SWINE FLU, CHICKEN LITTLE AND THE END OF MY WORLD!

The latest media driven catastrophe is swine flu. Some are saying it is a pandemic that will wipe out half the world. Others are calling it a conspiracy by politicians and drug companies to make money. I call this all too human, universal propensity to anticipate annihilation, the 'Archetype of the Apocalypse.' By that, I mean that there appears to be a universal element in the human psyche to anticipate and even thrive on the prospect of disaster.

Humans have always catastrophized. It seems to be in our nature. For Western mythology it begins in biblical Eden with Adam and Eve being told that if they ate from one particular tree they "would surely die!" They ate from the tree. They didn't die. Life changed, but no one died. That’s important to remember in these doom and gloom scenarios. Things change, but people rarely die.

Chicken Little continued the apocalyptic tradition by screaming to all who would listen that the entire heavenly canopy was going to crash onto the earth and kill everyone. Many listened. He gained quite a following until it was pointed out that he had only been hit on the head by a rogue apple. He didn’t die. But, like Adam and Eve before him, his life had changed.

From the second coming of Jesus, to Y2K, to global warming (or cooling), to meteors hitting the earth, to nuclear holocausts, to the Mayan 2012 calendar, to Catholic conspiracies, to drug company scams, to greedy politicians, to Free Masonic plots, to Jewish plots, to Islamic world domination -- and the list goes on and on and on. In fact someone has compiled a brief list from various times and cultures around the globe predicting various ends of the world: http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm

While such external scenarios are never out of the question, and an actual 'end of the world' could occur due to human error or circumstances of Nature, most never have and never will. Of course, each person's pet apocalypse will be deemed to be "the one that IS true!"And you may be right, but probably not.

It seems to me that this internal predisposition to catastrophize is a wonderful and useful part of the human psyche. That part of us that anticipates and even thrives on judgment, destruction and ‘The End’ needs to be applied at a personal level in order for each of us to become a complete en-humaned being. You see, each of us is a walking apocalypse, a living end of the world. Each breath is the end of the old breath and the introduction of a whole new world of oxygen molecules. Each minute, hour and day is the end of life as we know it. When the head hits the dreaming pillow, the past day has been obliterated, the four horsemen have wiped the slate clean and a brand new world is coming. We cannot count on the fact that anything we possessed yesterday, mentally or physically, will be around when we awaken.

It has been said that the biblical book of Revelation is like a bad dream. That is a very helpful insight. Our night dreams and day anxieties are often filled with bizarre and troubling imagery and disastrous scenarios. A short peaceful car trip to the grocery store can end in thoughts of financial ruin or a life of miserable loneliness. The mind loves to construct end of our world scenarios. Let's face it, Time is a harsh Judge, passing sentence on each tick of the clock. The old is destroyed and buried. Frequently we imagine scenarios which are far worse than they actually become. Like the biblical book of Revelation, we experience days and sometimes sleepless nights filled with moments of tribulation or rapture. We await the Day of Judgment, the Lake of Fire, the Second Coming. There is some relief in knowing that this is the way the Psyche works.This is the way life works. But remember, every good apocalypse concludes with a new thing replacing the old, always.

Our lives are changing, always. What we thought we knew and had yesterday is going to shift, gradually or drastically. That is how life works. That is why babies grow and adults age. Such processes and events are what cause our souls to evolve and our unique characters to develop. Every change, each apocalypse, all fears and worries are purposeful and working toward the next new heaven and new earth. So take a load off – relax your shoulders and calm your thoughts. Shift the focus from 'the end of the world' and 'paranoid conspiracies' to your own life of ongoing change. God is making something new in each moment. Faith in the purposeful process turns catastrophes into what J.R.R. Tolkien called 'eucatastrophes' (ostensibly bad situations suddenly revealed to be fortuitous).

The Hebrew God, through his prophet Isaiah nearly 2,700 years ago said it like this:

"Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

Pay attention! I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; can you not see it?
I am making a road through the wasteland
and streams in the desert."

~ Isaiah 43:18-19

How is The Imaginal Realm Different from Human Imagination?

Someone recently asked me why I use the term 'Imaginal Realm,' and wondered if it was the same as 'imagination.
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First off, the Imaginal Realm, like the Chinese Tao, cannot be named or defined.

We may examine the Imaginal Realm in the way a physicist studies an atom. Some activities and very limited results of the atoms existence can be observed, but never is the dynamic atom seen. If that is true of the miniscule atom, how much more of the vast Imaginal Realm which originated the atom? Perhaps these are more closely related than we realize as William Blake said, “To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower/Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.” (Auguries of Innocence)

I use that term 'Imaginal Realm' to distinguish it from 'human imagination', or the 'imaginary' work of people. 'Imaginary' refers to what we make up with the human will, like making up a story, creating a television commercial or constructing ideas for projects, etc. The Imaginal Realm is beyond and before human imagination, or imaginary human musings. The two areas clearly intersect because all human 'imaginings' are ultimately connected to the Imaginal Realm.

