THE BIGGER PICTURE

We live in a world that has arrived at the brink of a cosmic developmental crisis. Those in power over the human world literally have the future of this world and its inhabitants in their hands. There is a lot of talk about the need to preserve the environment, the dangers of uncontrolled expansion, the evils of political corruption, and the ever present danger of war with weapons of mass destruction. Even space is not safe from human manipulation. Although it is popular to promote the protection of endangered species it is still obvious that humans have an anthropocentric bias resulting in lack of consciousness beyond the immediate time and their own species.

Kazimierz Dabrowski

Before an evolutionary concept can actualize into social recognition it must have a conceptual description that can serve as a psychic handle, or so it seems. Kazimierz Dąbrowski provided just such a mental structure for the process of moral development.  Dabrowski was a Polish psychiatrist who developed a theory of moral development called Positive Disintegration that ventured into the social moral and creative development of human psychology.  His theories are still not well known in the West.  They are primarily used in presentations about both childhood and adult giftedness.  I was first introduced to Dąbrowski by a Jungian oriented therapist in Denver.  The aspect of his theory that gripped my attention was a concept of levels of moral development that seemed far more enlightened than the routinely taught theories. One of Dabrowski’s greatest influences was Plato;  "Mankind will not get rid of its evils until either the class of those who philosophize in truth and rectitude reach political power or those most powerful in cities, under some divine dispensation, really get to philosophizing.”


Very little has changed since Plato’s time except external technology. By now its obvious that philosophy alone is not enough. I often wonder why this is so. Why is there such a gaping chasm between true wisdom and the fruit of intellect? They seem to be two dimensions that seldom connect within the human mind. Humans are very clever and some are capable of amazing mental and technical achievements. Nevertheless there is so little progress of soul and spirit beyond a few enlightened individuals. I watch Science Fiction movies that are built on incredible and fantastic technologies of the future but the characters and their motives are as ancient and primitive, as were those of our first ancestors. The same applies to scary aliens. Although the media presents them with superhuman abilities and they are way more technically advanced than we are these movie aliens only excel technically or biologically. The assumption seems to be that this is all there is. I think it is obvious that philosophy is not enough. It may lie out the map but it can’t get us to the destination.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

At times it seems that the world is controlled by the mentality of a 14-year-old male geek. There is passion, technology, cleverness, creative imagination and hubris. The spirits of both power and experimentation are well represented but balance and wisdom are totally lacking. It is the problem of “the sorcerer’s apprentice.”

The modern human world seems seldom to notice that intellect and wisdom have a different source. One can be a genius intellectually and yet be emotionally and spiritually undeveloped. Dabrowski called attention to the absent developmental steps to Wisdom. We have come to admire a powerful intellect but IQ tests don’t reveal anything about emotional or spiritual powers and very little about creative powers. I am suggesting that there are many levels of intelligence but MIT educates on the first two levels. The problem with this is that it is this limited kind of intelligence that is ruling our present and determining our future and it is creating a world out of balance. The emotional and spiritual abilities are still undeveloped and it is these that are expressed in the shadow side of power.

What Motivates Us?

Perhaps the core problem is the fact that humans are actually motivated by emotion not by intellect and yet emotional development is the missing link to wisdom. One can be a creative and intellectual genius and still lack good judgement and developmental balance. It is significant that there is a recent interest in indigenous cultures that are rooted on the concept of maintaining balance with the natural forces. How ironic that after hundreds of years of attempting to force indigenous people to adapt to our ways the so-called civilized world now looks to the often demoralized remnants of these cultures for guidance. To quote from the New Testament in the gospel of Matthew, “In the coming kingdom, the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” Iconoclastic psychologist Fritz Perls often reminded patients that in a conflict between top dog and underdog, underdog always wins. By this he meant that the part of a person that is least conscious and often denied holds the energy cards. It plays the part of trickster and undermines one’s conscious intentions because the conscious intentions don’t represent the wholeness of being.

Although we are nagged by environmentalists warning us that the world as we know it is on the way out, due to global warming, destruction of natural habitats, etc., we are caught in a political economic merry-go-round and are afraid to jump off. The momentum of the spin is huge. But I would like to suggest that we might not be as totally in control of the fate of this planet as we think we are. Here again our anthropocentrism skews our perception. We are still children of mother earth and citizens of the stars. Our organic origins bear down stronger than either the individual ego or the social ego. Mother Earth and the laws of the universe will prevail even if life and human identity as we’ve come to know it is sacrificed in the healing process.

