XIBALBA BIBLE
21-27/28
TWENTY-ONE
PRELUDE
Recently, my mother and I visited my great-grandfather’s town just below the High Sierras in California. His town is located in an area of transition between the rolling grass hills with giant oaks below and the snowy Sierra crags above. I’ve always felt uncomfortable when we visited that middlin’ place. Though, I have to admit that my mother and grandmother tell charming stories about their childhood experiences in such a gulch-sunk town. The place has significance to this story because I began a cycle of pilgrimages there twenty years ago. Pilgrimages that I’ve completed recently, that have either been the purpose of my life or the ruin of it.
Who can tell why these pilgrimages started in the first place; young man coming-of-age, independence, adventure carte blanche, destiny. There certainly were all the usual justifications. But I have had to make other justifications since; to secular, even ecclesial authorities. Many boundaries have been trespassed since that first naive journey. Then, twenty years ago, it was only a quest of human curiosity. It has since become a pilgrimage trespassing the boundaries between this world and the “other” one.
Now at this conclusion, I am heartened to visit once again the old family plots in the cemetery and to find it handsome with poppies, roses, wild things. The rocky hills are green again with an infinity of green blades.
I came here to start that first journey by visiting the graves of my ancestors who first settled in California. My great-grandfather came here in 1850 during the gold rush. It was during this same period between 1850 and 1853 that half the population of the California Coastal Indians disappeared. They were exterminated. I’m not blaming my ancestor for that, but that conflict typifies the subject of this story.
This story is about a battle. And since this is a story without beginning or end, it is good to start where a beginning was an end.
Now, I can only remember a few clear images from that first pilgrimage. I left in the Spring and came home in the Fall. I didn’t even call it a pilgrimage. It was a quest, like I said. I didn’t know what a pilgrimage was technically or in this case what I was questing. Not really. But I was young enough that it didn’t matter. I had hitchhiked around the perimeter of the U.S. I ran out of money on the East Coast, 3000 miles from home.
I was on a freeway one night standing under an overpass. There was a girl sitting up on top of the cement embankment a few feet under the overpass, barely visible to what passing traffic there was. She called to me to join her. She sat there above me with her legs apart, closed–opening and closing, opening and closing. She was a simple-minded siren. Even silly. But she was on her own, on the road. Seemed able to take care of herself. It probably wouldn’t have been called rape if anything like that had happened to her. She was too eager. I doubt she suspected the possible violence. Poor girl. I still remember her up there calling to me. I felt no inclination to go up.
The second situation was with a man who picked me up and offered me a place to stay in a very large house in Bar Harbor, Maine. Later, he wanted sex. He wanted to pay for it. I wasn’t interested, but he was insistent, violent. I got out of there, away from his dirty-water smile. I thought that was pretty confusing. But not nearly as confusing as it would get later. Not that I was so pure. Is anybody? What is purity anyway? But I think sex and human personality really are different than popular, even educated, bias would have it. (What is the significance of the bi-polarity of nature? Is there an underlying common ground to which we can appeal; a Ground of Power to heal, to destroy, to love?)
A happily married couple picked me up in their RV. I stayed with them for a couple of days. They were a nice break from those other odd experiences. They left me in a place where I soon got a ride from an old mail lady on a rural delivery. She was spectacled and high pitched, “Afraid to pick up a hitchhiker? No… I’ve still got a pretty good left.”
…I stopped later at a country house to ask for a drink of water. The same woman built like a bird ready to fight a snake, kicks open the door. ‘Come on in, I’ve got soda pop and ice, if you want that. Afraid? I’ve seen my husband dropped dead on this kitchen floor. Three days later I took over his mail route. My son was killed by a bulldozer that I gave him. My father tried to kill me when he was half-crazy from a head wound given him by thieves in his blacksmith shop. You can’t be afraid. Not in this life. I’m not. The last few years have been hard for me but next week, I’m gettin’ married and moving away from this place. You want some cookies, ice cream?’
Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest I took up traveling with another hitch-hiker named Chris, also broke. We were compatible.
We lived off the land all the way to California, a Northern California town called Geyserville. It was a good place of orchards, vineyards, heat and one of the world’s largest supply of subterranean steam. Though, I did not discover this last fact until the end, many years later or the significance of it. (That significance also will make itself clear by the time we reach the eastern reaches of Asia Minor and when we return here for the fiery conclusions of the “Yemen Experiment”.)
A nice man at a country fruit stand gave us a lot of fruit. Since we had no money for food, the gift seemed miraculous. He seemed Italian. Then we started to walk the mountain road from Highway #101 across the coastal range to Highway #1 along the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco.
I remember walking by a country graveyard. There were Italians there by the names on the stones. We walked a long way. Maybe had a couple of short rides. By nightfall we passed an orchard of fruit trees. We decided to spend the night there. Then Chris discovered his wallet missing. That seemed to be a disaster. Now he had no ID papers, so important in this free society. I sympathized, but what could I do. Chris’s way of dealing with it was to go to sleep. No big deal. I was impressed.
The next day as we moved deeper into those canyons, where the pungent fragrance of wild plants filled the air. This place was holy with herbs. I remember in particular the laurel trees and the delight of breathing in their spirits. There was, flowing along the road, a late summer stream. It was shallow. But in a few places it gathered itself into dark pools of cool reclusion. Under dusty, prickly, yellow-green oak trees and between massive boulders we found such a pool. We fell in hot from the road. Cool, pure, perfect, drenching. We washed our dirty clothes, our bodies. We dried naked on round smooth rocks; played in the water; splashed out the aches and pains of the road; washed in the sun while warm sheets of air dried the youth of our skin. Our hearts were full of expectations. Little did we suspect about our destinations, little less did we care about our destiny.
