Naming Ceremony

In my life, persons I loved my age died too young. It was for this reason that I completed a Masters Degree with a specialization in rites of passage. In my family for 7 generations on both sides, when addiction and co-dependency take root, it is during adolescence. Here are the links to 2 publications on depth psychology I wrote with Jane Piirto. A rite of passage in the West since 1900 and the discovery of the unconscious must include a working knowledge of depth psychology. I used and taught the naming ceremony in the second paper for 25 years as a secondary school French teacher, later, department chair of world languages.

Depth Psychology and Giftedness: Bringing soul to the field of talent development and giftedness, Reynolds and Piirto

Read by clicking this link

While the field of gifted education has relied on educational, cognitive, counseling, behavioral, developmental, and social psychology, the domain of depth psychology offers special insights into giftedness, especially with regard to individuation. The notion of passion, or the thorn (J. S. Piirto, 1999, 2002), the incurable mad spot (F. C. Reynolds 1997, 2001), the acorn (J. Hillman, 1996, 1999), the daimon (C. G. Jung, 1965); the importance of integration through the arts and through dreams; the existence of the collective unconscious; the presence of archetypes; and the transcendent psyche—all have resonance with the binary etymological idea of “gift” as both blessing and poison. Depth psychology offers a way of understanding that is physical, psychological, and spiritual.

Honoring and Suffering the Thorn: Marking, Naming, and Eldering, Depth Psychology II

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This is the second article advocating and explicating a depth psychological approach to the education of the talented. In this analysis we take the “thorn” on the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development and relate it to the processes of marking, naming, and eldering/mentoring as teachers practice them. The article presents 20 ways that the imaginal, symbolic aspects of life can be acknowledged and brought forth in students, thus invoking the educare within education.

Here are 3 of my published works that are at the heart of my writing. REMEMBRANCE, A GATHERING OF ORPHANS, and PHALLOS, call for us to remember that walking out of life in the Wasteland requires us to help at least one other who suffers the same hell, to walk out together.

 REMEMBRANCE OF THE 1914 CHRISTMAS TRUCE: It’s Our Turn Now

The three key messages in Remembrance of the 1914 Christmas Truce: It's Our Turn Now are psychologically true when your depth psychology goes deep enough to merge with quantum complexity theory. All at once, they are:

1. The sacred is always vulnerable, generous, and merciful.

2. Heaven is always in our midst; all life is woven with Eternity.

3. The entire Earth and cosmos are sacred and nourish a sacred humanity.

The perinatal layer of the unconscious and its 4 matrices are an anchor, doorway, bridge, metaphoric place of merging within us that when we are awake feels like a vessel inside of us. This inner sphere is expressed by the alembic in the alchemical texts, pictures, and music. It works well historically when we allow this inner sphere of the Great Work to be imagined as glass that you can see into and through.

Our inner sphere is literally anchored by our own personal center of gravity -- a moving stillpoint of balance that moves with us and this stillpoint of all matters is mirrored by the cosmos around us and the solar system in which we live.

It's possible and helpful to include this inner knowing as our intellects develop. The intellect and insights of the alchemist are the partners to the inner sphere/alembic we carry inside us as human beings. At night when we sleep and dream, the inner alembic has us and we are inside the performance and/operation as a dream-ego who plays our part. In the day, we have the perinatal sphere within and in the night when we dream, we are within that same vessel now inside out.

The 2021 film, Infinite, is meant for entertainment, but it is another film like Interstellar, Arrival, Cloud Atlas, that integrates COEX constellations/systems into the lives of the characters. The Mark Wahlberg character starts slipping into past lives when the emotional and physical similarities trigger his slides.

It is due to the psychological facts of COEX constellations/systems that it is possible to say that the sacred is always vulnerable, generous, and merciful. You don't have to believe it. You can learn about COEX constellations/systems, gain insights about yourselves, others, and the planet, and then deepen your own devotion to your own Great Work of bringing forth the full character of who you are here to become. Here's Grof in Psychology of the Future:

A COEX system or COEX constellation consists of emotionally charged memories from different periods of our life that resemble each other in the quality of emotion or physical sensation that they share. Each COEX has a basic theme that permeates all its layers and represents their common denominator. The individual layers, then contain variations on this basic theme that occurred at different periods of a person’s life. The unconscious of a particular individual can contain several COEX constellations. Their number and the nature of the central themes varies considerably from one person to another…in addition to negative constellations, there are also those that comprise memories of very pleasant or ecstatic moments and situations.

In my present understanding, each of the COEX constellations seems to be superimposed over and anchored in a particular aspect of the trauma of birth. The experience of biological birth is so complex and rich in emotions and physical sensations that it contains in a prototypical form the elementary themes of most conceivable COEX systems. However, a typical COEX system reaches even further and its deepest roots consist of various forms of transpersonal phenomena, such as past-life experiences. Jungian archetypes, conscious identification with various animals and others.

The COEX systems play an important role in our psychological life. They can influence the way we perceive ourselves, other people, and the world and how we feel and act. They are the dynamic forces behind our emotional and psychosomatic symptoms, difficulties in relationships, and irrational behaviors.

(pp.23-24)

The corollary to the sacred is always vulnerable, generous, and merciful is that it's helpful to use the moral compass that the Ojibway call The Grandfather Teachings. They say that we are all innately woven with Love, Truth, Honesty, Courage, Humility, Respect and Wisdom. However, in our lives, we are better at some virtues than at others, so, our moral compass requires us to balance all 7 Virtues and live them at once in harmony. The Virtue you leave out will bite you in the ass. For myself, I tend to be good at Love, Courage, Truth, and Honesty. I tend to be lacking in Humility, Respect, and Wisdom. Enjoying the vulnerable, generous, and merciful sacred that is within and all around us includes stewardship of my fault-line as I grow, learn, and evolve, as I participate with others.

2. Heaven is always in our midst; all life is woven with Eternity.

The unconscious was proven to exist using the word association test. One hundred word/prompts were presented to the subject and the responses were noted. In the beginning, the flow of prompt and response was a smooth back and forth. As you got further down the word-list, the unexpected began to happen. The response-times would be longer, quite long in some cases. The response-words became illogical. Sometimes they would rhyme with the prompt. Other times, the response-words displayed an uncanny connection with the person conducting the test. Sometimes, there would just be silence and no response was possible.

They discovered that there were galvanic skin responses, which means that the sweat glands in the fingers and palms would be affected and the skin would become a better conductor of electricity at times of unexpected excitement and intensity. The heart-beat and breathing would change.

