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THROUGH THE BARBED WIRE UNTO THE TREE OF LIFE

Jacob — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 16:51:46 GMT

JUNG'S CONCEPT OF THE DAIMON IN THE HASSIDIC TALE "HOVERING ABOVE THE PIT" The man, therefore, who, driven by his daimon, steps beyond the limits of the intermediary stage, truly enters the “untrodden, untreadable regions,” where there are no charted ways and no shelter spreads a protecting roof over his head. C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung, 1963) Everything in the world including ourselves…is essentially a shattered vessel, splintered into many pieces. The work…is to join the shattered pieces of the whole back together, so that the unique sparks of light and truth may shine forth from each part. Estelle Frankel, Sacred Therapy (Frankel, 2003) PRELUDE According to Jewish myth and legend, the divine matrix from which all existence emanates is a tree with ten spheres located at the center of the Garden of Eden. This Tree of Life myth intimates that at the very heart of existence, there is a divine template which carries the cosmic code for life on earth, as well as the keys to healing and transformation. In the Jewish mystical tradition, this code is the Kabbalah, or “that which is received” from on high through a chain of tradition going back thousands of years, and the Tree of Life is its “face.” But what if, just as the Jewish revelation is premised upon the idea that God intervened in human history and made a covenant with a holy people as the scroll of history unfolded, evil intervened and placed barbed wire around the Tree of Life, circumscribed the holy with a zone of evil, an infernal realm where the ash of souls burned into a sky denuded of divinity? What if that laceration reverberates unto our day, scarring the soul and placing a confounding maze where once a harmonious labyrinth, a mandala with clear pathways existed? Then one who still seeks entry to the holy Tree of Life in our time could be regarded as one who had to go through the barbed wire, entering the black smoke of time and hell, and only then able to face toward the numinous or holy. UNTO THE NUMINOUS In a letter written in August of 1945, Carl Jung wrote: “The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology” (Corbett, 1996, p. 13). In my own life, this call of the numinous, manifesting as a relentless search for the code of the Kabbalah, has predominated. From my teenage years, something has driven me to search for the keys to the numinous, the realm of the sacred as embodied in the Tree of Life, while simultaneously making me acutely aware of the veil of suffering that encircles our world. Was this the daimon, the inner voice calling? I cannot say for sure; I only know that the call has been deep and abiding. Jung, whose own life was guided by potent inner promptings which he ascribed to a daimon or tutelary spirit, wrote about the effects of living with such a presence in ones life: “There is now an authentic secret in his life which cannot be discussed – if only because he is involved in an endless inner trial in which he is his own counsel and ruthless examiner, and no secular or spiritual judge can restore his easy sleep” (Jung, 1963, p. 345). Like Jung being driven to ceaselessly explore the mandala, another image of wholeness and of the integration of divinity and the mundane, without fully understanding why, I was “called” to study the kabbalistic tree of life like a talisman, some sort of “cosmic code” that promised to heal the pain and illuminate the enigmas of my existence. In hypnogogic states between dream and waking, I heard the chants of the Jewish mystics, my ancestors, who braved the ascent up the Tree of Life, while in real-time, I traveled to Jerusalem with seven dollars in my pocket and prayed before the Wailing Wall. I envisioned that my own ascent up the Tree of Life to the highest sphere of mystical illumination would mute my increasing sensitivity to the suffering in the world. The kabbalistic spiritual practices I learned under various teachers did grant me access to the Kabbalah, yet they also amplified my sensitivity to the whole spectrum of life – especially suffering. Thus, with an equal vehemence, another image also called me, ineluctably – the gates leading to Auschwitz. Paralleling my mystical ascent, I found myself bearing witness to the Holocaust. I can remember at sixteen reading Elie Wiesel’s searing short novel, Night. Like my father’s family who were also from Hungary, Wiesel saw his elders go up in smoke. For a decade afterwards, his faith virtually shattered, he barely spoke; when he finally did, Wiesel bore eloquent witness to the evil he had seen as a teenage boy who had loved the mysteries of the Kabbalah and the stories of his people. Driven by my daimon to hold the tension between the heaven and hell of the Jewish experience, I stood between these twin poles of my soul; the luminous realm of the Kabbalah with its ten strata of myself journeying, and the gates of Auschwitz. As I entered my thirties, my sense of the suffering manifest in the world, both in my expanded studies of the trace of genocide in our century, as well as witnessing the daily suffering in friends and family, overrode the blessings of the Tree of Life. Although I faithfully continued my mystical studies, the savor had gone out of the experience in the face of the unremitting sorrow I saw around me and in the trail of blood in human history. HEALING POWER OF STORY The carriers of Kabbalah, the inner code of the Jewish soul, were the great Hassidic rebbes. It was these souls who were consigned to the flames with an especial vigor by the Nazis. For a long time after the holocaust, it was believed that the Jewish mystics’ access to the numinous had been eclipsed by the hellish flames of the holocaust; as if the tender spark of the Jewish soul could not abide the infernal incursion. Throughout my thirties, as I contemplated the barbed wire encircling the Tree of Life, I continually asked, “What of the sacred survived?” What survives, always, is the tale. The Storyteller is he who can stand amidst the flames and reconnect to the sacred through the telling of their tales. My first intimation of the way through the barbed water back to the Tree of Life came when I found a book entitled, Hassidic Tales of the Holocaust. In Yaffa Eliach’s Hassidic Tales of the Holocaust, she writes: During the Holocaust, when European Jews were systematically destroyed and the cultural achievements of western civilization were fragmented, Hasidism continued to create its magnificent tales in ghettos, hiding places, and camps. Despite the unprecedented scope of the mechanized destruction of human lives, Hasidism did not lose its values, its belief in humanity. In fact, it seems that the very nature of the Hasidic tale made it a most appropriate literary form through which to come to terms with the Holocaust and its aftermath (Eliach, 1983, p. 17). Eliach goes on to say that the Hasidic tales often centered on the mystical, almost mythological power of the zaddik or righteous person (Eliach, 1983, p.20). For me, this zaddik, bearing the tradition of his ancestors, his connection to the holy Kabbalah, yet facing evil directly, represented a way through the barbed wire unto the numinous. Eliach, herself a Holocaust survivor and a practicing mystic, writes eloquently of the potency of the Hassidic tale and its salvic nature: The optimistic power vested in the Hasidic tale defies the burning furnaces and glowing chimneys of the concentration-camp universe… At a time when human beings were stripped naked of everything, even of their names, the only resource remaining to them was their inner spiritual strength. This was the very essence of their existence, and it is this that the tales record (Eliach, 1983, p. 24). HOVERING ABOVE THE PIT One particular tale that can be fruitfully looked at from a Jungian perspective is a tale called “Hovering Above the Pit.” A full version of the tale can be found in the appendix to this essay. To summarize: This true tale is set in the Janowaska road camp, situated near the cemeteries and sand mountains outside the city of Lvov, in the Ukraine. There Rabbi Israel Spira and a “free-thinking” friend are summoned in the middle of the night, along with thousands of other “living skeletons,” and forced to jump over two huge pits that have been expressly dug for them. The story points out the impossible