick, rather we are deconstructed. There is nothing wrong at the cosmic level, though from our social perspectives everything is severely wrong. Pharmaceuticals will not solve the problem in the long run, though they may provide some temporary relief. Alcohol, sex, drugs and a host of other consciousness altering substances or events won’t last long term. Seeing a therpist or counselor and blaming our parents, the government, et al will do little to promote the emergence of the new soul.

Why do these traumatic events happen? Who knows? I don’t. But that they do occur, and occur frequently on this planet requires us to take them as part of the normal phenomena of existence. From there, we will either see them as abnormal psychology, or normal events that come to move us into deeper and deeper experiences of soul.