Pansies of Numinosity

Some time ago, one of my blog buddies wrote to me, and mentioned his current enthusiasm for 'numinosity'. Numinosity, the numinous: great words, evoking primal magic, imagination, mystery, the Other. Best viewed mythically rather than tied down, chained, and reduced by logical definition. Such is not their purpose, their way.

Mention of the numinous immediately conjures, in my mind at least, the figure of Jung. It was a word that he used, and which I presume he was fond of. As time passes, my admiration for Jung only grows, his stature increases. Not that I am pretending he was a saint, a guru, an exemplar to be blindly followed. Not at all. But he put out so much amazing stuff, lots based on his own experience, and during a period of history when to speak about some of the things he spoke about required a good deal more courage and chops than it does nowadays.

Many modern Jungian analysts and therapists are, I suspect, extremely selective about the Jung that they deliver. Personality types, shadow work, dipping into the archetypes: OK. Creative imagination: writing, drawing, dancing. No problem. But some of Jung's stuff is seriously 'out there'. Alchemy, astrology, UFOs, throwing the I Ching before a consultation. No thank you very much.

Jung has been one of the greatest influences of all upon my own life. He has pointed me to pastures new as well as describing and clarifying a number of experiences that I was at a loss to understand otherwise. Deep within that great cauldron of investigation and exploration that is Jung, however, I spy two subjects on which, to be so bold, I suggest he was wrong.

First up, Christianity. Actually, he said many fine, insightful, and to some people shocking, things about Christianity. He saw with crystal clarity how the Christian ideal, embodied in the figure of Jesus Christ, was lopsided, accepting of one side only of humanity and the universe in general. It is the Light, and has no room for the Dark. Thus, darkness is denied rather than incorporated, and projected out into ultimate bad and evil, onto other beliefs and peoples, and comes to be embodied in the Devil. A religion that is so stuck in duality, identifying exclusively with one side of the divine equation without seeing beyond, cannot help but be a blight on this world.

Jung's deep understanding of this dualism, which remains unresolved, and which is therefore left to run amok throughout western culture in its widest sense, flowed out into his perception of topics way beyond Christianity as such. At the end of the section discussing alchemy in the cartoonish yet pretty spot-on 'Introducing Jung' by Maggie Hyde and Michael McGuinness, there is a picture of the alchemical 'Rebis', the reborn. This is the end of the line in alchemical studies. It is not a figure of obvious beauty, of supernal light, as one might expect, however. It is instead a weird-looking hermaphrodite grasping snakes, standing atop a crescent moon, and with a raven looking on. "Why is the desired goal of alchemy portrayed in this monstrous form?" is the question reasonably posed by a cartoon character in the book.. "Because," the cartoon Jung explains, "alchemy is the 'maternal darkness' that compensates for Christianity's 'paternal light'." I find this insight to be brilliant: it is a statement not purely about the religion in its literal sense, but concerns the entire project of western civilisation over the past 2000 years.

Note: there are variations in the depictions of the Rebis. Sometimes the hermaphrodite stands upon a winged dragon rather than a moon, for example. The overall nature of the illustration will be similar.

Jung had other ideas about the Christian God that would be perplexing, if not shocking and considered blasphemous, by any orthodox believer. He speculated that God remains imperfect and continues in a state of transformation: he is a still-evolving God. These statements would raise the blood-pressure of any self-respecting theologian, for sure.

Yes, despite seeing all the nonsense that is Christianity, Jung couldn't let go. He continued to place hope for the future in changes in the Christian religion. I suppose that this strange course of events was based on his premise that spiritual answers for the west need to be based in our roots, our history, our own traditions rather than importing them from the orient or elsewhere. Fair enough, I would say. But Christianity is not really an indigenous tradition to western Europe. It was, in its time, a foreign import, first introduced through the late Roman Empire in search of a unifying factor for its own crumbling edifice. And, what's more, orthodox Christianity is a system at the service of a false god. I nowadays insist upon this. It is based on the great impostor, the demiurge as perceived by Gnostics, the one who pretends to be the creator of all. He and his cohorts, the archons, whether we take them literally or metaphorically. The Gnostics were right on this. So there can be no healing in the west that is based upon a falsehood, a distortion, an untruth.

So I find it slightly laughable, raher quaint even, when Jung gets excited about the Catholic Church proclaiming the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1950. "The most important religious event since the reformation" he apparently called it, since he considered it as giving a place to the feminine in the spiritual realm, expanding the trinity (God the father etc) into a more complete quaternity. Had he lived a little longer, Jung might have seen how irrelevant Christianity, or any dogma-based monotheism, was for any spiritual hope in the modern world. It is with a touch of irony that we note how much of Jung's work has been instrumental in laying the foundations for much of the mystical/spiritual work of today, which moves far away from anything conventional Christianity is ever going to serve up. 'Spiritual life after Christianity' owes more to Jung than probably any other single figure.

So this is the first thing that I suggest Jung was mistaken about. There is a second: but, in the tradition of the pansy, I shall keep this short and leave it for another time.
                        

Tree of Souls

Part One

Always one to keep up with the latest trends and happenings, I recently revisited the movie 'Avatar'. Well, it was only released in 2009. I enjoyed it so much this time round that I watched it again.

OK, it's mainstream blockbuster. Parts of it are a bit naff, others cheesey. Even some of the deep ecology stuff is presented a bit clumsily, tending towards cliche and being hackneyed. All the same, all the same......