They discovered that although our conscious will-power may want to do something, sometimes there are unconscious intrusions that are golden material as regards becoming conscious of the unconscious. The 'right' answers were not as interesting as the "wrong" ones. Taken together, the long responses, the rhymes (klang responses), the illogical responses, the non-responses revealed other sub-personalities (complexes) who are members of our psychological whole. At the center of these sub-personalities there was found to be a small spark of consciousness that Jung called, "luminosities." When we dream, we interact with that wider community that is who we are. We become another luminosity among the luminosities and we are all performed in the dream theater underworld.

As they moved more deeply, the archetypes were found to be the foundational ground of the depths of our psychological beings. Later, Grof found that the sphere of the self, expressed as a mandala in dreams, was the perinatal (concerned with birth) layer of our unconscious and this anchor, bridge, window, threshold, doorway, portal, transparent ground, inner vessel connected us to all times and places. In the depths, our psychological center is inside and outside us at the same time.

We are always in relationship to Eternity through our own minds, emotions, actions, memories, skin, breathing, symptoms, and spiritual awe. Arrow #2 then, "2. Heaven is always in our midst; all life is woven with Eternity," is experienced directly by the whole of us and is a common human experience.

No one's, faith, political ideology, planet, solar system, galaxy owns or controls our choice of whether we choose to seek a greater wholeness via love and sacred experiences = Wisdom.

Experiences of arrow #2 are "holotropic experiences." Holotropic is a term coined by Stan Grof in 1992 to distinguish sacred experiences from trivial deliria/organic psychoses. The term, “holotropic.” comes from the Greek "holos" meaning "whole" and "trepein" meaning, "moving toward or in the direction of wholeness."

Depth psychology merged with Indigenous wisdom expressed in this trailer are expansive enough to affirm the interwoven 4-dimenisnal wholeness of spacetime and Eternity.

3. The entire Earth and cosmos are sacred and nourish a sacred humanity.

A scientific materialist can scoff at the degradation of all life expressed by the doctrine of Original Sin, however, even as doctrine is set aside, the attitude of profound worthlessness of the human species is carried over and driven deeper into disenchantment:

Disenchantment encases us in the iron cage of bureaucracy, turns us each into a cog in an ever-moving mechanism and leads us towards a polar night of icy darkness and hardness. We need to bear the fate of the times like a man.

-- Max Weber

There are currently many persons who have changed "their own energetic pattern to one that is incompatible with their issues." If you are reading this, you are not far from such a circle right where you live. If you have made the journey to know again the sacredness of the Earth, of the cosmos, of humanity and all life, feel free to connect this thread to your stories. It's proper that such a story is known as a "lead" in the Rooms of Recovery. No matter your gender, you don't have to "bear the fate of the times like a man," meaning to grimly power on like an impenetrable cannonball numb to your life.

In English, there is an added benefit that the word spelled "lead" has a triple meaning and a double pronunciation:

the 82nd element on the periodic table,

a "lead" that is your story of your ongoing journey from degradation to wholeness shared with others who are themselves on their own journeys,

lead the element in alchemical discipline from which your inner gold of direct knowledge of the sacred is made.

If I only have one shot to land an idea in your mind, it's to allow space for synchronicity where inner and outer coincide, where your future self seems to send you information that opens your own iron cage.

Synchronicity will enable you to appreciate the Mystery in the lives of others, even in the lives of those who oppose you. If you use synchronicity to examine your moments of awe, you will find deeper poetry that brings your stars closer to you.

We all have friends out in No Man's Land that we haven't met yet.

Kindle edition

This story begins by remembering that the true meaning of Christmas has always been the unexpected birth of New Life in a most degraded, forgotten, even despised place. There was a time when that location was imagined as a stable in Bethlehem. In our traditional telling, the savior was born into a forsaken shelter surrounded by animals. In the early 20th century, that unexpected location was No Man’s Land — the devastated landscape between the enemy trenches. The word, nonesmanneslond, first appeared in English in 1320 when it described a disputed territory beyond the rule of the church and the king.

Inspired by seeing the 2005 film, Joyeux Noel, I traveled to Ypres, Belgium, on a peace pilgrimage in 2014. Joyeux Noel is a film I showed to my students before winter break the last eight Decembers of my career as a high school French teacher. The narrative followed the lives of French, Scottish, and German soldiers who decided to put down their weapons and come out of the trenches to meet each other in peace. The night of December 24, 1914, there was a spontaneous pause in the slaughter.

First, the enemies sang songs to each other from their trenches. Slowly, they came to meet in No Man’s Land, where fraternizing through music led to mutual understanding and compassion. In some sectors along the front, the Truce extended into Christmas Day and beyond, with the soldiers coming together to bury their dead, to pray, even to play soccer. Some exchanged addresses in order to meet again after the war. Director, Christian Carion in Joyeux Noel described the heart of why I became not just a French teacher, but a teacher in the first place.

I envisaged a peace pilgrimage to No Man’s Land as a way to help bring more peace and understanding between cultures into the world. With the centennial of the cease-fire approaching, it seemed appropriate for me to go to the Western Front to a location where the original soldiers had gathered.

In my research, I learned that one place where the original soldiers had gathered was along the road between Ypres and Messines, Belgium. This area is remembered today in poetry as Flanders Fields, symbolized by the red poppy.

My intention was to emulate the courage of all who risked their lives for peace in order to build on it in our times. I feel strongly that now it’s our turn.

The road, N336 that gives way to N365 runs for 11 kilometers between Ypres and Messines. I decided that I would walk and pray on N336/N365 from December 24, Christmas Eve, to the dawning of Christmas Day - the length of that highway from Ypres to Messines and back. I also decided to perform a ritual for Peace on Earth at the Island of Ireland Park in Messines. The Island of Ireland Peace Park is a memorial where Catholic and Protestant Irishmen put aside their differences during the war. Even more important to me personally, that area of land is rumored to be a location where they celebrated the Truce.

I reflected for a long time on how to create my honorary vigil because the pilgrimage was so imbued with deep purpose. How should one best proceed, given this once-in-a-lifetime chance? Something that had always stuck in my memory was how, when the Great War broke out in August, 1914, huge masses of people came into the streets. Why would entire populations rejoice?

There is a poignant painting in Gare de l’Est in Paris by the American artist, Albert Herter (1871-1950), who lost his only son, Everitt, to the war in June, 1918. It’s called, Le depart des poilus, aout, 1914. (Departure of the Infantrymen, August, 1914)

Herter channeled his grief into this painting. His son is at the center with his arms held up in a “Y” shape. He is holding a gun with flowers in it, which was a common sight in the pre-war fervor that August. Women would come put flowers in the soldiers’ guns. La fleur au fusil (The flower in the gun) represented the ease in which everyone believed the war would pass and also the courage to volunteer.

While he features his Everitt swept up in the enthusiasm, the heart-broken painter appears at the right lowering flowers and holding his hand on his heart, as if at a grave.

On the other side is his wife who lovingly cherishes a child held by a soldier.

August, 1914, is well-covered ground so far as the causes for the war are concerned. The common three culprits are the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, nationalism, and militarism/alliances. To me, those three reasons have always seemed necessary but not sufficient. A deeper unseen power seemed necessary to explain why entire nations were possessed by such a destructive spirit bent on death. I unexpectedly found a satisfying insight in an ancient Anishinabe story about how First Man faced the being that killed his father.

In the story, the creature that killed First Man’s dad was the enemy of all life. That shadow-faced creature lived on a muddy, desolate island out on Lake Superior. The island of the enemy of all life was lifeless and barren save a few dead trees. The unprecedented industrialized killing of La Grande Guerre also created a desolate ground, bristling with ruined trees. The landscapes were noticeably similar— muddy, lifeless, no man’s lands.

I began to consider the idea that where we find the desolation of the Earth, there too dwells that-which-consumes-all-life. The mythic lens gave me a way to imagine the invisible hunger at work urging the 1914 rush to war. Getting back to the tale, Woodpecker helped First Man by telling him that the enemy of life had its heart hidden on top of its head inside a shock of hair.

Using that information, First Man dispatched the terrible creature by firing three arrows into its heart-in-the-wrong-place. The story’s symbolism suggested that the enemy of life has its heart above its head. When our ideas have no heart in them, we become enemies of life and bring desolation to the Earth.

I wondered: Which heartless ideas, more precisely, which intentions, unseen in the air, encouraged the collective rush to war in 1914? Were any of those ideas still contaminating the air now? Was it possible that I was still unknowingly feeding those intentions? If so, could I tease out three of them by removing them from myself, therefore, helping to remove them from the atmosphere around me?

I sensed that by entering into the journey down the Messines Road, I would get discernment about the life-eating thoughts at which I could take aim. I trusted that I would be able to create my own “arrows” along the way. My greatest longing was to sing, with all my strength, an atmosphere of peace into the world that would build on the Truce.

Since 1928, every single evening, there has been a ceremony called, “The Last Post” at 8pm, at the Menin Gate in Ypres. The Gate is a memorial to 58,000 dead who have never been found. To this day, bones are still unearthed in Flanders Fields around Ypres. On the night of December 24, 2014, about two hundred people gathered, and a young Scot, wearing his ancestor’s medals and a kilt, played the pipes in honor of his great-grandfather. At the end of The Last Post, the facilitator said:

And let us remember that one hundred years ago, on this night, the Christmas Truce was celebrated in places along the Western Front, including some areas not far from here.

Hearing that, I began my pilgrimage.

I set out from that moment and walked from the Menin Gate south to the Messines Gate that opens onto N365 to Messines. I walked through that gate and moved into the clear, calm night. In the dark sky above me, the winter constellation, Orion the Hunter with his companion, Sirius, the Dog Star, shone brightly before me. The unexpected synchronicity was striking. In many cultures over the centuries, this pattern of stars has always been associated with restoration to new wholeness.

According the many teachings, what was once degraded, lost, and broken can be renewed. Whether it is the Chief’s Hand of the Lakota, the Fire Drill of the Aztecs, the Ojibway loving giant, Nanabush, or the Egyptians’ Body of Osiris, among others, the theme of healing a broken world through a collective new beginning recurs. It’s fascinating that the Hubble Telescope discovered that in this same region of the night sky, below Orion’s three-star belt, is a stellar nursery. It’s as if our ancestors intuited a location where the future was unexpectedly being born.

The correspondence between the birth of stellar lights in the heavens and the sacred birth that Christians celebrate at Christmas felt like an additional affirmation. With such an auspicious start, I felt assured that my efforts this night would not be in vain. Walking now with the hum of synchronicity and under the revelation of those starry messengers, I next realized that the same cobalt blue tableau that the soldiers saw one hundred years ago was the one I was looking at too. It was as if time folded upon itself and we were all sharing in the same realization.

One hundred years ago, a miracle came forth from the place most unexpected — out in No Man’s Land, under the aegis of the portents of restoration.

Silent Night, Holy Night

all is calm, all is bright…

The song, “Silent Night,” was the trigger of peace all along the Front so long ago. As I walked on December 24, 2014, I saw how the hope expressed in the song was like a prayer that had been answered. It shown forth in the healed fields and restored nature around me. It had all come true. I stood in the radiant stillness of the night sky resonating with the words of that peacemakers’ song. It seemed so evident.

For 4.6 billion years now, Earth has been Our Mother, the source and teacher of life. Imagined as Grandmother, she has modeled all the cherished virtues of humanity: integrity, generosity, wisdom, love, creativity, authenticity, healing, harmony, truth…no single human faith or ideology has any claim, text, or ritual that entitles its followers to privilege. The virtues, like the Earth that spread before me, are possessed by no one — our entire planet belongs to all, not just human beings, all living beings — in that sense, I had an insight:

The starting point for peace on Earth returns again each year with the announcement that all Creation is no man’s land.

How could the soldiers not sing together that night?

The invitation to come together in No Man’s Land came most often from the German trenches:

Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht,

Alles Schlaft, einsam wacht….

The German words offer another layer of meaning:

Silent Night, Holy Night,

All is calm, alone and awake…

Of course, Silent Night was the first song I sang. Song followed song, prayer followed prayer, over the 11 kilometers to Messines. At times along the road, I felt waves of warm chills tingling all through my body. It felt like gratitude was coming from the landscape and sky around me. I understood the flow of warmth as the presence of the Holy. I would pause in those places and allow them to register. Often, there would be a gentle rushing of wind through the trees above me. At times, I wept for the beauty of it. After so much violence and misplaced passion, all that have ever lived before us, all of our Ancestors wish most for us to walk in a beautiful, peaceful world.

I walked through the village of Messines to the Island of Ireland Peace Park. During the Truce, the Protestant and Catholic Irishmen were joined by Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and atheist Germans.

On a small bench near the tower at the Peace Park, I sang my prayers. Singing under the peaceful starry heavens, I wondered if it is our songs that make the difference? There is a famous rabbi who said, “Good wins out in the end, but not by much.” Do the songs that unite us through compassion, even for our enemies, tip the balance?

Walking north back to Ypres after the ceremony at the Peace Park, the constellation, Cassiopeia, the queen of heaven, went before me. To my left was the constellation, Bootes, the shepherd.


Silent Night, Holy Night

Shepherds quake at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar…

In the Anishinabe story about the enemy of life, the shadow-faced creature was code for “face my shadow.” So, I faced those parts of my psychology that are un-owned, denied, repressed, unacknowledged. I realized that the target I was seeking was not just ideas that have hurt me through others, but ideas in which somehow I, too, have participated. Feeling even more in my heart and body, as the awareness of the pain in my feet increased, three destructive ideas stood out.

I can describe them using Herter’s painting. Recalling his son’s gesture with his arms in a Y-shape, I was reminded of some of the crucifixes found in road-side altars in Belgium. The arms of the Crucified Savior are in the same Y-Shape.

Wishing to harm no one, only to offer this information if it’s helpful, I came to focus on three self-destructive ideas that possessed me over the years. They came from Christianity. My family on both sides the past 900 years or so has been predominantly Christian, so I came by these ideas honestly. At times, I held the ideas righteously.

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son.

After living for centuries under its dogma, was Europe possessed by an unconscious Christianity? There are ideas within Christianity that encourage the devaluing of human life and life on Earth. I know this because I have struggled my whole life with them myself.

The first idea was that Christianity is a victorious religion. I’ve been inside this idea and am now sheepish to admit the certainty I felt when I believed my religion was superior to all others. It can be helpful to remember that Christianity began as a religion of love. Christian soldiers were a problem in the Roman army because they refused to carry weapons. The way of peace became a religion of war during the reign of Constantine.

The legend is that he was told in a dream that he would be victorious in battle by using a symbol called the Chi-Rho. The god of the emperors of Rome was Sol Invictus, in which the emperor was imagined as an undefeatable man who was also God. A similar adoption of Christianity happened in France with the first Christian King, Clovis. There can be an unconscious drive to absolute victory that we carry inside us due to our Christian history. I had it and it was very hard to release its importance to my self-image. In fact, it’s an idea that possessed me as much as I possessed it.

The second idea was that Earth and all life in our world are less valuable than an Eternal life after we die. Paul in Romans 8:18 wrote:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.

This is just one passage among many in the New Testament where the suggestion is that life on our planet is “less than.” If you scratch very carefully under the surface of seemingly heroic deeds, you may find a secret death-wish. This one has been a hard fact to admit about myself. For many years, I hid my secret death-wish inside my spiritual aspirations. What I am describing in myself is the desire to not be alive here — despair. I know that at certain points in my life, if war had broken out, I would have gone to seek an heroic death, all the while silent about my despair.

The third idea was the doctrine of Original Sin, as articulated by Augustine. With this idea, because of the Fall of Adam and Eve, the entire cosmos was corrupted and all humanity became a massa damnata (mass of perdition). How this lived in me was in the value I placed on myself. I can describe the difference between a universe of Original Sin and a universe that is immanently flowing with Divinity. There is a small asterisk that gets added to every expression in wisdom texts when you live in a universe of Original Sin:

*because you are worthless.

In a universe flowing with Divinity, this nuance does not appear. Over years in a lifetime, under the doctrine of Original Sin, the human worth-less-ness accrues. There is a small, but important difference between:

Be still and know that I am God — Psalm 46:10

— and —
Be still and know that I am God* — Psalm 46:10
*because you are worthless.

After I intuited the three destructive ideas from Christianity: that it is always victorious, that Eternity and later are better than here and now, and that the entire universe is corrupt because of the sin of human beings, I prepared the following vaccines. As the story suggested, I became First Man and I drew three “shots.”

1. The sacred is always vulnerable, generous, and merciful.

2. Heaven is always in our midst; all life is woven with Eternity.

3. The entire Earth and cosmos are sacred and nourish a sacred humanity.

I can attest that I think my song-arrows struck true. I felt the affirmation in my body. Walking back toward Ypres in the growing light of daybreak, I again felt the warm waves moving through me, soothing my heart. With each passing kilometer, I felt such an embodied appreciation for the precious gift of a human life on our planet. Again, I felt gratitude coming to me from everything around me, above, below, all around and within.

I felt an increase in my esteem for all humanity. I felt then and feel now that our lifetimes are each so valuable that even our worst moments support inner worth. Aren’t even our worst failures opportunities to learn to transform human life into beauty? My wish was and is that, through learning from the past, we may remove some of the violence from the world. May we offer healing to those who have died, to those now suffering and who are in despair. May we know again the true meaning of Christmas.

I walked the Messines Road a century after the Christmas Truce. My prayers were for us to gather once again in the holy silence. Could we as one people sing our hopes together to bring forth the beautiful world we wish for future generations? The longing for a Holy Night, a Silent Night, from an unexpected time and forgotten place came true once. If it happened once, it surely can come to pass once more. It’s our turn now.

How could we not sing together?

Human beings are all one people.

Magnificat

F. Christopher Reynolds

Blessed be your Presence

Beautiful body of the cosmos

And blessed all life that you bring forth.

From whence is this to me

That I would create with you

This new day’s worth?

As soon as I heard your Call,

The sacred life in me awakened.

In and through your Beauty shall

Flow the lifetimes of the generations.

You are the Beginner’s BodyMind.

The Body/Mind of the Source of all that is.

You are the sensual, immanent and beautiful,

You are the Presence who is faithfully with.

You are the embodied life

Who labors to birth the Never-been.

You are the Beloved ever-conceiving

The Never-will-be-again.

From whence is this to me

That I would receive with you

This midnight’s worth?

I am the sensual, intimate and beautiful,

Voice. I am faithfully with you

As soon as I felt your touch

The sacred life in me awakened.

In and through your love so much

Flows the lifelines of the Generations

I am the One-Who-Loves

And I am in love with the Never-been.

I am the Beloved ever-perceiving

The Never-will-be-again.

TURNING IN MY HOMEWORK

As I reflect on what I learned in 2024 sharing the Truce ritual space, what stands out because of this year’s Olympics in Paris is how entering into a No Man’s Land that is held by hearts who have respect for all, even enemies, is entering into a prophetic ritual space where the land that belongs to no human group is the horizon of the future. You can’t have the Olympics if there are no opposing teams. The Great Law of Peace of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee shifted the theology of nations who were once murderous enemies to each other. There had been an old teaching that Creator loves to watch men at war. The shift was to Creator loves to watch the Medicine Game of Lacrosse. The Olympics are Western culture’s Medicine Games. It is possible to delight in competition without becoming murderous. For me, this is a healing of aggression from a weapon into value to be cultivated and tempered. The Olympics include an expectation of Truce when warring nations stop the killing.

It's been just over a century since the Armistice of 11 am, 11 November, 1918. I have walked along the trenches in Verdun and Ypres in 2014. I've walked the lines at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Fredericksburg, Stones River, Antietam, Shiloh, Bull Run. I've been to John Brown's Fort at Harper's Ferry. I've been to the yard where they hanged John Brown in Charlestown, West Virginia. I've danced in 4 Sun Dances to atone for the crime of hanging the 38 Dakota in Mankato, 1862. I've been to Fort Phil Kearney, Laramie, and Fort Robinson, prayed where Crazy Horse died. I made a pilgrimage to understand and bring forward the message of the 1914 Christmas Truce in Flanders' Fields.

With Warriors Journey Home in September, 2023 and October, 2018, we accompanied the veterans, daughters of veterans, pastors, and counselors from Hanoi to Saigon, including Da Nang, Pleiku, Hue, Khe Sahn, the Mekong River, the Cu Chi Tunnels, at the bridge where Kim Phuc was burning in the photo, and we prayed together, sometimes with the former enemies in locations of trauma, at sacred Ancestral altars, at altars for hungry ghosts. We prayed in Hanoi where the bombs fell during the Christmas holidays, in Saigon where the monk, Thích Quảng Đức, set himself on fire.

I've contemplated war and its causes a lot and am turning in my homework. It is the Judgement card from Tarot de Marseilles and the book, Suicide: What Really Happens in the Afterlife. Since the 1850's on American soil, there have been mediumistic persons with easy access to the spirit worlds, the ancestors. The sheer amount of support material about what happens in the afterlife would fill a room.

Nearly all we have been told about judgement after death and Final Judgement went out of date in Egypt 2000+ years ago. The reports and teachings from the other side are that we participate in our life-review in the afterlife. There is no judgement throne on high. We have more responsibility now. The report is after death, in a life-review, we feel what it was like to be treated how we treated others. Those who have died and returned who have experienced a life-review are changed. There is authority in the statement that what we do to others, we do to ourselves. The Judgement card in Tarot is about being received after passing through an initiatory passage. It could be at any time of life, including death. Since Egypt 2000+ years ago, many have known that we live many lifetimes and have enduring Memory. We participate in judgement. We can make new choices from the wisdom gained when we get it right and when we get it wrong. We can grow wisdom and help others when we listen to their sharing.

From Suicide: What Really Happens in the Afterlife:

"Lysa Mateu puts it simply:

I've had many people come through who, right after pulling the trigger or swallowing pills, wish they hadn't. They were so damn angry they didn't stick around to handle what they falsely believed dying would erase. Then, they crossed over and had to deal with it anyhow. You can't kill your spirit, put a gun to your problems, or swallow pills to erase your pain. You must go through your situation and deal with it in order to move past it. There are no shortcuts. (p.193)

There is a thorough affirmation of the survival of human consciousness after permanent death of our bodies on the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies website. It is Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay entitled, Beyond the Brain: The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death.

This entire website is to offer ideas and strategies to be wise about facing our cultural poverty and rite of passage into a global humanity who knows what we do unto others we do unto ourselves. In Aikido, the reminder is always to protect the karma of even your enemies.

A Gathering of Orpans: Struggling For Liberation And Awakening Within The Goal

As we work as teachers working in an emancipatory (Henderson, 1995), prophetic (Slattery, 1995), or initiatory (Moore, 1997; Reynolds, 2001; Fideler, 1993) style, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, we soon encounter the image of the orphan. In fact, there seems to be no working in those styles without having suffered our own versions and visions of orphanhood. While the orphan is a guiding image of movements of change, we can stumble upon the very source of our wisdom if we are unable to separate from the archetypal energy of the One Who Belongs Nowhere and take on a more human attitude and workload.

The orphan path carries with the challenge of belonging nowhere. If acted out too unconsciously, that path can take us from city to city, from institution to institution, driven on at times by an inner necessity, at others by outer crises. However, having nowhere to lay one’s head, if taken up consciously, can also represent the stance of teachers working in relation with their deepest power. The difference between getting burned on the job and bringing a truly transformative fire into the world seems to be related to getting to know the archetype that has called us.

We can gain consciousness of the archetypal by psychologizing or seeing through (Hillman, 1975). That work requires many orphan images. The alchemists would say that we need to dissolve the matter in its own water. We will consider the orphan as biology, symptoms and secrets; as history, culture, and cosmology; as iconoclast and chosen one; as trickster, as elder; and lastly as a bearer of planetary consciousness.

ORPHAN AS BIOLOGY, SYMPTOMS, AND SECRETS

Here, the image is of the abandoned one who is literally not good enough to keep. Suffering from a broken home because of divorce, sickness, death come too soon, or because of some crime or shameful secret, deeply felt worthlessness seems to be the start of orphan life (Piirto, 1998). For me, the reaction was to hate my parents and most things they found valuable. With that hatred came blame for what felt like a life damaged from the start. I suffered from the symptom of chewing on my own hands, detesting my father’s drunkenness, my mother’s control. In the song, My War (2001), I wrote:

This is my war

I have fought from every side

I have conquered and I have died

This is my war

I am the blood on the steel

I am the chariot and the wheel

ORPHAN AS HISTORY, CULTURE, AND COSMOLOGY

Seeing through the personal wounding and neglect can be done by learning the history of the family and the culture. I eased up on my parents when I realized how wounded they were. I also saw the genealogy of the wounds they suffered. The energy that orphans us has a family history that has the reach of centuries.

Understanding the family wound as a seeing through of history opens to how the family wound is suffered by Western culture at large. Malidoma Some (1999) makes us aware of this wound with his description of the village life of the Dagara tribe of West Central Africa. In premodern cultures like the Dagara, the grandparents play a role in finding out an individual child’s true name, in the sense of that child’s reason for being born. In our culture, where that is not done, we suffer neglect in the form of ignorance of our life’s purpose and a general disempowering of the grandparents. Further, without meaningful rites of passage at puberty another opportunity for the individual to take possession of the deepest meaning of life is missed. These are two very powerful orphan wounds.

Ultimately, the cultural wound rests upon cosmology. By cosmology, I mean the story we tell of how and why our universe got here, its nature, source, and destiny, how culture, family, and individual fit into it. Reading of the care of soul done by Egyptian culture (Lamy, 1981), it soon becomes evident how the age of the individual soul and the age of the physical cosmos were always kept in harmony. The age was not only a scientific fact, but also a psychological one that could be known through initiatory experience. We currently suffer a tremendous wound knowing our universe is billions of years old, but having no sense or experience of soul that is in pace with that. Our planetary sense of self is orphaned and not at home in its own cosmos.

Life also can be lived at this level of orphanhood. It is another form of hell, a prison of materialism. For me, the symptom was hatred of all things Western, all things “White.” In extremis, there was a virulent seeking of the revolution to overthrow the system with the belief that non-Western cultures were unconditionally better. In dreams, I experienced a doubling of myself, the theme of the evil guy who looked like me, who always seemed to get me in trouble. To be honest, within all the suffereing, I also held a constant secret superiority, looking down on even my friends, who I felt had bought into the system.

It is possible to stay at this level, but it requires alcohol, medication, or manic energy as the hatred grows and the doubling becomes more pronounced. It’s a dangerous place to live because of the potential for violence.

Seeing through this image of the orphan requires what Jung (1959) called work on the “Shadow,” what Campbell (1968) called, “entering the forest where it is darkest.” It is a movement out a wasteland in search of what has been lost, a felt connection to the Source. Of this I wrote in the song, Into the Dark (1991):

The lady lays in waiting

The king is sealed in his tomb

held bound in silence by forgotten wounds

The way to all, the casting off

The final lot

The way to All, into the dark

ORPHAN AS THE ICONOCLAST, THE CHOSEN ONE

At this level, the solo flight to the Source is a direct dealing with the image of God. Meister Eckart called this, “taking leave of God in search of God.” I call it, “god smashing,” because that’s what it was like for me. It has tones of patricide. Aftern the smashing of the image of God given by the traditional faith, there is an initial high of freedom from bondage that can last years. The down side is the spiritual ordeal that comes one day after the old image of God is gone. Loss of the central image sets forth a rush of the spirit. Tis is not unlike the twister that comes and tears the home from its foundations in The Wizard of Oz. A good understanding of he psychospiritual terrain is in Stan and Christina Grof’s (1989) Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes A Crisis.

Spiritual transformation and mental illness often have the same appearance. This is important to know going in. It also bears upon how we get through. The Grofs warn that we can be held in a perpetual state of in-between if the psychological community applies drugs to stop the transformation from completion. We can also become overly inflated and too good for the world, refusing to return from the place of visions. This means becoming Jesus, Mary, Mohammed, Crazy Horse, or some mythic figure on a permanent basis.

It is possible to live life in the in-between in a disembodied and detached state. However, this seems to court its end in physical sacrifice. As an image-cage, it is another form of hell if we choose to stay there or are forced to stay there by a community that is unfamiliar with spiritual transformation.

The way through is by an experience of psychological death and re-birth, very much an initiation in the classic sense. My making it through was more a question of giving up self-will and commending my life into the hands of a loving deity. I think a successful death and re-birth are not possible without some leap of faith. A connection with a higher power seems to require letting go of personal power, when we learn from experience what the words, “not my will, but thine be done,” really mean.

I wrote of my passage in, Marilyn of the Whirlwind:

Maybe it was three days

Maybe it was forever

On the morning of the Golden Dawn

There was a new Creation

Now a vessel under the world

Now an anchor to the Heavens

Now a woman in the sunrise sings,

This is the New Life, My Beloved.

This is the rushing of the Whirlwind

The opening of the door

The sounding of the hour

No preparing for what’s in store

ORPHAN AS TRICKSTER, AS ELDER

There is a sense of well-being and health that comes from a successful passage through the death and re-birth of psychospiritual transformation. There is also a time of grieving of the person we were, the person who died. As teachers on the orphan path though, we begin speaking in the light what we have seen in the dark, we experience with our students what Plato in the Phaedrus called, ‘the horses of the student rushing toward the teacher.” The temptation is strong to use for our own gain the very Grail we have recovered.

There are two orphan mages which can ease the possessive and compulsive energy of the archetype. Together they can function to balance, to redeem, even to lovingly betray each other. The two are the Trickster and the Elder. Without the help of the Elder image, the Trickster can catch us when we overly personalize the results of our work. I am talking about the erotic inflation well described by the image of the trickster, Coyote: He Who Has Intercourse With Everything in the World. The overpersonalization can be as strong as being in love with several persons at once, but the love is in close proximity to very destructive forces. The love also has a recurring theme of “You are the only one who can save me.” or “I’m the only person who can save ________.” In a lesser form, the love dismembers our energy through good intentions. We are torn apart in the service of others. I wrote in the song, One Good Thing Blues (1999)

My woman needs a lot of love

That’s why I’m always standing by

My woman needs a lot of love

That’s why I’m always standing by

I keep trying to find the one good thing to give her

To keep her satisfied

Brothers, listen to me, cause I finally got the news

You never keep your woman satisfied

Once she gets the one good thing blues.

The awakened orphan archetype sets up what’s like a conduit to the divine. I mean here that we begin receiving healing information for other people. The more we share, the more we receive. You would think this would be a good thing, but it’s exhausting and unbalanced. When I teach at a conference, I can tell how well I’m doing with the Trickster energy by a quick look at where all my things are. On a bad day, my guitar is in one room, three different people have three different books I loaned them, my suitcase is up in my room, my pullover is over in the theater, my shoes are missing, I can’t find my car keys, and so on. At the end of a day like that, it can take me four hours to slowly gather all my things together in one place. Even then, I may forget my coat.

I think the Trickster’s wildness is essential to the spontaneity of good work. I also think that the Trickster’s challenge to become more aware of our own inner contradictions is a required passage. Make no mistakes: the path can end there, end tragically. Hopefully, when wisdom prevails, the way through the Trickster opens to the Elder, who can finally ground us.

To be blunt, the Elder represents one who sees through the bullshit. That capacity seems linked to having made many mistakes. The Elder is a very deep stage of the parentless life — as far as I know, the deepest. From that stance, the parentless and homeless life can be seen in in proper context. The chair over nowhere rests upon the unseen history, initiations, visions, ancestors, a special relationship with death, and the Source. Consider the orphan archetype as a slow movement of the Elder outward through phases out of context.

