Another Kind of Lofty Vision

What are we? Are we independent beings with wills of our own that choose our lives, that -- dare I say it -- choose our destiny? Or are we the other extreme, merely vessels, like hoses through which the water in the garden passes? If so, we can’t say, “We’re watering the garden,” because the water is. Or is it somewhere between those two extremes?

I was thinking today of voices. You know, crazy people are identified as being crazy because they hear voices. And whenever I hear that I want to say, “Well, who the heck doesn’t?!’ All our lives we’re listening to voices that come over the radio and the television and the pulpit and the classroom. Voices during an election year . . . save me.

So we’re all hearing voices, but the ones that are the most confusing are these internal voices that we hear, and I’ve become more and more aware of the fact that this brain just will not shut up. The voices that come at us through the brain are unending and usually insufferable. But what are they? What are the voices that we hear?

I was meditating on that today, and the thought came that since God is all things and all things are God, the voices have to all be from God. They certainly don’t come from us, because if we are just vessels, then we are more like receiving stations than transmitters. We receive the messages; we don’t initiate them. And that just really got to me.

What are we and where do ideas and desires and voices come from? Because they come from within, we think they come from us. But is that really the case? If we are merely vessels, then obviously all the voices have to be God. There is no devil, I’m convinced, there are no demons. But I think God can come to us in all guises to titillate us and frighten us and amuse us. But I’ve begun to think of even my thoughts as all coming from God. I don’t really think any of us have anything original or of ourselves. We are all just these marvelous receiving stations that confuse the voices with our own ideas, and we think that we are coming up with all this. One of the things that fascinated me about Jesus is that he told his disciples that one day they would be hauled before the magistrates and the priests and condemned, “But worry not about the words that you will say because the words will be given to you.”

And Jesus continually said while he was on trial, these were not his words. "These are the words of the father who has sent me." If we are created beings without wills of our own, then we are really pieces of God. Everything is part of God, and we too have to be part of God, and I love the Zen idea that in the beginning was God and he was lonely, so he broke himself up into this infinite number of pieces and instructed each one to forget that they are part of the godhead, and each one entered into the dance playing his role, and they were all essentially vessels through which God’s power and force and energy passes, but as vessels, we get to experience, like the hose, the water going through us and we get to see when the water reaches the ground and waters the plants and they grow. Everything that comes to me – including the voices -- has got to be from God, and if that’s the case, what in the world am I afraid of?

I don’t even care what the voices say anymore, and sometimes they seem to be speaking to me or speaking to one another, and I am sure that I would be called before the magistrate and consigned to some institution if certain people could hear me talking like this, but what the heck, I think at this point being thrown into an institution would have some advantages. In the meantime I just love being able to talk into this tape recorder because I’m very much aware that I am not doing any of this. God is somehow using me as a vessel to put these words onto tape, and they might serve as encouragement to a few and they may get me crucified by the rest, but hey, crucifixion is execution, and that means leaving the world, so I win, no matter what happens.

I think all of this can be encouraging to certain people. We can’t lose. It’s a win/win situation, even though it appears to be a lose/lose situation, but, like Alice in Wonderland, nothing is at it appears, and if we just take everything and turn it right side up and reverse the mirrored image, it will all make sense. In the meantime we are all creatures like Alice, wandering though this adventure, having no idea the meaning of what we see and hear and experience, but knowing on some basic level, this is all OK. This may be just a play, but in many ways it is a very interesting one.

Storytellers

Joseph Campbell is really big on story and storytelling down through the millennia, and I see that God has made me to have this sacred role, as all roles are sacred. I am a storyteller and a shaman who knows how to comfort people, to help them understand more of who they are and that they are made in God’s image, and that they’re OK. I have that capacity and can give examples through my storytelling and my knowledge of creation to help people transcend the earthly realm so they at least get glimpses of the heavenly visions, of the spheres – glimpses that are essential to us, or we slog through this life without any sense of purpose or joy. I was just a sweet, innocent kid who loved old people, and interesting people, who everybody else thought were dirty or crazy, or whatever, and I saw God in them, and they responded to that, and all through my life I have been the kind of person who people are drawn to for comfort and for humor and for music.