On release, 'Avatar' broke all box office records. Then slipped away into oblivion. I find this interesting: no mass Avatar fan clubs, no Neytiri party costumes. As pointed out ad nauseam on Pale Green Vortex, things don't just happen. So this is no coincidence, either. Despite the surface cheesiness, the underlying world-view of the Na'vi, the Blue People inhabiting Pandora in the film, is not easily disneyfied (though apparently they are trying). Taken seriously, it is downright dangerous. The deep shamanism of the Na'vi is shown as what deep shamanism properly is: not just an idea about ecology or the environment; not just scientific analysis of life, the world, and similar bullshit; not jumping onto pseudo-ecological political bandwagons. No. Real, direct, visceral experience. Becoming a different kind of being, with different kind of experience, really. And you can't have a whole generation of kids going around spouting about the interconnectedness of everything, and how the trees in this part of the forest know what the trees in the other part are up to, and how Eywa (Gaia-Sophia in the film) raises up in support if only you know how to call her. It's not going to help the cause of Empire one little bit. Best leave it alone to slip away quietly.

A fascinating spin-off from Avatar was the incidence of 'Avatar depression' -  thoughts of 'Avatar suicide' even - that was reported. People who had watched the film and absorbed the luminous beauty of Pandora, the world of the Na'vi, found leaving the cinema and returning to grey, boring, often nasty everyday world extremely difficult. These are people, I submit, who sadly rather missed the point. They cannot have not done their deep shamanic work and practice, otherwise they would realise differently....

Another fascinating snippet is the deleted scene 'the Dreamhunt'. Search this out and the whole film hangs together far better. Watch this, too, and you'll see why it wasn't included in the final 'product'. It involves our hero Jake Sully's initiation: when he becomes a man and truly one of 'the People'. It is explicitly psychedelic/entheogenic. In the context of ritual, he swallows a worm and is bitten by a scorpion, and goes off onto a lone journey, during which he sees various elements that will appear in his future. That funny 'little bits missing' feeling while watching the film disappears once you have found Dreamhunt. And, again, it's something else which is not going to be blasted across big screens the world over.  

Part Two

I haven't written for a while about windfarms. That doesn't mean they've gone away. Far from it, in fact. While in England, that green and pleasant land apparently, onshore windfarm construction has been terminated by government, here in Scotland it proceeds apace. Incredibly. Some parts of Scotland have been changed beyond recognition over no more than a decade. It's awful. I recently took the train from Carlisle, through the Southern Uplands and across some of the Central Belt, to Edinburgh. What much of this trip now entails beggars belief. It consists largely of a journey through a newly industrialised landscape, an almost continuous parade of windfarms plastered across hills, moors, farmland. A land compromised, degraded, devastated.

Just down the road from where I live, a monster windfarm is now under construction in the Monadhliath Mountains. It is called Stronelairg. We are not talking a few little windmills fluttering in the breeze: it is an enormous project, laying to waste vast areas of moor and peatland. All, of course, given approval by the Scottish authorities, despite challenge, protest, and the rest. Viva democracy.

Part Three

A while ago I was on a walk with a friend. I was extemporising on the subject of windfarms, and how the nature spirits would not be happy with the destruction of their habitat for these giant concrete-and-metal flapping structures. At that moment we were passing the edge of a new-build of bungalows on the fringe of town. "Don't you think these are worse?" my friend asked me. "They cover up everything; destroy the entire ground." I found this an extremely interesting question; I had no answer, except for "I don't know." The question went into my shamanic bag and we walked on. And thus things remained, until I took my recent gander at Avatar.

At one hour twenty minutes into the film, the bulldozers go in. Enormous, surreal, metal machine monsters march forwards, scrunching and trampling everything in their wake. Forest trees snap like twigs; animals flee screaming in all directions; Blue People run for their life. Pandora is under seige. It is truly awesome.

As I watched the bulldozers and their entourage laying waste to all and sundry, my mind flashed back to my friend and her question. "This is it!" an inner voice shrieked out loud and clear. "This is it, precisely." This is the image to capture the windfarm tragedy, more completely, more perfectly, than words can ever hope to do. I have written plenty on windfarms, but sometimes words just fall short. It is in their nature. And no word could compare to this.

On the Scottish hillsides, the bulldozers also continue to go in. The machinery is slightly less grandiose, but only just; and the archetypal configuration, as we may call it, is identical. Mile upon mile of access roads, gouged out of the heather, peat and rock; tons of concrete poured deep into holes sunk into the mountain. Then they arrive, the metal monsters themselves. carried on the backs of enormous lorries, so heavy that the earth quivers to announce their arrival. The spirits, the gods, the goddesses, are angry. I insist this is so.

No prayers of apology, atonement, redemption, are offered up. No conversation with the mountain, its spirits, the birds, the plants, the animals. No asking for a sign, an omen. 'Windfarm plan shelved due to omen': I have yet to read the headline. "We received a message from sister wind," project chief explained. "We're going home." No. As they say in the film, 'It's science.'

Most of the humans in 'Avatar' aren't on that alien world Pandora for the science. They are there for the richest mineral known to them: unobtanium. And the best deposits of all just happen to be found directly beneath a place most sacred to the Na'vi, their dwelling place, known as Hometree. The humans go for the jugular: cue further destruction of the forest and protracted battle scenes between humans and Blue People.

To the Na'vi, all the forest is sacred: their own energies are inextricably linked with those of everything that exists there. At the same time, some places are more sacred than others. Certain locations act as focal points, magnets, for connection, for energy, for healing even. Places such as the Tree of Voices, trashed by the bulldozers; Hometree; and the Tree of Souls, where uplink to the greater community, the community of ancestors, the field of magical healing, and to Eywa herself, takes place.

As it is on Pandora, so is it on Earth today. There is something special about the hill places, the mountain places, the upland places; and of these some are more special, more sacred, than others. This is not personal projection, to be unravelled on a Freudian therapy couch. It is more than that. Our distant ancestors knew this knowledge for sure. As, in my own vague, half-baked, and vaporous civilised way, do I.

The British Isles are tiny. For the most part they are crowded by humans, their spaces intensively utilised by humanity. So be it. But, as a result, its few remaining pockets of relatively untouched land possess value beyond scientific measure. Here - just, and with a struggle - can be accessed that vital connection with the rest of the natural world; the Power of the Land, if you will. It is this which is being sundered by the march of the windfarms.

