IN MEMORY OF ALAN, OUR DEAREST FRIEND

Three or so months ago I was walking, as I often do, back in Nisene Marks State Park on a part of the trail that eventually leads to Maple Falls. Ahead of me I saw an older man clinging onto a branch with eyes closed, breathing heavily with a very pained expression on his face. I thought he might be having a heart attack. I stopped next to him and said in a loud voice, “How we doin’?” He, without opening his eyes, responded in a surprisingly strong, resonant voice, “OK. I’m just catching my breath, so you can go on ahead.” Feeling uncomfortable leaving him, I lingered a bit. Opening his eyes and noticing my UCSC T-shirt, he commented on the “Fighting Banana Slugs” and we both agreed it was a funny and most impressive mascot name for a college. Then he said, “I’m moving slower, so you best walk on.” He seemed much better now and was walking on his own, I imagined, to the bench not far ahead at the Porter House sign. So I proceeded to fall back into my regular pace and then, from twenty feet away, he yelled out a riddle to me, and I stopped to listen, also realizing that he didn’t want me to walk away but to walk with him. I stopped and he approached me, telling me jokes and riddles, at which I laughed. We arrived at the bench where he sat down. While walking, I recognized his face and his voice though I couldn’t place it. I told him so while he sat but he couldn’t recall me. He told me his name, which I remembered; he and his wife (at the time) had once, 35 or so years earlier, been my clients when I was a financial advisor. He later remembered me from est and his decision that he could trust a fellow est member with his financial information as well as his finances. Alan told me of his chiropractic and “healing” work, I told him of my various serious and chronic physical aches and pains, he assured me that he could “take care of that,” and I decided I would go and see him. I also noticed that the chronic pain in the occipital nerve in my head, and the level of pain in my neck and back had actually subsided in Alan’s presence as he sat on the Porter House bench. Alan told me that he often walked this trail at Nisene Marks and that he was getting better and better at it. He said he had walked one day for six and a-half hours and had the intention of hiking all the way to Maple Falls. At that point we parted, with him proceeding up a very steep hill and me looping down the hill to the fire road, over the bridge and back to the parking lot. Those few minutes with Alan inspired me to hike to Maple Falls the following week, which was harrowing and exhausting, shutting my body down for the next few days. I realized that I didn’t much care about going through such an ordeal but that I “did it for Alan,” which surprised and pleased me. I also absolutely enjoyed the falls; stripping down and standing under them.

From Alan’s weekly treatments for a few months I felt some improvement in body and mind. I believed that Alan was gifted in his intuitive and technical understanding of the body. My wife, Amy, felt that Alan was a breath of fresh air and loved talking with him and sharing his presence, as did I. We had him over to our house a number of times over a number of weeks for very lively discussions. Alan demonstrated that he was a person of "big mind"; he saw life in cosmic terms and great context. He was one who "prayed to God" with much faith and love. We joked about "knowing so much of everything and so little of anything." Alan was our dearest friend. We loved him very much.

A few days before the day of his death, I invited Alan to our house for some good conversation and some food. Alan, however, wanted me to first bring him to my “perch,” a redwood trunk not too far in from the fire trail "road" on the Aptos Ridge Trail. It was a short 15-minute walk from the fire trail, with some uphill hike on the way and a lot of downhill coming back. Alan was waiting for me when I arrive on 9:45AM on September 12. He hadn’t been on this trail before and he loved it, exclaiming again and again how beautiful it was, finding a redwood “throne” to sit on and claiming himself to be “king.” He was so thrilled and so much like a little kid that I said, “Alan, you’re just like a little kid. You have such wonder!” Alan smiled and said, “Ye must become as little children to enter into the kingdom of heaven!” I replied with my own wonder at his statement, “Then you’re right at the very gates, my Friend.” Alan proceeded along the path impressively, stopping two or three times to rest and seemingly not winded at all. We got up to the perch after 45 minutes and Alan stretched out on the large trunk with all the self-satisfaction of a little kid or a cat finding the perfect spot. He said, “This is now MINE. You have to wait your turn and I will NEVER leave.” I told him of my instructions to my daughter to inter my ashes in that very trunk upon which Alan sat so that I could “haunt” that spot forever. Alan said, “Well now it’s MY place too.” I said, "I suppose our ghosts will have to share this place eternally." He looked at me and smiled. I was so pleased that I had been able to share something with Alan that he so loved. On the way down from the perch, I told Alan he was mensch, a good man, one with a "good heart.” I think Alan was touched; for the first time, he said nothing.

