Occupy Wall Street and Soul-making

The late Psychiatrist, James Hillman, writes about the Greek myth of Puer Aeternus (the Eternal Youth). Hillman suggests that a psyche stuck in the mode of "staying forever young," and free from the burden of having to grow up and face failures, responsibilities, aging and death--refuses to self-reflect and learn from the inevitable shortcomings of youth.

Perhaps this observation contains one explanation of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. The puer aeternus is characterized by excessive "openness" which is really the inability to stop whining and do some personal soul-searching, disguising childishness as "truth telling" and "justice" as a cry to be taken care of by mommy or daddy.

The puer aeternus is obsessed with a need for praise and validation from the outside world. Forty-six year old Charlie Sheen is the poster-child for this Western psychic pandemic: someone who "acts or speaks without thinking, lacks the reflection needed to avoid repeating past mistakes, has unrealistic expectations about his or her own capabilities, and has difficulty in establishing or sustaining deep and lasting relationships. Instead of turning inward and going deeper into one’s own emotional soul-life, the puer aeternus spontaneously and continually turns outward, looking for praise and meaning from others and the outside world."

Perhaps the OWS, in part, reveals a festering psychic symptom of a culture refusing to grow up and take personal responsibility--looking for wealthy corporate daddies and political mommies to kiss their owies and make it
all better.

Not the complete truth, but a point of view.

Occupy Wall Street and Puer Aeternus

The late Psychiatrist, James Hillman, writes about the Greek
myth of Puer Aeternus (the Eternal Youth). Hillman suggests that a psyche stuck
in the mode of "staying forever young," and free from the burden of having to
grow up and face failures, responsibilities, aging and death--refuses to
self-reflect and learn from the inevitable shortcomings of youth.

Perhaps this observation contains one explanation of the
Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. The puer aeternus is characterized by
excessive "openness" which is really the inability to stop whining and do some
personal soul-searching, disguising childishness as "truth telling" and
"justice" as a cry to be taken care of by mommy or daddy.

The puer aeternus is obsessed with a need for praise and
validation from the outside world. Forty-six year old Charlie Sheen is the
poster-child for this Western psychic pandemic: someone who "acts or speaks
without thinking, lacks the reflection needed to avoid repeating past mistakes,
has unrealistic expectations about his or her own capabilities, and has
difficulty in establishing or sustaining deep and lasting relationships. Instead
of turning inward and going deeper into one’s own emotional soul-life, the puer
aeternus spontaneously and continually turns outward, looking for praise and
meaning from others and the outside world."

Perhaps the OWS, in part, reveals a festering psychic symptom
of a culture refusing to grow up and take personal responsibility--looking for
wealthy corporate daddies and political mommies to kiss their owies and make it
all better.

Not the complete truth, but a point of
view.

Jesus Was Not Your Typical New Age Teacher

The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 contains an enigmatic and counter-intuitive saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Many modern teachers would have us believe just the opposite: “Blessed are the rich in spirit.” Why the difference? Because Jesus knew that you don’t need to teach anyone who is rich, healthy and happy to be blessed! They know it already. But Jesus had to remind those who were in abject poverty that there was blessing in the bankruptcy. Granted, this sort of teaching doesn’t sell well in our current market of consumer spirituality which promotes unceasing goose bumps and guaranteed formulas for light and love. But Jesus was not a New Age health and wealth entrepreneur; his message was radical and meant for those sunk deep in the crapper. And he didn’t try to teach them to make cake from crap, or turn lemons into lemonade. He taught them that our poverty is blessed—that the crap is crap, and is blessed. His point was not to “transform” or heal the crap, but to see the crap as crap, yet purposeful crap. Read the rest of Matthew 5—Jesus does not soften the situation for those who are poor, or in mourning or those undergoing persecution. He doesn’t promise that the poverty, mourning or persecution will disappear if they pray the secret ancient prayer or apply the secret spiritual principles from his self help workshop. He just tells them they are blessed while in the midst of their troubles. For Jesus the problem itself, as it is, represents the kingdom of heaven.

Oscar Wilde, the famous 19th century poet, was imprisoned for his alleged homosexuality. While incarcerated he had a profound spiritual awakening, and wrote: “Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of humankind…To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim…But in a manner not yet understood of the world, he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful, holy things, and modes of perfection."
~ from “De Profundis”

I am not on a crusade for suffering, nor am I pleading for Spartan self denial. NO! Please seek pleasure, prosperity and light! But mine is a corrective for the modern imbalance which equates God with feeling good and achieving success. What made Jesus such an annoying radical was his insistence that God was in the valley of the shadow of death with the lost and wandering soul. He never promised that one would even exit the valley in this lifetime, but he did promise that it is a blessed place—a place to meet and hear from God in unimaginably deep and intimate ways.

This month at the Spiritual Enrichment Center we will be looking at the life and teachings of Jesus to see how we can access that blessing and hear that divine voice while in the valley. Join us on Sundays at 10:30, either through attendance or through Direct Listening on the internet at: http://www.spiritualenrichmentcenter.org/direct_listening.htm.

Keep it simple.

Michael

Does Life Operate By Chance or Purpose?

The Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote a 1st century BC poem titled De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). Simply put, he explains his Epicurean philosophy by positing a physics of atomism. The universe described in the poem operates according to "chance" rather than the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.

One has to give Lucretius credit for getting a part of the cosmic game right that is often missed--namely that life has a randomness about it and that we are too often dominated by guilt, superstition and the "gods" who are out to get us like a Santa Claus who is keeping a list to see if we are naughty or nice.

But what Lucretius misses is that his slice of the cosmic philosophical pie is just that, a tiny slice of truth--an important one, but just a small piece. Yes, one mode or phase of existence is pure chance, luck, random events colliding with us at inopportune moments.

BUT, as we develop in consciousness, moving from animal, to human, to divine--we gain this eerie sense that it all may mean something and that there is purpose in this supposed randomness. Modern Chaos Theory suggests that order is implicit in every random event.

Lucretius, like all Atomists and Materialists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens), does not adequately answer the questions:

1. "WHY do we sense there is meaning and connection to it all?"
2. "WHY do we feel watched, feel guilty and intuitively know that justice will ultimately be measured out?"

He just assumes that those questions in all cultures everywhere just magically entered our psyches for no good reason, out of the blue. He is like the little boy who grows up thinking that cookies just magically appear in the cookie jar. We are the cookie jar, and the fact that we contain a sense of Destiny, Fate, Vocation, Final Judgment, Guilt, Fear of the Holy, Anxiety about the future, a sense of Divine Displeasure, a feeling of Necessity, Providence and other related feelings is not accounted for. Just as Mother baked and placed the cookies in the jar, so some sort of Higher Consciousness placed these purposeful feelings in us. They did not just magically appear. The Chinese called it the Tao, the Hindus called it Rita and the Christians call it the Christ.

Can There Be Absolutes in an Age of Relativism?

A friend from Pacifica Graduate Institute asked the question: "Is it possible to hold to a particular way of viewing the world, in our case a Jungian Depth Psychological perspective, and not be a narrow minded reductionist bigot?" This is a a great question for our modern, internet, era. We have access to so many different points of view--can we possibly choose one and stand on it solidly? Can one be a Christian, Jungian, Freudian or Buddhist, Democrat or Republican, in this pluralistic world? Here is my response:

Just because one chooses and uses a particular lens by which to view and apply the myriad phenomena of myth, philosophy and religion, does not ipso facto make him/her an ignorant ideological reductionist. It does make him/her an informed ideological reductionist, but these are two very different positions. It is my view that every human is one or the other.

The purpose of this whole reduction/irreduction discussion is to warn the uninformed bigot that he/she ought to inform his/her bigotry. As I see it, all humans are bigots by the given condition of our self-limitations: "bigot" being a derogatory term applied by the French to the intolerant Normans, coming from two words: bi = by, and got = god, meaning something like, "This is the way it is, by my god (lens)!". A bigot is one who sees the world through his/her theological or ideological lens. There are conscious bigots who see they have a carefully chosen lens, and unconscious bigots who have no desire to peer through the lens of another. I have yet to meet anyone who is not one or the other. I'm sure the French would not have considered themselves bigots, but clearly they were, to the Normans! This is true of every religious or philosophical position, no matter which side of the aisle one is on. I have personally met as many uninformed liberal bigots as I have uninformed conservative bigots. Of course I am in the middle, which makes me a superior bigot.