For another portion of the invisible support I think we must turn to the soul of the teacher. It is due time for a Western conception of the Eastern concept of the Boddhisattva. It’s time to say that there are some teaching souls that embody again and again, who choose to participate in the becoming of the cosmos, who work for the liberation of all. Jung seemed to hint at such an idea and more recently, Robert Sardello (2000), in a talk called, The Heart of Achetypal Psychology, suggested the existence of such a concept running through the Christian Sophianic tradition of Jakob Boehm, among others. The Western version of the Boddhisattva is a democratization of what was formerly a form of soul monarchy. At this time, there appears to be many teaching souls, outside established tradition. They are orphan souls. They work in distant places, but they show up at conferences like the Holisitic Learning Conference.

Of the orphan soul, I wrote a song (2001), a small instruction guide for teaching souls when they meet:

When you meet the Orphan Soul

May you talk all night because the time is full

May you know the growing edge of you

The secret questions, what your dreams told you.

Where did you wake up in this world?

These are the meanings, the signs and science I explored.

Feel your words grow thick, the synchronistic clues.

Feel the golden chills for the beautiful and true

Minds from all times visit our Time.

Minds from all Time are visiting our time.

When you meet the Orphan Soul,

Talk of immortal love, the Southern and the Northern Poles

As philosophers held out their mirror,

Again you know yourself, together the mind is clearer.

Once in painted caves, all the Spirit rooms

Across the wide oceans, along the rivers and roads

Know each other by laughter and heart

By the passion for your Work and your Art.

Minds from all times visit our time.

Minds from all times are visiting our time.

When you meet the Orphan Soul

Talk of your loved ones, from the young to the Invisible

Share this ritual, bless the humankind

With a Mysterious Heart

Who is In Love with Time

Minds from All Times visit our time

Minds from all time, They are Visiting Our Time.

ORPHAN AS CARRIER OF PLANETARY CONSCIOUSNESS

The full embodiment of the educator’s life called forth by the orphan archetype arrives in a nowhere that circulates or alternates among its many images. Surprisingly, the ever-wandering path has an unexpected gift. A small turn of the idea of belonging nowhere renders the idea not of homelessness but a home that is always in motion. The world planet means wanderer. With that in mind, consider the orphan’s home as a wandering home, a planet. Planetary consciousness is another name for the goal of the orphan’s path. The orphan’s voice leads us home to the wandering place. We return to Earth and the image of the Earth marks the orphan’s return.

So, I close with words from my song, Is It Time? (2001):

Through the wild heavens

Stars like horses run

I know that I love you.

I have a place to stand

Kai lai lai lai, it is time.

REFERENCES

Campbell, J. (1968). The masks of god: Creative mythology. New York: Penguin Books.

Fideler, D. (1995). Reviving the academies of the muses. In D. Fideler (Ed.), Alexandria: The journal of western cosmological traditions, (213-226). Grand Rapids, Mi: Phanes.

Grof, S. & Grof, C. (Eds). (1989). Spiritual emergency: When personal transformation becomes a crisis. Los Angeles: Tarcher.

Henderson, J. G. & Henderson, R. D. (1995). Transformative curriculum leadership. Columbus, Ohio: Merril.

Hillman, J. (1975). Re-Visioning psychology. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

Jung, C. G. (1959). The archetypes and the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, trans.) In Collected Works, (Vol. 0, 1) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kaplan, A. (1978). Meditation and the bible. New York: Sam Weiser.

Lamy, L. (1978). Egyptian mysteries. Singapore: Thames and Hudson.

Moore, T. (1997). Ways of knowledge, In The Salt Journal, 1 37-38.

Piirto, J. (1991). Understanding those who create. Dayton, Ohio: Gifted Psychology Press.

Reynolds, F. C. (1991) A suburban nigredo (cassette recording). Berea, Ohio: Shirtless Records.

Reynolds, F. C. (2001). Creation: The pyramid and the suns. (CD). Berea, Ohio: Shirtless Records.

Sardello, R. (2000). The heart of archetypal psychology (sound recording). Dallas, TX: Sounds True.

Slattery, P. (1995). Curriculum development in the postmodern era. New York, NY: Garland Publishing.

Some, M. (1999). The healing wisdom of Africa. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

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 Phallos And the First Gulf War, (Part 1), pp.24-28

F. Christopher Reynolds, c. 2012

C. G. Jung wrote that our images of God not only reveal but also protect us from the divine. Jung’s words were certainly true for me when I passed through my time of spiritual awakening in July, 1992.

That summer, I attended the Festival of Archetypal Psychology in Honor of James Hillman. Everyone who was alive and who was engaged in working for the soul of the world was there, but most important to me was Eugene Monick. I had met Gene a few years before when he offered a workshop for the Cleveland C. G. Jung Educational Center. His work on phallos as the sacred image of the masculine called to me and was the psychological medicine I responded to as a wounded Catholic. If you are reading this, I recommend his three-book series on separating sacred masculinity from patriarchy. From him, I learned the term “post-patriarchal” and was empowered to take up the masculine healing work that is the partner to women’s efforts to honor and restore the sacred feminine.

At that time, I was a public school French teacher and a songwriter going through a Jungian analysis. I had written a series of iconoclastic songs that challenged the Catholic symbols of my childhood, especially the Saints, the Virgin, and the Crucifixion. I called the writing and performing of those songs, “God Smashing.” It was my goal to find Gene at the conference and play those songs for him. I felt that what he was doing in writing to restore the sacred masculine, I was doing in music. To my delight, when I played him the songs, he both liked them and invited me to perform with him the next day in a talk entitled, Phallos and the Gulf War. He asked me to play a song called, Ora Pro Nobis, at the opening and a second song, Broken God, at the closing. My spiritual emergence broke forth during Gene’s talk as I sang Broken God.

Fortunately, I had read Stan and Christina Grof’s book, Spiritual Emergency, before everything unfolded. It gave me a mental map of the psychological terrain I would travel. My passage through the divine madness fits best into the categories of shamanic illness and a return to the center. In most expansive terms, I lived a series of deaths and rebirths, a world-ending and world-renewing near-death experience. Though the initiation required all my cleverness, courage, physical stamina, love and generosity, it was only through surrendering into Grace that I lived and am now writing this account.

These days I’m a singer-songwriter with a shamanic calling and retired French teacher. My calling is to help our culture transition into a more holistic worldview.