The Power of the Land: in Britain, it is nearly gone. Its best chance is probably in the Highland areas of Scotland. Or at least it was until very recently. Remove this link and we are as good as dead. It is possible to get conspiratorial about the whole thing. It is not far-fetched to surmise that the severance of this connection by the devastation wrought by the upland windfarms is not an accident, but is deliberate, designed as a matter of disempowerment. While a person maintains a contact with the Power of the Land, they cannot be completely contained, corralled. One part of their soul remains free - which, more esoterically, is the one thing most threatening to the System that would control us all.

In this article, I have written from the heart; blood runs through the words in this piece. Yes, there are windfarms on Pandora.

Appendix      

Down here at Pale Green Vortex, we're not always over the moon over happenings at infowars. Alex Jones jumping up and down on his chair, ranting and raving about something or other, sending our blood pressure through the roof, can sometimes be a bit much. Having said that.......

Below is a link to a very recent programme that infowars produced on windfarms. It is set in the USA, where people tend to be a bit more proactive about things than is often the case in tired, worn-down, resigned-to-our-fate, Europe. It's well worth watching; and everything in Scotland is the same, except that it's worse, since Scotland is such a small place so the effects are that more dramatic.

Infowars, thanks for that. And remember, folks: you heard about it first on Pale Green Vortex.

https://www.infowars.com/exclusive-wind-energy-war-on-the-high-plains/


Images:

Top: At the Tree of Voices
Middle: The Tree of Voices, after the bulldozers
Below: Stronelairg construction. Amazingly, SSE put up this photo as a sign of progress, as a good thing! It is at this point that, should further proof be needed, I recognise that 'humanity' is not a unified species, but a collection of varying offshoots, with actually very little in common.




  

Nettles in the White House

Part One

As well as Pansies, as referred to in my previous post, D.H. Lawrence entitled another collection of his poems after plants: 'Nettles'. Even if, like me, you are pretty rubbish at knowing the names of plants, the difference between a pansy and a nettle is so obvious that I need elaborate no further on the general nature of the nettle poems.

So, yes. It makes you laugh, really. I was in the process of completing my pansy, all about cutting the discursive thought etc, when I found myself in the middle of a whole bed of nettles. Ouch.

Neil Kramer provides an excellent window on the mess out there. From the perspective of Self, he declares, the current state of affairs (cultural, social, political) is a disaster. To Soul it presents a challenge. To the Divine it's all a game. Certain events over recent days have really come forth to test the depth of our immersion in Soul or the Divine; or whether we're solely scrambling around in the ever-changing mire of Self.

I speak of Trump, and of Syria. I was one of the many who felt the Trump was a good thing: not necessarily due to many of his policies, which suck like anybody else's policies - but because his election suggested a sea-change: enough Americans had seen at least a little through and beyond the Elite who had been running the roost over recent decades. Trump was at least different, not one of them. It denoted a change of consciousness on the collective level. A bit, anyhow.

Overnight, with his action over chemical weapons in Syria, Trump has transformed. He has turned into Hilary Clinton. He has become one of them.

As I write, I'd say that this use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government is a suspect proposal. Even many mainstream media reports include words such as 'alleged' and 'suspected' in their reports. It is worth considering why on earth Assad would use such weapons in the first place. By all accounts, he has been doing quite well recently in the conflict in his own back yard. He knows what's coming his way if he resorts to such nasty tricks as chemical warfare. Unless he's on his own suicide mission, which is unlikely, he's gonna steer well clear.

I suggest that it behoves any responsible citizen of Planet Earth to look elsewhere than the crap that spews out of their television screens and oozes off the pages of the mainstream papers if they want to know what is going on. Afterwards you still might not know what's going on - knowing what's going on is a critically-endangered species nowadays, and its pursuit may no longer be an appropriate strategy. But at least BBC's 6 o'clock propaganda show will be put into some kind of perspective.

Part Two

During my years of English language teaching in London - we're talking late '90s here - I developed decent relations with quite a few members of staff. There was one, a female teacher in her late 20s, with whom I was always joking, swapping good stories, etc. Let's call her Rachel. One day, however, I did something, or said something about her, that she didn't much like. I have no idea what it was. Not serious in my book. Anyhow, life continued as normal.

Months later, all the teaching staff was enduring one of our occasional post-teaching-hours staff meetings. These were invariably interminable affairs, the school principal engaging in a series of lengthy monologues on matters with zero interest to anybody apart from him. Anyway, at one point he brought up the subject of the photocopying machine. Once more, it had broken down due to careless handling by teaching staff, creating inconvenience for all concerned. It was unnecessary, and inexcusable that a lone irresponsible teacher should create so much trouble for everybody else. At this moment, Rachel perked up. She looked straight at me, accusation glaring from her eyes, and firmly declared in front of the entire gathering: "Ian, I told you not to do that with the photocopying machine anymore."

All eyes were instantly fixed on me. Was I the guilty party, the bringer of mayhem to class preparations, the prophet of last-minute panic? And we all thought Ian was such a responsible kind of guy. Meanwhile, Rachel found this hilarious.

Creating suspicion, making false allegations - creating fake news, as is the trendy way of putting things - is dead easy. One of the easiest things on the planet. At least Rachel had no machinery at her disposal to rub the accusation into the school's collective mentality. Imagine if the receptionists were telling students every time they went to the desk about my photocopier crimes. If the teachers were informing all the pupils every lesson to watch out for me. The principal's henchmen included a bit about my photocopier misdeeds every time they went round the classrooms publicising trips to Bath and Cambridge. This is what the anti-Assad machine has at its disposal, in the form of the mainstream media. Everywhere you look, there it is: the chemical criminal.

