December 2007 - Break on Through . . .

December 3, 2007

5:30 am. I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver, and then Tom Robbins books in the mornings and evenings, and together with a return to saying my mantra and occasional meditation (tho not a firm habit again yet), its all helping me get my priorities back in order and my perspective back straight.

I just finished Skinny Legs and All [by Tom Robbins] and want to record the message of the seven veils, the illusions destroyed by each one, so that I can more easily keep them in mind. They are things I've known a long time; Heck! I first read the book in 1991 or 1992! But we forget. The illusions are so powerful; they creep back in without our realizing it. Another reason daily meditation is necessary – eternal vigilance against maya.

Veil One –
Life is a sexual dance. Sex requires male and female as equal partners. Even molecules bond. There is even molecular rejection. And as we know now, the female has more control than we ever gave her credit for (eggs choosing the sperm) and more than the male in many cases. It's hard not to read patriarchy as a massive attempt to compensate for insecurity about inadequacy. Any religion that doesn't acknowledge, openly, the female aspects of the Divine is a religion based on fear.

I am becoming even more of a feminist because I've about had enough of the double-talk, the hidden and commonly accepted sexism.

Veil Two – Humans do not have dominion over plants, animals and minerals. "Humanity was a function of nature. It could not, therefore, live separately from nature except in a self-defeating masquearade. It could not live in opposition to nature except in a schizophrenic crime. And it could not blind itself to the wonders of nature without mutating into something too monstrous to love" p.404.

Veil Three – This is one it is really hard to remember. "It is futile to work for political solutions to humanity's problems because humanity's problem's were not political" p.405. They are [the problems], of course, philosophical. Trying to solve philosophical problems politically means solving them over and over and over. I realized this a good year ago. Stopped reading the paper, stopped getting so excited about the news. But when I stopped doing my own spiritual work, I got caught up again, and began all over to try to solve the problems in a wrong-headed way.

Veil Four – Religion is the improper response to the Divine. Religion tries to pin down something forever in flux. "To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could get to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that" p.407. "The Divine is expansive, Religion reductive." "Since religion bore false witness to the Divine, religion was blasphemy" p.408.

Veil Five – Money is an illusion. 'Nuf said.

Veil Six – Time – past and future don't exist. All is present. Time isn't linear, etc. No "after" life, no after. No judgment day. All days are judgment days.

Veil Seven – Everyone has to figure it out for themselves. Apparently many times!!!! How I wish I could keep my insights fresh every day! Live them as easily as think them!

December 9

I'm reading Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, and in The Manticore David's analyst, a Jungian, says "The unconscious chooses its symbolism with breath-taking artistic virtuousity" p.179.

I was getting sleepy, so shortly after I read that, I closed the book and my eyes and I asked my unconscious to tell me something about myself in a richly symbolic dream. I asked specifically for a metaphor – I wanted a show of this artistic virtuousity. How it delivered! And in a 10-minute nap!

[There follows a long description of a detailed and vibrant dream – full of symbols (about barbecuing, of all things) – which I realize is about a personal relationship]

What really, really pleases me is how receptive and friendly and downright accomodating my unconscious was! Can we build on this? I am certainly going to try. I don't know why I never thought of just asking myself for what I want!

December 16

Still reading Robertson Davies. What's Bred in the Bone right now. Tell's the story of Francis Cornish through the eyes of the Recording Angel and his personal Daimon. And in addition to some of the other things I've been thinking, and other things I now believe, it's shed new light on my own biography.

If we look at our lives as things planned, to a certain degree, by our larger Selves, to teach us particular things . . . or to put it less pedantically . . . If our souls, our Selves, have at least a moment of knowing the greater picture, the full spread and direction of our many lives between one life and another, and if they (we) can then choose, to a certain or full extent the circumstances of our next life, such that it will provide the opportunities to grow in the directions we most need `or will satisfy a hunger or thirst we most feel, or however it actually works – then very little of our lives in the early parts at least can be said to be due to chance.

We've chosen them for reasons. And might that extend through much of our life? Might not we have laid out a pattern that would unfold? And if so, how different would that really feel from having a personal daimon, or a guardian angel (two very different kinds of beings) guiding, interfering and making things happen?

In the book, the daimon talks about how he purposely provides Francis with some very unpleasant experiences, a generally unhappy childhood, an extended illness later (age 10-11) to allow him an escape from the small minds at school and give him time for reflection and creativity.

