In a recent edition of the Milwaukee Journal, a letter to the editor talked about the superstitious minds that believe in some sort of "spirit world," something that cannot be touched or seen (etc) and, for that reason, doesn't exist.  Don't you silly people understand? 

It is not enough to reply that all peoples throughout time and place have created some sort of spiritual reality, whether it be the big Void of the Buddhists or the creator twins of a South American tribe.  It is not enough to say that the greatest minds of the Old World have speculated on spirit throughout all of history, having only those in the West in the last two centuries posit the idea that it is non-existent.  It is not even enough to say that this everything, this ordered universe is most likely a creation of some sort of intelligence rather than a spark of something from nothing that somehow coalesced into a sublime order.  Nor, obviously, is it enough that many others throughout time and place have experienced the spiritual, to such an extent that the very experience makes it seem self-evident.  

The writer does have a point - the stern father of the People of the Book (Jewish, Muslim, Christian) and the twin gods of the Makiritare tribe share alike a humanizing aspect that is most probably false or incomplete, at least on the face of it.  Were we to take such symbols as material fact, the writer would most probably be correct - and that is, of course, what he does.  Not being interested in spirit, he does not explore its difficult, extra-material realities.  How can God be three-in-one, or "nothingness," or all-loving yet punishing?  Here we must start to think in the way of spirit.  If we do not, it all seems nonsense.  As Frithjof Schuan put it, "I write for those who already know of spirit.  I do not try to convince others.  That cannot be done except through grace." (my paraphrase.)   That is, one must have a break-away experience somehow, a glimpse of the eternal before the learning can be done in earnest.  Barring that, faith itself works, but faith, too, can be the break-away experience.  But for that there must be a willingness to believe. 

For those who have had an experience, spirit is so obvious that to attempt to convince someone else of it is head-bangingly frustrating, like a parent trying to teach a child addition who just can't grasp it.  Still, that is not all; our great philosophers, many of whom were atheists in the past 200 years, still had to play with the very idea of reality.  The conclusion, in various ways, often comes down to this: our reality - ANY reality - is a mental construct.  It is a given that our senses, our windows to the world outside our heads, are incomplete; and it is also a given that even this incomplete information is strained through the mesh of the brain, both through its own limitations and personal and cultural biases.  The writer of our editorial letter, then, confuses his own practical reality with REAL reality, which is beyond us, no matter your belief.  In fact, any reality system that we live by - even his - is in many ways a reality based on belief.  

Spiritual reality is based on philosophy's "apriori," something that is simply "given" so that we might talk about reality - or anything else.  It is the essence of Being beyond language or brain or sensory limitations.  That it exists is perfectly logical.  What it tells us is not - not when compared to our limited concepts of reality. The writer is confusing his reality for true reality, which even kindred souls in philosophy understand is beyond rational realization.  

What it tells those who experience it, though, is what we all know through the wisdom of the ages: that time and space are limitless and one, that we are all one in all, that everything is perfection, that the Absolute - even the null of Nirvana - is divine Love.  It is not rational, as no ultimate reality can be.  But it has been experienced as only the big picture can be - as all at once, as self-explanatory, as something so obvious it makes one cry - until that realization is folded back into the limited reality.  

New age books on quantum mechanics tell us that science is approaching the spiritual in spite of itself.  This does seem possible, but I don't know quantum mechanics.  However, spirit is not a fairy tale of the immature mind - only the representations of it are.  That something of its kind exists is philosophical truth. That it does exist as it does is simply truth, beyond philosophy.  It is time, I think, for our letter writer to try some truth -seeking of his own.  FK                

It has been my conceit to believe that I am open to new ideas, to new possibilities beyond my ordinary reckoning, but this weekend at the cabin taught me what a conceit this was. 