cruelty of the challenge, as countless victims descend into the pit, there to be shot by the S.S. and Ukraine guards. At the very edge of the pit, with only his faith to sustain him, Rabbi Spira prays to his ancestors. In a vision, he beholds the prayer shawl of his father, joined to the prayer shawl of his grandfather – a numinous image of connection to ancestors, faith and holiness. Rabbi Spira and his companion miraculously arrive on the other side of the pit. His friend is more than astonished – his survival seems to testify to the watchfulness of God. The Rabbi reveals that his connection to his “ancestral merit” is what pulled him across, while his friend simply states that holding on to the Rabbi, in other words, their unlikely connection and friendship, is what allowed him to leap the pits into life. Before briefly considering this tale through the twin lenses of the daimon and the numinous, I must state clearly that I do not believe the tales from the Holocaust are mere symbols to be applied to ones life; however, their fiery intensity can illumine the darkness in our own experiences. Thus, this tale of the resurrection of faith and friendship beyond the pit speaks to my soul. In it, I find elements that are central to Jungian theory: The inner voice of faith that guides Rabbi Spira even in the center of hell is the voice of the daimon that can guides us through life, even, perhaps especially, in times of darkness; the prayer shawl that beckons to him across the abyss is an image of the numinous, a sort of mandala of Jewish faith and continuity. The image of the pit is particularly potent and resonant. In my own experience, midlife was a sort of pit in which seemingly all my hopes and dreams, especially my mystical aspirations seemed eclipsed by my overwhelming sense of suffering – in myself, and in the world. Jungian analyst James Hollis, in his book, The Middle Passage, writes: “Awakening to the Middle Passage occurs when one is radically stunned into consciousness” (Hollis, 1993, p. 18). Like the bodies descending into the pit at whose edge Rabbi Spira and his friend stood, the lives that I had imagined for my future were all sacrificed in the crucible of midlife. Like the falling bodies, I felt hopeless and helpless – and yet, even during this painful passage, something, the daimon perhaps, whispered to me of meaning and purpose. Paradoxically, I found that it was when I felt weakest and most lost, that I also felt closest to this inner voice or calling. There was something about the utter vulnerability of this state that, if accepted, surrendered to, seemed to invite a sense of the numinous, just as Spira and his friend hovered over the pit. At the mouth of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. Jung understood well that the voice of the daimon will follow us even in the darkness: “Vocation, or the feeling of it, is not, however, the prerogative of great personalities; it is also appropriate to the small ones” (Jung, 1963, p. 199). In my own experience, it was this sense of being humbled, my voice crushed by the waves of disillusionment conferred by the midlife passage that perhaps allowed the numinous to begin to enter my life again. Again, Hollis: “Thus, apart from shock, confusion, even panic, the fundamental result of the Middle Passage is to be humbled. With Job we sit atop the dung heap, bereft of illusion, and wonder where it all went wrong” (Hollis, 1993, p. 41). Rabbi Spira in the tale was near physical death, but his spirit was strong, luminous even. It gave him the strength to jump over the pit, the abyss, and back into life, called by the numinous image of the prayer shawl. In my own case, the equation was reversed; in excellent health physically, my spirit felt parched and weak. Yet an inner voice, a still, small voice, never ceased to believe that beyond the pit, healing and even the return of the sacred awaited. This passage through midlife, which seemed to go on for a decade-long dark night of the soul, became emblematic of the core mystery in my life – the journey through the barbed wire of suffering and meaninglessness unto the Tree of Life. The tale, “Hovering Over the Pit” accompanied me through the dark night, a gift from my ancestors, reminding me that new life can emerge from intense suffering. At the edge of the abyss, a voice calls, beckoning with healing images of the numinous, beyond the temporal travail of midlife, unto the timeless realm of the numinous, where shines the Tree of Life. Looking closer at its ten spheres, gaining access again, I behold aspects of my ancient face. APPENDIX: "HOVERING ABOVE THE PIT" It was a dark, cold night in the Janowska Road Camp. Suddenly, a stentorian shout pierced the air: “You are all to evacuate the barracks immediately and report to the vacant lot. Anyone remaining inside will be shot on the spot!” Pandemonium broke out in the barracks. People pushed their way to the doors while screaming the names of friends and relatives. In a panic-stricken stampede, the prisoners ran in the direction of the big open field. Exhausted, trying to catch their breath, they reached the field. In the middle were two huge pits. Suddenly, with their last drop of energy, the inmates realized where they were rushing, on that cursed dark night in Janowska. Once more, the cold, healthy voice roared in the night: “Each of you dogs who values his miserable life and wants to cling to it must jump over one of the pits and land on the other side. Those who miss will get what they rightfully deserve – ra-ra-ta-ta-ta.” Imitating the sound of a machine gun, the voice trailed off into the night followed by a wild, coarse laughter. It was clear to the inmates that they would all end up in the pits. Even at the best of times it would have been impossible to jump over them, all the more so on that cold dark night in Janowska. The prisoners standing at the edge of the pits were skeletons, feverish from disease and starvation, exhausted from slave labor and sleepless nights. Though the challenge that had been given them was a matter of life and death, they knew that for the S.S. and the Ukrainian guards it was merely another devilish game. Among the thousands of Jews on that field in Janowska was the Rabbi of Bluzhov, Rabbi Israel Spira. He was standing with a friend, a freethinker from a large Polish town whom the rabbi had met in the camp. A deep friendship had developed between the two. “Spira, all of our efforts to jump over the pits are in vain. We only entertain the Germans and their collaborators, the Askaris. Let’s sit down in the pits and wait for the bullets to end our wretched existence,” said the friend to the rabbi. “My friend,” said the rabbi, as they were walking in the direction of the pits, “man must obey the will of God. If it was decreed from heaven that pits be dug and we be commanded to jump, pits will be dug and jump we must. And if, God forbid, we fail and fall into the pits, we will reach the World of Truth a second later, after our attempt. So, my friend, we must jump.” The rabbi and his friend were nearing the edge of the pits; the pits were rapidly filling up with bodies. The rabbi glanced down at his feet, the swollen feet of a fifty-three-year-old Jew ridden with starvation and disease. He looked as his young friend, a skeleton with burning eyes. As they reached the pit, the rabbi closed his eyes and commanded in a powerful whisper, “We are jumping!” As he stood there, Rabbi Spira beheld with his inner eye, the prayer shawl of his father. Time seemed to stop, as he saw the prayer shawl unfold to reveal the prayer shawl of his grandfather and then his great-grandfather. He felt himself filled with strength and a flood of joy coursed through him. When they opened their eyes, they found themselves standing on the other side of the pit. “Spira, we are here, we are here, we are alive!” the friend repeated over and over again, while warm tears streamed from his eyes. “Spira, for your sake, I am alive; indeed, there must be a God in heaven. Tell me, Rebbe, how did you do it?” “I was holding on to my ancestral merit. I was holding on to the coattails of my father, and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, of blessed memory,” said the rabbi and his eyes searched the black skies above. “Tell me, my friend, how did you reach the other side of the pit?” “I was holding on to you,” replied the rabbi’s friend. Adapted by Jacob Shefa, from Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, by Yaffa Eliach