As we walked along the road, we talked about concerts and movies, parents, school, how long to stay on the road, what choices we had: San Francisco coming up, the Haight; how hallucinogens were sacred, clarify rather than mask or deform reality, as do cocaine and heroin; how hallucinogens made one more interested in meaning, less interested in commerce or aggression; how an aggressive commercial technology such as dominated our culture couldn’t allow for such distinctions, how the bad PR about drugs and the abuse of them by unstable people served that end, how I was still biased against their use and avoided them; how the war in Viet Nam was killing everything, all the hope of the early sixties, how the anti-war movement took up all the energies of the counter-culture revolution; how even the sacrifice of an American president was nothing compared to the power and intentions of that international commercial empire. Not bad for a couple of 20 year olds. (Perhaps, I’ve embellished it a bit, now that I’m more than twice that age.)
Somewhere in there, was it in the evening?, I don’t remember, Chris started calling me “the bishop” because I talked about spiritual things. He said that I should be a priest since I was so fascinated by God. That struck me so that I still remember it. I had no formal religious background then. Certainly I was not a Catholic, which was the only kind of priest I had ever heard of.
Not long after that, we got picked up by a young couple with a baby. They had been college students and had “gone back to the earth”. They lived up here in a cabin. The baby was blond and blue-eyed. We stayed with them one night. They were still adjusting to country life. There was some hostility from neighbors. But mostly there was a magic to their life that we liked. Their house was all wood with lots of windows all different sizes. Their little boy ran around naked, especially in the cold mornings. They encouraged that to toughen him. They wanted to learn to use the outhouse without toilet paper to cut down their dependence on store-bought goods. It’s all in how you manipulate the sphincter, they said.
They had to make a run to the dump the next day which was in the right direction for us. They took us that far plus a little more past the dump. Then we were on our own again. We got down to the coast after traveling through those orchards, ranches, laurel and redwood groves, high treeless reaches of rocky peaks. We camped along the sea, surprised that we were able to catch fish to eat, though we did not know how to cook it right. It was peaceful along that shore, those cliffs replete with cormorant, gull and hawk. Chris wanted me to go with him to San Francisco. But I didn’t like cities and now I was ready for home.
That concluded my first pilgrimage. Though it seemed hard enough at the time, it was open, clear sky travel and peaceful, compared to what will follow. That’s most of what I remember now. It took the 10,000 miles plus to get me to that place where I realized the first glimmerings about what I ultimately came to understand as a priesthood of mediation between this world and the next. An ancient priesthood inherent in human history and personality, hidden in the folds of being itself. It was there in that land where commenced what led to the “Yemen Experiment”, that I discovered that the land itself has personality, the plants have power, the stones themselves experience being. Somewhere in this lay our hope.
THIRTY YEARS LATER:
Still on a serious note, and yet, curiously, in some ways a more joyful note, I would like to end this excerpt with a description of the friend in Derha Dun who helped us with advice and inspiration while we were in India.
Her name is Agnes. Forty or fifty years ago she went to India and founded a string of leper colonies across north India. I met her at the colony in Dehra Dun. In her native Germany, she had been an assistant to a famous Catholic priest scholar. She was fluent in English, Latin and Greek. Perhaps, she was fluent in other languages as well as her native German. She prayed the Divine Office in Latin from habit, rather than a reactionary political stance. She was solid and strong and deeply compassionate. She knew and appreciated Indian cultures and religions.
Agnes suffered in her youth from a form of schizophrenia, from split personality. I asked how she was cured of it, since she was obviously healthy when we met her. She said that she chose the one dominant personality and sublimated the rest. Perhaps there was more to it but that’s what I remember her saying.
Agnes worked with lepers for forty years without contracting the disease. A year after I met her, she slipped, broke her leg, developed an aneurysm, gangrene and had to have her leg amputated. She suffered considerable depression but survived. She continues to work single-legged among the lepers. They and the surrounding populace revere her as a saint. She reminds me of what St. Athanasius says about St. Anthony when he came out of reclusion. ‘He is warm and present to everyone. But he is not swayed by emotions. He is humane, i.e., gentle and kind, but also clear headed and just. He was sought out to settle legal disputes. He performed a few miracles but was more known as a consolation to the distraught.’ That’s a model of a saint.
Agnes is a saint. Brave and clear–like a jewel, rational and humane. And she helped save me, later, in the troubled times…
THE MAGIC CIRCLE:
That concludes Chris’s account of our India venture. It changed my life. Though, I see it quite a bit differently than Chris. I think he used to divide women up into saints and witches. It might have been so in this case, but generally I don’t agree and by now I doubt that he does either.
There is something else I think is necessary to explain for you to understand our story. I would like to conclude this chapter with an explanation about the magic circle mentioned above and the jewel-like light that Chris associates with our friend Agnes. (I don’t know why Chris did not mention my name in the story above. One of his secretive little quirks. He has mentioned me on other occasions, dozens of occasions!, when he tells this story.)
My name, Stephanie, from the Greek means “crowned.” You know, like the laurel crowns that were given to champions. It was demeaned in latter days to be something one could wear anytime, at parties, banquets… But in the beginning it was for great heroes. The human head for the Greeks (Celts and others) was thought to be the place where the soul was located. It was, in the experience of heroes, a sacred place, a place of magic and power, to be separated from the profane or ordinary perception of mortals. Thus, the crown, was the magic circle that separated sacred space from profane.