Why? The Recording Angel asks if he has no pity, if he/it isn't cruel, etc. The daimon replies that those are human attributions, that what he's creating is something special, and that greatness isn't born from happy childhoods, free of reflection, etc. Humans do not come to know themselves or to know charity, art, compassion, truth, or wisdom from easy lives.

Something in me felt a joyous leap of recognition and freedom as I read these words. What a wonderful way to approach the past. I am not a victim. The troubles I had as a child – the molestation, etc., were things I was giving myself – gifts, to help me become more fully human. Hell, I even gave myself a sickness of long duration so that I could write a novel at 12! Forget the petty, drivelling, conventional morality that for so long made me feel guilty about that! About lying to my parents and doctors about being sick and celebrate the guts of a child who dared to grab what she needed from a world that was too routinized and institutionalized to give it to her!

And the same applies to R [the abusive boyfriend] and the drug use and the selling of sex and all the other experiences I've had – probably – well of course not probably!!! Dummy! The shingles and the PHN! All the pain and every other single thing.

The pattern isn't clear at all to me right now. I think that it's related to myth. I haven't a clue what kind of a myth I am. But it's about time to start finding out. I know this is big, because I had been allowing myself to start feeling like a victim again. I've been struggling so hard and feeling so embattled and dragged down.

I refuse! I reject it! I refute it! I am the Self of my own life! Nothing happens but by my own will – conscious or un. If there is pain and unpleasantness, I must need to feel it for some good reason. But I'm not going to blame it on fate, or God, or anyone else. And I'm not going to wallow in self pity, either. Look what beauty all the childhood pain brought into my life! What in the world is there to be pitied about?! Would I rather be one of those self-righteous, self-ignorant morons walking around? Brahman forbid! I'll take the pain and mess any day.

I don't imagine I'll be able to let go of the complaining and sniping immediately, but I'm sure going to try, because I am heartily sick of being unhappy. Goodbye to the stinky pity-pot.

December 19

Gave my last finals yesterday.

I've been thinking a lot about my own spiritual/psychological life. What is the next step? It is to find my myth, the myth that is living me; the mythic, or allegoric, or metaphoric pattern that shapes/informs my life. How does one go about doing that? There are so many myths, so many mythic traditions. Why should I believe a Swiss psychiatrist identified all the relevant ones? Still, I do think that Jung is a frutiful place to begin, but I'm not looking to adopt his whole system. I don't want any one else's system. I think I have finally truly understood what it means that these ultimate answers must be worked out individually by each of us.

Wish that I had more time to devote to these things during the semester. It isn't just Jung; I need an education in allegory and the allegorical symbols used in art, especially in the middle ages and Rennaissance. I want SO much to be able to read those paintings, to understand them for the stories they told to the people of the time. I wonder if I could sit in on a few art history classes? The problem is, the professors here probably don't even know how to read the allegories unless it is their own little niche of expertise. They teach history and technique and composition and color and light and other important things I am not focused on right now.

See, if I could learn to think allegorically, even kind of medievally, I might be able to see a pattern in my life that would be meaningful to me. Like Cornish, my mind is not necessarily the most comfortable in the idiom of today. Maybe none of our minds are. And maybe, by stumbling around in the religion of our history, I can find something that works on multiple levels.

Be careful how you interpret that.

1. By "religion" I do not mean anything organized, but more the patterns – maybe the psychological or spiritual or (isn't there a better word?) _________ patterns that underlie the European search for meaning which has expressed itself in the mythologies of many cultures, along with their superstitions and folk tales, their local saints (who are often just their indigenous religious figures dressed up in Christian clothes), the ways in which they interpreted Greek and Roman myths in their art in later periods, their astrology and cosmology, etc.
   
2. The pattern I'm searching for is above all the one for my own life. It is ultimately only my own life I am in charge of, responsible for, and have any hope of being able to understand.
   
3. Having said that, if I found a useful methodology – well, I am a social scientist trying very hard to understand human development, especially the development of identity. If I found something that worked for me personally, I'd want to see how far it could be stretched professionally, or at least communally. Write a book, maybe.
   

So for now it seems my routes are to learn the languages of symbolism and allegory and to become familiar with the myths. That is so that I can take the next step, which is to begin thinking about my own life in those terms.

