No one has the last word! 06/28/09 b

Truth

Truth does not come wrapped in bright paper and tied with a bow, between two covers, nicely worded in sequential fashion like some wonderful Final Theory, which isn’t theoretical at all, but fully factual all the way so that that’s that, and there is no question about it. Truth isn’t like that.

Truth is all squirmy and slippery, and contradictory, and inconsistent, and paradoxical, and conundrumatic. So that the truer it is the less sense it makes, and you have to carry it around with you for days cogitating on it, poking it, and prodding it and turning it over in your mind, and the more you think about it, the more you see that its opposite is also true, and that doesn’t negate it, or cancel it out, but deepens it and expands it and enlarges it, and you find yourself saying, “Of course!” and laughing at the wonder of it all—which includes wondering why people take truth so seriously that they excommunicate one another and go to war when they should be laughing together and singing Pub songs.

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Woody and I tripped up to Roan Mountain State Park to take in the Rhododendrons and Flame Azaleas on Roan Mountain, and I asked for directions to Carver’s Gap from an 80-something year old on the path from the cabin to the car. “Honey,” she said, “you’ll have to ask somebody else. I’ve been coming here all my life, but I only go where they tell me to.”

We don’t want to know any more than we need to. Carver’s Gap is somewhere. We know that much, but if someone else will do the driving, why bother with the details? Just get in the car and enjoy the ride!

It would be a different world if people were living their own lives. Most of what passes for life is a substitute for life, a surrogate for life, a replacement for life, a facsimile of life that depletes us and leaves us exhausted and empty. But, if we stay busy enough and tell ourselves to just do what we are told enough, we may not notice the emptiness and be “just fine” all our lives long.

The clouds kept the camera in the bag during the early part of the day, so I drove into the village of Roan Mountain, Tennessee and had breakfast at Bob’s Dairyland, and sat waiting on my eggs and toast among the locals who were already enjoying theirs. As I took in the crowd, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t have a chance with them. Better to keep my ideas to myself, discretion being the better part of valor, and all.

I walk among, live among people who cannot begin to understand what I’m saying. “Why don’t you talk to us about things we can understand?” means “Why don’t you tell us what we expect to hear?”, or, “Why don’t you tell us what we have always heard?”

For people to understand what I’m saying, they would have to reformulate their world view. They would have to un-think everything they think, and ask questions they cannot begin to ask. The gap is too great. It’s FM talking to AM. So, I don’t push the matter. Those who hear me hear me, and those who don’t hear me, don’t hear me. Those who are with us are with us, and those who are against us are against us. We have to do what is ours to do and let that be that.

“Some girls don’t like boys like me, ah but, some girls do!” The Sawyer Brown song wraps it up. Some people can’t hear what I have to say, ah but, some people can. So I say what I have to say and those who can hear it, hear it. But they don’t stop with having heard it, as though I’ve said all they need to hear. They use it as a spring-board into what else they need to hear. We all continue to listen for what else we need to hear.

Life consists of listening for what we need to hear, looking for what we need to see. When we hear it, see it, we know it. It resonates with us, and we have no question about that being what we need to hear, to see. We incor-porate that into our lives, make the shift necessary to accommodate what we have heard and seen, experience the transformation, and look and listen for the next thing we need to see and hear. There is always a next thing.

There is no final word, no Final Theory. We never arrive. We just stop too soon, are satisfied with too little. We go where they tell us to go, think what they tell us to think, believe what they tell us to believe, and are happy with that. But, we cannot quit. The path does not end. There is no settling down with this point of view, or that one, this belief system, or that one, this way of structuring reality, or that one. Here, in the world of how it really is, everything is off the table and up in the air!

No one has the corner on truth. Truth cannot be cornered. Captured. Incarcerated. Truth cannot be dissected. Examined. Exposed. Explained. Truth is not content, but process. It is not a noun, but a verb. We cannot talk about truth any more than we can talk about God. Or, when we talk about truth and God, we can only use words like “mystery,” and “numinous,” and “contradiction,” and say of both truth and God, “There is that which is true and that which is also true.”

But, not everyone can hear that. There are those who ask you what truth is and then answer, before you can, “The Word is truth!” And, that’s that. They say it because they have been told it, and believe it, because they have also been told that to fail to believe it is to go straight to hell and stay there through all eternity. Going where we are told to go doesn’t get us anywhere.

If we are going to get to the Land of Promise, we have to find our own path. We have to look in order to see. And it takes seeing to spur the looking in order to see. Something winks at us, nods to us, flashes across our field of vision, waves to us on the periphery, and is gone. From there begins the search. We don’t get to the Promised Land, we don’t find the Holy Grail, in chronological order, first this, then that, if-then-therefore. This is not a logical, rational, intellectual exercise. This is intuitive, instinctive, insightful, discerning all the way. We struggle to see and then, like that, grasp the truth of what we have always known without knowing that we knew, or are stunned by a reality beyond our grasping, and cannot help laughing, or crying.

When people speak from the heart—as opposed to reading from the script—about what they see and think, about what they have experienced and gleaned from their experience, about their lives, we all benefit. I am drawn to the places where the truth shines through.

This is the kind of talk that saves the world, honest talk, straight from the heart about what we have experienced and gleaned from our experience, and what has helped us most with our lives. We cannot get by on the strength of someone else’s experience, but their frank discussion of life’s impact can help us find our own way.

There is no formula. There are no directions to give. No explanations to make. There are no maps to the Promised Land. No one else’s path to follow. No nostrums, remedies, fixes, or cures. There is only life and living it. What helps? What works? A lot of people are hawking a lot of things, but there is no removing from us the burden of life and living it. What have we found to be helpful? What have we found to work? What enables, allows, assists us in living the life that is ours to live? In doing the work that is ours to do? What do we need to live the life that is ours to live, to do the work that is ours to do?

We crave certitude, certainty, explanation, structure, and we are called to step into the unknown, “To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.” What’s it going to be? We have to move past what we want into what we also want. We have to know what we also want. We have to open to that part of ourselves that wants more than we want. We cannot just go where they tell us to go. We have a voice—we have to listen to it!

My trick is to connect you with you and get out of the way. You might say that my place with you is to bore you so much with me that you turn to yourself to find what you need. I have to refuse to give you what you want. I cannot become who you need me to be. Only you can become that. I cannot, must not, usurp your power to provide yourself with what you need. That is your responsibility, and you cannot grow without bearing the burden, the cross, that is yours to bear, namely YOU. You are charged with the care and tending of YOU. We find our way in the company of those who are finding their way, but it isn’t the same way. We may drink the same water, but we dig our own wells. We all may wind up in the Land of Promise, but we find our own path.

Being Soft

We don’t have enough soft places in our lives. Those of you who were on hand Wednesday night know that I uncovered my need to soften up in an encounter with a photo of a tree at Rocky Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Soft is where it all begins. Soft is the essential step, the crucial place to be.

Becoming soft means trusting, relaxing, letting be, laughing, enjoying, easing up. But, it’s hard to be soft. It’s hard to be easy. So, we have to be easy on it not being easy. Be soft with it being hard, and let things be as they are for as long as it takes for them to be different. We all will make it as well as we can for as long as we can. What more could be asked of us? What more can be asked of the tree at Rocky Knob? We have to celebrate that tree, and honor it for what it is. The same thing applies to each of us.

The path begins beneath our feet. We start where we are. We don’t have to be somewhere else. We begin by being soft with ourselves. Accepting ourselves as we are. Letting ourselves be. “Easy does it,” is an AA slogan for staying on the beam and in sync with our true best interests, intentions and desires without trying to make anything happen. Of course, we would be better off sober than drunk, but we can-not will sobriety any more than we can will ourselves to fall asleep. But, we can arrange to fall asleep, just as we can arrange to be sober.

There is a Zen technique for dealing with our propensity for internal chatter, or “monkey mind,” during meditation. “Let it come, let it go,” or “This too, this too,” simply acknowledges the noisy thoughts without engaging them. We just observe them and allow them to pass on. This is quite different from “fighting for peace,” or “willing ourselves to be calm and serene.” We arrange to be quiet without forcing ourselves to quieten down.

The same approach applies to spiritual development. We cannot force spirituality. We can be spiri-tual, but not by not trying to be spiritual. “Do or do not,” says Yoda, “there is no try.” This is the Taoist doctrine (And they say they don’t have doctrines!) of wu-wei, or doing by not doing (It’s how water wears away stone and finds its way to the sea, how dandelions grow through asphalt, how we go to sleep and wake up—we do it but we don’t consciously, willfully, DO it). It is a matter of aligning ourselves with what needs to happen (so that it becomes what we want to happen) and getting out of the way.

Getting out of the way is the trick. We have to accommodate ourselves to the possibilities. This is where “easy does it” comes in. We don’t get out of the way by willing it. There is no forcing. “There is no try.” That’s the trick. How do we learn it? Spiritual practice, practice, practice. And the practice is becom-ing soft. Softening up. Getting out of the way.

It’s hard to be soft. And so, we practice. Being soft. Softness. Softness has to do with resiliency. With acceptance. With accommodation and acquiescence. And with persistence. Courage and resolve, kid. Courage and resolve. Soft is steady, constant, unrelenting, yet undemanding and non-intrusive. Soft is receptive, willing, waiting, anticipating. Soft is putting everything on the table, and seeing what comes forth, seeing what shows itself to be important, perhaps to our surprise and consternation.

In talking about his understanding of God, Carl Jung said, “(God) is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions, and change the course of my life for better or worse.” How different is this view of God from the popular offering of institutional religion, where God is the benevolent doofus, the kindly Sancho Panza, helping us along our way, serving our ends, seeing to it that we prosper and are happy, and rewarding us with paradise when we die.