Generally speaking, the sanctuary inside the circle is entered into as a place of protection, power, holiness, awe and wonder. Thus the sacred and the ordinary mark the two main levels of reality that human beings are capable of dealing with. Even today, many churches are still divided into sanctuary space and space for the congregation. The temples at the beginning of civilization in Mesopotamia and Egypt also mark this division between the profane and the sacred.
Chris had this experience of it:
Once, while Chris was in a seminary, he had been elected as the student rep on an important faculty committee. After spring semester was over, they were conducting a week of meetings. The room was warm in the way of early summer. Chris was drifting a bit– from the warmth of the afternoon, or boredom. Then, he felt himself slip into an “other” state of consciousness, while still attending to the progress of the meeting. The circle of white light formed around him, became a column of light. This column carried him up, up, up, until it reached the ceiling of the sky. It stopped and seemed to ask, wordlessly, the question. Chris knew what it meant: Did he consent to go all the way with this spiritual path. He hesitated. The ‘price’ is great…. No other way… YES! The column of light shot beyond the sky, taking Chris with it.
Chris then returned to singular, normal consciousness, very awake to participate in the faculty meeting. No one at the meeting noticed anything extraordinary.
But for weeks after, whenever Chris would tell the story of his vision, his hands glowed with extraordinary warmth… two levels of perception, time and non-time… jewel-like in its clarity and color…
central nervous systems, person/world…
***
God is smiling
His rapture through
Undulating waters
In
Dark and crystal
Waves behind our boat.
*
God is whispering (her)
Sweet kisses
In tiny breezes across my ear…
*
God is chattering
en
*
thus
*
i
*
asm
*
By
Our friendly talk
*
Sailing past sunset
Down the Nile,
through the arms of life,
and the embrace of stars!
TWENTY-TWO
ACHEKALE
Eastern Turkey, a year or two later:
Chris:
…The migraines were terrible. I determined that this migraine problem must be resolved. Medical therapy hadn’t worked very well, so I would try spiritual pilgrimage.
Over a period of months, in meditation, I located a place along the eastern border of Turkey that held promise. I would make pilgrimage there. A group of friends would join me part of the way. We were to meet on the island of Corfu to commence a liturgy of healing for the world and empowerment to effect our gifts as ministers.
We met on Corfu to construct a liturgy of healing in the “Game of Being”. Lila. It is the game of Love. The divine play of creation; the game of life and death and life. We did it near a place that one among us described as “vile” with an horrible energy. I don’t think it was evil, but a powerful place, not pleasant or easily approached. This is the third dragon. (Assisi was the first, Kasmir the second. The dragon motif represents not only the general reference to “Nature” but a localization of “Grace”, the “Divine Energies”. It is also a “spirit animal familiar” for me. Thus, it represents the comparison of motifs of divine or spiritual intervention.)
After our ritual on that island, I parted with the last of the “Corfu Company” at Delphi. Then, I stood alone outside Le Vadia, a country railway station in Greece, and was struck with a sense of kind simplicity that is the ambiance of all our endeavors. I was on my way to Thessalonika then Turkey via Pythia as it will say on my ticket. I’d just left the Pythian oracle at Delphi where visions and dreams were kind to me. The journey continued in kindness across Turkey, kindness in the people I met, kindness of the God who provided the way and at the last moment in the mountains east of Kars, a fellow traveler, a guide who for the moment was obsessed to show me the “Akchekale”, the “White Castle”. I knew that this was the place I sought. It was a long way from civilization on a promontory above a deep river canyon…
My guide took me there, then after returning to the village, we parted. I didn’t see him again.
After a night of energizing, urgent dreams, I returned there alone next morning. Behind these ancient ruins of a castle, I sat alone in my ritual before the gathered flowers that sang their pure violet to the sacred fire and the devil-chasing bell that sang to silence, taking my song along with it. In that deserted, white castle, outside its dark tower, between an abandoned well and razed church, in that place unvisited much, even by Turks much less tourists, a wind blew up the river-cut chasm thousands of feet down, then everything fell away,
fell away—
the Word, Christ, whispered across perception… and it seemed at that moment that I had died,
for how could human biology contain such love. It would have evoked a similar response, I believe, for Buddhist, Christian, Moslem, shaman or priest, I believe, for it was the heart of creation.
There in that place of an ancient wound, the sacred fire was invoked and some creature roared its cry–a terrible sound that tore through the canyon.
This was the fourth dragon.
This travel joined my need for healing with the healing that I believe is inherent in creation.
I could not look back at the castle when I left, for fear, for respect. I seldom think about it now because when I do my eyes tear fully remembering such fullness. At that moment though, it was smooth and easy in its blessing; pale green, brown rose, yellow, the light set the land dancing.
Now that some time has passed I still have a deep sense of satisfaction about this pilgrimage. It is as if the pilgrimage finished something successfully. This is an important juncture. It is true that since then my migraines stopped completely for several years. But there is more. Perhaps the satisfaction lies in the fact that, somehow the whole approach works. It can resolve personal problems of significance and there is indication that it is perhaps a viable means, and empowerment, to address and solve the problems of the world community by this “working” with the gods, the psychic structures of creation within the radiance of absolute divine spirit.
Something else very special happened while I was on pilgrimage to cure my migraines. My beautiful friend Stevie (Stephanie) discovered she was pregnant. I’m the only one she’s ever been with. We both loved the idea of having a baby. We did not want to marry. Our relationship was not a marriage in a traditional sense. But not every significant sexual or personal, physical encounter happens in marriage. Our relationship is beyond words almost. It is so special to us. Everybody knows about us and many envy our relationship. Even our parents, strict Catholics, have come to accept that there is something special about our friendship. They’ve even stopped asking about details, about… well, you know.