What's going on with Trump I do not know. It would seem that he's been well and truly got. The transformation borders on the surreal. It is like if Pale Green Vortex suddenly gets full of articles entitled 'Nicola Sturgeon's funniest jokes'; 'Why Angela Merkel is my screensaver'; 'More windfarms, please'. Ironically, it was Trump who really brought into the public domain the term 'the deep state'. Now, I propose, that very same deep state has him by the short and curlies.

Part Three

Why I am an anarchist.

Should anybody still be needing further proof that the current system of politics is unworkable as far as accomplishing change for the better, the Trump story is it. Vast numbers of people in the USA voted in the Trump, out of a sense that the Old Order served them not; they wished for something different, maybe something that took them a little more seriously, even. The turnaround, the volte-face, by Trump which led to the attack in Syria, all undertaken with no explanation of policy reversal, was so quick, so total, that it leaves us in no doubt. The System, the Elite, Empire, call it what you will, has simply and effortlessly reset. Nothing has changed. The same old influences - whoever and whatever they may be precisely - are back in charge.

The current mainstream world - financially, economically, socially, culturally, politically -  exists to perpetuate itself and to further its reach. That is all it is there for, nothing else. This is so obvious nowadays that I am tempted to say that anyone doubting or questioning this is just stupid. It is as if the Gods have decided the time is right to give it to us straight: more and more situations in your face, smack bang, the Trump and Syria being the most recent and blatant of all. It requires a considerable effort of purposeful unawareness, a kind of self-disavowal, to maintain the deception. Wilfully turning a blind eye becomes an increasingly schizophrenic act. The Gods are trying to help us: Look, look! Great gifts! We bestow events with our blessings. They are your teachers, if only you will see. All we cannot provide is the awareness to see and to learn. That alone must emanate from you, the individual.

Thus is the configuration within which we live. Only a restructuring along anarchist lines will more properly reflect the individual and their deeper purpose, their self-determination. I do  not subscribe to the classic political view of the 19th century anarchists, however. Their notion was that all we need is to remove the bosses, the chiefs, the big nasties, and people will become free and good. In this they were naive and metaphysically limited. As I've discussed elsewhere, we are all here because it's where we are suited. It reflects our own being, the maturity (or lack thereof) of ourselves on the levels of Self and Soul. The System is not something we just smash to pieces, to enter into Utopia. No. We need to do our unique spadework; to grow, to use that language. Only then will the powers that strangle have no choice but to slink away into oblivion. Precisely how, I cannot pretend to understand. But this much is clear: it cannot work any other way.

P.S. When I was a child, I once fell out of a tree into the middle of a large bed of stinging nettles. I was wearing short trousers, and it was not a good experience.

P.P.S. I did not damage the photocopier.

Images: A bed of stinging nettles
              Bakunin, 19th century political anarchist
            

A Pansy for Spring

The idea of 'Pansies' is not my own. It comes from D.H.Lawrence. It didn't originate with him, either. He took it from 'Pensees', thoughts in prose as written by Pascal or La Bruyere. Though in his case it was a collection of short poems to which he conferred the name. And in typical Lawrence style, he amplified on what he was talking about: "Each little piece is a thought; not a bare idea or an opinion or a didactic statement, but a true thought, which comes as much from the heart and the genitals as from the head" ('Introduction to Pansies' in 'The Complete Poems of D.H.Lawrence'). Elsewhere,
Lawrence describes 'real thought' thus: "Thought is a man in his wholeness wholly attending."

'Pansies' is my mood - at this moment at least. Over the past eight months or so I have done a fair wack of writing, exercised my faculty of discursive thought, following a number of threads which I have felt it necessary to follow.

This has all been good, and I have reaped benefit. But I sense a change. Conceptualising, that certain way of thinking, has its place, but should be allotted no more than its due. This was presaged in the Tarot (at this moment, half my readers raise their eyebrows skyward, shrug their shoulders, and go and make lunch. So be it....). A Full Moon reading in the middle of March spoke strongly and insistently of 'banishing a skill', letting go. And work, a project, broken, along with its attendant ambition. Then, New Moon at the end of the month: new cards, a reading bathed in feeling, and the power of the dream. No swords, the image of the mental plane.

Related to this is a feeling that I have been doing many different things - writing, reading, communicating, walking, planning, discussing, cleaning, and goodness knows what else. All of these things are good things: I have succeeded in concentrating my life and its purpose so that little extraneous matter remains. Yet still it all can seem a bit of a jumble. I strive to experience the overarching intent - or presence.

Self - Soul - Sun (the Divine) is one way that Neil Kramer describes the journey along the mystic path. I'll buy that. 'Self' in this instance is what I sometimes call ' the petty self'. It is concerned with the matters of the everyday. Many people never see beyond its incessant, inexhaustible demands. It has its place. 'Soul' is 'big picture you'. The concerns of Self are as dust to Soul: mortgages, pensions, jobs, money; security, happy marriages, health even. Or if Soul does address these issues, it is from a perspective that is competely different from that which everyday life approaches them with.

Soul simultaneously seems to look after you -  it can be the guardian angel - yet is ruthlessly indifferent to our cares, fears, anxieties. It is, I suppose, intermediate twixt everyday me and the divine. And in -isms like Christianism this miraculous inner gift gets projected onto the priesthood, the cardinals, archbishops and popes; a disavowal of our own inner wealth.

I concede that things have been a bit different since the severe illness I succumbed to just over two
years ago. During those weeks of enforced doing-nothing, my everyday mind had no choice but to simply shut down as well. Many facets of the petty self ceased to function, and in the ensuing silence (aside from the incessant din of coughing) something else came through. This 'something else' had made its presence known before, in fits, starts, and trickles for years if not decades. But now it decided to move centre stage. Soul, daimon, anima, guardian angel, call it what you will: its voice came through loud and clear. It was ready to communicate, to converse. And it became my little secret, our communication. Part of me was done with 'this world', the 'deep concerns of everyday life' as Castaneda ironically calls them in 'The Active Side of Infinity'. Channels were opened up which have steadfastly refused to shut down again - not completely at any rate.