The Imaginal Realm is the arena of dreams. It is the Psychic-Sea in which we swim. It is the Realm of Psyche or Soul. It most often takes us into the depths, into the deep, into the abyss, into the labyrinth, into the matrix, into the womb of darkness, into the caverns of Hades. It is the realm of myth and fantasy - but again, these are not humanly constructed fantasies; rather they are unexpected and alien ideas, daydreams, thoughts and emotions.

The Imaginal Realm transmits those intrusive and often annoying feelings of awe or dread that seem to arrive from nowhere, those waves of overwhelming love or murderous resentment, and those flashes of clarity or confusion that seem to drop in 'out of the blue'.

The Imaginal Realm removes our limiting blinders and shows us, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, the evolving Numinous Realm, the sacred spheres, the worlds of the Gods. Sadly, most modern humans try to assign the responsibility of all such experiences to the human mind and 'free will'. That is a huge mistake, and an impossible burden for us to bear. All ancient cultures realized that the Gods were the authors of such 'revelations'.

The Imaginal Realm conjures up the invisible playmates of some children, and sends us sudden insights into deep problems. It manifests itself as puzzling nightmares or shocking erotic interludes that interrupt our dreams. These perplexing images require us to move beyond a current ego-self, beyond the literal 'manifest content' of the dream, as Freud would say, to the 'latent content' wrapped in the dream's symbols. In other words, the Imaginal Realm loves to give us riddles and cryptic psycho-spiritual codes to crack. Humans love codes and riddles! That is why we are always finding religious, political and relational conspiracies everywhere!

The Imaginal Realm reminds us of our inevitable appointment with death, takes things apart we thought were solid and introduces transformational periods of depression, addiction, grief, insanity or other 'neuroses'. These useful psychological terms can also be misleading when we assume there is something 'wrong' with us and the cosmos. These necessary, normal and purposeful chaotic pathologies and painful symptoms, like the knotted root-ball of a potential plant, spread their tentacles into the deep rich loam of the Unconscious and prepare us to blossom.

The Imaginal Realm rearranges our understanding of 'love' and calls us beyond our ego and self will. It always surprises, troubles and nudges us beyond our current world securities and beliefs in what is taken for granted. It is the inner undiscovered jungle, and the Guide into that jungle of the unexplored unconscious, often showing up like Gandalf the Wizard from the Hobbit, prodding us on an adventure and into experiences which we could never have imagined would have entered our lives.

Rod Serling called the Imaginal Realm the Twilight Zone, "We are traveling through another dimension. A dimension not of sight and sound, but of 'mind'. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition; it lies between the pit of man's fears and summit of his knowledge."

The Imaginal Realm is like a stack of 10 trillion kazillion Lego pieces which can be constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed into an infinite number of images - both physical and psychical. It is simultaneously chaos and creation. The Hindu Sankhya philosophy calls this ‘prakriti,’ the eternal substance from which all physical and mental forms arise.

The Imaginal Realm is a crystal ball containing visions which may calm us or scare us. It was accessed by Shamans, Greek Oracles, Hebrew Prophets and Christian Apostles (cf. Apostle Paul, Colossians 1:15ff.). It is described in the Bhagavad Gita, chapter eleven.

The Imaginal Realm captures what we see when we shut our eyes and visualize, or listen to what is beyond the audible senses, and beyond our own intentional thought. Some today call it channeling, others call it being filled with the Holy Spirit or speaking in tongues. It is what Jesus referred to when he talked about 'the Kingdom of Heaven'. It is the Hindu Ganesh, a boy with an elephant's head. It is Alice Through the Looking Glass, Neo Anderson escaping the Matrix, Dorothy entering OZ through a tornado and all fantastic journeys into fantastic lands. It is the Realm of the Living Archetypes, which we call 'gods' and 'goddesses'.

Perhaps most importantly, we must remember that this Realm existed long before the human being, long before the human brain evolved. The Imaginal Realm is NOT synonymous with our neural biology any more than a television image is the result of the televisions internal technology. Both the television and the human brain receive their 'images' from a realm that is beyond the container holding the technology, beyond brains and microchips. To identify human bio-chemical cognition (the brain) with the Imaginal Realm may be the biggest and most deadly mistake in modern psychology, and the cause of our modern pharmaceutical culture.

