that nifty poet John Keats, and some thoughts on suffering.

"In a letter written back in 1819, the British poet John Keats refers to the world not as a vale of tears, but as "the vale of soulmaking." He says, "Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and Troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a Soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!"

i am so struck by how similar this is to Jung's concept of the Soul's path toward individuation by facing and incorporating its 'shadow side.' we all have a shadow side...and it is a sacred duty toward adulthood to hold no illusions about that reality within us...and in facing the darker places within us, we are inevitably opened up to pain and grief...how interesting that, especially in this culture, we are conditioned to think that pain and suffering are a result of something having gone wrong in our journey...of having, perhaps, taken a wrong turn...but the reality is...pain and suffering are universal...and a wholehearted acceptance of this truth is so often the key that can unlock and open our heart to a more encompassing love and compassion than we could ever imagine. As the writer Ram Dass expressed when discussing the spiritual lessons found in suffering a stroke:

"Greater suffering elicits higher consciousness."

and so it is, wisdom and maturity is found in not shutting down, but opening ever wider your heart.

living fully [is honoring the great sacrament].

A beautiful phrase of Hegel's is...
"Die Wunden des Geistes heilen, ohne dass Narben bleiben";

"The wounds of the spirit heal and leave no scars."

There is healing for each of our wounds, but this healing is waiting in the indirect, oblique, and nonanalytic side of our nature.

We need to be mindful of where we are damaged,
Then invite our deeper soul in its night-world to heal this wounded tissue,
renew us,
and bring us back into unity.

If we approach our hurt indirectly and kindly,
it will heal.

Creative expectation brings you healing and renewal.
If you could trust your soul,
you would receive every blessing you require.

Life itself is the
great sacrament
through which we are
wounded and healed.

If we live everything,
life will be faithful to us.

- from "Anam Cara" by John O'Donohue -

she left me alone, by myself, and there my self was waiting.

Under the Elm


Under the elm for a long time
I've been waiting for you, O my soul.
Weeks follow each other like books
Perused, my thoughts elsewhere,
Full of music that's distracted too
Full of a deep buzzing where words images
Perceptions dwell in the jumble of memory
Of which our mind is composed.
And nothing comes to assert your coming
No other sign than smoke.
Is it you that we should have welcomed
When tenderness filled our hearts?
You that we should have discovered
On the shores of pity or of love?
I have not been taught to notice your presence
Even when reveille raises the limbs
Of a future happiness; even when
Tired of a long day I seek
Silence in the immense dark where I jettison
What differentiates the sun from death.
Hours accumulated, absurd riches,
I am ready to give up the trees and the cities
But I still hope to receive you, my soul,
Laden with my own eternity.
You who are me, who resembles nobody,
You that I must give back some day to who knows who.


-Pierre Martory-

(text of the poem in the original French)

and why, it is, i'm committed to taking my time fixing my vision.

[and so, it is, i awaken each night to haunt the midnight hours, and keeping me company of late, these words from my dear, good friend...i read his letters with a different vision now than i read them then. and realize, our greatest work of art is surrendering to the process of being undone to be made whole, and devoting ourselves to the gentle work of fashioning an honest, true, and real life].

------------------

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism.
Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them.
Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every
such argumentation, discussion, introduction;
if you are wrong after all,
the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly
and with time to other insights.
Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development,
which, like all progress, must come from deep within
and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything.
Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.
To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself,
in the dark,
in the inexpressible, the unconscious,
beyond the reach of one's own intelligence,
and await with deep humility and patience
the birth-hour of a new clarity;
in understanding as in creation.


There is here no measuring with time,
no year matters, and ten years are nothing.
Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting,
but ripening like the tree
which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring
without the fear that after them may come no summer.
It does come.
But it comes only to the patient,
who are there as though eternity lay before them,
so unconcernedly still and wide.
I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful;
patience is everything!

- from "letters to a young poet"

rainer maria rilke -

------------------

[i am learning, rainer, so i am learning]

may it be me.

I've been reading a lot of Carl Jung's theories of individuation and the journeys we each make to whole and integrated adults...and I like his theory of the collective unconscious...as I understand it. Somehow the romantic, idealist in me likes to think that...every smile I proffer to the old [maybe terribly slow] woman in line ahead of me at the grocer's creates a ripple effect of goodwill and compassion and shift toward patience throughout the whole of the world.

It's like the scientific studies that have measured when a crossword puzzle or some other standard of measurement is submitted to one study group, the second and later group given the same puzzle completes it uniformly faster than the first group...and vice-versa.

It's as though the knowledge has been entered into humanity's collective mind bank, and is now somehow 'out there', where people can psychically or unconsciously pick up on it.

It causes me to think, each day – If one of us finds the answers and chooses to do right...…it affects and influences others to do the same.