There doesn't seem to be much of a place for the Self - Soul- Divine thing in Buddhism, at least not in its more exoteric forms, and in the ways that I learnt and practised it. In Buddhism there's samsara, which is a bit crap; and there's nirvana, which is all freedom, release, liberation. Except in its more developed forms of thinking, where it is pointed out that nirvana and samsara are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other, so you might as well just relax and go eat breakfast.

In case any Buddhists should feel indignant at my portrayal of its teachings, yes I know, I've simplified and caricatured. And if you're feeling indignantt, that's part of your samsara, so get over it.....

Self - Soul - Divine is better sourced in the fragments, the bits and pieces, that have come down
through the various mystical traditions of the west. Somewhere in the middle of that series of programmes 'The Great Work' (readily viewable on Youtube), Georgia Lambert delineates the different levels of meditation. The practice of meditation, she says, culminates in the ability to 'Shut up and listen'. And learning to shut up and listen is one way to look at the theme of this pansy. Too much mental activity, too much discursive thought, and you're dead. Forget it. Too much internal noise and chatter, even about apparently 'important things', has to be treated as an indulgence to be chucked out. Lots of reading and writing goes out the window, too. We're doing something a bit different. We're tuning in to 'Soul Intuition', outside and beyond the ruminating mind. And 'Shut up and listen' has a different feeling to it than the Buddho-Hindu mantra 'Be Here Now'. Shut up and listen implies a fine-tuning, a marvellous opening to intuition, an active and intentional receptivity. Whereas in comparison, being here and now sounds a bit passive and stupid to me.

I am grateful to the compilers, translators, and interpreters of the western tradition fragments. Some of this material has spoken eloquently to me. In particular, in the context of this pansy, in valuing and validating emotional and intuitive experience in ways which nothing that my decades in Buddhism did. I have been able to breathe a deep sigh of relief at having aspects of my experience properly acknowledged by anyone other than myself, it seems for the first time.

        



  

The Greatest Teaching

Part One: Er, Me....

It was in the early autumn of 1976 that I left the relative idyll of life in the suburbs of Oxford for the grime and delapidation of north London. Archway, London N19, was squatland, and among those many temporary abodes were numbered a goodly few communities of Buddhists. I never harboured the least desire to live in London as such, but if that was what living the Buddhist life required, then I was up for it.

Living conditions were tough, and by nature precarious. For most of my time there, I was the junior in that particular Buddhist community, everybody else having already been officially ordained and boasting a Buddist name. My aim as I moved was clear: I was going to find part-time work, enough to survive on economically, then devote the remainder of my time to meditation and study. This, it seemed obvious to me, was what I needed to do in order to bring myself closer to absolute reality - which was what the Buddhist thing was all about, as far as I could see.

One day, not long after moving, I was approached by one of my fellow community members. He was in the process of starting a wholefood business, based in the much larger Buddhist centre under construction in East London. Would I like to go over and take a look? I said 'Of course, yes.' And it was at that moment I began to give it all away.

Very soon, I was a full-time worker in Bethnal Green, London E2, spending a goodly portion of the week in a basement mixing muesli and packing peanuts. When I wasn't in the basement, I could be found on market stalls in Brick Lane or Hammersmith, selling the muesli and peanuts which had been packed etc etc.

Things moved fast. Within a year I became an ordained Buddhist, committed to the path of the
Enlightened One. Two years further down the line, I found myself chairman of the modestly-named West London Buddhist Centre. I say 'found myself' deliberately. In the 'What do you want to be when you grow up, son?' scenario put to little boys, I never answered 'boss of a Buddhist Centre, please'. Or boss of anything else, for that matter. In this case, however, the previous chairman was moving on, to set up a retreat centre in Wales. When eyes were cast around for a replacement, they came to light on little old me. And I went along with the consensus. I mean, you do, don't you? Devoting yourself to the cause, the enlightenment of all, that's the name of the game. To do otherwise would be folly indeed.

In some respects, I was not a bad choice. Fairly friendly and approachable, so I'm told. Able to get on with a wide range of characters. Moderately well-organised. In other ways, I was rubbish. Particularly when it came to notions like 'developing', 'expanding', creating a really big, bold, important Buddhist movement. Not my cup of tea at all.

This is not actually the point. For a decade I soldiered on with a job which I did not feel completely at home in. That is not to say that it didn't have its beneficial aspects. It did. But it's simply that: I was not really at home in that role. It wasn't quite me. Eight years in, I resigned, only to be 'strongly advised' by my Buddhist teacher to un-resign, since nobody was at hand who was capable of taking over. So I entered the two most frustrating years of my life, until somebody else was finally deemed up to the job.

It's been a long trip. A decade ago, I moved from southern England to the Highlands of Scotland. For much of the past ten years, I've finally made it: worked part-time, spending the rest of the day studying, writing, meditating, walking, doing whatever else feels fitting to following the sacred path.

It took the benefit of hindsight, many years of it, for the underlying pattern to become clear to me. I had my path envisaged in my mind, only for my intent to be derailed, or diverted onto other tracks. And when I finally made an effort to change direction, that move was postponed in the interests of the 'greater good'.

Nobody actually asked me what I wanted to do - apart from being a Buddhist in a most general kind of way. You might well expect me to feel a bit cheesed off about it: not properly living my dream, blah blah. However, try as I may, I have been unable to get angry with anyone. I haven't felt manipulated or exploited. Other people may or may not have acted dishonourably, that's their problem or prerogative. But the stark and unavoidable fact is this: I was part of the deal. I did it. I brought my body into these situations, if you will. It's the most humbling realisation, bruising to the ego and not at all comforting.