Industry and technology are modern manifestations of the Imaginal Realm, but not to be confused with it, or seen as substitutes for humanness. The Greek God Hephaestus was the God of technos, constructing and inventing from the world of stuff, but he was homely and limped when he walked. Perhaps the Greeks recognized that technology, as wondrous as it is, contains a kind of ugliness and impairment of humanity. We see increasing numbers of people welded to their iPhone, iPod, television, computer or other techno-gadgetry. This is the shadow side of technology. There is a kind of ugliness and impairment of relational and communal intimacy. The wondrous product of the Imaginal Realm has replaced the Imagination, replaced revelation and creativity. We ought to stop using the ‘hardwired’ metaphor for the human brain. The Imaginal Realm reminds us that we are 'soft-wired,’ pliable – not machines. We need some Totos today who can do to us what the little dog did to the Wizard of OZ trapped behind his inhumane 'computer' screen. Toto drew back the curtain and revealed the human as primarily a receiver of personal contact, not a transmitter of second hand images.

The Imaginal Realm will never be defined, located or controlled. It is the sea of infinite potential and usually beyond human manipulation. I say 'usually' because at some minor level we are allowed to use our thoughts and intentions to create reality. But we do NOT create all reality. Man is NOT the measure of all perceptions, as Protagoras said. The Imaginal Realm created us as an author writes a poem, and It still continues to make us into unique poems. This realm screws with our perceptions in the most annoying ways.

Let me repeat: Most importantly, humans and specifically the human brain with which we are so enamored these days, receives the Imaginal Realm. The brain does not originate it. When this solar system runs down, shrivels into a smoldering ember and eventually fades into a cold, dead intergalactic debris field - after all sentient life has been consumed - the Imaginal Realm will continue to unfold new imaginings, new fantasies and infinite realities beyond our humanly 'imagined' ponderings.

The Imaginal Realm does NOT depend upon us, but we on It. That is why the ancients spent so much time addressing issues of destiny, fate and necessity. That is why even moderns, as they become older (ancient), begin to look in the rearview mirror of time and see forces beyond human will.

I have a series of comments and quotes regarding the Imaginal Realm on my blog site:
http://michaelbogar.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-is-soul-making_14.html

God is One, and Two

The irony of dualism is that until we see good and evil as part of the One, we are dualists.

When you say, "God is all there is," are you paying attention to the word 'all'? All is more than one. To say "God is all there is" implicitly recognizes duality by using the word all.

One cannot separate evil or any other thing from God without being a dualist. One must recognize duality in order to cease being a dualist, just as one must recognize the equality of two opposing football teams to see it as a perfect union of One Game. The Two (or more) and the One are both eternal. That is why the Yin/Yang symbol, and every other religious symbol, contains One and Two together.

Ten Hard Questions for Soul-making

Like Siddhartha Gautama, I find myself intrigued with the hard questions of suffering. Unlike the Buddha, I do not dismiss them by saying 'it is not important to know why we suffer, but only to put an end to suffering.'

I agree with Nietzsche that 'when one knows the reason why, he can endure almost any situation.' When I was in school, the teacher who could convince me there was a good reason to study the course material, got better results than the teacher who simply said, 'because it is good for you.'

If you believe we are here by dumb chance and that there is no rhyme or reason behind the Cosmic experience, these questions are not for you. Go read Russell, Hitchens or Dawkins.

I do not expect absolute and complete answers. This blog site is aimed at wrestling with these questions, not getting them right. I hold to a position that Soul is made in the grappling. Welcome to the Soul-Gym - now, go build some Psycho-spiritual muscle!

Here then are hard questions. I hope you do not find these questions too morbid. They go beyond the typical response which says that suffering results from 'free will.' That response is like saying, "My poem is crappy because it has rotten verses." The Creator of the thing must take, or be assigned, responsibility for the thing it has created, and the way he/she created it.

1. If there is a 'Creator or Conscious Source', why did He/She/It make us with a free will that would result in such atrocities and suffering as the holocaust and so many internal and external wars? Why is the human brain hardwired to worry, fear, disagree, form opinions, judge, feel lonely and grieve?

2. Why did the Source create or allow a world with earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, flesh eating animals, meteors, Big Bangs, birth defects, poisonous plants, crushing gravity, consuming fire, engulfing water, lightning bolts and rolling rocks that can maim or kill us?

3. Why did the Creator introduce or allow disease, old age and death?

4. Why did the Creator give us nerve endings that can experience so much pain as well as pleasure?

5. Why did the Creator make us to evolve into this world naked, cold, hungry and vulnerable to attacks and exposure to a Nature that can be quite hard on us? Why evolve a being without giving it clothes, food and shelter? Why make existence so difficult? Why make beings with such strong yearnings for more than we have?