Is This The Kali Yuga?

The 10 of Swords. Final defeat before the dawn

Dawn is already on its way at the darkest hour and the creation process involves destruction of the previous form before re-construction begins. I’m reminded that we are already in the Kali Yuga, the final age of destruction before the cycle of creation begins again according to the Hindu tradition. And yet I don’t see the world as a continuous circular repetition of stages in the classic Hindu tradition rather I see it as a spiral in continuous developmental expansion just as the universe is expanding.

MANIFESTATION: More Lessons on the Cosmic Waves

In the previous three weeks there were several forest fires in New Mexico and a fire in the White Mountains of Arizona blowing east into New Mexico. This is very hard on PQ’s lungs so we stayed inside with the doors closed most of the time.  And yet my Taos garden was doing well and I thought the wind that has been blowing since mid February and the fires surely would be over soon and I could enjoy my summer gardening.  Every morning that the weather permitted we had coffee on the flagstone patio in my backyard and PQ talked to the birds.  We gave leftover tidbits to the local magpies and watched them enjoy our cafeteria.  The Starlings that live in my bathroom vent stand sentry on the neighbor’s roof and they also talk to PQ.  These birds have an amazing vocabulary and he is trying to learn it. In response to his efforts they flap their wings and cackle. We were trying to make the most of living in Taos this summer even though the altitude and smoke were a problem for PQ.

Nevertheless we were longing to be in Cottonwood Arizona again.  I couldn’t see how this could happen in the immediate future but among my secret fantasies of possible scenarios a house-sit entered my daydreams here and there. We didn’t bring up this topic often because we had resolved to make the best of the current situation but sometimes we updated each other on our fantasies. I began to accept that once a good opportunity like the one we had last year comes and goes its lame to keep trying to make it happen again. But I’m being pulled in two directions.  One day I feel that for myself there is little to keep me in Taos.  The wonderful energetic sparking of 10 years ago has been gradually falling away and Taos feels like a plastic flower that is beginning to fade. But I’m not sure if it is Taos or me. I was stuck in a rut and didn’t know what would change this. Where had the old magic gone?  Nevertheless, there were many good things, too.  Our favorite restaurants, running into old friends and of course my garden. For PQ there was his kids and grand kids the 42-inch TV and Netflix.

Century Plant blooming on Soldier's Pass trail

During this time back in Taos I was also examining the paradoxes of my desires and the results of those desires. It seems that there are areas of life that flow very easily and other areas that dead-end over and over.  What am I doing wrong?  What makes the difference?  Where are my guides now? But perhaps I attend too much to what I think isn’t working.

Then two weeks ago our friend Carol called and asked if we would be interested in house-sitting at her home in Cottonwood. She needed to go back east to help her brother find a better housing arrangement for their mother.  She knew how much we liked being here and she knew her own little garden would expire in the heat if no one took care of it.  In addition our friends who moved to the Taos area from Cottonwood last fall had reached a fork in the road.  Having spent the winter in a dark overcrowded cubbyhole they each needed more personal space for their work and private life. I asked Todd if he would be up to staying in my house while we were gone and I could see right off that it was going to be of mutual benefit.  He is almost the ideal house-sitter.  All of these things fell into place immediately.  I’m once again aware that when wishes and prayers manifest they generally sneak in so organically that they are easy to miss. Of course as is the case with many direct answers to prayers and wishes we ended up here without really grasping how magical it was. Four people had a simultaneous synchronistic manifestation experience and it all seemed simple and normal.

The items that grab our attention aren’t necessarily the most significant events but expose the personal deficits we focus on.  We’ve connected with old friends, took some walks among the red rocks, saw the Century Plants blooming for the first time, ate in our favorite restaurants and enjoyed freedom from smoke and wind.  This is manifestation on a fairly small level but that is a judgement that the greater consciousness, that which theologian Paul Tillich called “the ground of all being” doesn’t make.  After all nature doesn’t judge between the big and the small and nothing is important or unimportant from a cosmic perspective.  I’m learning to be.  I don’t really know anything but its fun to anticipate whatever is around the next turn because each new view changes everything about all the previous views but not in a negative way.  Its much like turning a kaleidoscope, the same elements have infinite combinations.