Il est intéressant, n'est-ce pas?

in your hand. the birth of a new day...or a childhood myth revisited.

sometimes we happen upon the fortune
of waking from
the deadened sleep of adulthood
and
tripping through some portal,we stumble without veiled vision
into the realm of childhood,able once again to
see things with the same magick
that came so easily before
we became numb from hungering only for
the songs of experience
[tempered without innocence - all they can do is leave us jaded]

But again,
now/here
we are
and given respite for awhile
[perhaps after having been driven there by some dark and tremulous storm]
we cast our eyes
into that silvery liquid pool
of memory
chancing to reflect upon our journey
and drawing strength from our own myths.

and so…here it was I recently found myself
considering the tomes of my youth
and offer up to you
like Lewis’ soundless wardrobe
a wondering path home




I considered Bastian’s journey.
Remember that quiet, bright boy?whose childhood crime was one of
wishing for wisdom:
he preferred to spend his days whiling his way
through ancient novels
rather than pursue the rowdy, barbaric bruises of youth
and suffered for it, by bearing the endless torment of bullies.



and then he fell into the Neverending Story…

whose leaves of pages called him to
the mountains and trees
of Fantasia
Causing him, in desperate act, to steal away
and read with shallow breaths the
Hero’s Journey of Atreyu

and with that boy warrior of the Plains people we
confronted
[perhaps for the first time, many of us]
the despondency of despair

oh shed even now a tear, for Artax,
whose spirit gave up
in that dark and murky swamp
only then, remember, was it
that he sunk
[all his hope was lost]
and he died

and still, the Hero journeyed on
though weary
he bore the mark of the Auryn
[it’s labyrinthine significant of the quest]
and understood the sacred call of duty
[he knew any personal sacrifice he must bear was for the good of us all]

again, Great Wisdom
for it is true
we know for certain now:
- we are all interconnected -
and whatever breaks my heart
like ripples

affect

and breaks the heart of Hope and Love



and this is why we journey on
[it is our sacred duty]
Toward wholeness in ourselves,
We heal the Heart of the world.



But still, Fantasia, was doomed
And being consumed by The Nothing,
Atreyu must journey on…

through many hardships and much suffering
unwittingly, he was pursued
all the way by the Servant of Darkness
that would snatch the life breath from him should he stop



he traveled all the way to face his fears
[and through the riddle of the Sphinx]
On his way to the Oracle
he made his way past the questions
we don’t even know need asked

and then, having reached the end
of whatever path he knew he must take,
he reached also
the end of himself
and the Nothing raged on
[vapid dark star of apathy and despair]
devouring Fantasia
[the dream world of all human beings]
eating away at all the goals
and hope for progress of humanity

and it is there at the edge of the precipice
that Atreyu faces the ultimate test:
even after slaying – with warrior skill— the Gmork that sought to destroy him
[overcoming all that would stop him]
he reaches the point where all that is left for him to do is
-to give up-

Surrender

-let go-
Again, the ultimate test



There is nothing more he can do
But acknowledge
His fate resides within the strength of Another



And Dear Reader,
do know
it’s not a place of weakness to admit:
to discover this selfsame truth in the realm of your own journey -
- it is always what seems contrary to rational thought
that reaps real wisdom
and
All Spiritual Truth

Enter Bastian:
the small boy who
has made a lifetime at his young age of
thinking he, insignificant,
reveling in the bold, brave acts of others.

[so too we/here can seem at times so incapable of any good
we could ever hope to achieve]

and the revelation dawns
even as he is reading…
…that he cannot separate himself from the story
even as the life of Atreyu [the warrior]
And the Princess [lifeblood of Fantasia]
Hang in the balance, so too
Does Bastian’s World
[because Fantasia is the dream world of humans, and because thoughts and dreams by their very nature have no boundaries]
so too,
and it is true,
neither does Fantasia,

but the reality is
– and soon we each learn in our own ways –
that the Nothing is real
and exists to snuff out the boundless worlds within us
should we, either for disbelief
or lack of desire for trying any longer
give up and give in to the darkness that would consume us

and in his awareness, so too
Bastian is pushed to the edge
beyond the limitations of skepticism
he is called to leave the rational boundaries of thought behind
to enter the Dream World
[that is indeed, undone]
and in that that moment, the supreme irony resounds
trading innocence for experience
yet wanting Goodness and Light to reign
the child confronts his own dark self
and learns to move toward maturity
in a world shaped by the power of his dreams and wishes
[which as we know is the ever unmarred, unfailing strength of childhood]

only he can give the Princess her new name all it requires is that he
- believe -
regardless of how it seems that
all is lost
[Fantasia was reduced after all to a single seed, that golden grain of sand]





[and please, Brave Heart, take note:]
It is never too late
to begin the world over again.




Again, all we have is now/here

Selah.
Or in other words:
Let it be.

- zenjen -