The soft understanding of God allows God to shake up our lives and allows our lives to be what they need to be in order to wake us up and change our intended course “for better or worse”—for better AND worse!—in order to become what they must be. If we are going to adopt the soft image, and allow the tree at Rocky Knob to be what it is, and allow ourselves to be who we are, we must also allow God to be who God is and allow our lives to be what they need to be. If we are going to be soft, we are going to allow things to unfold according to their nature, to become what they are, to “do” us, to “live” us, rather than us “doing” and “living” them!

The work of being soft is to sync-up with our lives, with the lives that are our lives to live, the Authentic Me, so to speak. We are all more or less authentic, there is something genuinely us tucked away into each one of us. The idea is to live so as to be more of who we are and less of who we are not—to live with our eyes on the lives that are ours to live. Ah, but. We have eyes for other things! And so, we must get out of the way!

How do we get in the way? What do we do to escape the lives that are waiting to live us, that are our lives to live? To numb ourselves out so that we don’t feel the uncertainty, anguish, and anxiety that comes our way? To avoid the fear of being abandoned or overwhelmed? To avoid the agony of not being able to live the kind of life we wish were ours (which consists of, don’t say it doesn’t, more in the way of avoidance and less in the way of responsibility)? In what ways are our lives spent running from life? Complying and denying? Where are we being asked to grow up, to do for ourselves what we wish someone else would do for us? Where are we not facing what needs to be faced and not doing what needs to be done? Where are we asserting or failing to assert the power of our own personal authority over our lives?

What do we do to keep from being still and quiet? How quiet can we be for how long? What meets us in the silence? How do we meet it back? Then what happens? The only thing silence is good for is listening. When we listen in the silence, what do we hear? What are the voices? Whose voices are they? What are they saying? Are they chastising us? Condemning us? Berating us? Where did we first hear them? Where in our lives, in our lived experience, did they originate? What person in our experience do we most easily associate with the voices? How old were we when the voices made their lasting impression?

We are no longer that old. We have to stop acting as though we are. Step into the silence in behalf of the person you were when the voices made their lasting impression. Stop agreeing with the voices. Whose side are you on? Become an advocate for yourself. Ask the voices what they want. When they tell you they just want you to become somebody, to make something of yourself, tell them they are taking a dumb route to that end. Ask them when has telling someone she is fat made her thin, or when has telling someone he is lazy, stupid, slow and worthless made him the opposite of those things? Point out to the voices that for all the years of their constantly haunting and hounding you, you are still the poop pile you always have been and their strategy of yelling at you hasn’t gotten them anywhere, and that is indisputable evidence that they are as great a failure as they accuse you of being. And then tell them to step aside because there are other voices you must attend.

The other voices have been waiting for you to be quiet long enough to hear what they have to say. These are the voices who know what you need, who know who you also are, who are with you to help you find and explore the path that is yours to walk, the life that is yours to live. Ask them what they have to say, and begin the dialogue that will sustain and guide you through the rest of your life.

There are a number of ways of developing your ability to engage the nurturing voices in this kind of sustaining, guiding dialogue with ourselves. The Clearness Committee exists to help us hear our-selves—our deeper selves—speaking to us. Parker Palmer’s “Circle of Trust,” which Carol Steger and Julie Strope are going to initiate here in the near future is another approach. Keeping a journal is another. Working with your dreams and paying attention to your projections are others. Learning to participate in active imagination is another. The list is long of ways to listen to ourselves and talk to ourselves and deepen, expand, enlarge ourselves thereby. It is a spiritual practice that never ends, and one that cannot begin too soon.

06/14/09, Negotiating the relationship between inner and outer

We all have sold ourselves short and sold ourselves out for something. Maybe it was for money, or Mother, or Father, or Husband or Wife, or the Children. Maybe it was for status, social acceptance, recognition, adoration. Maybe it was for the title The Most Responsible Living Person, or The Greatest Living American. Maybe it was for our idea of Who We Ought To Be. Maybe it was for security, stability, certainty, comfort, peace, happiness. The list is long. Adam and Eve sold themselves out. We all sell ourselves short, sell ourselves out. The theological term for our inescapable propensity to sell ourselves out is “Original Sin.”

Our sin is our failure to be who we are, who we are built to be, who we have within us to become. It is to settle for less than we can be. Our life’s work is now to redeem our failure to take up our life’s work by becoming who we are. But the way back to Eden, to our true home, to the locus of our natural self, is blocked by the angel of death with a flaming sword, which means that in order to live we have to die. Or, as Jesus put it, “Those who seek to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives (in the service of life—he said, “for my sake and the gospel’s”) will find them.” There you are. The good news is that it is no more difficult now than it was then. The bad news is that it is no easier! We are always at the point of giving self up for what seems better, easier, than self. It is always hard to be who we are. The delight of the forbidden fruit is always there to distract us and to save us from the work of being who we are.

The journey is to recover what was abandoned. We have to go back and redeem what we left behind, what we rejected of ourselves. We have to live what we can of the life that is our life to live. If gestures and fragments are as close as we can come to the life that was to be ours, then gestures and fragments it will have to be.

Carl Jung said something on the order of, “We always are who we have always been, and we always are who we will become.” There is always something of us as we were meant to be apparent in who we have become. We never completely sever ourselves from the gift, the genus, and are never far away from who we are called to be. We are always a mere perspective shift away from the truth of our own souls. The tragedy is that we can be that close and not know “the time of our visitation,” and not recognize the one who is with us always, and not hear the one who is calling our name.

There is always that within us which believes in us. Which seeks after us. Which calls us to wake up and be who we are. But we think we missed our chance back there in Eden, back when we “coulda had class,” when we “coulda been a contender,” when we “coulda been somebody, instead of a bum which is what (we are).” And we think if we can’t be now what we “coulda” been then, why try? What’s the use, or the point? So we turn our backs on ourselves again, and perpetuate the sin of Eden, and do not allow ourselves to become who we are, who we have within us to be, because we can’t do it “right,” the way we wish we had done it back then, when we had the chance and didn’t know what we had.

We still don’t know what we have, and again walk away from the chance to do what we can with what we have to work with. Our sin is a failure of vision and nerve. It is a failure to be ourselves, a failure to believe in our-selves, a failure to do what is ours to do, to the extent that it can be done within the terms and conditions, context and circumstances of our lives.

We are always limited, always restricted by, bound to, the time and place of our living. There is always something that isn’t quite right, something to have to work through, around, something to overcome. We failed to be who we are back then with good reason. There were obligations, you know, duties. There was no money for med school or law school. We were in love. That list is also long. There is always a reason to not be who we are. Always something we have to confront, stand up to. There is always a dragon blocking the path, a Cyclops in our way. And, there is always that within us which believes in us, and calls us to believe in ourselves, and hopes eternally that we will have what it takes to do what needs to be done and become who we are in the time left for living.

Will we believe in that which believes in us is the question. Will WE believe in ourselves is the question. The hardest thing is to believe in ourselves, in our gift, our genius, over time, over the course of our lives. Will we trust ourselves to the gift, to the genius, to the Self we are capable of being—within the terms and conditions, con-text and circumstances of life, within what remains of the time left for living? We give up too easily, quit too soon. The Self/Soul is eternal and timeless. The time is always NOW for Self/Soul. It is never past, over, too late. Self/Soul does not understand the concept “too late.” Self/Soul is always calling us to be who we are NOW! “Dance however you can!” Self/Soul exclaims. “If you can only blink your eyes or wiggle one toe, blink or wiggle in rhythm to the music, and if you can’t hear the music, imagine it!”

Self/Soul doesn’t cut us any slack, doesn’t grant us any excuse. Self/Soul is a “harsh taskmaster,” demanding always demanding that we be as much of who we are as the terms and conditions, context and circumstances of our lives will allow NOW—and demanding always demanding that we push against the limits in order to see what we can get by with, and not give up too easily or too soon in the service of the life that is our life to live.

We begin the work of recovery, of redemption, with the question, “What does our soul want?” Clues exist in the places we are most alive, and in the places we are most dead. In the experiences that are most meaningful and in the experiences that are least meaningful. In the things that catch our eye, that nod to us, wink at us, speak to us. In our dreams and dreads. In the things we feel drawn to (not like alcohol or gambling or strip clubs and other forms of addiction and distraction, but like music or books or tools or conversation and other forms of engagement and enlargement). We have to do the work of participating in an inner dialogue with soul, with that which is deepest, best and truest about us, and find ways of expressing the inner truth of being (who we are) in our outer lives (who we also are). The sum of the spiritual journey is here, in negotiating the relationship between inner and outer.

This is not something we can read in a book (“Five Weeks to Holistic Living,” for example). This is the work we engage in over the course of our lives, merging inner with outer, becoming who we are in the time and place of our living. It requires us to learn the language of soul and participate in regular conversations with the mystery of being. In this work, we are all you have. You are all we have. We remind each other of the strength we have within.

In this work, everything is on the table, or off the table. Either way, it’s the same thing. Nothing can come between us and our life’s purpose, our soul’s intention, the life that is ours to live, “God’s will” for us and our life. Complete integrity of being, oneness with purpose and life, expressing, bringing forth, what is ours to express, bring forth, is IT. Is LIFE. Anything less than that is some stage of death, of dying. How alive are we willing to be is always the question. “Thy will, not mine, be done.”