Manifesting Beyond the Shallows of the New Age:

Last year we dreamed of living in Cottonwood, Arizona but I was afraid of running out of money and we did run out of money. There are two elements at work here. First, I knew that I might not have enough money to sustain us over a long period of time unless two unknowns came through (which they failed to do) but went ahead and made a lease commitment before synching the needed arrangements. I called it acting on faith. Actually I sometimes get lucky and I was hoping the gamble would come through. I’m a natural chance taker, but I was raised in an excessively cautious environment, which is still a chain around my neck. But I keep trying to get loose with plenty of mercurial energy on my side via my four planets in Gemini sooner or later I expect to trick the manifestation police. But an external situation is the best way to become aware of what is going on internally however well hidden.

Since I didn’t have a firm idea of where the necessary funds were coming from I doubted the wisdom of committing to a lease but enthusiasm prevailed and I did it anyway. Now we want to come back this summer and recreate successfully what we left behind. I feel guilty for lack of faith on one hand and lack of responsibility and realism on the other hand. Clearly I’m trying to please two masters with opposing belief systems.

I often attempt to force a new outcome when I feel I have betrayed the gods of opportunity. In this sense I still feel attached to the way things were last year. I have largely forgotten the worries. I’ve also discovered that once a time has passed it can’t be recovered. Nevertheless there is such a thing, as completing something that hasn’t been fulfilled. But it’s important to recognize that one is going forward with a creative process not attempting to relive the past. Sorting this out is crucial to moving forward.

Although manifestation still seems partially a pipe dream I have also experienced it many times. I am actually very good at manifestation and still I doubt this when it comes to the particular areas that are covered by my personal negative conditioning. Do I, on some level, still carry a childhood obligation to remain loyal to my family by not surpassing them? This goes back to the family belief that all the grass must be cut to the same height. I also worry that the Master of the Universe hasn’t forgiven me for not following through on a more enlightened commitment and may not allow me back into the program. And then I worry that all this is just a narcissistic personal fantasy anyway.

But why do I push on when I feel something is spoiled? Perhaps it’s exactly because I believe that I spoiled it and don’t want to accept that possibility. Now I recognize that I’m dealing with several levels of beliefs and they are clashing with each other. But I’m still counting on surprising those mischief making tricksters living in my psychic garbage bin who think their clever cover will keep them concealed. They actually believe they are helping when they conceal this over-the-hill smelly stuff.

Nevertheless, I believe there is a GPS guide to wholeness in every heart and mind. It is a hardwired memory of our true state and we instinctively desire to return to it. This is just as true of humans as of birds migrating with the seasons. Is that wrong? Only if it takes a perverted form reminiscent of having a dead bird stuffed and mounted. A stuffed and mounted yearning can be remembered but it will never substitute for the real thing. The key is to continue within the process rather than trying to recreate the way things were, or more accurately the way we remember them to be. Memory can be a powerful tool of self-deception.

Navigating out of the Maze

Truly my greatest dream is to realize my dreams. I fear that my dreams are out of sync with the timing of this world and are like stillborn babies. This has been my experience but perhaps this experience is the result of some thought, belief, fear, or externally imposed lack of faith. The road out of this dilemma is also the road in reversed. If I track my way through the fear and negativity I should reach the source of the road to a beginning before any preconceived beliefs were in place. Jesus said that one must become as a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven. I believe that to mean being free of constraining, externally imposed beliefs. Faith is perhaps the most important component in manifestation. What do I have faith in? If I don’t believe in my own validity I can’t possibly believe in manifesting my dreams. It has always been easier to work for someone other than myself, and to realize the dreams of someone else and at the same time I’ve never given my heart to someone else’s project. It’s as if I lived my outer life in a cardboard and plastic pretend world. But nevertheless this false world seemed impenetrable as well. I never knew how seriously I should take it so wavered back and forth between slavish obedience and barely touching it. Never did it feel like genuine participation. I assumed this was normal and that other people simply didn’t trouble themselves or else were better informed than I.