Those of us who see ourselves as shamen and storytellers are healers and encouragers and peacemakers. In a world that’s made up of mainly violence and war and soldiers, we have this special calling, that’s not about killing, even if none of the killing is real, it’s just this bad soap opera, but it’s nice, isn’t it, to be affirmed as a creature of God who has purpose in this world and who wouldn’t be here still except there’s still work to be done, gifts to be distributed, and encouragement to be ladled out. That’s part of why we’re still here.

My Home -- A Magical Place

I’m realizing that I have been placed in this pretty magical place -- my little trailer, my little yard, my little mobile home park, the mountains that are just right. This magical, tiny little spot is not perfect, of course. It’s in the world. And we’re just a stone’s throw from a major highway, and the sirens and the motorcycles come by, but by and large, there’s a lot less noise than what I experienced in a much more populous city where I was surrounded by hospitals and a fire station and a police station. It’s really different for me now in this smaller community.

My yard is a magical place. Right now I’ve got all my Easter stuff up, and a couple of lighted, animated bunnies who tip their hat and lift the carrot, and I have all of these other wonderful little statuettes and things that I have found in unlikely places, and somehow they have all ended up here, and I came into my place tonight and I just stood there thinking, “Oh, how I love coming home to this little magical piece of land.”

This place has its frustrations, but where else could I be in this world at the age of 66, being who I am, and have as much privacy and quiet and magic all around me? I have a player piano, which plays for me because I can’t play the piano, and record players and tape recorders that have this world of incredible music that I love and that I can retreat to every day, and not have to listen to the noise that’s called music today. And this has come together in this little special place that is mine, and I don’t have to share it with anybody. I can, when I want to, but I am so grateful that I don’t have kids and grandkids and dozens of cousins. I’ve got my dear brother, who I see three or four times a year, and we have a wonderful time when we’re together, and I know he would do anything for me.

I hate this world in so many ways, and I’m so enamored of it in others, and the images that it gives me of a loving Creator. If it’s like The Matrix and I’m sleeping in some kind of a nest and being pumped up to be consumed one day, then fantastic, because I’m having a wonderful dream.

East/West, Dualities, and Living in Harmony

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three major religions that came out of the Middle East, supposedly all claim Abraham as their father, and each looks to the others for some support in its traditions, beliefs, and customs, but each also insists that it has the only true vision of Allah/Jehovah/God. For us the legacy of this Western tradition is a dualistic view of the world as being either good or bad, or black or white, and a view that all things we do are tainted because we are part of a fallen, sinful creation.

Joseph Campbell touches on the fact that the Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism, don’t have this concept of creation as being fallen or evil. It’s perfect, it’s wonderful, just the way it is, and we are to enter fully into each experience without fear or guilt, because there is nothing wrong with us or with creation.

I think that as we outgrow our own heritage and begin to realize that we are OK, that creation is OK, that life is to be embraced, enjoyed, and relished, rather than struggled against, we begin to marvel that any of us have survived this tradition, that from the time we have entered this Western culture we have been brainwashed to think of ourselves as evil and dirty and that the world itself is something we must resist and struggle against and how that robs us of the joy of existence, of life, because we’re constantly running from it and constantly denying ourselves and who we are -- Creatures of God, for heaven’s sakes.

In Eastern cultures, man is in harmony with nature, and there’s nothing to be afraid of or to feel guilty about. You are in the river and you go with the river and it takes you where it wants you to go. And again, that is a message that older people in our culture need to hear, because some of them have gone their entire journey feeling guilty about who they are and feeling guilty about earthly and worldly pleasures, and it’s time that some of them were released from that.

This philosophy isn’t going to be for everybody, and I’m not trying to change the world or win everybody over to my side. I’m just trying to offer comfort to those who can find it in this particular view of the truth, because it’s all truth, it’s just that each of us has a little, tiny portion of it. However, I’m finding that my portion of the truth does bring comfort to a lot of people.

It’s also important to have lots of humor, lots of fun, and lots of irreverence, especially toward ourselves. I think that when we’re able to laugh at ourselves and find the absurdity in our positions that people are more likely to listen openly and even embrace some of what we’re saying.