Easy to say, hard to do. The truth is that no matter how much we wish we were engaged in our own spiritual development, we are always looking for something to save us from that work. Escape and entertainment fuel our lives. We are always running away from something. Hiding from something. Hoping that something will leave us alone. Where do we ever square up to it, stick it out, stare it down? Where do we ever face what must be faced out of the resources and resolve we find within? We are always looking to be saved, to be rescued, trying always to reach the land flowing with milk and honey. Where do we ever stop running and make a stand?
What are we looking for that we don’t have? What is the source of dissatisfaction, disenchantment, dismay, conflict? What is it going to take for us to, here it comes, get ready, be happy?

What it takes is the right combination of outer and inner. Outer is what it takes to meet the physical requirements for life—food, clothing, shelter, tools. Tools are important because that is what it takes to bring forth the inner. Inner is what it takes to meet the spiritual requirements for life, to bring forth, incarnate, express the mystery of being, of who we are, within the visible world. We live to make the invisible visible.

Our work is making our peace with the context and circumstances, terms and conditions, of our lives. Our work is to bring forth what is within no matter what. Life gets to do anything to us, no holds barred, anything goes, and we get to bring forth what is within and honor one another, and live with grace and compassion for it all. That’s the deal. If we want something else, we are standing in the wrong line.

Carl Jung says, “All our troubles flow from being separated from our instincts.” But, if we lived only on the basis of instinct, we would be in trouble as well. Jung goes on to say, “Too much of the animal distorts the civilized person, and too much of civilization makes sick animals.” We live to find the right mix between our instincts and our duties, obligations, and responsibilities—between the requirements of life on the spiritual level and the requirements of life on the physical level. Too much of one and not enough of the other and we are in trouble.

We are here to serve the genius, the gift, the vision that is our vision, the life that is our life to live—regardless of how well that is received and valued. We must receive it. We must value it. We must believe in it, align ourselves with it. Our faith you might say, isn't so much in the God "out there" as in the gift of God "in here." The challenge is to serve that gift and let the outcome be the outcome. May we all have what it takes to do that and go on doing that day in and day out, "for better or worse, in sickness and in health," for the rest of our lives!

06/07/09, What does being happy have to do with it?

The normal distribution curve would suggest that the majority of people who gather in a church on Sunday morning fit the following profile: They don’t want to grow up. They don’t want to be responsible for their own life. They don’t want to have to go to any trouble, be inconvenienced in any way, or do anything they don’t feel like doing. They want to be pleasantly taken care of, entertained with a lifetime of diversions and distractions, and live happily ever after. And they would want me to tell them how to arrange for that to happen.

Since you are already outside the normal distribution curve by being here on Sunday morning, I can reveal to you the actual truth and you will not cringe, blanch, or run and hide: Here it is, spoken by Shelton Kopp over 30 years ago: “We have to solve our own problems every day for the rest of our lives.” Here’s more of it, spoken by Carl Jung over 60 years ago: “None of the real problems have solutions. We don’t solve them. We outlive them.”

There are no fixes, remedies, potions, cures, nostrums, recipes, answers… There is only living in the mess and waiting out the problems. We outlive what we cannot solve. I know that isn’t inspirational. We don’t want to hear it any more than the people do in the church of our experience. We have our stake in the status quo just as they do. We long to be comfortable in our little world, just as they do, just as anyone would. And we don’t want to do anything to disrupt what peace and certainty we have managed to attain. Our lives are in enough upheaval without our adding to it.

We want me to go away with my take on reality. Leave us alone. We want stability. Safety. Refuge. Rest. And, here is the interesting part, we want to take up the spiritual journey and grow spiritually and live deep, ex-pansive lives. Yet, we don’t want to go anywhere or to do anything new. We don’t what to change. We want to grow without changing. We want things to be better without things being different. We want opposite things at the same time.

Always the tension, the contradiction, the dynamic! “Without contraries is no progression” (William Blake). We cannot take anything at face value. What is true is counterbalanced by what is also true, and we live between opposites, on the boundary between yin and yang, for better and worse, all our lives long.

We want to be reassured that the life we have chosen for ourselves can work with just a bit of spiritual tweaking, with some spiritual mumbo-jumbo, meditation, maybe, or a crystal medallion. A personal mantra—that would do it. But don’t ask us to change. We have worked hard enough to be where we are, and we are not about to give up any of it for the sake of spiritual growth and life lived on terms other than our own.

But, we also know there is no place of safety for those who are alive. There is no immunity, no protection. We know we have to get used to it. Only the plastic people feel no pain. Life is painful, work, trouble. If we are going to be alive, we are going to do the work of accommodation, adjustment, acceptance, acquiescence, adaptation… We move over and make room for life, or we wrap ourselves in a bubble of denial and pretence—pretending we are not pretending and not knowing the first thing about being alive.

The church as it ought to be is only good for those who are into life, living, being alive. It exists as a way-station of encouragement when life rises up to slap us around. “Get up and get back into it” is the message of the church as it ought to be. Not, “Come here and you will be safe and happy until the kingdom comes.”

Being safe and happy have absolutely nothing to do with being alive. Happiness is a cultural substitute for life. People make themselves happy to compensate for being mostly dead. People who are alive don’t worry about happiness. They are too busy living, invested in the experience of being alive. The pursuit of happiness is a dead-end path and the antithesis of the spiritual journey. Happy growth and development is the oxy-est of oxymoron’s.

Being alive is about working the program. Working the program means waking up to how it is with us right now. What is true and what is also true? Where are we most alive? What is trying to come to life in us? Where are we dead? Stuck? Blocked? Refusing to live? What fears drive us? Limit us? Keep us from being alive? What are our dreams saying to us? Our symptoms? What keeps flirting with us as an interest, an urge, an inclination, an attrac-tion? What do we keep putting off? What are we doing to keep from doing what we know needs to be done? The practice is being aware of the life we are living and how it needs to be lived instead, and taking up the work of mov-ing from where we are to where we are asked to be.

We don’t want to work the program. We don’t want to be silent and reflective. We don’t want to dialogue with our dreams and symptoms. We don’t want to explore our stuck places, examine our repetitive, recurring, reactions and encounters, look at our patterns, make inquiries about origins and messages from the gods. We want our lives to unfold according to our ideas for their unfolding. We want the life of our dreams delivered to our door. We want to know how to get what we want. We want to live happily, conveniently, ever after. It is not to be.

I know as much about God as anyone on the planet. So do you. The idea that there are authorities on God—theologians—God scientists tucked away in the high hallways of academia, or the lecture halls of institutional religion, who know what we should believe and not believe is a trick played on us by us. We want somebody to know more than we do. We don’t want to be left on our own, alone with God. Yet, that is exactly the path each of us must tread to the land of promise. We drink the same water, but we dig our own well. Each of us must find our own way to God, simply by waking up to the God who is calling our name. Ah, but. That God asks hard things of us. That God doesn’t love us the way we want to be loved. Therein lies the problem. So, we call on the theologians to tell us what to do to get God to love us the way we want to be loved. And God recedes farther into the background of our lives.

Always the opposition, the contraries, the limitations, the restrictions, the boundaries, the barriers, the terms and conditions! Life is lived in contention with that which does not support life. The universe doesn’t care about us. Doesn’t even know our name. Is not here to serve us and dote on us and make sure we have what we want, or need. We have to work in the service of life. Life is lived pushing against the limits that make life difficult, if not impossible. We are the dandelion buried beneath the asphalt. What are we going to do about that?

We cannot put living off. If we are going to be alive, we have to begin in this moment right now by opening ourselves to the moment, receiving the moment well, seeing what the moment has to offer and what the moment needs, and offering to the moment what we have to give out of that which is deepest, best and truest about us. What are the possibilities for life right here, right now? Who would we have to disappoint in order to take advantage of the possibilities? How would we have to do it, and not do it, in order to be alive right here, right now? What existing structures would we have to ignore? What new ones would we have to honor? How differently would we have to live? What is keeping us in place, locked into the same old, same old, waiting to be rescued, delivered, in-vited to be alive?

None of us is aware of everything. The more aware we are of one thing, the less aware we are of other things. Diffuse awareness dilutes particular awareness, particular awareness inhibits diffuse awareness. We are always missing something. Always unconscious of that of which we are unconscious. Always being challenged to see more than we see, to hear more than we hear, to understand more than we understand. We never graduate from the school of awareness. Don’t even get to the second grade.

But. We’ll figure it out. We will figure it out if we are nurtured and cared for (Mothered) in the right kind of way. All we need is time and the supportive presence of the right kind of community. We need to be upheld, sus-tained, encouraged while we figure it out. If we are Mothered in the wrong kind of way, it’s all over. We don’t have a chance with the wrong kind of Mother. Everything hangs on the kind of Mother we have and are.

We cannot hope to be an “I” except as a part of a nurturing “we.” “We” bring “you” into being. Not by telling you what you need to hear, but by listening to what you have to say. We hear you into the realization of yourself, into the you-ness of you. We ask you the healing questions. We explore with you the lair of dragons. We call you to work the program even as we work it ourselves. We share the path with you and laugh with you along the way.

The training for becoming a nurturing “we” is the work of being a listening “I.” It is the work of seeing, and hearing and understanding. The work of developing eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that understands. There is no way to do that. There is only doing it. It is the way to Carnage Hall: “Practice, practice, practice,” until we can work the program in our sleep and follow our dreams to the land of promise.

09/24/09, Loose Change

Everything exists in the service of losing our way or finding it. Which is to say that we are never more than a slight perspective shift away from being lost, or found. Everything that happens to us seals us in or opens us up, depending entirely upon what we think about it, look at it, and do with it. Delta Dawn’s betrayal and abandonment could lead to her death, or to her life. Nothing has to be what it is. The future exists as 10,000 possibilities in every moment. Life is always out ahead of us, calling to us, urging us on. We are the ones holding back, complaining, “Oh, it’s too hard! It’s too much trouble! It’s too painful! Just leave us alone! Let us die!”