FRAGMENT FROM A LOST SCROLL

Jacob — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 21:33:15 GMT

Heir of lunatic poet-Kabbalists, exiles even unto their own tribe, he had lived to ride the Chariot Divine, to ignite the jewels of the Holy One; to set in motion the code that would add to the evolution of God on this Earth. Accepted the gift and curse of divine partnership, lonely for two-way discourse between the Throne of Glory and our stone/tone on Earth. A driven, desperate man, he had moved to a calling that he could not resist, even though its disclosure was veiled. Two decades – two decades! – driven by code, driven to find The Word, the sound of his own name, driven through Paris, London, Israel, across California, Colorado, New Mexico, Boston, Idaho, never at rest, finding some semblance of what propelled him in a line of text (mirror), but never quite right, because the word outside can never match the word within (though it can nourish the famished). What was the nature of this call that could drag his body around the Earth, in pursuit of something he could not even name? How had it assembled itself, earthly reflection of a stone from the Throne or line to the divine? How had it diffused itself into a certain code of words in a text, a line of music? Was it the human task to circle the Earth, mobile temple aflame, gather unto oneself these emissaries of the primordial unity, to heal them before the thirsty eyes of the traveler, come into a moment of true feeling, mix them in the electro-chamber of the grail cup mind, resonate, amplify, and send back heavenword, the transfigured treasure? A God, playing hide and seek, Itself a lonely entity? A human upon the sands of time, mostly lost, despairing, in exile, then the flame within meets the descending flame. If only we could amplify and resonate those few moments, sunlight upon shards of stained glass! What haunted him now, over three decades later, was a single question: Was there accompaniment? A watcher, guardian, even some keeper-tutelary spirit as he stumbled through the decorated cake of Europe, crawled towards the sand-gates to Jerusalem? How could it be possible that he was alone on the stones of Earth? Cast out, with a few sacred shard-images the only compass? To imagine that was to cosmologize a God with a cruel edge. But then, if you discussed these things with a fellow Jew, as he often did, slaving over washing some huge soup tureen in the kibbutz, they were all too ready to hold up Auschwiz, Dachau, Birkenau, as evidence of God’s descent into fucked-upness. But really, no one knew – well, with the exception of the truly illumined, who hid themselves so well in plain light – and the mad. He had been neither of those; he had used a holy letter, a line of text, the revelation-doorway revealed in a moment of stillness, to propel himself through the mud, clamor over stones, crawl through sand. Now, perhaps too late, he knew that the fire of youth, that savage, selfish steel energy, was grant, was gift. Of course, now it was so clear to him. It was graced, on account, like seeds. Whoever, whatever, had pumped up body and mind through his twenties and thirties, had conferred the flame so that he might build something, construct a vessel, a spaceship even, into which he could settle, in his forties. Instead, like some maniac cartoon character, he had burned the gift daily, idiot self immolation which neither illuminated nor flowered to ash, only looking back as supplies dwindled, and even then failing to consider the source and what such wastage might mean to it. This is why men at midlife pray for redemption, not knowing what redemption might mean. Some sort of stunning cleansing that confers clean-slate status on those who have failed to use the model according to the spec sheets of its imminent Designer.

THE TAO OF OZZIE AND HARRIET

Jacob — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:16:04 GMT

“The wise had subtle wisdom And depth of understanding Too profound To be understood.” Lao Tse, 517 B.C., China “Harriet? I’m going down To the malt shop To see what Rick and Dave Are up to.” Ozzie Nelson, 1957 A.D., America Taoism is all the rage. Books applying its principles to such diverse realms as physics, salesmanship and mystical lovemaking proliferate faster than a Viagra giveaway at an AARP convention. The recent tomes, Tao of Bowling; Tao of Malls; and the unforgettably cryptic Tao of Laundromat Sitting proved that the Tao’s principles are totally adaptable to modern spiritual seekers (or your yen back). Years ago, Winnie the Pooh came out of the Taoist closet, so to speak. It wasn’t long before Ronald Reagan snickered: “That’s Tao it is,” when asked about the national debt. National Public Radio gives hourly updates on the level of Tao present on the planet. All of the above were but stepping stones unto the supreme Taoist revelation: The retroactive unveiling of Ozzie Nelson as the greatest Taoist saint in American history, one whose spiritual stature rivaled Taoism’s founder, Lao Tse (or “Ol’ Bean Curd Breath,” as Mr. Nelson referred to his ancient mentor offstage). Like his B.C. (Before Cable) Taoist brethren, Oz’s Way was subtle, almost inscrutable. Always attired in a matching sweater and slacks that would put any self-respecting golfer to shame, The Great Oz spouted an unending font of gentle Taoist parables illuminating the joys and follies of urban American existence at mid-century. “Through doing nothing, all is done,” said Lao Tse’s comical successor, Chuang Tse who some consider to be the world’s first Oriental Borscht Belt comedian. Oz elevates Doing Nothing to an art and a science, tantalizing viewers for many a season with the highly advanced mystical enigma: What in the heck does Ozzie Nelson do for a living? That is just it: Oz does nothing. Yet through Oz, it is the Tao itself that does all. When one is joined to Tao, the abundance of the universe is close at hand. The popular Tao of Physics and Dancing Wu Lei Masters revealed the great Taoist-quantum truth that nothing may really be everything. But that nothing is nothing at all compared to the vast, epic nothingness which Ozzie radiates so effortlessly. From his humble, suburban tract-home, unto his American Taoist Headquarters (The Malt Shop), Ozzie Nelson traversed galaxies in the mental and spiritual realms without others ever realizing it. Often, his humble self did not even guess the width and breadth of his esoteric acumen. It has been claimed that the early Taoists could transmit the essence of their entire teaching with a single arch of the eyebrow, so concentrated upon Tao were they. Master Nelson continues this revered tradition, elevating and transmuting it to a style more befitting American Taoism. In one of his wonderfully concise, potent snickers, Oz conveys volumes of esoteric information for those who have become awakened through the practice of T.V. Channeling. Like many a great sage, Oz was blessed with a family who surrendered to the fact that he needed lots of seemingly idle time in order to maintain his spiritual connections. In short, work was out of the question. Their support is all the more poignant, given the fact that they hadn’t the slightest clue that Ozzie’s spiritual commitments exceeded beyond an occasional church social dance. Paradox? Well, Tao is like that, especially when dealing with a sage of Oz’s caliber. In speaking of his family, we refer, naturally, to the Great Gal of Tao, Harriet Nelson, and those cute Yin/Yang Boys, Dave and the Irrepressible Ricky. The apparent everydayness of the Nelson Dynasty is but an occult mask, a la 1950’s Americana, behind which pulsates a thunderous rebirth of Tao on Yankee soil! If I Love Lucy’s Fred Mertz penetrated the Seven Levels of Boredom, Ozzie Nelson in some ways surpasses even the Mighty Mertz, for Oz perceives no difference between the banal and the sublime. All is one, all is Tao; from Harriet’s scrumptious apple pies, to the allusive repartee he engages in with his friend, Thorny. Offstage, witnessing the shenanigans of his brood, Oz was often heard to mutter, “That’s Tao it is,” but few could divine the metaphysical depths behind his proclamations. There is a secret T.V. Channeling technique for becoming attuned to the potent Taoist vibrations emanating from reruns of Ozzie and Harriet. Occult scientific textbooks tell us that the electrical field of energy, or “aura” surrounding the human body, can best be perceived by looking out of the corner of the eyes whilst pretending to be uninterested, a perfect spiritual practice for couch potatoes, as well. As we sit before tube and open ourselves to Oz and Tao, employing this truly swell esoteric method, we begin to attune to all sorts of curious occult phenomena. Is that a gigantic Chinese dragon, next to Ozzie Nelson, where just a moment before we thought we saw only a golf cart? Daring to try again, we are now startled by a vision of the ethereal form of Lao Tse, Ol’ Bean Curd Breath himself, where once we saw only Ozzie’s golf caddy. Gradually, as our T.V. Channeling powers awaken, we come to accept the mystic truth; these profusion of forms are but the higher entities drawn down to our lowly realms by the spiritual majesty that radiates from Ozzie Nelson. Glimpsing, denying, then finally surrendering to reality, the Ozian Snicker takes on new dimensions. Tao begins to vibrate within. Once we come upon The Way of the Malt-Shop Sitter, our lives are forever transformed. We are now the grateful beneficiaries of an unending sequence of Tele-Visions, in which East meets West and Nothing becomes Something Else entirely. Here are three, to get you started: An ancient mystic proclaimed: “My burden is light.” Taoist Master Oz, returning home one fine Sunday is met by Dave and Rick who offer to take the burden of Dad’s golf clubs from him. “No, boys; it’s really quite light,” Oz says, simply. Another: Sitting contentedly at the dinner table, surrounded by his beloved brood and the boy’s rotound friend, Wally (a Taoist of the Chuang Tse stamp; how else explain his resounding, sage-like laugh, his absolute refusal to take life seriously?), munching on Harriet’s fabled apple pie, Oz says mysteriously: “Now this really is something!” And, finally: En route to The Malt Shop, secretly the center of the rebirth of Taoism for all western civilization, Oz encounters his pal Thorny, that nervous, East-coast man whose ceaseless banter is so alien to the gentle flow of Tao. “Where ya headed, Oz?” Thorny bellows, with his usual dumb bravado. “Nowhwere!” beams The Malt Shop Sage, continuing serenely on his Way, beckoning to all who are ready to follow the Tao of Ozzie and Harriet.