My Life as an Illegal Alien

This comes down to my central personal issue. My very being has been in question since before birth. I still look to someone who is licensed to exist on this planet to recognize me as a valid resident. Much of my life has been lived as if I was a temporary visitor on someone else’s planet. I have never truly believed from the heart that I was on the same level as other earthlings. I’ve known since earliest childhood that it didn’t matter how smart, creative, hard working, honest, or well intentioned I was, I didn’t have a visa to be here and that meant that anything I manifested was automatically invalid. I had no rights by the very circumstances of my entrance into this life. A tinge of guilt lay behind everything I had. It always seemed that it would be taken away as soon as some cosmic authority noticed that I wasn’t licensed to participate in creation. I know that my parents loved me but they too didn’t believe that I was licensed to be here. This was especially true of my mother. She also felt less than a full citizen of planet Earth but she shared this with the rest of her tribe, whereas I didn’t feel part of a tribe. I often think of this when someone criticizes a minority group for their lack of focus and responsibility. People must believe that they are connected organically to the society that controls their outer life circumstances or else they become a destructive element toward that society. This is something that domineering groups just don’t get.

Creation, healing, transformation, rebirth, evolution, and manifestation are all related. We are constantly creating and evolving as we progress through life on this dimension. However we have the choice of being either manure in the garden of life, or seeds. Reverse development also has its place. We never limit the process of creation except on the level of our participation. A society, a group, or an individual may chose to serve the goddess Kali the destroyer but the real power is in the fact that the matrix of existence uses all forces for creation. It’s a matter of whether one chooses the path of a conscious co-creator or an unconscious tool to be ground up for fertilizer or mulch. Manifestation is the constant master and teacher.

NIGHT JOURNEY - Sleepless in Taos

Last night I didn’t get to sleep until after 4 AM.  This kind of night is all about a life review and personal database backup.  For this purpose I venture far back into my past and work up to the present.  Along the way many elements of my life are given a new form.  Birth is what you make of it, and rebirth isn’t that uncommon. I’ve come to believe that I absolutely must do this work now and then.  And it really is a review of now and then. While I’m indulging in this ritual I gather up pieces that have fallen off my database of defining experiences unnoticed and forgotten. Here I must change the metaphor to something more elemental like earth itself. They reappear lying along memory lane like the shiny quartz crystals I used to gather from the gravel of my hometown road on the way home from school.

And why would anyone bother to do this?  Outwardly it seems like a waste of time if not a dangerous and potentially painful indulgence. Over and over on this memorial journey I find myself headed into a box canyon with apparently no way out.  Something that I have put all the energy of heart will and muscle into accomplishing comes to an impasse and I feel defeated trapped or doomed.  This brings up the most primal negative issue in my existence.  “My life will never work.” That is my personal key to wisdom. I know this doesn't agree with the New Age trend of positive thinking but negative thinking taken all the way tends to flip to its opposite. Carl Jung recognized this as Enantiodromia wherein the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite. It is equivalent to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order to restore balance.

My favorite teachers are ruined in a scandal, my boss goes under or runs out of money, I toil away hoping that patience and persistence will prevail and time and again I get to the end of another road and look up at shear impassable cliffs.  When I take a course or a degree program I run out of funds or the school goes under, or both.  Usually I leave with the hope that someday in the future I can pick up where I left off.  But that never happens or, if it does it is never effectively the same.  The saying, “You can never go home,” is paradoxically both true and untrue.

I’ve always identified with the foxes in a foxhunt.  Like them I try every clever trick I can think of to escape to freedom but am literally hounded into submission.  I’ve studied a number of passions that I hoped would lead to a career but each path arrives at a dead end and I have to abandon it.  Then I take up something else with the hope that perhaps this is the one that will finally workout but it never does.

The few things that have worked out in my life have come so late that much of the original potential was lost in the limits of time.  Last night I was again wondering if my entire life would come to nothing but a series of failed beginnings and unfulfilled hopes. I wish I knew which astrologer to attribute this saying to, "Cancer must occasionally indulge in a binge of awful expectations," but having Cancer rising Moon and Jupiter in Cancer I've come to appreciate it. Sometimes instead of trying to curb self pity or negativity its best to plunge in full on and get it out of the way.