We don’t know enough to know when to quit, fold up, hand it over, shut down. We think we are tired, we think we’ve had enough, we think it’s too hard, with too little payoff and not enough fun, we think we will get off the bull and sit in the shade, but, so far as we know, this is our one shot at life, and we have no idea of what might happen if we actually lived the life that is ours to live in the time left for living, and there is only one way to find out, and why die not knowing?
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We are certain that the agony and anguish of life cannot compare with the bliss of oblivion and seek the bliss to escape the agony. Just give us the mountain retreat, the cave, the cushion! Spare us the pain of income tax returns and cleaning the gutter and deciding what to do with Mama in her dementia and decrepitude! Keep us from the misery of not having our way! We forsake it all for nothing, thinking nothing is better than the dreads of life

Look. If we are going to give up our way for some stupid mountain side, and leave everything to meditate our way into oneness with the Divine (which is, you’ll have to admit, zeroing ourselves out in order to merge with the Universe), why don’t we just zero ourselves out and take care of Mama without the agony and anguish of having her in our way? We are giving up our way for the Guru. Why not give up our way for Mama?

It’s our way that is in the way. The agony and anguish of life is the agony and anguish of not having our way. It isn’t life that is the problem but what we want life to be. Shift the wanting and disappear the problem. No anguish, no agony. Just doing what needs to be done. Even in the monasteries they have to do what needs to be done. I wouldn’t lie to you about that. And someone has to take care of the Guru in his dementia and decrepitude.
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Everything is equidistant from perfect union with the Divine, bliss, oneness, transcendence, absorption in the Absolute—what’s important, or whatever it is that we think we are after. If you leave here and go there, or there, or there, you are no closer to “it” (however you think of it). “It” is right here. Right now. Seeing it or not seeing it has nothing to do with its proximity or its availability to be seen.
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It helps to sit with something for a while before trying to change it, disappear it, X-it out of your life. Of course, that doesn’t apply to hot horseshoes straight from the coals, yellow jackets, or bad coffee. There are some places you just have to get yourself walked out of fast. You have to decide for yourself, when to sit, and when to leave. It is enough to know that knee-jerk is not the only reaction, and as a life-style it is largely lacking.
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There is nothing here for you. We don’t have anything to give you that you don’t already have. We can only give you you. You come in here with you and you leave with you. What happens in between in you. You happen. You becoming you is what your life is all about. We are here to help you become you. You are here to help us become us. I don’t have anything to give you but you. You don’t have anything to give me but me. How do I give you you? By receiving you well. How do you give me me? By receiving me well. We receive each other well, and allow each other to be who we are and who we also are, and it is beautiful. We are beautiful in each others’ eyes.

We are all mirrors and sounding boards for each other, showing each other who we are, and who we also are. Once we know who we are and who we also are, there is only the matter of bringing that to life in our lives. But that is really one thing, the knowing and the bringing to life, not two things. We don’t know and then bring to life. We know as we bring to life. We live as we live. We are alive as we come to life in the lives we are living, by seeing, hearing, and understanding who we are and who we also are, what we are doing and what needs to be done.
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There are recipes everywhere for doing what we want to do, but how do we align our wants with what truly needs to happen? This is the search for the Holy Grail. Can we serve the Grail, is the question. Can we get out of the way and allow the magic to happen? Can we trust the magic? Can we take our place and not be jousting for what we want our place to be? “What is MY place?” Can we ask the question and receive the answer?

“Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” Can we live with that if we are Saul? Can we realize that Saul has his place and David has his? Can we focus on making our place a really good place to be, and leave the other places to those who occupy them? Can we not have to be the shining star? Can we not have to have fortune and glory? Can we reconcile ourselves to our lot, and be content with what is ours to have, and be, and do?

“But, what is OURS?” How do we know our place when we see it? Don’t worry about it. Just do your part and let the outcome be the outcome. “But what is OUR part?” Seeing, hearing, understanding—and doing what needs to be done, what we are capable of doing, out of the gifts and talents and skills and aptitudes and abilities and interests that we have.

Our life calls itself forth. Children who like to draw, draw. Children who like to dance, dance. Children who like to build things, build things. What do you like to do, for no reason beyond liking to do it? What do you do just because you enjoy doing it? Do more of that thing. Not for fame and wealth, but because you enjoy doing it. Not to be seen and acclaimed, but because you enjoy doing it. Do that. See what unfolds around that.

And don’t be in a hurry. Your life unfurls itself over time. One thing leads to another. There is no plan, no timetable. There is only living as only you, as only we, can live. So, “get busy living.” And don’t worry about knowing anything or if you are doing it right or doing the right thing. Just do what you like, what is “most you,” and see what that becomes over time.

And, be sensitive to your urges and inclinations and budding interests. Be alert to the white rabbit when it flashes across your field of vision, or appears momentarily on the edge of your peripheral vision. Don’t pass up opportunities to adventure, but don’t push yourself into adventures that don’t have your name on them. The white rabbit will come back around. If you aren’t sure, wait, watch. Use waiting for the white rabbit as prep time for being ready when it comes again.
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We have to trust ourselves. That is the primary act of faith. Trusting our own voice, our own sense of direction. And, we have to trust ourselves when trusting ourselves doesn’t work out like we thought it would. When we make wrong turns and end up in bad places. We have to trust ourselves to get out of there. We have to trust our mistakes to just be mistakes, and steps on the way to getting it right. We have to keep trusting ourselves. Eventually, we will become trustworthy. At least, that’s the theory.
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Nothing has to be the way it is, and nothing is wasted. The fact that nothing is wasted doesn’t mean that everything is necessary. Things don’t have to be the way they are. The fact that nothing is wasted doesn’t mean that things are good as they are. They could be better in 10,000 ways. The fact that nothing is wasted means that everything is a part of our experience and has its place in the production of us. We incorporate all of it into who we become through the process of living our lives. This is the way it is. What are we going to do about it, with it? How are we going to deal with it, use it, change it, improve it, integrate it in the work of our own becoming?

05/31/09, Everybody believes in something.

Everybody believes in something, being happy, keeping up appearances, rocking the boat, or not rocking the boat, staying away from edges, jumping off edges… The list is long. How does what you believe help you live your life is the question. How does it help you be who you are—how does it help you be fully, wholly, wondrously alive in the time and place of your living—within the terms and conditions of your life is the question. At least, I believe these are the questions, which underscores my belief in being who we are and being alive in the time of our living.

Ephraim and Minerva (“Nervy”) Bales believed in plenty of things: having children, for instance. They raised nine of them in a two-room log house, one of which was a kitchen, in the Roaring Fork area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee from 1890 to 1930. They farmed, if you could call it that, on about 30 acres of poor topsoil four inches away from granite rocks and boulders. They had pigs and chickens and a cow or two, and raised enough corn to feed themselves and their livestock most years.

I walk, occasionally, through their house and over their land, wondering about their lives and what kept them in place there. What made that a good-enough existence for them? Why did they think that was the best they could do?

Two things come to mind: fear and shame. I imagine that they were afraid and ashamed. Ashamed of their ignorance. Ashamed of not knowing how to move smoothly through the larger social and cultural world beyond their two rooms and thirty acres in an isolated corner of an isolated region in the south. They were ashamed of their lack of social skill and of themselves, and afraid of being shamed in a world where they didn’t belong or fit in. They believed in their inability to live in a world beyond the world with which they were familiar and in which they were safe and comfortable, if you could call it that.

Of course, all of this conjecture is entirely projection on my part. I’m giving Ephraim and Nervy the roles of Will and Nan Hamilton, my maternal grandparents in Itta Bena, Mississippi. I expect that there is a high probability that I am right in making that connection and the judgment that goes with, but I’m still imagining the Bales as an extension of me and my impression of my experience, transferring where I have been to where they were. I could be wrong about it all, but I cannot get out of the impressions I’ve formed in order to form different impressions. If you think that’s easy, give it a turn around the block. Think of some of the ways your life has impressed you and cook up a different impression. Once the impression has taken hold of us it’s hard to shake. The way we see things, you see, becomes, in short order, the way things are.

Our impressions are among the most invisible, we could say “unconscious” things about us to us. We can see them best when we react emotionally, either positively or negatively, to someone else. Our reactions to others disclose who we are. This is the nature of a projection. We project our unconscious impressions onto someone else and see in them what we cannot see in ourselves. I see fear and shame in Ephraim and Nervy Bales because I would stay on those thirty acres for thirty years out of my own fear and shame.

Compassion, as you know, is a way of identifying with another’s feelings. It is feeling with another, bearing the burden, you might say, of the other’s experience along with the other. With projection, we give another our feelings, our reactions, our impressions, our needs and see him or her as though he or she is who we are. When we fall in love, we see the other as having the qualities that are missing from and needed in our own lives. We fall in love with what we feel like we are deficient in, and try to find in another what is so absent in ourselves. So a question we might ask ourselves when we fall in love is what we might be asking our new true love to do for us that we need to do for ourselves.

On the negative side, we despise or pity in others what we cannot admit or face in ourselves. I am not proud to say that I would be afraid to leave a hardscrabble life in Tennessee because I would be afraid of my ignorance and lack of social skills and my insecurity would keep me stuck. But where do you think stuckness comes from? Fear, insecurity, anxiety. We stay in a hole in Tennessee because we are afraid that something worse might happen to us if we leave. Is there anything sadder in the entire history of sad things than to be stuck with something that is killing us because we are afraid that something worse might kill us more dreadfully?

We are stuck wherever we are stuck because we do not have what it takes to step voluntarily into an unknown world and learn different skills and different ways of living. It has to be forced on us. We have to be thrown out of one world before we can step into another one.