SIT-COM SPIRITUALITY: TU-BE OR NOT TU-BE

Jacob — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:03:58 GMT

The Answer's in the Reruns! A Spiritual Practice that’s Sweeping the Nation (Or at least a street or two in the Nation!) A man sits in a darkened room, slouched as if in a semi-trance, a malted libation beside him. Pointing a mysterious oblong box in the direction of a huge rectangular structure from which flows an ever-moving fresco of sacred images, the man seems to enter into ever deeper and more profound states of trance. He presses a button on the black box. The images change. To the unenlightened observer, to those not in the know, we see a man drinking bear, munching on pork rinds, and watching the ‘boob tube’; however, to those millions – O.K., maybe it’s only ten or eleven – who have joined the ranks, this man is practicing the new spiritual practice favored by baby boomers across the nation: T.V. Channeling, the central practice of Sit-Com Spirituality. T.V. Channeling is the new art, science (and income tax write-off) that enables us to divine the hidden spiritual/new-age message in our favorite sit-coms. Some of the most bold T.V. Channelers in the nation (I speak here of the buff Biff Elohim, and the Madonna of the Antennae, Meshugenanda Schwartz) are proclaiming no less than a half-century of highly practical spiritual content had been encrypted into our favorite sit-coms, and that T.V. Channeling initiates are unlocking this content, having better sex lives (or at least having a sex life), becoming radiantly beautiful (or at least they think so), are enjoying both abundance and unlimited spirituality, and are able to understand Ancient-Egyptian-Kabbalah-Zen- Buddhism-Feng Shui-Abundance-Meditation-Nirvana-Sort-Of-Stuff (or your money back) while never getting up from the couch. The movement began amongst a few reefer smoking beatniks in the late fifties and early sixties who, going way against the Eisenhowerian tides of the times, were able to espy the Bodhissatva in Fred Merz, the Kabbalist in Beaver Cleaver, the Hindu Goddess in June Anderson and the Yogic genius of Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor; the movement began to silently catch fire in the iconoclastic mid-sixties and into the seventies, when you could say the whole culture was castaway on Gilligan’s Island, or becoming a Beverly Hillbilly; the movement went underground in the mid-seventies and throughout the eighties, only to roar into prominence in the nineties, as spirituality became de rigeur for every other baby boomer, many of whom had spent their youth gazing at Beaver, Lucy and Ralph Kramden, little realizing that they were being prepared, their consciousness seeded, to become the Couch Potato Masters of T.V. Channeling you see around you in your local Televisionary franchises. Amazingly, what was once the exclusive domain of austere initiates fasting in Himalayan caves, is now the property of simple folks like you and me. Armed with a pack of pork rinds, some good brewsky, a large-screen T.V.. a remote, and a strong cable connection, we are able to enter hithero uncharted T.V. Channeling Meditations. With T.V. Channeling, the couch or easy chair is our ticket to universal consciousness. Through T.V. Channeling and Sit-Com Spirituality, the essential question of human life – "tu-be or not tu-be" –is now confounded by even greater universal mysteries: Was I Love Lucy’s Fred Mertz secretly a Buddhist saint? Did Father Knows Best’s Margaret Andersen moonlight as a Hindu Temple Dancer? What was the mystical connection between Ralph Honeymooner Kramden and the medieval alchemists? Last, but not least: Can we really just Leave it to Beaver and…The Kabbalah? The answer’s in the reruns. T.V. Channeling, the New-Age science of mystically ‘tuning in’ to unedited episodes of early sit coms which still reverberate as signals in Earth’s atmosphere ushers you into the mysteries! In this extraordinary practice, stars of the primordial fifties and sixties sit-coms are experienced as living entities! That’s right: Your inner Lucy Ricardo or very own Ozzy Nelson inner entity is as near as the remote control! New-Age boomers, many of whom were virtually weaned on the sit-coms are now able to sit-calm, merging advanced couch potato activity with a complete spiritual practice. Not surprisingly, millions have reported the attainment of advanced states of Inner Swellness, and millions more, radiating an almost unearthly serenity, speak of achieving new levels of bitchin-ness. Television channeling centers are now forming across the nation. “Televisionaries” flock there by the hundreds of thousands daily, paying tribute to their favorite entity – Mertz, Cleaver, Clampett and Kramden, to name just a few. A cult is even rumored to be gathering around worship of Mr. Ed, the talking horse. At least four televisionary doctoral thesis are currently being written, with more on the way. The Beaver Cleaver Cantata is enjoying a huge success in symphonies across the land. The T.V. Channeling movement has even begun to spread to Europe, where, in Bayreuth Germany, the annual Wagner Festival shows reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies to warm the crowd up for The Ring of the Niebelung Cycle. Plans are underfoot to update the opera to include the Clampetts. For millions of Americans, sitting-calm has become a daily devotion. With T.V. Channeling now making its run for Number One on the Top 100 American Spiritual Practices, many believe we are entering the end of history, prophesied in The Cleveland Talmud: “In the final age, all will sit-com.” How can you join this revolutionary movement? It's simple (and very perky): To begin to experience the full influx of televisionary energies today, simply grab some beer nuts or pork rinds, pop open a brewksy – and tune in! That's all you need (dude). As sit-com sage Biff Elohim writes: "The answer’s in the reruns."

THE ANOINTED - A KABBALISTIC NOVEL

Jacob — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:39:56 GMT

Elderhood and Mentorship In Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’s Kabbalistic Novel "All the experience gained over many lives had prepared him for this day. It was for this he had come into being. With this declaration, the shimmery presence departed. He was left alone to watch out his last hours on earth before beholding the Divine.” Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, The Anointed What are the qualities of an authentic elder? What does it mean to be truly “generative” in old age, even unto planting human development seeds for future generations? How can the manner in which one faces death, even destruction at the infernal hands of the Spanish Inquisition, transform torture into life-changing mentoring moments that quicken the evolution in all those witnessing the crucifixion of a spiritual master? In The Anointed, written by contemporary kabbalistic master, Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, and set in the Spanish countryside at the dawn of the Inquisition, Don Immanuel is a kabbalistic teacher whose universal understanding of spirituality enables him to reach the souls of Jews, Christians and Moslems thirsty for God. Entering the autumn of his life, Don Immanuel beautifully illustrates Erik Erikson’s developmental stage of “generativity”: “It is therefore the responsibility of adults to bear, nurture, and guide those people who will succeed them as adults, as well as to develop and maintain those societal institutions and natural resources without which successive generations will not be able to survive” (1986, Erikson & Erikson & Kivnick, 1986, p. 73-74). Don Immanuel is a guide and nurturer of souls who come under his spiritual mentorship; the “institution” he seeks to preserve is the Kabbalah, the heart of Jewish mysticism, and the “natural resource” he gives is the spiritual essence, the shefa, or blessing, a living substance that can only be imparted by one who is joined to God, the Source. Don Immanuel’s embodiment of the calling of generativity is both his blessing and his curse; providing him with an urgent spiritual message that he artfully passes to his young disciples, while evoking the wrath of the Grand Inquisitor who regards the kabbalistic master’s universal spirituality as a mortal threat to the exclusive control of Christianity. Facing the threat of crucifixion at the hands of the Grand Inquisitor, Don Immanuel faces the highest moral choice, one that is central to elderhood and mentorship – to cleave to his core principles and keep his integrity, or to save his life by renouncing the spiritual truths which give his and his disciples’ lives meaning and purpose. By the end of The Anointed, Don Immanuel is in his fifties – an “old man” for the times in which he lived. More important, he has fulfilled his purpose, arriving at what Erik and Joan Erikson considered the completion of the life cycle – wisdom (Erickson & Erickson, 1997, p. 5). As Carl Jung Wrote in Memories, Dreams, Reflections: “The archetype of the old man who has seen enough is eternally true” (Jung, 1973, p. 359). Don Immanuel, having fulfilled his spiritual mission, enters the heavenly academy at one with his life/his death. Having traveled the range and depth of the kabbalistic tree of life at the center of all existence, served as the spiritual “pole” or “axis” of his age, although tortured in the flesh, Don Immanuel ascends into death with the name of God on his burning lips. Beyond life, beyond death, the luminous figure of the elder spiritual mentor endures, generating seeds of spiritual integrity through the ages.