To continue; many promising circumstances arise.  When I inherited the money from the sale of the family home I had a chance to quit a deadening job and investigate new possibilities.  But now the money is almost gone, I may have to go back to work before long, and the possibilities in this Town seam bleak.  I’m always attempting to escape from bleakness.Yes! Now I’ve found the keyword: bleak.  The 12th house is astrologically the house of imprisonment and as long as I can remember I’ve felt either imprisoned, or just recently escaped, with the Bloodhounds baying on my trail. And then it’s back to prison.  But what is the true dynamic of this imprisoning experience. I’m always yearning for that which lies beyond the prison.  There was a time in my life when I would visit the natural history museum when I was feeling most imprisoned just to view a particular diorama of the plains just west of my hometown.  I would unleash a fierce passion toward the curled buffalo grass, cottonwood trees reaching toward the open sky, and the great expanse of land rising up and spreading out beyond the warm familiar clay dust. The reward was a nostalgic and almost unbearable longing.

With all my heart I wish to find the source of this deadening groove looping back again and again to the same entrapment.  Truly I feel cursed and tricked, as if my life was never to be and never could become.  In some way my very existence seems to not be approved and authorized by the great authority of the universe and nothing I do can ever make it a real life.

Everything I most value seems to out of reach.  I get a taste here and there and that is what keeps me going.  But full participation is always out of reach. And so I have looped back to the Monkey Bar experience as my first awareness of hopes and abilities that will always be out of reach.

Paradoxically, I feel that I can take on anything I want to take on and learn to do it.  But there will come a time when I hit an impenetrable wall and must return to my old prison.  Is this merely family conditioning, personal karma, or circular thinking?  Whatever it is I haven’t found a way beyond it, although I find bits of insight here and there.  One of the most recent blocks comes in the form of our desire to be in Arizona again.  We experienced good energy, friendship and a feeling of protection there however it was financially a disaster. I lost my recently gained financial freedom, and many items that would be expensive to replace, and yet we both keep our hopes up that we can return soon.  When I let the furniture and the little house go it was with the hope that I would soon be able to return and replace them.  But that possibility seems to be getting further and further away. However, our connections with the people continue to deepen and I'm actually writing this at The Heart of Sedona Coffee shop. Now its out of my control but I'm still here.

What are the skills other people who have the life I want have that I don’t have?  How do they find their way up the Monkey Bars? Remember the Monkey Bars?  I believe that I’m a survivor and able to be quite resourceful but I reach a powerful block about entering this world. Yes, here I am again with the belief that I’ve never been fully born into this world and more significantly what such a failure implies to me.  Somehow I came to feel that I’m not a real being or a real member of the earth population.  Dear God you know that more than any peripheral acquisition or accomplishment I want membership in this world.  I want to know the secret of life on earth.  I want to unlock the prison door and explore what the dimension called life is all about and then I want to be able to share that which has been hidden in a dark corner as long as I can remember.

This may be the key to why I still feel connected to my ex-husband.  He has always been in a similar situation.  It’s as if we were lost and abandoned children together.  To leave him behind forever was to abandon the possibility of healing this broken connection in my own soul.  We shared the same penal Desert Island and I understood his confusion, pain, and frustration and his loneliness as well.  But in reality our goals were incompatible. Thus he tried to pull me back whenever I attempted to move into the world beyond our shared prison.  Originally we made a pact to move into the greater world together but his taboo is even greater than mine and in the end he hung onto our shared alienation fiercely.

This situation seems to become more poignant as time runs out.  A vast network of images flooded my mind last night.  Many things I’d long forgotten came back and I felt sorrow and regret for my forgetfulness. The things that were forgotten were things of meaning and value, things that when forgotten make you less. I felt that I was now living with a simplified cartoon picture of the life I’d once known.  Where is the passion, the depth, the subtle shadings and details?  They fell away bit by bit as if there was too much to carry in my worn out psychic backpack. The container of the conscious mind is neither as large nor as strong as that of the unconscious mind and must be mended frequently lest its few fragile contents slip out through the holes.

But now there is an unfamiliar sun just emerging on the horizon barely illuminating a new unexpected world. Unsolvable life patterns are much like Zen koans. These unsolvable dilemmas are the material with which we work out our individuated form. From our conscious social mind we charge forward with our understandings and successes, all things that define the known world.  But it is with the unsolvable frustrating and unmanageable themes that our souls are formed. The known world always first emerges from the seemingly unsuccessful unknown.