I’m just talking about where I am at this point in my journey, and if there are any of you out there who also see things this way and have felt lonely and isolated and thought there was something wrong with you, no, there are lots of us, and there have been all the way through human history, people whom the creator has given this joyful view of what our journey is all about. It’s an adventure and it’s supposed to be fun, and it’s also supposed to be painful.

Ecstatic Experiences

I was thinking today of ecstatic experiences, times when we seem to be in a magic bubble, when everything is as close to perfect as we’ve ever known, and in which we have an incredible feeling of well being. And when those times come we are grateful for them, and we hold onto them as long as we can, but of course, inevitably, the bubble bursts or it deflates slowly and we’re back in our world. I got to thinking about those experiences and what their purpose might be and why we have them at all, and how, again, we’re often using many different words for the same experience. We could say, “I had a heavenly experience today,” or “I was in ecstasy,” or “I had a magical day.” I think we’re talking about the same thing.

Someone might say, “I had an orgasmic experience.” And what is an orgasm? We think of it in terms of the physical act of sex, but we can have that kind of experience when we have a delicious meal or when we bite into a piece of absolutely fabulous fudge – anything that is so perfect that we are lifted up and taken into another state. I think that these are pictures that God gives us of heaven, of paradise, of eternity – again, a lot of different words, I think, for the same experience.
We’re talking about a world following this one in which we are finally out of school and back into a garden-like setting where there are no rules and we cannot mess up. It’s the picture of Adam and Eve in the garden before the so-called temptation. We are given experiences like this all through our life, initially, I think, to keep us going.

We go to movies. We get drunk and take drugs and have sex. We smoke pot and get the munchies and go on food orgies. Music does this to me. To be at the player piano or anyplace where I’m hearing something as nearly as perfect as it is possible to have it in this world, Frank Sinatra with Nelson Riddle’s orchestra behind him, and I am moved into this ecstatic realm where I’m able to forget the world for a while and I’m transported back to heaven for a short time, and the frustration of this world is that these experiences always end. The joy is that God, to encourage us, keeps giving them to us off and on through the years. Eventually we come to a place where I’ve been recently where I begin to view these not as just very pleasant experiences in a world that is unpleasant or BORING, but as promises from God, where I am encouraged to remember that these are heavenly experiences that I will be experiencing all the time once I am finally out of this veil of tears, or at least the illusion of it.

I would like to help people to identify these ecstatic experiences for what they really are, as reminders from the creator that we came from a place that was perfect and where there was no disharmony, strife, illness, death, or loss of any kind, and that we’re going back, perhaps much more capable of appreciating it.

Even though I don’t think that we will remember any of this experience, I hope that there will be some kind of cosmic memory that will allow us to really appreciate the garden after all these years of slugging through this earthly pilgrimage. This reminds me of a wonderful scene near the end of The Bishop’s Wife, that wonderful 1948 movie with Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young, in which Grant plays an angel who comes down to this troubled couple. He spends some time with them, and when he leaves he take away all memory that he was there. At the point when he leaves, David Niven turns to Loretta Young and says, “I have the most incredible feeling of well-being.” I just love that. This feeling is what Cary Grant leaves behind. Although the couple don’t have any physical memory of it in their brains, in their hearts still there is this incredible feeling of well-being, because they had an ecstatic experience with an angel.

Fear & Guilt

There is no panacea, but there are a lot of people out there who are really tired of the fear and the guilt, and they’re especially tired in old age, now that they no longer have the power, tired of bring told by the world, by their kids and grandkids and doctors, and by the politicians and the pastors and everybody else, that they’re wrong to be feeling the way they are, they’re wrong to want to leave, they’re wrong to be tired of this world. “That’s unhealthy,’ they say. “We need to help to help you in your last years hold onto as much of your intelligence and your optimism as possible.” This just makes it worse. The more people hear this, the more they close up, because they find that the more that they’re honest about what they’re feeling, the more the world comes down on them.