In other words, one may seriously examine other perspectives re. myth, religion and philosophy--and still openly hold to a personal ideational and working weltanschauung. In addition to providing a depth psych. weltanschauung, the classes at Pacifica Graduate Institute attempt to broaden our horizon of world views. By the end of the religious studies course, the student ought to know what people like Comte, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Berger and Stark think of a sociological approach to religion; how Freud and Jung view religion as primarily psychological; and how people like Kant, Schleiermacher, Otto and Eliade view religion as an experience of the sublime/sacred/holy; how Feminists, Black Liberationists and others re-vision religious phenomena, etc. But having an open mind does not preclude taking a particular position based on a persons current understanding of the material--or the material's understanding of the current person(ality). That is what makes our cohort, and life in general, so damn fascinating and frustrating. We are a bunch of expanding bigots--reduced irreductionists.

My main problem with most of the so called post-modern, academic, "open minded irreductionist deconstructionists" is their tendency to level the playing field to the point of being intellectually and practically useless and bland. We see this in the current politically correct blasé culture--an approach which is ironically very reductionist. In 1943 C.S. Lewis coined a term for the "open minded" educators who denied the possibility of finding Truth in a "reductionist" Platonic sense: he called them Urban Blockheads (The Abolition of Man). The derogatory term denoted their disingenuous crusade for absolute subjectivity (sic)--replacing True universals with personal and cultural "truths"--each to his/her own truths. They were urban (educated elitists) blockheads (brainless) because they denied the ubiquitous evidence for universal Truth. Only hicks from Bumfuck, Arkansas believe in universals. Lewis argues that humans generally intuitively gravitate toward similar epistemological and aesthetical universal Truths (like Beauty, Justice, Courage, etc.) by which to live. Jung saw himself as an empiricist in just this way, a scientist of psyche seeking universals without apology.

An archetypal perspective suggests, to me, that one ought to rigorously and openly explore each and every mythical and religious paradigm, yet not be afraid to land on Big Ideas that cross cultures--the Greek Logos, Hindu Rita, Chinese Tao, Hebrew Hokmah, Christian Christ and Muslim Sharia. The various particular systematic philosophical or theological formulations of each of these perspectives may not be 100% True, but each intuitively knows and seeks Truth as a real possibility. There is a sense in which all good science reduces research in the direction toward the "more-true" theories or conclusions through meticulous examination. Why apologize for moving from the exploration of irreducible phenomena toward truer reduced theories?, providing that one continues to re-search and re-vision.

Finally, I like the phrase, "non-exclusive particularism" which is sometimes employed by theologians when discussing pluralistic religious and mythological perspectives. This idea suggests a couple of things: first, that one may seriously examine and come to deeply understand other points of view, excluding none, allowing each to have its own clear voice and contribution to the human enterprise (informed irreduction). Secondly, non-exclusive particularism suggests the utility and necessity of consciously choosing a particular foundation upon which to stand in order to see and act in the world (informed reductionism). Jung always emphasized that good research brings one back into the world with a particular ethical view and moral position "to be lived". The notion of anima mundi recognizes the importance of taking a solid stance in the world. I think most Global Warming and non-Global Warming advocates are pretty particular about where they stand--and many in both camps are even exclusive!

Subliminal message: [Al Gore and Sean Hannity]

Hillman's Pathologizing and The Book of Genesis:

James Hillman describes pathologizing as "the psyche's autonomous ability to create illness, morbidity, disorder, abnormality, and suffering in any aspect of its behavior and to experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted perspective" (Re-Visioning 57, italics mine). By viewing pathologizing as archetypal, necessary and "central to the soul" (55), Hillman expands our perceptions of suffering beyond the usual notions of anthropocentric mental illness and a sinful human will. Hillman says that suffering, revealed through symptoms, reminds us that each "I" is a "personification whose reality depends on something other than my own will and reason," and that pathological symptoms give me "the sense of being an automation, or--in Plato's words--in the hands of the Gods" (49). For Hillman, all pathologies may provide soul-making perspectives:

"Were we able to discover its psychological necessity, pathologizing would no longer be wrong or right, but merely necessary, involving purposes which we have misperceived and values which must present themselves necessarily in a distorted form." (57)

I will argue that the general biblical view of suffering accords well with Hillman's description of pathologizing, focusing especially on the story of Genesis which contains the idea of pathology as being divinely and purposefully "created". I stress the word "create" because, as we shall see, not only does Hillman use it in his description of pathologizing, but it is used in Genesis and throughout the biblical literature.

Biblically, the first case of created disorder is found in Genesis 1:1-2: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the waters" (NIV). Simply put, God created the disordered depths out of which emerged the ordered cosmos. In the biblical myth, a disordered watery abyss often precedes order: Noah's flood before the re-creation of humankind, Israel crossing the Red Sea and Jordan River into the Promised Land, and Jesus being baptized before he begins his messianic mission of the new covenant.

After the void is created in Genesis, we find an image of the Spirit of God moving over the surface of the unformed depths. The Hebrew word for "moving" is merachefet (מְרַחֶ֖פֶת), and is used of an eagle flapping her wings over a nest of eaglets, forcing them from the nest (Deuteronomy 32:11). This image implies that God scatters the contents of a pregnant shell, coaxing forth the nesting dualities of light and darkness, sky and water, fish and fowl, dry land and seas, beasts and fish, male and female—the fragments of an evolving creation. Yet the Genesis myth of creative fragmentation has more pathologizing to come, specifically in relation to the newly hatched humans, Adam and Eve.

After the humans are created, God places them next to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "in the middle of the garden". Augustine (400 C.E.) viewed this tree as a symbol of ungodly desire to which the humans succumbed, plunging the entire human race into original sin. However, other interpreters before Augustine held that eating from the divinely created tree of opposites was a necessary experience for the initiation of human consciousness, a view supported by the fact that the crafty enticing serpent was "fashioned by God" as part of the original "very good" creation (Genesis 1:31). In this latter view, eating the fruit symbolized the onset of suffering, the painful yet indispensable educational experience of stark-naked alienation prior to maturation.

The second century C.E. theologian Irenaeus believed the Edenic fiasco was anticipated in Genesis 1:27: "God made man in His image, and in His likeness" (NIV). The Hebrew word for image implies potential while the word for likeness implies actual, hinting that the divine intention had always been to transform the potential "image" into the actual divine "likeness" through the expulsion from Eden and subsequent pathologizing, symbolized by pain in childbirth and sweaty manual labor. The remainder of the Genesis story, and the entire Bible for that matter, narrates the often painful unfolding of the Adamic seed into the Last Adam or Christ who is called the first-fruits of that original seed (NIV I Corinthians 15). Much of Jungian depth psychology holds to a similar view, summarized by Edinger: "...the first half of life [requires] ego-Self separation; the second half of life: ego-Self reunion" (5).

The central role of suffering in this process of human development is also revealed in the Genesis preface, chapters 1-11, which supplies a protracted encounter with pathologized images: The Eden characters are all alienated from one another, Cain kills Abel, God floods the sinful earth, Noah's son is cursed for mocking his drunken father, the Tower of Babel is toppled as humans are separated by language, and there is a sort of final pathologizing epithet found in Genesis 10:25: "In the days of Peleg...the earth was divided" (NIV). This preface provides the set up for Abram's call to heal the earth (NIV Genesis 12:1-3) and the evolution of human consciousness through conflict.

The idea of God-created pathologizing shows up again when JHWH calls Moses to free the Israelites from Egypt. Moses excuses himself by complaining about his speech impediment. JHWH asks, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (NIV Exodus 4:11). The Hebrew word for make is sum
(שׂוּם), which can be translated "to assign or appoint" (Theological Wordbook II.872-73). The Hebrew God gives people pathologizing assignments, recalling the poet John Keat's example of the suffering heart as the school-child's hornbook replete with soul-making assignments (Keats Letters). Jesus also taught an "assigned" view of suffering when a crowd suggested that a man born blind was in his mess because of personal or familial sins. Jesus responded, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him" (NIV John 9:1-2). Jesus knew the Hebrew Scriptures—pathologizing sometimes came from God. Seven hundred years prior, the prophet Isaiah wrote, "God says, 'I am the Lord...there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things'" (NIV 45:5-8).

Any Hebrew account of pathologizing would not be complete without mention of Satan (שָׂטָ֣ן), a word which began as a verb meaning "to oppose," referring to any antagonist, whether human or spiritual, with an oppositional and/or adversarial mission. Even the Angel or messenger of the LORD could "shatan/oppose" in behalf of JHWH (Numbers 22:22). The verb Shatan was later personified, designating a spiritual character who presented tests that could disintegrate a person with a view to future reintegration. The pervasiveness of this notion in the Hebrew psyche is evident in Jesus' words to Simon Peter: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you...that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back [reintegrated], strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32). Here Satan creates pathologizing with divine permission and with a purposeful, soul-making, intention.

It's worth noting that the word JHWH was also originally a verb meaning "to be," sometimes translated "I am". From a phenomenological perspective we may view the eventual personification of these two verbs, Shatan and JHWH, as an attempt in Hebrew culture to understand human nature as it is--one part of the psyche says, "I am" (JHWH) and another enigmatically says "I am not" (Shatan). A kind of spiritual isometrics is integral to Hebrew psychology--the name Israel means "he who strives with God" (Biblos Israel). This notion corresponds with Paul's struggle between his two natures in Romans 7:15-20, and with Freud's theory of the Eros and Death drives. The Hebrews recognized the irony of evil—with it we have unspeakable pain, without it, there is no consciousness. William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience, writes, "In the Louvre there is a picture by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan’s neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend’s figure being there—that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck. In the religious consciousness, that is just the position in which the fiend, the negative or tragic principle, is found; and for that very reason the religious consciousness is so rich from the emotional point of view." (52)

Finally, it is important to see that the Hebrews viewed suffering as necessary for the human maturation process as stated by the Apostle Paul: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose..." (NIV Romans 8:28-29). The book of Genesis and other biblical images view pathologizing, similar to Hillman, as psyche's autonomous ability to create suffering. It seems to me that a psychological understanding of the Bible, rather than sectarian theological views, can bring us to a conclusion similar to Hillman's words, "Were we able to discover its psychological necessity, pathologizing would no longer be wrong or right, but merely necessary, involving purposes which we have misperceived and values which must present themselves necessarily in a distorted form." (Re-Visioning 57)

Living in Fear is a Bitch: A Bitch is a Mother Dog

A friend recently wrote regarding the contemporary western fear of Muslims in general as a result of the various acts of Islamic inspired violence in America and abroad. He went on to say, “Living in fear is a bitch and does not set us up for good mental health - or our best behavior.” He then suggested that bin Laden and others trying to terrorize the West are “winning” because they have succeeded in causing us to “live in fear”. I do not disagree with him altogether, however, as is my nature, I like to consider other ways of viewing the matter. This is my response:

----------------------------------------------------------------

Again, as I see it, "good mental health" is not only a bad metaphor, but an impossible and unwanted goal. This is another of our American unquestioned assumptions--that mental health is ideal, or that it even exists or should exist. As I see it, physical health cannot and should not be equated with the mind or soul. They are two very different entities operating by very different principles. This is true of all systems in Systems Theory; for example, a brain surgeon most likely cannot repair a car transmission, and an auto mechanic typically cannot do brain surgery. While related, the two systems function very differently and must be considered according to their own unique principles of operation. Never assume a metaphor is acurrate until you have thoughtfully examined the correspondances. Unfortunately, the late 19th century reinvention of psyche as parallel to, if not synonymous with, the body is not only wrong, but dangerous.

The mind and soul (two different but interrelated phenomena) are not identical to the body, and medical terminology must be used very cautiously. Anxiety, fear, "paranoia" and most of what has been assembled in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as mental illnesses are normal human psychological functions and responses. Just as an undeveloped baby encounters a world of troubling gravity and hard, sharp objects for the purpose of developing muscle and skeletal structure--so the mind provides all of these "unhealthy" emotions and responses for developing soul.

As you said, “living in fear is a bitch,” and a bitch is a female dog, a raging mother who gives birth. Fear is the womb or container that gives birth to an evolving psyche, and bin Laden can be seen as the "mother of new psychological development". Neurologist Andrew Newberg explains this simply and yet profoundly in his bestseller, Why God Won't Go Away. He explains the neurology of anxiety as the mechanism that drives evolution, and moves the mind/brain to seek a unitary experience of being (God).

I call these normal and necessary experiences of anxiety, fear and all so called "negative emotions," psycho-spiritual isometrics which is defined as “increase through resistance”. On the physical level, if you remove the material and gravitational resistance from a baby's life, you end up with a flaccid, atrophied, dead baby. On the psychological level, if you remove the troubling "material and gravitational" psychic resistance from a human soul, you end up with an atrophied and dead soul.

Remove pain, suffering, and difficulties from a child's life, you end up with middle class kids who kill their classmates because their peers do not recognize how cool they really are—i.e., Columbine and the rise of "well adjusted" middle class kids joining gangs. Experiencing difficulties works as a sort of psycho-spiritual homeopathy--the cure is in the dis-ease, to use a medical metaphor carefully. If you want to see a fascinating study on this phenomenon, read Allan Guggenbuhl's The Incredible Fascination of Violence, or James Hillman's The Terrible Love of War, or his Suicide and the Soul. Or click on this link and read the July/August 2011 article by therapist Lori Gottlied, "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy" which examines how the cult of self esteem is ruining our kids by not allowing them fail and feel fear, rejection and sadness.

This point was beautifully stated in a recent issue of The Week, by Katie Roiphe in The Financial Times:

"One sometimes sees these exhausted, devoted, slightly drab parents, piling out of the car, and thinks, is all of this high-level watching and steering and analyzing really making anyone happier? Can we, for a moment, flash back to the benign neglect of the 1970s and 80s? I can remember my parents having parties, wild children running around until dark, catching fireflies. If these children helped themselves to three slices of cake, or ingested the second hand smoke from cigarettes, or carried cocktails to adults who were ever so slightly slurring their words, they were not noticed; they were loved, just not monitored. Those warm summer nights of not being focused on were liberating. In the long sticky hours of boredom, in the lonely, unsupervised, unstructured time, something blooms; it was in those margins that we became ourselves."

James Hillman's View of Suffering and the Bible

Hillman's Pathologizing and The Book of Genesis:
The Purposeful Creation of Suffering

James Hillman describes pathologizing as "the psyche's autonomous ability to create illness, morbidity, disorder, abnormality, and suffering in any aspect of its behavior and to experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted perspective" (Re-Visioning 57, italics mine). By viewing pathologizing as archetypal, necessary and "central to the soul" (55), Hillman expands our perceptions of suffering beyond the usual notions of anthropocentric mental illness and a sinful human will. Hillman says that suffering, revealed through symptoms, reminds us that each "I" is a "personification whose reality depends on something other than my own will and reason," and that pathological symptoms give me "the sense of being an automation, or--in Plato's words--in the hands of the Gods" (49). For Hillman, all pathologies may provide soul-making perspectives, "Were we able to discover its psychological necessity, pathologizing would no longer be wrong or right, but merely necessary, involving purposes which we have misperceived and values which must present themselves necessarily in a distorted form." (57)

I will argue that the general biblical view of suffering accords well with Hillman's description of pathologizing, focusing especially on the story of Genesis which contains the idea of pathology as being divinely and purposefully "created". I stress the word "create" because, as we shall see, not only does Hillman use it in his description of pathologizing, but it is used in Genesis and throughout the biblical literature.

Biblically, the first case of created disorder is found in Genesis 1:1-2: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the waters" (NIV). Simply put, God created the disordered depths out of which emerged the ordered cosmos. In the biblical myth, a disordered watery abyss often precedes order: Noah's flood before the re-creation of humankind, Israel crossing the Red Sea and Jordan River into the Promised Land, and Jesus being baptized before he begins his messianic mission of the new covenant.

After the void is created in Genesis, we find an image of the Spirit of God moving over the surface of the unformed depths. The Hebrew word for "moving" is merachefet (מְרַחֶ֖פֶת), and is used of an eagle flapping her wings over a nest of eaglets, forcing them from the nest (Deuteronomy 32:11). This image implies that God scatters the contents of a pregnant shell, coaxing forth the nesting dualities of light and darkness, sky and water, fish and fowl, dry land and seas, beasts and fish, male and female—the fragments of an evolving creation. Yet the Genesis myth of creative fragmentation has more pathologizing to come, specifically in relation to the newly hatched humans, Adam and Eve.

After the humans are created God places them next to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "in the middle of the garden". Augustine (400 C.E.) viewed this tree as a symbol of ungodly desire to which the humans succumbed, plunging the entire human race into original sin. However, other interpreters before Augustine held that eating from the divinely created tree of opposites was a necessary experience for the initiation of human consciousness, a view supported by the fact that the crafty enticing serpent was "fashioned by God" as part of the original "very good" creation (Genesis 1:31). In this latter view, eating the fruit symbolized the onset of suffering, the painful yet indispensable educational experience of stark-naked alienation prior to maturation.

The second century C.E. theologian Irenaeus believed the Edenic fiasco was anticipated in Genesis 1:27: "God made man in His image, and in His likeness" (NIV). The Hebrew word for image implies potential while the word for likeness implies actual, hinting that the divine intention had always been to transform the potential "image" into the actual divine "likeness" through the expulsion from Eden and subsequent pathologizing, symbolized by pain in childbirth and sweaty manual labor. The remainder of the Genesis story, and the entire Bible for that matter, narrates the often painful unfolding of the Adamic seed into the Last Adam or Christ who is called the first-fruits of that original seed (NIV I Corinthians 15). Much of Jungian depth psychology holds to a similar view, summarized by Edinger: "...the first half of life [requires] ego-Self separation; the second half of life: ego-Self reunion" (5).

The central role of suffering in this process of human development is also revealed in the Genesis preface, chapters 1-11, which supplies a protracted encounter with pathologized images: The Eden characters are all alienated from one another, Cain kills Abel, God floods the sinful earth, Noah's son is cursed for mocking his drunken father, the Tower of Babel is toppled as humans are separated by language, and there is a sort of final pathologizing epithet found in Genesis 10:25: "In the days of Peleg...the earth was divided" (NIV). This preface provides the set up for Abram's call to heal the earth (NIV Genesis 12:1-3) and the evolution of human consciousness through conflict.

The idea of God's pathology-making shows up again when JHWH calls Moses to free the Israelites from Egypt. Moses excuses himself by complaining about his speech impediment. JHWH asks, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (NIV Exodus 4:11). The Hebrew word for make is sum (שׂוּם), which can be translated "to assign or appoint" (Theological Wordbook II.872-73). This Hebrew God-image gives people pathologizing assignments, recalling the poet John Keat's example of the suffering heart as the school-child's hornbook replete with soul-making assignments (Keats Letters). Jesus also taught an "assigned" view of suffering when a crowd suggested that a man born blind was in his mess because of personal or familial sins. Jesus responded, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him" (NIV John 9:1-2). Jesus knew the Hebrew Scriptures—pathologizing sometimes came from God. Seven hundred years prior, the prophet Isaiah wrote, "God says, 'I am the Lord...there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things'" (NIV 45:5-8).

Any Hebrew account of pathologizing would not be complete without mention of Satan (שָׂטָ֣ן), a word which began as a verb meaning "to oppose," referring to any antagonist, whether human or spiritual, with an oppositional and/or adversarial mission. Even the Angel or messenger of the LORD could "shatan/oppose" in behalf of JHWH (Numbers 22:22). The verb Shatan was later personified, designating a spiritual character who presented tests that could disintegrate a person with a view to future reintegration. The pervasiveness of this notion in the Hebrew psyche is evident in Jesus' words to Simon Peter: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you...that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back [reintegrated], strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32). Here Satan creates pathologizing with divine permission and with a purposeful, soul-making, intention.

It's worth noting that the word JHWH was also originally a verb meaning "to be," sometimes translated "I am". From a phenomenological perspective we may view the eventual personification of these two verbs, Shatan and JHWH, as an attempt in Hebrew culture to understand human nature as it is--one part of the psyche says, "I am" (JHWH) and another enigmatically says "I am not" (Shatan). A kind of spiritual isometrics is integral to Hebrew psychology--the name Israel means "he who strives with God" (Biblos Israel). This notion corresponds with Paul's struggle between his two natures in Romans 7:15-20, and with Freud's theory of the Eros and Death drives.

Finally, it is important to see that the Hebrews viewed suffering as necessary for the human maturation process as stated by the Apostle Paul: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose..." (NIV Romans 8:28-29). The book of Genesis and other biblical images view pathologizing, similar to Hillman, as psyche's autonomous ability to create suffering. It seems to me that a psychological understanding of the Bible, rather than sectarian theological views, can bring us to a conclusion similar to Hillman's words, "Were we able to discover its psychological necessity, pathologizing would no longer be wrong or right, but merely necessary, involving purposes which we have misperceived and values which must present themselves necessarily in a distorted form." (Re-Visioning 57)

Myth and Science, Two Ways to Two Truths

"We're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." ~ Rod Serling


African ethnographer Maya Deren's definition of myth enchanted me the first time I read it: "Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in the fiction of matter" (Divine 21). She goes on to speak of a West African elder who tells stories, "not to describe matter but to demonstrate meaning...[talking] of his past for purposes of his future...[composing] from the matter of memory at hand--from specific physical conditions" endemic to his own geography, era and race (21). This elder's culturally expressed stories arise from and gesture toward phenomena beyond the veil of empirical verification. These invisible "facts of the mind" in-form the mythical stories and fulfill a human hankering for cosmic order and meaning. Deren says, "[the human] creature contains the possibility of a mind, like a fifth limb latent in man, structured to make and manipulate meaning as the fist is structured to grasp and finger matter" (23). Deren captures the instinctive human predilection to mythologize--to speak of the, "...important aspects of reality which escape science, including those which are manifest within the perceived world.
These later [non-scientific] aspects are likely to be of fundamental importance for our primary understanding of things, just as those which are characteristic of the world of science are of fundamental importance when we seek to explain natural phenomena." (Merlou-Ponty 14)

Mythic reality points to truth beyond mere scientific rationalism and empiricism, summed up famously by Blaise Pascal: "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." Many mistakenly take Pascal's word "heart" to be synonymous with a vacuous emotional feeling, just as many take the word myth to be tantamount to illusional phantasmagoria, dismissing mythic truth as Scrooge tried to set aside his vision of Marley's ghost as "a bit of undigested beef". Not so fast--"heart," as used by Pascal, like Deren's myth, refers to perceptions that are every bit as real and "reasonable" in their own way as any empirical perception.


Lawrence Hatab argues that truth is plural, comprised of ordinary "empirical" truth and primordial "mythical" truth. This accords nicely with Deren's defintion, allowing for not only the scientific "facts of matter," but for the mythic "facts of the mind". Hatab, elucidating Heidegger's work on the philosophy of Being, writes, "Heidegger distinguishes between ordinary [scientific] truth and primordial [mythic] truth, or representational truth. In representational truth, a statement must correspond to a state of affairs. The 'tree stands in the field' is true if in fact the tree is in the field. All well and good. But Heidegger argues that before this correspondence takes effect, 'something' must first be presented, come to be, or show itself as a phenomenon. Indeed, a good deal must first show itself--the meaning of tree and field; their relation; the context of relations and meanings into which tree and field fit; statements; the relatedness of statements and states of affairs; a criterion of empirical verification; and primarily the meaning of Being itself. So before representational correspondence, before the operation of empirical verification, a primal presentation shows itself. Presentational truth refers to this primal showing or emergence, which Heidegger calls unconcealment...Such primordial truth is prior to what is disclosed." (Myth 5, italics mine)

So there are two truths: presentational truth, sometimes called presencing or prespatial by Heidegger, and representational truth. Innate mythic reason works through presencing, providing or gifting the prespatial canvas beneath the mythmaker's artistic brush. Myth is created from the primordial presentational "facts of the mind." In his lectures On Time and Being, Heidegger writes: "As the ground, Being brings beings to their actual presencing. The ground shows itself as presence. The present of presence consists in the fact that it brings what is present each in its own way to presence" (56). In what Heidegger refers to as "the fact that...brings what is present in its own way to presence," I think we find Pascal's "reasons of the heart" and Derens "facts of the mind" which prompts each culturally unique mythic narrative. These primordial "facts of the mind" are the pre-scientific and pre-human seeds which, when sown in the psyche, compel storytellers to open with, "Once upon a time".


This can be illustrated further by math and music. Like myth, these two phenomena are internal mental presences before they are external re-presences, prespatial presentations before spatial representations, or "facts of the mind" before they are made manifest in the "fiction of matter". Before the architect's blueprint or the musician's musical score are made manifest on paper, they exist in the realm of mind as archetypal "facts". Once on paper they become material fictions--fictions not because they are untrue, but because no single blueprint or musical score can contain all of the truth there is to know about math or music. Each fiction, or fantasy, presents a tiny fragment of mathematical and musical truth, but not the entire truth of these pre-human "facts of the mind". So it is with myth--each myth presents or manifests a fictional yet true fragment of archetypal reality. These archetypal "facts of the mind" incarnate as material manifestations--as spoken sound waves, ink on paper, theatrical dramas, or ritual objects and actions. They ex-press internal im-pressions or primal perceptions of Being.


It is crucial to remember that no myth can ever completely depict or contain the whole primal showing or emergence. Every myth borrows from the humanly constructed props endemic to a unique culture in order to stage its representational cosmology. Nor can humans fully exist without expressing and impressing these innate inklings--we require stories to communicate experiences that cannot be contained by material factoids or chemical analysis. The compulsion to discover and express imaginal beginnings, values and beings is the "fifth limb latent in man, structured to make and manipulate meaning as the fist is structured to grasp and finger matter" mentioned by Deren (Myth 21). Humans must create true fictitious responses that co-respond with and to the "ground that shows itself as presence". In this view all anthropic mythical systems are provisional fantasies, including post- modern science, as admitted by many physicists who are questioning the old Newtonian myth of pure materialism, "In breaking with Newtonian materialism we must accept that the objects of our theoretical models and the real entities of the external world bear a much more subtle relationship to each other than was assumed hitherto. Indeed, the very notion of what we mean by truth and reality must go into the melting pot...In quantum field theory, for instance, theorists often refer to abstract entities called 'virtual' particles. These ephemeral objects come into existence out of nothing, and almost immediately fade away again...So to what extent can they be said really to exist?" (The Matter Myth 18, 20)

In this new quantum mythology the old rejected religious myths are not only being revised, but invited back for a second look. Take for example the Buddhist idea of reincarnation and other ubiquitous religious accounts of post-mortem consciousness. Even the skeptic Carl Sagan in his book, The Demon-Haunted World, wrote that arguments for reincarnation may have some support: "...there are three claims in the [paranormal] field that deserve serious study...[one being that of] young children [who] sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation." (282)

Sagan's comment also suggests that the line between empirical and mythical realities is fading. Consider the Tantric Buddhist bardo doctrine which teaches that people experience their own harmful mental projections in the intermediate states between life, death and rebirth. Some good research by neurobiologists like Dr. Andrew Newberg suggests that the human brain may have the capacity to access a level of reality beyond the empirical world—to actually enter into the archetypal realm of the mythic "facts of the mind". Brain scans of meditators reveal that all deeply mystical experiences are preceded by the diminishment of sensory stimulation. Newberg says that in deep meditation, "something" other than sensory objects is encountered. He makes it clear that neurology can neither prove nor disprove a non-material dimension, however, it is entirely possible "that the brain is truly in contact with some divine presence or fundamental level of reality" (NeuroTheology 145). Physicist Frank Tipler suggests that seminaries, and I would add mythologists, had better start studying physics as a prerequisite for doing serious theology and mythology.


Thank you Maya Deren for providing such a simple yet incredibly complex description of myth. This perspective allows for what James Hillman calls psychologizing or "seeing through," permitting us to see why humans have always been compelled to make manifest the archetypal “facts of the mind in the fiction of matter”.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE BEATLES

The Beatles and The Four Stages of Psycho-spiritual Consciousness

“The more I go into this spiritual thing, the more I realize that...something else is doing it.” ~ George Harrison

Nearly 2,000 years ago, four Gospels named for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John changed the course of human consciousness and history. Fast forward almost 2,000 years to twentieth century Europe and America--a time of dehumanizing technology, world wars, political tyranny, religious decline and civil unrest. This soul-malaise moved Carl Jung in 1933 to write about Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Less than thirty years after Jung's assessment, four young English musicians named John, Paul, George and Ringo took the world on a psycho-spiritual magical mythical tour of soul evolution. With their lives and music the Beatles would penetrate a rigid Western consciousness, expanding it like a Rubber Soul.

In their early years, the four teens were influenced by what had been dubbed the Beat Generation, a term coined by a group of American writers, artists and rebels like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The term beat connoted being "beat down by the establishment," but Kerouac added the paradoxically optimistic notion of restoring a new "upbeat and beatific” vision of consciousness. The four English musicians liked the symbolism and called themselves The Beatles. John Lennon felt "beat down" by life, and with his assertive rhythm guitar caused the band to explore all human emotions. Lennon said, "My role in society...is to try and express what we all feel...Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all" (Beatles Biography 83). James Paul McCartney, undeniably the most musically balanced of the four, added stability and an almost naive "upbeat" optimism. Paul Vallely said of McCartney, "Paul McCartney is one of those people who has represented the hopes and aspirations of those born in the baby-boom era, which had its awakening in the Sixties" (The Independent). Add the slaphappy no-rolls drumming of Richard Starkey whom Lennon called "quite simply the heart of the Beatles," and the shy spiritually minded George Harrison with his rockabilly guitar style, and you have what drug guru and Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary, in his book The Politics of Ecstasy, called, “The message from Liverpool...the Newest Testament, chanted by Four Evangelists-saints John, Paul, George, and Ringo" (134).

It is my contention that this Beatle "message" corresponds very nicely to what some have identified as archetypal stages of evolving consciousness. Stages-of-growth theory is founded on the Freudian depth psychological work of Eric Erickson and developed at the spiritual and moral levels by James Fowler, Lawrence Kholberg, M. Scott Peck and many others. Jung refers to four universal stages of individuation in his work, Man and His Symbols, citing Paul Radin's study of the heroic cycle in the Winnebago Indians mythology(112-114). These four stages are also found in the Eros and Psyche myth, the Hindu stages of life, the phases of the Buddha's awakening, the Epic of Gilgamesh and in the evolving God-image of the Bible. I will utilize the four stages as developed by Scott Peck in his book, The Different Drum, (186-200). After a brief description of each stage, I will give parallels found in the Beatle's biographical and musical career which animated, evoked and altered the consciousness of Western civilization.

Stage one is the ego stage, or what Scott Peck calls the Chaotic-Antisocial phase, "…a stage of undeveloped spirituality [during which a person is] incapable of loving others...[and] relationships with fellow human beings are essentially manipulative and self serving…, [eventuating] often…in social difficulty" (Different 188-89). This describes the early years (1959-62) of the ragtag band that would become The Beatles. They described themselves as Teddy Boys, the equivalent of American Beatniks, with skin tight jeans, leather jackets and ducktail haircuts. They smoked, drank, did drugs and fornicated. Their early music was little more than dissonant shouting and bizarre theatrics. McCartney was arrested and deported from Hamburg, Germany for setting fire to their apartment located in a porn theater. Their first big hit song written by John, Please Please Me, was covertly sexual, admonishing the prudish English lassies to please their lads like the carnally enlightened German Fräuleins.

Eventually such pathological behavior breaks a person down, preparing them for stage two--Formal-Institutional--which provides necessary structure so that social skills might be acquired. The ego expands to embrace some "other" person, idea or tradition. Falling in love, getting a job or finding an ideological stance is common. In 1962 the Beatles, demoralized by their chaotic German gigs, met their manager Brian Epstein who encouraged the group to assume a more mature social attitude. John Lennon recalled Epstein's words, "Look, if you really want to [succeed]...you're going to have to change—stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking" (Anthology 67). During this period they donned suits, wrote formal love songs and focused on the institution of romance with lyrics like, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and "She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah." They guided a generation of young men and women, providing both with permission to fall insanely in love and attach to the idealized "other".

This second stage also comes to an end, always painfully, as the evolving consciousness tires of symbiotic enmeshment with the "other". Stage three arrives--the Skeptic-Individual phase--wherein one becomes an "active truth seeker" (Different 192). Confused and questioning everything, a person begins to discover who lives at the core of the self. This stage of consciousness overtook the Beatles shortly after achieving success in 1964. Neither stage one hedonism nor stage two institutional stardom had worked, so they shed their conformist suits and began using drugs to expand their individual awareness. Their albums changed tone, calling out for HELP! after experiencing too many Hard Day's Nights. They longed to escape from the socially restircting box they were in. Suddenly their songs were about failed love, domestic abuse and evil taxmen. They felt torn to pieces and expressed it by releasing "The Beatles Yesterday and Today" album with the Butcher Cover displaying dismembered babies. After an initial release, the record jacket was immediately recalled and replaced. The second image was less macabre yet still showed them emerging from the conformist box as individuals bent on differentiating "yesterday" from "today". In his book, The Beatles and Philosophy, Erin Kealey writes: "Beginning in 1965, the Beatles take a philosophical turn from singing the romantic songs that brought them early popular success to scripting more profound and critically acclaimed lyrics that probe the human condition…[exploring] such issues as getting lost in the crowd, alienation, self-deception, and the call to a better way of life." (109)

Scott Peck notes that stage three typically ends in hopeless exhaustion accompanied by spiritual curiosity, leading to the dawn of stage four--Mystic-Communal. Shattered by the in depth analysis of stage three, stage four results in an emptying out of the self and an increasing awareness of an "invisible underlying fabric that connects everything" (Different 193). During this period the Beatles went on meditation retreats and produced Sgt. Pepper's in 1966 with an album cover sporting such psycho-spiritual luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Babaji, Yogananda and an image of the Hindu Goddess Lakshmi. The album also included Harrison's Krishna inspired song, Within You Without You. The stark White Album was released in 1967, a symbol of emptying out the past and the future. The Beatles were helping a whole generation move through stages of development, regaining the lost soul Jung had written about in 1933.

Their first and last album covers taken alone demonstrate how the Beatles symbolized and galvanized the evolution of Western consciousness through the 1960s. Their initial album showed the four in complete conformity with no distinctions between them. Their last two albums revealed four unique characters walking away from the "institutional" Abbey Road studio, and then a final Let It Be cover that was similar to their first album with all four guys together, except that now each Beatle had acquired his own distinct look and individuated quadrant. The final message was clear: Be yourself, things change, move on and let it be.

The Beatles knew there was something mythical occurring during those years together. George Harrison said in 1967, “The more I go into this spiritual thing, the more I realize that...something else is doing it” (Gospel 194). Paul McCartney agreed, “We just happened to become leaders of whatever cosmic thing was going on. We came to symbolize the start of a whole new way of thinking” (Gospel 194). After they broke up John Lennon said, "The Beatles were a kind of religion" (Gospel 11).

Jung, in Man and His Symbols, says that the four stages of evolving consciousness found in every culture "provides a clear demonstration of the pattern [of individuation] that occurs both in historic myths and in...modern man" (114). The Beatles provided that archetypal pattern for many in the twentieth century. They became the living symbols of individuation, motivating scores of people to march forward in the messy yet magical, mythical soul-making processional.

Is It Really a "War on Terror"?

I want to question the accuracy and value of the phrase, War on Terror. I personally do not see the war as really being against "terror". It is more accurately a war against inhumane ideas that lead to bondage. Therefore, it is a War On Ideas, or a War Against Bondage. I believe we should not fight an emotion. No human emotion is evil or abnormal. The feeling of terror is a normal and beneficial human feeling. I’d like to look at this beneficial view of terror from two perspectives.

First, from a practical socio-political perspective:

The Week magazine, and other sources, estimate that up to 10% of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world are actively engaged in spreading some form of the old Sharia laws of Islam to all seven continents. My focus is on the most harmful and inhumane laws of Sharia, like stoning gay people, honor killings of women, limiting education of females, enforced clothing laws, teaching young boys to grow up and die for Allah, taxation of non-Muslims, religious intolerance, etc. I will not call them Terrorists. They are ideologues. It is their ideas that are dangerous and worthy of fighting, not their terror. This war that threatens the world is neither against Islam nor terror—but against ideas that lead to enslavement of the mind and body. So at the socio-politcal level, we are in a War Against Inhumane Bondage. The emotion of terror is actually very beneficial because it awakens, motivates and activates free people everywhere to do something to stop the infectious spread of enslaving ideas. We will never win a war against terror. We might as well fight happiness or grief. Terror, like all emotions, is a normal and beneficial human experience that moves people to transform intolerable situations.

Secondly, from a psychological perspective:

Psychologically, the emotion of terror is a very normal and beneficial human experience. Terror awakens the complacent human soul to the larger issues of existence—like one's core beliefs, values and priorities in life. Terror makes us conscious of suffering and injustice, of death and a host of other experiences that cause the soul to come up against something other than work, food, sleep and collecting more stuff. This psychological perspective is seldom taken into account by our politicians and by our culture in general. I am not talking about the “psyche” that is discussed in cognitive, behavioral and pharmaceutical psychologies. While there is a place for all of these approaches to human problems, they have virtually nothing to do with the soul per se. These therapies treat brain function, social behaviors and other assessable “scientific” phenomena--stuff that can be statistically quantified, measured and fixed with some technique or drug. When I use the word "soul" I am referring to that vague but very real "aspect" of sentient existence which moves us from our current level of consciousness to the next. This distinction between "soul" and most modern therapies reminds me of David Chase’s award winning HBO series, The Sopranos. In the pilot episode, mob boss Tony Soprano goes to a psychiatrist and receives a lithium prescription to treat his panic attacks. His wife Carmela finds out and is elated, saying to Tony, “Psychology doesn't address the soul--that's something else--but, this is a start.”

Soulful experiences of terror work on the complacent, unconscious static human being. Terror is like a hair or speck of dust under your eye lid, creating concentrated focus. Terror moves one to know him/her core self. Most of us want the "self" to have experiences of life, but few of us want to experience the life of the "self". Few people take time from their busy schedules to know their inner self and its judgments, motivations, worries, pleasures, inclinations, fantasies, dreams and behaviors. This is not bad--in fact I highly recommend being unconscious as long as it works! Being unconscious is a very pleasurable experience, but it almost always comes to an end, and most often that end comes through feelings of terror. The stark and icey feeling of terror has a way of moving one inward toward the core self. In the midst of a terrifying situation the really important things of life rise to the top and seemingly evaluate themselves while we feel like a mere spectator. It is as though someone is playing a scary video for us, revealing thoughts, feelings and points of view we didn't know we had. The soul expands at such times and psychic tsunamis rearrange our whole personality. To fight against this experience of terror is to wage war on the soul.

The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron tells us that terror and hope are wonderful feelings because they both push us up against the limitations of our current ego consciousness. The moment we are feeling terror we can be sure we are trying to flee from our current self, to leap over the present soul-making moment. To get rid of terror robs us of the opportunity to follow that emotional trail into the rabbit hole of consciousness and find the culprits that are keeping us from expanding. When terror is examined as an ally of psyche, and the disintegrating and reintegrating work of terror is realized, most often the terror will evaporate--its work is done.

That is why I don't like the phrase, War on Terror. I see the world fighting a War Against Bondage. I suggest that we stop fighting the terror, and instead, we should openly feel the terror and explore our unconscious assumptions, values, projections, prejudices and actions. Psychological iconoclast Thomas Szasz says, “There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.” Through terror, you can come to know your self in ways you never could without the experience. Let's fight to keep our American freedoms, but cease fighting the soul-making experience of terror.

THE SOLUTION IS IN THE DIS-EASE

As modern westerners have increasingly dominated nature with technology and great inventions, making external life easier, safer and more secure—we have concurrently neglected the soul, the internal life, or character. The neglect of the internal for the advancement of the external requires a compensatory response from the psyche. The internal will find a way to restore balance. The inner and the outer, spirit and matter, like the electrons in an atom, always work in tandem and dance together to make a whole. Psyche will restore balance through dis-ease—allowing the external phenomena to proceed to their logical conclusions that those ends might complete their arc and swing back the other way like a pendulum. Internal psyche will call us back. How?

Addictions, disorders and afflictions arise from Psyche, outside of and apart from human will. These dis-eases serve to turn us back to the internal life, to attend to soul. Pandemic obesity caused by external consumption is making us sick, depressed and miserable—forcing us to abandon external concerns and to examine and feed our malnourished souls. A heart attack has a way of rearranging priorities in a literal heartbeat. Rampant drug use (legal and illegal) and ubiquitous alcohol consumption give us external chemical highs, but then force us into the depths—hitting bottom, to see our neglected souls. Greed and obsession with money, career and stuff result in recessions and depressions which leave us bankrupt and depressed—forcing us back into reflection and soul-tending. Relationship and sex obsessions leave us eventually alone, insatiate, and often bitter-- forcing us to look inwardly. Our American political process has gradually abandoned soul along with religion, calling for external solutions through rational policies and messianic politicians—and we are all raging at the other party. Psychotherapy focuses on statistics, diagnostic manuals and averages, assigning labels and standard treatments that “reprogram” the brain or body—and few are much happier. Even our western spirituality often turns to a kind of external solution as we look to theological systems, metaphysical techniques, spiritual books, seminars, teachers and intellectualized quick-fix “scientific” religions that leave us shallow and dissatisfied--forcing a spiritual crisis which drives us back into our own neglected souls.

The solution is in the disease. Each of these external failures, mostly unconsciously, are forcing us back to the radical or root source—our own bereft self or soul in need of care--not a cure. The care must come from powers that were prior to all externals, and greater than all human inventions which make life easier, safer and more secure. There is no quick fix or herd solution. Decades of soul neglect have left an overgrown internal topography. Most will not hack their way through, but return to the food, drink, relationship pursuits, technological distractions and other external answers. Most prefer the disease itself to the hard work of self knowledge--not self obsession, but deep self knowledge. But can't we change? Can't we decide to fix the problem and change our individual life?

The bad news is that this is primarily a collective problem afflciting the entire western psyche. While most of us think we can solve our problems with the right effort, maany are finding failure after failure. When individuals try to “overcome” their particular problem--which we call addictions, neuroses and afflictions--they do not know that their struggle is against a larger psychic assault on western externalized values. The neurotic “onslaught” by a compensatory psyche is not personal, but exists in pandemic numbers for the corrective of the collective soul. The corrective is bigger than the individual's obesity or drug problem, bigger than the democrats or republicans salutary policies to fix the economy. The psycho-emotional epidemic in America is from a cultural neglect of soul. Some sort of larger "victory" will arrive when a significant number of people learn that self knowledge and character need attention—that the soul must be seen, heard and attended to on a scale that will shift the western soul. Technology, industry, herd solutions, statistical and formulaic social agendas and all of the great academic rationalisms must learn to co-exist with and even surrender at times to psychic agencies which operate inwardly, individually and apart from external human consciousness.

However, if one does per chance work to achieve success, recovery, and “healing” in his/her area of addiction or affliction--it almost always requires much time and attention put on elusive and enigmatic self knowledge, and always a compassionate return to society with a message of soul over stuff. If these two criteria are not met, the successful changer will inevitably return to some external solution--and lead the proverbial life of quiet desperation.

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE CONFUSED AND JUDGMENTAL

After the death of my son, Jason, in 2008, someone sent me some words from the teacher, Byron Katie. Katie wrote this about her experience of loss when a brother died. Following is my response. I will warn the reader, I did not find Katie's response very helpful and describe why. You decide. Seek, and you shall find:

Reality is always kind

"If my daughter (or brother in my case) dies, I realize that there is no self to be affected. It's not about me. This is about her life, my child's life, and mind --the unceasing bodiless mind that is finally awake to itself, the mind that never existed as a her, and the her that can never die. In this, we are never separated. And that's just a beginning: it gets even kinder. I get to see what my child's children grow in to because she was not there to teach them differently. Whenever I lose something, I've been spared. Every loss has to be a gain, unless the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world cannot decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any better, it has to. That's the law."

~~ by Byron Katie

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BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE CONFUSED AND JUDGMENTAL

from Michael Bogar

I can certainly find some wisdom in this quote containing Byron Katie's current soul-story about death, loss, judgment and confusion. It evoked this long response. I certainly don’t expect you to read it to the end. But it is my interaction with her quote, my current soul-story about Jason's death and my judgment and confusion around it. And I do know that blogs are often like watching other people’s vacation slides.

My concern with this quote is the assumption that 'judgment,' 'confusion' and the suffering they cause are unnecessary experiences, and are best gotten rid of. Just because something is undesirable doesn't mean it is unnecessary. Often teachers who compassionately seek to end suffering imply that there is no cosmic necessity in the suffering created by a judgmental and confused mind/brain. Perhaps there is another way of seeing this. Perhaps the Universe is a wondrous place for the eternal experience of 'Confusion'. Perhaps the mind/brain are made to judge and to be confused. Perhaps there is great purpose in such emotions, as painful as they are.

PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL ISOMETRICS

Isometrics is the increase in strength as a result of the necessary and normal fusion (co-fusion) of joint and muscle with the hard objects of resistance. Without gravity and solid matter, humans would be limp noodles. Babies emerge from the womb kicking against uterine walls, swinging their arms, inhaling and expelling oxygen for the first time, grabbing fingers, fighting gravity, pushing against hard surfaces and screaming against the resistance of a very 'oppressive' (to press against) world. Without these resistances, or oppressing co-fusions, they would never develop. The body would grow flabby and atrophy without continued resistance against immovable or reluctantly movable objects.

I call this Spiritual Isometrics. I call this soul-making. The soul is in some ways analogous to the human body. It is not made of matter, but like the body it must encounter continual resistance in order to develop. The propensity for mental and emotional conflict is built into the mind/brain, or psychic world, to provide a force of resistance that increases soul. This is important--the propensity for conflict, resistance and co-fusions are built into the process.

Mind/brain, as a vehicle of soul, functions like joints and muscles to expand through resistance. We know this to be true of neurons, that they increase and multiply through fusion with (co-fusion or con-fusion) crossword puzzles, college exams or arguing and trying to figure out ways to prove we are right to our partners, even when we are not. All great inventions and adventures are the result of meeting and fusing with resistance in order to expand beyond the current state of mind and soul maturity.

Resistance and confusion are native to Reality. At the cosmic level, the Big Bang is an act of creative resistance as once unified mass explodes into bits and then co-fuses back into new phenomena. This has a fancy name, the Nebular Hypothesis, where stellar debris falls together and co-fuses into planets and stars, etc. The recent Membrane Theory which attempts to explain the Big Bang says, “Spontaneous creation of matter seems to be possible, because the resistance of the existing matter inside the membrane is producing a great amount of energy.” One physicist oversimplified it by saying, “The universe appears to be made up of quantum membranes, like vast cells, and when two or more collide, they con-fuse and there is the birth of a universe.” Humans call this con-ception, a co-fusing of a sperm cell and egg to make a new creature. From inception, cells split, multiply and fuse into tissue, organs and organ systems, con-fusing to make a single body.

So from the structure of the cosmos, to the energy of the atom, through every phase of evolution, to muscle development, to pounding my fingers against this plastic alphabet on the computer key pad, through grappling with Jason's death – “Reality” always expands by meeting immovable or reluctantly movable forces, colliding, fracturing and refusing or co-fusing. These experiences are uncomfortable and cause “negative emotions”.

So called ‘negative emotions’ exist for that purpose, namely, expansion of soul. Fear, grief, confusion, anxiety, panic, depression and so forth are forms of normal, necessary and creative thoughts and emotions that expand and empower soul to grow bigger than it was yesterday. These amazing perceptions, feelings and mental formations are as much a part of a loving Reality as joy, peace, clarity and ecstasy. That’s why the Hindu mythology, and all mythologies, depict a Mother Goddess (Kali) as simultaneously the giver of new babies and the decapitating demon. The Celtic equivalent is Morrigan. That is why Nature slaughters her population every Fall, and regenerates them each Spring.

Katie says, "Every loss has to be a gain, unless the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world cannot decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any better, it has to. That's the law."

I would change three words in her statement, "Every loss has to be a gain, because the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my kindness in my world must decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life can't get any bigger or different, it has to. That's the law."

Our “confused judgments” are the means to, or cause of all new gains, rather than useless obstacles. This is a huge difference. The “confused judgment” is a fusing of obstacle with solution, of pain with the next stage of development. “Confusions” are the building material or cause of soul-making, just as the weight in the gym is the building material or cause of muscle increase. The obstacle, then, is the cause of the expansion, not unless “the loss is being judged by a confused mind.” BK runs the serious risk of trying to manipulate reality to serve her system. Does she know better? Are her 4 questions superior to the way the human mind naturally works? Does she know that confusion is not doing an amazing work of making soul? Her “unless” implies that what the mind does naturally, namely gets con-fused with the material it encounters, could be improved upon by her system of The Work. We humans do that--we are always making “Nature” better because what Nature does is sometimes annoying and uncomfortable. And trust me, I prefer a warm house with centralized heating over a frosty cave. But, we would not have invented the centralized heating without our co-fusing human discomfort with natural freezing. This reminds me of what Bilbo Baggins said to Gandalf when the wizard invited Bilbo to go on an adventure. Bilbo replied, “Adventure? No thanks, nasty uncomfortable things—they make you late for dinner.” Well, as the story unfolds, Bilbo goes, is late for several dinners and comes home with a hoard of treasure and much more.

I see the mind/brain as being wonderfully constructed to include the capacity and necessity of confused judgment - and thereby create the needed space and the new material for the myriad gains that will come with each of our many experiences of judgments and confusions in a lifetime. Just as the foot is constructed to press against the pavement in order to generate movement, or the finger to pinch and squeeze a piece of food in order to hold and eat it, so my mind must grasp or press against each loss 'in order' to acquire the gain. The foot and finger are 'confused' or fused together with the objects of resistance (pavement and food) in order to increase strength to take the walk or get the food. Likewise, my mind must encounter resistance and ‘suffer’ internal and external oppositions to acquire the invisible stuff that will create my unique soul. It is what mind/brain is made to do as much as the foot and finger, and the co-fusing are always purposeful.

We encounter these mental ‘fusings’ all day long with thousands of subjects and objects. The mind/brain are in a chronic state of judgment, fusing or combining with more objects and situations than we could ever count. And in each blending or co-fusing with these things, we are thinking thoughts such as, “I like this or I don’t like this.” We don’t consciously do this, it just happens. Mind/brain automatically fuses with life events, just as the lungs automatically fuse with oxygen, inhaling and exhaling without conscious thought. Attraction and repulsion are the two autonomic states of mind/brain for making unique souls.

When we begin to grow up and become conscious, there is a gradual awareness of this judging process and soul is made more consciously and often with less struggle and pain. Our innate judgments and con-fusings are seen as normal and necessary, and we learn ways to care for and work with them as allies rather than enemies.

That is where I find Katie’s method helpful in not getting stuck in a single, myopic state of con-fusion. Her questions can help me shift the fusions – I can refuse them, literally re-fuse them, or in-fuse them, sometimes de-fuse them, or ex-fuse, or inter-fuse them, etc. But the Psyche is always fusing with the objects and subjects of existence, always creating more anxieties and con-fusions to stretch our souls. Most of these fusions are subtle, some are catastrophic. To fuse with life’s tragedies and blessings is as instinctual as the baby seeking to fuse with a nipple, or to squeeze a finger. Humans are fusing, blending, mixing and mingling creatures. These fusings cause us to expand physically, emotionally, mentally, economically, socially, creatively and soulfully. This universe is rife with the normal and necessary objects and subjects of co-fusings for soul-making.

I must admit that I do find Katie’s language to be quite instructive when she says, “I come to see…” The ‘coming’ process is just as normal and necessary as the goal of ‘seeing’. Sometimes we minimize the ‘coming to’ process. “Coming to’ entails going through all of the painful and confusing thoughts and emotions. “Coming to” alludes to a mystical awakening, or enlightenment experience. But never forget that there cannot be a human mystical awakening or psychic integration without first experiencing emotional and mental disintegrations—usually many. I know of no mystic who has not fallen completely apart before coming back together as a “guru”. We know of no galaxy, solar system, star or planet that did not develop without the fragments of a flaming debris field. Psyche's nature is a 'coming to'...and then the 'seeing.' The goal requires the process. The process requires many fusions, co-fusions, con-fusions.

“I come to see…” teaches me that the serene mystic mind is ontologically no greater than the confused judging mind, anymore than the fully blossomed rose is ontologically greater than the little root system in the dark soil from which it sprang. Souls, like flowers, are made progressively and processively. Just as the root system must co-fuse with the dirt and darkness to result in the budded (Buddha) lotus, so the human soul must co-fuse with many experiences of death, darkness, disagreement and a thousand ego related conflicts to reach full enHumanment. ‘Coming to,’ is a necessary process for ‘coming to see’.

Wholeness is not attained when one 'sees'. That may be the biggest error of much New Age teaching—that “wholeness” means health and peace. Real wholeness, “Complete Wholeness” includes the dirty, confusing process of coming to as well as the result of the final “seeing” or awakening. This assumption that Wholeness is the just the awakened mind is a mistake made in many New Age circles to the peril of all humans who think there is something amiss until they 'see' the Light. The flower is Whole from the seed pod buried in the dirt, to the roots going down into the dark earth, through the stalk poking its head out of the soil, to the full blossoming, all the way to dead and wilted heap.

This process of spiritual isometrics grows soul, or some would say 'increases character.' This is what the poet William Blake was conveying in his opus, 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell', summarized by his proverb, "Without Contraries is no progression." The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said it like this, "Strife (confusion) is the Father of all." And the Geek philosopher Homer Simpson who said, "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel."

There is a danger, an immense danger. Confusions can sometimes strain and break us beyond earthly repair. Not all isometric exercise strengthens joints and muscles. Sometimes we break a bone or damage a joint and need healing. Sometimes we break the mind – what we call 'emotional or mental breakdowns.' I see Katie's process and other mental healing tools as beneficial when the mind is being 'over-exercised' or at the breaking point. The Work can move you into and through the resistance to develop soul, unless you use it to escape. Exercises are only as good as their proper execution. Carl Jung, in his biography, said he used Hindu meditation to take a rest from exploring the messy and troubling unconscious world. He noted that most Hindus used meditation to escape, or transcend samsara, to get off the wheel of painful life, but that he used it to take a break from working his way through the soulmaking material of a painful life. Jung’s use is very different, and more correct in my opinion.

Let me reiterate, to imply that judgmental confusion is unnatural, unnecessary, abnormal and needs to be gotten rid of is a very dangerous assertion. It is tantamount to saying that just because physical exercise is difficult and uncomfortable, it must be stopped. Or that algebra causes me to suffer, therefore algebra is bad for me and must be ended. If my musculature did not daily fuse with the many objects of resistance in my path, I would atrophy and die. The mind/brain are not doing something 'wrong,’ 'alien,’ 'abnormal' or 'unnecessary' when it judges and gets confused. The mind/brain is doing what it is supposed to do, fuse with objects of resistance, and judge them in order to grow a soul.

I already mentioned the human fertilization process. Let me expand on that example. It is natural and necessary for a hundred thousand sperm cells to assail and crash into the citadel of the solid and resistant membrane of the ovum. These microscopic crusaders batter the impenetrable shell until one finds the open gate and enters. Then the 'fusing together' begins. The sperm cell and egg cell fuse together (con-fuse) and a new life begins. This is the microcosmic snapshot of the making of an individual soul, and I think also the collective Soul of the Universe. These collisions, confusions, divisions, multiplications, additions, subtractions and all that is done in the depths of a dark womb make a new life. The creative chaos in the womb is the way mind/brain works too.

The night I heard Jason died, I was fused with unimaginable loss. It would have offended me as immoral and inhuman if someone had said, “that there is no self to be affected.” I know there was a self to be affected because it was. That self was, and still is, being dismantled by these affections. There may be a stage in the process of development where the soul ceases to be so affected in the enHumanment journey, but the necessary beneficial experiences of traumatic self -‘affection’ must not be discounted or avoided. Such experiences are not “unless,” but “until” the need for such experiences have passed. I meet too many people in my work who have a kind of subliminal assumption that ‘someday,’ when they are truly spiritual and enlightened, suffering will cease. One might as well wait for the trees to stop shedding their leaves or the universe to stop expanding toward extinction. To negate or minimize the experiences (Gods) that we don’t like because they are troubling is what the Greeks called hubris. Humans are in a process of infinite expansion, and humans will never trump the work of the Gods in soul-making. The Gods, including confusions and anxiety, will return until they are heard and/or honored.

There will be days of pleasure and days of pain, days of loss and days of gain – and perhaps, as we enter the process fully and encounter our sufferings as normal and necessary, we may achieve some measure of consistent serenity in the midst of the myriad co-fusings on planet earth. M. Scott Peck said, “Life is difficult. But when you see that life is difficult, it becomes less difficult.”

Tolle said it well when he wrote that without the suffering caused by ego we “would not evolve as human beings…Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form AND (my emphasis) erodes identification with form…eventually suffering destroys the ego – but not until you suffer consciously.” (A New Earth, p.102)

This observation from Tolle should have been developed and turned into a whole chapter to help people see the necessary role of the egos and its more negative aspects as tools of creative soul-making. The poor old ego has come on hard times. It is the seed pod of soul, containing the blossoming of our completed Humanity (divinity).

Since Jason died, I have been fused together with loss, sadness, fear, remorse, resentments and a thousand other forces of affective or emotional resistance. I have been falling apart. I have curled up in bed and slept, dreamed, wept, prayed, cursed and experienced affections I didn't know existed – but unlike experiences of past personal disasters, I could more clearly see my falling apart and confusion as normal and necessary, not as a mental illness, not some alien intrusion, not due to original sin or the fault of my selfish ego which was trying to ‘Edge God Out.’ I see the work of Ego now as ‘Edging God Outward,’ or Onward.

There have been times the emotional isometric resistance I have encountered with Jason's death has debilitated and broken me - but even those contained the elements of expanding my soul. There have been times I have allowed people to carry me when I was so broken I could not walk, and the bones now are mending to become even stronger. Like Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord, I will always have a dislocated hip, but the soul blessing is mine as a result of the crippling struggle, not in spite of it. Soul-making gives us wounds and scars. What better way to be reminded that the amazing character we are developing is not self-generated, or from my mystical mastery, or the result of some self righteous morality or spirituality? It is sacred work. It is the grace Christianity speaks of. The result of these past months has been a gradual increase in heart and mental strength; a greater love for my children, my parents, my fellow human beings - and this new love continues to grow. I have never in my life wept so much as I have over Jason’s death, and my heart has never been more broken and enlarged. I have never been so co-fused with loss and darkness, and my heart is now opening to levels of abundance, love and light I could not have imagined. One night, Jason came to me in a trance (dream) and gave me his large red heart. It encompassed my puny black and blue heart, entered my chest and Jason said, “Dad, this is one reason I died, to give you a bigger heart. You will need it for your work.” This is grace. It had nothing to do with my spirituality or my self.

Finally, I do not think that reality is always 'kind'. That implies that there is little or no reason or room for 'unkindness' apart from human failures or sins. Experiences of unkindness, like war, are archetypal, universal and provide us with the opportunity to grow souls of kindness. The experiences of heartless cruelty from mean people provide the resistance a soul needs to individuate, to grow and clarify values, to draw personal boundaries and form deep compassion for other wounded human beings. That is why Jesus told us to bless our enemies - they provide the isometric resistance against which our souls press in order to increase spiritual muscle and stature. Bitter resentment teaches the soul to release hatred. Grief expands a tiny ego-pod into a greater capacity for joy. Cynicism, criticism, hatred, anger and sarcasm give us the experience of hellish isolation and self absorption, moving us like Scrooge into an experience of bleak misery that presses us down (depressive resistance), forcing us to brood over the past, present and future. It is during such broodings that Psyche, like the Spirit of God hovering over the Cosmic egg in Genesis one, may hatch from the ego-egg the light of consideration, acceptance and compassion for others.

We live in an odd universe, because within the human psyche, infinity has been mixed with finitude (con-fused), and it is through the daily interactive resistance of mind, body and spirit that we grow invisible souls.