The Whisper in the Wind

Forgiveness

2011-09-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

Fall is in the air. This has always been my favorite season - in Michigan where I grew up, the leaves change to brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red before falling delicately off the trees. I would pick up my favorites as I walked through my neighborhood and admire the individual color pattern of each. It all seems like a dream to me now... Fall is a time for dying, a shedding of old skin before the death slumber of winter, and then the joyous burst of life in the spring. It is the time for harvest, when we reap what we have sown throughout the current solar cycle. Many human cultures, recognizing themselves as part of this great cosmic system, have acknowledged this time of year, then, as a time to make amends with one another. Death has a way of bringing to the fore things that have been left undone - of forcing consequences to be faced. And so, during this time, our debts come due. We reap what we have sown. The fruits of our labor (both ripe and rotten) are borne.

Because we are part of an interconnected universe (and, even more intimately, human) community, our flaws, mistakes, and uncorrected issues tend to be brought out through our relationships with one another. We "rub" each other the wrong way, and things that need to be brought out of us to be dealt with for greater holistic health are triggered. Harvest time, dying time, is the period of the seasonal cycle to deal with those issues that have come out but not yet been addressed. We are an interconnected network. Therefore, I believe that "no (hu)man is an island" and thus no human's uncorrected issues, or sins, are hers and hers alone. Everything in the universe belongs, at least a little bit, to every one of us. And thus autumn is not just a time for individual shedding, but also a time for forgiveness. Many religions have acknowledged the great importance of regularly practicing forgiveness (and it's place in the great cycle of life in general) by ritualizing it during this time of the year: Jews celebrate Yom Kippur, Muslims celebrate Ramadan, and Jains do penance for their unaddressed karma during Paryushan.

I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness this fall, too. This year I've found myself entangled in some "messy" relationships, which hasn't been typical for me throughout my adulthood. Perhaps it is because my heart has been opening up in new ways over the past few years that those sticky issues, those thorns in my heart, have been "caught" by the thorns of others as they begin to get close. I have suffered some grievances, or very painful and unresolved conflicts with some I had trusted as friends, family, and cohorts. Perhaps, when we are hurt, it doesn't matter how much we consider someone a friend - it always hurts, it's always unjust, and it's always perpetrated by a being from this human family. But when we are shamed, rejected, abused, taunted, bullied, threatened, or beaten down by those from within our own tribe, however, the pain does seem to feel more severe. Perhaps it comes as more of a surprise. It's about trust, and who we let into our hearts and inner lives. When someone we trust betrays that trust, no matter the motive, we feel as if we've been shattered from within the sacred confines of our own heart. How, then are we to go on with our lives? How, then, do we resist the urge to board up our hearts to become bitter and brittle people who cannot truly engage in relationship, cannot truly grow, cannot discern spiritual wisdom, cannot access inspiration? How, then, after trauma inflicted by those that knew me but did not value me, am I to believe that I am still a being of light, precious to God and necessary to this earthly community? How, then, can I open myself again to life, rather than death, when I have been shattered?

Beyond these piled-up and writhing questions, undergirding them all with quiet dignity, lies the answer: through forgiveness. Jesus, when asked how many times a man should forgive a brother or sister who sins against him, said seven times seventy times. During the fleeting autumn of his own life, the "season" of his dying on the cross, he said of those that crucified him "forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do". This is what my own father advised me to do upon hearing of my own grievances. "Life is short, Kari" he said. "Just forgive them". My incredibly loving and ever-supportive husband, who truly knows my value and beauty more than any other human being in this world, said in response to my pain "You could do what Jesus did, and turn the other cheek. Or you could take a page out of Gandhi's book, and pocket the insult". My best friend said "Rise above the drama", and another friend said "Cut the spiritual entanglements based on fear - those based on love can never be cut". How grateful I am to have such mature and courageous people in my life, to hold me up and help me see the light when I feel that I'm wandering in the darkness. They hold a mirror in front of me, reminding me not only of my own value and beauty, but also of my own power and responsibility to be a loving and compassionate spiritual being who does the work necessary to learn from her mistakes and allow her weaknesses to become points of spiritual growth and strength, and uses her life to influence the world for love more than for hatred, bitterness or pride. I feel, in the midst of my pain and confusion, blessed. I feel blessed. And, this, I believe, is the beginning of forgiveness.

Is forgiveness the self-sacrifice of Jesus, who takes the world's sin upon himself so that the cosmic slate can continually be wiped clean? Is it the self-immolation of the boddhisatva, who renounces buddhahood to assist other sentient beings toward enlightenment? Yes, I think it is these things and more. Forgiveness is a profound, courageous, and loving act that brings great and deep joy. It is not the smug, power-based (fleeting) "joy" that comes from thinking you took the high road; it is the joy that springs from a place of being "in the flow" of Divine love. When I am fully connected with God's spirit, I feel that my "cup runneth over" and my capacity to love is infinite.

I began to write this essay as an exploration of forgiveness. I had hoped to come up with some elaborate cosmological explanation of the "mechanism" of forgiveness, and why it's important for spiritual health and why it works. But, I'm realizing as I write that forgiveness is mysterious. I know that it has something to do with accepting that, even when people choose to do malicious and hurtful things, it means they are hurting themselves and are in a worse hell than their victim, and already suffering the consequences of their sin in the midst of "committing" it. I know it has something to do with the "victim" freeing herself from the consequences of that sin, so that the negative energy doesn't stay bound up with her spirit. I know it has something to do with wiping the slate clean, which ultimately helps smooth out at least one wrinkle in the varied tapestry of cosmic life. And I know that it results in spiritual wisdom, love, joy, peace, and a deep knowing of Divine grace. But I don't quite understand it.

I think it's also worth noting that, because everything in the universe is interconnected, there is always a reason for everything we encounter in our lives, and the most painful experiences we have are those that hold the most potential for growth - it is these tender spots within our spirits that call for our attention and long to be given over to and healed by Divine hands. So, we always bear some responsibility for the experiences that come into our lives. The quality of the fruit that grows from these experiences, though, will be determined by how we respond to them. I hope that those with whom I have unresolved grievances choose to forgive me (the situation, and themselves) as well, passing their part of the spiritual burden on to Divine spirit to be resolved and dissolved by cosmic love.

Forgiveness is reaping the harvest of our work "in the fields". It is taking on the consequences of the unresolved entanglements in our lives and integrating them into our being for spiritual growth. It is "letting go" by giving the remnants of our grievances that are still with us to Divine spirit to be reabsorbed into the ground of being. Perhaps our sins, karma or unaddressed issues are like those dead leaves that cling to the branches in the fall. They change colors, brighten, so as to be noticed, and forgiveness is like the wind blowing softly on them so they'll drop onto the ground, only to disintegrate, become compost and nourish the soil below.

Forgiveness allows our hearts to become clear and open again. The Bible says "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life", and indeed, it is the most important organ of perception in my own life. Allowing it to become choked off with the tangled weeds of bitterness would be spiritual suicide. Those weeds must be cleared out, and forgivness is what allows the cleansing light of God to flush that most precious of wellsprings. In this way, forgiveness is truly a matter of eternal life and eternal death.

And, so, I forgive, out of responsibility to serve out my purpose in this earthly life, and because I love myself. I forgive, out of Divine joy and a desire to experience the peace and euphoria of being connected to Divine spirit, and because I love God. I forgive, out of compassion and love for those who commit grievances against me, because you are all my brothers and sisters, are all precious, and because I love you.

My heart is breaking open, and truth is spilling out

2011-06-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

I don’t know anymore if the ruthless pursuit of truth is the thing to live for above all. What does it mean to pursue truth: to know that I know, or to know that I don’t know? Or both? Is it always ultimately healing and life-giving in an eternal sense? Or does its searing pain burn away trust and love along with what is incomplete? I must submit, once again, in my ignorance, to that greatest of Truth-tellers, hidden behind so many veils. I must admit that I just don’t know. Truth abstracted from its Person can no longer be my idol, but its Person can. My heart is breaking. I hate feeling vulnerable, messy, and helpless almost as much as I hate ignoring the pursuit of authenticity, but I will keep seeking after Truth through Divine relationship, even in the stickiness of my own preconceptions splattered upon the floor around me, because that is my deepest soul nature. And I will be open to It coming to me in different guises. I will not let the weeds of bitterness choke out my heart, that most integral organ of perception and the wellspring of my life. I will fight to remain open, even as, even because, my heart is breaking open. My heart is breaking open (agony). My heart is breaking open (Hallelujah). My heart is breaking open, and truth is spilling out.

I am reminded once again of Jon Foreman's haunting song "Cure for the Pain", in which he sings "It would be a lie to run away":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-_sZIh2cQ

Mother

2011-05-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

It's my first Mothers' Day as a mother myself, and I'm feeling privileged to be mother (and all that entails) to my wonderful son Forrest. Today I'm enjoying him, what it is to be his comforter, nourisher, security, love, teacher, guide, disciplinarian, and defining matrix of his world. But I'm also thinking of my own mother. Everything I know about being a mother has been inspired by my memories of her mothering and by my invocation of her spirit throughout these past 7 months. Even though she's passed on, she continues to guide me with quiet strength in some mysterious way. I miss her with an ache that just never fades. She's been gone 5 years now, and to honor her in light of Mothers' Day, I'm posting the eulogy here that I wrote and read at her funeral in 2006. You pervade my being, Mom. I miss you. Thank you for creating me, supporting me, loving me, and teaching me how to be that most sacred of figures, a mother.

Eulogy:
Once upon a time, there was a little fish named Finda. She grew up at the mouth of a stream, and thrived there. One day, she began to wonder what was outside of her own little stream. She wondered if currents existed in other place that felt different, what kinds of other creatures lurked outside of her community. Her head swirled with dreams of what lay beyond. One day, she went exploring on her own. She found herself in an interesting place. The water was pushing at her tail in a stronger way, almost as if it were calling her on an adventure. So, Finda took a deep breath, and dove in the direction of the pressure. She found herself tumbling and twirling in a column of water, barely able to breathe. She was terrified! “What if I made a mistake?” she wondered. Finally, with a slap, the twirling stopped, and Finda hit a rock. She looked around her, and was amazed at what she saw. There were gloriously beautiful and exotic creatures all around her – so colorful and varied. It was unlike anything she ever could have imagined. Soon, she met an exciting rainbow trout, and he became her companion. They traveled the river together and shared many exciting adventures. She hatched 3 eggs, and doted over her beautiful baby fish. The little family was happy. One day, after many years, she encountered something strange. A wiggly pink piece of food appeared before her eyes as if by magic, and it glistened in the sunlight. She was curious, and bit onto the food. Immediately, a searing white-hot pain burned through her mouth. She was lifted up out of the water, her world, and she gasped for breath. She wriggled and wriggled for her life. Snap! – she broke free, but not without a souvenir to remember the experience. Finda was left with a wound that never left her. She continued with her travels down the river and never complained about her wound. She was content to be with her little family. One day, she began to wonder what lay beyond her surroundings, just as she had in her earlier days. She wondered if the river was all there was to life? It seemed to her that there must be more. The question tugged at her day and night. Where does the river lead? They had heard stories about what was beyond the river – it was called “ocean”, and all kinds of beliefs about what it was like abounded throughout riverine communities. But nobody really knew that it existed, let alone what it was like. One especially cloudy day, as she and her family swam along, they ran into an invisible wall. It was a strange wall, and it tasted salty. It was a bit scary, but intriguing. The rest of her family was afraid, but she was bold, an explorer. She heard the ocean calling to her. So one day, with characteristic bravery and adventurous spirit, as her family looked on, she took the leap through the salt wall into the great beyond.

I probably don’t have to tell you all that my mother was a remarkable person. When I think of her, the main thing that I think of is her incredibly fierce inner strength. She had conviction. That incredible inner strength was combined in my mother with a deeply sensitive compassion, making her an amazingly valuable person for doing the work necessary to make the world a better place to live. She believed in many worthwhile causes, and truly acted out her convictions in loving, peaceful, and effective ways. To the best of her ability, she practiced what she preached.

She was truly a visionary, an innovator, and a revolutionary, ahead of her time. She was counter-cultural. She took more extra steps than we’ll ever know in order to help form young minds, those of my siblings and I as well as those in her classrooms so that we would value that which is truly important.

Yesterday, at the visitation, I was speaking to one of my mother’s friends from her teaching days who told me all about her and how she believed so much in empowering young women, even before it was fashionable to be involved in womens’ lib. Mom believed that young women were tomorrow’s leaders, and they had to be empowered if we were ever going to change the world. She committed herself to that cause, raising up tomorrow’s leaders and innovators through teaching. I remember that when I was a child, Mom would not allow me to watch the Miss America pageants, because she did not want my brother and sister and I to value only outward beauty. I feel so fortunate to have had a mother like her. She taught me to respect myself. She taught me that I can do anything I put my mind to. She gave me the self-confidence and skills to believe that I’m capable of breaking every glass ceiling out there.

My mom was so passionate about peace in the world, and had such a big heart (something that is not valued enough in today’s society). As kids, we weren’t allowed to play with toy guns. We weren’t allowed to watch any violence on television, movies, or video games. I am so thankful for that. To this day, Ami, Kevin, and I are all very sensitive to any violence that we see or experience. This allows us to see the world through different eyes than many of our peers, and inspires us to work for peace in powerful ways. There is so much strength in compassion and sensitivity. Mom, of course, hated war. I know that everyone hates war, but I learned first-hand how much my mom hated war when the Gulf War started in 91. She didn’t cry too often, but I remember that as she watched the news that night in the kitchen as she made dinner, they announced that war had been declared. I was alarmed as a child to walk into the kitchen to find my mom bent over the counter, by herself, weeping over this news. She cared so much about people. The people of Iraq, the people of Kuwait, the soldiers on all sides – they weren’t just numbers to her – they were people. I think the reason that she was able to see them as real people is because of her willingness to reach out and understand cultures so drastically different from her own in a time when that just wasn’t done. And she valued human life so much. Mom was an independent thinker, and a brilliant woman, with more beautifully humble inner strength than anyone but God knows.

She was a practical idealist who believed that anything is possible, but that we have to go out and be the change we want to see in the world. Because of that, I believe it’s people like her who make life worth living. This is her legacy to me. And I will carry these values, ideals, and zeal for compassionate causes on through the next generation as I move forward in my life to make my own family.

I honestly believe that my Mom is at peace as we speak. For much of our lives, death seems like simply a far-off theological concept. We can talk and think and worry about it for our whole lives, but we’ll never quite understand it until we experience it. I had the opportunity to be with my mother this past week as she experienced it. There is a bond between mother and daughter that can only be described as mysterious. She participated in creating me. She held me in her womb, and I entered the world through her. When the bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh and spirit of your spirit is dying, there comes a whole new understanding of death. When she left us, there was nothing but peace surrounding her. I know with a great certainty that she is at rest. She is dancing with God, at true peace.

Thank you, Mom, for everything. Thank you God for giving my mother to the world.

Beauty: Reflections on, Projections of

2010-12-31T23:11:00.000-08:00

I'm on the Oregon coast right now, on vacation, and it's been storming for a full day. One of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, that I love traveling, no matter what the conditions, is that I love to get a feel for the character of a place. Even if the weather is grumpy, fierce or downright depressing, I feel the spirit of a new place, and enjoy getting to know it. This particular place seems rugged, fierce, tough, and wild. It's stunning! I am in awe at the great power I witness here, where the waves "do whatever they want all the way across the Pacific and then encounter this coast" (as my husband so eloquently put it), slamming against the shore with wild abandon, white caps obliterated into angry mist as they hit scraggy rocks - wind, their constant companion, whipping relentlessly at the trees standing sentry at the gate to land. It's all so intimidating and inspires in me a feeling of great respect for the Earth and all its different expressions of itself in nature. I'm overwhelmed, awe-struck and captivated by such beauty.

I've been thinking a lot about beauty recently. The topic came up with some girlfriends at a party, which is always a sensitive topic to broach with young women, and there were some tender feelings prickled as we discussed the idea of the "truly beautiful woman" and touched on whether any of us qualified. The question arose: What does beautiful mean? What is beautiful?

My mother, a very beautiful woman in every way, was careful to raise me in an environment where I would strive to develop as a whole person - strong, intelligent and confident. Some people might call this feminist - I just call it healthy. My sister, brother, and I were not allowed to watch the Miss America pageant that came on television once a year because it encouraged limited notions of the value of a woman. And so I grew up with a very open view of what a beautiful woman was. In fact, I didn't give much thought to what a beautiful woman was, because there was so much more to women than just what they looked like, in my mind. My mother had this mug, or bookmark or something in the kitchen that had a quote printed on it: "Beauty is truth; and truth, beauty" and this always resonated with me, and I believed it. But when I encountered adolescence, of course new challenges arose. Thank God I endured those years with the solid foundation of where to find my value (in all of my identity) underneath the raging storms of emotion and self-doubt, but on the surface, it suddenly became important to me (as it does for many girls) what boys thought of me. My awakening sexuality was at first expressed in terms of: Who sees me? Who wants me? Am I captivating? Am I worthy of attention? And most importantly, Am I beautiful?

"Am I beautiful?": This is the question that rings through each and every woman's mind in one form or another, and it is unfortunate that we often seek the answer to this question in the response of others (men, women, all) to our presence, especially when we do not feel empowered to define our interpretation of reality for ourselves. Because I had the confidence in my teenage years to know that my value did not just come from outer beauty, I was able to excel at many things. I was the MVP for the basketball team (my one year of athletic glory), I played piano, flute, French horn, and guitar, I was the flag captain in the marching band, I was on a competitive math team, a competitive trivia team, and had lots of friends. I knew I wasn't worthless, but I never knew if I was beautiful. Boys seemed to respond to a certain kind of pretty that I just couldn't figure out. I had no concept of graceful, refined, or elegant. I didn't know how to walk, talk, or dress to impress and attract boys, like a lot of girls did, and I didn't feel like I should have to change who I was or how I presented myself just to get them to notice me. One girl in my gym class told me that I walked like a guy. She "taught" me how to "walk like a woman", swinging her hips from side to side. I thought she looked ridiculous, and thought "But I am a woman! So how I walk is how a woman walks!" I was just hopeless at enhancing my "beauty", whatever that was.

I watched my friends as many of them lost themselves in their attempts to fit the mold of what they thought would make them noticed, worthy, valued, and beautiful. I watched as playful, tree-climbing, pranksters turned to doe-eyed, self-conscious, hair-combing fembots, batting their eyes for male looks, selling their souls for dates and kisses. Although I don't think I ever became a fembot, I certainly engaged in my own self-deprecating behavior in the search for validation. We were all in pursuit of the beauty within ourselves, that elusive state of being that seemed just out of reach when we looked at magazines or watched MTv.

For a long time, I did believe that beauty was truth, and truth, beauty. But then again, the doubt lingered at the back of my mind - what about how all the boys seemed gaga over certain girls? What was it that they were responding to? And why didn't I have it? Or did I have it after all? I remember watching a documentary a long time ago, and I don't remember what it was about, but in it, they talked about universal beauty. And how in every culture, and every civilization throughout history, there are certain standards of beauty that hold true. Babies and children even respond better to certain features in people that are perceived as beautiful. I remember they said it has a lot to do with facial symmetry, the proportion of waist to hips on a woman, health and fertility. So outer beauty wasn't just arbitrary - it wasn't just in the eye of the beholder - it was a real, true concept. It turned out that life was unfair. It turns out there is a reason why we admire the looks of Audrey Hepburn, Angelina Jolie, and Ashwarya Rai over average beauties, plain Janes, or homely Harriets.

So there we have it: two theoretical concepts of the definition of beauty, (beauty is truth, or beauty is associated with certain characteristics indicative of health and superior genetics) and a confusion as to how these concepts translate into practical terms (the question every woman asks: "Am I beautiful?"). Where do we go from here? What is beautiful? Is a rose more beautiful than a fern? A praying mantis more so than a cockroach? And why? I think it's worth exploring the ideas of "inner" and "outer" beauty here. Many women cringe when someone tells them "you're so beautiful, on the inside". Every woman wants instinctively to be seen as beautiful on the outside, for people to see plainly, clearly, and simply the beauty that we intuitively know is inside of us. But, really and truly, what always matters in life is the heart of things. The "outside", or the surface of life, is simply a projection of what is on the inside. The trouble here is that all of creation is inter-connected, and so when a person is born with good looks, it has to do not with that person's choices as an individual or her character, but rather with the full health (including spiritual health, indicative of character) of her ancestors. If that person maintains strong and healthy character, her inner beauty will match her outer beauty, but if she doesn't, her outer beauty will be deceiving. It is elusive; it will fade and decay. Eventually the inner character will be projected in the surface look of the person, but if one doesn't look past the surface, he will be temporarily seduced by a fading glimmer.

A few days after the conversation among my girlfriends on beauty, I shared my reflections with one of them. I told her that I wasn't sure if I was beautiful or not, as a rose is beautiful. All humans respond to a rose's beauty, automatically, instinctively - there is a human attraction to such outer beauty. And I don't know if there is such a human attraction to the way I look. Sometimes there is, but not always. I suggested to my friend that perhaps I'm beautiful as a fern is beautiful, but not as a rose. There have been people throughout my life who have told me that they find me beautiful - my husband, lots of friends, people I've met here and there, and random men calling out on the street - people say I have shiny hair, or beautiful skin tone, nice legs, a strong profile, etc; there have been people who have told me I'm not - that I have strange shoulders, animal hands, that my nose is too wide, my face too round, or my everything too big; and society tells me every day that I don't quite fit the mold that many women try to squeeze into, all of them unsuccessful because it is a mold created to be unattainable for the purpose of generating consumeristic drive. I don't know how "surface beautiful" I am (or am not), but I think it's a waste of time to ask the question, because how much does it really matter? It is so cliche to say, but so profound to recognize that outer beauty is fleeting. Outer beauty is truly only skin deep. A rose may bloom, but it quickly fades. As I look in the mirror, and ask it the age-old question: "Mirror, who is fairest of them all?" I watch as the reflection looking back at me changes with every tick of the clock. It is especially fitting that I should address these issues as I celebrate my 30th birthday, and just three months after I've given birth. My body is changing and aging, and I'm facing questions of what is beautiful with a new urgency during this time in my life. I have spent much of my self-reflectively conscious life attempting to cultivate my inner beauty (of course not without distraction), and I can say at this point in my life, that I'm glad for every moment that I have been successful at it. Investing in something that lasts and holds, rather than a glimmering image, tenuous as the ripples in a pond, is ultimately fulfilling and brings a deep and quiet joy. So many women waste their lives away, fretting and fussing, prodding themselves in front of their mirrors. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?", distracting themselves from truly living. What they really want to know is: Am I beautiful? Do you see me? Can you see the great and captivating beauty that I feel I could be, deep down inside? If only our mirrors could show us what's beyond the surface, a picture of our inner selves, a drop of the glory of God marred by wounds and streaked with doubt. Then we would primp and groom those parts of ourselves that really matter, and our true, deep, full and healthy selves would shine out through our skin, each of us a unique aspect of the beauty of Creation which encompasses all qualities.

The answer to our question is YES. We are all beautiful, underneath the surface. We are all drops of God, each piece of Creation unique and necessary, with a true name and an important purpose. The more we excel at allowing our true light to shine, the more our beauty will captivate the world on the outside. Genetics reflects the legacy of our ancestors' attempts at doing this. But genetic beauty, the attractiveness of our features, is such a small piece of what beauty really is. The only thing that isn't beautiful in the whole universe is the projection of our brokenness, where we try to cover over our wounds and fight the grace that the Divine sheds on us. Even our brokenness is beautiful, because it's through these cracks in the surface of our lives that the light really breaks through as we are forgiven and redeemed.

Oregon's coastline is stunning, in a powerful, intimidating way. Its foliage unique and varied, its rains energetic with reckless abandon, its haunting moss dripping off wind-whipped birches and sea lions barking in their perpetual wrestling with the relentless waves. It is shocking in its beauty, awe-inspiring in its unapologetic expression of itself. I pray that I can be that unapologetic in the expression of myself - uncensored and uncovered, without self-conscious doubting and wondering - am I beautiful? Perhaps all of creation is meant to shine this way, the way that the Oregon coast does. I think it is true that our biggest fear is our own greatness. It is more unfortunate than I can express here how the image-driven consumer-machine by which global society has become defined has stripped women, especially, of all unique expression, as womens' images are commodified more than anything else in its grip. When I was pregnant with my son, the weekend that I first began to notice stretch marks growing over the until-then smooth skin of my belly, my husband and I went walking among the Sequoias of southern California. These are enormous and mystical trees, very old, and if you are intuitive like me, you can feel the great wisdom echoing in their auras. My husband commented on the beauty of one particular tree, wrinkled and stretched with uneven growth, the story of its life mapped out on its bark. I compared it to another tree next to it, comparatively young - stark, thin, and straight. Although I appreciated the perfect parallels of those straight lines it traced, there wasn't much to appreciate about the young tree. It was the older tree that seemed to have a story to tell; the older tree that was compelling, wise, and endlessly interesting. As I traced its story with my fingers, I thought of the story that was being written in my life, on my stomach. And I realized that my stretch marks were profoundly beautiful. Now I wear them like a map of the time when life grew inside of me. I am remembering through motherhood, and life in general, what we should all recall - that the beauty of each one of us is shockingly powerful, captivating. If we could fully comprehend it, we would be completely awe-struck. Fretting over the length of a nose, the curve of a leg, or the softness of a belly seems so silly when compared with true beauty, and it is scandalously tragic when we dream of changing ourselves or even go under the knife to change ourselves when we feel into the beauty that we know we embody.

In an attempt to get in touch with my inner self, and to focus on the belief that the energies that make up "me" are, in this unique combination, lovely, and, yes, beautiful, even in all my quirky glory, I am attempting to conjure up and invoke in my life the spirits of women who inspire me, who I find to be beautiful in their own ways, so that I can have the confidence to let my light shine, in a society where youth, glitter, and one-dimensionality are the primary virtues that define surface beauty, and the primary things that distract us and steal away our attention from its rightful owner, which is the light of the Divine. If you are struggling to believe that you're beautiful, perhaps you, too, should find figures whose beauty inspires you, so that you can get in touch with your true self and find the courage to unleash its radiance into a world that desperately needs it for its own inspiration.

Here is the beginning of the circle of beautiful women that I am drawing on for inspiration:

my mother
Katherine Mansfield
pilot lady from the cover of the Women Who Dare 2009 Engagement Calendar (wish I could remember her name!)
Rosie the Riveter
Frida Kahlo
Joan Baez

Birth Pains

2010-10-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

I'm officially a mother! My son came into the world late at night on September 29. He is absolutely beautiful! It's hard to describe what it's like to become a parent for the first time, to be around new life that is this fresh… I'm finding it difficult to reflect on my experience, I suppose because I'm so immersed in it. It's hard to get the distance required to comprehend what's really happening. I have what they call "baby brain"; I am functioning out of my body mostly - and I have felt that I'm constantly pouring my body out for this child. This is my life right now - a vessel focused solely on his proper nurturing and growth; this is the essence of my love right now – physical and raw, pouring myself out through my milk.

My son has a beautiful swirl on the top of his forehead – marked in the soft fuzz of the beginnings of his hair. It reminds me of the great red spot on Jupiter, the enormous storm that has been raging on that planet for at least 400 years. I tell the baby that he came into the world with the storm of Jupiter, as his birth ended up being quite a dramatic event.

My water broke early, and because of the risk of infection, my healthcare providers have a policy to induce labor if a mother doesn't spontaneously go into labor within a given time of her water breaking. My husband and I tried everything we could think of and more to induce labor without drugs – walking, nipple stimulation, prayer and driving to an acupuncture clinic for treatment meant to induce active labor. The midwives let us wait as long as they could, and I did go into labor, but progress was so slow that we finally gave into the strong recommendations of the midwives that we chemically induce.

I won't go into detail about the following 20 hours or so – needless to say, they were excruciatingly painful and exhausting – active labor. I finally reached full dilation, and the midwives, doula, and my husband could see the baby's head. I pushed for 3 hours. I can honestly say that I used up every last ounce of energy I had. I have never in all my life worked so hard for something. I danced on the knife-edge between conscious and unconscious worlds as I desperately tried to pass this baby all the way out from me with my own strength. He was face-up, and his head was cocked to one side. Specialists in turning babies were brought in. They coached me and tried to get his head straightened so he could pass underneath my pubic bone – but he wouldn't budge.

So I had a c-section. Lying on the operating table, exhausted beyond measure, paralyzed from the chest down, and again teetering on the edge of consciousness, I felt utterly helpless. The scene before me faded in and out of view. I tried to focus on my husband's eyes peering out, concerned, from above his mask, for reassurance. I felt, as the doctors cut me open and brought my son into the world under those harsh lights, that I was lying in the pit of hell.

The doctor who delivered my son found him positioned with his foot stuck up under his chin (which explains why his head was cocked and the need for the c-section) – she said she'd never seen that before in all her years of practicing. As I met my beautiful son, I struggled to stay conscious. I struggled to comprehend what was happening as I kissed his face fresh from my body. I felt lost and disconnected and struggled to recognize this person as the one I had grown and held and nurtured in my body for the last 9 months.

This story is so traumatic that I can hardly bear it. There is so much pain and disappointment to grapple with! The days recovering in the hospital following the birth were equally as dark. They dragged on, and I struggled to comprehend what was happening. It felt as if I had been thrust into a different realm of the universe, suddenly, and I was grasping in complete darkness to orient myself. It was as if, when I was split open, so was the space-time continuum and that there was a complete disconnect between worlds.

As the pain meds faded, and my mind gradually came back into focus, I was left with a lot of questions and immense grief that it takes courage to face in the midst of the joy surrounding me from family and friends. How could I cope with how my son's life had begun, and with how my journey as a mother had begun? How could I accept what had happened as real, with any kind of strength or grace? How could I go on in the visceral way I had to, as this child was depending on me for his very survival? How could I look into his bright and hopeful eyes and face my own feelings of loss, helplessness, and failure, as he looked to me for his own sense of orientation and reassurance?

Early in my pregnancy, I experienced some dark moods and was talking to a friend about it. I mentioned that I worried that my depression was affecting the baby's experience as he was taking shape, and he said “And vice versa. You're probably feeling what the baby's experiencing as well”. That concept blew my mind, and throughout the pregnancy, I continued to think of mine and the baby's journeys as intertwined, neither more dominant than the other – inextricably linked and directed by the complex and mysterious combination of combined destiny and will, both mine and his. It consoles and encourages me to think that, despite my not being fully “there” for my son's birth, perhaps we were more bonded than I felt at the time, by the fact that we were probably experiencing the birth very similarly. I can imagine that, for him, the feeling of being transported into another realm was felt quite literally. For him, the veil that had always sheltered him from the world to come was ripped away suddenly, and he had no idea what was behind it. He and I both were thrust into a new place, disoriented by bright lights, masked realities, exploded expectations, and stunning pain. We went to the place where life begins and ends together, to the River Styx, and we crossed it. We went there, holding hands, both in the thick of it, primally, not able to comprehend what was happening as it happened – there being only room for feeling, and none whatsoever for reflective thinking. Raw fear, searing pain, hard work, and the fire of transformation consumed us and devoured us, spitting us out upon the shore of the other side. If that's not bonding, then I don't know what is. I don't know if mothers often experience the birth of their children this way – perhaps some of the excruciating pain is there by design, perhaps we all go to the place where life begins and ends as mothers in order to retrieve our children - but I suppose it's not my place to question that. I've learned that something as primal, deep, and intimate as childbirth is like nothing else, and, similarly to birth, sex, or death, a person's experience with it is uniquely expressed in that person's soul and cannot be adequately explained or described.

This birth experience has taught me (as so much of the pain in life has) about acceptance, or as a Jain or Buddhist might call it, non-attachment. Ultimately, I've now realized, this birth story is not about me. As I alluded to in my blog entry about motherhood (which I wrote while pregnant), I was simply the vessel through which my son entered the world. This is my story in some sense, but it's also his, and, more wholly, this story is God's. I have been reminded that although my life is “mine” to choose how to live, my life is not mine alone. I am not only a vessel for my child, but, more than anything else, a vessel for God to act in the world. I live because God gives me breath. I live because God placed me in this life. I have a calling, and it is by God's grace alone that I can live it. The best I can hope for in this life is that I can find that “vein of gold” that allows me to live in the way that God would have me live, to learn the lessons that will shape me into the Self that God wants me to be, to find deep and ultimate fulfillment in that. In that spirit, frankly, I will not always get what I “want” in life. Sometimes, I simply have to accept, accept, accept things that are difficult, and allow God to write my story, no matter how painful. To live in the story He gives me with a spirit of non-attachment, a spirit that is able to live into it while transcending it; to feel it deeply but also to feel the stillness that is God at the center of it. I've been counting my blessings instead of focusing on the loss of the ideal, or the loss of what I wanted for this birth. Thank God for my healthy boy. Thank God that I made it through this delivery alive, and that I will recover (many women in the developing world cannot hope for the same). I get to continue to live and learn and grow through this life! What a blessing.

The most poignant part of this story, for me, is the date that my baby came into the world - September 29, 2010. This date is exactly 10 years after my other most transformative experience in life occurred, when I first enjoyed a mystical communion with God, “accepting Christ into my heart”. I wrote in my journal on Sept 29, 2000, “I experienced the effects of the Holy Spirit for the first time today...” It is remarkable that this baby chose to come into the world early and chose this exact special day (or that God chose it, or that I subconsciously chose it – or all of the above). I do not know what it means, but it speaks to me of profound themes, such as the tension between the ideal and the fallen, the hoped for and the settled for, and how the spirit of Christ represents the choice to live in that tension for me. Christ, arms spread on the cross - on one side the criminal who joins him in heaven, and the other, the one who goes to hell - is the reconciliation of heaven and earth, of the spiritual and the material, of God and humanity. He is the middle path, and it is this path, I believe, that allows us the friction required to move the Earth forward along its journey of transformation towards a state of heaven. “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven”. The middle path is not a path of the ideal. It is a path fraught with very real dangers; it is a path through the narrows. The Bible says “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:13-14, New International Version). It is a path of constriction and the pain of transformation. This path is the path of humanity, and humanity alone. We are the beings in this universe who alone have the power of self-reflective consciousness, and it is we who are thus tasked with the deliberate transformation of the world. I think here of birth and human (imperfect, overly-mechanized) intervention versus the ideally-experienced“natural way”, and how my baby's birth walked the line between these ways. I so longed for the natural way. I so longed for the ideal. I left no room in my mind for anything other than that. But when my water broke on Sept 26, a chain of events was set in motion that reminded me indelibly that I don't live in an ideal world, and that neither will my son. That we are tasked with walking this middle path between spirit and flesh, “carrying our crosses”throughout our lives.

I remember that early on in labor after all other alternatives had been considered, I finally consented to the first intervention in the birth. It was a pill I had to take that would soften my cervix to make it ready to deliver. As I dropped the pill into my mouth, I sighed to the midwife and my husband and said, sarcastically, “the bitter pill of compromise”. This poignant phrase pretty much sums up the entire experience for me. It is a deep cosmic compromise to live somewhere between the ideal and the purely broken. Yet there is something so tragically beautiful about this compromise, something that feels grounded and real, earthy and so... human. With this reflection, then, I will “take up my cross” and accept this experience for what it has been, for myself, my husband, and my son, thank God that He exists, thank God that I exist, lift my eyes towards heaven, and continue walking this rocky path.

The Mother

2010-09-23T23:38:00.000-07:00

I swam beneath a beautiful starry sky tonight, held together by the full moon, and felt a resonance with her fullness as I turned inward and felt my own fullness, my body rounded with fluid and child.

I thought, as I hovered in the water, about my mother, who left this world in 2006, and wished for the millionth time that she were here to share in this time of anticipation, joy, and initiation with me. I recalled that common sentiment from after she died - well meaning people telling me that she'll never leave me, she's still with me. And I wondered - is she really? In what form is it possible that my mother could still be around? And with what eyes does she look down upon me?

Of course I don't know the answers to these questions, and I haven't spent much time considering them, but my initial instinct is that my mother, as she was, no longer exists. Though of course I do hope that her spirit, holding its integrity, continues on its journey in some form, in mysterious realms beyond this one, the embodied bouquet of energies that made up her core consciousness has irreversibly changed form - it seems to me that these energies must re-orient themselves, that this energetic body "dissolves", just as the external body does. And yet I feel her motherly presence around me. I feel her in the way she's shaped me, in the qualities and character of my family. She is with me in some way. I don't know in what way this is, but I do know that where I feel her most of all is perhaps as a being related to the concept of "mother", who continues to nourish me and nurture me, just as she did in her embodied self before that self dissolved.

This got me thinking - what is "mother", in the general sense of the word? What is "mother" as a spiritual concept, being, or archetype? Who is Our Mother, really?

The doula that I'm working with for the upcoming birth of my son, which is due to happen any day, recently suggested to me that I prepare a collection of presences around me of strong women who inspire me - women who support me in my journey into motherhood - either literally or figuratively, directly or indirectly, physically, emotionally, or spiritually. It feels very important for me to be in touch with feminine strength at this time, and to draw on that collective spirit. And just as I can sense a collective feminine spirit, held together in some way and represented and centered in the concept of the Divine Feminine, and the being of the Goddess, I can also sense a "mother" being (archetype) within the cosmos, and it is She who I feel my mother in. It is She who holds me, supports me, believes in me, nurtures me, and beckons me now, as I stand on the threshold of initiation into the sacred role of motherhood.

I feel that this archetypal being, this spirit of mother, shudders now with anticipation, waits eagerly to enter my being, to become part of the energy that makes up my consciousness, to pour herself out through yet another "tap" into the material world, through me!

I see her in the moon and feel her in the waves, and she calls to me: "Kari - meld with me, embrace me, become one with me, and know what it is to be mother - nurturer, care-giver, guide, provider of sustenance, agape-lover, compassionate goddess, embracer of the world, vessel of life..."

In this way, I enter a tribe of women, I become my mother and every mother who has ever existed, and I come to know the Goddess in yet another way, entering gladly into her mystery, and into the Arms of the Universe and Life Itself.

The Essence of Faith

2010-09-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

It's a familiar pattern

A familiar pain

I'm standing on the edge of hope once again

Are you taking my dreams, and burning them away?

So that I'll fall from

Illusion and follow your way?

Why does this walk require such a state

Of constant disillusionment, a doomed fate?

How can I move forward, and continue to grow

When all I can manage is to shrink back, eyes closed

To more and more of this cosmic flow

Are you sharpening my vision so that I know

How to see the world as more whole?

I don't want to give up and live a life that's not full

Oh God you're the only place I find hope

So as I fall off this edge

Of my illusion into this abyss

I'll re-dedicate myself to you

Breathe in deeply this elusive mist

Falling, falling – constant threat of pain

Learning, learning to let it drip off me like rain

I can't hold onto life

Attachment offers nothing real to gain

So despite my instinct to grab onto something new

I'll open myself up now to just You

And accept that life is learning how to die

To my ego, my passions, illusions, and lies

Teetering on the edge of where hope and despair meet

Standing but knowing the ground could shift beneath my feet

This instability requires dependence on grace

This perpetual falling is the essence of faith

The Spirit of Sacramento - 3: Taize Prayer Service - Saint Francis of Assisi Parish, downtown Sacramento

2010-08-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

Taize is a small village in the heart of southern France, that has become known worldwide due to the presence of an ecumenical Christian monastery there, called simply "The Taize Community". This monastic community was founded by Frere Roger Schutz-Marsauche, a Swiss theologian, in 1944, just after World-War II. It has grown to a community of over 100 monks, and people flock there week after week to pray with them in their special mode of prayer, contemplative singing. I had the great privilege to spend 10 days at the Taize monastery in the summer of 2008, and it was an experience that reignited my faith in and relationship with God. The meditative singing took me deep into the recesses of my heart, where I felt that I was able to meet God in a deep and profound way, and commune with Him/Her in a way that was authentic and deep, rather than contrived or narrow, as attempts to describe or intellectualize often are.

Needless to say, I have a great respect for Taize-inspired prayer, and a soft spot in my heart for it. When I moved here to Sacramento, I was thrilled to find out that there was a weekly Taize prayer service at a local Catholic church. I go to it from time to time, when I find that I need to commune with God or when I need refreshment or re-centering. It's a wonderful way to do this, and also to bless others by adding myself to the numbers of those attempting to invoke the presence of the Holy Spirit in centered and deep worship.

Two Wednesdays ago, I attended the service at St. Francis of Assisi parish, which is a breathtakingly gorgeous older church with intricate carvings and inspiring stained glass surrounding a dark and intimate sanctuary. The Taize prayer service is on Wednesday evenings at 6:00, and lasts for an hour. I usually sit on the carpeted stairs at the front of the sanctuary. The place is dark and peaceful, and there are usually around 30-100 people there. We sit and sing Taize songs in English, Spanish, and Latin, the same line over and over again for each song, and go deeply into our hearts in prayer. The best way I can describe the nature of these gatherings is as deep, whole, mystical, silent, humble, authentic, and deeply centering. I feel that one cannot help but have a profound encounter with God's spirit in these gatherings, as it feels so present to me. As I discussed in the introductory post to this series, I believe that the Holy Spirit is marked by wholeness, a movement of all of the aspects of God, and I must say that Taize contemplative prayer is one of the most effective methods I've experienced in invoking this spirit in such a whole way. No words are necessary to describe or analyze God in an abstract way - it is simply a Divine encounter, in the hearts of those that truly seek one. It is simply contemplation, a rumination on, a soaking in, of what one finds when their heart connects with God's.

Spirit of Sacramento - 2: The City of the Dharma Realm

2010-08-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

A few Sundays ago, on August 15, I went to a Buddhist scripture reading class at a Chinese Buddhist convent in West Sacramento. I had driven past the large complex of The City of the Dharma Realm several times over the past year, and have always been intrigued, so I was very excited to finally see what was behind the mysterious walls and palm trees that surround its border. It was beautiful - a peaceful series of buildings separated by gardens and courtyards spread out throughout the entire campus. The class is held in a small classroom, and is led by 2 nuns, in this case it was one older Chinese nun, and one younger Argentine nun. There were 4 students. We spent the first 20 minutes or so in silent meditation in a small meditation hall where there sat 3 beautiful statues at the front of it. After the sounding of a small bell which marked the end of the meditation time, we went back to the classroom, where we spent the next hour and a half reading through parts of an English translation of the Shurangama sutra with commentary - according to the nuns, this is the most important sutra in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. It was very detailed reading regarding the importance of the sutra, and how it can keep away evil spirits, etc. My general impression of this gathering is that it was academic in nature, detailed, and open/friendly. The participants seemed to genuinely care about learning and respecting truth from the Chinese Buddhist perspective, and were persistent in their efforts, no matter how tedious or laborious.

Birthing, and Motherhood as an Oracle

2010-08-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not exactly sure of who out there in the blogosphere is reading this blog regularly, but for those who may not know, I am expecting my first child in just about 7 weeks. I've slowly but surely been transforming from a conscientious and spiritual young woman who values and attempts to define true femininity, into a fresh and new mother, sprouting life from her womb as mysteriously as the soil sprouts plants from its rich hands. I have definitely felt this new identity creeping up inside myself so slowly as to not even be noticed, and so deeply as to not be able to be articulated just yet, except for perhaps with poetry (which I'm hoping to do more of before my son is born). Anyway, I'm very much "with child" these days, and as I'm reaching the end of my pregnancy, my thoughts are turning away from diapers and nursery decor, and towards preparing for the moment of birth.

Birth seems to be a pretty daunting thing. It's a major transitional moment, a very real gateway of life, like death, only the gateway is really for my child - it's not really for me. My role in the whole process is a little more undefined. Yes, I will "officially" become a mother the moment his little body comes passing through me, but haven't I already entered into that role? I certainly feel that my role as a mother began the instant I conceived this child, and that I have taken on more of a nurturing role as he has grown inside of me and needed more and more care-taking. But it will be a dramatic and triumphant moment for him, won't it, when he flashes into the world from the dark transitional state of having incubated in my nebulous and peaceful womb? He will be born! So the question remains - just what is my role in this process? I am simply, but profoundly, the vessel through which he is passing, the gate itself, like the oracle in "The Never-ending Story" (if you haven't seen the movie, you must!).

How to be the most supportive, wise, and nurturing gate I can possibly be is something that has been brewing in the back of my mind for the past few months, and is starting to pop into the front of my mind more recently. Practically, in order to prepare for his birthing time, I've been using an at-home study program called "Hypnobabies". It's a program in self-hypnosis and deep relaxation to help this moment to naturally (ie no drugs) be a joyful and peaceful time with minimal pain. Although I found the cd recordings to be a little bit cheesy at first, I've gradually been really enjoying it. Yesterday, I listened to a recording about having a positive birthing experience, and I found myself experiencing ecstatic feelings as I felt that I was preparing the way for my baby to come through me, allowing energy to flow through me unimpeded by fear and tension. And I realized how important this skill is. It is a distinctly feminine quality, to allow life to pass through us and to hold it in a nurturing way - to play a receptive, supportive role with all of life. However, it occurs to me how important it is to allow God's spirit, the Holy Spirit, the "whole" spirit of life to flow through us all unimpeded at all times. This is the goal of religious life in virtually all cases, is it not? To walk with God, to worship and serve this Spirit at all times? To not become attached to "passions", fears, ego-built illusions, and instead to live in a more full reality? To allow this full reality to pass through us, as vessels and gateways from the spirit realm to the material world? To transform the material world in this way? What an important lesson this is! And what a joy that I get to experience this lesson in such a tangible way!

An oracle is defined in wikipedia (the ever illustrious and dependable source) as a "portal through which the gods [speak] directly to man". As a mother, I suppose it is my role to act as an oracle, allowing God's spirit, in both a Holy Spirit sense, and in a tangible sense as in the spirit and flesh of my son, to pass through me from spirit world to material world, to "allow the gods to speak directly" to humankind, to allow spirit to interact directly with flesh. I feel truly blessed to have the opportunity to serve this quiet and stoic role - to be the gate through which this new person will pass as he is initiated into human-hood, takes his first breath of this air that behaves so like spirit, yet is so ubiquitous in the material world.

What an honor to become more and more a mother. I can only pray and abandon myself to the mysterious and deep, full spirit, allowing it to flow through me as I learn how to serve in this role more accurately, more lovingly. I am sure that being a mother will be filled with these opportunities - not to grasp, control, fear for, and use, but instead to hold and guide this child with a deep, abiding, unconditional, all-embracing, and firm love as he grows and moves through the world, just as I am learning to do as he moves through my body. I pray for the wisdom and faith to do this sacred job that I've been tasked with, and that as I do it, that I would engage more deeply with God's strong, feminine spirit, and bless the world with it. Praise to mothers everywhere! And praise to our mother God, who gathers all Her children under her wings as a mother hen shelters her chicks.

"How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings" (Luke 13:34)

Spirit of Sacramento - 1: Sacramento Friends Meeting

2010-07-28T11:44:00.001-07:00

On Sunday the 25th, I visited the Sacramento Friends Meeting House for the Quakers' weekly "quiet worship" session. We shared about an hour of silence together, in deep meditation. The physical space itself lends itself to contemplation. The worship room is tucked away beyond a flowered courtyard, and is round, surrounded by large windows. The sun shines in on a group seated peacefully in several concentric circles.

My experience with the Friends was, I would distinctively say, quietly joyful. I sensed deep peace within the group and an earnest seeking quality to the spirit of their worship. There was a longing in this group, not necessarily for something deeper, but for something more pure - for harmony and for justice. A few people spoke during the time of meditation, but said little. One person talked about her sadness at the fact that many of those who work for justice and peace in our world have been killed for their idealistic work, and her sadness over what this tells us about where we are currently in our spiritual evolution. A man then, in response, shared a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. that referred to Jesus Christ. Overall, a sense of honestly and earnestly seeking peace through introspection and a cultivation of personal inner peace was distinguished.

The Spirit of Sacramento

2010-07-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've decided to embark on a new project - I'd like to explore and examine the movement of the Spirit of Sacramento. I'm really fascinated with and attracted to "whole truth", a term that I would use interchangeably with "Holy Spirit", and as I care about nurturing this spirit throughout the world and causing its realm of influence to grow, it only makes sense that I would be on the search for where it is thriving or wanting to thrive. I want to know "whole truth" better, just as I would a lover. I want to know it thoroughly and completely, simply because I love it so much, and feel that I need it.

I also, recently, have been more and more attuned to my personal skill when it comes to intuition. On the Meyers-Briggs N-S scale, I am 100% N, which means that I skew as far as possible to the "intuitive" side of information gathering, rather than the "sensing" side. This means that when it comes to detailed physical observations, I am completely useless. I could know someone intimately for 20 years, and if you asked me about a specific quality of their face (ie - do they have a mole on their right cheek), I likely wouldn't be able to tell you. I rarely notice colors of objects around me, etc. However, I seem to be hyper-aware of my surroundings when it comes to a general and holistic sizing up of a situation (this general or holistic quality, I think, can also be called "spiritual"). I can usually tell if there is psychological or spiritual tension within a person, or between two people. I have an uncanny ability to know instantly the quality of a person, and would likely be able to tell you generally about their personality preferences, style, and quirks, simply from a first introduction. This is an intuitive capability that may or may not be considered to be psychic. I believe it simply stems from a tendency to instantly synthesize data that is being taken in, and to form a general impression, or image of life, as it flows into my frame of reference. Nothing too weird or mystical about that - right? (or could that indeed be the mechanism behind mysticism? But that's a topic for another post)

That all said, my plan is to visit every spiritual gathering that I can in Sacramento over the next few months and to paint a picture of the quality/personality of the spiritual environment of each particular gathering.

The Holy Spirit is like a gust of wind, and "where" this wind blows subtly determines how the future of the cosmos will be shaped. Allow me to be the meteorological technician that takes a meager sample of this wind, and thus provides one small data point that helps us to further understand the air we breathe and where it's headed.

The Seed Song

2010-07-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

Ode to the reddening apple at the heart of my tree

2010-06-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

You flashed into existence as a seed
And all your potential
Was concentrated there
With the pressure of eternity
Aching towards manifestation

Immediately you began to grow
Making of this aching space a womb
Of this barren house a home
And I felt your spirit flutter up and down
the marrow of my bones
With anticipation I shuddered
And I knew that you had come

Dear child, now you are a fruit
Ripening inside of me
And although deep down I already know
I wonder at the intricacies of who you're meant to be

I love you now both as part of me, and separately
A reddening apple at the heart of my tree
And soon you'll drop into the loving hands of this family

May we be the soil you need to grow
Faithfully stable and high
Nestling roots towards the heart of the Earth
And stretching liberated branches to the sky

- Kari Risher, June 11, 2010

The Story of Earth

2010-05-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

by Kari Risher

Sophia looked within herself to find that she was disintegrating. Just an instant before she had been longing for communion, to share herself with others, though she couldn’t remember ever having known anything other than what had always been, herself, hanging in a void, eternally. But now this. The ecstasy was something she would not have expected. She didn’t know what was coming next, but she smiled anyway, having faith that an adventure was opening up within her, from beyond this lonely void…..

This is the story of a village called Earth, from its birth to its death, and the great, unprecedented adventure it lived out, quite possibly the most amazing adventure that ever existed. It is the story of existence itself, of reality, of the emergence of something called space-time, of something new, something that grew from the seed of a flash of longing in the heart of beauty herself. You’ve never heard this story, but something in it will echo in your bones, an echo of something whole. So listen closely now, and let it ring through to the bottom of your soul.

The village was hard at work, existing. They worked as they always had, focused on subsistence. Life was monotonous, day turned to night, then back to day again, and nothing much seemed to change. Everything was done in the service of their mother, whom they did not know, but their ancestors claimed that reverence for her was the greatest thing; indeed, it was everything. She had paved the way for them, and so they existed. They didn’t think about why it was that they lived, or even how it was that they lived. They just lived. Although for them, living in a perpetual present, a unity of dependence on one another for survival, life seemed to be always the same, there was a creeping change coming upon them, unfurling from their depths like a vine from the earth. It was so slow and surreptitious that none of them noticed that as the days and nights cycled by, the temperature of their inner awareness rose bit by bit.

One day, as the sun rose, it illuminated a new configuration of reality. Now the villagers had joined together, virtually all of them, into small clumps. And life began to be different. But still they didn’t notice. Somehow they knew how to live life differently. They began to live out different purposes. One group would be drawn to another, and they would join, forming a unique identity, while another group might eat another so that it could live. Each group developed its own identity. Each slowly crawled throughout the village, drawn mysteriously in the direction determined by their communal desire. Many different groups formed and lived into their greatest potential, burning bright, and then ceased to exist. As the groups interacted, some of them formed for specific purposes. And as the sun set and rose again, it continued to rise on yet a more diverse panorama, as the groups joined and thrived and lived out the purposes that seemed to be stamped into their interiors.

One day, on the surface of it just like any other, several particular groups throughout the village were drawn to one another in a new configuration. Mara was a part of one of these groups. Mara had been through change after change since the beginning of change in the village, but had never considered it, having simply followed the overpowering wind of instinct that carried her in the direction she was to go. There was nothing special about this change. It was simply another overpowering drive to sweep into union with several other groups. She joined with others into a new configuration, led by the mysterious, as yet unappreciated spirit that directed such experiments, and it was then that she jolted into the awareness of a realm of the village that had never been there before.

It was a day like any other. Mara woke from her sleep, on the bank near the river, with the sunrise. She walked to the river, splashed the cool water on her face, and stretched, welcoming the day’s activities. She set off of find some berries for the day’s sustenance. She walked the same trail she always walked, hopping the rocks to cross the river and venturing deep into the forest, past the thicket of pines, deeper still, until she reached the enormous currant bush she knew and loved so well. She had picked the first side pretty clean the day before, and so she walked around to where she could see more of the little black jewels sparkling in the sunlight that glinted now and then through the waving canopy above. She began to pick them, and put them one by one into the leather pouch she carried on her hip, as she did every day. The birds had been picking at this same bush, and so she crept to the underside of the bush, not notice the sun rising high in the sky above her. As she crawled to her knees next to the currant bush, as well as the imposing boulder that sheltered it from being completely picked clean by birds, she was suddenly overcome by a blinding light. The sun’s brightness seemed magnified by the lacy interlay of branches above her sheltered spot deep in the forest. She closed her eyes to block it out, and when she opened them again, the mouth of a cavern had appeared beside her in the wall of the black rock she knelt beside. She was astonished. She knew suddenly that she had never before seen the inside of a rock like this, and she knew that there was something strange about her knowing that she had never seen a cavern. Despite the fear that crawled up her throat at this insight, she followed her instinct to crawl into the cavern. It was such a small opening that she had to enter on her hands and knees, but about 10 yards into it, the space seemed to open up and she could walk normally. She crouched on her legs, then rose up a bit more, her back still hunched, and eventually was able to walk upright. The light had faded a long way back, but she could see another light up ahead, so she continued to walk forward, towards it. As she approached the light, she could see the shadows of figures occasionally silhouetted against it. She walked more and more briskly, her heart pounding relentlessly. As she drew close enough to make out the figures moving in the light, she began to run. It was her tribe! There was Bard, and Skela, and Orbe! Tol, Ferg, and Salo! She looked around. It was nearly everyone, and they all had the same new quality to their faces – like the face of a river during a storm, contoured and shaped in such ways that made her body shudder strangely. She looked up. The light streamed in from a hole in the top of the cave. She approached Tol. “How did you find this hole in the ground?” His eyes sparked in the light. “I was stalking prey as usual, following the tracks of the antelope tribe, when the Sun grew so bright in the dew of a fallen leaf that I had to close my eyes. And when I opened them, I saw a black opening from a pile of rocks next to where I stood. So I walked in.” Mara’s eyes ignited with the same flash that had been in Tol’s. “That’s just what happened to me. I was picking berries when the Sun flashed so strongly that I had to close my eyes, and when I opened them, there was a hole in front of me.” They looked at one another in a way that they had never looked at anyone before. There was a new depth between them. Mara sensed the importance of what was happening, and suddenly knew what she had to do next. “We have to tell the others.” Tol nodded. “Everyone!” He called out loudly. He winced as his voice came bounding back at him, and some of the others crouched like they were hiding from a predator when they heard the echo. But when they realized it was just Tol, standing in the light streaming from above, they stood up and looked at him. “Mara and I found this cave today after the sun blinded us. Did this happen to you too?” Every single one of the tribe members grunted in agreement and nodded their heads. They looked around, eyes lighting up successively like a flame passed from candle to candle around the circle they stood huddled in. Tol looked at Mara. She nodded in acknowledgement of the significance of the response. “Does anyone know what this is? Where did this hole come from?” Degh spoke up. “When I went into the hole I found, nobody else was here. So I wandered around. It looks like this place stretches all throughout the village; there were lights in every direction, as far as I could see.” An audible sigh rose above the tribe and hovered over them, a communal vibration expressing the shock they didn’t yet know how to express. “What should we do?” Rube asked the group. Mara didn’t know, but she knew that somebody had to decide, so she replied. “Let’s go on with our tasks as usual. But we can come back to this place when we need to have a meeting, or to rest.” A bubble rose up from her chest into her mouth as she spoke one last thing to the crowd. “We’ll call it the inside, and the rest of the village the outside.” There was a murmur of assent, and then the tribe filed out of the cave back into the light of day and their tasks, but as each of them stepped back onto the earth again, they knew it would never be quite the same.

As Mara worked at her daily tasks over the next few days, her mind remained on the scene at the cave. She wondered where it had come from – had one of the other tribes dug it out overnight, or – could it be? – had it always been there, but never seen by any of her people until just the other day? She couldn’t shake the feeling that she and her tribe had been meant to find the inside, and that they had stumbled upon it for a purpose that remained to be discovered. This idea exhilarated her; her stomach flipped, and she felt a tingling in her spine that felt like the most cleansing raindrops she had ever known were dancing upon it. It was this feeling that drove her to think more and more about the meeting on the inside – to analyze it, searching for some clue as to what it meant and what they were to do with the new discovery about their village. She made up her mind that she would ask Tol to explore the cave with her, in the hope that this would help her to understand why it had come into their lives.

That evening, as the tribe sat around the fire, Mara pulled Tol aside, to tell him about her plan. “Tol, the inside has been with me these past few days, and I feel as if there is something more about it that we must discover. I want to explore it. Will you join me?” Tol’s eyes looked narrow and focused, as the hunters did when they were stalking prey. “If we want to know why we found the caves, we need to explore the outside of the village, not the inside. There is much to understand about the other tribes that surround us. I will be visiting the stars at sunrise, and examining them first. Ferg and Skela will be coming with me.” With that, Tol turned around and walked back towards the fire. Mara felt an empty space inside of her swell open further, just as suddenly as the cave had opened up from the rock wall the other day. She felt her aloneness echo on the walls inside of her, but felt even more convinced that the way forward was to explore the inside. She sat next to the fire by herself, hunched over to hold the emptiness she felt in her gut, and as she sat thinking of what tomorrow might hold, the light of the flames licked her forehead in the vast darkness of the village at night.

Mara rose just before sunrise, with the anticipation of her quest for the day. She walked to the river hesitantly. This was the first day that she hadn’t simply embarked on her routine mindlessly. Everything she did felt strangely significant – deliberate, even. She splashed the water on her face, and drank some as she had always done, but as the droplets fell back into the pool, she noticed a face, contorted by ripples and illuminated by the moon. As she started from the shock of it, she noticed that it responded with the same expression that she felt. And when she raised her hand to brush her hair back from her face, she saw that the reflection was her own. She wondered how is it that I’ve never seen this before? Things were changing quickly, and this made her afraid, but she could see in the now still water that the thought had also brought a smile to her face. She leaped up, hopped across the rock trail in the river, and ran into the forest straight to the opening to the inside, where she knew she would find some answers to quench this desire in her breast, to know, to understand the purpose of the cave, and the purpose of her people. When Mara reached the cave opening, as she had before, she crept to her hands and knees and descended into the tunnel. As she crawled, she tried to notice everything she could about the cave. She felt its hardness on her palms, and the pricking of the tiny bumps on its surface as they pressed into her knees. She felt the enormity of the void before her as it resonated with the void that she had identified within herself. She looked at the wall as she passed it by – dark gray with tiny rainbow dust glittering in the moonlight that came in softly through the mouth of the cave. She breathed in deep, smelling the foreign, yet familiar, smell of the place – it was musty and earthy, but with a tinge of something so different, so grand, something that felt whole to her. She continued on down the narrow path, standing now, past the first opening where they had all gathered the other day, and kept going. Now she was descending lower and lower into the depths of the inside. It was getting darker, and the area she walked was opening larger and larger, ever more vast, until it looked as if she could be swallowed up in anonymity again, as she had felt she was for most of her life. She looked up to see that the sun had risen, and its light was faintly discernable in a hole far far above her head. The subtle light illuminated the shadow of the undefined boundaries around her, and she realized just how vast this cavern was. She was suddenly afraid and dropped to her knees, crouching to shut out the loneliness, when she felt a brush of air on her head, and felt a calmness descend upon her. She looked up to see a man, hovering between her and the light far above.

“Mara.” His voice shuddered through her like the wind through the trees during a storm. She opened her mouth to speak, but she could say nothing. When he spoke again, she felt as if he were speaking from her own chest, the resonance was so thorough. “Yesterday was a great day for Earth. Your tribe has discovered a very special place. The cosmos is celebrating.” She looked up at him (as he was much taller than her, and was hovering above the ground so that his feet were at the level of her clasped hands as she crouched before him). He was slightly taller than the men in her tribe, and she couldn’t quite make out what he looked like exactly, because it was more of a sensation she had that took the place of what should have been her visual impression of him. But from what she could tell, he “felt” like sunlight, just as its first rays touched her eyelids in the morning. She felt that this man was very important, that he could tell her about the inside, and about her tribe, and even about her mother, whom she believed she had never known. She gathered this impression in a stretch of time that seemed like an entire day, but she knew that it had only been a very short time, as the sun had not moved from where it shed light on the cavern floor just to her right. She found that she could now speak. “Celebrating for what?” He answered. “Never before, in all of Earth’s age, has any tribe been able to know this realm. And you now you have found the inside of things. This is a turning point. It is for this that Earth was created. From now on, more and more of your tribe will dwell here, and eventually the other tribes too. And you will join together in love.” Mara wanted so much to understand. She could sense that all of this was important, but could barely grasp what he was saying. “Love? What is that?”

“It’s unity, Mara. It’s coming together for the sake of unity. And it is what causes the changes in your village. It brought you together with your tribe, and it will bring your tribe together with others. Listen very carefully to this. This is the reason you exist. The Earth needs to transform. It needs to be united, to come together, so that you and all the others can be fully expressed. This cavern is the key to that. It will provide you with all that you need, to know what to do. You must continue to come here, and to explore all of its depths. Allow it to nurture you, and to guide you.” Mara nodded, her eyes wide in awe at all she was hearing. “Is my mother here?” The man smiled, and Mara felt as if her heart were bathed with warm water. “Yes, she’s here. She’s been here all along. Look here, transform the village, and you will see her.” Mara felt water coming from her eyes, and a crushing sensation in her chest. She cried out in anguish. “Where? How?” But the man has disappeared, leaving behind him only the shafts of sunlight which, Mara realized, had now moved to her left side, which meant that the entire day had nearly gone. The encounter with the strange man played out in her mind over and over again as she made her way out of the tunnel, and back to the camp, where the others were sitting by the fire as usual. She wished that she could understand what he meant when he talked about why Earth was created, the inside, love, and, most of all, her mother. She didn’t yet know what to do next, but as she approached the camp, these worries were replaced by a shivering feeling in her legs that made her want to break into a run, and light feeling in her heart that made her smile. It was anticipation to join together with her tribe, and it was nothing that she had ever felt before. This was certainly a day for new beginnings, she thought as she joyfully ran towards the others. When she got there, she could see that the others were smiling also, and everyone was making sounds altogether, in different tones. Some tapped their feet with the rhythm of the hunters feet as they hit the ground in pursuit of their prey, and some clapped their hands together, while all expressed their joy in sounds uttered from the deepest parts of their voices. It brought Mara such joy to hear them all joined together, making such a beautiful sound, and as they sang, she remembered what the man had said about love, and wondered if this had something to do with it.

That night, Mara settled onto her spot near the river and drifted off to sleep, as she always did, but this night something new happened. She found herself, while she was asleep, in another world, which looked like the normal one, but in this world, there was violence and suffering all around. She was standing on the bank of the river, but the river ran black in this world. She tilted her head toward it, trying to get a better look, and dipped her hand into it. It came up thickly black with blue and pink shimmering rings sparkling off of it. Mara felt alarmed, and a little sick, but became distracted by a sound she heard upriver. She began to walk towards it, and stopped in her tracks as she watched a large ball of fire blasting up from the mountains. She dropped to the ground and cried out. She ran through the prairie behind her towards camp. She was relieved when she saw her tribe, but as she drew closer, she no longer recognized its members. These people were possessed by some spirit that terrified her. The fire from the mountain seemed reflected in their eyes, which were black and opaque, like the water in the river. She called out to them. “Hey! The river is black! And the mountain is fire!” A few of the people turned towards her and spoke back, but she didn’t understand anything they said. The language they spoke sounded like gibberish to her. She ran into the woods, searching for anything familiar. The trees cried out in a chorus of sadness. Ahhhhh….. ahhhhhh!!! They seemed to wail as the wind rippled through their leaves. She smelled blood in the air, and heard the faint cries of the many tribes in a symphony of suffering. She was overwhelmed by a great sense of anguish and helplessness. Then the man from the inside appeared to her, emerging suddenly from between the trees. “Mara, this will all happen, but it will pass if your tribe can find a way back to your original language, and to connect again with all of Earth.” He then held out a slab of rock, and handed it to her solemnly. “This is your guide. Follow the instructions within it to know the way forward in love, and call on me when you need to.”

“What’s your name?”

“Call me Son of the Light. I am your brother, and your guide.” Without another word, he turned and faded back into the forest, back to the place from whence he had come. Mara surveyed the symbols that were inscribed on the slab, and miraculously understood what they were trying to communicate. This is what they said: Earth started as one, then began to diverge. The journey begun, many beings emerged. Playing, experimenting, Earth continued to flourish; it knew what it needed, for it to thrive and be nourished.

In a variety of forms, life danced into existence, but the primary branch continued to thrust forward, persistent. Finally a being was elegantly formed, free enough to compound consciousness, and allow self-reflection to be born. Earth turns back on itself now, embracing itself in love, and turns towards convergence, guided by a unitive force from above. This one mighty tribe, called humankind, will become utterly powerful because of their minds. They’ll rely on them only, ignore their unitive guide. They’ll want to know what to expect; so they’ll follow their incomplete insights, and treat the rest of the village with disrespect. Frantic in their search for the purpose of their lives, their reflective capacity will drive them down a path riddled with chaos and strife. But flexing, contracting, reaching towards one another, love will patiently guide them on to come back together. If, by attraction or self-surrender, they can let go of their identities, they will discover their truth, unique for each entity. They must allow their vision to be cast to the place, where the whole converges together, a gateway out of time-space. If they are able to accomplish this holy purpose, the Earth will shimmer and glow, homogenous on its surface; and will eventually reveal its heart as the heart of none other, but the nurturing and graceful, ever-longed-for mother. The way forward is unity; surrendered to the permanent, the never-changing force that is the ultimate firmament. Stand on this rock to know the way, put your hope in the immutable, and see that pure day, when Earth is completely transformed; each being on it is profoundly known, and finally, fully, it finds itself home. Mara carried the tablet, in this miserable alternate-world, to the mouth of the river, where the water sprung up, to her relief, pure and clear, and placed it, symbol-side down, under the cypress tree that grew there. Immediately after she placed it down, she woke up. The others in the tribe were already eating and washing. She blinked her eyes a few times. The water was clear. The air was thick with the mist of morning on the prairie, but nothing else. She breathed a sigh of relief and got up to start her day.

The sun set, and rose, set and rose again and again. Mara went to back to the spring, and found the tablet just where she had left it in her dream. She didn’t know how it was possible that it could have been given to her in that world, and still exist in this, but she didn’t question it. She was just thankful for a solid guide on which she could rely. Her conviction only grew about the importance of the inside, and she continued to spend her days wandering there, exploring its depths in silence, and her nights telling others of its wonders and of the Son of Light. She showed the others the tablet with the words inscribed on it, and many were amazed by it, and believed in the words. These tribe-members explored the inside along with Mara, and had their own encounters with other worlds as they traveled far into its secret depths. They were always motivated by their desire to find their purpose. They called themselves inner-seekers. But there was another group, led by Tol, who also desperately wanted to find their purpose, and these tribe-members believed that this was to be found by examining the exterior of the village. This group discovered many things about Earth that they had not known before, and their confidence in their own minds and methods grew. Over time, more and more tribe members joined Tol’s group, and spent their days journeying to all the places throughout the village, to its farthest reaches, surveying and mapping its contours, observing the behavior of other tribes, and, eventually, even killing some tribe members for the purpose of picking them apart and analyzing them. They called themselves outer-seekers. The one place they did not explore was the inside of the village. They were unimpressed with its darkness and seemingly monotonous, winding passages. And as they grew more and more reliant on their own vision, they saw no use for the message of the Son of the Light, so alien to their village and to their way of seeing things, and for any of the cryptic knowledge they might find on the inside, especially when compared with the stark brightness of all they were finding on the outside. In time many nearly completely forgot it was there, and the number of those that continued to seek answers on the inside with Mara dwindled. After all the only answers they had ever found were veiled in mystery, and could not be properly brought to the light of examination by the tribe members, for the answers stayed in the dripping, musty cave below them, and so remained hidden from complete exposure. Mara kept the tablet with the prophecy on it in the enormous cavern where she had first met the Son of the Light, and spent many days there, basking in its presence, trying to understand it deeper. The words of the prophecy remained deeply imprinted not just on the slab of rock, but on her heart as well, but a very strange thing happened within her tribe. The way they spoke to each other changed. It was so gradual that they didn’t even realize it was happening, but one day Mara was shocked to realize as she gazed on the prophecy that the symbols on it were distinctly unfamiliar to her – of course she could still understand them, but she suddenly felt that if she were to try to speak these words to someone in her tribe who didn’t know them, she would not be able to find a way to say them. The depth and complexity of their meanings had somehow been flattened. And something inside of her sunk with grief as she remembered her dream from ages ago, that forewarned of this very phenomenon. She knew, more than ever now, that the prophecy was coming to pass; but she also knew that, more alone than ever, she could try to warn the others, but her words would only fall upon deaf ears.

The inner-seekers began to spend more and more time in the caves beneath the village, withdrawing from the rest of the tribe. They eventually began gathering around their own small fire there in the evenings, and sleeping there. Now and then, a representative from the tiny group would go back to the camp of the rest of the tribe, and come back with stories of the outer-seekers transforming the entire village with all of their growing power. They had managed to subdue many of the other tribes, and, no longer able to speak their language or understand them, became completely disdainful all creatures besides themselves. They cut down the trees in the forest without their permission in order to build large shelters. They drilled deep into the belly of the rocks so that they could draw out its blood and guts for motive power. The air became thick with the residue of their relentless drive for more power and towards what they believed was the answer to the question they had been asking since the discovery of the inside: why were they born? Why does Earth exist? From where did it come? And, most elusive of all, where will it go in the future?

One day, Mara decided that it was time to confront Tol. She had tried to hold onto her belief in the power of the Son of the Light, and the hope that he had provided her, and that had given her the strength to continue deciphering the message he had left her with. She had allowed it to settle into her heart, and she and her group had worked on ways to translate it so that it would be understandable to the rest of the human tribe. She was convinced that the way forward was for the entire tribe to unite on the inside, and to leave the village behind – to melt into the darkness below, and that if they traveled far enough throughout its corridors, they would find the answers they were searching for, and their true home. Just as the sun was setting that evening, she emerged, blinking, from the cave. The outer-seekers no longer met around a single fire. Instead many of the leaders among them had their own shelters, constructed of tree flesh and dried clay. Their fire was contained in cylinders made from metals dug from deep within the ground, and was siphoned into the home through holes in the floors. Mara, along with her fellow inner-seeker Orbe, knocked on Tol’s door. He was eating cow flesh with his mate, Ferg. When he opened the door, he looked surprised to see them, but smiled and invited them in to join in on the meal. When all four of them had gotten settled at the table, Mara brought up what she had really come there for. “Tol, Ferg, the other inner-seekers and I don’t like what’s happening to the village.” She paused and took a deep breath. “We see the power your group has wielded over all of the tribes and all of Earth in your search for answers to our ultimate question, but we feel it has gone too far.”

“What do you mean by that, Mara?”

“Look around you! The air is thick with smoke! The river is nearly black! We no longer know our fellow villagers; they hide from us or are silent in subservience. Yet you continue on, searching for answers by picking apart this place that is worthless!”

“You’re wrong.” Tol replied. “We know the other members of the village. We know them all better than ever before. For instance, I know that this cow I’m eating is made of muscle and fat, and organs that all function together to make it alive, and that it came about when its parents mated, their reproductive cells combined, it grew inside its mother, and then it was born. I know it all, Mara. Tell me, what have you learned by sitting in that dark cave where you go?”

“The inside is where it all started, Tol. Don’t you remember the day when we discovered it? That was the day when the questions first arose in us. When we first felt driven to discover our purpose, and the meaning of our lives. When we remembered our mother, and we wanted to know her again….” Tol abruptly cut her off. “Our mother? I don’t remember any mother. All of that is ridiculous. We are finding our purpose, on our own. Look around you. Look at this shelter I have built. Feel the warmth on your skin. Taste the food on your tongue. Know how joyful our lives have become. It is because of the mountain of information we, the outer-seekers, have gathered about Earth. Soon we will have explored every bit of this place, and then we will truly have mastered it. Then we’ll know.”

“This is what the Son of the Light warned us about. Blindly following our incomplete insights, Tol. Don’t you see how what we’re doing is driving us to destruction? What do you expect to find by ripping up the village? You’ve already explored every bit of it, and found nothing whole. It’s worthless. We need to leave it behind. The Son of the Light told us that we need to come together. And so we must come together on the inside.” Orbe shook his head in agreement, and continued. “I have seen it myself. I discovered a whole new world, of other beings that know much more than we do. We must learn from these beings, and let them direct us home through the corridors. But we need the entire tribe for this task. We all need to be together. Only then will we find our mother again. I have such peace in my heart, Tol and Ferg, ever since I began to go to the inside, and I am certain that the way forward is to follow the Son of Light, and to leave Earth behind.” Tol arched an eyebrow at Orbe’s confession. “I know that we all want the same thing: to know our purpose, to understand. But we don’t need the Son of Light to do that. He’s not even one of us, and as far as I know, he’s not even real.” Mara sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. Please consider joining with us in our search for meaning. If you don’t, we’re going to have to stop you ourselves.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s just a warning. If you continue like this, we will never be able to find our mother again, and we can’t let that happen. So we’ll stand in your way. We’ll make you join us on the inside, and get rid of those who don’t.” Tol laughed. “What can you do? You have no power.”

“We’ll find it somewhere.” With that, Mara stood up from her chair, turned on her heel, and left the house, Orbe following closely behind her. She was furious. She spent the rest of the evening meeting with the other inner-seekers, planning their first line of attack.

War broke out within the human tribe. The inner-seekers, a smaller band with less obvious power, resorted to furtive guerilla tactics, such as kidnapping explorers on expeditions and sabotage the machines that mined and analyzed mountain rock, while the outer-seekers could afford to launch more brazen attacks, such as throwing explosives into caves, killing a few people and creating roadblocks of rock so that they would have to dig through the rubble in order to continue their explorations. Everybody was miserable, but both sides believed in their cause all the more as a result of the fighting, and so it continued on.

The outer-seekers had discovered virtually all they could about the village. They had sent representative to nearly every other tribe to examine and explore their behavior and anatomy, they had an enormous book full of their discoveries about the composition of every creature in the land, they had taken expeditions beyond the mountains, and even under the river. They had figured out how to cultivate food, how to make the tribes work together for their own comfort, benefit, and continued exploration, but they were running out of elements to explore. It was time for something new. Tol decided to send expeditions to scout out the boundaries of the village. He divided all of the outer-seekers into team of four – each team was to set out in each of the four directions – north, south, east, and west, with instructions to keep on traveling until they reached the end of Earth, and to write down every detail of what they found. He himself would join the group that went north. In the meantime, Mara was afraid. The outer-seekers’ attacks were becoming more and more aggressive, and she feared that soon all of the corridors would be blocked, and all of her people killed, and there would be no way to get home. She decided that it was time to send an expedition to travel as far as possible into the inside, to try and catch a glimpse of their true home. She couldn’t stand the idea of not seeing for herself; in fact, none of the inner-seekers could, so they all decided to join together and go, with the intention of coming back if they could, to honor the prophecy of the whole tribe being united, but of course in their hearts many of them secretly hoped that they would find their mother waiting with open arms and would never have to return to the growing strife and carnage of the village of Earth.

On the same fateful day, all five expeditions set out for the ends of their known world. It was a long and arduous journey for them all. The inner-seekers traveled down the path where most of them agreed that they had felt the most guided and had met the most ghostly beings. They encountered barely-there creatures, most of them human-looking, who spoke to the depths of the hearts and directed them on without providing any clear answers about what was up ahead. The path led them down, deep into the inner heart of the village. The outer-seekers traveled in vehicles, powered by oil from under the prairie, and made up of metals from under the mountains. They recognized their own fingerprints with pride as they drove past already-conquered land throughout the vast village. Tol’s team, after many days, reached the clouds, the previous boundary of their explorations. They had never ventured farther, because they knew that the air began to thin out here, and had assumed (until now) that it was simply where Earth ended. But they had rigged together masks that pumped oxygen into their lungs from tanks mounted on their backs, so that they would be able to venture beyond the clouds. Tol elected himself to be the first to step outside the confines of the village. His singular purpose was to know about the origin of this village, which he now felt such jealous possession over, and which he mistook for love. With one last breath of pure Earth air, he put on his mask and stepped into the mist.

The team of inner-seekers did not have any idea what they would find. They had been told cryptically by several beings that “the light” was up ahead, and so they continued on day after day. Supplies were getting low, and Mara began to worry that if they did not reach the light soon, they would either have to turn back or die of starvation in their quest. She did not want to make that decision for herself or anyone else. She trudged forward, in complete darkness now, wondering what she should do, a tiny flame of hope lit in her heart that this expedition was not destroying their last chance to live into the prophecy that she had found such peace in, and in which she had put all of her faith. She closed her eyes, and focused in on this light inside of her heart, and when she opened them again, she was stunned to find that the light she had seen with her inner eye, was now reflected in her outer view. She blinked several times, and began to run when she saw that it was really before her. Around her, the others were running and shouting, but she barely noticed. All she could see was that light, guiding her on in the darkness, telling her there was hope for her yet…

Tol stepped fully through the mist and took a deep breath from his oxygen mask before orienting himself. He couldn’t see much through the residue of the misty cloud behind him, so he took another step forward. It was so dark there before him. Where was this? The loneliness of this place gripped him tightly. Was Earth simply a living village, standing by itself, surrounded by emptiness. But then, there was a figure, running towards him. For just a flash of an instant, he thought it might be the mother. He waited until she reached just in front of him, and then she stopped dead in her tracks. It was Mara. “Tol?” Her voice was hesitant. “Mara. What are you doing here? How did you beat us to the edge of the village? I don’t understand.”
“The edge of the village? But I’m on the inside – this is supposed to be the light! You can’t be here!” The other humans began trickling in, some from the darkness, and some from the light beyond the cloud (all 4 expedition teams), and murmurs rose up as the warring groups encountered one another in this twilight of combined and projected hopes. Tol looked around. “How can this be? We came to the edge of the village, beyond the clouds, from every direction. But now we’re all here. And you’re here too.” He motioned to the inner-seekers, then squinted at the darkness beyond where they stood. “Did you come from the inside?” Orbe stepped forward. “Yes, we took an expedition to the end of the inside, as far as we could go. And ended up here. The beings we met told us there was a light up ahead, and we thought this was it. What’s beyond that cloud there?” Ferg answered him. “It’s the village.” They were all confused and stunned. The outer-seekers took off their oxygen masks, and nobody dared to move. The war suddenly seemed ludicrous. Here they all were, in the same place, united by their common desire to find the answer to their common question about the purpose of Earth. As they stood pondering their plight and remembering the joy they had felt when they had been all together, singing and working all together, they began to notice that the misty realm in which they stood began to expand. The twilight seeped into the darkness of the cave as far back as they could see, while the clouds rolled back to reveal the village, luminous and fresh in its new light. It seemed as if the inside and the outside had combined into one realm, which although it was new, felt more familiar than the village ever had. Peace descended over the human tribe along with humility and awe for what was happening to them, and they could think of nothing else to do but to make their way back to camp. When they returned to their routine, they could see that everything in the village sparkled and flashed with a sacred inner fire, and they loved it all. Together, the inner and outer-seekers could sense the spirit within the other tribes, and began to commune with them more respectfully. Over time, their language evolved so that they were able to communicate with the other tribes again directly.

Mara basked in the glow of the spirit she sensed throughout the village. The cave had disappeared, but it was okay, because she felt that the inside was with her, all around her. One day, as she was walking along the river, admiring its playful dance along the riverbed, she saw the Son of the Light again. She had just arrived at the mouth of the river, the spring bursting from the rocks, when she leaned over for a drink, and saw her reflection. Only it wasn’t her reflection – it was him, his face. She jumped back, startled, and looked again, only to see him smiling back at her kindly and joyfully. Her heart warmed. This was right. As she walked back towards the camp, the scene around her faded, and she became captivated by the sunlight. She looked up.

And Sophia looked down. She was exhilarated, with the wildest adventure she could ever have dreamed of. Her children, all parts of herself, were back safely in her arms, resting in the joy of their ultimate expression, singing a chorus of communion within her soul. And her mind was awakened with clarity and joy. She looked up again, to the cloud on her left, and felt the pull. She knew she was going home, finally, towards love. She kept walking until she was beyond the cloud; until she was wrapped in an embrace of ultimate and complete love.

An Essay on Time

2010-05-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

From Chronos to Kairos:

An Examination of Time Concretion
as the Narrow Gateway to Eternity

Kari Risher
May 6, 2010
EWP 9109:Gebser and Aurobindo
on the Evolution of Consciousness
Professor: Dr. Eric Weiss

In his landmark book, “The Ever-Present Origin”*, Jean Gebser emphasizes the importance of time in the transition from the mental mode of consciousness to the integral mode of consciousness. As we stand on the threshold of a four-dimensional notion of reality that threatens to shatter beneath our quivering legs, it is of paramount importance that we contemplate the form that time, or rather time-freedom, will take in the coming mode, as well as the nature of the intensity represented in the mental mode as time. This paper will explore these issues, and examine the narrow gate through which we must pass in the mutation from our current mode of consciousness to the future one; to make the great leap into the perceived abyss that lies before us at this moment in time.

What is time, really? In our society, we understand time to be a passing flow, much like water in a predictable river, always carrying us at a constant rate, ticking by in clearly defined and commonly experienced segments. But Gebser makes it clear that this is not the whole story when it comes to the phenomena we experience as time. He claims that time, as mainstream society in the modern age has perceived it, is simply an extension of space, which only abstracts a partial perspective of the experienced phenomena, portraying it as a quantitative phenomenon that can be “mastered”, rather than the complex and fundamental intensity that it truly is. “Chronological time is but one aspect of a more encompassing phenomenon: it is the mental aspect of that constituent of the world which manifests itself, not as space, but as a basic phenomenon of space” (Gebser, 284). The Greeks referred to this form of time as chronos. A British online encyclopedia defines it as “chronological or sequential time”. Kairos, on the other hand, was an altogether different form of time that was acknowledged by Greek civilization. This understanding of time embraces its qualitative aspects, and is described in the same source as “a time in between, a moment of undetermined period of time in which `something` special happens”. This paper will explore how the mutation from the mental mode of consciousness to the integral one, in terms of time, can be understood as a transition from chronos time to kairos time, from measurable time to time-freedom, from time-space-bound mechanism to dwelling in the realm of the infinite.

Gebser identifies time as the central issue in the mutation to the integral mode of consciousness, in which we are currently participating. The task at hand, in order for the mutation to occur successfully, is to accomplish the concretion of time into our consciousness, to experience it fully for what it truly is, rather than perceiving it from a wary distance, as we do currently. It is difficult, from this position on the evolutionary spiral, to apprehend the true meaning of time as it is meant to be experienced in the integral mutation; nevertheless, we must try, as conscious involvement in the mutation can help it to be that much more successful, peaceful, and fulfilling. Time is an intensity, as Gebser points out. It is “an ‘ever-present abundance’ or plenitude, spiritual and not psychic in nature”(Gebser, 357). It is a fundamental element in the universe in which we live, and in our relationship to origin, the most fundamental aspect of all. “It turns out that time … indeed is a world constituent” (Gebser, 286). In fact, it is likely that time arises fully and directly from origin, and may even be characterized by the flow of origin into human life. As humanity has undergone each (known) mutation of consciousness, we have ventured further and further away from origin, so that the light of our own consciousness has been able to grow brighter and brighter. As we have emerged into the blinding light of our own consciousness, our engagement with the ultimate realities of the universe (rooted origin) has become more and more abstract. This abstraction has allowed us to portray the universe in terms that we can conceptualize and synthesize in order to function; however, it has left us viewing life and our position within it from outside a window, so to speak, rather than engaging with it directly and fully. It has been only in the mental mutation that time has irrupted into our consciousness. The intensity that we experience as time, however, has taken on different forms throughout each mutation of consciousness. We can examine the ways it has changed as we have traveled away from origin, in our further attempts to characterize it in its more pure form.

In the magical mode of consciousness, Gebser writes that life was experienced as “a weakly conscious somnolent and trance-like state of magic space-timelessness” (Gebser, 163). The magical mode of consciousness is characterized by its one-dimensional nature, in which the human conception of the world is “point-like [and] unitary” (Gebser, 48). Although there is a vague demarcation of the material world from within origin, there is not a separation from it per se. Gebser indicates that at a place of unity, time serves no function, and indeed, does not even exist. “He becomes one with the unity to which all differentiation is unknown. There spatial boundaries and temporal limits are suspended” (Gebser, 163). This seems to indicate that time does seem to be at least partially characterized by separation, or some sort of self-other relationship between humanity and origin, which implies a dependence upon separation.

In the mythical structure of consciousness, time in some sense begins to exist, but is experienced as what Gebser calls temporicity. Temporicity is a form of time-awareness that is still completely space-free. As the light of humanity’s consciousness begins to dawn, it illuminates the images of the world governed by the psyche. The rhythmic motion of these images is likely the original cause for a sense of time. The sensations accompanying this sense of time correspond to the emergence of the soul, which, conceptually, is inextricably tied to time. “There must have been a far-reaching connection between the discovery of the first perceptions of regular, that is, periodic movement and the discovery of the soul. These movements were first discerned from the night sky, and the correspondence between its movements and man’s own rhythm and dynamics may have brought about man’s first sensation of time” (Gebser, 165). Again, we see that time, even in its earliest forms, appears to arise as a result of a separation from origin. In a state of complete unity with origin, the human soul has no reason for existence, but as consciousness begins to awaken and separate from origin, the soul is distilled from within origin, and develops its own life, co-emergent with the experience of time, and whose experience is described and defined by time.

As human consciousness approaches its peak of separation from origin, mutating into its mental form, time as we currently know it emerges. Time as we know it in our society is marked by, first and foremost, directionality. It is a constantly moving flow that we cannot escape – moving, it is important to note, from a beginning towards an end, from the past towards the future. “It is this directional character of ‘time’ which underscores its mental nature and therefore its constitutional difference from natural-cosmic temporistic movement which is mythical in nature” (Gebser, 173). But what is the true nature of this directionality, and again, what can this analysis tell us about pure time as a fundamental constituent of the universe?

Gebser discusses the notion of mental time as a divider, which gives us an idea of how directionality emerges. Time is associated with the dividing of the perpetual twilight of the mythical world by the light of the sun of day. The mythical world is associated with two-dimensional polarity, which acknowledges wholeness, but stretches its aspects into opposites that swirl around one another (as represented so clearly in the yin-yang symbol). As the mental mutation is encountered, the light of human consciousness grows brighter, cutting through the polarities and making of them dualities, separated elements of the whole. The human experience of reality thus becomes abstracted from concrete reality, that is, from origin. This abstraction, a partial capture or extraction out of a facet of origin, is by definition only a partial representation of reality. “Only concretized parts can be integrated; the abstract, and especially the absolute, always remain separated parts” (268). An abstraction cannot be whole, because it is not connected with the whole. In this way human thought has become unbalanced and thus directed, and, as the soul is with temporality, this is co-dependent with the form of mental time, oriented in a direction. “This world of virtual yet still sheltered movement, which was motionless, as it were, since every movement returned upon itself and cancelled its effect, burst apart when oriented thought temporarily halted the course of the sun: … With this, our “time” and “space” were born: orientation and direction, which the circle, being without beginning and end, was lacking. Only movement, that is, directed motion, could give rise to our experience of what we today call ‘time.’”(Gebser, 166-67). This form of time, according to Gebser, has given rise to the concept of three-dimensional space. “Our mentally oriented conception of ‘time’, the divider of mythical movement and the partitioner of the circle, severs its two-dimensionality and thereby creates the possibility of three-dimensional space” (Gebser, 177). Our reality has (in the mental mode of consciousness) become dependent on the three-dimensional conception of reality that our consciousness has built from our mental abstraction from origin. This matrix has arisen as a creation of our own conceptions of the universe for the purpose of orienting ourselves, and so that we can function with a (false) sense of security in this partial and directed existence, which is mistaken for ultimate reality, but is truly nothing more than a product of our own abstract musings. Thus, even time has become completely abstract, and entrenched within our spatialized notion of the world. We view time as a line, firmly entrenched within the three-dimensional grid that we take to be reality, stretching from past, through present, to future, able to be divided cleanly into uniform segments and thus analyzed and conceived of in mental terms. However, in a strict sense, past and future do not exist. Truly all that exists, always, is “now”, as the uprising of origin into human existence. The deadening of time in the mental mode of consciousness, making of it a mechanical, quantified spatial concept, is a direct consequence of the attempted mastering of time (along with every other phenomenon in the universe), which has occurred as a result of the mental mutation’s over-spatialization of the human conception of the universe. “For perspective-thinking man, time lacked all quality. This is the decisive factor: he employed time only in a materialized and quantitative sense…” (Gebser, 284).

With all this analysis behind us, we are obliged to again approach the question at hand: what is time in a pure sense? Can we find its meaning amongst the grasping at its character within foreign modes of consciousness that we have undertaken in these last few pages? Time appears to be a quality whose form and character are dependent upon the human consciousness’ proximity to origin. In each mode of consciousness in which it has played a role, it is related to a sense of motion that is initiated by a pulling away from origin, and is indicative of our drawing upon origin for the sustenance of the removed paradigm of whichever realm of reality we happen to be functioning within. Time is a fabrication based on distance from origin (to use a spatial metaphor).

Now that we have a better understanding of the meaning of time as a general concept, we can approach the question of the role of time in the coming mode of consciousness: the integral. Gebser discusses time in the integral mutation as being “concretized”, which refers to it being acknowledged in human consciousness in a pure form, not abstract and deadened, but rather in a living and directly experienced sense. “The coming to awareness of ‘time’ in its full complexity is a precondition for the awakening consciousness of time-freedom” (Gebser, 289). Concretion is the essential summation of the effect of the integral mutation on time, and we will attempt to explore the meaning of this concept here, by attempting to grasp the character and role of time in the integral mode. The most basic characteristic of the integral mode of consciousness is the perception of the universe as a whole; there is identification with the spiritual element of life, which is all-embracing, and a mode of perceiving that allows for all of the modes of consciousness and the process of their unfolding to be made translucent. “The new mutation of consciousness… as a consequence of arationality, received its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual” (Gebser, 541). Perspectivity will cease to exist as the whole is apprehended. “The whole can be perceived only aperspectivally; when we view things in a perspective a way we see only segments” (Gebser, 289). In the context of time, all forms of time throughout the modes of consciousness will, in the integral mode, be simultaneously experienced, resulting in a state that is perhaps best called time-freedom. There is an acknowledgement of time as a measure of proximity to and flow from origin, simultaneous with a communion with origin, as Gebser points out. “It is from origin, which is not bound to time, that all time forms constituting us have mutated. Origin lies ‘before’ all timelessness, temporicity, and time. Wherever man becomes conscious of the pre-given, pre-conscious, originary pre-timelessness, he is in time-freedom, consciously recovering its presence. Where this is accomplished, origin and the present are integrated by the intensified consciousness” (Gebser, 289). Because of the closeness to and identification with origin, humankind, in the integral age, will experience time as the present. The dynamic of continual interpenetration between humanity and origin is perhaps another way to envision time in this form. “This ‘dimension’ is only today coming to awareness, or, more exactly, is only able to come to awareness when it is no longer conceived of as ‘time,’ ‘movement,’ or ‘timeless being,’ but as the presence of origin” (Gebser, 179). The movement of constant communion between origin and humanity is represented geometrically (as illustrated by Gebser) by the symbol of a moving sphere, in which wholeness encompassing motion is captured abstractly. “The simple sphere is merely three-dimensional; only the moving, transparent sphere is four-dimensional. And only the transparency guarantees the aperspectival perception” (Gebser, 346).

The result of this orientation with regard to origin and the universe is, as Gebser calls it, verition. “Verition is neither a unification, a polarization, a postulation, nor a synthesis, but rather an integration by means of which origin – which places its imprint on the whole – becomes the perceived present” (Gebser, 271). Verition is a knowing, a direct experience of the present as it occurs. Gebser also seems to indicate that humanity participates in the creation of reality as it arises and dances in the space between itself and origin, which he describes as the “a-waring” and “imparting” of truth in the integral mode of consciousness. “[Time-freedom] is an acategorical element of systatic perception which makes possible the completion of synairesis, and thus it is the sustaining, indeed ‘a-waring’ and transparent, spatially incomprehensible amension”(Gebser, 356).

Now that a sense of the integral mutation lies more or less before us, the question now is how must we accomplish it? What is the way forward for the concretion of time? This is a complex and compelling question, but one of paramount importance in this age of time-anxiety. Humankind today stands at a very precarious place with regard to our sense of the reality of our existence, as it is rooted in a conception of time-space which is now crumbling under our feet. Gebser explains this phenomenon by pointing out the fallacy of the grounds for security in the mental mode. “He achieved this security by means of his new faculty of directing thought which enabled him to create world-systems and to grasp realities that gave him stability… The security of the mental structure was – in accordance with its nature – purely fictive, that is, a design and projection of security by the ego onto the external world” (Gebser, 288). Because of our recognition of the existence of time, but our inability to grasp its full character, we have conceived of time as a simple extension of the three-dimensional structure of space that we have erected in order to orient our directed thought. But as we have begun to grapple with time in this representation, it has become apparent that “space has absorbed time” (Gebser, 289), and that “time, when employed as a mere divider, dissolves space” (Gebser, 289). The work of Albert Einstein has been pivotal in the acknowledgement of time, and has paved the way for its eventual concretion. His theory of relativity posits space-time as a unified structure; relativity considers time to be a fourth-dimension, coincident with the three spatial dimensions that define the physical universe, and basically an extension of space. In this model, time is quite literally spatialized – quantified in purely physical terms. The problems that arise when viewing this theory through a mental lens reveal the limitations of the mental mode of consciousness. Whereas the desired avenue forward, for Gebser, in terms of the analysis of time is that of the supersession of physical space and towards a dimension of coherence in terms of other realms of the universe, such as psychical and spiritual, the positing of the fourth-dimension in physical terms only expands the physical-focused, abstract paradigm of the mental mind and thus results in disintegration. In the spacetime model, the physical universe is expanding, at speeds approaching the speed of light at its furthest limits. “It was Einstein’s theory of relativity which invalidated the previous exclusive claim of the Copernican world system and replaced it with the space-time continuum. As a consequence we can no longer conceive of the world as being infinite and unbounded but rather ‘finite yet unbounded’.” (Gebser, 287). The structure of space-time is encountering its own limits, and crumbling under its own weight due to its unstable nature. “Einstein’s theory of relativity …had to be conceived of in terms of constant decay and simultaneous renewal, paving the way for a process of expansion, as we might say, in consequence of the dividing capacity of the heterogenous quantity of ‘time.’ This process of expansion is a frenzied rush, pushing ever outward the boundaries of the microcosm as well as of the macrocosm, dissolving – indeed destroying – and exploding rather than overcoming the spatial structure” (Gebser, 353). Despite its discouraging aspects, the notion of a fourth dimension as a relative, rather than a static, absolute (i.e. dead) quality is a step forward in the process of the concretion of time. The fact that it forces the mental mind to face its limits is the most exciting aspect of the fourth dimension in terms of its usefulness as a bridge towards the integral mutation. It cannot be visualized, which points the mental mind towards a new mode of realization, one of verition rather than visualization. However, the fourth dimension must be considered a dimension that integrates, rather than piggybacks onto the spatial structure, as time is the basis for the arising of the three-dimensional matrix, and not a spatialized dimension itself. “Thus time does not curve space; it is open and opens space through its capacity of rendering it transparent, and thereby supercedes nihilistic ‘emptiness’”(Gebser, 353). We must face the crumbling limits of our disintegrating universe, open our eyes, and jump past them, to a deeper, more whole reality that causes our current conception of the universe to fade like mist before the moon. “The irruption of time is destructive only if we fail to realize what ‘time’ actually is. If we are able to realize this, the irruption is not a further and ultimate loss of shelter and security, but rather a liberation” (Gebser, 288).

Now at the dusk of the mental mode of consciousness and on the verge of a new paradigm, in a sense, we do stand before an abyss. Reality as we know it is the cliff, and it is quickly fading. The question arises: will we fall violently against our will into a new understanding of life and the universe, or will we consciously jump in such a way that leads peacefully to complete transformation, coherent to our best understanding of where we are headed? In what direction should we jump? We know that our new conception of reality must be beyond dimensionality, time-free, and space-free, a communion and dance of conscious connection with origin. But, again, how exactly do we arrive at this place of ‘beyond dimensionality’? Gebser illustrates this concept artfully, using a technique called ‘paradoxical thinking’. A paradoxical statement “mediates between oceanic and perspectival thinking” (Gebser, 259) by containing both rational and irrational elements within it. It draws a conditional inference (rational) between two phrases, while the phrases also seem to contradict each other (irrational). This type of thinking, though not perfect for propelling us into the integral mode of consciousness, does take us beyond the expected point of perspectivity when viewed through a mental lens. Gebser compares this phenomenon to “the axiom of parallels; it states that two parallel lines intersect at infinity” (Gebser, 260). Each of the phrases in the statement is represented by a parallel line, seemingly in proper relationship with one another. But at (the gate to) infinity, they meet, and beyond this point, they cross. And that is when we observe an interesting phenomenon. The phrases switch order, and the statement, when put back together “beyond the vanishing point”, is no longer rational. It instead has an irrational character; indeed, the phrases seem to contradict one another. The paradoxical statement forces the rational mind to go beyond the vanishing point at infinity, by forcing it to acknowledge rational and irrational elements simultaneously. Beyond this point, the mind is propelled into a new paradigm. It is forced to abandon the exclusivity of a perspectival way of perceiving. “It is a synthesis or compromise, a third form of thought in which there is a (consistently unsatisfactory) effort to unify opposites” (Gebser, 260). Synthesis is the only way to achieve resolution in the mental mode of consciousness, which creates dualisms everywhere one looks, as is a natural consequence of perspectivity. We see the importance of synthesis in the trinity principle of Christianity, which acknowledges the necessity of an intercessor to reconcile the abyss that lies between a dualistic conception of God and humanity. Paradoxical thought, in synthesizing the irreconcilable dualism between rationality and irrationality, forces us into a new paradigm at the vanishing point. Much like the concept of the fourth dimension, it begins to help us understand (from a mental point of view) the process by which we may enter into the integral mutation, into the realm of time-free amension, where the whole is regarded. “The disruption of space by time does not lead to emptiness, to nihil, to nothingness or nada, but to transparency… by surpassing dualism, we resolve the division of the world in favor of the whole” (Gebser, 529). However, paradoxical thought cannot make the transition for us completely. The inadequacy associated with it is primarily that it is still conception. The synthesis takes place in the mind, which can only deal with abstract ideas, removed from the living origin. Again, much like with the fourth dimension, it forces us to face our limits, which causes our abstract illusions to fade from view. In this case, we face the limits of the illusion based on the abstract relationship between subject and object. As consciousness distances itself from origin, and becomes more and more based on an abstraction of ultimate, whole reality, identity becomes further abstracted from soul until even it becomes a deadened concept, a collection of concepts, much like time being spatialized. The rational conception of identity is called ego. The ego is instrumental in the mental mind’s perception of reality, and the creation of the space-time structure. The ego also provides the mental mind with the sense that it is separate from the rest of the universe, that it is able to view and analyze is from a place of transcendence, from which its actions do not affect the rest of the universe. In a sense, this perception is correct, since the ego itself is very separate from the coherent wholeness; however, in another sense, this perception is an illusion, as the ego is abstracted from a deeper identity that is intimately connected with the heart of reality. The ego’s sense of separation can be referred to as the subject-object relationship, in which the ego is considered to be the subject, and anything in the universe that is apprehended is considered to be the object. The rational mind perceives the world with a clearly-defined subject-object orientation, but when it encounters the perspectival vanishing point, as it does within paradoxical thought, it encounters its own mirror image, the irrational realm, and the subject-object relationship is challenged; indeed, it begins to break down. Gebser acknowledges this as a productive (in terms of evolution) consequence of the paradoxical statement. “It may well be synonymous with a dissolution of the mirror aspect which is an essential element of the psyche; indeed, even the polarity principle itself may be regarded as a reflective or mirror principle, whose dissolution is the final retraction of a projection… The dissolution of this principle is nothing other than the supersession and concretion of the soul, and this the first step towards its integration (Gebser, 261). The subject-object relationship becomes stretched and stressed under the weight of the attempted reconciliation of rational and irrational elements. It is the point where these meet, and that we must look for the secret wisdom that we must glean for our leap into the new paradigm. It is through the perspectival vanishing point, the point of breakdown of our illusory conceptions, that we must aim, so that we can land squarely into the integral mode of consciousness. In this mutation, we must make of our entire lives a paradoxical statement.

It is clear that as we move into the integral mode of consciousness, the subject-object relationship in our consciousness will transform, and it is of interest to consider if and how it will persist in the new structure. In the integral mode of consciousness, although there is an identification with origin, and a perceiving of the whole, there remains an acknowledgment of a dissociation from origin in some sense, not quite an extracted individual “I” that remains to do the perceiving, but rather something in-between an “I” and “non-I”, or rather beyond “I”: something beyond the dualism of the subject-object relationship, yet not resembling a simple unity. If it were in complete unity with origin, humanity would no longer have its own consciousness and time would not exist. Gebser discusses this issue on page 532: “Egolessness is a deficient regression into magic while a mere egotism is a deficient continuation in the mental-rational structure. Only the overcoming of the “I”, the concomitant overcoming of egolessness and egotism, places us in the sphere of ego-freedom, of the achronon and transparency.” (532). He acknowledges that both subject (ego) and object must not exist within the integral mode, in order to “sustain the verity of the whole” (Gebser, 309).

Again we have arrived at the moving and transparent quality of the integral structure of consciousness. It seems that in this mode, human consciousness will continue to exist in a free state, but will be in intimate and clearly-experienced connection, and, interestingly, co-creation with origin. The material world will exist in some sense, but arising anew each instant in the space of creativity sparking between ourselves and origin. “We may regard such [spatio-temporal] materialization as a bridge that makes possible the merging or coalescence …of origin and the present” (542). The nature of this relationship is mysterious and profound. Whereas our consciousness has arisen from origin, we return home to apprehend it, to embrace it wholly, while maintaining consciousness, allowing time in some sense to continue to exist, even as a quality of relationship that can be defined totally by a “present” that simultaneously embraces all of reality. “This implies that preconscious origin becomes conscious present” (Gebser, 356). This sense of the “present” is ultimately valuable, and humankind’s role in manifesting it is crucial. “We too presentiate the whole by realizing that we are to the same degree active as well as enduring and passive, past as well as future. Man is in the world to sustain it as well as himself ‘in truth’, not for his or its own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual present. It is this spiritual present which elevates wholeness to transparency and frees us from our transient age, for this age of ours is not the present but partiality and flight, indeed, almost a conclusion. Only someone who knows of origin has present – living and dying in the whole, in integrity” (Gebser, 273). It is this “present” that we can look forward to fully manifesting in the age to come.

The entry-point to this state of time-freedom, ego-freedom, and dimensional-freedom is a specific point of exit from the illusory space-time, subject-object-oriented structure that currently holds us, which we are now outgrowing. As we surpass this limiting paradigm, we will enter into closer communion with the origin, perceiving and a-waring the whole. The gateway to this time-free realm is narrow and treacherous, and this is expected. Any transition, personal or collective, is typically marked by a sense of anxiety. In fact, on a collective level, anxiety may represent our discomfort with the current paradigm and our readiness for change, and could be the necessary emotional response that leads to the willingness for transition to occur. In the Christian scripture, the New Testament, Jesus Christ said, when referring to the way to the Kingdom of Heaven: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:13-14, New International Version). The Kingdom of Heaven is a place where time has a different quality – it is a place of eternal time, described with the word kairos. Jesus Christ entered eternal time through an experience of darkness so well represented by the symbol of the cross, which creates a narrow point defined by intersecting lines, as does the geometrical representation of the paradoxical statement. Only when he entered through “the eye of the camel”, surrendering to the process of transition with arms stretched out wide, did he succeed in initiating the “redemption of the world”. Gebser alludes to the resonance of this prophetic myth with his ideas. “Will Christianity, in accord with the incipient mutation, change in keeping with the possibilities which are indicated for it? Will the church of the crucified become the church of the risen?” (Gebser, 339-40). It is only through this narrow point, the perspectival vanishing point, at which we encounter our greatest fear, the end of our crumbling world and our own disappearing self-image, that we can find hope for the transformation of our own consciousness into the next age, and thus for our resurrection into the realm of kairos time.

Although the mental analyses of the gateway principle conducted in this paper are not experiential guides that lead us fully to the integral mutation, they can serve as tools that assist us to use the best of the mental mode of consciousness to responsibly and faithfully transition to the mode that awaits us – the realm in which we will truly know that qualitative intensity known as kairos time, and the thrill of deep communion with the source of life, the origin.

* Gebser, Jean. The Ever-Present Origin. Translated by Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985.

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Risher – From Chronos to Kairos

Hair

2010-03-25T18:24:00.001-07:00

I have hairy armpits. I've been hiding them under my arms for years, as a silent protest against the oppressive social norms women endure in this society. But recently, I've been more outspoken about this rebellious hair. Just last month, I accompanied my sister to a waxing salon in Michigan for a day of girls' bonding, and had my eyebrows waxed (which I hadn't done in years) and as the woman doing my brows asked me about my eyebrow maintenance habits, I told her I typically go for "the natural look". As she explained to me the wayward elements of my wild brows and how to keep them under control, one of the other women working there overheard, and quipped "Oh, those California waxers!" I told her I have never had my brows done in California. There was a confused pause. "Then what do you do?" All of the other clients looked at me as I looked up from under the waxing strips and answered. "I sometimes pluck, but I usually go natural..." It was then that I spotted an opportunity to unveil my secret stamp of feminist revolution. I boldly continued on. "In fact, I told my sister that if you guys saw my armpits, you'd cry." Dead silence. Her eyes widened. "Let's see 'em." That's when I did it. In that little salon, packed with high-maintenance glamazons, I pulled up my sleeve, and showed them all that patch of glorious hair. It was my little way of kicking it to the establishment. I make my own choices about how to be a beautiful woman, so there!

But in all seriousness, what is it about hair that is so terrifying for some women? I have been running into this a lot lately - women who have been telling me that they compulsively wax their entire bodies because they can't stand to have hair on them. I understand the desire for women to feel beautiful, to embrace their femininity (and women naturally bear less hair than men), to enhance their softness, etc. I share that desire. But it's important to find a balance that emphasizes who we feel we are intuitively as women most appropriately. And, as women, yes we can be soft and delicate - and I believe that these qualities are some of our most important ones! But we are also strong. And we are living in a time (the past several thousand years) when that strength has been buried under values that oppress women and haven't allowed us to be free. Finally in these decades we have an incredible opportunity, because we have become free enough to awaken to ourselves, to discover a definition of ourselves as women that has been given to us by God, rather than power structures that see no value in us. We need to go deep within ourselves and listen to who we truly are. Only when we go there, will we find the great inherent, natural, full beauty that is inside of us, and be able to bring it out.

I believe in intuition. I believe in the natural way of the world. I believe that natural always equals beautiful, because natural means true, and truth is beautiful. I don't claim to have a better grasp of beauty than the next woman - I struggle just like the rest of us to feel beautiful in a world that tells me that I'm not - but I also struggle to be honest with myself, with God, and to challenge our society to reach deep within the heart of life to transform our values and worldviews to match those that match God's eyes, and so I struggle to define beauty on those terms - Divine terms. And you know what? God gives me hair on my armpits! (and incidentally, my legs, and lots of other places too)

Hair serves a lot of purposes that helps us live life more effectively. First of all, hair traps and exudes hormones called pheremones, which give off an "invisible" scent that alerts people to your personal chemistry. It's one of the primary things that attracts us to potential mates, and probably even to people we want to get to know because there's something we can learn from them. Shaving our hair off greatly reduces this (not consciously noticeable, but very powerful) scent, thus reducing our ability to live life intuitively, to attract the right people and experiences into our lives, and to experience life more fully; indeed, it decreases our ability to follow our own destiny. Also, hair helps regulate our body temperature, naturally insulating us from the cold, and assisting with carrying sweat to cool us off when we're too hot.

Throughout eons of development, we human have evolved in such a way as to serve our purpose in this time in the fullest way possible. Why would we ever want to thwart that? It's an interesting question, and one that deserves consideration. Why do some have an instinct that hairless=better? Perhaps it has something to do with our collective prominent consciousness and the desire to hold onto it. One thing that makes we humans distinct from other mammals is that we have noticeable less hair than the majority of them. Presumably, as the light of our self-reflecting consciousness has evolved, the hair on our bodies has thinned. Perhaps it is our subconscious association with and pride in this distinction that has us so caught up in shunning (or taming) our hair. According to Jean Gebser's theory of the mutations of consciousness, with each mutation (that we know of), we have become farther away from God, but the light of our consciousness has increased. We now stand at the very end of the mental mutation of consciousness, which is the most "enlightened" place, the place of the most reliance on our own human rational minds and the least reliance on the holistic and universal mystery of God. This rational mind has served us well over the past 500 or so years - it has given us science, technology, and so much more. We have learned to rely not on the subtle, mysterious and intuitive element of our relationship to the universe, and rather to rely on our outer senses, our so-called objective observations. We've become almost completely externally-focused, and driven to base our values on utilitarianism for the purpose of our own power and progress. It appears now, though, that this same instinct is now ceasing to serve us and our world. We've reached the end of the line of this mode of engaging with life. We are waking up (over the past 50 years or so) to the value of the mystery of the subtely-known elements of life. We are waking up to the inherent value in other forms of life in the universe (and our own dependence upon them). We are losing faith in the perceived omnipotence of our own intellect. We are rediscovering the beauty in humility. And most of all, we are beginning to long for the God that we hope upon hope, sense, and ultimately know is there. For we would not seek Him if we did not know He was there. Gebser calls this shift the mutation into the integral mode of consciousness, in which our consciousness becomes open to all other modes of consciousness that we've "traveled" through, and also to the "ever-present origin", or God.

I think this hair issue is directly related to our mode of consciousness. Baldness conveys a starkness, clarity, rationality, logic, a "there is only one perspective" kind of perspective, while hairiness conveys a veiled, mysterious kind of perspective, and even helps us engage this perspective by enhancing our ability to rely on intuition (pheremones), and by providing a veil over parts of our bodies. Perhaps those that value and continue to cling onto the hyper-rational mode of consciousness defined by a reliance on human intellect are those that see stark body-balness as beautiful. I, on the other hand, firmly believe that real beauty ultimately embraces more of the veiled mystery of life by embracing hair; however, perhaps some level of hair management and manicuring is not out of the question, as the integral mutation does allow room for the beauty and power of human consciousness to be married to the complex mystery of God's universe.

In the meantime, I'll keep my armpits integral and revolutionary and you can trust that I'll be thoroughly appreciating the (pheremone-filled) air of mystery that comes along with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9oq_IskRIg

Gayle Haggard and the courage to stay

2010-02-02T17:59:00.000-08:00

I heard a wonderful interview on Sirius radio today (I get it free in my car for the first year) on the Rosie O'Donnell show. She was interviewing Gayle Haggard, the wife of Ted Haggard, who was a high profile evangelical Christian pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and then fell from grace when it was revealed that he had been engaging in drug-fueled sexual trysts with a male escort/masseuse. Long story short - Gayle decided to stay in her marriage, Ted lost his career, the church shunned their family, they had to leave Colorado and were homeless for a time (with their 5 kids), they sought extensive therapy, and then, slowly they began to speak out about their understanding of what had happened in their lives. Gayle has recently published a book about why she decided to stay with her husband, aptly titled "Why I Stayed", and this is what Rosie was interviewing her about.

I must say, I have seen this woman interviewed a few times - the first being on the Oprah Show, and I was completely blown away by how refreshing it was to see her and her husband speaking so openly and authentically - people trying to follow God in the midst of their brokenness. That sounds cliche, but I do find that it is hard to find people, especially those who call themselves spiritual, who are that broken, and are open and honest about it. It takes great courage to expose yourself that way, but wounds need to be exposed to the freshness of the open air before they can heal.

Here's a link to her interview (with Ted) on Oprah which aired about a year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qy_S64h2eU&feature=PlayList&p=D8770DEF8EF2939F&index=0&playnext=1

Gayle Haggard makes me proud to call myself a Christian. I love how she talked about why she stayed with Ted on the Rosie show. She said something along the lines of I wanted to be honest with myself about the truth of our relationship. I loved the life we had built. I wanted to embrace what God had revealed in our lives. I'm paraphrasing a little but but when I heard this, I wanted to shout from the rooftops "YES!!!! YES! Thank you! Finally - someone who has the courage to face with honesty the path that God has given her and to embrace the suffering for spiritual purification!!!!! Thank you Gayle for your courage! Thank you for truly loving God! Thank you for showing us the true purpose of marriage and giving people a real example of dignity!!!" The longer I am married, the more I understand what marriage is (it's always a journey of faith that can only be fully understood once entered into and lived out). I find it to be a journey of two souls, fully intertwined. Just as individuals build a life based on will and choice, families also build a life based on will. We can fool ourselves into thinking that we have infinite choice all the time, but I don't think that's true. We are like blades of grass - starting with the seed of our genetics and ancestry and conditioned by the circumstances of our environment, we reach toward the Sun, with every choice we make determining the course of our growth and limiting the direction of our path until one day, we find ourselves fully blossomed into the place of the ultimate extent of the sum of our choices, and we wilt and die. Being married is two blades of grass, intertwined, growing along one path together, building one life together. It's really a remarkable thing. But I believe that having a partner who is committed to the same ideals as I, encourages accountability in my spiritual growth, and brings continual challenge so that I can be shaped and twisted towards the light of the Sun (God's truth and spirit) continually. It takes courage. It takes constant vulnerability. It takes humility. It takes commitment. And yes, it involves suffering - something which our society does not like or even accept, let alone condone or invite.
Of course suffering for its own sake is a ridiculous notion. But living at the deep level of the spirit, and listening to that still small voice in the heart that calls us towards purity cultivates a joy in the midst of suffering (to use the words of the utilitarian society we live in - it makes the suffering "worth it"), and this joy that indicates our Oneness with God is, I believe, the purpose of our lives.

It takes courage to commit to something, even when you're being hurt. And it is always our first instinct to run away, or to fight back. Especially for women who can sometimes have a low self-esteem, a weak sense of self, or who struggle with shame and allow men to define their self-worth, it does seem that the most courageous thing is to walk away from the relationship altogether when hurt. In many cases, this is undoubtedly true - with the caveat that she walks away to pursue growth and self-love, to cultivate dignity by getting in touch with who she is in the eyes of God. But what I'm saying is, it's not always best to walk away. I grew up hearing the voices of well-meaning role-models, at school, on TV, in books, saying if a woman is hurt, she shouldn't stand for it. She should protect herself and flee. That is a very very important voice that needs to proliferate our communities in deep ways for women to become empowered and to find their feet in places where they have not. But what about women who have? What about women, people in general, who have a strong sense of their worth and are able to act with dignity? These people are in a position to offer something astounding. They are in a position to offer grace - to help give their partners a chance to heal, and to give their relationships a chance to grow through the power of unconditional love. What Ted did to his wife, his community, and himself was abominable. But it does not need to take away from Gayle's love for herself and for God, and from her commitment to her own path, which is intertwined with his. This is power. This is dignity that is worthy to be called the love of the kingdom of heaven. This is how true healing happens. This is the kind of courage I aspire to.

Towards Wholeness as Expressed in Human Consciousness: Self as Spiritual Telos Through the Lens of Quantum Physics

2010-01-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

Towards Wholeness as Expressed in Human Consciousness:
Self as Spiritual Telos Through the Lens of Quantum Physics

Kari Risher

California Institute of Integral Studies
Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness

PARP 7400 - Psyche and Spirit
Instructor, Sean Kelly

Abstract
Jung’s concept of the Self is an archetypal potentiality uniting consciousness and the unconscious. This paper will explore the relationship of this Self to the transpersonal realm through the lens of quantum mechanics, and distinguish it as a spiritual telos, which draws the human psyche towards itself for the expression of wholeness in the universe.
The concept of particle-wave duality found in quantum mechanics implies that the structure of the universe is better understood in terms of probabilistic, rather than definite terms. The atom, like the Self, has traditionally been considered as a self-organizing, basic element of reality. If we consider the Self in the context of this metaphor, in light of quantum mechanics, it opens up to a non-form whose contents are ultimately undefined. We find upon consideration that the content of the transpersonal realm of the unconscious in this model constantly “breaks into” the self, saturating it with possibility.
It would appear that there exists a flow into the human psyche wherein greater content from the unconscious realm continually enters consciousness. This indicates a possible telos in the human universe towards the embodiment of ever more of the infinite whole that is presumably found in the transpersonal realm, beyond space-time. It appears as if the universe is turning itself inside-out, or outside-in, as it were, with humanity acting as its fulcrum. It follows, then, that the ultimate state for individual consciousness would be to conform to the self archetype, thus allowing psychic energy to come to life through it wholly and unimpeded.

Keywords: self, telos, quantum, synchronicity, consciousness

Throughout history, people have sought answers about the ultimate nature and function of the material universe through the attempt to characterize the most basic substance of which it is comprised. The interaction of this tiniest of material elements with the energetic force that animates life as we know it is of tremendous consequence to our conception of the ultimate structure of the universe, and even of our own sense of meaning and purpose in our human lives. As we examine the topic throughout this paper, we must bear in mind that scientific theories are always abstractions of elements of reality whose essence cannot be completely articulated, and thus are always open for further refinement. However, as each subsequent generation builds on the knowledge of the last regarding the basic structure of the material universe, our abstract image of it becomes ever more subtle, complex, and, likely, accurate.
Carl Jung’s concept of the Self is an archetypal potentiality that serves as the center for the individual human psyche. It is an abstract representation of a state of psychic wholeness that cannot be characterized per se, because by definition, it “includes in it a supraordinate concept” (Jung, Aion, 1959, p. 3), but whose conceptual presence can nonetheless be substantiated via its appearance in the psyche in the form of spontaneous symbols. This Self, in Jung’s estimation, cannot be distinguished from the theological concept of the God-image, as he asserts in his book on the Self, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self: “Unity and totality stand at the highest point on the scale of objective value because their symbols can no longer be distinguished from the imago Dei. Hence all statements about the God-image apply also to the empirical symbols of totality” (Jung, Aion, p. 31).
The structure and function of the basic elements of the material universe as they relate to the non-material universe are of similar consequence to the structure and function of the psyche as it relates to the transpersonal realm, which cannot be distinguished from the Divine presence: Both consider the frontiers of the material and the interface between it and the intangible. As the human being contains a physical aspect, the body, that consists of these most basic elements of matter, and as this is partially identified with the concept of psyche, we can presumably discover insights regarding psychic interactions with the Divine from careful comparison with scientific analysis regarding the basic element of the material universe, typically referred to as the atom. In the same sense that the atom is an image used to describe a compound, self-organizing unit of elementary substance, the Self is an image used to describe the compound, self-organizing psyche in its whole individual form. Carl Jung concedes the validity of this instructive metaphor. “At the very least, therefore, the self can claim the value of an hypothesis analogous to that of the structure of the atom. And even though we should once again be enmeshed in an image, it is none the less powerfully alive, and its interpretation quite exceeds my powers. I have no doubt at all that is an image, but one in which we are contained” (Jung, Essays, 1966, para 405).
The concept of the basic, indivisible element of matter (in modern times known as the atom) has been studied and explored since ancient Greek thinkers such as Plato attempted to define an elementary unit of matter. But it has been in the last few centuries that characterization of its specific structure has accelerated. The most recent discoveries in this field, resulting in the birth of quantum mechanics, are of particular interest. As quantum theory grows more prominent and we shift our gaze from a Newtonian-atomic understanding of reality to a quantum one, we discover that the implications of this more subtle viewpoint on the nature of reality are stunning. This paper will explore the relationship of the Self to the transpersonal realm through the lens of quantum mechanics, distinguishing it as a spiritual telos that draws the human psyche towards itself for the unimpeded expression of whole and infinite complexity in the manifest universe.
One of the features of quantum mechanics that is of interest to understanding the interaction between the psyche and the transpersonal realm is particle-wave duality. It all began in the very beginning of the 20th century when Max Planck investigated discrepancies he was finding between experimental data and predicted results based on Maxwell’s equation regarding spectral content of light. He posited that exchanges of radiant energy could only occur in discrete chunks, called quanta, the intensity of which is wholly dependent on energy frequency. Einstein confirmed this theory by his own observations with light; however, radiant energy still seemed to behave in a wave-like manner in certain situations, like during the interference between multiple light waves. Thus radiant energy began to be defined as having a dual-nature. In 1924 (Pullman, 1998, p. 273), Louis de Broglie made the bold proposition that perhaps matter also had this same type of dual nature, and could behave as a particle or a wave, depending on the circumstance. He applied Planck’s formula for calculating energy using frequency (E=hν, where E=energy, h=Planck’s constant, and ν=frequency) to Einstein’s famous formula relating energy to mass (E=mc2, where m=mass, and c=the speed of light) in order to characterize the wave properties of a given particle. The formula he proposed was λ=h/(mv), where λ=wavelength, and v=the velocity of the particle. Erwin Schrodinger then took de Broglie’s research to the next step, establishing a wave function that revealed the relationship between the mass and velocity of a particle and the wavelength and energy of the corresponding wave, Δ2Ψ+(8π2m/h2)(E-V)Ψ=0. Because this is a second-order partial differential equation, the energy (E) values for which it works out are limited, confirming mathematically that energy is emitted in discrete amounts, as quanta. In 1926, Max Born presented a stunning new interpretation of this dual nature of matter and thus the elementary particles that makes it up: He introduced the idea of probability into the wave function. The square of the amplitude of the module of the wave function Ψ is equal to the probability that a particle will be found at a given point and given time. This idea is generally still accepted among physicists today.
The implications of a probabilistic view of particle-wave duality on our picture of the universe are nothing short of worldview-shattering. It basically creates an image of the composition and development of the material world as being made up of pure probability waves that only manifest as elementary particles under certain circumstances. When a particle does manifest, it is as though the wave function collapses into a particular space coordinate at a given instant in time. But what causes this manifestation to occur? The answer to that question begins to be addressed by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which states that the position and momentum for any elementary particle cannot be determined simultaneously. Although Heisenberg’s primary method of deduction for this principle was mathematical, he popularly articulated it using a specific illustration: If one attempts to determine the position of an electron, for example, using a microscope, upon observation, the photons emitted from the observer’s visual inquiry will perturb the electron’s motion, preventing her from obtaining her answer. The same is true for attempting to determine the particle’s momentum and its position being altered due to the observer’s involvement. It is the observer who causes particle manifestation to occur.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle imposes a complete paradigm-shift for the way we as humans examine the universe, conceive of the universe, and understand our role within it, by implying that matter is formed partially under the influence of a human observer. It introduced a fundamental indeterminism into our picture of the basic nature of the universe. Although some scientists have argued that we will one day return to a more deterministic view, developments in quantum physics have continued in this vein. “We must not deduce [from the uncertainty principle] that we are unable to simultaneously determine the position and momentum of an electron, but rather that the electron does not posses these two attributes at the same time” (Pullman, p. 294). The picture that has now emerged is of a completely probabilistic reality, with elementary particles popping into existence along with the influence of a human cooperator. “It is only when the result of the measurement is registered and recorded in the mind of a human being… that the wave function “collapses” into an observable reality” (Pullman, p. 280). One interesting consequence of this idea is that the concept of “existence” itself comes into question. What does it really mean for something to exist materially? Could it be that reality as we know it is nothing more than a complex co-creation among collective human minds? Schrodinger acknowledged the complications inherent in this line of thinking in his book, My View of the World: “The real difficulty of philosophy lies in the spatial and temporal multiplicity of individuals doing the observing and the thinking. If everything were confined to a single conscience, it would all be quite simple” (Pullman, p. 296).
With the Uncertainty Principle came a serious challenge to the existing picture of the foundational building block of the universe, the atom. Heisenberg “strip[ped] the atom of the last vestiges of personality” (Pullman, p. 291), as it proved to be too restrictive a metaphor to represent primordial substance as it was coming to be understood. As Heisenberg observed, “The smallest parts of matter are not fundamental Beings, as in the philosophy of Democritus, but are mathematical forms. Here it is quite evident that the form is more important than the substance of which it is the form” (Pullman, p. 291). The newest image that has arisen to give structure in human consciousness to the foundations of reality is that of a vast network of probabilistic fields, creating the world anew at every instant. “Reality boils down to an assortment of fields interacting with one another via their respective quanta particles” (Pullman, p. 347). This field-laden space is further homogenized by a more accurate depiction of what used to be called the “vacuum”, via an analysis using Heisenberg’s 4th uncertainty relation, which states - the shorter the lifespan of a particle, the more uncertain its energy. If we consider this idea for the entire spectrum of possible particle lifespans, we come to a further conception of the vacuum, what used to be considered to be the space between atoms, but can now be viewed more accurately as the void from which material particles emerge. If we imagine that, within the void, even populating the void, particles exist for an infinitely short duration of time, approaching zero seconds, then the energy required to sustain that particle would be extremely uncertain, to the point that it would approach a point of infinite possibility in terms of its energy and mass values. The required amount of energy would be borrowed from the void, and would need to be returned very shortly to it. Because these particles exist only in theory, they are called virtual particles. The “zero-state” of our universe is composed of them. This paints a picture of the foundation of reality as a rich and fertile soil bed, ready and eager to allow matter to spring forth from the realm of possibility. “Vacuum functions as a sort of permanent energy bank…it is actually continually filled with a host of virtual particles of all types...” (Pullman, p. 350). This picture of the void from which material springs forth conveys an active and involved energy source for the continual creation of the world, which is an idea that has not been embraced since the beginnings of recorded history, until modern times. “Democritus’ vacuum was an inert playground for atoms to frolic on. It has now been supplanted by an active vacuum participating in the making and evolution of the world” (Pullman, p. 352). This active vacuum is rich with infinite possibilities in terms of matter - what types of particles will arise, in which orientations, and in which combinations. “There is an obvious mechanism that allows a transition from virtuality to reality: It requires supplying enough energy to guarantee that particles will materialize” (Pullman, p. 350). This energy that is required is supplied by human consciousness. In some way, we are responsible for the material world around us. It does seem possible however, that consciousness permeates the entire universe, and exists also in some form in elementary particles. Neils Bohr asserted that basic self-organized structures do seem to exercise will. “Generally speaking, it can be said that a particular atom in a stationary state is free to make a choice between many possible transitions to other stationary states” (Pullman, p. 265). The interactions amongst conscious beings and their impact on the creation of the material universe is a very complex issue and can only be speculated upon at this point in time.
This image we have now cultivated of material reality and its unstable state, so dependent on the will of consciousness, primes us to consider ideal forms that exist in the realm of possibility, such as the Self, as goals for manifestation towards which the universe is oriented and that give rise to conjectures regarding the purpose of human life and the direction of the evolution of consciousness. The psyche is a realm of human “inner” experience that seems to encompass the idea of the “self”, but is not very clearly defined in terms of function nor limits. It includes both conscious and unconscious elements, and is the medium through which an individual experiences her life. The Self is to the psychic realm as the atom was at one time to the physical realm – an image representing a whole, self-organized element. Carl Jung characterized the Self as an archetype of wholeness towards which the individual psyche attempts to organize. “Fundamental… is Jung’s discovery that the psyche is a self-regulating system, capable not only of maintaining its own equilibrium, but of bringing about its own self-realization” (Aziz, 1990, p. 16). Given this parallel relationship between the atom and self, what does the transformation of the atom image into one of intersecting fields of virtual particles mean for our understanding of the Self? Considering the structure of the Self in terms of our old picture of the atom, we encounter a form, hovering in psychic space, calling the psyche to merge into its solidified shape, and once this has occurred, the individual has fully arrived. He has become the ultimate version of himself, knowing everything there is to know from the perspective of his limited form. He is a pure reflection of God – an eternal and unchanging God. The concept of an active void, filled with virtual particles as representative of the ideal psychic state, then, remarkably alters this image. The Self in this context is seen not as a set form, but rather, as a non-form. A psyche that incorporates conscious and unconscious contents would be one that resembles the “zero-state”, active void discussed earlier in this paper. The clearly defined conscious realm, with the ego at its center, is analogous to an atomic entity that has formed due to the manifestation of elementary particles with a nucleus at their center. As this conscious realm integrates unconscious elements, we can imagine it fading into a less clearly-defined wave function. Ultimately, at the point of maximum integration between the conscious and unconscious, we find the same relationship we considered when defining virtual particles: Consciousness is stable for an infinitely short period of time, approaching zero, and its contents are continually retrieved from the void. Consciousness, in this case, is completely permeable and, indeed, resembles a flow, defined by the infinite possibility inherent within the void. This paints a picture of an active and living Divine spirit flowing through humanity, reminiscent of the common religious metaphor of the Divine breath. The Self, then, no longer an ideal form holding steady in the realm of possibility, begins, with quantum mechanics, to instead resemble a process. This image matches Jung’s eventual definition of the Self, as outlined in Aion. “The self cannot be localized in an individual ego-consciousness, but acts like a circumambient atmosphere to which no definite limits can be set, either in space or in time” (Jung, Aion, p. 183). One point that is worth noting is that this state is not free from conscious involvement; on the contrary, the presence of virtual particles indicates not a passive openness to some external flow, but rather a dynamic and engaged openness, embracing and acknowledging all possibilities simultaneously, shivering on the precipice between formlessness and form, between eternity and space-time.
Jung identified a flow inherent in the universe that seems to pull the psyche towards this perpetually open state. “The question arose repeatedly: What is this process leading to? Where is its goal? From my own experience, I knew by now that I could not presume to choose a goal... it had been proved to me that I had to abandon the idea of the super-ordinate position of the ego… I was being compelled to go through this process of the unconscious. I had to let myself be carried along by the current, without a notion of where it would lead me. When I began drawing the mandalas, however, I saw that… all the paths I had been following… were leading back to a single point… During those years…, I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self” (Jung, Memories, 1965, p. 196). He recognized the existence of the ideal state through the recognition of its appearance in the dream-state, both for himself and his patients. “Although “wholeness” seems at first sight to be nothing but an abstract idea (like anima and animus), it is nevertheless empirical in so far as it is anticipated by the psyche in the form of spontaneous or autonomous symbols” (Jung, Aion, p. 31). The psychic process of assimilating to the Self is defined as a compensatory process, by which unconscious contents are pulled into engagement with the conscious realm of the psyche. Jung came to recognize this as “a kind of developmental process in the personality itself””. (Jung, Nature, 1945, pp. 289-90). The mystery behind this compensatory flow of psychic energy can be further examined by looking at another of Jung’s concepts – synchronicity.
Synchronicity is a quality of the human relationship to the universe in which there appears to be a meaningful connection between occurrences in one’s interior and exterior realms of experience. When it occurs, an external event happens in an individual’s experience that resonates with something internally for them – this is often experienced as an answer to a deep question the person has held but not been able to answer, or a breakthrough that provides perspective the person has desired for the resolution of some internal tension but not yet achieved. Jung identified synchronicity as an indicator for the continual flow of contents from the unconscious to the conscious parts of the psyche, as Aziz points out in his book on the psychology of religion and synchronicity. “With a synchronistic experience of “absolute knowledge”, then, information that is not space and time-bound finds itself in the space- and time-bound world of ego-consciousness” (Aziz, p. 72). The mechanism of synchronicity, in this way, can be understood as the engine by which the psychic flow from the unconscious realm into human consciousness is generated.
The existence of synchronicity in our universe implies that this flow of psychic energy exists, in which virtual particles, the infinite possibilities of life contained in the breath of the Divine, vie to be incorporated into human consciousness. Content that has entered into the collective field of conscious experience does not leave, and thus it seems as if this psychic flow orients the universe towards greater and greater content being processed by human consciousness, leading ultimately to the Self-form as the psyche’s end-point. “The Self is “all the time urging us to overcome our unconscious” (Aziz, p. 21). What is the significance of this incorporation, and what does this tell us about the Self as the culmination of this process?
Considering synchronicity as one mechanism with which the universe (from a human perspective) functions, in terms of the involvement of human consciousness in the manifestation of material reality as we mentioned in a previous section, we find that synchronistic events occur as if the energy in the conscious part of the psyche that is focused on the manifestation of a certain occurrence via the desire to understand or experience one possibility from the void of infinite possibility is enough to cause the collapse of the probabilistic wave function governing that possibility, so that it manifests into material reality, where it can then be observed, digested, and incorporated into the human consciousness. David Peat addresses the significance of this processing for the evolution of the universe in his essay, “The Alchemy of Creativity: Art, Consciousness, and Embodiment”. He suggests that human consciousness is a part of a cyclical process of purification for the universe, likening its involvement to the alchemical process. “Its [Consciousness’] origin is … a process, an indivisible cyclical movement of projection and internalization, one of making manifest within the realm of the physical and then of ingestion, in coded or symbolic form, back into the world of the mental. In this creativity, resembles an alchemical cycle in which the creative gold is generated within the alembic of body and mind” (Peat, 1).
Because consciousness seems to be such an important figure in the psyche’s development towards the Self (what Jung calls the individuation process), it is important to look at its role in the Self-image. The relationship between the Self and the ego, which is defined as the center of consciousness, is a precarious one. It is clear that they must somehow encounter one another, as the Self is partially-defined as a state of the union of the conscious and unconscious, but it is crucial to identify the nature of this relationship. If the Self were to completely subsume the ego, Jung asserts, the results would be catastrophic. “It must be reckoned a psychic catastrophe when the ego is assimilated by the self. The image of wholeness then remains in the unconscious, so that on the one hand it shares the archaic nature of the unconscious and on the other finds itself in the psychically relative space-time continuum that is characteristic of the unconscious as such” (Jung, Aion, p. 24). We find that the ego is critical to the proper structure of the Self. “The ego must be the one to lead the process of integration” (Aziz, p. 26). As the psyche approaches the Self-form over time, the ego’s boundaries become permeable, maintaining their structure but opening more fully to the unconscious, eventually rendering it completely diaphanous through itself. Thus, in the relationship between the conscious and unconscious realms of psyche, “a third, transcendent position emerges” (Aziz, p. 25), the Self.
The Self as defined by Carl Jung and as discussed in this paper can be understood as a telos for spiritual development. This ideal psychic state is identified in different ways throughout religious culture, but is perhaps most directly analogous to the Christian concept of Divine incarnation into the (material) world. That the Self is a portal to the process of the infinite (unconscious) invading the finite (consciousness) makes it indistinguishable from the God-image, as represented in Christianity by the Christ-figure. “Through the Christ-symbol, man can get to know the real meaning of his suffering. The cause of the suffering is in both cases the same, namely, ‘incarnation’… The drama of the archetypal life of Christ describes in symbolic images the events in the conscious life [life of the ego] – as well as in the life that transcends consciousness [life of the self] – of a man who has been transformed by his higher destiny” (Jung, Dogma, 1948, p. 43).
Material reality is tangible to us, because it is energy that has oriented itself in such a way and at such a scale that we can more fully acknowledge it, hold it, work with it, appreciate it, and incorporate it into our will. This idea points to the possibility that the manifestation of material reality in and through human consciousness defines space itself, and that the psychic flow into human consciousness defines time itself; in this sense, human consciousness creates and defines the realm of space-time. Over time (perhaps defining time), more and more content from the presumably infinite Divine is incorporated into human consciousness. If this process were to continue indefinitely, ultimately infinity would be completely manifested in space-time, at some point rendering space-time itself obsolete. If infinity were to pull itself through human consciousness, turning itself inside-out, the fulcrum point of the entire process where finite meets infinite, consciousness meets the unconscious, and light meets dark would be the archetypal Self. This image calls to mind the line from William Blake’s poem, To God: “If you have formed a circle to go into, go into it yourself and see how you would do”. Because we know nothing beyond what we are conscious of, the nature of the Divine and how It calls us forward on our path of development is something on which we can only speculate. For now, the empirical existence of the Self, as an image of wholeness, which appears to us as a light in the distance, provides us a direction by which to set our bearings, a place to rest our deep inner focus, and perhaps even a hope for the wholeness and peace for which we long as a universe community.

References

Aziz, R. (1990). C.G. Jung’s psychology of religion and synchronicity. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Combs, A. and Krippner, S. (2003). Process, structure, and form: An evolutionary transpersonal psychology of consciousness, International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 22.

Jung, C.G. (1953). Two essays in analytical psychology (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.7). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1945). "On the nature of dreams", The structure and dynamics of the psyche (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.8). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 2). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1948). “A psychological approach to dogma of the trinity”, Psychology and religion: West and east (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.11). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1965). Memories, dreams, reflections. New York: NY Vintage Books.
Main, R. (2000). Religion, science, and synchronicity, Journal for Jungian Studies, 46, no: 2, 89-107.
Peat, D.F. The alchemy of creativity: Art, consciousness and embodiment. Retrieved Nov 11, 2009, from http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/embody.htm
Peat, D.F. (1995). Alchemical transformation: Consciousness and matter, form and information. Retrieved Nov 11, 2009, from http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/padova.htm

Pullman, Bernard (1998). The Atom in the history of human thought. New York: Oxford University Press.

Stevens, A. (1983). Archetypes: A natural history of the self. New York: William Morrow and Co.

Wilber, K. (1985). Quantum questions. Boston: Shambhala.

The Soul of the Machine

2009-12-15T02:19:00.000-08:00

The technological-industrial way of life continues to grow in and throughout human society. As the market economy and the values and lifestyle that go along with it sweeps over the globe and is adopted by community after community, it would seem that its progress would be aligned with human success and potential. After all, isn’t it we humans who first created and who now power this system? Isn’t it we who are fashioning our lives to fit into this great machine? Yet in light of recent discoveries regarding the damage this way of life is causing to the natural environment that sustains us and the social fabric of our existence, we find ourselves stuck in a system from which it is virtually impossible to remove ourselves. It seems to be rolling forward with its own momentum, and perhaps more importantly, its own will. Does this techno-industrial system have a soul? Can it be considered a living entity? This paper will explore the animate force behind the “machine” - what it is, how and why it arose, and what will become of it, in two forms: a narrative poem that addresses the relationship of humanity to the technological-industrial being from the vantage point of the collective human consciousness, and a traditional linear-logic-based academic inquiry.

The soul.
Holding a smoke-stack cigarette, it stares at me with sparking eyes. Says – “Really, are you surprised, at how powerful I am?
You built me like a man.
Took the mechanical aspects of your hands, compounded them, used me to tie up the land, which taming was a burden to you. You put the fire of nature’s belly into one neat little point, rolled it up in this metal joint, placed gracefully at the end of my fingers. My fingers, your fingers, my fingers are your fingers. And they’re holding it all, right here. I’m smoking it”, it says... smoking it, smoking it.
Smoke curls, curls up like tendrils framing a fearsome face. Absent of grace. Its legs keep a steady pace, marching forward with regular foot-falls that hypnotize me, set the measure by which I acknowledge reality - linearly. I’m mesmerized by its sway over me, its ability to out-perform me.
It must be a god-like entity.
Yet wasn’t it once part of me? Is this my soul staring back?
What kind of mirror returns a reflection so black?
It doesn’t feel like me, yet it compels me ever forward and I look down at my legs that are marching, marching, in line with this thing
towards a future defined by the sharp-edged essence from which it springs.

The techno-industrial complex moves along its path with rigid, mechanical efficiency, blind to all human values but utilitarian production for its own survival and growth. It’s fitting that the vehicle holds such an important place in our society, because one is hard-pressed to think of our society’s system of production apart from the image of a moving machine, rolling efficiently forward towards its elusive goal. Alf Hornborg, in his book “The Power of the Machine”, details a model for how this system functions within a big-picture context. He acknowledges the parallels between it and a living organism. “Viewed as in some respects analogous to living biomass, the suprahuman “technomass” of industrial society must be fed specific kinds of substances in order to grow” (Hornborg, 93). Hornborg emphasizes that “structure can be maintained only as long as there is a net gain in order drawn from the environment” (Hornborg, 93). This order that feeds the system is defined as exergy. Exergy is “ingested” in the form of human (and sometimes animal) labor and natural materials, and processed to create industrial products for human use. In order for production to continue on, the system must be capable of harnessing more exergy than what is used to create the products for direct human use. Human labor is generated through the ingestion of food products, and some industrial products must be used for the accumulation of further natural materials, by the acquisition of local natural resources, as well as the trade of industrial goods for non-local natural resources (which implies a necessity for transportation). In this way, the techno-industrial system of production requires increasing levels of exergy in order to survive. Ever farther-reaching spatial expansion becomes necessary as the “machine” of industrial production continues to function in a world of limited natural resources.

What are you?
I’ve studied its face. And it resembles mine. I’ve stared and stared at it, for the longest time because it looks like me, but I know it’s not. It tries to make me think it’s me, that in its arms I’m truly free. But I’m not duped so easily these days.
What is it?
I trace the line of its face with my finger, and it traces me in return. When I look in its eyes I let my gaze linger, searching for depth in its soul but I can find none.
The touch of its flesh on my flesh burns like acid.
This isn’t right. I check my senses, I check my sight. I try to lash out in anger with all of my might but in the mirror I see a farce of my fight. I feel like I’m stuck in an eternal night, staring at myself, but unable to express my complexity autonomously. This thing thinks it’s reflecting me but where’s my insight? Where’s the light of the soul in my eyes that should be flashing along with my wrathful cry? It’s me, but it’s not me. To be honest, it’s the ugliest sight I’ve ever seen. I hate you, reflection, whatever you are, because you’re so close to me yet so frustratingly far from who I want to be in the world I occupy. Did I think that by projecting onto you, I would find my true “I”? I wanted to worship my progressive capabilities, to alter material territories at the altar of “me” so I created you thoughtlessly. I did not fashion a being after my own heart and soul, but mistook a collapsed and simple hologram to be the whole self I own.
And clothed it in flesh of metal and stone.
Now, you’re a calamity. Is there any redeeming value in this estranged piece of me? Will I ever again feel autonomous and free? Or am I doomed to live out the course of history as a slave to this cold, marching, and one-dimensional zombie?

The techno-industrial system is, at its foundation, a means of production for the continued functioning of human society. Ultimately, it is about the human need for resources in order to maintain our own survival, yet this is no small matter. It influences, and even defines, the full measure of expression of our humanity in the world. Frank Elwell writes in “The Sociology of Karl Marx” that “for Marx, the entire sociocultural system is based on the manner in which men and women relate to one another in their continuous struggle to secure needed resources from nature” (Elwell, 2). It appears that, historically, human systems of production have been closed-cycle processes, wholly and deeply rooted in social and spiritual contexts and focused on the sustainable use of local material resources. By contrast, today’s industrial society is disproportionately focused on utility, seemingly blindly and relentless driving towards cold, analytical dissection of the universe, and unnaturally neglects basic human concerns such as social relations and spiritual meaning.

The Self, as defined by Carl Jung, is the God-image, the full potential of the human spirit as a reflection of the Divine in all its wholeness. Throughout this paper, I will use the term “human soul” to refer to this concept of the Self. Whereas a means of production initiated by and functioning for the good of the human species seemingly should arise as an expression of the entire human soul and how it relates to the world around it, it seems that, in modern society, the means of production has arisen as an incomplete expression of that soul, removed from the concrete reality of basic experience. The development of this incomplete expression has continued autonomously, and has seemed to take on a life of its own despite any collective change in consciousness, and is increasingly rendering the relationship of the human soul with its expression in the material world ultimately unfulfilling and frustrating.

Hornborg asserts that modern society has, since the late 19th century, functioned in service to the system of production rather than the other way around. “The abstract, neoclassical notion of “utility” thus emptied human livelihood of specific and intrinsic meaning in order to render it subservient to the industrial world organism” (Hornborg, 105). The goal of human life in this system is no longer the flourishing of the society as a whole, but rather the continuation of the cycle of utilitarian production, removed from human experience. Hornborg agrees. “”Production” is the goal in itself, answering to the needs of the technomass” (Hornborg, 103).

Human labor is a primary element that feeds the machine, and although humanity has become subservient to it in terms of purpose, the machine’s survival is completely dependent on human involvement at every stage. In this sense, any animate quality it has arises out of the life-force of humanity. As time passes and human consciousness continues to build on the wisdom of increasingly greater experience, it evolves along a primary axis. But because the machine’s needs have overshadowed the needs of those communities that have entered into it, and its most urgent need for survival is an ever-increasing production output for the accrual of ever-increasing amounts of exergy, the axis of evolution, in modern times, has been focused on the development of industrial technology. Technology, in a broad sense, is defined in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, as “the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area”. Technologies are, in any context, the mechanisms by which we engage with the material world. If humanity were to pursue evolution in a direction that embraced all facets of our human soul, the technology we would develop would most certainly serve a noble purpose for our development and the development and evolution of the universe ecology of which we are naturally a part. But in the context of modern industrial society, technology has served as a concrete, material manifestation of the abstract notion of utility that is the spirit behind the machine. This axis of development for the soul of the machine is misaligned with the holistic interest of the human soul. This has become increasingly apparent as we stand by and witness the devastation of the very environment that sustains us due to the industrial technological functions of the machine.

From whence?

I was seduced by your efficiency. You were trim, toned, and shiny, and you astounded me with your sense of purpose. I believed it was manifest destiny, for you to be taken out from me. And together we’d coast to eternity with a single purpose – to encompass the entire earthly territory.
I was possessed by lust,
obsessed,
thought I must know more of what lay beyond the shore of my community. You were a glorious magnification of those parts of me that could explore. You grew more and more and before I knew it, you outgrew the limits of what I had intended. I was captivated by your transcendent glow. So I stood by and watched as you continued to grow, feeding on whatever I could sow and more, eating my world to its beating core. And still you want more and now I find myself with nothing left to give you. Yet you continue, ripping into the sinew and connective tissues that hold together my precious world. This whole project has become unfurled. A snake chasing after its tail cannot go anywhere, will never prevail.
You are a great nothing,
sweeping like a gale over hill and dale. And, let me tell you something, Great Nothing, you are destined to fail.

We have established the technological-industrial system of production as the material manifestation of the part of the human soul concerned with physical utility and divorced from ultimate meaning. But the question remains: what initiated this projection? For thousands of years, human civilizations lived upon the Earth, producing their necessities from the land and sustaining their communities with them. Sometime in the last few centuries, something abruptly changed in human consciousness that initially caused at least one mass of people-groups to drastically alter their means of production (and now we see the majority of the global population adopting this means). Karl Polanyi, in his book “The Great Transformation”, addresses this change. He notes that before a few hundred years ago, economics within human societies were conducted primarily by the principles of reciprocity, redistribution, and householding, which were practiced as a subset of complex socially and spiritually contextualized rituals. The sharing of objects for use was done “without any motive of gain or truck. Not the propensity to barter, but reciprocity in social behavior dominat[ed]” (Polanyi, 53). Market economies began to spring up with the emergence of long-distance trade, as “long-distance offer[ed] an opportunity for trade to occur “in an external sphere unrelated to the internal organization of economy” (Polanyi, 62). But even as these markets expanded from their limited beginnings in town centers at convenient cross-roads to become national in scope, eventually spreading throughout provincial areas, they were very heavily regulated in order to protect communities from monopolization and other dangers. A critical shift occurred as merchants began to develop more specific technologies for the production of their goods, and, eventually, the factory system emerged. They began to observe that the risk of accumulation and processing of raw materials was one that typically paid off in terms of sales, so they shifted their focus from commerce towards industry, from the needs of the community towards the needs of the mechanism for production. As this occurred, the need arose for a method of organization for the basic ingredients of production – labor, land, and money. It was at this critical moment that these basic elements of society, in particular, labor and land, became commodities, whose value was now defined through the eyes of the newly-emerged machine rather than through the eyes of the human community, and in this way, the machine swallowed the whole of the civilizations it came into contact with.

Although it is apparent that this critical shift in perspective occurred in the minds of those merchants who chose to focus on industry over commerce in 19th century Europe, the seed for this commoditization of the entire society was planted with the beginning of long-distance trade and the invention of the market, as Polanyi discusses. “That is why the control of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system” (Polanyi, 60). Value, in these situations, became divorced from its complex social context, rooted in full and concrete human experience, and took on a new meaning, determined by the merchant and his/her buyer, and denoted by a tangible item that stands as a symbol for this abstract sense of value - money. It seems that the abstraction of value was needed from the beginning because merchants needed a “level playing field” with one another in order for trade to occur. Subconsciously, as merchants from different cultures haggled in order to determine actual value, they were establishing a lowest common denominator between the complex value systems of their different home communities. In this sense, the abstraction of value that has led to the subsuming of society by the machine seems to be related to the shifting orientation in human consciousness during the middle ages towards physical expansion, as expressed in the spontaneous proliferation of long-distance trade. Jean Gebser’s theory of the mutations of consciousness supports this observation. The expansion of the market economy would fall right around the time of the height of Gebser’s mental mutation of human consciousness, which places an emphasis on the notion of physical space. Perhaps with the arising of this form of consciousness came the awareness of a world beyond one’s borders, and a burning desire for physical exploration, and thus long-distance contact and trade began. Gebser paints the image of the human evolution of consciousness as unfolding in a spiral pattern (in terms of a Newtonian notion of space-time), with human consciousness manifesting itself in a distinctly different orientation during each mutation, and there being four mutations per turn of the spiral, with each turn evolution progressing to a new level. Each mutation of consciousness has an efficient stage and a deficient stage. As long-distance trade grew, from the middle ages up to the late 19th century, and markets were heavily regulated, the human exploration of the world in a Newtonian spatial sense exploded, greatly enriching the content of collective human consciousness; but as the markets grew to subsume the human understanding of our own value (concentrated to simply labor in an industrial sense) and that of the land, the mutation turned towards its deficient form, and ultimately, the machine was officially born, as the climactic manifestation of the deficient form of the mental mutation.

The key to understanding how such an originally enriching development (the abstraction of value from the depth of experience to a more commonly-shared expression of value) could turn so sour lies in the idea of abstraction itself. The word abstract, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, means “expressing a quality apart from an object”, and comes from the Medieval Latin word “abstractus”, which is the past participle of the word “abstrahere”, or “to pull away”. The Divine, as the ultimate ground of all being, can be considered to be the only fully concrete reality. If this is the case, any expression of the formless and infinite Divine into finite material form can be considered to be an abstraction of, “pulled away” from the only thing that is ultimately real. If reality were a cube, “expressing a quality apart” from this cube would be a square, a representation that cannot convey the full depth of the cube. In other words, an abstraction of the Divine is like expressing one facet of the (infinitely-faceted) Divine.

The concept of the will of the machine subsuming the will of the human soul in terms of expression is related to the Judeo-Christian religious concept of sin. The classical Greek word that is translated for “sin” in the biblical New Testament is “hamartia”, which is an archery term meaning “to miss the mark”. This image exemplifies the essence of the origins of the techno-industrial system, the machine, as it has been described in this paper. It is an incomplete, skewed, and imbalanced expression of the Divine soul, as expressed from the human soul through human consciousness and manifested into material reality. The expression has “missed the mark”. The verse Romans 7:13-15 from the biblical New Testament addresses the quality of sin that makes the consciousness acts as if it is its slave. It states “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do”. It takes one further and further away from what one truly desires. We find this “runaway” tendency in the techno-industrial complex as well. There is a constant hunger for more, along with a constant feeling of frustration, a running after emptiness. Karl Marx acknowledged the slave-like nature of humanity that has resulted from abstracting value from its concrete origin. He said “Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and existence; the essence dominates him and he worships it” (Marx, 1964b, 37). In this way, the machine is a manifestation of collective sin.

The collective human soul, or Jung’s Self, is considered to be a reflection of the Divine, containing infinite complexity within itself. However, when expression occurs through human consciousness, and the formless takes on form, it is as if a seed is created and planted in a bed of soil, and from this moment on, as the seedling grows, the potential for this line of expression is limited by the limited nature of human consciousness at the moment of the seed’s creation, or conception. Oswald Spengler, in “The Decline of the West”, as cited in Tainter’s “The Collapse of Complex Societies”, asserts that civilization itself is a manifestation of a line of expression that is already hardened and dying. “A Culture is born in the moment when a great soul awakens out of the proto-spirituality of ever-childish humanity, and detaches itself, a form from the formless, a bounded and mortal thing from the boundless and enduring. It blooms on the soil of an exactly definable landscape, to which plant-wise it remains bound. It dies when this soul has actualized the full sum of its possibilities… The aim once attained – the idea, the entire content of inner possibilities, fulfilled and made externally actual – the Culture suddenly hardens, it mortifies, its blood congeals, its force breaks down, and it becomes civilization... As such it may, like a worn-out giant of the primeval forest, thrust decaying branches towards the sky for hundreds of thousands of years….” (Tainter, 78). Our modern techno-industrial civilization, the machine, is like a flower (or a tree, as Spengler presented) that has reached its full potential for expression, has bloomed, and is now wilting. It is the abstraction of value from the concrete human soul (rooted in the Divine) and its limited expression into material form that doomed the market-economy and ultimately, the machine, to eventually face its death.

The collapse that is inevitable for this kind of expression seems to be related to complexity. Tainter analyzes this idea at length. He points out that increasing complexity in a system renders it increasingly difficult to maintain. “Not only is energy flow required to maintain a sociopolitical system, but the amount of energy must be sufficient for the complexity of that system” (Tainter, 91). Civilizations that arise out of one facet of the human soul, or one “stem”, over time, branch off into more and more divided expressions of that same facet. Eventually, the stem can no longer hold up its own head. It crumples and falls.

Death.
Like a full-in-bloom flower, you have been breath-taking at your height of power. Commanding all of nature to rise up and bow before your tower. But like a flower that has grown up into the soil of space-time, and now has nowhere to go but to die, you too have reached the end of your line. It’s time for you to succumb to the ravages of material death. I’m starting to hear that telling, that haunting, that rattling breath from you. And so as I step back from this vantage point, and look at all this from a greater view, my anger begins to subside, and instead I’m finding myself facing you with compassion. I want to urge you to go gracefully to your grave. I want you to know - you are part of this vast ocean, a wave of energy that has risen up from eternity to face finity with grace and dignity. And now your final task is here. I don’t know if you’re capable of fear, but you seem to be frantic in your quest to survive, as you face your incapacity to thrive. You’ve become top-heavy.
A flower with too many petals cannot stand.
So I’ll hold your hand as you return to the land. I assure you your life has not been in vain. This pain of acknowledging your inability to flourish completely is part of the system of life.
Expressions of form from formlessness rise and fall out of and back into the soil of existence.
As you lie down, all you were and are will come back around, because you will disintegrate into the primal ground. The next seed that grows will contain a little of what the ground knows because of you.
You are a projection of a projection of the Being
who is the Essence of holy and true.
It urges me, humanity, to express my Divinity into material reality, ultimately becoming an infinitely-branched tree,
pulling infinity through finity.
So trust that you were only meant to be for a time. Sacrifice yourself for that
ultimate seed,
the one in whose potential lies the infinite tree.
And go, techno-industrial civilization, gracefully.

The qualities of, and the process surrounding, the “soul of the machine” as depicted throughout this paper shed light on a pattern, or rhythm that seems to be an integral part of the structure of the universe, and the way in which the Divine calls humanity to evolve towards Itself. Despite the fact that the modern, techno-industrial civilization appears to be dying, its life will not have been for naught. The abstraction of value that has led to the blooming of the full potential of the seed created from that abstraction, the techno-industrial civilization, calls to mind the “hero’s journey”, a three-step process of development found in the work of Joseph Campbell. The basic principle outlines a process of development that consists of departure, initiation, and return. If abstraction of value in this case was “departure”, and the fulfillment of the full complexity allowed from that piece of the human soul is “initiation”, then the collapse of this civilization will be the “return” stage of development. The return stage is really an integration of the perspective gained through initiation into the original place from which the hero emerged. In Richard Tarnas’ essay “Is the Modern Psyche Undergoing a Rite of Passage?”, he asks whether human consciousness may be in the midst of just such a journey. “To see that long spiritual and intellectual journey, through stages of increasing differentiation and complexity, as having perfectly ambiguously brought about both a progressive ascent to autonomy, and a tragic fall from unity – and as having perhaps prepared the way for a synthesis on an altogether new level” (Tarnas, 6-7). In this case, the portion of the human soul that was abstracted from its formless Self, the portion that was defined as valuable at the height of the mental mutation, has been the hero. Its journey has led human consciousness and the material world along with it as it has flourished to its greatest potential. And now, upon dying, all that it has led the human consciousness to incorporate into material existence will be part of the soil from which form emerges out of formlessness, allowing the next expression of a part of the human soul to be more complete. Karl Marx echoed this sentiment when he said, speaking of humankind, “By… acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature” (Marx, Capital, vol 1, 174).

The propensity for a portion of the human soul to become prominent (become abstract and expressed into form), to grow into its full potential, and then die, adding its content to the soil of human consciousness, hints at a possible telos for the evolution of human consciousness. It appears that there is an axis of evolution drawing human consciousness towards the goal of incorporating ever more content into it. The human soul, as a reflection of the Divine soul, wants to be fully expressed in material form. If this rhythm of abstraction of an ever-greater portion of the human soul being expressed fully and then dying and incorporating its “body” into the background of consciousness were to continue indefinitely, the infinite complexity of the Divine soul, as reflected in the human soul, would be completely and fully expressed in material form. It is as if the Divine were aiming to encounter itself fully “on the other side” of material reality through human consciousness; indeed, to pull Itself fully through human consciousness as a garment pulling itself fully through a button-hole.

It appears that the machine is on its way to its death. But we can remain hopeful that the suffering it has caused, the alienation from our human nature we have experienced at our own hands, will not have been in vain. It is part of a much greater, mysterious rhythm of life in which we, humanity, are a critical player. It is our task now, to recognize this great manifestation of incompleteness for what it is, and to assist it in its staggering to its death bed. We are the great gardeners of the spiritual world, and as we stir the rich compost that is sure to result as it decomposes, may our dreams for a bright future fall as seeds into the soil of manifest potential, ready to reach out and attempt to embody wholeness.

Works Cited
Elwell, Frank. 2003, The Sociology of Karl Marx. Retrieved December 7, 2009
Hornborg, Alf. The Power of the Machine. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2001.
Marx, Karl. 1964b. Early Writings. Translated and edited by T.B. Bottomore. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol 1. Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1887.
Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1944.
Tainter, Joseph A. The Collapse of Complex Societies. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Tarnas, Richard. “Is the Modern Psyche Undergoing a Rite of Passage?” Retrieved December 11, 2009.

2009-11-12T09:27:00.001-08:00

I've been completely overwhelmed with adjusting to school and am still working on fitting blogging back into my schedule, so sorry about that. But check out this article about "restorative justice" in Northern Ireland. They are trying a system of apology and mutually making-it-right between criminal and victim for minors that commit crimes, rather than locking them up. And remarkably, it's working dramatically better to reduce numbers of repeat offenders. This is just amazing and brings me great hope.

Is Saying Sorry Better than Prison?
Andrew Price
October 29, 2009

To deal with young criminals, Northern Ireland has been experimenting with something they call the “Youth Conference.” Instead of sending kids who commit assault, theft, or “motoring offences” to a prison, the government sends them to a meeting. There, the young troublemaker is asked to give an account of the offense, and the victim, who is usually present, is invited to ask questions and describe the effects of the crime. Then they decide, together, with the help of a professional coordinator, on a “plan” to make things right. This usually means doing unpaid restorative work and giving a face-to-face apology.

You might think this lets wayward teens off easy if all they have to do is apologize and do a little manual labor. But a new report (.pdf) on the effectiveness of these Youth Conferences just came out and the results are remarkable:

More than 5,500 meetings between victims and offenders have taken place in Northern Ireland since 2003…. Some 38% of 10 to 17 year olds participating in the scheme in Northern Ireland in 2006 re-offended within a year, compared to 71% of those given custodial terms. The percentage of those re-offending where restorative justice was used instead of a prosecution was 28%.

In a report, the PRT said many victims were found to prefer the experience of participating in a restorative justice meeting to attending court.

In Northern Ireland, this system has turned out to be better than prison in every way. It reduces recidivism, saves the public the expense of locking a kid up, and victims actually like it better. There’s now talk of expanding the system to England and Wales.

We should be adopting this approach in America—and expanding it to other kinds of crime as well. Our prison system is at a breaking point and revenge is overrated.

George Sodini and Our Society's Desperate Need for Connection

2009-08-06T23:45:00.000-07:00

Most of you probably know this already, but a 48 year old man named George Sodini walked into an LA Fitness health club Tuesday evening, turned off the lights in the aerobics room, and began shooting indiscriminately. Nine were wounded, three died - all women. He then turned the gun on himself and ended it all.

On the surface, he was clearly a disturbed, rage-filled man who snapped. But all we have to do is peel back the surface a little bit to learn more about this man and his motive. In fact, police didn’t have to search far at all to find their first clue. Sodini was virtually shouting his pleas for help before he hit this breaking point. He left, in the gym bag that had carried his guns, a note that explained why he had done what he did, and in cyberspace, an online journal documenting his suffering over the months.

I’ve read a few articles on this story and heard news casters talk about it, and there seems to be a collective attitude, as is common in these kinds of cases, to brush him off as a monster – an unrecognizable anomaly of humanity with a twisted mind, and to say something like “We’ll never quite be able to understand exactly why Sodini chose to take these innocent lives ….Sigh.” And then an “OK let’s move on” kind of attitude. There was even a push a few years back to stop talking about the attackers in these sorts of cases so as not to “glorify” them, potentially encouraging others to wreak havoc in the same way in order to get thee attention or fame they are desperate for. I don’t think not talking about the attackers is a productive strategy. I’ve said it before on this blog and I’ll say it again now: We are all interconnected – one humanity – all made up of the same stuff; and a related opinion I haven’t shared here yet is that what one human is capable of, we are all capable of. Thus I am capable of what George Sodini did a few nights ago, and so are you. When we brush people who commit these heinous acts off as monsters and deny them their humanity, we do ourselves a disservice. We need to affirm Sodini’s humanity, to understand that a human, any human, is capable of something like this when squeezed into the “right” circumstances. That is not to discount his responsibility for his crime. He free will plays a part in this all, but we must step back from our anger and pointing fingers in our search for justice for the victims long enough to try and understand what led to this terrible turn of events and how can it be prevented from happening in the future with a new George in a different, yet familiar set of circumstances. The point is he was human, and the more we can understand what it was the pushed him off the edge, the more we can understand ourselves and use this awareness to help nurture people better and thus nurture our entire society better, making it a more peaceful and joyful society for us all.

George was an extremely lonely man. He ranted and raved in his blog about how every day was a struggle for him; how women wouldn’t give him the time of day; how he hadn’t been intimate with a woman in decades. He posted YouTube videos talking about how to impress women and the loneliness he would try to keep at bay for one more day. He longed for connection, companionship, love. Love is a basic human need, like food and water. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, love is listed just above the need for safety, as in slightly less basic than that. It is a universally-accepted and documented fact that newborn babies, when not touched or held, will simply shrivel up and die. When I think of this, part of me thinks, “well no wonder Sodini went mad. He was desperate. His survival instinct drove him to this, as when a normally moral person is hungry and steals a loaf of bread to keep from starving.”

I am convinced that sin is the byproduct of the survival instinct. That is the only reason a human being will do something wrong is due to a drive to survive because somewhere in their being, they feel that their survival is threatened – whether physical, mental, or spiritual (individual ego self).

What happened and why at the Pennsylvania LA Fitness this week is not a big mystery. It was not some horrible act that we can shake our heads at and brush off as a freak attack by a monster. It is clear why George Sodini went on his rampage: he was desperately lonely, bitter over being ignored, tired of being alone: he was literally shriveling up. Perhaps his mind was twisted – but if it was, this was what twisted it: a lack of connection. I hope we can take this opportunity, as we reflect on this sad, sad situation, to step back and take a good look at our society, where a person can literally go mad with isolation while crying out for connection in the only socially-acceptable ways he can.

This story is a warning signal. There are so many lonely, desperate people in this country. How can we take steps to become more human, more connected, again? This is really something to think about. For those that live in a big city, perhaps it’s easier to connect with people in shared trains and buses, on busy streets, sitting on your front porch, or going to the newspaper stand or cafe on the corner. The same goes for some that live in a small town – perhaps the neighbors know one another, meet in the local diner, or walking down main street. But for so many Americans who live in the strange wastelands of suburban strip malls, where SUVs interminably circle parking lots and hollow-eyed people hold empty paper cups as they drive back to their personal palaces and shut themselves up within chain-link picket fences, life can be very lonely. As it has come back in vogue to live in the city and higher-class Americans flock back downtown, we are seeing the beginnings of a shift in the way we think about life lived together. This is encouraging, but what do we do in the meantime? And even if we are flocking back to cities, does our technology and busy lives still keep us isolated? If we don’t intentionally work to choose to live life alongside other families, to share our lives in community, will we stay lonely and separated, even if we live in close proximity? And for those who cannot afford to live in the city, what can we do? What are some small simple steps that can make a difference?

A few that come to my mind are:

- Bike or walk as much as possible – you never know who you’ll meet riding down the street.

- Make extra for dessert – take it over to a neighbor’s house and see if they’d like to join you - make it a regular thing

- Leave your door open and sit on the porch as often as possible - invite neighbors to sit on porch and chat – make your home seem welcoming

- Have picnic dinners in the local park, and invite any homeless people to join you

What are your ideas for making your community less lonely?

Jimmy Carter: The Words of God do not Justify Cruelty to Women

2009-07-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm not sure if there are any of you out there who check my blog regularly and sit on the edge of your seats waiting for updates, but if you have been disappointed by my dry spell, I'm sorry. My excuse is I've been moving - transitioning for a really long time, and the dust still hasn't settled.

From Dhaka, to Detroit, to Delft, to Dublin, to Grand Rapids, and now Sacramento - all in the last 6 months - has knocked the wind out of me. I'm living in a hotel and hoping to move into a more permanent solution very soon. So hold your horses just a little longer for original content.

And enjoy this amazing article by Jimmy Carter about women and religion - specifically, the Southern Baptist Convention. I love Jimmy Carter. I played the part of him for my third grade president report - had to dress up like him and bring in one of his favorite dishes and give a speech as him about his life. It was awesome. Props to my mom for telling me to choose him. He is a elder who illuminates our society with wisdom.

Love This.

2009-07-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

This video about hurt and injustice in the world, and God's way of healing through us touched me.

Tools and Violence

2009-06-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months, I’ve really enjoyed following the blog entries of Meghan McCain, John McCain’s daughter, as she’s risen in power and influence from the daughter of a presidential candidate to a strong, young, female voice within the political sphere, representing moderate conservatives. I find her refreshing, relatable, witty, and intelligent. I would love having her for a friend, and, more importantly, I fully respect the challenges she is making to the Republican party and I believe that her shaking things up will result in a re-awakening of the political right and a healthier country (because discourse, and debate over a variety of opinions always results in a better way forward) even though I consider myself to lie on the more liberal end of the spectrum.

One of McCain’s recent blog entries on the Daily Beast, the online magazine she writes for (www.thedailybeast.com), was about guns and the second amendment, called “Why I Love Guns”. She wrote that “the shooting range is one place I’m Republican through-and-through.” She makes the (insightful) point that many liberals who want tighter gun laws have never actually used a gun, and so do not understand them as tools, and thus tend to be afraid of their power more than they need to be (I’m one of these people). In the end, she comes to the same conclusion as many who uphold the right to bear arms do: Guns are not to be blamed for the damage they inflict on society – the problems that cause people to misuse them are.

I think this is a great point. Damage can be inflicted with so many tools – it is not the tool that should be blamed but the intent of the person who uses it. So we should focus on alleviating the issues in society that cause people to want to be destructive, right? As Meghan McCain herself says “Putting it bluntly, we’ve done a disservice to our violence problems by making the political argument about guns instead of whatever causes people to be violent in the first place. ….. The real solution to preventing gun violence is not taking away the tools, but tackling its causes: poverty, inadequate health care, mental illness, joblessness, inadequate housing, and poor education. Desperate people will make anything a weapon. We need to eliminate desperation, not guns.” (bolding mine)

I think this argument can be expanded to apply to other tools that can be used for harm, like abortion or nuclear power. Abortion is a tool that was created and developed to take away life. While we can all agree that in a perfect world, no life would be taken (human, fetal, animal), do we want the freedom to make that choice and work to alleviate the issues that cause people to make bad decisions with that freedom? Or do we want our government to restrict these freedoms to protect us all from ourselves?

The knowledge to create nuclear power is a tool perhaps even more comparable to a gun. As we look to North Korea as they just ran a nuclear test last week, how are we to respond? If our value, as Americans, is that everyone is entitled to the right to bear arms, why do we restrict that right to nations like Iran and North Korea? My point here is NOT to claim that these countries should have access to nuclear weapons or that abortions should stay legal, but I want to ask questions that make us consider the inconsistencies in some of our value systems.

As I’m finding myself asserting more and more often on this blog, we on this Earth are all inter-connected. Restricting the welfare and freedom of others limits our own life, and puts us at greater discomfort and in some cases, danger. Those who are in favor of smiting out our enemies in hopes that they will go away, as if they are some race of non-human creatures that can be completely eliminated, are wrong. The only way to ensure our own safety and well-being is to “love our enemies”, as Jesus said. In other words, to try and understand the reasons behind peoples’ anger instead of de-humanizing them in our own minds; to have compassion for the suffering the is doubtlessly the motivation for violence; to look at the log in our own eyes and work in any way we can to make this world more just and balanced and harmonious. After all, we are all humans that value, ultimately, the same things: health, happiness, love, peace along with progress, freedom to explore, grow, and flourish into the people that we feel we have the potential to become.

My opinion on all the practical “tool” issues is that none of it is black and white. I think most of us can agree that in a perfect world, we would all have all the freedoms we want, but would not be motivated to use any of them to inflict damage on others or on the Earth, because everybody would be content. But we don’t live in a perfect world. And it is our freedom and our right as human beings to have an opinion as to how to navigate this imperfect world and if or how we want to help to make it more perfect. I hope that as realize this we can all take a deep breath and humble ourselves until we find ourselves standing on common ideological ground.

As we strive towards a state of shalom together, how do we handle access to tools like guns, technical knowledge, and medical procedures? Do we support only anarchy, which would be complete freedom across the board and be paired along with education and a scramble to reduce poverty and desperation around the world? Do we support very restricted government systems that protect us from ourselves and others? Or do we support something that’s in-between and reflects the in-betweenness of our cosmic state, stuck somewhere between heaven and hell?

It’s probably clear from my angle on this blog entry that I think something in-between is inevitable, and the only way to make steady progress as a global community towards that elusive goal that we all have in our consciousness. The journey towards shalom must be made as anything else is in life: one step at a time.

This is not easy. It takes an admission that it’s not cut and dry, as so many like to pretend it is. We have to admit to ourselves that when there is an imbalance of power and wealth in the world, there will be instability and people are more likely to use tools to cause destruction. It’s a human response to desperation. We have to admit to ourselves that in order to feel safer in a more complete way, we must work to create more balance – to reduce poverty, to re-distribute wealth – but that this will take a lot of effort, a lot of change, and a lot of time, given the rate at which the human species adapts to change. So, in the meantime, as we work for a more safe and harmonious world, it is probably appropriate and necessary to enact some restrictions on the use of tools that can cause harm – for the sake of the society and its integrity as it moves forward.

Food for thought, as always….

Vegetarianism and Spirituality

2009-05-20T13:24:00.001-07:00

I have been a vegetarian my whole life. As far as I know, vegetarianism goes back in my family, on my dad’s side, for generations and generations. Although I was born and raised in the USA, and my mother was American, my father is from India, and a follower of the Jain religion. Jainism arose at least 5,000 years ago, around the same time as Buddhism. A non-violent lifestyle is strictly adhered to by its followers, and a big part of this, for them, is addressed through diet. They eat grains, most fruits and vegetables, and dairy, but don’t eat figs, root vegetables, seafood, poultry, or meat - basically, anything that once breathed plus a few other things. Anyway, I was raised never eating any kind of animal life.