Maybe it was that way with Ephraim and Nervy Bales, and maybe not, but my bet is that more misery can be laid at the feet of a failure of nerve than any other cause. We are a fearful lot. How else can you explain the proliferation of bad religion over thousands of years of hard evidence denying the assertions of bad religion? Bad religion doesn’t have to say anything that is true in our personal experience because we want so badly for it to be true we explain away the fact that it isn’t. We are that afraid, and insecure, and anxious. We are afraid to call the gods out. We are afraid to say there is nothing to them. We are afraid to step unprotected into the rawness of life.

Here’s the truth for you: Everything is always on the line. Everything rides on the choices we make. Playing it safe is just another way of betting the ranch on red and giving the wheel a spin.

We yearn for reassurance and affirming guarantees that our lives will be what we want them to be: safe, reliable, comfortable, certain, secure. IF we do our part, obey the rules, stay carefully within the prescribed limits, and step in the black footprints all the way to the grave.

Life laughs at our timid ways, and comes at us with fearsome ruthlessness no matter how we try to ward off its intrusions with our charms and nostrums. Life smashes through our defenses, demanding relentlessly, “Stand up and show me what you’re made of!” And we cower, and whine, and plead incessantly for the protection of the gods. Surely, there is a god somewhere who will give us what we want if we believe the right beliefs and offer the proper propitiation! And bad religion prospers with its empty promises and sham directions to the land of milk and honey.

We have to get over it. Grow up. Stop looking to be rescued, delivered, taken by the hand and led to the lemonade springs and the popcorn trees on Big Rock Candy Mountain. What we do with our lives cannot be governed by our desire for safety, security and a trouble-free existence, or determined by what we fear. We have to listen to the deeper voices, leadings, urges, intuitions and inclinations and override the tendency to inertia and sameness and death.

Being alive is an ordeal, a test of the spirit and will. The question is always will we go to the trouble? Will we have what it takes? Being alive asks us to follow our soul’s lead, but we hold back wanting it all spelled out in advance. How do we know? After all, we can justify anything, talk ourselves into anything. Fooling ourselves is what we do best. No, telling ourselves what we want to hear is what we do best. No, shooting ourselves in the foot is what we do best. How is soul to break through? How are we to know when it does? Is it a white rabbit, or a red herring, or a wild goose? We only know after the fact. Wisdom is known by her children, sometimes by her great grandchildren. We make our best guess and take our chances.

There is no such thing as happy growth and development. We suffer our way to wisdom. The spiritual journey is a painful path. Sorry to be the one to tell you. We buy into the spiritual quest thinking it is the way to get our lives lined up with all that is right and good, which, of course, will qualify us for abundance and prosperity and easy living and happiness ever after. The truth is there is nothing in it for us. Being spiritual is just being alive in the moment of our living for the simple sake of being alive in the moment of our living. Don’t take my word for it. Ask any of the spiritual giants what they get out of it—Sister Teresa. Ask Sister Teresa what she got out of it. Thich Nhat Hanh. The Dali Lama. The Buddha. The Christ.

All they get out of it is being alive in the moment of their living, in this moment right now just as it is. How much of the moment are we aware of? How much of the moment is going unnoticed? We can gauge how alive we are by noting how present we are in the moments of our living, how open we are to what is present with us. Be it fear and anxiety, shame and insecurity, or love, joy and happiness. Welcome it all, and be open to what is being asked of us, make your best guess, take a chance. May as well, since you’ll be taking a chance no matter what you do.

05/17/09, A Poetry Reading

Perfection
The only two perfect people in the history of the world are Ken and Barbie. To be perfect, you have to be plastic. No life. No personality. No choices. No choosing. Always doing what somebody else wants you to do, living the life someone else has in mind for you, perfect according to someone else's idea of perfection. Perfectly pleasing to those who know best. Perfectly dead and dying. If you want to live, you have to put perfection aside and live a gloriously imperfect—perfectly imperfect, you might say—life, laughing at the idea of life lived any other way.

Getting It Right
Getting it right means being graced by rightness. We cannot arrange rightness. We can’t plan for it. Foresee it. Predict it. Make it happen. We fall into it. Splash around in it, glorying in the wonder of having done something right for a change, looking forward to the next time it comes upon us out of nowhere for no reason when we aren’t expecting it and have no hope of it and get it right again, anyway, magically, mysteriously, wondrously. And stand there dripping wet with rightness, amazed, again, that we of all people can do something right.

A Good Start
We come self-confident and glowing out of the womb. What happens then tells all.

Here’s the Truth for You
Okay, here’s the truth for you. Not one of us thinks we deserve to die. Not one of us thinks any of the rest of us deserve to die. Some of “them” might deserve to die, but not “us.” And some of “us” think that not even any of “them” deserve to die. Not any of “them.” Not even those of “them” criminal courts would sentence to death, have sentenced to death. Yet, we are told to believe Jesus saves us from the death we deserve to die by dying in our place. Wait a minute. We don’t think we deserve to die. Somebody help me here. Anybody.

All We Need
All that we need to find what we need lies latent within, waiting for the environment required to bring it forth. All we need to find what we need is the proper environment to awaken us to the gifts that come built-in. What more can we ask than for an environment which enables us to see ourselves? What is more nourishing, nurturing, than relationships which lovingly accept us while helping us to see and be who we are, and also are? No excuses and no exclusion, no denial and no dismissal. Squaring us up with ourselves without abandoning us to ourselves. Growing us up in healthy, healing ways.

Encouragement
We can’t get too much encouragement. Incentive certainly doesn’t come from the results of our ef-forts. Where do we find what it takes to get up and go at it again, if not from the company we keep? If we aren’t finding it there, we better find some different company.

Our Lives Are Too Small
Carl Jung talks about the importance of “living mythically,” and says we “walk in shoes that are too small.” Our lives are too small. Too shallow. Because we are afraid to venture forth beyond the world of concrete and steel and take on the dragons that guard the treasure, that hoard life in their possession, and require us to stare down our fear if we would claim our fair portion. But the “also truth” is that the world of concrete and steel will let us down. The life it offers is a mirage that moves away as we draw close. Its promises are boxes of smoke wrapped in bright ribbons and bright paper. We live safe and empty lives, afraid of the dragons that have made off with LIFE. Jung says, “Only boldness can deliver us from fear,” but we deny our fear even as we hide from it in the game of profits and losses or the other games of pleasure and progress. Life has no stake in any of our games, and waits in the lair of dragons to be claimed and lived.

The Dragons Are Laughing
To “live mythically,” we have to have a sense of what is being asked of us by our lives. What are the intentions of soul we must protect and serve? What are the fears that hold our life captive? The things we cannot allow ourselves to do because “there be dragons” that must be faced? Is Responsibility a dragon we dare not slay? Or Duty? Or Obligation? Or Desire? Or Expectation? Or Mother? If we do not slay Mother, Mother will slay us. But, to slay Mother, we have to become our own Mother, and who is up to that task, immersed as we are in the fantasy of a trouble-free existence? Life is not trouble-free. The dragons are laughing.

Vulnerable and Alive
Always the decision about what to do, about what is being asked of us, about what is truly needed, about what must be done, with no rules to rely on, no black foot prints to go by, making up in the moment of our living how the moment is to be lived, taking another chance, hoping for the best, being vulnerable and alive in the time left for living.

No Assurances
There is no knowing what to do. No Assurances. No protection. No safety. Somebody is going to not like what we do, how we do it. Those Who Know Best will frown. Those Who Must Be Pleased will express their displeasure. And, we may be wrong. But, whose life is it? And, whose side are we on?

What Is the Nature of Our Fear?
What is the nature of our fear? Of what are we afraid? What are we afraid will happen? What keeps us from breaking free of the restrictions we place on ourselves and taking a chance on life? What is it we won’t look at? Refuse to think about, consider? What keeps us locked into the life we have always lived, safe from the intrusion of other possibilities?

We Owe It To Ourselves
We cannot allow our fear to keep us from living. We owe it to ourselves to go into our fear and see if there is anything there to be afraid of. Everything is fearsome at a distance. “There be dragons,” you know, “over there. Don’t go there!” The edge of the world is always just out of sight. "Don’t go looking or you’ll fall off!" Go look. Find the edge of the world. Jump off.

The Higher Calling
We admire those who don’t let life get them down, and wish we could become more like them, distancing ourselves, stoically or philosophically, from the events and circumstances of our lives, living with balance and sanity, wisdom and grace, compassion and humor, living out of who we are and not out of what happens to us or what we are afraid might happen, or what we want to happen. If only we could shift the focus so that we are no longer resisting or compelling or forcing or fighting or fearing the world, but are birthing ourselves, bringing ourselves to life no matter what the world does, no matter what is happening around us. If only we could remember that we have a higher calling, a larger mission than to make a nice little nest for ourselves, have our way, and be comfortable and happy during our lifetime. If we have had an easy, trouble-free existence, but never lived, what good is that?

The Welcome Mat
Recognition, realization, recollection, these are the things that grow us up, that wake us up, that reconnect us with ourselves, that restore us to the “dynamic core of our being,” that heal us and make us whole. What of us can we see in the things around us, in our lives, in our reactions and responses to the things in our lives? What of us can we see in our dreams and symptoms, our projections and phobias, our desires and disinclinations? What of us can we see, and seeing, accept, and accepting, love, and loving, heal and welcome home? We are the home we seek. We need to put out the welcome mat, and invite us in.

Integrity
It isn’t about getting anything, or having anything, or making use of something, or benefiting from something. It is about living with integrity of being (of being at one with ourselves) to the point of self-sacrifice. We give it all up in being who we are for the sake of being who we are without anything in it for us, without getting anything out of it, without having anything to show for it. There is no boon in the sense of realized good fortune. The boon, the blessing, is the realization of integrity, the fullness of life, even though it leads to death. All roads do, you know. So, what do we gain by not dying? We are going to die anyway. We may as well die in the service of integrity and life, and trust the boon to be a blessing in the lives of others. Besides, we get to say we followed the white rabbit and rode the bull. That's cool.

05/10/09, Working the Program

We have to work the program. The program consists of listening, looking, watching, waiting, trusting, trying, asking, seeking, knocking—of learning the language of soul, being conscious, of waking up, of taking ourselves under our own wing and growing ourselves up over the course of our lives. We work each day to be more aware and alive than we were the previous day. To see what needs to be done and do it. To notice what winks at us and know the difference between an invitation and a test. Working the program will ask hard things of us and make us true human beings—and, of course, you know what that will do for us. Nothing. And everything. But no one can sell us on the idea. We have to decide for ourselves how important being alive is and if we are going to do what it takes to bring ourselves forth into the world. It’s our call all the way.

It is not easy. There is nothing I can tell you to make it easy. There is nothing I can say to make you want to do it. We are not here to make it easy for you. We are here to make it possible for you. We begin by telling you it isn’t easy, but it can be done.

Life is not easy. There is nothing easy about it. Dying is easy. Living is hard. If you want to be alive, you’ll have to pay the price, which is not doing or having what you want! The price is doing what has to be done, never mind what you want to do. The price is dealing with how things are, never mind how you wish they were. Doing what you want means not doing what you want!

If you want to be alive, you have to do the work. The work is done on two levels. We work to bring two worlds together. You have to learn to think of yourself as having a dual citizenship in two different worlds. One world is the physical world of outer, tangible, concrete reality. The other world is the spiritual world of inner, abstract, metaphorical, intuitive, instinctive, numinous reality. The inner world is the world of heart and soul. The outer world is the world of the body and the physical universe. We live in both worlds and our work is merging the two, bringing the spiritual into the physical, so that the two become, in us and through us, one.

We do this work by becoming conscious of our place in both worlds and working things out between worlds. What does the inner world require? What does the outer world permit? The work is negotiating the ways between the worlds. The work is being awake and aware. The work is seeing, hearing and understanding. Making connections. Bringing heart and soul to life through the body in the physical world. The work is constant, continual, eternal and unending. You never graduate or retire. You don’t get a plaque to hang on a wall declaring that you are awake. If you think you are, you aren’t. If you think you aren’t, you’re right.

We cannot take up the spiritual journey without deepening our relationship with the inner world. We have to learn the language of soul and intuit the leanings of soul, the intentions of soul, and serve them in the outer world. We also have to understand how our desire for safety and security and comfort creates barriers between ourselves and soul, and inhibits our bringing forth what soul intends.

We carry with us a collection of impressions, and memories, and assumptions, and ideas about our experience with life. We see the outer world through the filters of these memories. We interpret and react to the outer world based on the impact of our experience that is stored away within. We have to become conscious of how our memories restrict our living, our bringing to life the intentions of soul in our lives.

The more unconscious we are, the more difficulty we have separating what is happening to us from what has happened to us. We lose the line between inner and outer, and live here and now as though it were then and there. As we wake up, we wake up to our origins, to our history, to what happened to us and how we responded to it, and how that has impacted, determined, the way we live our lives. We wake up to the inner source of our being the way we are in the outer world.

Seeing things changes things. We don’t have to react to present experience as though we are eight years old, or twelve, or fifteen. We can become increasingly able to recognize what is needed and respond to it out of what we have to offer without being compelled to react out of the impact of past experience and its influence upon us. We can work to bring soul to life in our lives without having to always please, or refuse to please, our father, or our mother, or whomever it is that we think must be, or not be, pleased.

Knowing what we have to offer is a function of deepening our relationship with the inner world. Our life in the outer world is where we incarnate, bring forth, birth, the deep gifts of self that are latent and waiting in the inner world. Our mission, our calling, is to read, serve, and express the creative intention of our soul by bringing forth the beauty and truth of our nature, our “dynamic core of being,” and exhibiting it in the world of external reality.

We stand between the outer world and our soul. We decide what is called for in the world of external real-ity and what is being asked for by our soul, and choose what to do. We have to protect our soul from the outer world and we have to express, incarnate, reveal, exhibit our soul in the outer world. How well we do that determines how well we live, how alive we are in the time and place of our living.

Our ability to live well between the worlds hinges on our skill in making choices. We learn to make choices by choosing and being conscious of the outcomes of our choice. We teach ourselves all we need to know. At least, that’s the idea. We don’t have to do it that way. We can wall ourselves in, seal ourselves up, entomb ourselves until we die. We can avoid life, or we can live. Our choice.

How would you do it? How would you live your life, if it were your life to live? It is your life to live, you know. Who knows better than you what you have to offer and how you might make that available to your life? No one can tell you how to do it. You decide for yourself. What are you going to do? Whatever is pleasing. Who knows what that is better than you?

Ah, but, here’s where it gets tricky. We have to do what is pleasing, but we cannot live any way we please! There is only doing what is ours to do the way we would do it, but we can’t do anything we want. We do not do what is needed only if, and on the condition that, it provides us with what we want. We do what is needed and let the outcome be the outcome. And there, in the outcome, we do what is needed again. See? Get it? What does wanting have to do with it?

We are both guardians and servants of soul. We keep soul safe and live soul out in the world. That is our work. Soul is dependent upon us for its protection and expression. We are dependent upon soul for consolation and direction, and the wherewithal to do what is ours to do. It is a perfectly functioning system as long as we don’t wreck it by imposing our ideas about how things ought to be on it and wander stupefied and agog among the lights and action of Gay Paree.

It is all practice. We are practicing being who we are at the level of soul, bringing ourselves forth into the world. We are aren’t here to get anything, have anything. We are here to be who we are and bring ourselves forth into the world. To live the way we would live. To do it the way we would do it. To keep faith with ourselves. And to enjoy everything about the experience. Everything. And to want, when it is over, to do it all again.

We have to find what works for us, what assists us in doing the work that is ours to do, in doing what is asked of us, what needs to be done, what needs us to do it. We have to find what enables us to do that, what helps us engage our lives. This is where this gathering comes into the picture.
This gathering is here to equip us to be who we are, to be ourselves, to be who we are doing what is ours to do, to bring us forth, to birth us, individually, personally, to introduce us to ourselves, and invite us to come alive, not by stepping in the black footprints, but by intuiting the next step and the time to take it all the way to the Land of Promise.

We have everything we need, but we have to access it. We have to be open to it. When life calls for it, we have to be able to stand aside and bring it forth. We have to trust it and allow it to show us who we are, what we are capable of. In order to do that, we have to work the program, engage in the practice. We can’t play shortstop without having played shortstop. If you know what I mean.

What is helpful? What is useful? What do those questions mean in a world where nothing is wasted, where every experience has the capacity to open us to the truth, to connect us to ends worthy of us, to wake us up and re-store us to ourselves? Hitler and Gandhi were both agents of revelation, realization, enlightenment, so in that sense both were equally helpful, useful. One was the servant of suffering and death, the other the servant of grace and peace. What is truly helpful and useful wakes us up graciously, kindly with compassion and peace, smiles and says, “It’s about time you were waking up.”

05/03/09, Living Organtically

Our lives have an organic or an artificial base. We bring forth what is within, or we impose restrictions and align ourselves with what is without. Organically, we are seen as having everything we need, and are encouraged to incarnate what is within and find ways of exhibiting ourselves appropriately in the world. Artificially, we are seen as blank slates to be written upon, lumps of clay to be molded into who we ought to be according to some external conception of the Ideal Self. We meet encouragement and suggestions or commandments, restrictions and regulations. We become our natural selves or we become somebody else’s image of who we ought to be. Our inner peace and development depend on the luck of the draw, on the environment that receives us when we emerge from the womb, and on the environments we live in throughout the life that follows. We live in search of an environment that is conducive to life. Or capitulate to death and live out our days with hollow eyes and an aborted soul.

The outer world has to be conducive to the birth of the inner world. We need a world that is receptive to our coming forth. Vulnerable souls need a welcoming environment. Or, a protective presence that can deal with any environment. Enter Ego! An Ego that lives in right relationship with Psyche/Soul is exactly what we need to bring ourselves forth into the world. We might think of Ego as The Guardian. A Guardian whose task is to Protect and Serve the Soul, but a Guardian that can be seduced, corrupted, by the lights and action of Gay Paree (or by the fruit of a forbidden tree). A Guardian that is aligned with the world’s idea of what it means to live successfully is death to the soul. You see where this places us. “Is you is or is you ain’t my constituency?” Soul wonders. Whose side are we on?

Whose side ARE we on? How come we keep complicating things for ourselves and getting in our own way? Why are we always shooting ourselves in the foot? Refusing to cooperate with the deeper leadings of Soul? We’re burning daylight here. We have a life tied up at the hitching post while we peruse the sights and sounds of Gay Paree, or whatever passes for Gay Paree. We distract ourselves with Wonderful Nothings, console ourselves with comforting choruses of “Poor, poor pitiful me,” and wait longingly for deliverance while our lives stomp and snort impatiently, and the day drags on.

Oh, but it’s too late now, isn’t it? If we were going to live, we should have started in our twenties. No one can live with their best days behind them. Everyone knows that. After a certain point, it’s all over and you just have to hang it up and tie another one on. That’s what they make beer for. The white rabbits are dancing on the table and we are drinking to missed opportunities and lost dreams. There is a country song in here somewhere.

Figuring out what Soul is asking of us when we have an interest in doing something else is as diffi-cult as anything in the Book of Difficult Things. We are in our own way, and have to constantly decide whether to make way or give way. It is easy enough for us to read our dreams as indicating our opposition, even refusal, to engage in the work of soul, but to see where our cooperation is needed in our daily life—to understand where we are actually being obstinate and obdurate—is beyond the scope of ordinary awareness. And so, the need for developing our sensitivity to, our discernment of, the movement and whispers of Soul. But, why would we?

We don’t want to go where Soul needs to be. Soul seems to be a master of taking things in stride, of biding its time, of waiting things out, of keeping the pressure on, but it also seems to thrive on encouragement and the least amount will do. But without some indication of our willingness to recognize and express the leanings of our Soul, Soul breaks out of its bondage with explosions of Shadow-truth, and we are left with messes beyond imagining to clean up, if we can. If we don’t chase the white rabbit, she will come driving six white horses to run us down, and that will not be pretty.

But becoming who we are, in light of who we also are, is no picnic. This is no walk in the park. It is not for sissies. This is the Search for the Holy Grail, the task of life, the great adventure we all crave as children and shrink from as adults. The monsters, they be real. Who wouldn’t seek the safety of the womb, of Mother’s lap, of the same old same old, of fundamentalist religion, of the black footprints laid out before us to the grave?

No one would volunteer for this work. Or, volunteering, no one would stick it out. It has to be forced on us. We have to be conscripted. Dragged out of our beds at night and thrown into an initiation ritual against our will. This was the place of those primal rites of passage, to force growing up upon us, because not one of us would have what it takes to do it on our own. Yet, we have developed a culture in which we have to do it on our own. No one kidnaps is in the dark and thrusts maturity upon us. This is the task to which all are called but few are chosen. James Hollis says, “Childhood dependency must be relinquished for adult self-possession and creativity. The longing for a trouble-free existence must be put aside in favor of the mature meeting of responsibility. Such changes constitute not only the quickening of consciousness but a form of election. All are summoned to grow up, not all are up to the task.” And why would they be? What do “adult self-possession and creativity” have to offer against “the longing for a trouble-free existence”? Surely, you see the problem!

What exactly do we get out of growing up? What’s in it for us? Why not remain infantile forever? We are leaving Mama’s arms for what? What is better than Mama? Who thought this up? Besides, what’s a soul good for in this world? What’s a soul going to do for us? Get in our way! That’s what. Keep us far from that happy shore, storm-tossed, at the endless mercy of the wine-dark and trackless sea!

All we want is “that happy shore,” and it’s blissful promise of a trouble-free life. In other words, Mama. But the truth is: “We are born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.” That was Job’s take on things (5:7) 2,500 years ago, give or take. He couldn’t find any buyers then, or now. We don’t want to hear it. We want to hear, “Come to Mama, baby. I’ll take care of you.”

See how many surrogate Mamas you can identify roaming through the culture, promising freedom from worry, fear, and trouble. All we’ve ever wanted is freedom from worry, fear and trouble, and we’ve created a culture to provide it for us. Of course, there is one small catch. We have to believe The Lie: “I’m your Mama.” And, we have to hand over our lives. That happy shore is the land of the Sirens--another name for Mama. The terrible thing about Mama is that we can’t be safe in Mama’s arms and be alive. Mama kills the babies. Mama is a Death Eater in disguise, devouring the souls of those she shields from the worries, fears, and troubles of life, rendering us safe, soulless and as empty as gourds on dry ground.

We save our lives by realizing that we have what it takes apart from Mama. We don’t need a trouble-free existence. We have what it takes. If you are going to believe anything, believe that you have what it takes. Believe that you have what you need. Believe that you can stand naked and defenseless before IT, before the way things actually are, and be okay, and be just fine. Don’t hide behind your made up shields, clutching your contract with life, saying, “Look here, look here. It says right here if I do this and this and this, that will happen!” Life will laugh and say “That has no validity—it’s only a joke you’re playing on yourself! You don’t get what you deserve in this league. You get what you get. Now stand up and let’s see what you are made of.” So, stand up, and look Life in its ugly red eye, and smile. You have what it takes. All it takes is trusting that you have what it takes. And, you will never know what you have if you don’t live as though you have it.

How to enlarge ourselves and be true to ourselves is the trick. Enlarging ourselves pulls us beyond ourselves. Being true to ourselves chains us to our idea of ourselves that we have become accustomed to over time—an idea that has to be shattered again and again as we show ourselves who we also are by dealing with situations we have never encountered. We cannot restrict our idea of ourselves to who we have been, to who we have shown ourselves to be through the process of living our lives up to this point. We have to expand our idea of who we are and be true to more than we can imagine we are capable of. We surprise ourselves. We don’t know who all we are. We are here to find out, but it is not easy.

We need the help of Soul. “Look,” we say something on the order of, “Look, you have to speak up if you expect to get my attention. You have to make plain what you want. You can’t be coy and subtle and expect me to get it. I need your help here. What do you want? Signs and signals are crucial. Signs and signals. It’s the least you can do.” Of course, the least we can do is read the signs, and follow their lead!

04/26/09, We find the way by getting out of the way.

We have to do the work of becoming conscious of, making our peace with, reconciling ourselves with, squaring up with, becoming comfortable with where we have been and what has happened to us and how we have responded and how that has impacted our life, for better or worse. The work is to make our peace with the life that is ours to live. It’s called growing up. It’s also called the spiritual journey. It is a continuing process of coming to terms with our lives that covers the entire span of our lives.

This process of growing up, of the spiritual journey, of coming to terms with our lives, involves us in living out our idea of ourselves, of who we are and what we are about. We have to keep faith with ourselves by living in ways that are commensurate with our idea of ourselves, of who we are and what we are about—even as we do the work of aligning our idea of who we are and what we are about with who we actually are and what we actually are about.

We aren’t free to just make something up here. We have to be true to ourselves. There is an essential reality, a specific, individual identity that we have to take into account and accommodate ourselves to. We have ourselves to consider. We have to be who we truly are in the world, and live so as to express the proclivities and inclinations, aptitudes and abilities, the calling and gifts that are ours to express. We have to do the work that is ours to do. We have an appointment with our life. No matter where we have come from, we still must live our life. Part of that work is continuing to deepen and expand, to clarify and express who we are, so that our idea of who we are increasingly coincides with who we actually are, and we live with integrity and are at-one with ourselves in the world. This is growing up, the spiritual journey.

At every point along the way, we have to be confident in our own ability to know what is right for us in any situation, to know what the next step is here and now. And, we have to be patient with the process of clarification, of knowing what we know at that point, with the information available to us. We can only act on the basis of what we know at the time. As we gain experience and our perspective expands, deepens, enlarges, we may well change our minds about what is right for us, about what needs to be done. We may misstep all along the way. But we remain confident in our ability to make the corrections necessary to get back on track and in the center of life as we need to live it, one step at a time. “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off it” (Joseph Campbell).

When something “rings true,” when something resonates with us, we know it. That is foundational, essential, knowing. That is the knowing that guides us through our lives. Yes/No is the fundamental choice. “Is you is or is you ain’t my constituency?” Soul wonders. Whose side are we on? When we stand apart from ourselves, from our agendas and aspirations for our lives—when we get out of our own way—we know what is right for us. That’s the knowing we need to know.

This knowing suggests that there is an unchanging essence about us all, an unshakable foundation of goodness and life, which can be counted on as a reference point through deep nights on churning seas. The truth abides: we have what we need and will not be left bereft, abandoned and alone. There is “a very present help in time of trouble” that we can trust to see us through dark times and difficult places. In seeking the stability we yearn for in the external world, we are like a woman holding her car keys looking for her car keys.

That being said, there is something attractive about lives with a comfortable, and comforting, sameness about them. Marriages that remain vibrant through the years, houses with flowerbeds that have been tended over time, places we return to for their continuing ability to nourish, nurture and sustain. We need actual, tangible, physical reminders of that which is stable, reliable, durable and dependable within. “As above, so below.” “As out there, so in here.” We have what we need, but that doesn’t mean that our lives will be smooth and easy with nothing but “ups, and ups, and ups” (Lucy in the comic strip Peanuts). Soul doesn’t care about smooth and easy.

What does Soul want? Not very much, it seems. We have our, Ego has its, eye on the displays of success, achievement and arrival, on wealth, prosperity and having it made. Soul is happy with the aroma of fresh bread and digging in the dirt of spring. Soul wants the simple experience of being alive and the straightforward expression of its interests and gifts in the world. Neighborliness. Conviviality. Grace. Compassion, Hospitality. You know the list: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Generosity… Doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. Living in the service of life. Bringing life to life in the time left for living. Walking the straight and narrow.

Oops. Now I’ve done it. Walking the straight and narrow. We’ve always understood this as the way of moral rectitude. Being a straight arrow. But the straight and narrow is exactly the way of compromise between Ego and Soul/Self/Psyche. It is the fine line between the interests of both sides of ourselves. It is the Third Way between submission and defiance. It is the way of working it out. Of deciding together with ourselves what is being asked of us and how we will respond, of knowing what is needed and what must be done. We do not know this beforehand, intellectually, rationally, apart from the anguish and agony of the struggle with anxiety, ambiguity, and ambivalence. Sometimes we only know it well after the fact, and have to repent, turn around, redeeming what can be redeemed, and bearing the pain of the burden of what cannot be redeemed. Not being sure about what needs to be done or what to do about it is the cross of life, borne by all who would be alive.

Oh, but, we want more than being alive. We want to be rewarded. We want to be recognized. We want accolades and commendations and prosperity. We want the effort to be who we are to be worth our while. We want to get something out of it beyond being ourselves, alive and open to the wonder and glory of life. We want something to show for it. We can’t settle for being awake, aware, and alive. We want to be rich and famous. Celebrity status. We can’t just be who we are. We want to be Somebody. You see the problem.

What does wanting know? We can want what we have no business having. We are in the mess we are in because of wanting. Wanting, and doing what we wanted, got us here, now. And doing what we want will lead us on. What are we going to do? What we don’t want? That puts us in the position of wanting what we don’t want. We are still doing what we want, even when we do what we don’t want. Even when we do what someone else wants. We have to do what we want whether we want to or not.

Wise wanting is wanting that remembers, imagines, anticipates, intuits. Growing up means honing our wanting, discerning what to want and what not to want, getting better at wanting the right things. We want to avoid investing ourselves in the wrong things. What are the wrong things? There you are: The task of life, discovering what is worth our time. The surest way to find out what the wrong things are is to invest ourselves in them. We figure out how to live by plunging into our lives and experiencing our experience. But, we prefer lectures and books on experience. We want to do it right. We want to avoid investing ourselves in the wrong things. We can imagine our way around some things, but some things we have to live with for a while in order to avoid them in the future.

Wisdom is known by her children, and what is right becomes apparent over time. In the moment, however, there is only feeling, sensing, intuiting, hunching, guessing. We can be wrong, and often are wrong, and we cannot let that keep us from guessing again, from going again with what feels right, even though it may be wrong. The hope is that we will guess our way to becoming better guessers.

Being wrong can lead to the deepening and expanding of our perception of truth and self as surely as being right can restrict and limit our perception of truth and self. We can be wrong in the right way and right in the wrong way. Impact and outcome have to be assessed over time. Sometimes, wisdom is known by her grandchildren. Sometimes by her great grandchildren. The jury, as they say, is out.

What works is the question. What does it mean for something to work? Works in light of what? Does it increase the level of grace, mercy, and/or peace in the world? Does it lighten loads, enhance joy, produce gladness? Does it bring life forth? Does it work to make the world a better place to be? Does it make you a good place for others to be? Is anyone blessed by it? Does it serve a good that is greater than your own good? Do the things that infuse you with life, bring you to life, enable you to be alive. Live so as to be alive in the time left for living. Evaluate the life-potential of your choices, and go with life wherever it takes you.

04/19/09, Life is the origin of all that is.

You Are Your Only Problem

You are there to catch yourself when you fall. You have to believe it to know that it is so. When you are on the edge of the abyss, hanging onto the cliff side with bleeding fingertips, dangling at the end of your rope, despairing, having lost all hope and at the point of the end of it all, it is only your idea of how things ought to be that is slipping away. You are only being asked to change your mind about what is important. And, who is asking you to do that? YOU are! When you have run out of options, then you have to trust yourself to yourself. To The One Who Knows. You are never alone. You always have exactly what you need at every point in your life. You just don’t have what you wish you had. Things just aren’t what you want them to be. That’s your only problem. Make your peace with that and let your Self lead you along the way, and you’ll have it made.

The inner world is more important than the outer world. The only value of the outer world is its place of expression for the inner world. The inner world is to be incarnated, birthed, made visible, tangible, actual and real in the outer world. If we aren’t doing that, we are dead, or dying and soon to be dead. Of course, we aren’t doing that because we are distracted by the lights of Gay Paree, and think the outer world is the living end.

We think the Outer world is where life is to be found—in the lights and action of Gay Paree—and neglect the Inner world, which connects us with life, and is life, and live draped with beautiful rags, wearing glass beads, admiring ourselves in our silver mirrors, oblivious to the death that would point us to the path of life if we could only wake up and know how dead we are. Death is the path to life to those who realize they are dead. And, it is only death to those who think they are alive.

Life is conditional upon the inner work that is necessary to connect us to life, bring us to life and enable us to be alive in the outer world of normal, apparent, reality. Outer calls forth inner which blesses outer, and all things are complete, and one. But, in order for that to be the case, we have to do our inner work.

We have to reestablish our connection with the inner world by learning the language of soul—image, metaphor, dream, symbol, symptom—and bringing soul to life in our lives, living to incarnate soul, to give it concrete, tangible existence. Soul work is the work we do to bring soul to life in our lives.

Carl Jung says we have to find the image tucked away in our experiences. What has become of the dragons and monsters, the demons and ogres? The path? The journey? The magic? We don’t live magical lives, lives that are attuned to the inner world because we think it’s all about concrete and steel, and what you see is what you get. We have forgotten that there is more to life than meets the eye. In order to recover the sense of “more than eyes can see,” we have to rekindle our imagination and curiosity, and see the outer world with the “inner eye.” We have to live with a foot in each world and know which world is home.

We also have to connect our experience of the spontaneous images that arise in our minds with our experience of the concrete world of tangible reality—making the experience of the mental images concrete and tangible in the outer world of daily experience. What does it mean that I dream of snakes? How does the image of the snake connect with my lived experience? How do I translate the image of the snake into the tangible world of concrete and steel? Where are, who are, the snakes (dragons) in my daily life? It is the work of consciousness to make the connections, to find the meaning, and live with a foot in both worlds.

As it turns out, I hate snakes. Whenever I encounter a snake in a dream, I, the dreaming dreamer, say in the dream to whomever is in charge of production, “You know I hate snake! I’m going to always hate snakes, and you keep throwing snakes at me!” I hear the producer laughing. The dream is indicative of my waking world in which I encounter an endless stream of things I hate: trips to the dentist, to the auto repair shop, income tax preparation, balancing the check book… You have your list, you know what I’m talking about. The snakes at night are the hated list by day. The dream producer seems to be saying, “Get used to it. Get over it. Take doing what you hate in stride. Life is full of stuff like that.” Image becomes reality. Another snake dream underscores the truth of the way it is, invites me to accept it, live around it, and get on with my life, with doing the things that bring me to life, the things that I am here to do, in and around the snakes, the things that must also be done.

Inner prepares us for Outer, for life in the world of normal, apparent reality, offering images which reflect and shape experience, enabling us to live in the external world as those on a mission from the internal world. The mission is to bring forth who we are in spite of the context and circumstances of our lives. The mission is to be alive in a world that is not always conducive to life. Life is an inner reality to be brought forth in the world of physical experience.

Two things here. One is that the physical experience of life is not the only experience of life. Life is experienced on more than the physical level. Life is expressed physically, in the world of outer reality, but it does not EXIST physically! Physical existence is not the only form of existence! The inner world connects us with another world—who knows how many worlds there are—and life is the source of all worlds. This is a switch from the normal way of perceiving reality, which scratches its head and ponders the origin of life, as though life is produced by the physical universe. Reverse that train of thought. The physical universe is produced by life as a means of expression of life, of experiencing life. It is one of the ways life exists.

From the standpoint of this view, an end of life, of LIFE, is out of the question. Life is the foundational reality, the absolute, the given. If you are going to believe in anything believe in life beyond life, on-going, unending, eternal, beautifully, wonderfully, mysteriously, real. Life is not bound to the physical expression/experience of life. When physical existence ends, life continues. It only takes being a little bit alive to know this is so, and we are here to be alive in the time of our living. Being alive is exactly the work of soul, the work of bringing ourselves forth in the world of normal, apparent reality.

The second thing is that this past week I made my annual spring pilgrimage to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For three days, I walked among the flowers and alongside the streams with camera in hand honoring the rebirth of the world. This year, my wanderings took me to the Ephraim and Minerva “Nervy” Bales place in the Roaring Fork region of the Smokies. Ephraim and Nervy raised 9 children in a two room log house, and one of the rooms was a kitchen. They farmed about 30 acres of four inches of low grade topsoil covering granite rocks and boulders from 1890 to 1930. Think about bringing soul forth under those conditions. Think about bringing soul—yourself—to life there, then. Well, we’ve had it worse for thousands of years, and a large portion of the world’s population has it worse today.

In spite of that, life finds a way. We can count on life. And, we can join life in the work of finding a way by getting out of the way, by standing aside, by not interfering with life by imposing our judgment, evaluation, commentary—by keeping our terms and conditions and expectations from adding to life’s burden. We are here to assist life, to help bring life to life, not to impose more restrictions and limits. Even hope gets in the way when we misunderstand hope and think it is “for” something, or “that” something will happen or not happen. “I hope the Cubs will win the World Series,” is not hope. Hope is what water has when it finds its way to the sea no matter what obstacles it encounters along its path. Hope is the hard-headed, resolute, determination to find a way, when there appears to be no way, when there IS no way. Hope is life at its best, which we trivialize by hoping it doesn’t rain on our day off.

The challenge is the same in every time and place: Honor the inner world and be alive in the time and place of our living. Bring soul forth. Do what is ours to do, what we came to do, what we are here for. And that is not to achieve some great work in the world of outer reality, but to unfold what is within, to bring forth the inner into the outer, to express what is ours to express, to exhibit what is ours to exhibit, to make known what is ours to make known, namely who we are, who we are capable of being. “What I do is me,” says Gerard Manly Hopkins, “for that I came.” In order to know what that is, we have to attend the inner world, learn its language, and assist the unfolding of what is within.

To attend the Inner World, we have to feel the feelings stored there, and honor their place in our lives as we find ways to express them appropriately and consciously. Inner work is not intellectual. It is experiential. It can be wrenching. Like dying. The dead have to die if they are to come to life and be alive. It is easier to remain dead. And so, we have to do what is hard and bring soul forth in the time and place of our living, assisting Inner in the work of transforming Outer, and saving the world.