7. Why did the Source create a being or allow the likelihood that we would choose to steal, kill and cheat another due to our insatiable desires? Why give us such unfulfilled desires?

8. How does one say 'it is ALL God' and then blame humans for the selfish ego? Is that not like the artist blaming the painting for having flawed brush strokes?

9. If it is ALL God, then how can people claim that the so called 'negative' emotions of fear, anxiety, grief, depression, loneliness, etc. are not part of God? Did these emotions originate with humans, or are they eternal too? Are they as eternal and necessary as their ‘opposites’ of love, serenity, joy, ecstasy and relatedness?

10. Why do we humans have the strong innate idea of personal and collective Utopia and bliss, and so consistently and often deliberately create so much dystopia? Dystopia is a vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution, nuclear fallout and/or the abridgement of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and other kinds of pain.

A BONUS QUESTION!

Why do so many people argue against duality? Does not the motivation to debate from a contrary opinion prove them wrong? How can one oppose duality while taking a dualistic position against duality? Why is the human brain simultaneously obsessed with unity and made to think in opposites?

AND A FINAL BONUS QUESTION!

Why do humans NOT wonder and question why we experience happiness in the same way that we question suffering? Put another way, why do we expect and take happiness for granted, but feel suffering is foreign? Why do we not assail God with the question, "Why have you made me so damn happy?"

CONCLUSION

Some will find these questions depressing, troubling and disturbing. Good. Both Jesus and Lord Krishna said that one must wrestle with such issues before finding lasting peace and joy:

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Saying 2, Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be sorrowful. When they are sorrowful, they will marvel, and will reign over all. And after they have reigned they will rest."

In the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, after Arjuna sees a vision of Lord Krishna with sharp teeth devouring men on the battlefield, Arjuna says, "O Lord of lords, O refuge of the worlds, please be gracious to me. I cannot keep my balance seeing thus Your blazing deathlike faces and awful teeth. In all directions I am bewildered...O Lord of lords, so fierce of form, please tell me who You are. I offer my devotion unto You; please be gracious to me. I do not understand Your mission, and I desire to hear of it." ~ Gita, Verse 11:25, 31

Lord Krishna responds, "O best of the Kuru warriors, no one before you has ever seen this universal form of Mine, for neither by studying the Vedas, nor by performing prayers, nor by acts of loving kindness or similar activities can this form be seen. Only you have seen this. Your mind has been perturbed upon seeing this horrible feature of Mine." ~ Gita, 11:48,49

Where Do Mistakes Come From?

Where do mistakes come from?

Someone recently told me that she was giving up her 'mistaken beliefs'. Her face and voice were exuding self loathing - clearly disappointed that she had spent so many years believing lies.

Where do all of these mistakes come from? Why are there so many mistakes in life? Why are they so common? Do we assume that mistakes are foreign intruders, unwelcome guests on planet earth? Are 'mis-takes' because of human Original Sin? Why are we on a planet with such strong tendencies toward, and so many opportunities for mistakes, miscues, misunderstandings, missteps, misinterpretations, misbehaviors, miscarriages, and missed opportunities that result in separation, grief, fear and confusion?

The prefix 'mis' originally comes from an Indo-European root word meaning 'to change'. So a 'mistake' is a 'change in takes,' a sort of cosmic movie term - 'Action: take two,' or three, or four, or more.

If that is true, then 'mis-takes' are perfect for a soul learning to grow into divinity. Each earthquake is a mis-quake, a change in the scenery. Each tsunami sweeps away the old props. Each war or conflict is a change in the individual or collective social and psychological story. Each cancer cell or AIDs virus is a change in the shape of the body, the mind, the family, the emotions and ultimately the soul's adventure. Each contamination, whether by a snake bite or carbon emission, is natural ultimately, if humans are as much a part of nature as everything else. Each 'miscue' changes the scenery in the drama of soul-making on stage earth. Each act of abuse or damage, which is a more uncomplimentary name for 'remodeling,' is an act of renewal - a transition from one idea, feeling or state of being. Ultimately, every mis-take is a shift in the story, a change away from the current version of the 'self' to the next self in a succession of molting and shedding, moving us toward completion.

If this is a truth, and it is not the whole truth, then 'mistaken beliefs' and 'separations' are as necessary and important as our 'taken' or true beliefs. Actual 'Wholeness' is drawing the circle large enough to encompass the mistakes as well as the right-takes. The Chinese Taoists had something when they wrote, "In order to become straight, you must be crooked. In order to become perfect, you must be imperfect." (Tao Te Ching, 22)