The talk, Phallos and the Gulf War, at Notre Dame in 1992 was in a lecture hall, but it was both lecture and performance art. Gene, who was also an Episcopal priest, work a long black cassock that he told the crowd he would leave unbuttoned below the belt on account of the theme of the talk. We handed out the lyrics to the songs saying that these were our songbook. My song, Ora Pro Nobis, was an appropriation of the Catholic Litany of the Saints sung on the holy days when I was growing up. However, instead of Catholic saints, I sang a litany of the divine feminine, of women condemned by the Church:

Saint Jezebel, sweet Saint Eve

Saint Lillith, we believe…

If you listen to the sound recording of the talk, you’ll hear the sound system breaking down and crackling. We started off with some very high emotional voltage, the women, especially, singing and swaying together:

Ora Pro Nobis, Pray now for us,

Ora Pro Nobis, have mercy on us…

Dr. Monick was from a political family. His father was in politics. He often referenced national leadership in his talks and writings. In Phallos and the Gulf War, he inquired into the patriarchal hardness of the first President Bush and raised questions the shadows of phallos, both the solar, institutionalized man and the chthonic, hidden man. At this point, a beginner’s introduction to phallos is appropriate. Gene wrote:

To write of archetypal masculinity means to concentrate upon phallos, the erect penis, the emblem and standard of maleness. All images through which masculinity is defined have phallos as their point of reference. Sinew, determination, effectuality, penetration, straightforwardness, hardness, strength — all have phallos giving them effect. Phallos is the fundamental mark of maleness, its stamp, its impression.

It is helpful to be aware of the larger framework within which Gene’s words can be placed. He described his foundational concepts this way:

1) Patriarchy is not the same as masculinity and most not be equated with it. It is not necessary to subordinate masculinity as one draws away from patriarchy. Quite the opposite.

2) Phallos is sacred to men as the manifestation of the inner self. Gene used Mircea Eliade’s notion of sexuality as “hierophany,” as a means of understanding the holiness of phallos to men.

3) Phallos is co-equal with the feminine in origination. Phallos protos is the psychological equivalent of the maternal oroboros in the origin of life, and therefore, also in the origin of psyche. Phallos is god in its masculine form.

4) Both solar (sun, light, spiritual) and chthonic (underworld, dark, material) phallos are sacred and essential to masculinity…to judge one as superior and the other as inferior is, at the least, misleading.

5) The shadow of phallos, its negative and destructive element, is present in both solar and chthonic phallos.

Before the talk, he commented on the violence of the war that was hidden from the American public. What was so powerful to me was how he was speaking truth to power in a way that I could feel physically with my heart. My heart was stirred in my chest. The event most strongly in my mind as his talk came to a close was what is now called, “the bulldozer assault,” where Iraqis were buried in their own trenches by our armored earthmovers. The unreported numbers of civilian deaths also came forth into my conscience when Gene finished his presentation. He invited me back to the stage, moved the microphone of the podium to where I could sing into it and sat down quietly at the side.

Capo on third fret, opening finger-picking with my guitar pick palmed…”Sing along, if you can,” I say. Settling into the emotion in my torso, I begin to sing…I built my temple in the streets, in muddy holes, I made the seats…Look to guitar neck, feel guitar in hands, against chest, check fingering, look out to the silent audience…A ruined child I transfixed upon my crucifix… Now my solar plexus is starting to increase in heat; I breathe a deeper breath; my left arm is trembling. I took the blood of a poisoned whore and smeared it up across the door… I look over to Gene, he has his eyes closed in a meditative pose, back to guitar neck, unpalm guitar pick to bring it to the strings, gaining volume…All the filth, I raised up into a Communion Cup… Now, my neck is warming, I feel like I am shedding a weight from my back… God of pollution, o god of waste, o god of suicidal grace… Now I am feeling a layering of emotions moving through my body; some of them are mine, some belong to the collective, some belong to the ancestors, some belong to the Earth, some to the sacred masculine… It is a discernable flow of grief… God of chaos, o god of loss, o broken god upon the cross…

Step away from the microphone, stand tall and sing forth a lamentation… I am howling forth, emptying myself and all that I am connected to of the grief that is the pain of our enemies. At this moment, I come to know the truth of Jung’s statement of how our God images protect us from the divine, for through the scattered surfaces of the icons I had just publicly smashed came rushing forth a gnosis. As I sing my lamentation, I feel a shattering in my throat —- a shock-wave pulses through me into the room, through the people to the walls, passing into and through the walls into the culture, like a ripple. Suddenly, from above me and dropping into me, She arrives and I am Her. I feel my body as a grieving Iraqi grandmother. All in black, I look out to the people. I am weeping Her tears, my tears, our tears. I continue to wail and feel my head wag from side to side; I am helpless and broken open. She is helpless and broken open by our national unconsciousness, by a planetary and patriarchal numbness and violence… I am not myself anymore, grasp guitar, hold close to body, look to guitar neck, squeeze the chords, re-palm the pick, tears on face… god of chaos, o god of loss, o broken god upon the cross, o broken god upon the cross…

I looked from the stage and there was a moment of silence, then a burst of applause. I looked to Gene; he was smiling sadly too, tears on his face. I nearly collapsed as I stepped down from the stage. There was a friend, Victor, there who hugged me when I got to him. He was surprised by the depth of the grief that shook me. I wept for a long time there. Gene came over to me and walked me out of the room and outside to a picnic table where we began to speak, beginning to wrap our heads around what had just occurred. Who I was before Phallos and the Gulf War was now passing away and a new, expanded form of myself was being birthed.

Gene: “Are you ok?”

Chris: “Yes, I think so.”

Gene: “What happened in there?”

Chris: “I felt it all.” (Beginning to weep again)

Gene: “All of what?”

Chris: “All of the pain we have caused with this war.”

Gene: “The sound system kept crackling.”

Chris: “It did?”

Gene: “I think you were overriding the system.”

Chris: “It felt bigger than me.”

Gene: “Are you going to be ok?”

Chris: “Yes, I think so. I going to take a nap, I think.”

With that, I started back to my room, but the world was broken open now, expanded. It was as if I had come out from behind glass and was moving through and feeling the world for the first time. In particular, my experience of nature, the trees, birds, winds, sky above, and the Earth, was more vital and now, noetic and message-bearing. When I got back to my room, I did sleep for awhile. When I woke up, I didn’t want to go to any more lectures, nor talk to anyone. I was keenly aware of the steady flow of deep information, all in layers, moving through me and all around me. So began my initiation into direct experience of the beauty and wisdom that sustain, inform, and embody the world. It was a time both privileged and perilous.

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