For example, if my life were a fairy tale, who would the characters be? Or if it were an allegorical painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style, who would be in it and how would I represent them? Would it have a biblical theme, given my childhood? Or a pagan/classical theme given my later sensibilities? A King Arthur/Grail Quest theme given a long-standing obsession? Who would be the heroes and who the monsters? Who the hidden beauties? The betrayers/false-faces? These are the kinds of questions I want to be asking myself, and thinking about, and struggling (?) with.

Struggle. Do I even like that word any more? Why do I need to struggle? I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, when I'm supposed to be doing it, and I'm excited about it and looking forward. What does "struggle" have to do with anything?

Here's a quote out of context. Its about a real horoscope, which would be fun to have done, by someone who knows what they are doing and speaks this ancient language of symbols: "Your Saturn has the same relationship to your Moon that Mars has to your Sun, but it's a giver of spiritual power, and takes you deep into the underworld, the dream world, what Goethe called the realm of the Mothers. There's a fad now for calling them the Archetypes, because it sounds so learned and scientific. But Mothers is truer to what they really are. The Mothers are the creators, the matrixes of all human experience" p.308, Davies, What's Bred in the Bone.

That's essentially what I want to do. I want to journey to the Mothers, and humbly ask them if they will let me know anything. I am sick nigh unto death of the fathers.

Now I'm reading my old book on myth by Leonard Biallas. What a wise person! Many of the things I highlighted at age 20 or 21 I still find important today. He really seems to understand this process I'm going through – have been going through for at least 2 decades now, of trying to discover who I am. To discard what is "not essential to me," but to embrace both the light and the dark that are truly parts of myself. I don't want a religion that is aimed only at making people good. I want one that aims at making people whole. Making them "real" "honest" with themselves and with others. I guess I'm looking for the word 'authentic.' As in Hinduism – a dialogism, a dialectics that transcends dualities.

April 22 - 24

April 22

Third Teaching – Discipline of Action

Arjuna begins by begging for clarification, if understanding is better than action, why is Krishna telling him to fight?

Krishna explains that no one can live and not perform actions. It is nature, the quality of life itself. He mentions – source for Easwaran – how in meditation one's senses still supply information, and if you utterly withdraw, like in a sensory deprivation chamber, your mind will recreate sense objects. Through disciplined practice, one can control the senses, and not allow them to control you.

We have to act, so we should make every action a sacrifice to God. Only then can we be free from attachment. Perform actions with detachment. But that doesn't mean sloppy work, because each action should be good enough to offer as sacrifice. Krishna reminds Arjuna that there is nothing to be attained, yet Krishna himself keeps acting. If he did not "these worlds would collapse."

No wise man disturbs the understanding

Of ignorant men attached to action;

He should inspire them

Performing all acts with diligence.

Does this mean it is better for people to act, attached to action, than it is not to act at all? It does keep the world turning, ar a least all shook up. So the ignorant soldier who kills for glory is more useful to the universe than a secluded, solitary monk who tries very hard not to hurt anything? Wow.

The next stanza seems really important, but difficult for me to unravel. First we have to remember that the Sanskrit word "guna" means "qualities of nature," which are lucidity, passion, and dark inertia.

Actions are all effected

By the qualities of nature;

But deluded by individuality,

The self thinks "I am the actor."

When he can discriminate

The actions of nature's qualities

And think "the qualities depend

On other qualities," he is detached.

At first I read it as "affected," not "effected." So I didn't see that he is saying all actions, the things we do, are really done by guna, by nature. Following the rest of the passage, I believe he's saying that our senses and our desires which cause us to be attached are separate from our deep selves – Self. Maybe?

Since we are in bodies, we are all affected by nature, "creatures all conform to nature; what can one do to restrain them? (33)" Kind of like what I've said before, that our "sin" is our bodies, the desires that rise out of our bodies, like hunger/gluttony, softness/sloth, etc. and come out of our evolutionary history.

Attraction and hatred are poised

In the object of every sense experience;

A man must not fall prey

To these two brigands lurking on his path.

Everything that provides a sensory experience – every smell, feel, sound, taste, and sight invites or compels us to have preferences. To say "I like that" or "Yuck! Get it away!" These preferences get in the way of seeing things as they are. And they bind us further to our egos. I like, I hate, etc. We keep making self stronger, the illusion of self, each time we say something or think it, about sense objects.

