LUDAMUS...LET'S PLAY PHOTONS
Photons. The tiniest of particles, not really "things" as all. We call them light, or heat, or chemical reactions, pretty much every ordinary event in our everyday lives.
The scientific theory goes like this: Only photons travel at the speed of light. They have zero mass, so they can move at the very fastest speed in the universe: the Speed of Light. The theory also says: YOU cannot ever get to the speed of light, because you do have mass. If you push the scientific accelerator halfway down, you might get moving at half the speed of light...but if you shove it all the way to the floor, uh, well, you don't double your speed; you don't quite make it all the way to the Speed of Light.
You start adding mass, and time slows down. All that rocket fuel just turns to extra blubber!
The closer you get to Light Speed, the closer your weight edges out toward infinity! And the closer you get to Light Speed, the slower and slower time passes...not that you'd actually notice, of course, if you're actually on that rocket.
But the light from the sun, from the distant galaxies, from the Cosmic Background Radiation left over from the Big Bang itself, all this light and heat travel at the Speed of Light: No Mass, and No Time.
To us, it looks like the Speed of Light is pretty limiting. But to a photon, the moment it leaves a star in some remote galaxy is exactly the same moment it hits your eyeball. At the exact Speed of Light, time slows down all the way to zero. The bits of light you see do not experience any time en route; they touched that star at precisely the same time they touched your face.
Photons, all the heat and light and chemistry in the universe, do not experience time. And since they never experience spatial separation. What did my high school teachers explain? Distance equals "velocity multiplied by time." So if time equals zero, then distance equals zero, too. Photons experience you and the stars at the exact same instant, and in the exact same place.
And this is the logical conclusion that the scientists never say out loud. One of them patiently told me, "Photons don't have experiences." Nice man, but his solution to my logic was not very logical.
So, shamans everywhere, you are right! Radio waves, X-rays, light, heat, and every single energy exchange mediated by photons (chemistry, fission, fusion, you name it)—they all depend on non-time non-space "thingies" that match every spirit reality ever expressed. Eternity, Infinity, Omnipresence. All dawning every morning and rising with the stars every night.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
PLAYING TO LOSE
Shamans, at their most honest moments, will confess that there is no good or evil, not really. The Sami shamans of old seemed to think there are people who live underground who walk upside down, with their feet up against our own feet. Shamans see a whole world, upside down, opposite life as we know it and right beneath our feet. Shamans resonate with Merlin, who lives in reverse, by contrast to all ordinary folk, born old and wise yet growing younger and more foolish every year. Shamans see drunkards who drink and misbehave in order to bless their hapless families. They see the wretched poor as a vast pool of advanced spiritual beings, who suffer and die in spiritual support of the heedless, mindless rich. And they see violence and murder as laying the groundwork for unconditional forgiveness and unlimited trust in the eternal Power of the Almighty.
No good or evil? I see evil at hand everywhere! Abysmal disappointment in so much of humanity. I want to serve human beings—and I want to flee them! Such horrible parts of my own small world. A Sunday-school teacher of mine who was later jailed of for raping children. A blood-relative who has gotten away with monstrous felonies for a lifetime (no victim will stand up and testify). The suicide of a young mother, widowing a coworker. The murder of the sister of a dear friend. A harmless little professor I knew who later beat his wife to death. Horrible, fearsome, havoc-wreaking human beings. What's that old song? "I Want to Run Away!"
The other day, it hit me. My "game theory" of life (We're not here to learn lessons—we're here to play) might hold a spark of comfort in the face of evil people and their evil deeds.
Most of us come here to this life to play casually. We mosey along, play along, collect some joys and some regrets. And we encounter people who play quite differently.
Some spirits come here, and they decide to play TO WIN. They forget their spirit Source so thoroughly they become one hundred percent mesmerized by the game. Here in the game they create amazing goals, to become First Chair Violin, or grow wealthy, or fulfill amazing moral feats, or be outstandingly popular or good-looking. They play this game childishly, desperate to learn the rules and desperate to win. But even so, the reality remains unaltered: even the apparent winners must eventually leave the stage or the playing field and return to the Source. The desperate winners misunderstand the true purpose of this drama, this dance—which is PLAY. Many desperate folk reach age 60 or 80 still trying to win, all as death walks ever closer, with unwavering gaze and immutable purpose. But they are not the worst of humanity.
Some people come into this life as horrible, revolting abominations. It seems they come into this Game of Life with a clear purpose: they're here TO LOSE. They incarnate as addicts and drunks, bullies and killers, sneering dictators and mocking bosses, family annihilators, pedophiles, stalkers, suicides both fast and slow. Pick the label you prefer. These are people you just want to wish away from life itself. You agree with the movie rabbi who prayed, "May the Lord bless and keep the Czar—far away from us!" You wish they'd never been born...or that YOU had never been born.
But spirits that play to lose are participants in the Universal unfolding, and they help enable the rest of us to play casually or even play to win. These revolting persons are also beings sprung from the One, sharing in our lives. These horrible individuals—from the standpoint of the Infinite—are rather like seasoned experts teaching novices how to play piano or fly airplanes or bluff at poker. These spirits, part of the Universe that loves us all, take on human life so they can lose to others, and lose deliberately. They come into this match to drop the ball, and in dropping it they let the rest of us play easily and well. They know what is good to do, and—unlike Plato's moral paragon—they go out and do evil anyway! Through the magic that is the Universe, they shape the game, in losing, so that others can play longer, or better, or with more joy or love or ease.