In the five years that we have owned it, I have never been there with my wife alone - it has always been with our son.  Other friends have gone up, but of course it's my cabin and they did things according to my custom (how much so I never imagined.) But with my wife, someone who over the decades has lost most illusions about me, I found myself disturbed that she instantly took over MY tea drinking spot and MY guitar couch.  She also had to go to bed earlier and wake later, a problem in a tiny cabin with an open loft where every move resounds like a sound box (not a good place to take another couple with whom one is not on very intimate grounds, as I found out before.)  It was built on the model of another cabin that I helped some friends with in Vermont when we were in our 20's - when piling in nearly on top of one another was normal and somewhat cozy.

It seems that "cozy" isn't the operative word for me now.  A few years ago when I found myself complaining too much, I realized that I was becoming "the grumpy old man."  I determined to not become the grumpy old man.  But it was not until this visit that I realized the true nature of the grumpy older person; they have their lives set.  They do not want their comfortable routines broken.  When they are, they complain.  Grumpy, grumpy.  

I adjusted because I had to, and we had an excellent time, but the truth remains - I am as caught in my habits as anyone else my own age.  I have changed remarkably from those cozy days when having a roommate in a tiny college cell was normal and sometimes fun.  The idea now is appalling.  With a wife, yes; with the world?  Not in your life, and I never even realized this had happened.  In my hitchhiking days I dreamed of a Utopian commune and found that I was too individualistic, regardless of my dreams.  Now even the idea sounds ridiculous. I want my tea-drinking spot!

If it were only that, I could shrug and forget about it, but with habits of actions, one might also expect habits of thinking.  Yes, I am open to inter-dimensional travel, the truth in a multitude of religions, ghosts, even aliens and flying saucers, but what of other political ideas?  What of other visions for our country and for the world?  Further, what of the nature of Truth itself, of God or non-god, of the very nature and reason for existence?  

Over time, many of us - certainly me - make a prison of life. Thomas Keating, whose book I am starting, tells us that we must make an ego for ourselves to become separate, so that God might see himself from another perspective, but that in doing so, most of us err.  Somewhere in adolescence we absorb the ethos of our culture and so continue the collective narrowness - we believe in the status symbols and hierarchies that we were fed, and so continue as if these make the nut of life, as if these should form our goals.  We seldom see, and certainly seldom live, life as a mature human being should - as beings cast in the image of eternity, made from nothing, adrift in infinity, and capable of cosmic realization.  Instead, we cling to our security blankets, as banal as they are. 

In adolescence we incorporate our cultural flatness, but
we are still closer to the openness that we need to expand, to become more.  If we don't watch out, with age that window narrows to almost nothing.  We are left with a comfortable little jail cell of our own making, afraid to change our place on the couch or our ideas about the most important things of all - if we even allow ourselves to think about them.  We are given many chances, for the greater world breaks in at many times, but these breaks we often see as misfortunes.  We - certainly me - want things to go as planned, according to our version of the cultural template.  And I would say with hindsight - one of the great things about age - that viewing the wrongs in our lives as simply misfortunes is a mistake.  

The very old sometimes do become wise.  One of the things that I have often heard them say is, "I wouldn't want to change a thing about my (past) life," and I have often gasped.  What?  You wouldn't change marrying the wrong person, selling your house at the wrong time, taking that wrong turn that caused an accident and your constant back pain?  But they often really mean it, and sometimes now I can see why.  It is the twists and turns from habit and cultural conformity that not only make life interesting, but also give us the texture, the nuance that we need to see the bigger picture.  And the bigger picture is better because it is true, and the truth of existence is greater than anything we can imagine.  Only with openness, which begins with trust, can a larger vision come to us, not from our conditioned past, but from what is outside our little cells.    FK 


               

A quick one today because I am late, late, late; a few days ago, I read famous inspirational speaker Eckhart Tolle who tells us, "just let go.  Be in the now."  But how hard that is!  Then, when in anxious turmoil last night, I read Father Thomas Keating.  In this passage he DOES tell us to let go - to let God do it when it is beyond rational control - but he also adds, "but this can be the most difficult thing.  If you center yourself though and become open, God will help you if you are ready.  It might be a phone call, it might be a book..."  And he was right. It was HIS book.  

Let it go - live yourself now, for that is the reality.  Do it with a little help from that which is always there; it is ready when you are.  It is true.  Sooner or later, when we are ready, the help comes. Grace lives, even here, even now.  FK  

Recently, someone I know has had to have psychological treatment for neurosis that had gotten out of control.  He could not work efficiently, could not enjoy more than a few moments at any time, and kept having to repeat scenarios over and over to a maddening degree.  Asked my advice on this, I at first suggested my preferred method - transpersonal psychology.  Freudian psychoanalysis is too mired in sex and the past, behavioral psych treats the social human as a robot, and both are absolutely soulless.  Transpersonal psych works within the spiritual framework, pointing towards the ultimate end of obtaining greater union with the greater Field, something I have highlighted in this blog again and again.  We are much more than our neurosis; we are on a quest in a marvelous, unimaginable universe.  Once we get our little selves out of the way, the stars are our destination. 

And yet, perhaps I am wrong.  Another friend of mine was involved with a "New Age" psychologist many years ago, who was probably a follower of the transpersonal philosophy.  Yet I was surprised to learn some years later that he (the psychologist) had committed suicide.  That was a startling bucket of cold water. What could have happened?

I do not sneer at neurosis.  Although not particularly bothered by such things, I did have a major run-in with it after first moving to Wisconsin 15 years ago (recounted in the foreword to "Dream Weaver.")  It was as if a monster, a demon had entered my head. I became a victim of this monster, who abused me constantly for shortcomings, as well as made me envision all the worst of life.  I could not find joy even on a beautiful day. Everything seemed to contain evil.  Somehow, gradually over a few years, it worked itself out, and as it did so, I realized what I had known but could not grasp before - that is was only me, Freud's super-ego, the policeman of the ego that makes us behave.  It had gone wild, some normal balancing tendencies having been weakened by my very unwelcome move.  

It did have its good side - it got me to start writing, and also to take up the classical guitar, both of which I do to this day.  In those exercises, I have realized some incredible things about life and been brought to realizations that have become more than mental play things.  

I did not receive counseling, but if I had, would the transpersonal kind have helped?  I was, at that time, into spiritual things, but now like now.  Would such a platform have made the weirdness in my head even weirder?  For there is one thing that you long for when under psychological stress - normalcy; just every-day socially constructed normalcy.  Leave the space- tripping to others, you just want to be able to sit comfortably and watch a sunset.  

So the transpersonal psychologists tell us themselves: the point of developing the ego is the create a firm platform to supersede it.  That is the point (or one great point) of creation - to develop an individuality that may then return to the Source with the total experience.  In psychological distress, we cannot do that - instead we cling, we create neurosis, we stick to anything that keeps us from sinking into the abyss.  We need normalcy first before we can explore - and psychological distress is a signal that the big "outside" is coming in and we are not handling it well.

I don't know at what level we have to be to handle such a thing, this looming greatness, well.  As Kathleen Singh has written, every dying person she has attended went through a period of extreme distress, to get ready for the loss of the small self and the entrance of the Unified Self. But perhaps in life, especially in the earlier to mid years, we need that strong ego first.  That is where regular, flat-plan psychology might work best.  The problem is, that might become all we get to know, but that is a problem that arises later.  

I will tell my friend, then, to find that which works the best.  I would advise, though, from noticing the experiences others have had: don't end up blaming all of your troubles on your parents.  "Man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." That is true, regardless of your conditioning.  We should, I think, simply (it may not be so simple) become comfortable enough to acknowledge joy, and from there, delve further.  Best of luck to you, my friend, on your voyage.  FK      

      

     
     

Finishing Singh's powerful book on death leaves me with two mostly unanswered questions: once we have obtained the "ground of being" in death, do we continue forever in this union? And, two: to what extent is this power present in the partial reality that we perceive in everyday life?  

For number one, Singh leaves us questioning; in some religious mythologies, we continue our lives much as we do here, except we are not frustrated by want or disease.  It is the life of Riley. This often includes a vague notion of living in closer harmony to God.  For others, we are born again in the cycle of karma, living out many lives until we have burned away the chaff of our mundane desires and defenses.  In many of the books I have read on the afterlife - of those who have experienced Near Death, they usually reiterate the first alternative, perhaps because most of these came from a Christian cultural background.  I will leave this question open for another time.

In number two - the "power's" involvement in our impermanent lives - Singh does tell us that those who pass certain thresholds DO often develop special powers such as ESP, telekinesis, clairvoyance ad so on.  She does not get into it, but the reason for it, given her overall approach, is obvious: once one has left the tight strictures of our small ego-selves, this greater power of creativity, which transcends spacial and temporal limitations, may start to appear in our lives.  Yogis and saints tell us the same, and warn those on the spiritual path against such powers - not because they are evil, but because they can seduce the acolyte into remaining at the level of small miracles, leaving aside the path to Union.  These powers might also be too tempting for the still-intact ego, and cause an abuse of power that leaves the soul far worse off morally than it was before - as the mad scientist or evil sorcerer.

However, Singh does not answer the question for us regular spiritual peasants: does the power (aka, the Absolute, or God) come into our lives in noticeable ways or are we opaque to such things in our extremely limited outlooks?  

It seems obvious to me that if all is from the Absolute, then even our little worlds are a part of this energy.  Then of course the Power is in our lives - if we are open to see it.  That is the big "if." I recall reading an author's autobiography where he talks about his old Kentucky mountain grandmother.  She lived in a small cabin in a "holler" with no running water or electricity, and so had no immediate communication with the broader world.  Still, when his parents would load he and his siblings into the station wagon, his grandmother would have a large meal prepared for them, as well as extra beds put down and so on.  When he would ask her how she knew, she would tell him she just knew.  The same has been shown to be true with pets - who often are waiting for their masters at precisely the right moment even after days of their absence (this has actual experimental validity - and many of us pet owners know this to be true already).  "Primitives," those who live in technological and social simplicity, generally have such inexplicable powers as well, just as some young children do.

In fact, it seems that 'miracles' happen all around us as well as in our lives - except we do not see them.  The fully developed modern ego, as understood in Singh's transpersonal models, is purposefully closed to such phenomena.  Quite simply, in sleep, in meditation, and by death, we become better acquainted with them - that is, in the moments where the ego-wall is weakest, the greater power can be witnessed.

This is what is meant by my favorite phenomena, "synchronicity," or, as Carl Jung defined it, "meaningful coincidence."  It is the greater reality popping up in the middle of our ego-dream.  It is the right exact change at exactly the right time, the long-lost friend calling after a thought about him, the tire blow-out that keeps you from the pile-up accident on the high way.  It need not always work to advantage, but it does work beyond our abilities to understand.  It happens when we can clear our thought patterns enough, our internal feedback loop, so that a wider view can pop in.  It knows when Uncle Joe is coming, when an accident will happen - and when death will come.  It is our spooky factor, the wink from beyond our little world that lets us know something else is going on.  It comes from the world that is beyond space and time - and beyond limits of power - but it is just a peek.  Any more and we would go mad, be seen as being mad (as are many saints, at least at first), or become hopelessly neurotic in an attempt to not go mad.  The power bounces around our conceptual walls like so many moths before the flame, but even more so - for the very development of this "flame" is directed by the power.  Know it our not, it is not only around us but in us.  "If we but had eyes to see..."    

And with that I end the exclusive talk about Singh's singular book on death.  Read it and you will agree that most if not all fits.  Which mean we are so much more than most of us can possibly imagine.  FK     
  

                     

Today, a new Essay, "Just the Ticket," under "Essays" in the website.  FK

Since reading the book on death (Singh, "Grace in Dying"), I have talked to three people about the phases the author has said ALL go through, particularly the one about panic (called Chaos). Surprisingly, all three denied that they would have this problem when they died.  I know what they mean, for we all know that death will come, and we all think that we are prepared for it.

This reminds me of a rather beautiful country/pop cross-over with the phrase, "If I die young, bury me in linen.." or something to that effect, evoking a beautiful but melancholy image of a beautiful young women covered in roses, leaving all to grieve.  Which also reminds me of Tom Sawyer's funeral, which he witnessed from the church balcony and which brought tears to his eyes, even though he knew very well that he was not dead.  In both cases, the death is envisioned by the superficial self as a handle-able, even poetic affair, all within the romantic aura that still permeates parts of our culture.  

However, the author reminds us that our ego-self cannot imagine its own death.  This is knowledge held in a repressed unconscious which, by definition, the ego has no access to.  By definition, the ego is separate from the "Ground of Being," by its very nature, that of a separate and autonomous self.  Thus, instead of finding the sad romantic image of death in our own death, we find chaos - a wild confusion at the crumbling of all our categories, including what we thought death was.  We will panic, in one way or another.  

Anyone who has taken a meditative path knows this, for at some point, the shadow, or repressed aspects of ourselves, begins to come out.  This is not the Ground of Being, but the safeguards we have placed in our development to prevent the Ground from coming out.  These safeguards are not pleasant.  They evoke fear and attempt to turn us back, as if  wearing a sign, "here dragons be."  It is the unknown and forbidden land.  And it is nothing, only the start, of where the chaos of death begins.  

Now, it could be my delivery - no one likes to be told how he or she will behave in the future, as if there were no individual control.  But that is exactly the point: at the closing in of death, there is no individual control.  There is no escape.  Our "selves" are cornered.  The only recourse left in the end is to surrender. And it is here at surrender where, the author claims, we begin to find our true selves.  However, according to her samples, even those who understand this must pass through the phase of chaos and terror, for it, death, is that total and that "other."  

It reminds me of my fearless youth, when I eagerly took psychedelics to "see the face of God."  The pattern is the same in this as in that of death - although at first there is hilarity in everything, as everything we have believed is unmasked as so obviously contrived.  But then it gets to ourselves - that what we think of ourselves is just as contrived.  There then comes the panic.  I recall one time reaching this peak, and coming to the conclusion that I simply could not live in this chaos (called "suicidal panic" by the author.  It does not necessarily come to everyone, but is a phase for some in Chaos).  I then stoically went to the chicken coup and sat down amid the feathers and straw to calmly die.  I did not die.  Rather, in the giving up of a resolution to the mess, a revelation of wholeness and beauty came.  I ended up never more glad to be alive (this, or another episode like it, is in the first chapter of my book, "Dream Weaver").  Unfortunately, I have long since fully regained the false ego.  I have no doubt that I will come again into this frightening land.  As for the psychedelics, it would take a lot of money - or maybe an impossible amount of money or something else - to have me go through that again.  It's that scary.

I do not believe in death.  Almost none of us really do.  Yet, like the existence of the Ground of Being (aka, the All or God), we know underneath or beyond it all, somewhere beyond our guarded gates, that it is real, more real than the lives we live.  We have given death a name, but like the name God, we do not, cannot know what it really is until we live it, become part of it.  But to do this we must "die to ourselves," never a comfortable thing.

And so I understand the affront of those who deny that their death will be so laced with fear and confusion.  To admit to that would be to admit to the limitations of our ego-selves, the soul source of reality to that same self.  Chaos is a fearful thing.  We can see it as it plays into the inevitability of war for our species, for to act upon chaos is so often thought to be a means of controlling it.  But as history tells us, we are more often surprised that chaos is chaos, beyond our control, better left to the natural order of things which will arrange it all perfectly, for all of us, in the end.  FK                                

As Cal waits in his hospital room for triple bypass surgery, it might be a good idea to skip talking specifically about death. However, Singh's "Grace in Dying" has brought out another topic for analysis, one spoken of many times before in this blog: are we of the world culture an evolving society, or are we dragging ourselves towards Armageddon? This was brought out by Singh in many ways, including this observation: "we"- our socio-cultural reality - is the collective view of all of us involved.  

If one thinks that our version of reality is true and not subjective, I bring again the example of the Hawaiian god Lono, who was thought by the native Hawaiians to come again at a certain date (they were sharp observers of the stars, particularly for navigation) at a certain place.  Sure enough, Captain Cook arrived at the right place and the right time, as certain to be the god Lono as the priests could tell.  Here they feted him, fed his men and sent women to them and bid them all farewell as they left to continued to move around the rest of the Islands in a counter-clockwise motion (as I recall - in any case, he went in the right direction) and then landed again at the spot that legend said Lono would land after taking exactly that voyage.  According to the Hawaiian scripture, at this juncture they were to kill him.  All was a part of the life-death-new life cycle they believed they and their gods were involved with, and Cook did exactly as he should have, as did the Hawaiians.  Cook was killed and reportedly eaten, as he should have been.  A new era did indeed begin then.  The prophets had been right.

But they hadn't been, at least according to Cook's point of view.   All was coincidence.  There was no god.  Ignorant superstition had mistaken he and his men for something they were not, leading to a change that the Hawaiians could not possibly have envisioned.  As far as our understanding goes, it was a curious though meaningless synchronicity.  

In that thought, however, comes the idea that we of the West, now the expanding world culture, have it right.  But according to Singh, we do not, not by a long shot.  All reality systems built on separation are partial, and in being partial, are ultimately false. Even science admits that every one of its theories have been proven to be wrong with time through partial knowledge.  The role of science, scientists say, is to continue to build towards a greater knowledge - but this knowledge will never be complete, and in that, will always be false.

However, just as the Hawaiians built on a foundation of gods and cycles that is incomplete and ultimately false, so are our assumptions - our underlying assumptions - partial and false. They have to be, for they separate us from the ALL, the Truth. As such, in the greater scheme of things  beyond practical survival skills, we are blind as bats.  Our assumptions about the greater role of ourselves as selves and our society at large are built on sand.  And yet they are built, for we weave order out of a chaos of parts, just as the astrologers of old wove figures and myths out of the stars.  To find our our direction, our collective future, then, we must discover the nature of the sand we have built upon.  

Or not.  Spiritual evolution would have it that we will discover a firmer plot of sand, and thus build further and higher until another, then another base is found until - we approach the All, Godhead. But is this true?

Kathleen Singh shows us that before we die, we must surrender our false self - our model of ourselves and the world - before we move to a higher, ineffable  level of the spiritual - a true or at least far truer realm.  But can this be done culturally without a cultural death?  If so, in a cultural death, mustn't we go through the pains and travails of death before we reach the higher truth?  In other words, if culture is a social collective, mustn't it be build on the same crumbling sand that our personal realities are built upon? And then, mustn't that have to crumble before enlightenment can ensue?   Aren't all cultural models incomplete, with built-in destruction modes, just as all bodies and egos are?

This would not necessarily mean mega-nuclear death for us, but rather "death" as the Hawaiians experienced with their own culture.  I leave it to them to decide if they have since risen to a higher realm, or are still in that process.  But the movement of building the ego, and then letting go in the dying process reminds us that such great change does not happen easily; it will not be done by gradual and comfortable steps.  If one must die to oneself before finding oneself, so must a collective die to itself to advance the collective.  It would seem to me that we are in for some wild rides before we find the peace of a New Age.  FK