With the baby, I forgot about our ritual to save the world and all that… Not that I stopped believing. I’m happy to be free of migraines. But, save the world? I had to get a job. And help Stevie. I was happy to do it. I could work and finish school. No problem.
***
After Compline,
We continue down a verdant middle way
Having stood in the hot shade
Of telephone poles
All the long road long
During enduring
the day.
Nearby, a furious wasp
Is trapped
In a plastic shopping bag
With its putrefying cut of safeway steak
At night
We fly between
Stars and high wire dive
To rapids deep below
And wait for just the crepuscular
Moment to
‘stop the world!’
TWENTY-THREE
MONTANA RITUAL
I was able to help Stephanie. I was able to bond with the child—a beautiful, baby, boy. In those first years, well two to be exact, I was with them all the time.
(I could describe a scenario of Chris delighted with baby and comment upon how a well-loved child completes and gives purpose to normal life—the deep joy of it. But considering what is about to happen, I think it best if we remain more detached. S.)
But I really did not have to work to support them either. Steph’s family is wealthy. So, after a while, I felt free to continue my more esoteric interests.
Invoking rainstorms was part of last summer’s work. I did it to test my talent for such things. In doing so, I traveled from the place of ‘primary ignition’ for the spell in western Montana to the place of ‘primary impact’ in eastern Montana. I was hitchhiking and was given a ride by a young couple in a new car. We drove across a land nearly empty of the Twentieth Century but for us. I was surprised that they picked me up. They looked affluent in the mid-western way of middling wealth. They were well-groomed, clean, in summer whites with spots of pale color. We passed quickly the usual information of wherefrom/going, and why. We were silent for a while.
The wife (I assumed marriage) turned to me and said, “I just feel moved to talk to you about the Lord.” “Oh”, I said. My first and several other rides on this trip had been with born-again Christians or ex-Catholics who told me about their religious experience. “I want to ask you if you know the Lord.”
I didn’t want to say that I was into rain-making and raising elemental dragons at that moment. So, I talked about the Lord for a while, somewhat professionally. We, all three it turns out, were professional evangelists. I, a Catholic, on leave so to speak; they worked with a Protestant guru in Michigan and were on their summer break from their mission.
They planned to start a new mission in a rich Virginia suburb at the end of the summer. I told them that they should avoid being a pseudo-Gospel stamp of approval to the values of the rich and powerful as so many other Christian apologists had been. I felt pretentious about saying such things but what did I have to lose? I’d be back on the road soon anyway.
When we got past that, they told me about their plan to found a chain of houses for unwed, pregnant, teenage girls. That seemed to be a good idea as well as being profitable. In the midst of this conversation, I found out that their summer was being spent driving recreational vehicles and new cars from coast to coast for dealers who wanted to help them through financial rough spots of their lives in ministry. They were apparently in just such a rough spot until they were to start this new mission in Virginia. All they owned was in the trunk of that new car. The wife was enthusiastic about the value of fasting and hardship. The husband was less enthused and generally resented the experience if not the idea of poverty.
They dropped me off near a town as sunset illumined a silhouette of roadside landscape. We were then in a part of the state, that seldom, if ever, I was told, got rain that time of year. And that was a year of drought. It was dry– from the parched sheaves of wild oats along the road, to the cracked earth where I chose to lay for rest. I could not rest for long though. Some strange disturbing energy urged me on. After several hours of walking through the night, I found a place of refuge, near a special hill that seemed to have a strong geomantic energy about it. I rested and waited for the storm that hit the next day with lightning, hail, wind and torrential downpour…
I didn’t like the way those Christians used language when they talked about the “Lord”. It seemed fake. It seemed to me that each word stepped away from the vital experience of a spiritually enlivened being. Yet, I liked them somehow. The surprising point that I want to make is that they helped me affect that rain ritual. They might be chagrined to know that. But the expression of their real aspirations added to mine empowered the ritual and now has left me with a sense of quiet, washed-clean, effective enchantment.
P.S. I should note that also during this week’s duration my parent’s ranch home burned. Within the next month, I met in Yemen, the fiercest dragon energy so far–violence, sexual violence and fire–I had to run—(there is a certain sexual element in the rain ritual described above). On the day of my return home, my father had a fatal heart attack–due to the fire that burned the ranch, no doubt. On that same day, an airliner crashed into the neighborhood to one side of where I was living and there were violent riots on the other side, at the beach–it was Labor Day weekend. Soon after, my car’s engine caught fire as I drove into a parking structure. Then my beautiful baby son got sick. He was diagnosed to have leukemia. Thereafter, the energies of this ritual pilgrimage seem to diminish.
***
We,
Watchers from either shore
Where our river bursts
To the sea
Like pincers, we observe
A commingling of waters
Fresh and salt
The thrust and back wash
Peaking and waves in every direction
Turquoise and steel
Froth and spray
Colors the day
of undertows and treacherous admonitions
A sloughing channel narrowed from its wide bay—intensified
Capsized to make its passage.
We
Watchers (know the moment of arrival) steel and turquoise…
Then, languish in torpor
As after a kill.
TWENTY-FOUR
The Baby
we had a baby. beautiful and healthy it seemed. at first. but, from the beginning something was wrong. at two years. he died of leukemia. i’m telling you this because it had an important effect on Chris’s development. otherwise, i wouldn’t tell you at all. the pain in me is still too strong, too awful. but for chris it made him crazy for a while. the baby for him was the cure for all of the negative things in his life. he delighted just in looking at our baby. when it suffered and died so horribly. he was numb and desolate. beyond that. then, he was angry. furious. with god. he rebelled against the church, against everything. i tell you this only because it might help explain the intensity of what happened later.
