On Approaching Infinity

Balloons released outside a church after a memorial service and celebration of a remarkable life.

No matter what your tradition, or manner of worship--or lack thereof; no matter what your relationship to the Great Whatever is, it's all fine and good. Believe whatever you want--if it increases the amount of love, goodwill, compassion, and joy in the world,  it's all good.

My meditation for the day: 

We are imperfect expressions of perfect Love.  Mind the gap--and close it.

On Suffering, and Becoming

I had a sudden realization recently, that I felt compelled to share. But, I feel like I need to lay some thought-groundwork first to set up where it's coming from. So, what comes first are some possibly-disjointed thoughts and philosophical snippets which tend to bounce around in the rattling bingo cage that is my mind. . (Bibliography and inspiration/sources available on request. Likewise, If you want to skip this part, scroll down to cut to the chase.)

The natural state of the human being is open, curious about the world, and actively compassionate. Anything that deviates from that standard indicates an emotional wound that lies unaddressed, and unhealed.

"In the presence of Love, that which is unlike Love comes forth to be purified."

The ego's job is to protect the self against all attacks--real or imagined.  Yeah--it's the imagined part that's the problem. The ego takes everything personally.   It can't grasp that it's not the center of the universe.  All the cool kids know this:  Buddha, Jesus, Buber, Khan, Rumi, Tolle, Walshe...that whole crowd. They say it a lot better than I do, but the bottom line is always:  "You're not who you think you are--you have no limits, and we are all One. The same. God."

Decisions we make about our lives--to be more patient, to eat less chocolate, to finally write that novel--are often met, almost immediately, with a host of obstacles that seemingly come out of nowhere.   If I say, "I'd like to be more patient," that intention is not rewarded with a sense of serenity and a feeling of calm as we move through our days. On the contrary, it's as if Life itself is conspiring to give us opportunities to work on that very skill.  That is, our patience will be tested. Constantly.  The thing is, this isn't personal. It's just the way it goes.  Were given plenty of chances to say, "On second thought, no thanks. I'm good."  This is what free will is about. We have the option to say, "No, thank you" to what we know is in our best, highest interest. And, in the end, in the largest sense, it's okay if we do. The chance will come again to grab (or not) for the gold ring. Maybe not in this lifetime, but eventually, we'll make the choice to go for our highest, greatest vision of ourSelves.

Some schools of thought phrase it in terms of a "Breakthrough/Breakdown" cycle. After a "Breakthrough" (a powerful, profound realization combined with an intention for some sort of transformation in one's life), comes close on its heels, a "Breakdown" (life circumstances, events, and personal resistance that challenge one's resolve to follow through). It's a constant cycle, and though it's easy to take it personally, even to the point that it appears a super-human battle on an epic scale--a fight against "temptation" and even "The Devil" himself--it's just not. This gives an outsized amount of personal authority to this impersonal cycle. It also allows us not to take any responsibility for saying "Never Mind" to what we say we want as our higher good.

Every religious and spiritual tradition teaches that we ultimately are here on Earth to recognize our identity with God--to realize that there is no separation, to become One with All That Is. At the core of these teachings is the commandment to love each other as oneself. To practice compassion, to be our brother's keeper, to break down the walls that make us think we are separate and apart from each other--in short, to live in such a way that we are the very embodiments of the holy spirit of Love and Compassion. The Kingdom of God is Within, and there is no Without.

God is the impersonal energy of Creative Love, manifested personally. God creates in order to know Itself. It just creates, and creates, and creates again. Because that's what Love does.  It really doesn't care about who wins a football game, or what the building looks like which we have built to honor It. It is the Great What-Have-You. The Ineffable Mystery of Everything. It honestly doesn't care what you think, say, or do. It has no need to take offense. Does a river care if you throw a stone into it? Or curse it? Or even look at it? It's the same with Love. It simply Is. It will continue to flow and do Its work whether you "put in" or not.

Cut to the chase:

So, why do we suffer? Why is there so much suffering and pain in the world? I've been thinking on this a lot lately. And something finally gelled for me, which leads me to share this post.