Things don't 'just happen' - one of the basic truths, but properly understood by few. It's not a case of 'everything being my fault', or of having recourse to fancy theories of karma. Blame, guilt, the whole works. We don't need any of this stuff. It's simpler yet more elusive than this. The universe, it seems to me, works more like a giant kaleidoscope than a massive pinball machine. You somehow find yourself in situations that are congruent with the state of your being; it cannot be any other way. What happens reflects who, how, and what you are at that moment in time. As I said, it's a humbling realisation. All those crap situations, all those dodgy people who you are above and different from. No. You brought it on yourself. It's a magnificent co-creation. And if your consciousness is attuned to 'growth', then another element introduces itself.....

All those humbling situations present as the most valuable learning opportunities. The more humbling, the greater the potential. The lesson for me individually undoubtedly concerns 'personal power' on the path. Don't compromise it, don't give it away. Not even for the most magnificent, transcendental project. Learn, with devotion; sit at the feet of the wise ones, yes. But don't give it away. Not an ounce. This amounts to the real disavowal of ones path, which is individual, unique. Be fierce about it. If there is one thing that I may have learnt in this life, something I can carry forward, it is this.

Part Two: Teachers and Victims

My former Buddhist teacher is ninety-one years old now. If I had my way, he would be left well alone, to savour his remaining moments in this lifetime as he so chooses. But no, it seems not to be. It has been creeping around behind him for decades; now, his past - or selected aspects of his past - has jumped out full face, so neither he nor any of his disciples has a place to hide.

The aspects of his past which continue to snap at his heels - not so much like a terrier (though they can be tiresome enough) but like multi-headed Cerberus dragged up fresh from Hades - concern his propensity for sexual activity with younger male disciples. Over the years, an increasing number of these disciples, a goodly proportion of them ordained Buddhists, have come out of the woodwork and told their tale. Some have been pretty OK about it all, some a bit so-so. While others still have felt confused, hurt, damaged, traumatised, and the rest.

One, in particular, has hounded my former teacher for years. What his purpose is eludes me (though I should make clear that I have not followed the entire blow-by-blow story: I have other things to get on with). But what does he want? Justice? A nebulous and problematic term, I suggest, to the point where it no longer makes any sense to me. Revenge? Well, at least I understand what that is. An uncovering of the hypocrisy of the affair, maybe? Fair enough - but why go to all the bother?

The story was taken up voraciously by those fashionable protectors of victims in the mainstream media, notably the Guardian and the BBC. A few months back, a 12-minute slot on a regional BBC show was devoted to the subject, including reportage and interview with aforementioned particular person.

Now I'm a softie - just this morning I collected a woodlouse from the living room floor, but didn't have the heart to put it out in the rain, so deposited it in another warm, dry room instead. So, putting aside cynicism about how people on television always manage to choke at precisely the right time, I could not help but feel affected by the pain and upset which he (the former sexual partner, not the woodlouse) clearly still felt. Nevertheless, I looked hard: what exactly was the source of the pain which continued to haunt him? Well, I can't tell for sure. But the answer which came through took me by surprise. The pain coming through wasn't much to do with the Buddhist teacher at all, really. No. It was aforementioned person's own inability to accept the most unpleasant of realities: he had been part of it; he had participated; he had allowed it to happen - for quite a while, willingly. So it's not much about the Buddhist teacher, but about the 'victim' and his past behaviour, which he would dearly like to erase.

Part Three (Recap of Sorts)

Life can be tough. It can appear mean and nasty. But for anybody claiming to be following a 'spiritual path' it behoves them to try and look at things from a wider dimensional perspective, not that of the mainstream media and the current fashions in thinking and moral acceptability. In order to do this, a whole load of conceptual and perceptual baggage needs to be let go of. Let go of the hand-me-down concepts, the mental constructs, which serve to manipulate the mind, to cloud its innate clarity. Constructs that most folk don't even realise are constructs at all, instead conferring upon them the status of a given reality.

Blame, fault, unfair, unjust. These have to go. 'Whose fault is it? Who is to blame?' - not appropriate questions for anybody trying to lead an authentic life. 'It's your karma': do we need this? Victim, perpetrator. Yes, especially these: the victim - perpetrator syndrome has to be chucked out. While we consider ourselves as 'victims', whether of an unjust social system, a predatory guru, or a global elite, we remain helpless. The System, Empire, call it what you will, loves victims, and deliberately perpetuates this way of looking at things. Women, blacks, other ethnic groups, gays, transgender folk, disabled people, those mistreated by religious figures: all are cast as victims by the mainstream, and it does them no favours. It keeps them locked into a way of thinking which blocks the individual's unique capacity to unfold. It prevents personal responsibilty for ones life, and sustains a perpetual dynamic of confrontation between 'victim' and 'perpetrator'. Which suits Empire just fine. Divide and rule, geddit?

For anyone seriously trying to 'grow', all this needs to be left behind as interpretative mechanism. It's the most difficult and scary thing: to be able to look, listen, feel, touch, intuit, think directly.

I am not saying that bad things don't happen, or that people who harm others should not be brought to task and punished. Not at all. I am saying that a lot of the conceptual baggage which accompanies such scenarios is not helpful. In fact, it takes us away - maybe is designed to take us away - from our sense of personal power, our ability to live our lives with initiative, honour. It is uniquely disempowering, and is ironically the most abusive thing we can do to ourselves. Play the victim and it is just not possible to walk a sacred path, or however else we choose to frame it. In this case, teacher and pupil - young, confused, impressionable (the media prefers the more emotive 'vulnerable') pupil - experienced a certain confluence of being. And that's it. For both, it's a tremendous learning opportunity, should they be looking for such treasures amidst the pain, conflict, and suffering. A real chance to learn invaluable things that can be taken forward.