In order for me to survive the loss of my child, I started to work and to write again. I wrote mostly about Chris. Work? I volunteered mostly. I also went back to school. Graduate work. It was the writing that occupied my mind best. The following is an introduction to a collection of short fiction. There is something in it that became a self-fulfilling prophecy…
BRILLIANT PASSAGES
INTRODUCTION
This work addresses a broad spectrum of spiritual and material issues: from a priest who inherits 3 billion dollars to the motley company that seeks his treasure; from real god killers, to a way through their murderous dilemma; from gods to God; popular fiction to poetry; issues of masculinity and the feminine; sex, flesh and the spirit; animals, plants, rocks and and what parents teach their children about human perception re: this world and the “other” one. Brilliant Passages addresses this spectrum through an adventure in consciousness with roots in Shamanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Scientific, Critical Method– from the vantage of personal witness. Though this errant vacation once expressed itself in someone else’s Ph.D. dissertation, the present work is a series of prose, fiction selections; stories, vignettes, and episodes with a sub-text of scholarly references, poems, original paintings and appendices. Brilliant Passages is a web1 of sensate confrontations that might be read as a series of short stories. But I hope, because of the interconnections between the stories, that it will also produce some satisfaction and relief.
We begin like this: The priest walked onto the balcony patio of his rectory about midnight. There he conducted a ritual of the wind, fire and sacred objects. Objects and the fire– molded and remolded. Until, in the crepuscular moment of tender light, that night’s work seemed complete. An unseasonable (the news said “freak”) squall hit the church. Winds struck, stronger than the mighty Santa Ana winds of that California clime–Rain, unseasonably tropical and terrific. The priest had conducted the ritual for a benevolent purpose. He wondered, well, half wondered, about any connection between the ritual and the storm.2
___________________________________
1This “web” indicates an “associative” type of thinking in comparison with linear, logical perception, that might be distinguished respectively as “non-discursive” and “discursive” consciousness. Non-discursive perception is exemplified by Zen Buddhism, or some forms of Art, or Christian Contemplation. As well, associative thinking is closer to shamanistic thinking and is the method of processing information primarily in computer programs.
2What follows, entitled here, Brilliant Passages is an abstracted reference to a reformatted version of “Nepsis.” “Nepsis” is a picaresque narrative. When it dealt with Tantric or magical issues, it was a grimmoire with a certain literary flavor in a modernist sense. When it dealt with the Church, “Nepsis” is in the form of a letter addressed to a Roman Catholic Bishop from a priest who feels compelled to follow a certain spiritual path that he thinks the Bishop misunderstands. This letter format harkens back to the New Testament for its epistle format. It relates to letter writing motifs in literature, as well as other patterns typical of religious literature and myths. This approach maintains a certain ironic admiration for classical or medieval, less-technocratic worlds. At over 400 pages, the letter format of “Nepsis” continues the irony and abandons the discreet brevity of previous communications between priest and bishop. “Nepsis” and subsequent fiction derived from it, i.e., Interstates, Adam’s Way, and Brilliant Passages, represent a search for the format appropriate to the subject matter of this material. The narrative format of “Nepsis” seems now to be more successful than the novelistic style of Adam’s Way. Perhaps the poetic prose style in “To Eat With Long Ass Chopsticks” is most appropriate after all. My experiments with popular evangelism, represented by these (Adam) fictions have lead me back to a literary approach similar to, but in a significantly different mood from the abstract, poetic base in which I originally felt most comfortable. However, this loosely connected web of stories, incidents, (paintings and poems), and other excerpts that tell what has happened, and why the tale is worth re-constructing in this fashion, is a form that might facilitate presentation of this topic best of all.
Brilliant Passages, continues the sardonic hope of “Nepsis” in love with “the light”, while it depends upon dark forces to effect its salvific intention. Brilliant Passages is a collection of fragments that tries to create a network, a web of meaning– a mosaic if you like, wherein one might still just perceive a figure, an environment–but much is missing. It is truly an “artifact” of the unconscious trying to effect conscious expression.
This story in fragments, is entitled “Brilliant Passages” because, as a Hollywood movie producer who read parts of the longer original works remarked:
“…your book has some brilliant things in it but… it rambles, it roams, it circles, it meanders, and it really goes nowhere…”
However, a world class scholar, in a recent interview, remarked about “Nepsis” that it is just this labyrinthine fantasy, this tortuously circuitous, often obscure expression and re-expression of an inner experience, turning again and again in on itself, that is the success of the pilgrimage art and stories. It is exactly as real symbols of the inner processes of this “erring” way that the [art has its] meaning. These works are artifacts from a particular spiritual, aesthetic, and psychological process. Carl Jung, in his “Commentary” on The Secret of the Golden Flower, a Chinese mandalic, alchemical text, comments more generally upon such a ‘method’ of reflection and distillation:
…Yoga teaching rejects all fantasy contents and we do the same, but the East does it on quite different grounds. In the East, conceptions and teaching prevail which express the creative fantasy in richest measure; in fact, protection is required against the excess of fantasy. We, on the other hand, look upon fantasy as valueless, subjective day-dreaming. Naturally the figures of the unconscious do not appear as abstractions stripped of all imaginative trappings; on the contrary, they are embedded and interwoven in a web of fantasies of extraordinary variety and bewildering abundance. The East can reject these fantasies because long ago it extracted their essence and condensed it in profound teachings.” p. 199ff
What has characterized the Western, and increasingly, the universal mindset, is a nearly psychotic break between discursive and non discursive processes. We have attempted to overcome this dualistic split by pursuing knowledge from both discursive and non discursive points of reference, thus spontaneously engaging the shift between painting and research, or, pilgrimage and study (of the Tibetan mandala, for instance).
The dominance of discursive consciousness and its isolation from its own roots was diagnosed as a problem early in this century by Carl Jung. In his “Commentary” on the same text mentioned above, The Secret of the Golden Flower, p. 88ff, he warns about the effects of repressing the anima,
The more powerful and independent consciousness, with it the conscious will, become, the more the unconscious is forced into the background. When this happens, it is easily possible for the conscious structures to detach themselves from the unconscious archetypes. Gaining thus in freedom, they break the chains of mere instinctiveness, and finally arrive at a state that is deprived of, or contrary to instinct. Consciousness thus is torn from its roots and no longer able to appeal to the authority of the archetypal images; it has Promethean freedom, it is true, but also a godless hubris….
Quite obviously, the Chinese owes the finding of this path to the fact that he was never able to force the opposites in human nature so far apart that all conscious connection between them was lost. The Chinese has such an all-inclusive consciousness because, as in the case of primitive mentality, the yea and the nay have remained in their original proximity. None the less, he could not escape feeling the collision of the opposites, and therefore he sought out the way of life in which he would be what the Hindu terms nirdvandva, free of the opposites.
______________________
Notwithstanding the correct wisdoms of many scholars, they might agree with the Hollywood pundit above, that few could follow the whole of this work without being likewise lost in its maze, not thinking it very brilliant at all, perhaps. This network of fragments and subtext (footnotes, paintings and appendices) that constitutes Brilliant Passages [is an earlier attempt that] hopes to overcome that barrier. Yet, I don’t really know if the passages included here are those the producer thought to be brilliant or not! Brilliant, more importantly, refers to a “self-justifying radiance” that is the inner force animating the world. Passages refers to the shifts of consciousness and the growth necessary to access that radiance. The title refers generally to both the heights of this topic and the vanity of those who would dare to talk about it.
__________________
chris and i seemed to recover from the death of our child slowly over the next couple of years, but chris started to spend more and more time at the monastery. then, finally, he entered a seminary and eventually–five years?– was ordained a priest. odd. really. that he should do that. we long since had given up our sexual relationship. he transferred all that energy and grief into religion. he both loved and hated different aspects of the religious institution. but he felt driven. driven by some spirit, the Spirit(?), to pursue this course.
***
BACKLIT GRASSES
Late sunlight
Glints
gold white Brillant off
The wing top
Of gliding black black raven
Watching.
Starts to illumine
Weed wild chaparral and mesquite, full grasses of our last profane exile.
Mother lies dying
And I try to
Remind her of the golden poppies and purple violet lupine
Of my kind infancy
The high wild oats and our secret place hidden amid fresh oats that high land happy retreat.
Weak and wretched, sweet and wise
Now,
she grows to the
‘great departure.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Chris in the Monastery
INTRODUCTION
We have come to a point in history at which human consciousness bleeds into the temporal and non-temporal and beyond. We can say with the ancient Chinese that human consciousness is the self- reflective consciousness of the whole world– capable of great compassion and self-sacrifice. But also capable of the worst murder, torture and shortsighted, selfish abuse of persons, cultures and environment. Here is the problem that is the reason for all the effort represented in this work: Given the power provided by technocracy, this same light and dark capacity is capable of destroying the world and perhaps more, since a bizarre, self-destructive hatred lurks feral and hungry somewhere, always, in our communal consciousness. One advantage of historical awareness as opposed to the non temporal is that it provides adequate record of these suicidal urges on personal and international levels.
We approach this topic from extremes so that a golden mean, a solution, may become evident. For example, what is the difference between pornography and a full usage and enjoyment of our physicality–neither sexuality nor its natural processes are inherently evil; arousal, ejaculation, orgasm (nor the esoteric, light-filled experiences associated with yogic sexual attitudes, in psychic relationship with the whole; universe or God.) So, where is the problem? And there is a problem! Religion has not been wrong to maintain that problematic emotional and social issues remain associated with sex. Though, so many in all camps seem to be obsessed with the sexual topic. Sex and money seem to be the ruling concern. What, then is chastity, if not just abstinence? Love that remembers the body of concerns associated with time, person, and eternity, i.e., God, the world– integrity of self and other.
I have taken a particular course in this vein. Mine is a love that uses one’s own sensations and needs to catalyze a relationship with the psyche of the world. Perhaps that means the collective unconscious in Jungian terms, or the world soul, or that which is the animating spirit of all reality– the title does not matter. The significant matter is that the relationship is possible. Not just possible, but I would say always operative. Here comes the rub. When the collective intention of people develops great material power, technological power, eventually we will destroy ourselves because we are still at the mercy of our own sub-conscious drives and intentions. Some of which have proved themselves murderous, collectively so in history. So much so as to repeatedly escape the control of moral and legal systems! Self-destruction is one of those drives.
Modes of expression are important in the formation of such experience and perception. In reverse, such experience and perception are also formational for modes of expression. An example of this is how people now and in the past express themselves about the intricate connection between temporal matters and eternity. For instance, there has been for thousands of years a tendency to interpret the co-incidence of natural phenomena– earthquakes, storms, etc., as significant spiritually to a particular person or people. A scriptural example would be the plagues in Egypt that preceded the exodus of the Hebrews. There is substantial evidence that there was more than one Exodus over a period of time during which Egypt was subject to various natural disasters . Yet, this overall experience was poetically and mythically reinterpreted for moral purposes in a way typical of religious literature/histories that try to come to terms with the interaction between time and non-time, the world and God. Without excusing any of the dirty politics that might use or abuse such literature, this poetic, mythic technique is none the less a most effective vehicle for opening inner spiritual experience and insight– when such poetic accounts are not expected to perform in a literal manner. One can find the same format in much shamanistic experience. A ritual is performed or asceticism practiced and a storm happens. Therefore, the gods are thought to have responded. Well, nature is not merely mechanical. The world does not have to respond only according to religious expectations or scientific precepts. What to some might rightfully just be a breeze, or shift in climate, to another might be a valid form of communication from an ineffable quarter of reality. That scenario has been expressed in various ways according to the means available in any given culture. Just as my expression of this phenomena is according to what is possible in my life and my culture. Both the scientific and the mystical interpretation are important for any evaluation of phenomena.
Further, what has dominated human energy for the past 6000 years is the development of civilization. But civilization is inextricably linked to viciously, violent conquests–empire. And now, the same cruel ’empiricists’ have the power to destroy everything. It is like giving a loaded gun to a petulant, drunken adolescent with the safety off. All the moral posturing in the world will not save us from the darkness within, if we ignore the need to dynamically resolve all of the opposites: masculine-feminine; matter-spirit; time and eternity… (The Christ and the Buddha–as necessarily male, but celibate and absolute pacifists–mediate between the dominant male warrior cult in the human psyche and the Goddess religions of “eternal return.”) Mythological consciousness, ritual, and compassionate morality interweave eternity and temporality that does not need an apocalypse at the end of a line of history–MYSTICISM!
So, as regards the thrust of this last selection, the dark dragons will be baited. As will those of the light– Art and Religion will do this. If you are weak in the faith or if you are easily titillated, I’d go back if I were you. Because what follows will be distracting to your spirit. I talk about sex and drugs because that is what seems to get attention in a wider audience. But also because our physicality is undeniably intimate with our spirituality. Because a prudish denial of our physicality is as wrong and dangerous as pornographic illusions. Both represent a vast and multifaceted distraction from more important issues, issues of survival and our real identities, at this, our first, “most desperate moment.”
Chris Goes to Monastery
(Bardo Plane/Dreamtime Pilgrim)
So many… many states of consciousness. Ordinary, extraordinary…
Zen Master preaches, but as the meditation teacher of this monastery is speaking, I [Chris] am remembering dreams, experiences insights… and then…)
Ven. Shinzen Young says:
“There are many paths for entering the reality of Nirvana, but in essence they are all contained within two practices: Stopping and seeing. Why? Stopping is the primary gate for overcoming the bonds of compulsiveness. Seeing is the essential requisite for ending confusion. Stopping is the wholesome resource that nurtures the mind. Seeing is the marvelous art which fosters intuitive understanding. Stopping is the effective cause of attaining concentrative repose. Seeing is the very basis of enlightened wisdom.
…a dream last night. This dream concerns the final stages of initiation of the dreamer as a shaman. This refers to shaman as universal priest/prophet, a creative healer who transcends time/space as his gift but in so far as the shaman pre-figures Christ as well as follows in his footsteps. Divine androgen rather than demonic hermaphrodite this one.
The dream: The initial images of the dream seemed at first unrelated to the following sequence. As the dreamer remembers the dream, the dream re-conjures itself and continues as he listens to the meditation master’s sermon. I was a shaman. I was shamanizing. The object of my action is–myself!
…An image of the Globe appears, the earth. It splits open, white light bursts from the breakage, from inside the earth. Is there not a human figure in the midst of the light, the Christ?, perhaps ourself, walking towards us.
That was the climax of the dream. The development is continued in a series of brief concluding images: the dreamer is praying over a certain novice. The novice begins to shake and to experience a vision of himself falling through the ice of a frozen-over lake. He descends into the dark water, near death. Then he breaks back through the ice. The novice who is usually abnormally warm; the type who would go outside on cold mornings in his undershirt, is quite cold during this experience. This is considered in the dream to be a powerful breakthrough into the unconscious and the initiation of a strong right brain function. It is an initiation of the novice facilitated by the shaman dreamer. Both are the same person…
Master:
The person who attains both concentration and wisdom has all the requisites for self-help and for helping others. …It should be known then that these two techniques are like the two wheels of a chariot, the two wings of a bird. If the practice is lopsided, you will fall… Therefore, the sutra says: “To onesidedly cultivate the merits of concentrative repose without practicing understanding is … dullness. To onesidedly cultivate knowledge without practicing repose is called being crazed. Dullness and crazedness, although somewhat different, are the same in that they both perpetuate …an unwholesome perspective.
The dreamer meets Christians working for an integration of Tantric meditation into Christian theology. They talk about a new theology of sexuality and the meaning of the above “initiation” and the high sensuality of the dreamer. This is a sensuality that is not per se sexual but had a powerful influence in the psychic breakthrough.
Yet, concerning basic principles, there is remarkable agreement among Buddhists as to what is involved in the meditative process. This distinctive Buddhist orientation towards meditation can be summed up concisely. The first, called “Samatha” in Sanscrit, is the step by step development of mental and physical calmness. The second, “Vipassana”, is the step by step enhancement of awareness, sensitivity, and clarity of mind. These complement each other and should be practiced simultaneously. Some techniques develop primarily calming, others primarily clarity, still others both qualities equally. It is of utmost importance, however, that one component not be enhanced at the expense of the other. To do so is no longer meditation. Tranquillity at the expense of awareness is dozing; awareness at the expense of calm is “tripping.”