I miss Alan. I felt like a child with him; we played like little kids in the forest. We laughed; we understood each other. We accepted and appreciated each other. He was a twin soul, my soul brother. Amy, my spouse, loved him too. I was overly critical of him in his passion and energy. He was so enthusiastic, so bhakti, so trusting and believing. I came to the realization that I saw in Alan myself as I had been a long time ago. He believed! He was inspiring! After forty years of Zen practice, I had come to neither be a believer nor a non-believer, “seeing through” both without great passion. Alan told me that he was a boddhisatva, to which I asked, “And why did you wish to be reborn?” Alan responded, “So I could have a body again.” In all my supposed “great wisdom,” I reprimanded him, saying: “I doubt whether any boddhisatva boasts of being one and I don’t think they do it just so they ‘can have a body again’.” In retrospect, I have to believe that perhaps Alan was, after all, a bodhisattva. He lived a life of service and healing. He taught me much about “being as a little child.” Alan was oil to this Tin Man.

Alan told me that he considered himself to “be Zen” more than anything else. He extolled Zen to me all the time. When I shared my own worldview with him, he wrote to me that it was “morbid.” I concluded that Alan was the quintessential “light seeker in the light.” My own was more "light seeker in the dark,” through paradox and irony, the contemplative via negativa, the apophatic (or “hidden”) perspective. Alan seemed to neither fathom nor agree in his light-filled state of mind and being. 22 years ago I wrote a Masters Thesis, The Rebirth of the Christian Apophatic Spirit: Embracing the Dark Night of the Soul, in which I explored the writings of St. John of the Cross and Buddhist parallels as well as Western mystics such as Meister Eckhardt.Twelve years ago I wrote a Doctoral Dissertation, Forty Days and Forty Nights in the Wilderness: Comprehending Myth in Today’s World, in which I recognized and described various essential and elemental archetypes of Nature and Being that presented themselves to me during my ordeal. Nine years ago I published a book, Depression’s Seven Steps to Self-Understanding: A Guide to Comprehending and Navigating Your Inner Journey, in which I recognized and explored depression as an expression of the soul’s needs in its journey through our lives and us. Alan was in the process of reading the latter two of these writings, which we had begun to discuss.

I never met anyone with such enthusiasm, faith, love, and passion. Alan truly believed. He was such a mensch, such a good person. Alan had FAITH! Alan was INSPIRING. Amy and I loved him. We do and will miss him. As already noted, Alan said, he would "like to be in a body" again. Even as I write this, almost a month after his death, I can envision a little baby somewhere, smiling already, and bringing hope, joy, love, and great heart and mind once more into the world.

REALIZATIONS OF PAIN

I do live “by pain” and now sleep by pain as well. Pain legislates my being, the rules of my movement, my life. Yet I count my blessings and am most grateful that the pain is far more moderate than severe, that I am allowed so much pain-free movement, that I am able to walk in the forest and at the ocean when I choose to go. So, yes, there is pain, but there is also much freedom from it. And for that I am most grateful and most fortunate and, yes, most blessed by God and all the gods and goddesses. I have not been forgotten by the divinities who look after me. True, I am severely reminded of my life transgressions, my hurting, usually not malicious or intentional, of others, and I am given the benefit of knowing on a certain level how others do actually suffer in their bodies, as well as touching upon the suffering deeply and sharply in their minds, hearts and souls. I so feel their pain, as is said. Not just the physical pain but the deep pain of loss and abandonment and loneliness and regret for harms that I have committed upon others in my life. To be able to feel and go through this while I am still alive is a great blessing and gift that allows me not to have to wander lost and alone when I finally do leave the body. This is not morbid; rather, this is good fortune, the greatest of gifts, allowing me to feel myself one with all other human beings and to have and feel deep compassion and understanding for all, even the worst of them. And not only compassion, but hope, and a sense that my suffering is not in vain but possesses the purpose of giving me understanding and acceptance of myself and others and of the way it is in the world, of what we have done to ourselves and each other, in the hope and faith that it can be unraveled and undone, that we can make it right for ourselves and for each other in our understanding and our forgiveness. For, though this pain may even cripple our bodies, which may be their ultimate fate, it can also free our souls and hearts to operate beyond the poor body, the recipient of the blows of physical life and its ever-unsatisifed yearnings and desires of even heart and mind. Such pain squeezes these desires and appetites out of us as we come to recognize how much of mind and thought is driven by the needs and desires of a sixteen year-old seeking to conquer the world in so many ways to capture sexuality, power, fame, wealth and health for himself. And so I once did in great confidence and some success. But this conquering mind by necessity, by reality, changes. Life itself aids in our realizing our limits as times proceeds, as we age. The pain and limitation help us to disidentify with the world of the young, the endless conquest of everything by sheer will and drive of the young mind and body. Yet, still, at age 72, it foolishly persists as if it were still eighteen. Such hard-drivenness takes its toll on body and soul, and one realizes such in due time: one is simply no longer who one was over fifty years ago. One loses the dexterity, the strength, the endurance, the flexibility, the utter prowess one once possessed overwhelmingly. One loses the sense of unlimitness and endless faith in one’s utter and inevitable success and ignorant fearlessness of youth, which is the exact reason why young men are sent to war as cannon fodder; older men are not so naturally inclined in this way.