I'm not setting out to attack any group, because every group has its purpose, including the churches and politics, but not everybody needs that all their life. Lots of us, just by the grace of God and by virtue of the fact that we’re been around for a long time, have found that we can break free from those institutions and live even more joyful and adventuresome lives.

Joseph Campbell talked a lot about the adventure of life, and how we lose that sense early on, because all of these people are telling us that we’re not supposed to be going through life looking to have fun and adventure. We have to be disciplined, and we have to learn the rules, and we have to fit in, and we have to contribute to society, and we can’t be like the grasshopper, just playing through the summer of life.

I would like to reassure people that we don’t have to do anything, that God is taking care of it. And one of the things that he’s taken care of is that near the end of the journey we’re finally in a position to appreciate retirement and freedom and not having to go by everybody else’s rules.

Joseph Campbell

I want to give just a few quick thoughts about The Power of Myth, the series of television interviews that the late Joseph Campbell did with Bill Moyers. Campbell spent his life visiting different cultures, admiring the cultures that bring out the best in humanity, and expressing concern about cultures and religions that drag us down and bring fear and guilt. However, I find it fascinating that he saw all of that, and yet still seemed to be saying that we need to be better about how we live – that is, if we did this and this, instead of that and that, we’d be better off. And I fall into that trap everyday. It’s very hard to break free from this business that, somehow, if there’s pain in our life, we must be doing something wrong, and that if we would just make better choices, we wouldn’t have to go through this pain. That’s very erroneous, because pain is part of the journey. And whether we’re reading self-help books or taking medication or going through psychoanalysis, we’re still carrying around this burden of responsibility, the notion that we’re supposed to be doing something. And I’d like us to look at that, one of those subjects that we come back to at various times from different angles, not so that people are sick of it, but so their concept gets deeper and broader each time. I think that could be helpful to a lot of people.

Temptation

I was thinking of the Christian and Jewish and Muslim concept of temptation, of man being constantly tempted, either by his own corrupt nature or by the devil. From a non-legalistic viewpoint, from one of grace, it’s not temptation of all, it’s actually God teasing us. It’s like when my grandfather used to blow under my chin and tickle me in the ribs until I was just screaming with laughter. God isn’t tempting us to sin. He’s teasing us with things that we’re just not ready for yet but that he’s going to give to us down the road. Temptation is a concept that can only come from a belief that we live in a world of duality – of right and wrong, good and bad -- but if God is incapable of sin there can be no duality in the world. That is just another illusion. More and more, when I feel as thought I’m being tempted in the old sense, I realize that I’m just being teased. It’s one more manifestation of God’s sense of humor.

Different Words

I’m fascinated by the idea that different people use different words to refer to the same things and the same phenomena. For example, almost everyone believes in some higher power that they think put the whole thing together, but some call it “God,” some call it “nature,” and some call it “life.” There’s any number of words that people use to describe that creative force. I think that it would be fun to examine the words that we find ourselves using, depending on where we’re coming from and our view of the world. Another example would be such words as fate, destiny, the will of God, and free will. Aren’t these really the same thing just looked at from different angles? Words can really mean the same thing and yet bring division and strife into the world because we don’t recognize that we’re really all talking about the same things and just coming at them from different viewpoints.

Affirming Old People

There is a need for people who are in the last trimester of their lives to affirm what they are feeling and what they believe to be the truth about life and death. Many elderly have reached a point at which they no longer fear death and perhaps even long for the opportunity to leave this world. However, there are others who are surrounded by a culture that says you’re supposed to fight old age and dying as if they are enemies. I would love to help people who are approaching the end of the journey to feel OK about avoiding operations and procedures and the taking of drugs. One way of better understanding why we’re here, especially as we come to the end of the journey, is the concept of the world as a womb. More and more every day I see the similarities between the nine months we spend inside our mothers and the seven or eight decades we spend in this world. The basic process is the same, and again, it’s God who’s doing the work. We have nothing to do with it. God brings us into the world by means of the womb to help us understand that He is truly sovereign, not in the sense that he wants to be a dictator, but in terms of the security we have in knowing that our creator is a benevolent and loving force who has made the decisions for us, and we can just enjoy the ride.