It is a cliche, but it is said that, should a person really know what 'leading a spiritual life' involves, nobody would start in the first place. It is a walk on the wild side and into the unknown: by definition, we can have no idea what it will throw up. All our ideas, preconceptions, and book learning are worse than useless when the confrontation with deeper reality properly takes place. Thus it is with the teacher - and with ourself as a student, a pupil, a disciple. The greatest teaching of my former teacher may, indeed, be just that: his brilliant yet erratic and contradictory life. It should force each and every one of his followers, to look within - the deeper the better - to sink into her or his own unique resources and being. What the hell do I make of this? Do I need to make anything of this? What am I doing here in the first place? Where is my life? Why are there no simple off-the-shelf answers? To walk in perpetual uncertainty, maybe, forced back into ones own life. As the Buddhist parable says: the jewel is to be found in the dungheap.

Images: (Top): Cor blimey, it's changed since I was there: Balmore Street, Archway
              (Below): Strength, Anne Stokes Gothic Tarot  
         

              

Elemental Disharmonies

Part One

My most recent post was intended to primarily say something about the importance of images in my life - and I didn't even get round to mentioning Jung and archetypes, and James Hillman's archetypal psychology (I forgot). But it got me thinking - or imagining. more like - around that first trip to Italy......

There I was, chilling out a little in Siena, in the company of Duccio and the licorice-looking Cathedral. Although some of the candles and incense had gone missing, I still had my sights on a solitary meditation-and-writing retreat. I even got so far as phoning up a woman who had a little cottage available in the surrounding countryside. At this point, it is worth mentioning that I hadn't bothered learning much Italian before heading off south of the Alps: it is, after all, a long-held English tradition not to learn  other peoples' languages. 'Pronto' the woman answered. I froze. 'Pronto' she said a little louder, and with a tough of exasperation. I slammed down the telephone. It was only later that I learnt how, in Italian, 'pronto' does not mean 'Quick! Quick! What are you messing around at?' It's the normal way in Italy to say 'hello' on the phone.

At this point I made a bizarre decision. Why, I cannot recall: the memory would probably be too painful. Anyhow, I decided to head south.

Anybody with a modicum of knowledge about Italy and Italians would know that heading south is probably not the smartest move for a person still frayed around the edges from a series of slightly bruising encounters with a new and different culture. Plus the fact that aforementioned frazzled person was showing early signs of an influenza-like illness coming on. But head south I did.

After two hours in Naples - plenty - I eventually turned up in Salerno. Located at the entrance to the famed bejewelled coast of Amalfi, Salerno was brash, bold, and balmy, in a bold and brash kind of

way. As was my wont, I headed straight for the cheapest dive listed in 'Let's Go' and got a room at a great price. As I was settling in, I noticed a large hole in the wall above the wardrobe. It was the perfect size for someone to crawl through in dead of night, gas you and take all your belongings. That's the sort of thing people do in southern Italy, I'd been told.

I strolled out into the warm November evening. Just starting to unwind in the Mediterranean ambience, I was suddenly assailed by a group of kids. 'Inglesi, Inglesi' they chanted as their hands deftly touched my jacket and pockets. It was mischief rather than downright criminality, but the magic of the moment was well and truly shattered.

I was beginning to feel really ill. In brief diary form, the rest of the trip ran like this: a) straight back to Rome b) unable to change flight back home without long wait c) take overnight train to Paris d) feel extremely unwell e) robbed of £30 at Gare du Nord f) reach Buddhist community in London the following evening g) take train to Buddhist retreat centre in Wales for non-solitary meditation retreat, and gather disparate bits of self together again.

Part Two

I relate this tale, not because - or only because -  my life is so fantastically important and endlessly fascinating. It is also a story about disharmony, elemental disharmony. In Tarotspeak I travelled to Italy with a rucksackful of wands; swords, as usual, were in plentiful supply. Meanwhile, chalices were leaking water all over the place, and the pentacles had mysteriously gone missing.

Following my recently reported penchant for images, I find it more powerful to speak of chalices and wands than of 'elements'. Funnily, they present themselves to me in a direct and concrete way, while 'elements' is a bit abstract - needs more thinking about. Should a translation into elements be insisted upon, however, I suffered from a surfeit of fire (wand), plenty of air (sword), unstable water (chalice) and very little earth (pentacle).

This magic quaternity can be mapped onto a whole variety of signposts of reality: the four seasons, the four directions of space, Jung's four psychic functions, the four humours of the body. And plenty more besides, I guess. All of this can be used to create a wealth of readings in Tarot for those so inclined. Whatever, it provides a marvellous map for both universe and consciousness (should there be any difference).

Harmonising the elements has been a major ongoing task during this lifetime. As years have passed, its necessity in regard to physical health has become more apparent. A takeover bid by swords inevitably leads to severe migraine, sinus pain, and general misery. But it's always been there uppermost in terms of consciousness. On the basic levels of day-to-day satisfaction. And in terms of direct insight, deeper experience of reality beyond the veils and distortions. Without a degree of harmony between the wands and the pentacles, there is no chance of a more stable, sustained, experience on deeper levels of the psyche.

So it's an ongoing project. It's like bringing all the players in a football team into play, not just the goalie and the centre-back. And it's harmony rather than balance. 'Balancing the energies', 'Balancing the chakras': this stuff is all over the place nowadays. But to me 'balancing' suggests taking a discrete quantity of a discrete number of objects, and organising them so they don't topple over. Whereas the trick is more expansive, more magical. It involves a continual flux and flow, an interweaving of constantly moving pieces, interacting, morphing, taking on new forms and disguises. As somebody
once wrote, 'wisdom' is not about 'no self' so much as 'flow self'. And as Jung wisely pointed out, it's not about having all aspects of equal prominence. We are unique individuals with our unique tendencies. I shall always have more wands in my rucksack then pentacles; I shall always prefer Tarot to decorating the bathroom. That's fine.                  




Images:  Salerno (wikimedia commons)
              Wand energy embodied: The Magician, Gilded Tarot Royale
              The DIY card: Eight of Pentacles, Waite-Smith Tarot

Those Images

'I think images are worth repeating, Images repeated from a painting......'

John Cale and Lou Reed, 'Songs for Drella'.