I can think back on the Universe whenever I see someone who's a lifelong failure at romance, a dirt-poor financial wreck, or a moral brute. I can see the love and opportunities that the Universe has poured out for their benefit. And as they play to lose, unable to trust or love, I can lean on the Universe and play with more trust and love. The losers help show me the way. One gospel in the New Testament quotes Jesus as saying (my own paraphrase): "Love your enemies and pray for those who are out to get you, so you can become children of your Source-in-the-Infinite. That Source makes the sun rise on you whether you're evil or good, and sends the rain on all persons moral and immoral."
And I can even remember that there are parts of my own life where I have lost or still lose miserably: I am playing the loser so that others can learn how to play. Hidden pieces of my past, secrets from the present that I want no one to know, all these are known to the Infinite and knowable by any of my fellow players. Whether I win or lose, I am playing. THAT is what's good. After all, I might be pulled from the game at any time, written out of the script. Then this game will become a topic of mild interest out of infinitely many dramas that have ever been acted, out of the billions and trillions of symphonic movements, all of them the exquisite Creativity-At-Work by the Infinite Oneness.
Shamans and the communities they serve may live or die, may triumph or be destroyed, but shamans know with crystalline clarity that ultimate victory is certain though nothing is at stake, and that defeat is inevitable even as we are deep into the only play there is: this one that is unfolding now. Shamans know no good or evil. They know that everything on this dramatic stage is evil, separated as we seem to be from the Source and forgetful of the Universal Love. They know that everything is good, because we are never separated, and we will never forget irretrievably. And yet the shamans typically play—here, now, in this game—harder and longer than all the rest of us.
No good or evil? I see evil at hand everywhere! Abysmal disappointment in so much of humanity. I want to serve human beings—and I want to flee them! Such horrible parts of my own small world. A Sunday-school teacher of mine who was later jailed of for raping children. A blood-relative who has gotten away with monstrous felonies for a lifetime (no victim will stand up and testify). The suicide of a young mother, widowing a coworker. The murder of the sister of a dear friend. A harmless little professor I knew who later beat his wife to death. Horrible, fearsome, havoc-wreaking human beings. What's that old song? "I Want to Run Away!"
The other day, it hit me. My "game theory" of life (We're not here to learn lessons—we're here to play) might hold a spark of comfort in the face of evil people and their evil deeds.
Most of us come here to this life to play casually. We mosey along, play along, collect some joys and some regrets. And we encounter people who play quite differently.
Some spirits come here, and they decide to play TO WIN. They forget their spirit Source so thoroughly they become one hundred percent mesmerized by the game. Here in the game they create amazing goals, to become First Chair Violin, or grow wealthy, or fulfill amazing moral feats, or be outstandingly popular or good-looking. They play this game childishly, desperate to learn the rules and desperate to win. But even so, the reality remains unaltered: even the apparent winners must eventually leave the stage or the playing field and return to the Source. The desperate winners misunderstand the true purpose of this drama, this dance—which is PLAY. Many desperate folk reach age 60 or 80 still trying to win, all as death walks ever closer, with unwavering gaze and immutable purpose. But they are not the worst of humanity.
Some people come into this life as horrible, revolting abominations. It seems they come into this Game of Life with a clear purpose: they're here TO LOSE. They incarnate as addicts and drunks, bullies and killers, sneering dictators and mocking bosses, family annihilators, pedophiles, stalkers, suicides both fast and slow. Pick the label you prefer. These are people you just want to wish away from life itself. You agree with the movie rabbi who prayed, "May the Lord bless and keep the Czar—far away from us!" You wish they'd never been born...or that YOU had never been born.
But spirits that play to lose are participants in the Universal unfolding, and they help enable the rest of us to play casually or even play to win. These revolting persons are also beings sprung from the One, sharing in our lives. These horrible individuals—from the standpoint of the Infinite—are rather like seasoned experts teaching novices how to play piano or fly airplanes or bluff at poker. These spirits, part of the Universe that loves us all, take on human life so they can lose to others, and lose deliberately. They come into this match to drop the ball, and in dropping it they let the rest of us play easily and well. They know what is good to do, and—unlike Plato's moral paragon—they go out and do evil anyway! Through the magic that is the Universe, they shape the game, in losing, so that others can play longer, or better, or with more joy or love or ease.
I can think back on the Universe whenever I see someone who's a lifelong failure at romance, a dirt-poor financial wreck, or a moral brute. I can see the love and opportunities that the Universe has poured out for their benefit. And as they play to lose, unable to trust or love, I can lean on the Universe and play with more trust and love. The losers help show me the way. One gospel in the New Testament quotes Jesus as saying (my own paraphrase): "Love your enemies and pray for those who are out to get you, so you can become children of your Source-in-the-Infinite. That Source makes the sun rise on you whether you're evil or good, and sends the rain on all persons moral and immoral."
And I can even remember that there are parts of my own life where I have lost or still lose miserably: I am playing the loser so that others can learn how to play. Hidden pieces of my past, secrets from the present that I want no one to know, all these are known to the Infinite and knowable by any of my fellow players. Whether I win or lose, I am playing. THAT is what's good. After all, I might be pulled from the game at any time, written out of the script. Then this game will become a topic of mild interest out of infinitely many dramas that have ever been acted, out of the billions and trillions of symphonic movements, all of them the exquisite Creativity-At-Work by the Infinite Oneness.
Shamans and the communities they serve may live or die, may triumph or be destroyed, but shamans know with crystalline clarity that ultimate victory is certain though nothing is at stake, and that defeat is inevitable even as we are deep into the only play there is: this one that is unfolding now. Shamans know no good or evil. They know that everything on this dramatic stage is evil, separated as we seem to be from the Source and forgetful of the Universal Love. They know that everything is good, because we are never separated, and we will never forget irretrievably. And yet the shamans typically play—here, now, in this game—harder and longer than all the rest of us.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Big Games and Little Plays
Game versus Game
In amusement parks and theme resorts, we sometimes encounter small plays or concerts going on about us while we're walking around. Perhaps a mime is acting out a comical situation, keeping the children entranced as they swarm her. Maybe there's a guitarist, a trumpeter, or a guy operating a full percussion set who performs seemingly impossible feats of full orchestration. We stop and watch them play and perform. Each one of them has stepped out of a real life and into a role for a little while, a college student at a summer job, or a full-time acrobat who desperately needs work.
Then the daily Afternoon Parade comes storming by, or whatever it's called, with bands and floats and huge horses and gigantic puppets. The Parade itself is an act, of course, all of its participants also assuming roles for a moment, following rules for a little while, which will eventually be given up in favor of returning to full life, to "real reality." But at the moment everything is The Parade, sweeping down the street, drowning out all solitary musicians with its tremendous songs played by bands and over loudspeakers. Mimes and acting troupes scatter like birds before a running dog. The Parade, that seemingly irresistible force, pours down the street, a lava stream that simply cannot be halted. A big act has elbowed out the smaller ones.
Terrible natural disasters can happen to us here on earth. Just this year, unstoppable tsunamis from the ocean and floods caused by snow melt, rains, and rivers have caused havoc in countless parts of the world. Whether in gleaming cities of the wealthiest countries or among peasants scarcely scratching out a bit of life from the mud, flooding has been dramatic, interminable, and beyond our capacity to deflect it. Earthquakes from the Washington, America's capital, to the remotest parts of the Pacific Ocean or the Andean or Eurasian mountains, have ended lives and wrecked lifetimes. All our money and all our mighty machines stand helpless to change The Parade.
With the notorious end-of-the-world date from the Mayan calendar, we speculate about even greater disasters. I grew up on the flat lands scraped clear by the last Ice Age in North America, close to the readily visible lines of hills and boulders, the moraines, we called them, where the glaciers stopped their bulldozing effect on the land. With the record snowfalls last year, and the predictions of an even worse winter this year, I seem to hear echoes of The Parade advancing, across North America, Europe, Asia, maybe even South America.. Maybe that's what "2012" is about—the greatest disaster a tropical society like the Mayan people could imagine: Permanent Snow. Like so many other natural disasters, it would destroy great swaths of human civilization, including entire countries that I've visited, cities where I've lived, and the lands that provided for me and for my family and friends. It would sweep aside our little street performances and individual concerts. It would return a lot of animals, plants, and people to their real life of being great spiritual beings.
But even an ice age, or a supernova, or a hypervolcano, is just a Street Parade. Shamans might jump on a float for a quick ride, they might convert their street mime into a walking sideshow beside the great animals and noisy bands. Shamans respect nothing. Shamans have respect for everything. Shamans might add a sassy cymbal to the band; they might briefly distract one of the draft horses. But they know The Parade has its own power. Shamans love the big show, and the little shows, and the real lives and real life that underlie it all: Earth, Stars, Humanity, Animals, History, and Spirit.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Losing North
LOSING NORTH
In the far north of Scandinavia (which themselves are already far-north countries) live several groups of aboriginal peoples who are not Scandinavians, whose world has long been trampled by those very nations of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, that over the centuries have grown up around them. These peoples are the Sami (say "SAH-mee;" outsiders long called them Lapps or Lapplanders), and they have their own languages, cultures, and religious sentiments. Separated over the eons by mountains, fjords, oceans, and ice from most of the world, they have been the last Europeans to join Europe.
It is said (heaven only knows the linguistic facts here) that the original ancient Sami languages used words like "coastward" and "inland" for directions, but did not have any words for the cardinal compass points. Notions like "EAST, SOUTH," etc., apparently had no meaning.
The Sami, along with the reindeer herders across the Siberian Arctic, live in a world where the sun offers no help at all in finding directions. The sun blanks out the stars half the year—most of that time it pretty much circles not far above the horizon, a full 360° during the weeks near the summer solstice. When it does actually rise and set, the horizon points of rising and setting are changing continuously, shifting visibly from one day to the next.
And when you do see the stars, the North Star is almost directly overhead--makes it really hard to find "north." All the stars simply circle around in the sky overhead. And it's really easy to lose your way. Time to hire some reindeer!
Have you ever lost your way? Lost it totally? Ever tried to end your life? Ever drowned yourself with food, starvation, drink, drugs, work, play, causes? Ever gotten completely lost?
All the signposts that people recommend seem to fail you. The sun rises in a different spot every day. Or it never rises. Or it never sets. Perhaps you think you're looking for Shakespeare's "star to every wandering bark" (Sonnet 116) in solid character, in romantic love, in finance, in health.
When you've lost all direction, when—for cryin' out loud!—you can't even find which way is north, then your only help is to quit looking. North is straight up! The sun never sets anywhere on June 21; and for months on end it never rises.
Do what shamans do. Travel to spirit. As you can read in the first lines of the book of Genesis, or hear in the pre-modern languages of the Sami: Separate the land from the water, the coastline from the mountains. Shamans know that the basic knowledge is that of earth and spirit. The universe holds us on the ground, so we never fly off into space. Spirit gives us breath and life. Such directions are far better than east or west, in the long haul. Such directions work even when I've lost north.
In the far north of Scandinavia (which themselves are already far-north countries) live several groups of aboriginal peoples who are not Scandinavians, whose world has long been trampled by those very nations of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, that over the centuries have grown up around them. These peoples are the Sami (say "SAH-mee;" outsiders long called them Lapps or Lapplanders), and they have their own languages, cultures, and religious sentiments. Separated over the eons by mountains, fjords, oceans, and ice from most of the world, they have been the last Europeans to join Europe.
It is said (heaven only knows the linguistic facts here) that the original ancient Sami languages used words like "coastward" and "inland" for directions, but did not have any words for the cardinal compass points. Notions like "EAST, SOUTH," etc., apparently had no meaning.
The Sami, along with the reindeer herders across the Siberian Arctic, live in a world where the sun offers no help at all in finding directions. The sun blanks out the stars half the year—most of that time it pretty much circles not far above the horizon, a full 360° during the weeks near the summer solstice. When it does actually rise and set, the horizon points of rising and setting are changing continuously, shifting visibly from one day to the next.
And when you do see the stars, the North Star is almost directly overhead--makes it really hard to find "north." All the stars simply circle around in the sky overhead. And it's really easy to lose your way. Time to hire some reindeer!
Have you ever lost your way? Lost it totally? Ever tried to end your life? Ever drowned yourself with food, starvation, drink, drugs, work, play, causes? Ever gotten completely lost?
All the signposts that people recommend seem to fail you. The sun rises in a different spot every day. Or it never rises. Or it never sets. Perhaps you think you're looking for Shakespeare's "star to every wandering bark" (Sonnet 116) in solid character, in romantic love, in finance, in health.
When you've lost all direction, when—for cryin' out loud!—you can't even find which way is north, then your only help is to quit looking. North is straight up! The sun never sets anywhere on June 21; and for months on end it never rises.
Do what shamans do. Travel to spirit. As you can read in the first lines of the book of Genesis, or hear in the pre-modern languages of the Sami: Separate the land from the water, the coastline from the mountains. Shamans know that the basic knowledge is that of earth and spirit. The universe holds us on the ground, so we never fly off into space. Spirit gives us breath and life. Such directions are far better than east or west, in the long haul. Such directions work even when I've lost north.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Anything Spiritual Can Go "Wrong," Too
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Quick Summary
Playing the Game and Shamanic Death
The Universe loves infinitely, knows infinitely, and so plays at being finite—becoming separated personalities (you, me, Fido, whales, elephants, planets, galaxies, and roses) and playing fun and scary games that we call life, this world, or reality. Near-death experiences are just previews of the real Monday-morning quarterbacking, and after leaving this life we feel the calm of a match well played, even if I played villain this time and you played hero!
Much of our playing is dead serious, filled with grief and agony as we scramble to stay alive. Even more of it is enormously light-hearted: laughter, romance, song, travel, fantasies, meals, beauty. The Universe plays.
Since the Universe knows infinitely, there's nothing more to learn! Since the Universe loves infinitely, there's no fear of death, no fear of loss, no abandonment, no rejection. "It's all love." So shamans dance with Death, like directors who know the play, the audience, and the outside world, coaching their actors, who dive so deeply into their roles that they forget everything else. Shamans know Death not as an ending but as a boundary line you can cross—both ways, in fact.
The Universe loves infinitely, knows infinitely, and so plays at being finite—becoming separated personalities (you, me, Fido, whales, elephants, planets, galaxies, and roses) and playing fun and scary games that we call life, this world, or reality. Near-death experiences are just previews of the real Monday-morning quarterbacking, and after leaving this life we feel the calm of a match well played, even if I played villain this time and you played hero!
Much of our playing is dead serious, filled with grief and agony as we scramble to stay alive. Even more of it is enormously light-hearted: laughter, romance, song, travel, fantasies, meals, beauty. The Universe plays.
Since the Universe knows infinitely, there's nothing more to learn! Since the Universe loves infinitely, there's no fear of death, no fear of loss, no abandonment, no rejection. "It's all love." So shamans dance with Death, like directors who know the play, the audience, and the outside world, coaching their actors, who dive so deeply into their roles that they forget everything else. Shamans know Death not as an ending but as a boundary line you can cross—both ways, in fact.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Ending the Play
PLAYING THE GAME AND SHAMANIC DEATH
I'm anti-doctrine. The doctrine says: Life is a school—learn your lessons! Ugh, such a downer! Then when you die, you'll return to Spirit where you'll find you already know everything. Huh? I'm not so sure, says my contrarian self. I'm here to play, to act, to sing, and I find it so riveting to play here that I (mostly) forget my Higher Self, Infinity, the Universe.
We play game after game, and games within games, we sing hymns or rounds or chants one after another, and we play our roles through every scene until the audience rises and applauds and the curtain falls. Intensely focused on our drama or music or sporting match, we find ourselves, here in ordinary life, hoping it will never end, and behaving the same way. Like a little child, I spend the whole day—I mean, my whole life on earth—playing and playing and playing, for good or ill, collecting praise or scoldings, making toddler-friends and toddler-enemies, until I'm so exhausted that I cry and scream, refusing to go to bed, howling and shrieking because I have to leave all the fun I've been having. No, I don't wanna die!! But life as part of the Universe is far, far greater than any single game.
Each drama we enact here ends—applause or no, full house or empty. Every concert finishes, even if we can manage an encore or two. The game may go on, but all the players eventually must leave. Maybe in the tryouts or maybe in the finals. Maybe your character never reappears after the first act, or perhaps you have top billing. Even the most dazzling soloist stands in front of the chorus for just that one stellar moment, but afterwards the concert goes on, absent the star. We are just playing, after all.
We have entered the game, and we will exit. And while we engage, the game's the thing—the ONLY thing. We perform so very well. We think we're working for points, or competing to outdo others, or to last longer than the others. We remain so entranced by the rules and the results, that we have momentarily forgotten facts of the matter: this is a game we play within the larger Universe, the Greater Life of which we form a part. We almost never shed our fanatical play, so that not many of us are ever ready for death.
Some people die too young. Perhaps they join the game intending not really to play but rather to assist other players. Perhaps they simply run in from the sidelines with some useful instructions from the coach. It could be they overacted their part and fell off the stage—the actor is unhurt but the character has vanished.
Some people, supposing the rules to be immutable and thinking all is lost, as they suffer in agony, or shame, or total loss of hope, think their only choice is to leave. They smash their game-piece while it is still on the board, or occasionally they sweep several chessmen onto the floor. A few people, hating their place in the standings or the effects of their fellow actors, drive their opponents off the board, whether swiftly and murderously, or slowly with abuse and torture.
Some just leave the field, stop singing, freeze in stage fright—while all the song and drama and sport of this world continue to swirl around them. Their eyes and ears are fixed on all the action, but they find they have to sit out the rest of the match.
The majority of us dance and perform and tally up points until something in us tires of this game. Until something in us quits. Perhaps it's time to go back and rejoin the Whole for a while. Perhaps we have become entranced by another song from elsewhere, another rearrangement of the rules, a different place to play.
Do we really need 70 or 80 years to learn some lessons? Has a 15-year-old who suddenly passed away somehow learned all the necessary instruction? We suppose a long life signals success or that the death of a child is tragedy beyond all remedy. But there is another perspective: the Universe is at play. And we are children of that Universe. We do not play for points. We play just because we want to play.
Shamans know death, and so they understand about playing and players. They are seers and knowers. Shamans experience pre-game and post-game, tuning up instruments and later putting them away, locker room, dressing room, and all the wider Universe. Shamans walk both life and death. They always know more than you suppose. Indeed, they always know more than they themselves suppose.
I'm anti-doctrine. The doctrine says: Life is a school—learn your lessons! Ugh, such a downer! Then when you die, you'll return to Spirit where you'll find you already know everything. Huh? I'm not so sure, says my contrarian self. I'm here to play, to act, to sing, and I find it so riveting to play here that I (mostly) forget my Higher Self, Infinity, the Universe.
We play game after game, and games within games, we sing hymns or rounds or chants one after another, and we play our roles through every scene until the audience rises and applauds and the curtain falls. Intensely focused on our drama or music or sporting match, we find ourselves, here in ordinary life, hoping it will never end, and behaving the same way. Like a little child, I spend the whole day—I mean, my whole life on earth—playing and playing and playing, for good or ill, collecting praise or scoldings, making toddler-friends and toddler-enemies, until I'm so exhausted that I cry and scream, refusing to go to bed, howling and shrieking because I have to leave all the fun I've been having. No, I don't wanna die!! But life as part of the Universe is far, far greater than any single game.
Each drama we enact here ends—applause or no, full house or empty. Every concert finishes, even if we can manage an encore or two. The game may go on, but all the players eventually must leave. Maybe in the tryouts or maybe in the finals. Maybe your character never reappears after the first act, or perhaps you have top billing. Even the most dazzling soloist stands in front of the chorus for just that one stellar moment, but afterwards the concert goes on, absent the star. We are just playing, after all.
We have entered the game, and we will exit. And while we engage, the game's the thing—the ONLY thing. We perform so very well. We think we're working for points, or competing to outdo others, or to last longer than the others. We remain so entranced by the rules and the results, that we have momentarily forgotten facts of the matter: this is a game we play within the larger Universe, the Greater Life of which we form a part. We almost never shed our fanatical play, so that not many of us are ever ready for death.
Some people die too young. Perhaps they join the game intending not really to play but rather to assist other players. Perhaps they simply run in from the sidelines with some useful instructions from the coach. It could be they overacted their part and fell off the stage—the actor is unhurt but the character has vanished.
Some people, supposing the rules to be immutable and thinking all is lost, as they suffer in agony, or shame, or total loss of hope, think their only choice is to leave. They smash their game-piece while it is still on the board, or occasionally they sweep several chessmen onto the floor. A few people, hating their place in the standings or the effects of their fellow actors, drive their opponents off the board, whether swiftly and murderously, or slowly with abuse and torture.
Some just leave the field, stop singing, freeze in stage fright—while all the song and drama and sport of this world continue to swirl around them. Their eyes and ears are fixed on all the action, but they find they have to sit out the rest of the match.
The majority of us dance and perform and tally up points until something in us tires of this game. Until something in us quits. Perhaps it's time to go back and rejoin the Whole for a while. Perhaps we have become entranced by another song from elsewhere, another rearrangement of the rules, a different place to play.
Do we really need 70 or 80 years to learn some lessons? Has a 15-year-old who suddenly passed away somehow learned all the necessary instruction? We suppose a long life signals success or that the death of a child is tragedy beyond all remedy. But there is another perspective: the Universe is at play. And we are children of that Universe. We do not play for points. We play just because we want to play.
Shamans know death, and so they understand about playing and players. They are seers and knowers. Shamans experience pre-game and post-game, tuning up instruments and later putting them away, locker room, dressing room, and all the wider Universe. Shamans walk both life and death. They always know more than you suppose. Indeed, they always know more than they themselves suppose.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Starting the Play
Playing the Game and Shamanic Death
STARTING THE PLAY
July 25, 2010
You buy a new game, download a new application, replace your old cell phone, and you're so keen on it you just have to get going. How do I turn it on? Where's the charger? Where's the rule book? Whether on the playing field, at the gaming table, or on stage, the first moments are terrifying thrills of fumbling, mistakes, misunderstanding: dialing the wrong hemisphere, pushing to get a pawn queened a move before suffering checkmate, addressing fellow thespians by their personal names instead of as their characters.
In this game, we forget our real life as infinite beings and charge ahead with the new, restrictive environment and all its odd new rules. I'm so excited with my new phone, I just have to call my home number while I'm sitting in my own kitchen. Young actors address one another as Hamlet or Ophelia or Polonius over burgers and fries or as they commute on the city bus. The whole world fits inside the stadium at the World Cup, living and breathing the dreadful missed goal or the upset win that wrecks the hopes of former champions.
Oh, it is so EXCITING to play! Old toys are neglected. The sports heroes of yesteryear, with all their innovations, the records they set, the triumphs they achieved, fade before the game we are in, right-HERE-right-NOW. The bets so often made and lost never prevent us from putting down money again. It is so energizing‼
Games inside games, dramas within comedies within great tragedies! We live our plays and build our sports, one atop the next. Not just a round of golf, but side-bets per hole or per stroke. Not just a casino bet, but "doubling down" and "insurance" and borrowing money to wager some more. Our entire lives are enormous complexes of playing and gaming that we label as jobs, hobbies, families, rivalries, nationalities, religions--all far, far more intricate and involved than the schoolroom image explaining "Why we are here." School was never so entrancing! We are here because we love to play. We love to watch others playing, too, in stories, history, television and movies, news reports, sports events, ad infinitum. Yet, we are actually infinite beings, with infinite interests, whether those of infinity or those of this moment of play!
In the universe of eternity, amid the infinite beings of total knowledge, we are beings of wealth beyond all limits, of all knowledge about knowledge itself, of strength and power to move, accomplish, build, laugh, and love. It is wonderful. We do not need to go to school. There are no lessons to learn, if you already know. There is no power to acquire when you're already infinite.
But there is play. There are games to play. There are plays to perform. We love to imagine smaller worlds, like cell phones, and what it might be like to dial the person at the other end of the couch. We can converse perfectly on the couch; we love to play an imperfect conversation via technology. We are all players. So we repeatedly join in.
There are billions of us here on this planet. Actually, there are trillions of "us" if we correctly include ants, whales, dandelions, bacteria, and so many other variants of life. Or maybe countless quadrillions when we remember the gentle spirits that form and hold together each rock, raindrop, and molecule, all those being we brand as inanimate. Each spirit plays with us, as we play with them.
Little children, newly born, have entered the play afresh. Grown-ups often term their roll-call of friends and interests "imaginary," or "just" a flower, or "stupid" animals. Children often call their favorite adults by the wrong names (mine did!) or mistake the roles other children and adults have taken on. Some even insist they used to be Grandpa Fred or Great-Aunt Gertie. I can provide you with documentary evidence. Children, reincarnated.
Folks often like to ask Mensa members (the intelligence club), "If you're so smart, how come you're not rich?" I suspect that most of us, in fact, came into this play, the Planet Earth Drama, with memories of other stage productions and other rivalries, and many of us never quite catch on. You never got it that he was cheating on you. You never figured out what she really wanted. You never made enough money. Your health is wretched. Your parents destroyed you. You are dying all too young. We are stuck because we are playing by other rules.
Yes, there are rules here. Some are basic, like, only 52 cards in a deck, or like, dice have exactly six sides. We call such rules Science and Math, and Death. There are also squishier rules, rules that vary by person, place, time, the corner of the playing field where we happen to be. Sometimes a king trumps a jack, but sometimes every face card equals 10, and a ball through the hoop counts as 2, sometimes 1, occasionally even 3.
Shamans fly. Shamans know Death and visit the dead. They violate those most basic rules we know as gravity, mortality, and the like. Shamans know that all rules are squishy, because it's only a game, after all. Just a stage show that momentarily seizes our attention. Shamans stretch their attention, move their consciousness other-where, merge consciousness with that of other beings. Indeed, shamans participate in even more play than most folks, while being certain of the intent to play that underlies it all. They join the game and leave it at will. That is how they are death-walkers.
STARTING THE PLAY
July 25, 2010
You buy a new game, download a new application, replace your old cell phone, and you're so keen on it you just have to get going. How do I turn it on? Where's the charger? Where's the rule book? Whether on the playing field, at the gaming table, or on stage, the first moments are terrifying thrills of fumbling, mistakes, misunderstanding: dialing the wrong hemisphere, pushing to get a pawn queened a move before suffering checkmate, addressing fellow thespians by their personal names instead of as their characters.
In this game, we forget our real life as infinite beings and charge ahead with the new, restrictive environment and all its odd new rules. I'm so excited with my new phone, I just have to call my home number while I'm sitting in my own kitchen. Young actors address one another as Hamlet or Ophelia or Polonius over burgers and fries or as they commute on the city bus. The whole world fits inside the stadium at the World Cup, living and breathing the dreadful missed goal or the upset win that wrecks the hopes of former champions.
Oh, it is so EXCITING to play! Old toys are neglected. The sports heroes of yesteryear, with all their innovations, the records they set, the triumphs they achieved, fade before the game we are in, right-HERE-right-NOW. The bets so often made and lost never prevent us from putting down money again. It is so energizing‼
Games inside games, dramas within comedies within great tragedies! We live our plays and build our sports, one atop the next. Not just a round of golf, but side-bets per hole or per stroke. Not just a casino bet, but "doubling down" and "insurance" and borrowing money to wager some more. Our entire lives are enormous complexes of playing and gaming that we label as jobs, hobbies, families, rivalries, nationalities, religions--all far, far more intricate and involved than the schoolroom image explaining "Why we are here." School was never so entrancing! We are here because we love to play. We love to watch others playing, too, in stories, history, television and movies, news reports, sports events, ad infinitum. Yet, we are actually infinite beings, with infinite interests, whether those of infinity or those of this moment of play!
In the universe of eternity, amid the infinite beings of total knowledge, we are beings of wealth beyond all limits, of all knowledge about knowledge itself, of strength and power to move, accomplish, build, laugh, and love. It is wonderful. We do not need to go to school. There are no lessons to learn, if you already know. There is no power to acquire when you're already infinite.
But there is play. There are games to play. There are plays to perform. We love to imagine smaller worlds, like cell phones, and what it might be like to dial the person at the other end of the couch. We can converse perfectly on the couch; we love to play an imperfect conversation via technology. We are all players. So we repeatedly join in.
There are billions of us here on this planet. Actually, there are trillions of "us" if we correctly include ants, whales, dandelions, bacteria, and so many other variants of life. Or maybe countless quadrillions when we remember the gentle spirits that form and hold together each rock, raindrop, and molecule, all those being we brand as inanimate. Each spirit plays with us, as we play with them.
Little children, newly born, have entered the play afresh. Grown-ups often term their roll-call of friends and interests "imaginary," or "just" a flower, or "stupid" animals. Children often call their favorite adults by the wrong names (mine did!) or mistake the roles other children and adults have taken on. Some even insist they used to be Grandpa Fred or Great-Aunt Gertie. I can provide you with documentary evidence. Children, reincarnated.
Folks often like to ask Mensa members (the intelligence club), "If you're so smart, how come you're not rich?" I suspect that most of us, in fact, came into this play, the Planet Earth Drama, with memories of other stage productions and other rivalries, and many of us never quite catch on. You never got it that he was cheating on you. You never figured out what she really wanted. You never made enough money. Your health is wretched. Your parents destroyed you. You are dying all too young. We are stuck because we are playing by other rules.
Yes, there are rules here. Some are basic, like, only 52 cards in a deck, or like, dice have exactly six sides. We call such rules Science and Math, and Death. There are also squishier rules, rules that vary by person, place, time, the corner of the playing field where we happen to be. Sometimes a king trumps a jack, but sometimes every face card equals 10, and a ball through the hoop counts as 2, sometimes 1, occasionally even 3.
Shamans fly. Shamans know Death and visit the dead. They violate those most basic rules we know as gravity, mortality, and the like. Shamans know that all rules are squishy, because it's only a game, after all. Just a stage show that momentarily seizes our attention. Shamans stretch their attention, move their consciousness other-where, merge consciousness with that of other beings. Indeed, shamans participate in even more play than most folks, while being certain of the intent to play that underlies it all. They join the game and leave it at will. That is how they are death-walkers.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Why We Are Here (The Meaning of Life)
Playing the Game and Shamanic Death
WHY WE ARE HERE (THE MEANING OF LIFE)
July 20, 2010
The doctrine says: Life is a school where we learn lessons. When we die, we return to Spirit where we realize we already knew everything. I always find myself wondering, "So, then, why did we need to learn any lessons?" I also find myself wondering, "What about all those tragic lives that seem beyond any learning of any lessons." I worry about the child soldiers dying in so many of today's civil wars, impoverished women volunteering to be suicide warriors, and on, and on.
So let's dump the doctrine. Skip the school, cancel classes, and take another look. Our world believes in doctrine, right thinking and right behavior, regular attendance, passing and failing. Spirit seems not to think like that, however. I sure don't know just HOW Spirit thinks, but it's unlikely to be so parochial, so constrained, so Islamic/Catholic/Marxist and focused on "rightness."
No one instructs in Shakespeare. No Shakespeare prayer so many times a day, no weekly Shakespeare services with mandatory attendance. No passing or failing, no winners in heaven or losers in hell. Better than doctrine. Shakespeare says: Life is a game we play, a drama we enact. "As You Like It," Act 2, Scene 7: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
To play a game, to perform on a stage, we deliberately forget our full selves and the nature of our true lives. We sink into the card deck, we shrink the universe to the curtains of the footboards. Only the rules of the game matter now—our bodies, our cultures, our planet. Our thoughts are fully occupied only by the unfolding of the play, whether game play, sports play, or dramatic play. We play.
Our most meaningful activity as mewling babes or whining schoolkids is PLAY. Schoolyards are filled with tiny adults setting up new rules to follow, arguing about the rules, or about who played according to these invented rules, and eventually learning the rules that have become a little more durable, like laws, adult society, and the like.
The shamans among us deliberately leave the game, the drama, and all that play that forgets the real universe, and leaving the stage or the game table go and consult with wiser spirits about fixing problems with, and getting better information about, the game and its nature. They talk to the playwright, the director, the stage hands, and they encourage them to do things during the drama. They talk to their buddies who can see the cards in their opponents' hands, the spirits standing over the shoulders of the other players—players who have forgotten the true nature of the game, in which anyone can, in fact, walk around the table and see every hand that's been dealt.
Sorry, John Edward, Sylvia Brown, and Dr. Chopra. Sorry, Lily Dale and Pope Supremus Ultimus. I left doctrine when I left religion. The universe is too complex, too shocking, too TOO, for all our nicey-nice pictures of fine children and proper young teachers. The universe indeed seems quite busy knocking all our pegs out from under us, each time in some unpredictable new way. We are not in control. The universe is. But we are playing along, hammering out new rules and ideas and roles: "They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts." We have forgotten—perhaps intentionally—what the greater Universe is about, and we play the play.
And when we finish playing (or sometimes, when we give up on life and fling our cards on the floor and stomp off, or even sometimes, when some other player kills one of us, shoving us off the stage or sweeping our board clear of the checkers), we go back to the fundamental reality. We meet all our ancestors again, and our spirit guides, and even the true Higher Selves of those who bet against our cards, or acted the role of villain. We go off together to enjoy, to watch other beings at play, or simply to be.
The joy of shamanic practice is the chance to talk to the powers behind it all, the Genuine Grown-ups who remember the full reality of It All. Shamans shove back from the table, travel to the skies, and bring back benefits that astound the other players. Shamans are never "merely players." They are death-walkers.
WHY WE ARE HERE (THE MEANING OF LIFE)
July 20, 2010
The doctrine says: Life is a school where we learn lessons. When we die, we return to Spirit where we realize we already knew everything. I always find myself wondering, "So, then, why did we need to learn any lessons?" I also find myself wondering, "What about all those tragic lives that seem beyond any learning of any lessons." I worry about the child soldiers dying in so many of today's civil wars, impoverished women volunteering to be suicide warriors, and on, and on.
So let's dump the doctrine. Skip the school, cancel classes, and take another look. Our world believes in doctrine, right thinking and right behavior, regular attendance, passing and failing. Spirit seems not to think like that, however. I sure don't know just HOW Spirit thinks, but it's unlikely to be so parochial, so constrained, so Islamic/Catholic/Marxist and focused on "rightness."
No one instructs in Shakespeare. No Shakespeare prayer so many times a day, no weekly Shakespeare services with mandatory attendance. No passing or failing, no winners in heaven or losers in hell. Better than doctrine. Shakespeare says: Life is a game we play, a drama we enact. "As You Like It," Act 2, Scene 7: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
To play a game, to perform on a stage, we deliberately forget our full selves and the nature of our true lives. We sink into the card deck, we shrink the universe to the curtains of the footboards. Only the rules of the game matter now—our bodies, our cultures, our planet. Our thoughts are fully occupied only by the unfolding of the play, whether game play, sports play, or dramatic play. We play.
Our most meaningful activity as mewling babes or whining schoolkids is PLAY. Schoolyards are filled with tiny adults setting up new rules to follow, arguing about the rules, or about who played according to these invented rules, and eventually learning the rules that have become a little more durable, like laws, adult society, and the like.
The shamans among us deliberately leave the game, the drama, and all that play that forgets the real universe, and leaving the stage or the game table go and consult with wiser spirits about fixing problems with, and getting better information about, the game and its nature. They talk to the playwright, the director, the stage hands, and they encourage them to do things during the drama. They talk to their buddies who can see the cards in their opponents' hands, the spirits standing over the shoulders of the other players—players who have forgotten the true nature of the game, in which anyone can, in fact, walk around the table and see every hand that's been dealt.
Sorry, John Edward, Sylvia Brown, and Dr. Chopra. Sorry, Lily Dale and Pope Supremus Ultimus. I left doctrine when I left religion. The universe is too complex, too shocking, too TOO, for all our nicey-nice pictures of fine children and proper young teachers. The universe indeed seems quite busy knocking all our pegs out from under us, each time in some unpredictable new way. We are not in control. The universe is. But we are playing along, hammering out new rules and ideas and roles: "They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts." We have forgotten—perhaps intentionally—what the greater Universe is about, and we play the play.
And when we finish playing (or sometimes, when we give up on life and fling our cards on the floor and stomp off, or even sometimes, when some other player kills one of us, shoving us off the stage or sweeping our board clear of the checkers), we go back to the fundamental reality. We meet all our ancestors again, and our spirit guides, and even the true Higher Selves of those who bet against our cards, or acted the role of villain. We go off together to enjoy, to watch other beings at play, or simply to be.
The joy of shamanic practice is the chance to talk to the powers behind it all, the Genuine Grown-ups who remember the full reality of It All. Shamans shove back from the table, travel to the skies, and bring back benefits that astound the other players. Shamans are never "merely players." They are death-walkers.
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