MY DICK (LITTLE DICK VERSION)

Jacob — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 21:35:51 GMT

DIVINE INVASIONS OF THE TRICKSTER In the Life and Work of Science Fiction Visionary, Philip K. Dick “I've always had this funny feeling about reality. It just seems very feeble to me sometimes. It doesn't seem to have the substantiality that it's supposed to have.” Philip K. Dick on Philosophy: A Brief Interview 1980. During a Trickster class meeting at Pacifica Graduate Institute on June 3, 2006, Dr. Allan Koehn and his students discussed some of their findings on the core traits of The Trickster archetype. Interestingly, much of the list that was generated that day could have also served as an uncannily accurate description of the shape-shifting fiction of Philip K. Dick: “Adaptive, ambivalent, crossroads, destroyer, divine, fool, fragmented, iconoclast, jokester, messenger, savior, shadowy, shapeshifter, transgressor of borders, unconscious and unpredictable”– these are also the traits of such reality-bending novels as The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Scanner Darkly, and The Valis Trilogy. Throughout his thirty years of writing novels – from the mid-fifties through the early eighties when he died of a stroke at age 53 – Dick wove spellbinding visions of the irrational streak which he believed, echoing an ancient Gnostic belief, pervaded the universe, daily affairs, and the mind of human beings. It would be no exaggeration to say that Dick’s entire oeuvre is a sort of Trickster Testament, in which the traditional backdrop of science fiction – space colonies, telepathy, aliens, strange Gods – are mere props for his lifelong, relentless metaphysical investigation of two fundamental questions: 1) What is the nature of reality, and 2) What is Human? Not surprisingly, for Dick, the “answer” was as easy to pin down as Mercury – or is that Hermes? In the Spring 1991 Trickster issue of Gnosis Magazine, Richard Smoley wrote: “So it’s the function of the Trickster – whether he takes the form of a teacher, a friend or acquaintance, or the simple psychopathology of everyday life – to point out the lies we tell ourselves, and to nudge us, sometimes gently, sometimes roughly, into self-awareness – a lifetime’s work, if we choose to take it on.” Through more than forty books – sometimes writing as many as six novels in a year, novels now regarded as masterpieces, and for which he was usually paid less than two thousand dollars – Dick created wildly imaginative sci-fi scenarios in which the form and substance of reality and the nature of human proved equally illusive (and allusive – for Dick was a highly learned man who brought such diverse subjects as Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Goethe, Arthurian Literature, Kant, Hume, Plato and Ancient Egyptian theology into his spacey universes). Dick’s slippery “realities” depicted ordinary Joes waking up inside alternative universes where the United States and its allies lost World War II; where entire civilizations were part of the hallucination of one man; where an undercover narcotics officer is in relentless pursuit of…himself. In his later works, he sometimes questioned, if the creator God Himself might be insane. Again, although set in a skewed modern setting, this haunted belief about an irrational streak within the Divine has its most prominent expression in ancient Gnosticism. In Kay Redfield Jamison’s masterful memoir of her struggles with manic-depressive illness, An Unquiet Mind (1995), she mentions the attitude of a compassionate colleague toward her affliction: “He was kind enough to call creative that which some, no doubt, would have called psychotic. It was my first lesson in appreciating the complicated, permeable boundaries between bizarre and original thought.” Such an appreciation for the jewels of revelation that are sometimes found in the borderlands between “sanity and madness” is a good touchstone for appreciating the relation between Dick’s work and its relation to The Trickster, especially when one considers Dick’s amazing experience in March of 1974, or “3-4-74,” as Dick referred to it. Having spent decades conjuring tales to illustrate his explorations of his two fundamental questions – What is reality, and What is human? – Philip K. Dick had a mystical experience that he spent the rest of his life trying to figure out. What gives this final quest a particular Trickster twist is that Dick refused to come to a definitive conclusion as to what “really” happened? Instead, unto his last days on earth, he juggled theological hypothesis with a sort of mercurial mania. His final novels, Radio Free Albemuth, Valis, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, as well as an 8,000 page (yes; that’s 8,000 handwritten pages!), “Exegesis,” were all attempts to grapple with this cosmic epiphany. Dick’s explanations, some of which seemed tongue in cheek, ranged from thinking he had connected back to an ancient identity of his, an entity he called “Thomas” who had been alive just after Christ; to “believing” that he had been zapped by a pink beam of information which was fired either from a Soviet satellite, or from a place beyond the stars – and these are just a sampling of his speculations. Dick seemed to take great delight in the mind-play of this, his final quest, but those who dismissed him as mad were often stunned by his deep spirituality, his self-effacing humor and a depth of compassion that seemed at time, to extend to every creature in the cosmos. In Valis, the book where Dick grappled both deeply and hilariously with what in heaven or hell had happened to him – even dividing himself into two characters, one, the “crazy” mystic called Horselover Fat, and the other, the black-humored rationalist, “Philip K. Dick” – the author depicted a universe where God is both hidden and revealed – hidden deep inside of us for which a sort of loss of divine amnesia must take place for the truth to emerge; and revealed not in glorious visions, but through signs and symbols scattered and strewn through the garbage of everyday life. In an interview given during his final year on Earth, after listening to Dick spin ever complicating mystical conundrums, his interviewer returned him to the fundamental question: What then is reality? Dick’s response: “I've always had this funny feeling about reality. It just seems very feeble to me sometimes. It doesn't seem to have the substantiality that it's supposed to have” (Dick, 1980). What then is human? In Valis, Dick described the human as a carrier of a divine plasmate: “From Ikhnaton this knowledge passed to Moses, and from Moses to Elijah, the Immortal Man, who became Christ. But underneath all the names there is only one Immortal Man…And we are that man” (1991). Philip K. Dick’s life and his work embrace this paradox, between the trick-show of “reality” to the pinnacle of divine revelation. Which is “true?” Perhaps, if we put both answers together, we might pass through the veil of Gnosis, there to behold God and The Trickster, who may, according to my Dick, be One.