One becomes able to recognize reality regarding oneself and one’s limitations. One notices others, that there are others, if one is fortunate. One realizes the value and benefit of living for them, even as equal or better than living for oneself only. One, if one is fortunate and blessed in life, finds that love of others transcends love of self, or, more truly, is the epitome of love of self, for the other is oneself. The greatest joy comes from helping another.

And all this has come to arise out of my own experience of my own utter pain that has such power in my life. I am grateful for what it has revealed to me and utterly so.

THE MYTH OF HAPPINESS

Sometimes I forget some of the more sane, even wise, notions I put forth when I was younger. In my book, Depression's Seven Steps to Self-Understanding, which was published maybe eleven years ago, I spoke of the place of "happiness" in our lives and how it is so overemphasized because we are not only so unhappy but because we even more so refuse to face, much less realize, the reasons why. Rather than being willing to see the pain that is within us, that is within the world itself, we all believe that we must maintain a facade, a masque of "happiness" at all times. We equate happiness with "healthiness," with "good spirits." We dare not expose ourselves as unhappy, believing that to do such will only "spiral us downwards" into the deepest depression, even suicide. We believe that once we "open ourselves up," like Pandora's Box, all hell will break loose and we will either burn up in the flames of our own rage or drown in the tears of our own sorrow. In my book, I speak of Schopenhauer's notion of weltschmertz, or "world pain" or "world sorrow." Schopenhauer wrote that he felt this universal human pain and loss in the very pores of his own body. 

     Our need for such an overlay of happiness upon despair and rage and fear ultimately kills us, weighing so heavily upon our being that we are smothered or crushed. We have such an expectation of ourselves to be "normal" and socially acceptable that we repress and smother parts of ourselves that know we are not such happy, well and socially-balanced creatures at all. Some of those who cannot bear themselves or the so-called "culture of happiness" lash out against themselves through suicide or in group settings against those who believe they are having a good time. 

     In my book I speak of the reality of unhappiness, of the darkness it brings to the doorstep of happiness and all that that implies. If happiness is "normal," then unhappiness is "abnormal," thus to be avoided so that one is not "socially marked," shunned and outcast. Of course, happiness, in perhaps a truer, more inclusive, greater context is able to hold, though not hide, unhappiness within itself. In other words, when one is unhappy, one is unhappy, and one is quite aware of this and able to hold it within one's general context of being as a whole. One is thus able to be unhappy but also to be with it, as it were, rather than having to act out the rage of unacceptance it may create on either oneself or others. The Yijing or Book of Changes notes, seemingly paradoxically, that when one is unhappy, when one is "obstructed," one must be able to be unhappy with "good cheer," which is to say, understanding and acceptance of one's self in this moment. Being aware of oneself in such a "greater context" as this is the perpetual challenge to us all, is it not?

     As I initially noted, I forget that of which I was once more seemingly aware: that happiness is not an event, a moment, but, rather, a state of mind. And a state of mind in which one is aware of a larger context of being, of life, than merely what is happening, to oneself in particular in any given moment. Everything passes. We pass, for Christ's sake. In the great scheme of things, we are but a twinkling in our own eye. I myself talk of the reality of the "present moment," of the "here and now," even as the very moment I make note of it, it is no longer here and now but rather there and then. We actually believe that we can even define ourselves as "happy" or "unhappy," while even that is so utterly vague and relative. I am perpetually reminded of my favorite bumpersticker, Are We Having Fun Yet? 

    It may be a sin but I notice that I have far more trust of anyone who does NOT smile than those who smile all the time, though I also admit that there are those who can do both who are absolutely insane in their darkness, some in the highest places of our society. Still, a little happiness goes a very long way for me. I am also reminded of the handsome, charming, Poe's Masque of Red Death, recognized only after everyone has been mortally infected. Strange that I have wandered down this dark path is speaking of much-cherished Happiness. But there is a cherished place for Darkness, for the hidden, the unspoken, the unknown as well. Some of us head deep into the forest for this exact reason. For the peace, stillness, and quiet of the Darkness. I like to think of the soul as a dark place, like the womb from which we are born and is our first experience of life itself, a time before any happiness or unhappiness, but only perhaps a wholeness.

    It may be that our truer purpose is not to find answers but to seek questions.

M. ESTHER HARDING'S POST-WWII THOUGHTS PERTINENT TO OUR CURRENT AMERICAN PSYCHE

[I first published this essay in this blog in 2016. I reprint it here because I believe it to still be quite relevantto our current political situation. Harding was a Jungian author. Here she writes about thepsychic/psychological underpinnings of the influence of Hitler upon the German people.]

Harding wrote Psychic Energy: Its Source and Its Transformation, first published in 1948, with its Foreword written by Jung in 1947. I have excerpted quotes from the text (pp. 3-9) that, in my estimation, can be clearly related to our current political, social, and cultural situation in America. A crossroads seems to have been reached with choices to be made. My hope is that we may approach what confronts us as consciously and responsibly as possible.  The following material is directly quoted from Harding:

“Beneath the decent façade of consciousness with its disciplined moral order and its good intentions lurk the crude instinctive forces of life, like monsters of the deep—devouring, begetting, warring endlessly. They are for the most part unseen, yet on their urge and energy life itself depends … But were they left to function unchecked, life would lose its meaning … In creating civilization man sought, however unconsciously, to curb these natural forces and to channel some part at least of their energy into forms that would serve a different purpose. For with the coming of consciousness, cultural and psychological values began to compete with the purely biological aims of unconscious functioning.”

             “Throughout history two factors have been at work in the struggle to bring about the control and discipline of these non-personal, instinctive forces of the psyche. Social controls and the demands of material necessity have exerted a powerful discipline from without, while an influence of perhaps even great potency has been applied from within the individual himself, in the form of symbols and experiences of a numinous character … So powerful indeed were these experiences that they became the core of religious dogmas and rituals that in turn have influenced the large mass of the people. That these religious forms have had power to curb the violence and ruthlessness of the primitive instincts to such an extent and for so long a time is a matter for the greatest wonder … It must mean that the symbols of a particular religion were peculiarly adapted to satisfy the urge of the conflicting inner forces, even lacking the aid of conscious understanding, and in many cases without the individual’s having himself participated in the numinous experience on which the ritual was originally based.”

             “So long as the religious and social forms are able to contain and in some measure to satisfy the inner and outer life needs of the individuals who make up a community, the instinctive forces lie dormant … Yet at times they awaken … and then the noise and tumult of their elemental struggle break in upon our ordered lives and rouse us rudely from our dreams of peace and contentment. Nevertheless we try to blind ourselves to the evidence of their untamed power, and delude ourselves into believing that man’s rational mind has conquered not only the world of nature around him but also the world of natural, instinctive life within.”

             “These childish beliefs have received not a few shocks of late. The increase in power that science has made available to man has not been equaled by a corresponding increase in the development and wisdom of human beings; and the upsurge of instinctive energies that has occurred in the last twenty-five years in the political field has not as yet been adequately controlled, let alone tamed or converted to useful ends. Yet for the most part we continue to hope that we will be able to reassert the ascendancy of reasonable, conscious control without any very radical concomitant change in man himself. It is of course obviously easier to assume that the problem lies outside of one’s own psyche than to undertake responsibility for that which lurks within oneself … Can we be so sure that the instinctive forces that caused the dynamic upheavals in Europe, and obliterated in a decade the work of centuries of civilization, are really limited by geographical or racial boundaries to the people of other nations? May they not, like the monsters of the deep, have access to all oceans? … Is “our sea”—the unconscious as we participate in it—exempt from such upheavals?”

             “The force that lay behind the revolutionary movements in Europe was not something consciously planned for or voluntarily built up; it arose spontaneously from the hidden sources of the Germanic psyche, being evoked perhaps but not consciously made by will power [and it is here that the comparison to our American circumstances may come to mind]. It erupted from unfathomable depths and overthrew the surface culture that had been in control for so many years. This dynamic force seemingly had as its aim the destruction of everything that the work of many centuries had laboriously built up and made apparently secure, to the end that the aggressors might enrich themselves in the resulting chaos, at the expense of all other peoples, meanwhile ensuring that none would be left with sufficient strength to endanger the despoilers for centuries to come.”

             “The excuse they offered for their disregard of international law and the rights of others was their own fundamental needs had been denied. They justified their actions on the ground of instinctual compulsion, the survival urge that requires living space, defensible frontiers, and access to raw materials—demands in the national sphere corresponding to the imperatives of the instinct of self-preservation in the individual.”

             “The aggressors claimed that the gratification of an instinct on the lowest biological level is an inalienable right, regardless of what means are employed for its satisfaction: ‘My necessity is of paramount importance; it has divine sanction… Your necessity, by comparison, is of no importance at all.’ This attitude is either cynically egotistic or incredibly naïve. The Germans are a Western people and have been under Christian influence for centuries; they might therefore be expected to be psychologically and culturally mature. Were this the case, would not the whole nation have to be judged to be antisocial and criminal? It was not only the Nazi overlords, with their ruthless ideology, who disregarded the rights of others so foully; the whole nation manifested a naïve egocentricity akin to that of a young child … and this, rather than a conscious and deliberate criminality, may perhaps account for their gullibility and their acquiescence in the Nazi regime. Deep within the German unconscious, forces that were not contained or held in check by the archetypal symbols of the Christian religion, but had flowed back into pagan forms, notably Wotanism [regressive because focused on the individual in contradistinction to the collective focus of Christianity], were galvanized into life by the Nazi call. For that which is the ideal or the virtue of an outworn culture is the antisocial crime of its more evolved and civilized successor.”

             “The energy that could change the despondent and disorganized Germany of 1930 into the highly organized and optimistic, almost daemonically powerful nation of a decade later, must have arisen from deeply buried sources … These dramatic changes swept over the country like an incoming tide or a flood brought about by the release of dynamic forces that had formerly lain quiescent in the unconscious. The Nazi leaders seized upon the opportunity brought within their reach by this ‘tide in affairs of men.’ They were able to do this because they were themselves the first victims of the revolutionary dynamism surging up from the depths, and they recognized that a similar force was stirring in the mass of the people; they had but to call it forth and release it from the civilized restraints that still ruled the ordinary, decent folk. If these forces has not been already active in the unconscious of the German people as a whole, the Nazi agitators would have preached their new doctrine in vain; they would have appeared to the people as criminals or lunatics, and by no means would have been able to arouse popular enthusiasm or to dominate the nation for twelve long years.”

             “The spirit of this dynamism is directly opposed to the spirit of civilization. The first seeks life in movement, change, exploitation; the second has sought throughout the ages to create a form wherein life may expand, may build, may make secure. And indeed Christian civilization, despite all its faults and shortcomings [which are legion], represents the best that man in his inadequacy has as yet succeeded in evolving. … Crimes against … humanity are constantly being perpetrated not only in overt acts but also … through ignorance and … ego-oriented attitudes. Consequently the needs of the weak have been largely disregarded, and the strong have had things their own way.”

             “But those who are materially and psychologically less well endowed have as large as share of instinctive desire and as strong a will to live as the more privileged. These natural longings, so persistently repressed, cannot remain quiescent indefinitely. It is not so much that the individual rebels—the masses of the people being proverbially patient—but nature rebels in him: the forces of the unconscious boil over when the time is ripe. The danger of such an eruption is not, however, limited to the less fortunate in society, for the instinctive desires of many of the more fortunate likewise have been suppressed, not by a greedy upper class but by the too rigid domination of the moral code and conventional law. This group also shows signs of rebellion and may break forth in uncontrollable violence, as has so recently happened in Germany. If this should happen elsewhere, the energies unleashed would pour further destruction over the world. But there remains another possibility, namely, that these hidden forces stirring in countless individuals the world over may be channeled again, as they were at the beginning of the Christian era, by the emergence of a powerful archetype or symbol, and so many create for themselves a different form, paving the way for a new stage of civilization.”

             [At this point Harding approaches Communism.] “For this new dynamic or daemonic spirit that sprung into being is endowed with an almost incredible energy … Can it conceivably create a new world order? … It does not look as if it could be repressed once more into the unconscious. It has come to stay. And the spirit that conserves and builds up, if it survives at all, cannot remain unaffected by the impact of so vital a force.”

             “These two world spirits, which Greek philosophy called ‘the growing’ and ‘the burning,’ stand in mortal combat … Will the revolutionary spirit triumph and become the dominant spirit of the next world age? Will war follow war … ? Or dare we hope that out of the present struggle and suffering a new world spirit may be born, to create for itself a new body of civilization?”

             [Now Harding turns to the psychologist-as-healer.] “For the psychologist can observe the unfolding of this same conflict in miniature in individual persons. The problems and struggles disturbing the peace of the world must in the last analysis be fought out in the hearts of individuals before they can be truly resolved in the relationships of nations. On this plane they must of necessity be worked out within the span of a single life.”

             “In the individual, no less than in the nation, the basic instincts make a compulsive demand for satisfaction; and here to civilization has imposed a rule of conduct aimed to repress or modify the demand. Every child undergoes an education that imposes restraint on his natural response to his own impulses and desires, substituting a collective or conventional mode of behavior. In many cases the result is that the conscious personality is too much separated from its instinctive roots; … until in the course of time the repressed instincts rebel and generate a revolution in the individual similar to that which has been threatening the peace of the world.”

             “… But not real solution of such a fundamental problem can be found except through a conscious enduring of the conflict that arises when the instincts revolt against the too repressive rule of the conscious ego. If the ego regains control, the status quo ante will be re-established and the impoverishment of life will continue … If, on the other hand, the repressed instincts obtain the mastery, unseating the ego, the individual will be in danger of disintegrating either morally or psychologically. That is, he will either lose all moral values … or he will lose himself in a welter of collective or nonpersonal, instinctive drives … .”

             “But if the individual who is caught in such a problem has sufficient courage and stability to face the issue squarely, not allowing either contending element to fall back into the unconscious, regardless of how much pain and suffering may be involved, a solution of the conflict may develop spontaneously in the depths of the unconscious. Such a solution will not appear in the form of an intellectual conclusion or thought-out plan, but will arise in dream or phantasy in the form of an image or symbol, so unexpected and yet so apt that it appearance will seem like a miracle. Such a symbol has the effect of breaking the deadlock. It has power to bring the opposing demands of the psyche together in a newly created form through which the life energies can flow in a new creative effort. Jung has called this the reconciling symbol [and sounds much like Hegel’s “synthesis”]. Its potency avails … to effect a transformation or modification of the instinctive drives within the individual … .”

        

                “This is something entirely different from a change in conscious attitude, such as might be brought about by education or precept. It is not a compromise, nor is the solution achieved through an increased effort to control the asocial tendencies, the outbursts of anger or the like. … It is only after all … efforts towards a solution have failed that the reconciling symbol appears. It arises from the depths of the unconscious psyche [or, as I see it, soul or embodied spirit] and produces its creative effect on a level of the psychic life beyond the reach of the rational consciousness, where it has power to produce a change in the very character of the instinctive urge itself, with the result that the nature of the “I want” is actually altered.” (3-9)

                It seems that Harding, in her understanding of Jung, is suggesting a mass radical evolution of consciousness, an enlightenment for all, a Hegelian synthesis of understanding and action, a Christian “act of God,” even a miracle, an Anthroposophical recognition and understanding of the positive aspects of our “lower (instinctive) nature” as presented in the luciferic (ego-centered, individualistic) and ahrimanic (materialistic, nature-based, instinctive) “impulses” (as put forth in The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman: Human Responsibility for the Earth by Rudolf Steiner), and a Jungian exposition of Self, including all of its shadow aspects, as an individuation of humanity. I share Harding with you that we may all find the “greater context” in which we “live and move and have our being.” And thus be more enabled to make wise and real choices.

             Please note that I do not necessarily agree with all that Harding or Jung say here, but that I do believe that what Harding says is quite relevant and important here and now for us all.

WE ARE AS FIGMENTS OF OUR OWN IMAGINATION

So, the question is are we "as figments" or are we literally figments (creations/fantasies) of our own imagination, our own thoughts? And then, of course, we must ask, "How much of what we perceive as 'our own imagination' or 'our own thoughts' is actually 'ours' rather than our parents', our society's, and/or our culture's?" There is that old bumpersticker, "Don't believe everything you think," that pertinent to our belief that we do in fact possess a viable grasp of reality; enough that we are able to cope somehow with the contingencies of being in the world. There is no comprehension that "we" have created a relative world in which there is a reasonably acceptable level of absurdity and insanity; reasonable only if you are of the predominating race and economic group, and are also able to accept the groupthink that "all is well and proper enough," which reminds me of another favorite bumpersticker, a product of Zippy the Pinhead: "Are we having fun yet?" Another of his: "All life is a blur of Republicans and meat." However, the goodness of God yet exists in the heart of all avowed fearmongers and churchmongers. How wonderfully clearly Donald Trump reveals to the world images of the Heart of Evil. Is not such revelation a service to the world? If Americans choose such a path for themselves, is it not revelatory of their own "Chosen" souls? Even as it was for the Germans less than a hundred years ago?

And so we so easily fall victim to ourselves, to our own beliefs and mindsets, be they traditional or innovative. Regardless of rightness or wrongness, logic or lack of logic, hatred begets hatred and violence begets violence. The American people so easily and readily dismiss Marianne Williamson's, which also was once Dennis Kucinich's notion of a Department of Peace. How dare we even consider the notion of Peace, much less passionately waging it. Who would benefit? What munitions factories would save us from Depression if we had "only" peace? "Imagine all the people...". 

In other words, we create the world we imagine. If we ascribe ourselves to be "made in the image of God," is such a god a Smiter, a Destroyer of his children in true Gnostic, Manichean, Augustinian, Calvinist fashion? Or perhaps Hellenistic unifying, loving oneness, a step away from the unifying, terrifying Hindu oneness? I sat zazen rather steadily for forty years and came to the realization that it is much a self-observational form of self-hypnosis, a subjection to quite sublime thought process, as real as it could be made into. Better that, of course, that the norm of Lethal Weapon III. I attained the seemingly sought-after state of "enlightenment," which I instantly recognized to be the revelation of the "endarkenment" in which we actually live and have created ourselves to make real as the world.

Better to make a world of great kindness and love than a world of great hatred and fear, but, as a Bible salesman with a withered hand preached to me on a bus from Albany to Boston in 1966, we humans have not even reached the Old Testament/Hebrew Scripture point of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," the point of which was that rather than slaughtering a whole village or town or even culture for the crime of one single person, we hold that one single person responsible for his crime. Our great needs for "transcendence" arises from our profound awareness, as unconscious as it may be, that we have no choice but to "be here now." I once read that book by Ram Dass in 1972 while tripped out and sitting on a high rock overlooking the Bay at Indian Rock in Berkeley. I recall a smiling Jesus with nails being hammered into his hands. Now, is this just one more "figment of imagination"? A chosen figment much better than fearing and hating certain people? Perhaps. Are some "lies" we tell ourselves so that we might more properly and readily be able to live our lives, better than others? I think so. It is better to protect your children than not to be able to do so. Do we protect them by creating a safer, saner, kinder world rather than building a stronger wall or arming them with better weapons? I think so. 

If the case is that it is true that we make this world as it is, or at least greatly influence its development, I am with that bumpersticker with the Dalia Lama's quote: "My religion is kindness."

REALITY

Certain old bumperstickers still appeal to me, rattling out of my mind now and then. Truth is probably best spoken in a bumpersticker phrase. Two favorites: Are We Having Fun Yet? and Don't Believe Everything You Think. I might alter the second one to Don't Believe Everything You Know. More ironic. Which of course reminds me of my own particular aphorism: Too much irony makes one overwrought. But even the notion of "my own particular" anything is suspect to me these days. I have many experiences from life that I recall as "memories," and I do believe them and know that they occurred in some version of "reality." I even have such memories of events and moments of things that happened to "me" in previous incarnations. Rarely do I reprise these; most if not almost all people cannot relate even if they do believe. I myself can barely relate though it is as real as the moment at which a childhood scar was made upon one's body. I have a few of those which proves that they must have actually occurred, assuming that I am the same person who occupied my body when I was a child. I even have a school photo of myself from second grade right next to my desk at which I am writing write now, which must prove that "I" existed back in 1954. And it has "Joe" scrawled on the back in pencil, unless someone forged it and had convinced me that this was the child I was back then. And my right pinky is crooked from when I punched my college roommate in the mouth when he said that my girlfriend was a "slut," and we had to go to the ER to get stitches for him and a splint for me. He was actually right but she was beautiful and that's all that mattered, except for him saying what he said.
     The only kids I knew who were funny were either Jewish or gay. I went to Catholic grade school and high school and kids there were entertaining in their crudity but not with their irony or even their slapstick. I was raised among mostly Italians and Jews. In fact I was the only goyim at a Jewish summer camp for a few years, where the girls loved me and I loved them, and they guys made me laugh in all seriousness. My father's Jewish friends were inherently rabbinical midrashers and I held my own with them on various philosophical points even at the age of twelve. My father, who called me "Pope Joseph" whenever I attempted to engage him, didn't know what to think. 
     Over many years, perhaps 56 or so, I have quested, as it were, for the Truth, for Reality. I read many sources from many religions, philosophies, psychologies, theosophies, occultisms, and practiced numerous methods of prayer and meditation, particularly zazen rather regularly over forty years, including a stint in a Zen monastery as a Zen monk, as well as doing a lot of acid, peyote, and psilocybin once upon a goodly number of times. "Touching the sky" was almost as possible as touching my toes. But it was what life gave me that brought me to any sort of what is called "enlightenment," such being the realization that we are the product of our own imaginations, our own thoughts and feelings, which is to say also our own lack of reality. After sitting and observing myself, my thoughts, my navel, the world, I got a clue that it was all a phantasmagoria largely of my own making and that my own making was something greater and more prevalent than simply me, though I am not referring to either a Hellenistic Christian or a Gnostic Christian scenario in particular. 
     Some refer to Reality as "what is." But, if that's so then tell me what is. The question may be, What am I in relationship to What Is? Am I What Is? Which is much the same as saying that I am God. And if one can't see the reality of such a notion, one cannot say that one is "not God." I don't worry or think much about such things these days. I read well-written, often "deep," just as often funny novels. There is hardly anything left of scriptural, spiritual, psychological sources that I have not examined. I now look, seeing but not knowing what I see. It is similar to telling but not knowing what you tell. Something happens and it is simply not known. It cannot be defined, in my estimation. It is not to be understood. Reality remains unreal and vice-versa, especially on the physical level, which only seems to be the way it is.