The goal isn't to close oneself off from senses, but to appreciate all objects equally. A "bad smell" isn't bad in itself. I have to make that judgment and if I do, I'm not really appreciating the meaning or existence of the smell in itself, which is after all just another part of my Self (as brahman). Arjuna asks why we act against our wills, and Krishna verifies the above interpretation by saying desire and anger arise out of guna:

Know it here as the enemy;

Voracious and very evil!

As fire is obscured by smoke,

And a mirror by dirt,

As an embryo is veiled by its caul,

So is knowledge obscured by this.

And he goes on in detail about how desire, arisen from nature (our bodies?) makes it impossible to see the Truth. He exhorts Arjuna to "know the self beyond understanding, sustain the self with the self, and . . . kill the enemy menacing you in the form of desire."

Okay. Well. Where to start? So many places. But aren't we back to the lesson to not label things good or evil? To allow things (and people) to be what they are without making a division, not sorting into like and dislike?

I can start with the sound of the highway, which often really annoys me. The pain I'm already working on. People? That is really hard. To be able to NOT label Karl Rove, to feel neither pain nor pleasure at his name . . . that is going to take some big time practice.

April 23

Knowing I didn't fully explore all of the meaning or application of the 3^rd teaching, I'm still moving on.

Fourth Teaching

Arjuna hasn't understood yet who Krishna is, as he questions how Krishna could have taught the ancient discipline to the sun. So Krishna begins to tell him, and here is where it says he will come in every dark age. Oh! I just had a thought! We tend to speak of Buddha, Confucious, or at least Lao Tzu, Krishna and Jesus as possibly being divine incarnations that come at different dark moments to light the way – but in fact, all of them came at the same time – about 500 BCE, give or take 50 years (and maybe we should throw in Aristotle?). Except Jesus, who is off by half a millenium. So perhaps God comes all over the world when he comes? And other peoples have their own versions, their traditons that we never hear of. Like recently I read about the !Kung healers, some of them old and very wise and compassionate, the same quality of person as the mystics of better known traditions, who have stories about their own ancient sages.

Ok, so God reveals itself to us in many diverse ways, but it really suggests that 500 BCE was either a very dark time in the cosmos, or a really EXCITING time in human cultures!

Though myself unborn, undying,

The lord of creatures, I fashion nature,

Which is mine, and I come into being

Through my own play [lila]

Whenever sacred duty decays

And chaos prevails,

Then I create

Myself, Arjuna

To protect men of virtue

And desroy men who do evil,

To set the standard of sacred duty,

I appear in age after age.

Aren't things terrible enough yet? Perhaps everyone feels their own age is the darkest, but I think I could make a darn good case for ours. Though there were things like the awful 14^th century in Europe of course, with the Black Death and the Inquisition, the Crusades. The 20^th century was pretty terrible, with both World Wars and the carnage in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America following colonization and neo-colonialism, and then our involvement. Okay. It's been bad a long, long time. So when is 'bad' bad enough? I guess we'll see.

In the meantime, we do have the words of the previous incarnations. Krishna promises that whoever knows him will escape rebirth when he abandons the body.

Free from attraction, fear and anger,

Filled with me, dependent on me,

Purified by the fire of my knowledge,

Many come into my presence.

I like the "many." It isn't as hard as some people indicate – like the Buddha. But it isn't just a blanket promise to any who mouth a few words.

As they seek refuge in me,

I devote myself to them,

Arjuna, men retrace

My path in every way.

Doesn't it seem right there that Krishna is pointing out that he himself was just a human, who through discipline and knowledge and devotion came to know who He really is (who we all are) and realized His godliness? To me this feels like the best of both worlds, of both Christianity and its brother religions, and Buddhism.

Yes, one gets to the path and moves along it thru one-pointed discipline, to be a sort of god. And yes, a divine being loves you, is waiting for you, will help and comfort you. Both are true. If I take refuge in Krishna, devote myself to him, remain loyal to him, he says right here he will "devote himself" to me.

I feel as if my mantra is helping me learn to take refuge in this way, though I haven't been using it as much as I was. Will pick that back up again today, on this whole idea of taking refuge. That is exactly what I feel I need.

April 24

I did feel closer to God yesterday, was seeing Krishna more as a personal deity, not savior exactly, but one who cares and will help. I may be weak, unable to stand on my own, but I have a lifetime of training, of wanting to turn my self toward a God, to turn over my burdens, give thanks, seek comfort, give service. I don't believe it's wrong . . . god understands how we humans need personal figures to whom we can relate – and has provided them. I kind of see Krishna and Jesus superimposed on one another, morphing into one another.