I came to this inquiry about suffering on learning about the family of a child who passed away recently. This child had a recurrence of cancer, and their home was burglarized while he was in treatment. Throughout it all, they steadfastly refused to be anything but loving in their viewpoints and their approach to their circumstances. They were active in philanthropic organizations, and raised some $300,000 dollars for cancer research in the past six years; and, the father's eulogy was a love letter and a promise to the children who knew and loved this valiant young man. They chose powerfully, deliberately, to live and cultivate Love, and that radiance was, and still is, palpable. 

I sat with my heart torn open by the beauty, perfection, joy, pain, and loss that is inherent in this worldly life, and I felt like some puzzle pieces started fitting together, helping me understand in a new way, this piece of the picture.

What if--just what if--we really did come into this world, charged with the Self-initiated task of realizing ourselves as Love Itself? (This is not a new idea, of course.) But to extrapolate from other teachings, what if the very act of being born is a Breakthrough in the soul's evolutionary cycle?  We make a resolution to stand for Love (and it's not enough to know ourselves as Love, we have to choose to experience it as our Truth) Then, from the moment we get slapped by some guy in a mask, we're in Breakdown--the basically impersonal process by which we can take responsibility for defining and creating ourSelves as Love.  And this includes no less than giving it, allowing it--recognizing (at long last) our own inherent worth to receive caring and love from others.

So, you wanted to come here to practice Love, eh? You're on: I'll give you plenty of opportunities to be Loving.  Try this on for size: You're born into unimaginable poverty. Or maybe you're born into unimaginable wealth.  You have a genetic disorder. Your nerves don't work. You can't walk. Your child has cancer. You will be a target for other people's pain. You'll be used,  abused, attacked, emotionally extorted, and bullied. What do you stand for?  In the face of the "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," how will you move through your days? Will you still Love? Do you still want to do this? Really? How about now? What about this? Or this?  

Pain, the despair of feeling isolated, disease, strife, world tumult, it all shows up in our awareness; and every time, it's as if Life itself is asking us what we stand for. 

I think, when all is said and done, suffering is a test of our resolve to Love. In the face of suffering, Love can be a fierce, defiant choice.  All the things that befall us in our lives, all that we witness and help (or not), every injustice we ignore or wrong we seek to right, is a challenge to our pre-birth resolve to be Loving.  So if we take the viewpoint that we are in agreement with this spiritual task in our lives, we are in choice, and we are not victims. We can start to recognize that it's not personal, though we often experience it that way. It's about what we choose, putting us in charge of our capacity to love.  We choose to stay with our Big Task, or not. Every moment. We're in choice, all the time. There's no "have-to" and no punishment awaiting us if we don't go along. At any point, at any given moment of the day, we have the option to say, "You know what? No. I don't wanna." We can give in, it happens all the time. Most of us live our entire lives this way. But if, in our spiritual prep-time, we'd already made the pledge to come here to find, express, and be Love, maybe we can start seeing suffering as a means to prove ourselves and what we stand for.   Maybe we can afford to see suffering as part of the process of becoming Love.

Now, I'm finding myself--when confronted with some ego-trigger or I witness someone's painful circumstance--starting to reframe events and circumstances in these terms. (It's not that huge of a shift, really--just taking a slightly larger view of what I already know.) I'm feeling more inclined now, to remind myself, "This is a test. This is only a test. What do you stand for? Be that."  The result: it's not only making it easier to transcend the "bad stuff", but it also has the unintended happy side-effect of deepening and clarifying my experience of the "good stuff.".  Even if I'm wrong about all of it, everything I've written here--so what? It's enhancing my experience of my life.

Bingo.

Physical Conversations and the Mythic Mind.

This is not a fanciful suggestion by a bunch of New Age bookstore employees. Smart people in a laboratory figured this out.