As you can imagine, I’ve become used to comments and questions about this lifestyle everywhere I go, from the time I was 5 years old and in kindergarten, to 4th grade birthday parties, to middle school summer camp, to university, and beyond. I have to say, I’ve become a bit numb to the questions, and a desire to just give a pat answer and move on as soon as possible, so that I’m no longer the center of attention at every meal, has remained with me since my shy childhood years. My parents did a remarkable job raising my siblings and me to live a quietly different, perhaps revolutionary life (with regard to diet), believing in our way of doing things, while still fully respecting others’ ways of doing things, and still really feeling like we didn’t stick out too much from all the other Midwestern American kids in the 80’s. Sure, when we rolled up to the local McDonald’s and asked for Happy Meals sans meat, the clerks laughed at us, but we still got our figurines and our little happy meal boxes. Sure, when we made stone soup in kindergarten, I couldn’t partake due to the beef boullion cubes the teacher threw in, but I never felt like I was missing out, and not one kid ever teased me for my diet. Despite this significant difference, it was a pretty normal American childhood for that time and place (as far as I can tell).

Diet is such an intimate aspect of life for all creatures, and I think especially humans. We often take its significance for granted, as it’s just something we do daily, sometimes like clockwork. It seems so normal, so mundane, that we often completely neglect the utter sacredness of what we put into our bodies. Indeed, we truly are what we eat. When you think of it this way, we are creating our own bodies by what we put into our mouths. The quality of our entire life is shaped by the quality of our food.

We are vibration. Anyone who has studied basic chemistry can tell you that all matter is made up of atoms, which are just teeny tiny particles that are constantly in motion, held close together by energetic forces. And anyone who has studied the most basic quantum physics can tell you that everything is energy, including matter, which can indeed convert into energy-form, governed by the relationship Einstein uncovered for us, E=MC2, C being equal to the speed of light in a vacuum. And our bodies are working, a world within us, every instant that we are alive, pulsing and moving and creating and shedding, all the time. We shed our outer skin layer completely every month. We are constantly burning fat and calories. We breathe air in, and then out again. And all of it that’s being used, put out into the world as our intentions, thoughts and actions, is being replaced, rebuilt, and retooled, with the fuel that we put into ourselves - our food. What is food but matter, which, as we’ve already established, is made up of energy vibrating or existing in such a state that it is relatively stable to us. This can also be interpreted that it’s vibrating at a resonance that is similar to our own, which is why we relate to it on such an intimate level – why it’s real to us, appealing to us, why we can touch it and sense it on many levels and it feels substantial.

The reason I’m going into all this metaphysics to discuss something as basic and mundane as food and our choice of it is because I believe it’s integral to something that I’ve sensed about vegetarianism and I want to bring it up here. We humans (as we’ve already established) are energetic beings. In order to function optimally, each of our energy centers, or chakras, must be clear of all energy blockages, which happen regularly to most of us, especially in this imperfect world which is full of energy blockages and dark spots itself. We should ideally strive for overall integral health, which begins at a foundational level, that is, the energetic (which encompasses spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical). We want to take into ourselves fuel that composes for us a body that helps us to be the best human we can be, which means that we, as clearly as possible, channel the energy from God, the great spirit that directs and guides us, into all the realms that we act in, which are the spiritual world, the ideosphere, and the material world.

Flesh (as in meat) and non-flesh have different energetic qualities, and thus create slightly different energetic qualities within our bodies. I read, recently, in the book “Shaman’s Wisdom” by Tony Samara, that “Food affects everyone in the same way. We all constantly go through changes and food is a beautiful way of supporting and reinforcing this process of transformation. (Meat, chicken, and fish do not support this process in the same way as they do not transform the life force in our body.)” (89) He later mentions that meat is not appropriate for small children because it draws their life energy and consciousness down to a very basic and material level. This doesn’t mean that meat is necessarily a “bad” food; it just means that perhaps meat has more of a grounding influence on our bodies – skews the energy of our bodies towards the material end of the energetic spectrum, and can impede development in other energy aspects – those that govern emotional (heart chakra), communicative (throat chakra), insight and focus (third eye chakra) and spiritual growth (crown chakra). Conversely, however, when we eat no meat, we may enjoy an abundant connection with the spiritual realm, or a flood of ideas and interesting thoughts, but it may be likely that our selves are not as equipped for action in the material realm as they are in the intellectual or spiritual realm (although root vegetables, having been close to the earth, can also create a grounding effect). This is called being “ungrounded” and can create an effect that feels like floating. For optimal performance, we must strive for balance among all our energy centers.

So what does this mean? I suppose, like much of life, it's not a black and white issue. There are probably many ways to eat in order to achieve energetic balance. But as I contemplate this idea, I can't help but think about how our western society is meat-dominated, and also how materialistic we are, how disconnected (from God) and heavy our collective lifestyle seems. Could there be a connection? I believe there is.

Many people throughout history have regarded vegetarianism to be the way of the future. Leonardo DaVinci was a vegetarian, as were Saint Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, and many other visionary leaders in many cultures. Nowadays, throughout the developed world, vegetarianism is growing among socially conscious young people; although strict vegetarians only account for 3% of the US population, the number of people who often partake in vegetarian food (with very occasional meat eating) is growing. Some estimate these “flexitarians” to be 40% of the US population.

Throughout my vegetarian life, my opinion has swayed on whether I support it or not. For the bulk of my childhood, I accepted it as the best way to eat/live because that’s what I was taught. But briefly, in my early 20’s, when I was questioning much of what I had been taught in general, I began to flirt with the idea that it wasn’t so bad to eat meat. In my mid-20’s, I became a staunch vegetarian again, even giving up dairy and eggs at some points, and embracing the lifestyle primarily because of ethical reasons. Nowadays, I’m more open-minded about the issue than ever. This is a complex issue and, whether we want to admit it or not, is one that is intimately tied to our humanity. It’s a choice we all make (in the developed world we do have choices) that is tied to spirituality, physical health, and compassion for our fellow creatures. I think the most important thing is that there is dialogue about it and that we strive together to come to a solution that we as a (developed) society can feel positive about, that we feel matches our values.

I’d like to explore, over the next few weeks, different aspects of vegetarianism as well, so stay tuned in the future for more on this issue. In the meantime, I hope this blog entry can serve as a jumping-off point for the dialogue, or will just spur your thinking. What do you think about diet and spirituality? And specifically, do you think meat has a different spiritual effect on us than non-meat?

The Ideosphere, Coercion, and Global Economic Values

2009-04-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

I just read a little bit out of a book about indoctrination and brainwashing (suggested to me by someone I know) and have been thinking about the world of ideas and coercion. I think we, in our society, like to think we’re completely independent – that ideas that we are exposed to don’t really affect us – that we’re in control of what we think and believe. But the truth is, for good or for bad, we’re inextricably intertwined on this earth, and we all affect the realm of ideas, the “ideosphere” (the realm where ideas live – it’s a real word, look it up), and equally as important, the ideosphere affects us, regardless of how we try to block it out.

Ideas are incredibly powerful. I believe they are the foundation of the world, and they hold within them our future, as ultimately what shapes a person’s reality is her beliefs, and what motivates her actions is her beliefs. Collectively, what motivates the evolution of the world and the form it takes is the actions of each living creature in it. Thus, the world is created by ideas. There is a constant “battle” raging in the ideosphere all around us. Ideas fight for dominance in your sphere of reality to shape your perception and thus shape the world as it continues to evolve partially at your own hand.

I think this concept is very relevant in terms of the perspective on reality that most of us function within, all the time: that is, mainstream western society. The foundational ideas that define this world have competed and grown and won out for this particular time in history. I would be willing to wager that this set of ideas is the most powerful set of ideas that has ever existed on this Earth in its history – simply because of globalization and the sheer masses of people that are exposed to them subliminally and buy into them directly. What are these foundational and powerful ideas? I don’t think I can define them exactly, but they are somewhere along the lines of this: that the purpose of life is to progress towards something, and that progress is measured on economic terms. I think capitalism has really taken over the ideosphere in recent decades and is creeping across the Earth, affecting the lives of people in subtle but powerful ways.

In much of the US and Europe, and major cities around the globe, this economic-based “world” is virtually inescapable. In Ahmedabad, India last year (where some of my family lives and there were not even stoplights 20 yrs ago), I was shocked to see a blonde Barbie sticker on a lamp-post. I also saw Barbie dolls being distributed to poor Indian children on television. This is damaging on so many levels. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, while working for a school for slum children, I was surprised to notice as I bumped past dusty roadside stalls that in an area where paved roads, education, medical care, and gainful employment is virtually non-existent, coke and images of movie stars featuring in movies that are sponsored by multinational corporations are ubiquitous.

As the world becomes smaller, something amazing is happening: one unified mega-culture is seeping through cultural barriers and sweeping us all, especially young people, off our feet (so much because of global capitalism). There are benefits to this global culture: communication among members of the human race can improve and we can work together to take care of the Earth home we share. Our lives can become enriched as we share the amazing discoveries and beautiful expressions that all of our cultures have developed over the millennia. But I think it’s important to become aware of the foundations that underlie our perception of reality this day in age. Of particular concern to me is the inescapable quality of advertising. I would argue that advertising is a form of brainwashing that is virtually single-handedly shaping this new world culture. And the reason that it’s so insidious is that it is #1. mostly subliminal and #2. doesn’t exist with the good of the people in mind but instead to perpetuate and expand individual wealth.

The assumption behind unleashed capitalism is that competition and individual freedom is ultimately for the good of the people as a whole, but as multinational corporations grow and grow and the gap between the global rich and global poor grows (often along with the ignorance of the rich as to the existence of the poor who hold them up) we can see that this assumption is not realistic. Capitalism, despite the protests of many American conservatives, is ultimately too idealistic in that it forgets about the seductive power of human greed.

So what can we do? We as individuals have more influence than we know. Everything we say and do (even what we don’t do) affects the ideosphere. And I think the most important thing we can do on a daily basis is to become aware of all the subtle influences around us that are trying to convince us to buy into their values so that they can amass a bit of our life, and thus our soul. The more aware we are, the more empowered we are, which is a good thing when it comes to our own lives and how we choose to direct our wills towards the values that we truly believe in. God has placed us on this Earth, I believe, to allow His spirit to work through us in order to shape it, moment by moment into a state of Shalom. It is our decision how we direct our wills to impact and form the world during the instant of time and short burst of energy we are allotted in our life.

In the end, my life and how I choose to use it is all I have to impact the world, and though I want to participate in mainstream society and all that goes on within it, I want to be able to stand strong and clear on my own two feet and know that I have thoughtfully considered my life and been the one who chooses where to put my energy.

Los Angeles Ain't So Bad!

2009-04-10T03:29:00.000-07:00

I lived in LA for 3 years and loved every minute of living in that city. I love the unmatched diversity (class, race, style...) and, its gritty underbelly, and the inspiring feeling that comes from people still coming west to make their dreams come true. Anyway, over the years, I have received so many comments from people who "hate LA", many of whom have never been there. I think it's fair to say that many people who care about the environment and being authentic and down to earth hate LA's image. Well, maybe the idea that LA is all glitz and concrete, smog and wasted water, showy excess, was warranted years ago, but I think it's unfair. This article from MSN today backs me up. The EPA has ranked LA at the top for big cities with the most energy-efficient buildings.

http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=19053394&gt1=35000

Take that, all you haters. LA will always have a soft spot in my heart.

Miniature Earth Slideshow

2009-04-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

This outstanding slideshow provides some perspective by detailing what the world population and its resources would be like if the entire Earth were a 100-person village.

http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm

Why do we fold our hands (or press them together) during prayer?

2009-03-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Many of us were raised to assume that position when it came time to pray as a child – in the house of worship, at the dinner table, or by the foot of our bed – it didn’t matter – we were usually instructed to put our hands together. It was a matter of utmost importance, but we never understood why.

I was thinking about it recently as I folded my hands together in the anonymous dark of a public bus to pray, and I realized that by placing my palms together, I was closing a sort of current that ran through my body. As we walk through the world, our body takes in all of its information using a complex network of neural pathways. Ancient Chinese and Indian cultures recognize this specifically and its relationship with our spiritual life. Our palms are distinctly sensitive. There is an abundance of nerve endings are in our palms, which is why technologies to hyperactively cool or warm the body (for athletes, military, medical needs, etc) via the palm, using gloves, are being developed. In my personal experience, when I enter into communal worship, I am often compelled to raise my arms, palms out and up, in order to more fully immerse myself in the state of surrender to the Divine. The desire to do this first came over me organically years ago, only having seen it done a few times and not consciously understanding it.

It makes sense that as energy flows through the world, we as individuals interact with it - take it in and release it, using all our nerve endings, and thus in a more concentrated way through our palms, the exposed ends of the “electrical wire” that is our body. So what good does “closing the current” do? Let me remind you what happens when you close an electrical current that is attached to a light bulb, or other mode of electrical expression: it turns on. Perhaps that is what happens when we fold our hands in prayer - we turn on.

We are able to express, in a focused way, the energy provided us by our battery – our brain. Perhaps this "expression", our "light bulb" if you will, is our consciousness, our spirit. Maybe closing the current, preventing new energy from flowing into the system and our own spiritual energy from flowing out, gives our brain a chance to process in a more focused, quiet way, all the inputs that have been coming into our lives, and therefore, use its energy more efficiently to work on the evolution of our individual consciousness. It's as if our brain (battery) is most of the time plugged into the the electrical network that is life and all the inputs and outputs around us, and when we put our hands together and pray, we are unplugging our battery from the "grid", where it's constantly working in all directions (energy coming in and out all the time), and letting it work more efficiently (outputting energy) to charge the instrument it powers, our body/mind/spirit (ie our "self"). Perhaps it thus provides us the opportunity to express our true selves in a way that is more spiritually evolved, that takes into account all the big and small lessons we learn as we have encountered and processed our life experiences.

Perhaps we should all deliberately clasp our hands and bow our heads, regardless of our beliefs. Because, after all, with all the stimulation around us in this fast-paced, advertisement-laden, consumption-driven world, couldn’t we all use a little recharging?

Interfaith Sharing Reflection

2009-03-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

This is a reflection article I wrote for an interfaith discussion group I participate in about the power of reconciliation in the Middle-East:

The Interfaith Sharing discussion in the month of March was led and facilitated by a very special visitor, Merri Minuskin, who came all the way from Israel. Ms. Minuskin is the founder and director of The Center of Education for Reconciliation and Cooperation (CERC) in Israel and works for peace in multiple ways in the Middle-East region.

She shared with us her own personal story of her struggle to understand her identity and make peace with the nonsensical oppression of her (Jewish) people, inextricably intertwined with its context, the backdrop of a struggling Middle-East to reconcile itself with the past of multiple ethnic groups. Ms. Minuskin grew up in New York, but always felt she had been born in the wrong place. She was ostracized as a young girl for being Jewish, and of course couldn’t understand why people would single her out for her heritage. What did it mean to be a Jew? And what did people think was so wrong about it? At the tender age of 17, she went to live on a kibbutz in Israel. Her first night there, the Yom Kippur war broke out and a young Merri witnessed more violence than she could have imagined up until then. Nevertheless, she felt she had found her true home. Since then, she has worked tirelessly to sow seeds of peace into a decimated landscape.

Her organization works to build trust across divides, person by person. She brings people of different ethnic groups together, including Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians to discuss common issues.

I have grown up hearing about the various clashes and violence in the Middle-East, but far away in America, where I grew up, those stories seemed to have little impact on my life. They seemed to take place in another world. I knew that the disagreements had their tangled roots in what seemed like ancient history and so I never took the time to try and understand them. But in recent years, as my global awareness has grown, it’s become uncomfortable to me that I don’t understand the source of conflict in the Middle-East. So I was thankful to have the opportunity to hear more about it from someone at the center of it all.

Merri told us that she believes she is not a healthy person, that it is impossible to be a healthy person and live amidst such violence. I can only imagine what it’s like to fear for your life day after day, and to try to make a change for the better in a seemingly impossible situation. In such dire circumstances, amid such hatred and deep bitterness, it seems the only way forward is with small steps of understanding and love. This is what Merri facilitates. She is a warrior of her own kind: a warrior of peace, fighting to bring cracks of light to a very dark situation. She connects people on a human-to-human level, no guns or bombs needed, and they begin to relate with one another, on common ground.

The thing is, we’re all living on common ground. We’re all living on the same planet, and we’re all human. We have more in common than we have differences, and it only makes sense to reach out and try to understand one another and leverage our differences to solve problems creatively. The ongoing conflict in between Israelis and Palestinians is a conflict that affects us all. Because our entire planet is one system and everything on it interdependent, any kind of violence or instability in our global community is something that impacts us – economically, environmentally, spiritually, and emotionally. As I continue to digest the things we discussed at IFS, and to remember Merri, I will try to find ways to contribute to the step-by-step healing of this hurting part of the world, even if it’s simply reaching outside of my perspective to understand someone different from myself, seeing the Divine in them and forgiving them of any grievances.

The Way of the Mustard Seed: A Copernican Revelation

2009-03-27T19:01:00.000-07:00

Aren’t we all seeking the good life? I know I am. Regardless of how I may try to claim otherwise, I’m relentlessly type-A, a go-getter by nature and nurture, who feels like I’m wasting precious time and energy when I’m not proactive – either figuring out what I want or going after it in every way I can find possible. But throughout my adult life, when I’ve had the freedom to make significant life choices, the things that I’ve sought most fervently have consistently been the ones that have been the most unfulfilling; the fulfillment I think I’ll get by achieving them consistently sits just out-of-reach, elusive, like a hologram, an illusion. I think the reason for that is because that’s exactly what those things are: an illusion.

As I pointed out in my last blog entry, Jesus said “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” It’s such a scary scary prospect for us as humans, but this is just ultimately what our decision to follow God is about, and what the Christian message (and so many other messages in other cultures) urges us to do – it’s what, over and over again, groups of people have found to work: to forget about ourselves having control, to forget about what we think we want, to enter into some unseen network of power and energy that we do not understand, and to give ourselves to that. That’s how we find the good life.

But why??? Why can’t I just know what I want and then just go for it, and get it and then be satisfied? I guess that’s just not what life is about! That’s not how we as humans are wired. If we were able to know what we wanted and needed and then just get it, we would not learn much about ourselves throughout life, and we would not grow, and I know that part of the basic scientific definition of what’s alive is that it must be growing. We’re part of a world that grows and evolves and changes all the time. We’re part of that, and so we must grow and evolve and change.

So then what do I do? I want to feel fulfilled. I want to be content so badly. As a sensitive person, I’m most of the time painfully aware when I’m not at peace. I think most artistic people are, which is probably why there are so many alcohol, food, and drug-addicted artists around. I suppose I can keep running on my fulfillment treadmill, grasping out for the illusion that always seems to be right in front of me, or I can get off of it, take a deep breath, and close my eyes. And take my focus off myself. And put my focus on the rest of the world. Then it won’t matter so much that my role to play in the world is not any bigger than anyone else’s, or that my gifts are not more valuable than anyone else’s, because I won’t be at the center of my own perspective. “I” will just be a planet, orbiting the Sun, like everyone else, and reflecting its light for the betterment of the world.

I’ve been thinking about the “mustard seed” analogy Jesus repeatedly used in his ministry to describe the Kingdom of Heaven, mostly because I’m reading “The New Conspirators” by Tom Sine, who emphasizes it in his writing. Indeed, it’s very relevant this day in age. In our increasingly uniform global society, the myth that we play out in the collective creation of our reality involves obtaining power and influence, status and money, great experiences in order to reach a state of fulfillment. I suppose the ego goal has always, throughout human history, been to prove oneself better than everyone else, to delineate one apart from everyone else, and no matter what form this ambition takes on, throughout history the formula has always been painfully predictable and pathetically human, and the trap is way too easy to fall into. Even those of us who pride ourselves on being particularly spiritual or humble may fall into it by believing ourselves to be more valuable than others due to our supposed spiritual superiority. Those of us who consider ourselves to be counter-cultural and don’t want the prestige, power, influence, or money may find that our egos take solace in the outsider status that comes from choosing a different path. It is disgustingly hard to avoid. My ego hates it when I admit that I’ve fallen into a predictable human trap, especially when I’ve thought all along that I had found a loophole. But Jesus said “The last shall be first”. And the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The remarkable thing about this is that a mustard seed is so deceptively tiny. But inside that tiny seed is the potential for a ginormous tree. And the idea of potential is key. The future is there, inside that seed. It’s not some far-off concept, it’s a real, concrete inevitability that is present, an idea present within a physical element. In the same way, the Kingdom of God is here (as Jesus said). It is the potential that is within the small, humble actions that we commit, right here and now, in this world, that acknowledge God as the Center of not just our lives, but the entire universe.

Only by investing in tiny ways into the parallel universe in which God is at the center can we be part of the only reality that can actually move mountains. And only then will we find fulfillment. Because that reality is the only reality that is substantial – the others are just holograms – projections of that grounded, absolute reality into our sub-dimensional brains.

The mustard seed: What a great, down-to-earth way to make a point. It is a challenge for me to remember that God’s ways are completely embedded within the human condition and our everyday, concrete world. But there is no one less transcendent and more down to earth than God. The Earth is, after all, His.

Learning how to Die

2009-03-16T04:58:00.000-07:00

Recently I downloaded a couple of recommended songs on itunes by Jon Foreman, the frontman of Switchfoot. He's put together a solo album, and I have completely fallen in love with the 3 songs I have from it. One of them is called "Learning How to Die", and I find the lyrics succinct but profound. The song is a conversation between 2 friends, one of whom is dying and talks about how she'll miss the other. The chorus (if you can call it that) goes "All along, before I was learning how to take, how to bend not how to break, how to live not how to cry, really I've been learning how to die." I love it because just there, in that one line "I've been learning how to die", the essence of Christianity can be summed up.

When I first became a Christian 9 years ago, the cross was more of a place that I associated with Jesus' death. I would meditate on the cross and how he died for my sins there, and I would be thankful for it, but I didn't often think of the mechanics of the theology (ie how did he take the penalty for my sins, how did that work). It was more of a grace and freedom and hope than I experienced when considering the cross and I knew it brought me into a relationship with God that was very real, and trusting in that process was enough for me. Over time, though, it became not enough. I began a journey through a long, dry, spiritual desert when the questions about the mechanics of salvation began eating away at my mind and moved from the back of my mind to the front.

It was a long, winding journey that, looking back, I'm sure was led by God (though it didn't feel like it at the time) but at the end of it, when I came back home to Christianity, the cross took on new meaning for me. It became not just a place where Jesus died, but the place where I must die, with arms spread wide open, abandoned to God. The verses that say "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." -Matthew 16:24,25 have taken on greater meaning for me the longer I've been on this walk of faith. The cross is the place where I lose my life for His sake. The cross is where I hang up my ego-suit and find the joy that comes from faith and connection to the matrix of energy where God dwells. The longer I walk this path, the heavier my cross becomes. Perhaps it's because the temptations mount the longer I've been in the world. So over time, communion, which started for me as an empty ritual that I didn't quite understand, has become an incredible weekly source of strength for me. It is a symbol of joining in the flesh of Jesus as he died and rose again through the power of the cross. I'm not only worshipping that act of his, but I am taking part in it, taking up my cross, abandoning my ego-self upon it, dying, and rising again each time I take in his flesh and blood.

Every day, I'm learning how to die. God, give me the courage and the faith to die every day, every moment, to myself, that I can rise up into your will and purpose for the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h70CCpk8nrQ&feature=related

Is there room in the Church for the sacred feminine?

2009-03-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

I was walking past an old church the other day in the historic European city where I live and looked up to admire its tall, majestic tower, and I couldn’t help but chuckle as I took note of its resemblance to a phallus. I often notice the subtle symbols of male-dominance that dot the landscape throughout the world, in virtually every society. But as I walked past, I became sad as I thought about how fitting it was that a phallus should symbolize the Church. And I wondered: Is there room in the Church for the feminine aspect of God?

In many Christian circles, the sacred feminine is acknowledged. In evangelical churches, I’ve often heard people point out that God is neither male nor female, He is both mother and father (the “mother hen” verse is often used here). And in the Catholic Church, the sacred feminine is even honored in the person of Mother Mary. But it is obvious to anyone who is honest with her/himself that the Church is really male-dominated. In most denominations, women are not allowed in leadership positions. Their voices are restricted to only teaching other women, or they are relegated to the nursery to work with the children. But if it’s true that God is neither male nor female, but rather equally both, wouldn’t it be the case that both male and female aspects of God would be equally powerful, in balance, in the Church? Sure, male and female genders are different, opposite in some ways, and surely this means that they have different roles and positions, but in a perfect world, couldn’t we still have separate but equal? Not just in value, but also in influence?

What would this look like? I have my own ideas but prefer to keep my cards close to my chest for now because I want you to consider it for yourself.
...........................................

Incidentally, I noticed, as I got a bit closer to the church, that the phallus was rising up out of the main hall of the church, which, when you thought about it, looked vaguely vaginal…

And I figured, maybe there is room in the Church for the feminine after all. Maybe it’s just a matter of recognizing Her.