LOGOTHERAPY AND HANGIN' WITH THE HOMEBOYS

Jacob — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:43:35 GMT

VIKTOR FRANKL, LOGOTHERAPY AND THE HOMEBOYS OF INDIO, CALIFORNIA “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1958, p. 86). Is it possible for wisdom to travel across time and space? Can a message of inspiration and the courage to go on, forged in the hell of the concentration camps sixty years ago reach a despairing teen today whose parents’ tragic murder haunts his days and nights? Can a psychological credo of hope wrestled from the evil of Auschwitz provide counsel to a Latina youth facing AIDS? This writing attempts to show how Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy approach to healing compellingly addresses the developmental needs of contemporary at-risk teens who are seeking meaning in their suffering and a greater purpose in their lives. Caught in a backdrop of murdered parents, incarcerated aunts and uncles, drug addiction and teen pregnancy; these students who meet in a semester-long high school character education and literacy program (called Odyssey), are perfect candidates for a street version of Logotherapy. While the desolation in both realms allow us to see the universality of Frankl’s Logotherapy approach for all ages and walks of life, it must be clear from the outset that I am not here comparing the experience of contemporary high-school students, however challenging their life circumstances, with the literal hell-on-earth experienced by concentration camp prisoners. Compelling parallels do exist, however; both populations, at-risk teens and concentration camp inmates, have struggled mightily with hopelessness and lack of meaning, while seeking a resurrection of purpose. All are seeking dignity and counsel to divine their unique destiny. Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) was the creator of Logotherapy, sometimes referred to as the “Third Viennese School of Psychiatry.” Contrary to popular myth, Frankl did not give birth to his meaning and purpose-centered psychological theory while suffering through four Nazi concentration camps. In fact, when Frankl, then a young doctor of thirty years, entered Auschwitz, he had the manuscript for The Doctor and the Soul, his first book-length exposition of Logotherapy, sewn into the lining of his jacket. No sooner was he “processed” into the camp than he realized that his manuscript, along with virtually all that had defined his life and given it meaning, were to be sacrificed as he became “Prisoner Number 119,104.” Virtually all; for what Frankl confirmed in his hellish odyssey through the concentration camps was a perception that lies at the heart of Logotherapy, succinctly expressed in perhaps the most famous quote from Man’s Search for Meaning, his holocaust memoir and introduction to Logotherapy that has sold over ten million copies worldwide since its publication in 1958: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way” (1958, p. 86). In naming his approach to psychological healing Logotherapy, Viktor Frankl chose the ancient Greek word logos to refer to its broadest definition, as meaning and purpose, rather than logos as mere reason. Frankel also wished to clearly distinguish his approach from the first two “Viennese schools” of psychotherapy (Freud and Adler). By placing the will to meaning and purpose at the heart of his system, Frankl’s Logotherapy differs radically from the Freudian emphasis on early, even infantile sexuality and the Adlerian focus on power and family structure. For Frankl, what we can grow to become when our lives are linked to a greater purpose, and find the meaning hidden within our suffering is much more central to the human possibility than what we have experienced in childhood – even what was experienced in the concentration camps. Though Frankl surrendered his cherished Doctor and the Soul manuscript, his “child” as he called it, at his entry into the Auschwitz inferno, he rewrote and expanded the book almost immediately upon his release, went on to write over thirty other books and hundreds of articles, while founding institutes for Logotherapy across the world and being honored with dozens of honorary doctorate degrees. It was his 1958 book, Man’s Search for Meaning though that would be read round the world, providing Logotherapy with its widest audience. Indeed, the book continues to be a psychology bestseller nearly fifty years after its initial publication. In Search and in all his subsequent work and teaching, Frankl indefatigably broadcast the three core premises of Logotherapy: Finding meaning in life under all circumstances; the freedom of our will; and the quest, or will to meaning as the central drive in human life. An Odyssey to Meaning and Purpose In The Doctor and the Soul, Frankl writes: “The psychotherapist is daily and hourly, in the regular course of his practice, and in consultation with each individual patient, confronted with philosophical questions” (1986, p. 12). Similarly, high-school students in the Odyssey Program, where the goal is “to uncover one’s central vision or life dream; develop compassion for others; and express core values” (Shefa, 2005), are desperately seeking some sense of meaning in their struggles. Though on the surface they can present themselves as laid-back nihilists too cool to care, the discerning mentor-teacher will recognize what Frankl called “the cry for meaning” within their acts. How then to begin to invite students to consider that their lives, including the most painful experiences, contain transformational fuel and the seeds for a positive future? How to convey the bold invitation to find ones destiny, voiced by Frankl: “No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny” (1958, p. 98). On the first day of the Odyssey class students hold up their hands and are told “no one on Earth has, or has ever had your fingerprints. You represent a unique possibility, a seed to be realized.” Students then trace their hand on the back of a sheet that says, “You are Unique – No One Has Your Fingerprints.” While outlining their hands, the students are invited to consider the idea that the singularity of their physical fingerprint is paralleled by a “soul-code” that represents their uniqueness at a higher level. Then, inside their thumb, they write a few words to express their “dream” or “vision” for their life. This is a way of introducing the idea of purpose, of finding a central quest or meaning in their lives. As they continue writing, each finger’s “text” builds the picture of how they might practically express their purpose in life. Toward the end of the Odyssey semester, students are invited to write an essay about their core value in life – family, faith, courage, honor, never giving up on one’s dream, etc. The essays provide an opportunity for the students to harvest meaning from their experiences, as well as to envision their futures in the light of purpose. In the following examples, I will focus on some of the students whose Odyssey essays underline the essential need for meaning and purpose as a touchstone in young lives. (I have changed the names of the students for anonymity.) Chuck, an intense, witty young man of fifteen wrote about the experience of his parents being killed in a robbery in New York City when he was twelve years old, and his struggle to keep hope alive. After being shipped off to live with an aunt on the West Coast, Chuck found himself getting into fights, behind each battered face seeing the man who had killed his parents: “My story is not one filled with adventures and friends, but of a tortured soul” (Shefa, 2005), wrote this ninth-grade student. But when a friend he made was facing her own temptation to suicide, Chuck found that a sense of meaning for his suffering began to be revealed: “She felt the same as I did, with no purpose. I walked in just in time. Later on, we talked and we cried. In that moment, I realized why I was meant to live…All these years I had wasted, complaining and hating. She made me see that life is the most precious gift one can give” (Shefa, 2005). Frankl had often counseled people in despair, that through helping another, they could begin to reconstruct a purpose for their own lives. At fifteen, Chuck has already begun to painfully understand Frankl’s words: “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe” (1958, p. 99). In Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, Frankl writes: “Life never ceases to offer us a meaning up to its last moment, up to our last breath…There must be a meaning to life under any conditions, even the worst conceivable ones” (2000, p. 141). The essay of Jennet, a high-school senior diagnosed as HIV-positive when she was thirteen years old, embodies the promise of Frankl’s words. Jennet, who had never spoken about having AIDS at her high-school, decided to write about her diagnosis in order to show that though her body was failing, her humanity was still intact. She also wanted to help others who might suffer similarly in the future (she had contracted the HIV virus through poor medical procedures). Struggling frequently with her health during the composition of the essay, Jennet wrote: “That night I decided to look at my disease a little differently. Instead of thinking I was going to die, I would say to myself that everyone is some day going to go. I was just going to be with the Lord first” (Shefa, 2005). Again, her discovery of meaning in her suffering echoes Frankl’s compassionate and compelling insights. Since writing her essay, Jennet has gone on to college, her courage undaunted. Frankl’s Logotherapy invites us to find meaning as our essential dignity; in fact, he sees this quest as imperative to our survival. The stakes are high, according to Frankl, for without hope, a belief that there is light inside of and beyond the suffering, despair engulfs us and we cannot go on. This was Frankl’s compassionate observation at Auschwitz, one which he witnessed repeatedly: “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay” ( 1958, p. 95). Melanie’s parents had been killed in a car accident three years prior to writing her essay. (Hauntingly, her older sister had been in the Odyssey class three years before her, only two months after the accident. Rendered virtually speechless by her suffering, she had drawn a huge, beautiful eye with one tear, when first asked to describe her life.) Since that time, Melanie had given birth to a son, while struggling to finish high school and care for her younger siblings. In spite of her tragedy, hope has emerged: “My parents’ death still haunts me every day, yet I have a wonderful life in many ways. I am a mother myself now. My son is the main reason I fight every day to not be dragged down by the memories. I want to see him succeed in life the way his grandmother would have wanted him to” (Shefa, 2005). Having found meaning in her suffering and a belief in the future, Melanie’s compassion has expanded, and she even finds the strength to encourage others facing despair: “You’ve just got to earn your way through to it, smile and appreciate the present and don’t dwell on the past, no matter how tragic. God will hear your cry! But you have to give in order to receive. What will you then receive? Life – life itself” (Shefa, 2005). Wisdom can travel across space and time, bearing its message intact, expanding its audience as the scroll of life unfolds. The life and work of Viktor Frankl offer a mentoring presence for today’s youth. A vision crafted in the infernal flames of Auschwitz “counsels” youth in crisis, pointing the way through meaning in suffering to hope for the future.

FRED MERTZ - BODHISSATTVA

Jacob — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 17:35:01 GMT

“I will not desert this world Until the grass itself be enlightened.” Anonymous Bodhisattva of Ancient Japan “Get off my back, Ethel!” Mertz, Brooklyn, early 50’s As we take our first steps inside the 21st century, our thoughts turn, inevitably, to I Love Lucy’s own Fred Mertz. At last, the collective mind of our country seems to be awakening to the fact that this humble fat man in the background may be have been the very first American Bodhisattva, or Buddhist saint. To comprehend the origins of the Mertz mania now sweeping the nation, we must first switch channels in our minds and re-enter the mindset of the illustrious 50’s. Back then, though he was a regular on the highly popular I Love Lucy show, the amazing truth is that scant little was known of the spiritual life of Fred Mertz. While onscreen, Fred was the butt of many crass jokes about his dignity – from Lucy, Ricky and, of course, Ethel – an elite core of spiritually sensitive viewers intuited that there was something decidedly esoteric about Mertz. Some even divined his future role as a Bronx-based harbinger of illumined consciousness. With the advent of Sit-Calm Channeling (the New-Age science of mystically ‘tuning in’ to unedited episodes of early sit coms which still reverberate as signals in Earth’s atmosphere), T.V. Channelers from around the globe are beginning to bear witness to the fact that their illuminations are a result of direct spiritual transmissions received from such American illuminati as Ralph Kramden, Beaver Cleaver, Granny Clampett and, of course, Mertz himself. In a recent People magazine feature story on “The Sit-Com of The New American Spirituality,” Biff Elohim, a Cleveland televisionary claims to be the first to have made uninterrupted contact with the purely spiritual essence of Mertz. As a result of his mystical experiences with the Mertzian energies, Biff has been inspired to create a whole new T.V. genre, the spiritual sit-com, the first of which will be aired next fall. The series will be called: “Fred Mertz: Bodhisattva.” The Buddhist concept of The Bodhisattva saint speaks of one who willingly reincarnates in order to serve as the Living Exemplar of wisdom and compassion for those lesser evolved beings on Earth. Although his illumined level often goes unnoticed by the spiritually dense, the Bodhissatva is content to perform his spiritual services without visible reward. Those new to T.V. Channeling will no doubt be saying, at this very moment: “Heck; them Buddhists were talkin’ about Mertz!” One wonders if, in the volcanic force of this revelation, they will finally recognize the more than cursory resemblance Fred bore to the Buddha himself? A catalogue of Mertz’s spiritual qualities and mystical abilities could cover no less than three cocktail napkins. Who, for example, could think to deny the vast reaches of Fred’s stinginess, or his Zen-master-like irritability, elevating “The Art of Complaint” to levels never before achieved upon planet Gaia? It is only now, at the gates of the millennia, that we are in a position to begin to truly divine the multiple levels at play in the infamous Mertz Whine: Having actually transcended into the world of I Love Lucy from the uppermost spiritual ethers, Fred resorted to such esoteric techniques as Senseless Bickering, Scathing Indifference, Bad Timing, Advanced Balding, and The Seven Secrets of Stinginess simply as a means of binding himself to Earth. Had he not adopted these human-all-too-human characteristics, Mertz would have simply dispersed back to the spiritual regions whence he came, so ethereal was his pure essence. The density of these deliberately negative character traits allowed Mertz to hold fast to Earth (or at least the Bronx), while his masterly mind surfed the heavenly realms. To his immense credit, once ensconced in the I Love Lucy universe, Mertz willingly plummeted still deeper, unto the very nadir of the 50’s American male psyche. It was Fred Mertz, we now remember with amazement, who brought new levels of subtlety to the poker face, thus opening the way for the later explosion of such thunderous spiritual thespians as Wally Cox and Ozzie Nelson, to name just a few who crafted their own canny personas by The- Light-That-Was-Mertz. The new television show, “Fred Mertz: Bodhisattva” will begin with six never before seen episodes from the I Love Lucy series. Through revolutionary new-age spiritual technology, these episodes were literally brought into manifestation from the spiritual ethers where they awaited the advent of The New Age to receive their stunning wavelengths. Amongst the incredible disclosures awaiting viewers is the fact that Fred never understood a single word Ricky Ricardo was saying all those years! Mertz was actually using a secret method of Buddhist Telepathy – first learned in a Brooklyn alleyway by his Zen Master, Butch Von Kafka – to decode the impassioned ejaculations of the volatile Cuban heartthrob. It will also be revealed that it was Lucy herself who first divined the truth of Fred’s spiritual status. We witness Mertz at first reticent, coy even, when confronted by Lucy Ricardo on the issue of his Bodhisattvahood. He was but testing the purity of her spiritual motives, as all shall behold. However, once Fred confirms the impeccability of the perky redhead’s spiritual quest, he begins her two-fold initiation rites, ushering our Lucy through The Six Stages of Ditziness while secretly beginning their joint preparations for the coming World Savior, to be known to the masses as, “Little Ricky.” Moving on to episodes four, five and six of “Fred Mertz: Bodhisattva,” viewers will be treated to select, first-time visions of the touching fresco of passion that was the marriage of Fred and Ethel Mertz. In witnessing these ecstatic rites, we may finally grasp the true source of the avalanche of ecstatic mystical lovemaking manuals now found at your local Wal-Mart – all took their unaccredited inspiration from the bi-monthly Tantric frenzy that went on in the second floor Bronx apartment of Fred and Ethel Mertz. It was there that Fred and the beguiling Ethel spiritually pioneered The Nine Gates of Boredom and penetrated The Twelve Layers of The Mystic Paunch. For reasons known only to the fully initiated, these potent passages were usually performed just after Thursday night bowling league and just before Fred and Ethel’s ritual midnight snack of pork rinds lightly sautéed in bacon grease. The central concept in Buddhism is: The Void That Is All. In other words, Nothingness is big business in Buddhism! Mertz embodied this Void business in a level unrivaled by anyone on the globe during the bubbling spiritual cauldron of the Eisenhower era. Not even Ricky Ricardo, in the peak of shamanistic trance incurred by repeated chants of “Babbaloo,” approached the rich emptiness that Fred became. Additionally, it is no exaggeration to say that Fred Mertz single-handedly exalted Boredom and Worrying to a place of high stature in the American male psyche. He is thus the spiritual Father of The Way of The Worrier spiritual path now favored by five out of ten C.E.O.’s (according to a recent survey). The final episode of the first season will be entitled: “The Death of Ethel/The Bodhisattvahood of Fred Mertz,” allowing us to witness the final emergence of Fred as Avatar of The New Age. Viewers will be moved beyond tears, to a place of deep inner boredom, at the sight of Mertz as he nearly expires from grief when laboring through the loss of his Tantra consort, Ethel. Though depression had always been as common to Mertz as the inevitable digestive angst incurred by his fried Spam-on-white bread lunches, it was nothing compared to the agonizing apex it reaches in this episode. We, the blessed viewers, will be working through his travail, side by side with Fred. Our faith is richly rewarded, our suffering ecstatically transfigured to sheer bliss, at the vision of Mertz, rising victorious, reborn as…Fred Mertz: Bodhisattva! To close this article with a rather typically haikuesque quote from arch-televisionary, Biff Elohim: Actor who played Mertz Long since gone To Great Antennae Never tu-be replaced Screen Empty Remainder Of season Gaze into Mertz Mirror Your Bodhisattvahood Light of Void - Fredness

A MENTOR'S ODYSSEY

Jacob — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 14:59:24 GMT

Honoring the Stories of our Youths There is an incandescent seed of purpose that lies at the core of each human story. As a mentor and elder-in-training, I have listened to the stories of teenagers, seeking to discover seeds of purpose within tragic tales. I have been humbled by the challenges students face – drugs, poverty, violence, and families shuttled between prison and homelessness, to name just a few – and awed by their courage in the face of these challenges. The vast disparity between the potential brilliance of that luminous seed and the tattered classroom in which I meet my students is both painful and touching. Yet there are moments when these battered temporal walls seem to dissolve and we enter the boundless domain known as the ethnosphere, which cultural anthropologist Wade Davis describes as “the sum total of all thoughts, dreams, ideas, beliefs, myths, intuitions, and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.” When students sit in a circle and tell stories of their lives, I envision us encircled by this ethnosphere, adding to it and being invisibly aided by the sum total of humanity’s knowledge. I’m here because, like many a midlife hero in ancient myths, I “heard a call.” For a long time, I struggled to discern the exact message within that call. At first, all I knew was that as I crossed the threshold of midlife, my own sense of purpose became interwoven with the ability to connect with and inspire young people as they crossed their thresholds, from adolescence into adulthood. You could say that I was being called to become an elder. In helping students to find their stories, I have entered an ancient form of relationship in a modern landscape. Mythologist and youth-worker Michael Meade writes eloquently about the crucial need for elders and mentors in our society. His words give some description to the calling I feel: “As a man passes through the elders’ gates, his focus shifts from personal striving and status building to attending to the mysteries at the core of the community.” Over the past several years, I have gradually distilled my passion for working with youth into a program called, Odyssey. The name, Odyssey, signals my conviction that learning should be a great and mysterious adventure – an odyssey. Also, in Homer’s Odyssey, his troubled teenage son, Telemachus, is guided by an elder named, Mentor (who is actually the goddess of wisdom, Athena, in disguise) – the origin of the word, ‘mentor’. Mentoring, a genuine one-to-one connection between student and teacher – or youth and elder – is an essential key to students’ success. A mentor can help students to find their stories, and within those stories a portal to their purpose in life can sometimes be gleaned. In Odyssey, students find their own story, their guiding myth, speak them proudly in the presence of peers, and finally, write them in tales to share with their community. At the heart of their own myth, students can find the seed of a greater purpose. When I introduced the program in the fall of 2002, it seemed an unlikely ‘sell’ in the standards-obsessed realm of public education. Yet somehow my impassioned pitches to one school district in Southern California struck a chord. These educators recognized that their students needed something more than mere academics. One principal, surprising in his frankness, lamented: “What does it matter if they get straight A’s if they have no sense of purpose in their lives? It’s just a game.” Three high schools agreed to do a pilot year. The program would emphasize social and emotional learning skills, blending creative communication activities with a special emphasis on holding “councils” – an ancient method of communication that fostered deep listening while upholding the value of each speaker’s unique contribution. The schools were also excited about a writing contest in which students would attempt to articulate their core values in life – such as belief, love, staying true to one’s dream, and so on. I promised the schools that if students went on an odyssey of discovery for their own values, not only would verbal communication and writing abilities improve, student would also find a greater sense of purpose in their educational journey, as well as increased respect for each other. During the first semester of the pilot year, I remember talking to a young man named, Juan, who wore pants that were at least four sizes too big, giving him a shapeless, formless quality. Juan walked as if he was vanishing as he moved through space – beyond self-effacing, into self annihilation. During a communication exercise, I asked the class: “If your life became a book or a movie, what would be the title and how would it end?” Most of the students responded humorously – except Juan. “My movie would be called ‘No Way Out’.” The atmosphere in the class changed, suddenly crystalline in focus. Everyone was called to attention by the quiet, desperate sincerity in Juan’s voice. “How does the movie end?” I asked. “It ends with me shot down in the streets before I’m twenty,” Juan whispered, putting his head down. Again, no one said a word. I thanked Juan for having the courage to speak so honestly before his peers. Then the bell rang and the students, including Juan, dashed out to their morning break. As students munched on cinnamon rolls, I went up to Juan and asked to speak with him. I was determined to at least attempt what youth-worker Orland Bishop calls a “mentoring moment,” a brief window of opportunity seized in order to magnify the potential of a youth. “I forgot to mention that you are also the screenwriter of that movie.” Juan looked up, his attention caught. “You can write a different ending for your movie.” Juan looked at me, and then ever so slightly, nodded his head affirmatively. From that point on, Juan participated more actively in the class. He spoke with me about the shame of growing up without a father. He worked on an essay about his painful search for heroes in a dark time. Juan gradually began to carry himself with greater self respect. Although Juan’s life was still steeped in violence, he now sought a way out. Juan discovered that he had something unique to contribute. He participated increasingly in the class, and even revealed a smile that was two-thirds hard-knocks, one-third hard-won wisdom. The value of a program such as Odyssey, and my own sense of growth in purpose as a mentor came together vividly when a group of senior students worked on the creation of a personal ‘shield of power’. While most of the students confidently used words and symbols to fill out the sections of the shield that had to do with life’s turning points and their vision of the future, one student, Norman, sat frozen. In the first classes, Norman spoke through a sort of veil of hair which he combed directly over his eyes. It was hard to hear his words as they struggled to penetrate the veil. Gradually though, he had developed more confidence in front of his peers. However, when now asked to draw a symbol or write a vision of his future, Norman was totally stuck. “I don’t see anything. There’s nothing there. I don’t know if I’ll even be alive!” There were tears in his eyes – tears that I could see now that his hair had been combed a bit back. “Could you just draw a seed – a seed that represents your hope for a future?” I pleaded. “Maybe the picture will fill out later, from the seed.” Norman thought about this for what seemed like a long time. I simply sat beside him as he struggled to find the seed. Finally, Norman picked up his pen and began to draw a small, but definite circle. Underneath, he wrote ‘Seed of My Future’. Norman’s life was scarred by acute violence and poverty. He lived partly on the streets, partly at home. He had been on and off drugs for three years. Yet in the class, he had begun to discover a power inside himself which told him that his life might actually flower into accomplishment. In boldly planting the seed of imagination for a better future, he chose to believe in an eventual harvest of purpose. “The universe is made of stories, not atoms,” wrote poet Muriel Rukeyser. In addition to Juan and Norman’s stories, there were dozens of others from Odyssey’s pilot year – a year which, for me, was a first initiation towards eldership, revealing the immensely creative and healing possibilities in the mentoring relationship. There was the senior who once witnessed his mother shot to death by a relative; the freshman who, as a child, was in the room when her father committed suicide; the boy whose best friend was recently killed before his eyes; and the straight-A freshman who wrestled with suicidal thoughts and cutting herself, to name just a few of the most compelling. These students came from upbringings of acute poverty, as well as material wealth. There were all the students who “disappeared” into Juvenile Hall at various times throughout the year. Their stories were often tragic, yet again and again I witnessed these students discover and take firm hold of the threads of purpose within their tales, and resolving to continue on their odyssey. My job is to listen, to nurture and to celebrate the stories of our youth. The students have inspired me to shape what began as an ephemeral call to mentoring and eldership into a step-by-step journey; an odyssey. Setting sail on my mentor’s odyssey, I beckon to my students to board their craft, as in ancient times, did Telemachus, son of Odysseus, who sought not only reconnection to his father, but the initiation into manhood. Ultimately, this journey of education becomes an odyssey of the soul’s journey. As educator and writer Rachael Kessler tells us: “The connection among souls is ultimately what education is about. There is no single right way to do it, no blueprint. But there are paths to the soul of students that are open to every teacher, in every classroom, in every school. All we need is the courage to walk these paths with our students.” I have listened to the stories of teenagers. I have been called to assist in the discovery and birth of purpose in young people. However impossible the task seems, perhaps this is helping the world somehow, for what is needed more in the life of our youth than their discovery of the compass of human purpose? In the mentoring relationship between youth and elder, this potent and mysterious property of human purpose can spark from one life to another, growing and glowing in warmth and power across the generations. Finally, my work with teens has disabused me of one of my most cherished notions – perhaps one of the most cherished notions of the western world. Replacing the idea that I had “my” purpose, “my” unique, separate and individual purpose, I have discovered what is for me a greater truth: My purpose is not just to be found inside some sequestered spiritual inner realm. It is somehow mysteriously interwoven with the growth and development of the youth whom I serve. It is this flash of spiritual light, expanding, arcing across the generations, flame to flame, that inspires us all on the odyssey of human purpose.