This, to me, is pretty fascinating. I encourage you to click on the link to read the brief encapsulation of the discoveries. It appears that schizophrenic individuals have the ability/propensity to transfer or expand their sense of physical self beyond the bounds of their own body. My extrapolation: The literal displacement of chi (life energy) suggested in the minute drop in temperature of the subject's hand (the hands being exit points for energy) is consistent with a mytho-energetic understanding of schizophrenia-related disorders--which I had first read about in Joseph Campbell's Myths To Live By (cf. Hands of Light - Barbara Ann Brennan).

When I teach juggling, I approach it from a standpoint of having a 'physical conversation' with the objects--conversation being both 'talking' (exerting one's will/yang energy) and 'listening' (receiving information/yin energy). The best jugglers work their props in such a way that they appear to be extensions of their own limbs, deftly manipulating the objects in the air and around their own bodies. My students make their own juggling balls, which they keep with them for practice outside of class. This is not only a practical solution to the "how do you assign homework in juggling class", but also sets up the ability for these objects to be 'imprinted' into the practitioner's energy field.  This in turn, makes the object more a part of their sense of 'self'.  'Practice makes perfect' takes on a whole 'nother level of meaning here.

It's a reasonable, logical extension of the assertion in physics that all matter is simply energy, condensed.  Frontier physics (quantum and string theory) is where Western empiricism meets Eastern mysticism.  The fact of a subject in the above research having a repeatable out-of-body experience in the laboratory suggests that the bridge between the two is there for the crossing. So, don't call it 'chi'...call it our electromagnetic field.  There's no conflict in premise, only in approach.  East=chi. West=EMF. To me, it's a kind of unifying theory of consciousness, physical existence, and consciousness and its related disorders--you know: Life, the Universe, and Everything.

So, the question is: what if the treatment of schizophrenia included modalities that are not only based on brain chemistry, but also on consciousness alteration centered on energetic awareness? If this research can be integrated into a mythic/energetic mode of treatment for consciousness disorders?

Further:  based on the above picture, how far of a leap is it, really, to suggest that the Universe is the mind of God, and that we living creatures are literal microcosms of that God-ness?

Where was I again?

You know how sometimes you forget what day of the week it is? Today, I forgot what my emotional state was. As in, I had to remind myself, actively, that I wasn't pissed off.

In more than one idle moment today, my mind and body went back to the funk that had been in for much of the week. I felt the tightening in my lower back, my adrenals were ready to pounce, my thoughts started ramping up...then I remembered, 'wait a minute--that's not in play anymore'...the fog had lifted a full twenty-four hours prior--no need to be angry. After a moment of mental/visceral recalibration,  I was back to being a little more present.

It was an odd sensation, actually--a kind of unmoored anger, which was so patently made-up, and kind of easily released.  An interesting exercise in choice, awareness, and maybe even possibility.

For those who fast today

What strikes me most about this image is that so much more than a cute little angel playing the lute--it is a cherub, a young angel-in-training, learning to play--practicing awkwardly on an outsized instrument.

 

Fasting

There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Kaaba. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents,
Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

~Jelaludin Rumi
trans. Coleman Barks

Phantom Pain

Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away?

I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?

It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I. Is't a riddle?

~Herman Melville, Moby Dick. 1851

This seems to me at this moment an apropos description of the human heart, the grief of any loss, and the feeble desire to share the experience, or to have another take away the persistent suffering that such loss causes. 

Allowance

Being concerned about another's comfort and happiness is a very different thing than being responsible for another's comfort and happiness.

I just butted up against this distinction in the last 24 hours.  Realizing it's time to make a change in the habitual way I handle my relationship with my son has been a lightning-fast, hard lesson. This is a very difficult identification to face.  If I'm not constantly concerned with and responsible for ensuring the smooth sailing of his life, then what kind of parent am I, really? Don't I care about him at all?  This is what goes through my head as I face this change. In looking at how to move past this old pattern of being, then, I'm faced with this fear that I'm sending the message that I don't care about him at all.  It's a dynamic that is based in the history of my experiences with and regarding him and his care.  It's tried, and true...and now it's truly trying.  