It was an October in the early 1980s - '82? 83? It doesn't matter - when I first visited Italy. The final flourish of the era when travel really could be an adventure: especially if it was only your third time abroad, and the first time you had gone solo.

The first hint that we were going somewhere properly different was when the plane landed in Rome. All the Italian schoolkids on board shouted, yelled and almost threw an impromptu party at getting home. This would never happen with children from Chingford touching down at Heathrow, I mused.

Soon we issued into the tiny arrivals area of Ciampino airport, host to a small number of budget flights. Soon the luggage arrived, and soon everybody was on their way. Apart from me. Where was my baggage? I waited and waited and waited. Finally, my rucksack came bouncing up the steep slope of the luggage conveyor,  - only to go bouncing back down again. I eventually alerted an airport worker to the situation. He found a fish-hook kind of implement, and caught my rucksack like a helpless. floundering ocean-dweller. During the course of the struggles, one of the pockets of the rucksack had come undone, with the result that candles and incense which I had carried from London in readiness for an anticipated solitary retreat in the Tuscan hills were flying everywhere. The airport official handed over my rucksack and a couple of candles, and shrugged his shoulders. Welcome to Italy, dear friend.

I staggered out into the Roman evening. It was deserted. Eventually I found a bus that would take me into town. Soon we were bouncing along the arrow-straight streets at breakneck speed; the suburbs of Rome flew by. A short time into the journey, one of the few other passengers, a middle-aged man in a grey coat and trilby hat to match, got up from his seat and began speaking to the driver. Soon there was an almighty argument taking place at the front of the bus: hands gesticulated wildly before generally flailing around all over the place; voices became ever louder, and we nearly ended up in a ditch. Welcome to Italy indeed.

My purpose in heading south of the Alps was not to see Italy at all, really. It was to see the art of Italy. In fact, it wasn't to see the art of Italy in general: it was to see the art of the Italian Renaissance. And if truth be told, it wasn't Renaissance art as a whole. It was to see the art of Michelangelo.

I went to Italy for Michelangelo, and Michelangelo alone. Such was the focus, the single-minded direction, the depth and narrowness that has characterised my life (I feel that it has become tempered in more recent times, but that may be wishful thinking). It has been boon and bane in equal measure.

Michelangelo. The power of the image was nothing new to me. A decade beforehand, my attraction to Buddhism had been fuelled by a book. It was not a conceptual book, about the rational basis for Buddhism - impermanence, suffering and the like. It was called 'Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism' , written by one by Lama Govinda. Centred around the magic and the mystery of the Five Jinas, focal 'archetypal Buddhas', it pulled me irresistibly in. I didn't understand very much of it, but knew that it was onto something very important. It spoke to me. A few years on, now as a fully-fledged Buddhist, I had bestowed upon me a sadhana, a meditation practice centred on a particular Buddha figure, complete with verses of petition and invocation, mantras eliciting Voidness, and so on. While some of my contemporaries
struggled with this manifestation of higher realities, I took to it like a duck to water, practicing daily what was typically the high spot of the day. There were many occasions when, while everything else in my life seemed to be falling apart all around me, the Buddha/Bodhisattva visualisation practice kept me intact.

It was through the influence of my Buddhist teacher that I first started looking at pantings. He insisted on the connection between art and spiritual life; I felt he was onto something there. I began with Monet, Van Gogh, Turner, all relatively accessible I felt. But I soon graduated to the art of Renaissance Italy, where the resonance that I experienced with images (and by 'images' I mean those of 'forms', be it of humans, goddesses, Bodhisattvas, gods, angels, denizens of the underworld, or whatever) once more came into play. Through an image wrought by the hand of an artist in touch with 'Soul' so much could be said. In Michelangelo I sensed the coming-together, the synthesis, of archetypal universal forces which normally stood in oppostion. Heaven and hell; Apollo and Dionysos; light and dark; reason and emotion; water and fire; masculine and feminine: for all these, a transcendent element was invoked, conferring upon the attentive student a higher state of consciousness and of being. All of which was precisely what I craved.

Three days in Rome was more than enough, thank you. Life there was crazy, chaotic, hellish noisy, and precarious. What's more, there's not a lot of Michelangelo to be seen in Italy's capital anyway. I headed north, to Florence, in search of calm, and of David.

In the event, Florence was less of a disturbing experience than had been the capital city. The Michelangelo was fine, but I was moved more completely by the Botticelli. With nerves still feeling jangled, however, I decamped to a yet smaller city, tucked away in the Tuscan hills, Siena. No Renaissance giants here: both art and architecture predate Leonardo and co. A curious peacefulness and grace exude from the buildings in this beautiful place, and in bucketloads from the images painted - we can only imagine with love and devotion - by Duccio and Cimabue. Madonnas, saints, even dodgy Ducal tyrants seem to radiate a supernal quality. They won me over.

The magic thread of the image has woven its way into and through the phases and disparate elements in my life. A couple of years down the line I fell in love with the art and images of the Venetian Renaissance - Giorgione and Titian above all - and I even gave a series of illustrated talks at the Buddhist Centre on the theme of Renaissance art and its imaginal significance in spiritual life. Some people liked it, anyway. A decade on, I undertook an intensive period of shamanic journeying, during which a host of wizards, princesses, animals, and the occasional demonic figure, appeared as companions, guides, teachers, and tormentors. And the thread leads inevitably to the present, and the Tarot. I feel at home with its multiplicity of images.

An image, whether in a painting, a meditation, a shamanic journey, a Tarot reading, or seen walking down a mountain hillside, can communicate far more than words. It bypasses (without necessarily negating) the conceptual mind, and speaks directly. Its language is not that of the solely rational, but touches what can be called our Emotional Intuition, or our Soul Intuition. Direct transmission of secrets, mysteries, hidden treasures, through the medium of the image.  

Images: Delphic Sybil
             Daniel

Both from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling