PEOPLE WITHOUT SOULS
Life on earth means playing without rules. Not a "game" – just play. Like grade-schoolers inventing games at recess, or musicians improvising, or a flash mob of amateur actors. The rules may unfold as play progresses. Or maybe not. One way for the Omniscient to play is that It first forgets. I come here to play. I forget what I really am and what reality truly is—I focus on playing instead! Rules come only later...if they ever emerge at all.
SOUL LOSS
Occasionally I forget beyond all repair. The game of forgetting our Infinite self works too well. I get lost irretrievably. My soul goes to pieces, and piece after piece goes flitting off to find shelter from trouble.
Soul loss can come from deep shock during play. A natural disaster, a terrible accident, incurable or disabling disease, a violent beating, the death of your child, the murder of your sister or brother. War and massacre. Abusive parents. Classmates or colleagues bullying you. Trust and love shattered. And these are sample tragedies I've seen just among my own family and friends. Soul loss begins with that most fearsome question of existence: "Why is this happening to me?"
Like a chess game played to a draw, or tic-tac-toe played by most adults, your soul may fragment and flee when no winning is possible anymore, and your only choice is to abandon the match. Without major repair, soul loss often continues for years. Without major repair, it often ends only by sweeping all the pieces off the board, only by total abandonment of the game—in death.
Even just one shocking harsh word, or one horrifying photograph, can derail you for the rest of your life. The disaster we prettify as "childhood." Disasters due to attempts at "exploration," so highly praised in our day. The disasters of unceasing loss. So much loss that YOU are the one who finally gets lost. Parts of you escape from this reality and go missing—have you ever felt yourself slipping? You shed all sense of belonging—is everyone backing away from you? You lose any connection to the One, when it used to comfort you. Life loses meaning. Where did the laughter go? What's even the point of grieving? You shrink from any involvement in play at all. You turn your back on the world.
THE VACUUM INSIDE YOU
I think each of us has seen that dark place, has at least visited it. Whatever has harmed me in the wild game of "life on earth"—amputations, bodily assaults, deaths, loveless families, a hate-filled family, no family, poverty, prison, pain—it makes me want to quit the game entirely. I have been through that yawning meaninglessness. I have seen people in my life have invent individual anesthesias, numbing themselves so they never need to feel it when they touch the world, numbing themselves to the terrible wounds that have gone so deep.
And they have my every sympathy. I, too, have looked long and hard down the empty well.
You achieve insensibility through drink, drugs, medications, food, self-starvation, surgeries, self-cutting, avoidance, overindulgence, too much sleep, insomnia. When your soul goes lost...or even just parts of it...or even only on occasion...you mutely set aside your props and costumes, your instrument and sheet music. You stop the game mid-field and simply walk away from everything you once desired. The world disappears to you. You rot away the rest of your time here. Or you invent your own tiny, boring, new games, in which you permit no one else to play. Or maybe you just jump off the stage.
This is the true disaster. Not the catastrophes and horrors of the past, or other agonizing switcheroos of play. The true disaster is the present loss of your own soul. It occurs inside you: you play no more.
SOUL THIEVES
Some people intentionally harm those around them. They bully, they torture, they terrorize. Our age knows too well the terrorists and bullies. Terrorists claim they have some goal, be it politics or religion or vengeance. But their primary intent is to terrorize. They revel in spreading pain. They love to watch agony.
The really "effective" bullies and torturers reach out and try to steal our souls. They are not really after sex or money or drugs. They are after power. They gain power by robbing us of our power. Their thefts reach across oceans, yes, but they also reach into their own families and friends and communities. I've known at least two in my own family! They'd deny it, of course, but the withered, mummified wrecks of humanity they've left in their wake through the years confirm their thievery! An abusive parent steals power from a spouse or from the children; the most "effective" end up killing their own kin. Maybe it's by open murder; maybe it's by injuring children or other relatives emotionally or physically, making them die too young. Other insidious abusers let victims live just enough so they can keep on draining power, like true parasites.
Ours is a monstrously abusive, violent society. We collectively permit amazing levels of soul theft, and we collectively do almost nothing to heal the thefts or to block the thieves. In fact, whistleblowers are most often penalized for reporting their victimizers. Our system repeatedly blames the victims. The victims even revile themselves for the relief they feel when their abusers die. But if they get no help, that's the only way they can feel protected.
GROWING UP THIEVING
Indeed, you and I are personally at risk of being thieves, stealing power, wrecking other people. After all, we are born into a monstrous den of power thieves! We cheer when our team wins, and we mock the losers—ha, ha, ha! Too bad for you! It's completely acceptable to "vote people off the island." Incredibly inhumane! TV offers competitions in fashion, cooking, music, dancing, money-making, beauty, intelligence—they're all about fierce criticism of every competitor. Do you see the theft of spirit? We adulate the winners, yet 95% of the time on-air is about losing. We are entranced by power disasters, and still we adore the "stars" who are in fact professional power thieves.
RECLAIMING YOUR SOUL
There is help. I don't have to put up with soul loss. I don't have to suffer the theft of my power. The deathwalkers can go and find those lost fragments of yourself and return them to you. Or you yourself can link arms with your spirit allies and retrieve your soul. There is power out there that wants to help you.
Shamans deal in power. Shamans deal with spirits and souls. Shamans will go searching for lost fragments of souls and bring them back to their proper selves. Or, if you're willing, shamans will guide you in offering your own invitation to your soul fragments. Shamans have done it for me, and I feel much more peaceful, viewing my own flawed self and our big flawed world. With my own allies I've helped retrieve soul parts for others, and the results have been clear, especially in undoing soul thefts, in preventing horrifying dreams, in restoring true personal power.
Retrieving soul parts that have been in hiding—parts that don't even want to be found—can be the highest medicine. Healing and restoring those fragments to players who are still technically in the game is a grand mission. The soul seeker, whether shaman or the actual victim, recovers the power to be well: to leap off the bench and play, to gather up all those abandoned tools and head back building life.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Double-Selves: Doppelgänger, Vardøger, Ka, Etiäinen, And More
PLAYING THE GAME AND SHAMANIC DEATH
Late last year, while rummaging through a Norwegian-English dictionary (yes, I have curious hobbies), I stumbled over the entry, "vardøger." The dictionary didn't define it—it merely *described* the term, quite circumspectly in fact, as though the word were a dangerous object or a rotten egg. It was! Learning about vardøger opened up yet another strange door for me, straight out of reality and into the spirit world.
WHAT IN THE WORLD?
A vardøger is something like a double of yourself, a spirit twin to your physical self. More often, of course, our English term is "doppelganger" (we're pretty careless about German umlauts), which covers many kinds of appearances of a spirit self in our material world. Used to be that the ancient Egyptian "ka" was considered to be your living spirit-double. The sound of the Norwegian word is as alien as the concept itself: I can't even spell it with English phonetics, but if you know French, a Franco-phonetic spelling might be "vardœuguère," and with first-syllable stress. The Finns have a closely similar concept they call an "etiäinen."
The vardøger is a double who gets to your destination ahead of you, effectively announcing your imminent arrival. There's a summary article on it in Wikipedia, and one in the Journal of Scientific Exploration from 2002, on the Web. Lots of famous folks seem to have had doubles and acknowledged them: Goethe, Shelley, Lincoln, Donne, even military men.
MY OWN VARDØGER
The kicker is this: I have a vardøger myself! After I read the dictionary entry, I mentioned it to my wife. She surprised me by saying she and the dogs have often heard "me" come home: shutting the car door, coming in the front door, and even putting grocery bags on the counter. The dogs confirm they've heard "me," too, all leaving her side and trotting off to the front door to greet me, the way they do every day when I arrive from work or grocery shopping or whatever. Then she looks out at the driveway—and there's no car at all. A few minutes later I actually arrive: the "actual" me (the guy typing right now). Once she actually went downstairs to talk to me (because I was taking too long to come upstairs and say hi), and was quite startled to see me walk through the door coming into the house. I hadn't been home at all. She never mentioned it until now, when I asked about it, out of hesitation as to what my reaction might be.
About 35 years ago, a closely similar incident with my first wife (yeah, things didn't work out), when we were living with my parents for the summer. She'd been home sick, everyone else was at work, and in the evening she told us about somebody coming into the house, walking around the other rooms and making noise. She sorta had us all freaked, talking about an uninvited stranger there!
I used to think I didn't have psychic experiences. Yet psychic encounters have been happening for other people (plus dogs) all around me! And the same might well be true for lots of us. We just never think to ask friends or family. And being good Western skeptics, they may experience the doppelganger appearances but never bother to bring them up with anyone else. Maybe I need to start circulating questionnaires.
SO WHAT'S THE DEAL THEN?
We think of ghosts as spirits of the dead...and mostly as fictitious. But if we are here on earth "for fun"—the One and the Infinite focused on playing a game here—what happens if our true selves interfere a little bit with game going on somewhere else? What if you bump your opponent's pawn in chess or hum a happy tune to yourself back in the percussion section while the orchestra performs Beethoven? While you're totally focused on the chess world, so focused that you've become oblivious to the human world, then if someone jostles your pawn or your rook, it would be a major surprise—an other-worldly event! My physical self is at the office, or in traffic headed home, but my true self, my real heart, is at home with the ones I love. Vaguely neglecting the play of life, I slip a gear, so that my real self touches my real loves, and voilà: the vardøger shows up. Not always; just sometimes. Yes, many cultures say it’s a sign of imminent death when you see your double. Could be; I've never seen my own vardøger. Goethe saw his double, but it was a sort of fold in time: he saw his doppelganger the way he was actually dressed and travelling years later.
Is there a reason, a purpose? It's all play, remember? Does there have to be any reason? We are not here to learn lessons, not really. After all, since we are One with the Infinite, there are no lessons to be learned. Instead, we are playing at being finite, at being separate, at not-knowing. Phenomena like vardøger or doppelgangers remind us of the enormously greater reality all about us. They help us to take seriously what is important—relationships, love, connection—and to be amazed and grateful for the wonders and the Love of the Universe.
INTENTIONAL TRAVEL
Shamans bilocate deliberately. While playing the game, sometimes one will reach across the table and look at the cards in your hand. The doppelganger of a shaman will go places and do things and see truths, because the shaman recognizes the game, walks the boundaries, crosses between life and death.
A millennium ago, Norwegian records noted how a Sami "noaidi" in Bergen helped a German trader of the Hanseatic League, telling him how things were back home in Germany. The report says the traveling businessman came home to find things were just as the shaman had said. Bilocation. Doppelganger. Shamanic travel knows no limits.
Late last year, while rummaging through a Norwegian-English dictionary (yes, I have curious hobbies), I stumbled over the entry, "vardøger." The dictionary didn't define it—it merely *described* the term, quite circumspectly in fact, as though the word were a dangerous object or a rotten egg. It was! Learning about vardøger opened up yet another strange door for me, straight out of reality and into the spirit world.
WHAT IN THE WORLD?
A vardøger is something like a double of yourself, a spirit twin to your physical self. More often, of course, our English term is "doppelganger" (we're pretty careless about German umlauts), which covers many kinds of appearances of a spirit self in our material world. Used to be that the ancient Egyptian "ka" was considered to be your living spirit-double. The sound of the Norwegian word is as alien as the concept itself: I can't even spell it with English phonetics, but if you know French, a Franco-phonetic spelling might be "vardœuguère," and with first-syllable stress. The Finns have a closely similar concept they call an "etiäinen."
The vardøger is a double who gets to your destination ahead of you, effectively announcing your imminent arrival. There's a summary article on it in Wikipedia, and one in the Journal of Scientific Exploration from 2002, on the Web. Lots of famous folks seem to have had doubles and acknowledged them: Goethe, Shelley, Lincoln, Donne, even military men.
MY OWN VARDØGER
The kicker is this: I have a vardøger myself! After I read the dictionary entry, I mentioned it to my wife. She surprised me by saying she and the dogs have often heard "me" come home: shutting the car door, coming in the front door, and even putting grocery bags on the counter. The dogs confirm they've heard "me," too, all leaving her side and trotting off to the front door to greet me, the way they do every day when I arrive from work or grocery shopping or whatever. Then she looks out at the driveway—and there's no car at all. A few minutes later I actually arrive: the "actual" me (the guy typing right now). Once she actually went downstairs to talk to me (because I was taking too long to come upstairs and say hi), and was quite startled to see me walk through the door coming into the house. I hadn't been home at all. She never mentioned it until now, when I asked about it, out of hesitation as to what my reaction might be.
About 35 years ago, a closely similar incident with my first wife (yeah, things didn't work out), when we were living with my parents for the summer. She'd been home sick, everyone else was at work, and in the evening she told us about somebody coming into the house, walking around the other rooms and making noise. She sorta had us all freaked, talking about an uninvited stranger there!
I used to think I didn't have psychic experiences. Yet psychic encounters have been happening for other people (plus dogs) all around me! And the same might well be true for lots of us. We just never think to ask friends or family. And being good Western skeptics, they may experience the doppelganger appearances but never bother to bring them up with anyone else. Maybe I need to start circulating questionnaires.
SO WHAT'S THE DEAL THEN?
We think of ghosts as spirits of the dead...and mostly as fictitious. But if we are here on earth "for fun"—the One and the Infinite focused on playing a game here—what happens if our true selves interfere a little bit with game going on somewhere else? What if you bump your opponent's pawn in chess or hum a happy tune to yourself back in the percussion section while the orchestra performs Beethoven? While you're totally focused on the chess world, so focused that you've become oblivious to the human world, then if someone jostles your pawn or your rook, it would be a major surprise—an other-worldly event! My physical self is at the office, or in traffic headed home, but my true self, my real heart, is at home with the ones I love. Vaguely neglecting the play of life, I slip a gear, so that my real self touches my real loves, and voilà: the vardøger shows up. Not always; just sometimes. Yes, many cultures say it’s a sign of imminent death when you see your double. Could be; I've never seen my own vardøger. Goethe saw his double, but it was a sort of fold in time: he saw his doppelganger the way he was actually dressed and travelling years later.
Is there a reason, a purpose? It's all play, remember? Does there have to be any reason? We are not here to learn lessons, not really. After all, since we are One with the Infinite, there are no lessons to be learned. Instead, we are playing at being finite, at being separate, at not-knowing. Phenomena like vardøger or doppelgangers remind us of the enormously greater reality all about us. They help us to take seriously what is important—relationships, love, connection—and to be amazed and grateful for the wonders and the Love of the Universe.
INTENTIONAL TRAVEL
Shamans bilocate deliberately. While playing the game, sometimes one will reach across the table and look at the cards in your hand. The doppelganger of a shaman will go places and do things and see truths, because the shaman recognizes the game, walks the boundaries, crosses between life and death.
A millennium ago, Norwegian records noted how a Sami "noaidi" in Bergen helped a German trader of the Hanseatic League, telling him how things were back home in Germany. The report says the traveling businessman came home to find things were just as the shaman had said. Bilocation. Doppelganger. Shamanic travel knows no limits.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Animals
WHY WE ARE HERE (THE MEANING OF LIFE)
If we are here to learn lessons, then why are the animals here? Or the plants? Or neutron stars?
The religious perspective is viciously anthropocentric: "The rest of the universe is here to help people learn lessons." And there the explanations end. They serve us. People are more important than animals. After 50 years of failing ecology, massive extinctions, and irreversible warming, do our teachers still so pitifully misunderstand "why we're here"?
We are here because the Infinite is playing at being finite. The Indivisible Whole is pretending to be divided, into separate people, into plants and animals and creepy-crawlies and black holes and alternate universes. The One, at play. The Great Game. Music without rules, unless we make them. Children arguing at recess about what's fair and what's not. Lovers quarreling, enemies falling in love, multiple wives and extra husbands. Bipeds that can think, quadrupeds that can think, ocean-going monsters that can think. (Check out all those online videos of octopuses and whales that constantly make plans for their futures, or sing, or grieve.)
Animals are just further expressions of the One at play. So are you and I. Our pets reflect the love of the Universe back to us. Or sometimes Its deep unpredictability. The animals we farm or hunt are not our servants: they are more demonstrations of the Universe trying out every possible role in this drama, working out every possible scenario of predator and prey, the eater and the eaten, the dull beast with scarcely a clear thought for the future and human beings terrified all their lives by their own assured mortality.
Anyone with pets knows that they dream, just like people. More evidence of play and games and drama and music. All beings shift constantly from one state of play to another, from one dream state to another. We abandon dream games in a few minutes; we abandon ordinary-reality games after a few years. Our beloved domestic friends love, just like people. They fear and run, they play all the same games. Dogs and wolves and whales sing. Cats and elephants paint, given half a chance. Parrots do arithmetic. We are all One. The One plays at being, at being all beings.
Shamans merge with mountains and clouds, they dance animals and plants, they shape-shift, they eat meat, they sacrifice themselves. They coach the same game that they themselves play; they play medics to injured players, they cross all lines. Human, volcano, Antarctica, spaniel, squid...shamans read for all roles, play all field positions, sing all the notes. Hey, they help write the music and the playbooks!
If we are here to learn lessons, then why are the animals here? Or the plants? Or neutron stars?
The religious perspective is viciously anthropocentric: "The rest of the universe is here to help people learn lessons." And there the explanations end. They serve us. People are more important than animals. After 50 years of failing ecology, massive extinctions, and irreversible warming, do our teachers still so pitifully misunderstand "why we're here"?
We are here because the Infinite is playing at being finite. The Indivisible Whole is pretending to be divided, into separate people, into plants and animals and creepy-crawlies and black holes and alternate universes. The One, at play. The Great Game. Music without rules, unless we make them. Children arguing at recess about what's fair and what's not. Lovers quarreling, enemies falling in love, multiple wives and extra husbands. Bipeds that can think, quadrupeds that can think, ocean-going monsters that can think. (Check out all those online videos of octopuses and whales that constantly make plans for their futures, or sing, or grieve.)
Animals are just further expressions of the One at play. So are you and I. Our pets reflect the love of the Universe back to us. Or sometimes Its deep unpredictability. The animals we farm or hunt are not our servants: they are more demonstrations of the Universe trying out every possible role in this drama, working out every possible scenario of predator and prey, the eater and the eaten, the dull beast with scarcely a clear thought for the future and human beings terrified all their lives by their own assured mortality.
Anyone with pets knows that they dream, just like people. More evidence of play and games and drama and music. All beings shift constantly from one state of play to another, from one dream state to another. We abandon dream games in a few minutes; we abandon ordinary-reality games after a few years. Our beloved domestic friends love, just like people. They fear and run, they play all the same games. Dogs and wolves and whales sing. Cats and elephants paint, given half a chance. Parrots do arithmetic. We are all One. The One plays at being, at being all beings.
Shamans merge with mountains and clouds, they dance animals and plants, they shape-shift, they eat meat, they sacrifice themselves. They coach the same game that they themselves play; they play medics to injured players, they cross all lines. Human, volcano, Antarctica, spaniel, squid...shamans read for all roles, play all field positions, sing all the notes. Hey, they help write the music and the playbooks!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Play money
Play money.
Well, OF COURSE it's just play money. It's part of the game you're playing. It's for you to play with. Are we playing to participate? To love?
Or are we playing to win? That would be tragic. We cannot "win"—remember? We are mortal; that means we do not play "for keeps." Remember, we play "for fun."
Some shamans are wealthy; some are broke; most don't care. Shamans move between many worlds, only one of which cares for those thingies we call Euros or Dollars or Pesos or Yen. Other worlds, other lives, utterly other. Shamans have other things to think about, better things to do. Of course it's play money.
Well, OF COURSE it's just play money. It's part of the game you're playing. It's for you to play with. Are we playing to participate? To love?
Or are we playing to win? That would be tragic. We cannot "win"—remember? We are mortal; that means we do not play "for keeps." Remember, we play "for fun."
Some shamans are wealthy; some are broke; most don't care. Shamans move between many worlds, only one of which cares for those thingies we call Euros or Dollars or Pesos or Yen. Other worlds, other lives, utterly other. Shamans have other things to think about, better things to do. Of course it's play money.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Life is Like a Highway--and We're the Traffic
LIFE IS LIKE A HIGHWAY--AND WE'RE THE TRAFFIC
Playing the Game and Shamanic Death
December 22, 2010
I've always thought that human bodies were like the cars and trucks rolling down the road. The motorcycles and cars "think" that other trucks and motorcycles are the true beings of their world. If you are flying above the roads, that's what it looks like! They apparently sleep and wake, take in nutrition, expel waste, avoid pain (accidents), require maintenance, form societies following sets of rules, and occasionally make mistakes, injuring or destroying other vehicles or other objects in their environment. And they die.
But you and I are pretty certain that cars and trucks are not thinking beings. They follow rules and perform nearly all their actions because we are temporarily inside them, directing their actions. They undertake no action arising from volition or desire or revulsion. If a police cruiser roars past you at 100 miles per hour, it's because the officer wants to set aside the normal rules and follow different ones. If a dude in a pick-up spins circles in a parking lot for ten minutes, burning up half the lifetime of his tires, you don't remark how the truck was such an idiot. If your car breaks, you can still travel, but you have to find other options. When your trip is done, you leave your wheels behind and go about your real business. You leave behind the constraints of any rules of the road and live normally.
True You, the real You, are not the same as your body. Where your body is going, and why it's going there, is not the same thing at all as where True You are going or why True You are going there. No car ever drove to the bank to pay a bill or withdraw some cash—but people do. No truck ever fell in love; no motorcycle ever grieved—but people do.
In the same fashion we can re-apply the highway picture to our lives here on earth. True You, the real You, do not live here for the purpose of attending attend school and working for a living; your true goals are beyond ordinary comprehension, just as your car or motorcycle does not understand what human goals are. True You do not actually desire money, even though the person you are here on earth does want money. You, who you truly are, want the very best for yourself and others, even though the person you are "driving" on earth may viciously hate someone or even harm someone. You, who you really are, you love Life and are overjoyed at living, even if the person you temporarily inhabit feels like a walking disaster and wishes this life were over. True You are far more and far better and far greater than any of us can imagine, here on the highway of life.
Shamans drive while riding on the bumper. They make the rest of us scream, in terror—or perhaps in true amazement.
Playing the Game and Shamanic Death
December 22, 2010
I've always thought that human bodies were like the cars and trucks rolling down the road. The motorcycles and cars "think" that other trucks and motorcycles are the true beings of their world. If you are flying above the roads, that's what it looks like! They apparently sleep and wake, take in nutrition, expel waste, avoid pain (accidents), require maintenance, form societies following sets of rules, and occasionally make mistakes, injuring or destroying other vehicles or other objects in their environment. And they die.
But you and I are pretty certain that cars and trucks are not thinking beings. They follow rules and perform nearly all their actions because we are temporarily inside them, directing their actions. They undertake no action arising from volition or desire or revulsion. If a police cruiser roars past you at 100 miles per hour, it's because the officer wants to set aside the normal rules and follow different ones. If a dude in a pick-up spins circles in a parking lot for ten minutes, burning up half the lifetime of his tires, you don't remark how the truck was such an idiot. If your car breaks, you can still travel, but you have to find other options. When your trip is done, you leave your wheels behind and go about your real business. You leave behind the constraints of any rules of the road and live normally.
True You, the real You, are not the same as your body. Where your body is going, and why it's going there, is not the same thing at all as where True You are going or why True You are going there. No car ever drove to the bank to pay a bill or withdraw some cash—but people do. No truck ever fell in love; no motorcycle ever grieved—but people do.
In the same fashion we can re-apply the highway picture to our lives here on earth. True You, the real You, do not live here for the purpose of attending attend school and working for a living; your true goals are beyond ordinary comprehension, just as your car or motorcycle does not understand what human goals are. True You do not actually desire money, even though the person you are here on earth does want money. You, who you truly are, want the very best for yourself and others, even though the person you are "driving" on earth may viciously hate someone or even harm someone. You, who you really are, you love Life and are overjoyed at living, even if the person you temporarily inhabit feels like a walking disaster and wishes this life were over. True You are far more and far better and far greater than any of us can imagine, here on the highway of life.
Shamans drive while riding on the bumper. They make the rest of us scream, in terror—or perhaps in true amazement.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Regular Things Can Go "Wrong"--And Do!
ANYTHING CAN GO "WRONG"
Our lives here run on love, or else we would never grieve over losing a fellow-player, oh so young to exit the stage. Our lives here run on love, or else we would never lament old people who die helpless and alone. You and I do not merely eat; we do not merely stay alive. We do not come to this earth to sit in some loveless classroom; after all, school is an artifact of civilization, itself scarcely a few millennia of our immense history on earth.
But we always play. We act, sing, imagine, dream, build, laugh, grieve, and play. We invent rules, which we follow or bend or break. We play with love and with hope. Under normal circumstances we rejoice at life and grieve at death, because we love to play and we love our fellow players. In a few fearsome instances, too, we thrill at somebody's death and mourn another person continuing to live, because we have seen a life of actions utterly bereft of love. The Universe is shocking, amazing, wonderful, horrifying. All the emotions of play, whether sports, theater, music, building, travel, commerce, politics—we thrive on them, we build our lives on them.
The cycles of reincarnation and of life and death are not punishments. Disciples: "Lord, who sinned—this man, or his parents—so that he was born blind?" Jesus: "Neither!" Nor is this life with all its death about destruction or school lessons. It's about something else: focused attention. The Infinite is beyond all limits...so far beyond, that It can play at being limited—and that means the One become individuals, being "here" but not "there," starting and ending, birth and death. The One is so all-embracing it can imagine action and song in every possible form. Eternal Love encompasses all, so nothing is ever lost.
Back here on earth, we play ceaselessly, in a world bounded, limited, terminated. In fact we have invented all kinds of ways to magnify the amount and the intensity of play. We call them our communications media: newspapers, television and radio and movies, the Internet. But they are not for better information; they are for our play. Play seriously for a moment—you'll see they are of little use in helping us "learn lessons." When was the last time TV improved your character? How has the Web taught you to forgive everyone, to love without holding back? But look as what marvelous tools they are for play.
What can go wrong as you play? All sorts of things! This concert has no constraints; this game has no rules. We are in the Infinite, and Infinite outcomes can happen. The most common "mistake" is that we play this game so well that we forget the game we're playing, and we become focused on yet another diversion. We believe this life is all there is—we forget we are Infinite. This happens constantly, and our attention jumps from big games to smaller ones, from matches just lost to new competitions. A tiny sample: my computer alerts me to new email with a five-note fanfare that's identical to a melody of Richard Wagner. Suddenly I have an ear-worm, a tune that repeat endlessly in your head, and it interferes with the much "more important" text I was composing. Or I'll drop what I'm doing and look up Wagner on the Web.
Something's gone wrong with my behavior: Forgetting my universal, Infinite self, I've been in a game we call "writing," instead. And then in turn—forgetting my attention on writing—I'm mentally singing the Ride of the Valkyries, or maybe reading about opera. We play at earning money, then we play at spending it. Some folks play at loving, then get all wrapped up in the game of fighting with their lovers. Our life on this plane is a grand maze of games, volleys within matches within sets within tournaments, carburetor science within engine technology within automotive design within highway labyrinths. And we get lost.
The most obvious game-within-a-game is to play, er, to believe, that there's a rule book, and that our purpose here is to win. Or that there's a script to follow, so we can "get to heaven" if we obey it. We search constantly for the sheet music the whole time we're actively singing this life-opera. We try so hard to "win" (whatever that is—money, health, applause, a ripe old age, a page in the history books), even though it's glaringly obvious our game is temporary: everything and everybody's mortal! Indeed, our planet and our galaxy are mortal! The Universe does not jump into the game to follow rules or to win. The Infinite plays to play. Like kids as a summer swimming pool or actors doing improve or an out-of-control rock star, winning is irrelevant. Eventually everyone must exit. The concert ends; the pool closes. The apparent winners leave without their winnings, and the apparent losers exit no poorer than when they arrived.
Deathwalkers. A terrifying word. Hypnotic. Shocking. True. Shamans, the deathwalkers, know who's playing and why. Shamans constantly remember that we're all playing. Roman conquerors are said to have tipped their hats to ancient shamanic wisdom by having a slave whisper to them, MEMENTO MORI, "Remember you're dying," as they roared in triumphant parades to the applause of their fellow citizens. Some scholars remark on what a strange tradition that was! Not strange at all—if you were a general who won by massive slaughter, who knew killing and death deeply, face to face, in person. They played harder at winning than any professional actor or athlete today. Yet they knew: we all end up as deathwalkers. Shamans just volunteer for the job.
Our lives here run on love, or else we would never grieve over losing a fellow-player, oh so young to exit the stage. Our lives here run on love, or else we would never lament old people who die helpless and alone. You and I do not merely eat; we do not merely stay alive. We do not come to this earth to sit in some loveless classroom; after all, school is an artifact of civilization, itself scarcely a few millennia of our immense history on earth.
But we always play. We act, sing, imagine, dream, build, laugh, grieve, and play. We invent rules, which we follow or bend or break. We play with love and with hope. Under normal circumstances we rejoice at life and grieve at death, because we love to play and we love our fellow players. In a few fearsome instances, too, we thrill at somebody's death and mourn another person continuing to live, because we have seen a life of actions utterly bereft of love. The Universe is shocking, amazing, wonderful, horrifying. All the emotions of play, whether sports, theater, music, building, travel, commerce, politics—we thrive on them, we build our lives on them.
The cycles of reincarnation and of life and death are not punishments. Disciples: "Lord, who sinned—this man, or his parents—so that he was born blind?" Jesus: "Neither!" Nor is this life with all its death about destruction or school lessons. It's about something else: focused attention. The Infinite is beyond all limits...so far beyond, that It can play at being limited—and that means the One become individuals, being "here" but not "there," starting and ending, birth and death. The One is so all-embracing it can imagine action and song in every possible form. Eternal Love encompasses all, so nothing is ever lost.
Back here on earth, we play ceaselessly, in a world bounded, limited, terminated. In fact we have invented all kinds of ways to magnify the amount and the intensity of play. We call them our communications media: newspapers, television and radio and movies, the Internet. But they are not for better information; they are for our play. Play seriously for a moment—you'll see they are of little use in helping us "learn lessons." When was the last time TV improved your character? How has the Web taught you to forgive everyone, to love without holding back? But look as what marvelous tools they are for play.
What can go wrong as you play? All sorts of things! This concert has no constraints; this game has no rules. We are in the Infinite, and Infinite outcomes can happen. The most common "mistake" is that we play this game so well that we forget the game we're playing, and we become focused on yet another diversion. We believe this life is all there is—we forget we are Infinite. This happens constantly, and our attention jumps from big games to smaller ones, from matches just lost to new competitions. A tiny sample: my computer alerts me to new email with a five-note fanfare that's identical to a melody of Richard Wagner. Suddenly I have an ear-worm, a tune that repeat endlessly in your head, and it interferes with the much "more important" text I was composing. Or I'll drop what I'm doing and look up Wagner on the Web.
Something's gone wrong with my behavior: Forgetting my universal, Infinite self, I've been in a game we call "writing," instead. And then in turn—forgetting my attention on writing—I'm mentally singing the Ride of the Valkyries, or maybe reading about opera. We play at earning money, then we play at spending it. Some folks play at loving, then get all wrapped up in the game of fighting with their lovers. Our life on this plane is a grand maze of games, volleys within matches within sets within tournaments, carburetor science within engine technology within automotive design within highway labyrinths. And we get lost.
The most obvious game-within-a-game is to play, er, to believe, that there's a rule book, and that our purpose here is to win. Or that there's a script to follow, so we can "get to heaven" if we obey it. We search constantly for the sheet music the whole time we're actively singing this life-opera. We try so hard to "win" (whatever that is—money, health, applause, a ripe old age, a page in the history books), even though it's glaringly obvious our game is temporary: everything and everybody's mortal! Indeed, our planet and our galaxy are mortal! The Universe does not jump into the game to follow rules or to win. The Infinite plays to play. Like kids as a summer swimming pool or actors doing improve or an out-of-control rock star, winning is irrelevant. Eventually everyone must exit. The concert ends; the pool closes. The apparent winners leave without their winnings, and the apparent losers exit no poorer than when they arrived.
Deathwalkers. A terrifying word. Hypnotic. Shocking. True. Shamans, the deathwalkers, know who's playing and why. Shamans constantly remember that we're all playing. Roman conquerors are said to have tipped their hats to ancient shamanic wisdom by having a slave whisper to them, MEMENTO MORI, "Remember you're dying," as they roared in triumphant parades to the applause of their fellow citizens. Some scholars remark on what a strange tradition that was! Not strange at all—if you were a general who won by massive slaughter, who knew killing and death deeply, face to face, in person. They played harder at winning than any professional actor or athlete today. Yet they knew: we all end up as deathwalkers. Shamans just volunteer for the job.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Serious Fun, This Shamanic Death!
This is just a picture, of course. Modern spiritual instructors paint a picture of children, in school, learning lessons—ugh!—to tell us what we're doing here. I have a better picture: happier, available (to schoolchildren and super-seniors alike), both sad and blissful, hard and easy. The picture is that WE ARE PLAYING here on earth, playing games, playing music, putting on plays, playing sports, and all normal human activity.
Listen to the tiny tots on a playground, fighting about what the rules should be! School is an imposition foisted on children by adults. Non-urban societies have no schools. But play and games and inventing rules charge out like racehorses from our very core, from times before we can even talk.
Fun? Yup. Serious? Oh, yes! Watch those preschoolers screaming about what is fair and who broke the rules! Childhood is no idyllic dream. Too many teachers fantasize about their early days. So don't. Instead, sit at a playground. Baby shamans, focusing their infinite attention on small things. Like adults playing chess, whistling a tune, betting on a hole of golf, toddlers know how big the world is but choose instead to play little toddler games. And not just aimless play, either, but Rules, and Fairness, and Roles! Shocking! Awesome! Terrible! Wondrous!
Some shamans cannot abide such restrictions for long. Dare I hint at my understanding about why so many children die? The Game metaphor makes serious sense to me, in ways that scholastic nonsense always seems to fail. Mexican shamans have been said to disappear forever, on the rare occasion. Elijah and Enoch were reported to have ascended to the Divine without dying—or returning. Shamanic journeys that just kept on going. Deathwalkers that never returned to the living.
Listen to the tiny tots on a playground, fighting about what the rules should be! School is an imposition foisted on children by adults. Non-urban societies have no schools. But play and games and inventing rules charge out like racehorses from our very core, from times before we can even talk.
Fun? Yup. Serious? Oh, yes! Watch those preschoolers screaming about what is fair and who broke the rules! Childhood is no idyllic dream. Too many teachers fantasize about their early days. So don't. Instead, sit at a playground. Baby shamans, focusing their infinite attention on small things. Like adults playing chess, whistling a tune, betting on a hole of golf, toddlers know how big the world is but choose instead to play little toddler games. And not just aimless play, either, but Rules, and Fairness, and Roles! Shocking! Awesome! Terrible! Wondrous!
Some shamans cannot abide such restrictions for long. Dare I hint at my understanding about why so many children die? The Game metaphor makes serious sense to me, in ways that scholastic nonsense always seems to fail. Mexican shamans have been said to disappear forever, on the rare occasion. Elijah and Enoch were reported to have ascended to the Divine without dying—or returning. Shamanic journeys that just kept on going. Deathwalkers that never returned to the living.
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