The way I show my care and love for him is by taking responsibility for his moment-to-moment emotional state. Yeah, that doesn't sound at all pathological when I type it out like that. Feels strange to be downgrading my attention on him...that really, my only concerns need be his health and well-being and safety...but that the minutiae are up to him.

So. Okay. time to move into a more mature phase of our relationship. Time to allow him to be responsible for himself more, his own sense of happiness and comfort. So what if a particular thing isn't his first choice, or if he's resistant to it. Is his basic safety assured? Then get over it. Or don't.  But it's not my problem.  As he is about to turn 13, moving into something closer to manhood, it is time. I've been holding him back, without realizing it. He's coming of age, and I'm realizing that it's time for our relationship to do the same.  So, this is the allowance I can give him. To allow him to be responsible for himself.  My desire is for his happiness and fulfillment. My job is to let him seek it himself.

UPDATE:  If I'm releasing all this misplaced energy and attention...what am I freed up to do now?  Where could that attention go? To what projects/thoughts/creations?  The possibilities feel expansive.

Holding up, as t'were, a funhouse mirror up to Nature.

In short, this is why I do what I do in the manner that I do it.

"What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak from the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind. the personal aspect is a limitation--and even a sin--in the realm of art. When a form of "art" is primarily personal it deserves to be treated as if it were a neurosis." - Carl G. Jung

E Pluribus Unum

"From Many, One."  Can there be a more concise definition of God?  As above, so below. As within, so without.

I've had occasion lately to be thinking about Family, and increasingly, this is the image that comes up for me (Norman Rockwell, it ain't):

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, painting by Leloir.  In the story--Genesis 32--Jacob's thigh was torn out of joint. (A metaphorical understanding of the body, the thigh is what moves us through the world; and, the joint is that connective piece which holds us together.)

Wherever two or more are gathered in karmic agreement and in the name of Love, to create a singular entity, there walks God. And, like Jacob wrestling with the Angel at the Riverbank, we wrestle and struggle mightily in our lives, until we are torn out of joint, bloodied and exhausted.  And as morning breaks, we demand to know what is the True Name of Family, and what is our own.


"I will not let you go, until you bless me."

But Enough About Me...

Finally from the Archives, (November 2002), published once, condensed in a newsletter.

As you'll read, I had undertaken a home-grown exploratory soul-surgery on myself at a time in my life when pieces of my self, my identity, were falling away like ice off a cliff in the Arctic. I had no sense of when that reductive process would end, what else would be taken from me as part of that process. I was surprised to learn about a year later that I had begun the re-building process quite subtly.

 I took inspiration for the exercise I conducted from an article I had read about executive assessments called, "360's"  where a highly-paid consultant conducts anonymous in-depth interviews with everyone in a client's life, then gives them an unflinching assessment of where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and what they might do to adjust their manner or behavior for the better.  I had neither a consultant nor a budget; but I had email (and had I to do it again, I would have used an anonymizer like SurveyMonkey or something like that.) So, folllowing is the description of my experience:

But Enough About Me...What do YOU Think of Me?