MAPLE FALLS

He had been walking back in Nisene Marks Forest for eleven years but only today finally hiked the trail to Maple Falls. It had always seemed too far and unreachable before. He had tried once by following the creek itself which meandered endlessly with steep cliffs on both sides, the trail high up on the left. But then he had recently run across an old acquaintance on the path leading towards Maple Falls. Alan had been his client thirty-five years ago when he was a financial consultant. He knew that he had known Alan in some capacity but couldn't quite remember until Alan dreamed of how they had known each other. As he walked in the far forest, he saw an old man like himself ahead of him on the path; he was holding on to a branch to support himself and seemed to be out of breath or in pain or both. As he passed the old man, he asked, "How we doin?" The man instantly started telling jokes, and said, "You walk on ahead." He hadn't recognized the man as yet but felt concerned about him as he seemed to strain for breath. The man again said,
"You walk on. I'm ok. I just have to stop every so often. You go ahead." He reluctantly did move on ahead, but after a few steps, the man yelled to him another joke, and then another joke. He realized that he should and actually wanted to walk with the man, however briefly. After a few minutes of banter, they reached the bench at the Porter House location and sat down. He then realized that he knew this guy from a long time ago. When he said his name, he recognized the name. Alan told him that he had been a chiropractor and homeopath for forty-four years and still was. He told Alan of his own chronic agonizing pain in his back and neck and Alan told him that he could help with that. Just being in that moment with his old friend seemed to have substantially reduced his own level of pain. They parted.

He realized that Alan was heading up that very steep hill that led to Maple Falls, and thought, "If Alan has the guts to do that, I do too." It was Alan that inspired him to do it. The next week he attempted the long hike but found himself too exhausted before he got there and had to turn around and come back. But today, knowing and feeling comfortable with most of the path, he had made it. It had been most difficult for him particularly because his knees are weak and stiff, and the path went up and down steep, slippery cliffs and over ten-foot round redwoods.

Upon arriving he was warmly greeted by a young woman who was twenty-two and a recent graduate of the University of Florida. They sat on a log and talked about many things. She reminded him of his daughter, though he was old enough to be her great-grandfather. There was a resonance, an easyness in their communication. That he could interact with her, this young woman, in such a connected way gave him much joy and also much pleasure that people like this still exist in the world and have a whole life ahead of them. He felt happy for her and glad that she was in the world. But he also found himself almost embarrassed about what he said, what he talked about, and that he may not have said things as he wanted to say them. He was well able to "engage" and "converse," but he was also aware that he had "run out of words," which is to say run out of any creative thought within the last year or so, in spite of his ability to blither and blather. His whole purpose in life was to somehow get at what it is and also to convey to others that he was interested in them, their thoughts, their feelings, their lives. In fact to him a few other with whom he "resonated," were more interesting to him than himself. After all, he had lived with himself for a long time. And there were things that he hadn't said that would reveal an entrance to them into his own being. He had discovered that what was most important was to be able to share in being, in life, on a level most people were unwilling to go for fear of the unknown, of their own unknown, and of the pain this brings. It is always the cracking of the shell. People "show interest," which is not the same as "being interested." To share the beingness that is common to us, yet absolutely individual and unique to each of us, was and is his purpose, his nature.

And after she left, he stripped down not completely and walked under the icy waterfall for perhaps two minutes, letting out a gasp and a sound from the center. He wondered why he hadn't invited her to go under the falls and had said that he was "too old" for it. In retrospect it would have been too forward, too intimate, though it would have been great fun. As he was standing under the falls, three more people arrived: two young women and a young man. Seeing his example, even as another person had inspired him to finally do it, they got under the falls for the most part; more for the selfie than the exhilarating experience it seemed to him. He asked the guy where he had come from to be there: "Israel," he said. And then as he (the narrator) sat on the ground, having put on his socks and shoes, he realized he didn't have the strength to get up. Having been asked by the Israelis to take some photos of them and having done so, he asked the young man if he would be willing to help him up, which he did, which proved somewhat difficult since he was 225 lbs. and the man helping him probably weighed in at maybe 110. 

He is aware that, on one hand, he avoids "social convention" since it is so superficial, and is thus drawn to his practice of walking solitary in the forest, especially to his high redwood "perch" in a remote area where he sit and writes in his journal, surrounded in stillness and silence except for the breeze that moves the trees. But on the other hand, he greets other people heartfully that he sees on the trail, who approach and pass not even a foot away. He talks with people inimately as best he can when the opportunity arises. Such intimach is not in the topic or the words themselves but in how they are spoken and from where they arise within him. Sometimes this is matched, sometimes not. But one's greatest enjoyment in life is to be who one is and to share oneself and receive others.