Paul Simon wrote in one of his songs, “If I have weaknesses, don’t let them blind me”. It was in that spirit that I recently sent out an email to my friends, loved ones, and colleagues, asking them to tell me in no uncertain terms, what they thought of me. “What,” I asked, “do you see as my strengths, and what do you see as my weaknesses?” This was no ego-stroking exercise in fishing for warm-fuzzies. As an actor, I have learned that one way to learn about the character one is playing is to look through the play, and find out what the other characters say about him. So, why couldn’t that work for real life as well? If I am, in fact, out to increase my self-awareness, then, I realized, it was time to step back from my own self, and see myself as an actor in the play of my life. So I did the research. What I found in this exercise was not only personally enlightening, but also surprising on a number of fronts. I went through my entire email address book, choosing one name at a time—how well do I know this guy, and how well does he know me? Will she be able to address my request for total honesty tempered by generally-accepted standards of kindness? Gee, I haven’t spoken with that person in years...I wonder what he’ll say. I ended up with about a dozen and a half individuals. Perhaps I asked too many people, but I wanted a broad cross-section of the people in my life; I wanted to get as full an accounting as possible. I reasoned that I was at a point in my life where I could get my ego out of the way, and observe the feedback with a certain degree of objectivity, and without defensiveness. I braced myself for the onslaught of brutal honesty by making a list of my own perceived strengths and weaknesses. This, I found, was an important step. I also built into the message an easy, but important ‘opt-out’ clause, to allow for those who may just be weirded out by my openness. And after all, my ego was not so fragile as all that. With a decisive flourish, I clicked the SEND button. In the next instant, I heard the tone indicating the message had been sent. And, perhaps not surprisingly, I was promptly gripped by a flood of second thoughts. Yes, the barn door was closed, but the horses done gone...so I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long. Within the next couple of days, the responses came trickling in. I have yet to hear from some of the recipients, and some would prefer having a face-to-face with me. (The which I’m not comfortable with, since to have the feedback in writing allows, in my opinion, the surveyed to be more open, honest, and thoughtful in the response. And, it gives me a tool to which I can refer later—which is the whole point for me). Some responded with incredulity that I would contact them at all, after I had not actively maintained a relationship with them for years. This last one was a chastening experience I had to particularly steel myself for--but hey, if I’m looking at myself, warts and all, then look I must. Still others would be so averse to responding that they would even disregard my request for a reply of non-response. Though, with no statute of limitations in my request, it’s entirely possible some might find their way to commenting still.
But most did respond—thoughtfully, respectfully, and unflinchingly. I learned here that there is truly no such thing as an objective response to a survey such as this. And, by extension, no true objectivity in much of life. I saw so clearly here, the ways in which we bring our context, our own perceptions to bear on all our experiences. For the most part, the feedback I received was consistent with my own perceptions of my strengths and weaknesses. One of the biggest surprises to me was that I found that those closest to me (and who incidentally held me in high esteem), were the most humble in their responses, even to doubting their own (entirely valid) perceptions. A recurring motif in those responses was something along the lines of, “I don’t know if any of this means anything to you, since I see so much of this in myself as well...” And therein lies the true lesson I learned in this process. In a very real and immediate way, I saw first-hand, the theory proven how we project aspects of ourselves onto the people and circumstances in our lives. I saw how we are all reflections of each other, for each other, and in sacred service to each other. In one moment, it became more than an intellectual construct for me, and became instead an experiential truth. We are as the mirrors in a spinning carousel, multi-faceted, a kaleidoscope of images passing in a fairground, shifting for each gazer.

Ultimately, I learned that because of this very phenomenon, my research yielded much more truth than I could have hoped or sought.

Changing the Matrix

Another from the Archives of Trying to Figure This All Out (November 2002). 

Changing the Matrix

This past year has been a time of transition, and, for many, upheaval. Personal growth, and societal evolution seem to be picking up the pace, as if we collectively have realized that there is no time to waste on this path. After the amorphous feeling of disquietude gives way to a desire for real change, what then? Turning away from long-held fears and embracing the choice of Love would seem to be easy things to decide. Logically, who wouldn’t want to live with more peace, more joy, more in the moment?
We state an intention. A true intention, from the heart. We speak that intention to the Universe. It is clear, positive, and without reservation. It is vibrant with Truth. And one of the first things that happens is every fearful choice we made in opposition to that new intention is brought up for our examination. As if the Universe is saying, “Look around, are you really sure you want to choose this path?” This is a great temptation. Often, it is far too easy to fall back into one’s old patterns of reactivity, simply because they are familiar. Yet with each statement of intention, that path feels less and less satisfying.

The density of energy as it manifests here in this life makes the process of establishing an intention as our lived experience a sometimes maddeningly slow one. If, one might ask, this is the Truth of my soul, and our job here is to remember our Divinity, and live it, why then is choosing the highest choice so hard, on a moment to moment basis? What makes us attract the things in our life that we do--the patterns that both assist and hinder our growth?

Beyond our physical body, is our subtle energetic body, reaching out at ever-higher vibrations of light. With that as a given, I invite you to look at those levels of energy closest to the physical as a kind of energy Matrix, a magnetic template for our choices. The film of the same name is an exciting techno-allegory for spiritual enlightenment; but for our purposes, the Matrix is not only the enemy—Maya, the world of illusion--but is also the very tool by which we can transcend fear and limitation. It is a means by which we make our intentions manifest every day. Like a 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, this Personal Matrix is an energetic system of tabs and slots...tongues and grooves...doves and tails...of the which we are hard-wired to seek out complementing elements. This energetic template is established early in life, and is the basis for our propensity to (in its most overt form) seek out mates that recreate our relationship with our opposite-sex parent. But this also applies to all our circumstances, in terms of what we attract to our lives. It's operating on so many levels simultaneously, we literally can't comprehend the complexity of it. 

This Matrix Theory of Transformation and Growth recognizes that Quantum physics represents the point where the snake of spirituality starts to eat its tail. West meets East, literally. Empiricism meets Mysticism, in the frontiers of submolecular physics. Matter is simply energy condensed, in both idioms. We observe the effects of this truth, much as we can observe the effects of the wind, though we can not observe the wind itself.

Let’s look at relationships, since they are such fertile opportunities for awareness and growth. Looking at it graphically: let’s say Johnny’s ‘Love Matrix’ (sounds like an unsavory movie, I know, but bear with me here) is, to use a grossly oversimplified binary analogy, 0-0-1-1. This happens to match up with his mate, Mary, who’s Love Matrix has the form 1-1-0-0. A perfect complement, like DNA matching up along the strands of the double helix. (In reality, the Matrix is made up mostly of unconscious choices, self-identities, desires and beliefs.)

This correlation serves them well for years in the relationship, mainly because it’s familiar, and it allows them to maintain their entrenched sense of identity, consistent with their earliest programming. Let’s say further that as John and Mary grow in this relationship, their more-inclusive Life Matrices change with experience and intention—they are ready to move beyond the restrictive identities they were programmed with at an early age. Their matrices now don’t serve them as they once did, and they decide to go their separate ways. Now, each of them has a new view of what they would like in a relationship, and are thus altering the constitution of their “Love Matrix”. Now John’s is 1-0-1-0, and Mary’s is 1-1-0-1. Both see how they prefer this new personal matrix configuration. They both feel more grounded and strong in their new relationships, Yet, every time they meet again, they fall back into their ‘default modes’ of 0-0-1-1 and 1-1-0-0. But the problem is that the old matrix is so unsatisfying that it keeps old pain alive. The trick then is to bring the new Matrix, the preferred one, into the relationship with each other, without judging the former configuration. That’s the tough part. For when we move to another stage in our lives, it is part of the process to look back, and there may be a kind of incredulity and frustration at having not seen the pattern so clearly before. And that is easy to externalize in a tightly-knit Matrix like a love relationship.

So, John and Mary decide who they would like to be in a new relationship. They establish this intention, with clarity, and speaking the deepest, highest truth of which they are capable. Their energetic matrix begins to shift (that is, the wheels of creation are set in motion, towards manifestation in the physical). They may find that eventually, they feel compelled out of a sense of self-respect, to choose in accordance with this new idea of themselves. This new Matrix is then being brought more clearly into physical manifestation. These positive choices, just like the negative ones before them, feed on themselves, and build momentum on their own. The trick for John and Mary, then, is to build the awareness of the old Matrix, and know what sets it into motion, and learn to choose the New Matrix consistently. The tools to help that process: therapy, body work, meditation, the list goes on and on.

Look around you. What has your energy Matrix brought to you? What would you like to change? Set it in motion. Change the Matrix, and you transform your world.

St. Judas Iscariot

This was the first "column" that I wrote, years ago, for a "newspaper" that was "printed" on "paper".  Amazing to think that now.

Written when I really really thought I knew something about these matters, the content and message are sincere, but the tone is off the mark. (Though in my defense, I had just come off of reading a pretty intense Tom Robbins novel about an invalid, an Amazonian shaman, a parrot, and a nun.)  Much has changed since this writing: much has been recovered and much has been lost, and found, and otherwise transformed in my life since then; nonetheless, I'm posting this as it was written and printed nearly two decades(!) ago, if for no other reason than it's a kind of MRI slice of my life at that time.

St. Judas Iscariot

It has become my fervent belief in the past few years that Judas Iscariot has been wrongly denied canonization by the Catholic Church. I implore your patience for a moment as I explain. Yes, that same Judas who, according to sanctioned accounts, betrayed Christ in the Garden of Gethsemene, turning him over to the Romans for a few shiny pieces of metal under the watchful eye of the Pharisees. Yes, that same traitor--vilified through time, immortalized in fresco as the Apostle with Bad Table Manners for having toppled the salt shaker at the Last Supper—who was so shame-ridden by his sin that he committed suicide. But let’s look closer, shall we? Here was a man who did the Hard Thing. By ratting out Jesus, he in fact made the redemption of all humanity possible. If it weren’t for his setting in motion the wheels of God’s will, where would Western Culture be today? The good and the bad of it? Why must he be so demonized, rather than venerated? I bring this up because I see a bit of myself in J.I. And I’d venture to guess that many of you, dear readers, could as well.

I grew up in what I would call a “Resentfully New-Catholic” family. (That is to say, my parents were fairly observant, though entirely displeased with the vernacularization of the Church and its rituals after Vatican II.) I was, if not fully steeped in the Roman Catholic mythos, at least swirled around in that dogmatic demitasse long enough for it to rub off on me. (You can take the boy out of the pew…) Even now, as I consider myself an inconsistent mystic, I am drawn to the beautiful and powerful vocabulary of Catholic imagery. In it, I find the imagery of the spirit unbound from the political trappings of hierarchical religion. I have expanded beyond that as well, but it remains an important part of my particular path. I am also well aware that that imagery does not resonate with others as it does with me—nor does it have to, of course.

However, I have found a connecting thread among those seeking to live more consciously: it is that very willingness to do the Hard Thing. I have seen an almost universal acceptance of the blessed inevitability of making the difficult choice. The choice of Love that we are compelled to make even as it causes us, and perhaps those we love, pain. It is not news, I know, to say that the path of Light requires that we simultaneously dive into our own Darkness. We are yin and yang forever chasing each other. Our wounds are the paths to our healing. A teacher of mine likened it so: Some people spend the better part of their lives circling the fire, growing ever-so-slightly closer to it with each revolution, till at long last they are engulfed; some never get close enough to the fire to get singed; and still others hurtle themselves headlong into the fire like some rogue kamikaze moth. Neither route is better than the other is. Both will burn and purify, destroy and create you anew. I happen to be the lucky bearer of a Red-Ember-Express ticket. Although, to be true, it has been a fairly gradual realization beginning when I was a child, with the amorphous feeling that I just didn’t—well--belong with the family into which I was born. Mind you, nothing overtly tangible in my present-life experience induced that feeling. But, I have come to see that in order for me to have grown as I have--to make the choice to live more consciously, to seek out what the true meaning of family is--I have had to remove myself from the political system of my family of origin.

Now, I am not enlightened, by any means. I advocate no one particular modality towards awakening one’s kundalini. I am simply another seeker after Truth—a drop in the Paradigm-Shift Ocean, if you will—and I am learning to “connect the dots” of my life in whatever limited way I can. The reason I share this information at all is that in my experience, I have found it edifying to hear of others’ calls to Light, and the choices that they make thereby. I find strength and wonder in witnessing the myriad paths that are leading to the Great Unity. In fact, I would like to invite a dialogue to begin from this writing in which people can share their remembrances, as well as their forgetting, of the path, for themselves and others.

Sometimes the Hard Thing is simply standing in the fire, palms open at your sides, feeling a part of your old self die, not knowing where to turn--and not turning. Where is the strength? Who are the strong? The eleven who went into hiding for the weekend? Or the one who picked up God’s own gauntlet?

Saint Judas Iscariot, pray for us.