Samatha, if taken to an extreme, leads to special trance states; these may be of value, but they are not the ultimate goal of Buddhism. The practice of clear observation, on the other hand, if developed with sufficient intensity and consistency leads to a moment of insight into the nature of the identification process. At that moment, awareness penetrates into the normally unconscious chain of mental events which gives us rock-solid convictions like “I am so and so” or “such and such really matters.” This insight brings with it a radical and permanent change in perspective, a refreshing sense of freedom which is not dependent upon circumstances. The attainment of this perspective, a refreshing sense of freedom which is not dependent upon circumstances. The attainment of this perspective and the full manifestation of its implications in daily life are goals of Buddhist meditation.
Samatha is the practice of stilling the mind through letting go. In Buddhist usage, it is virtually synonymous with the term “samadhi.” This latter term is usually translated as “one-pointedness” or concentration. Unfortunately, the word concentration often carries a connotation of repressing the mind, forcing it not to wander from a certain object. Such a tug-of-war between the desire of the mind to hold an object and its desire to wander is exhausting and produces unconscious tensions. This is the very antithesis of the samata state.
The nature of concentration is detachment. Realizing this marks an important step along the path to the attainment of a mental power. In real concentration one simply rests the mind of the object at hand and then proceeds to let go of everything else in the universe. The mind then remains on that object until it is appropriate to shift attention. Thus the ability to focus, to concentrate totally on one thing, is essentially equivalent to the ability to let go of everything.
Christian marriage is talked about as such a way of spiritual conversion, an alchemy of sorts, wherein the two become one as they practice a kind of Tantric transcendence through the very processes of the married state. It is not just for those who “can’t be celibate” but it is a way of union experienced physically that can open the doors of transcendent integration of divine and personal capacities. In this one’s marriage is more than an analogy for divine union. It is the experience of the divine in one another.
Also, it is considered that a Christian theology of sexuality is needed that is broader than that which has currently developed only for heterosexuals perhaps fond of one another, who can perform the marriage act. There has to be a recognition of the reality that such sexual identity is to a considerable degree transitory and intangible, when we view the experience of humanity as a whole. This is evidenced by the large number of people who can or would neither be married nor be abstinent, yet, who are true seekers of knowledge, truth, even God. This is in light of traditional attitudes about chastity and the process that develops the chaste condition as the most authentic and compassionate way of relating to God, the world and self.
First, one learns to keep the body upright and utterly motionless entirely through balance and relaxation without muscular effort. The ideal posture for this is the cross-legged “lotus” although satisfactory results can be achieved with a variety of postures, even sitting in a chair. The important thing is to align the vertebra, find a position of equilibrium, and simply let the body hang from the spine by its own weight. This feeling of letting go then extends to the breath and finally to the mind itself.
Since samatha has the dual nature of letting go and one-pointedness, two approaches to the mind are possible. One is to simply allow the emotional and conceptual content of the mind to settle of its own weight. A way this may be achieved is through the elegant technique of analogy (anumana). One feels a part of the body such as the arm relaxing, then discovers the mental analog of that feeling, i.e. what it feels like to relax thought.
The second approach is to rest the attention on a specific object and [eventually] habit weakens, then disappears. The object may be physical or visualized, outside the body or within. The so-called “elephant taming pictures” of Tibet portray this process in detail.
It is common in all Buddhist traditions to give beginners some form of meditation which brings the mind to rest on the breathing. Chanting is also common to all traditions, but is not considered to be so efficacious as breathing meditations generally.
Samatha is thus a continuum of states of progressive settling of the mind associated with growth in detachment, concentration power, and a distinctive set of physiological changes. The characteristics of this process is fully defined in Abhidharma literature.
…knowledge that my father initiated me as a shaman by not doing certain things when a father would have done them. That was his gift. That ‘not doing’. It formed the ‘split’ that allowed entrance to the world of archetypes. It was done when I was about 7 years old, out in the wilderness in a completely spontaneous situation. It was done daily by not guiding me in the normal social or sexual development. I was born to it. My father had little choice either. Then, my very strong and also gifted mother and grandmother nurtured this process through my growing up. The world of schools; public schools, monasteries, seminaries, shamans, monks, other teachers defined and empowered the process. Guided…
At first in meditation, the body strains to remain upright during sitting, the breath is rough, piston like, and the mind wanders terribly. One may even feel more agitated than usual. Actually, one is just becoming aware for the first time of the appalling extent and intensity of the chaos within.
After that, the dream sensations dissipate in unconnected images. The dreamer wakes feeling cleansed and confident of identity in the world and God. One of the last images of the dream is that the dreamer has come to the end of school… “close the book, walk through the door”
This awareness is really the first state of progress. In the Tibetan tradition, it is called “realizing the mind as a waterfall.”
As with any other art, however, time and regular practice bring skill at samatha.
…For many samatha practitioners, the events of the day are seen as a sequence of opportunities to deepen and apply skill at one-pointedness. Peculiar inversion in values may take place. Normally unpleasant situations turn into gold. Overwork and physical discomfort become “negative feedback devices.” Uncomfortable? Go deeper! Chaotic and fearful situations are accepted as challenges to one’s meditative prowess. Wasting time is no longer conceivable. Being unexpectedly kept waiting for an hour somewhere means an hour of “secret use, hidden enjoyment.” The Sung dynasty Ch’an master We-men summed it up when he said, “Most people are used twenty-four hours a day; the meditator uses twenty-four hours a day.’
***
The eagle,
the old man are with me now. Abbas Mundi–
Servant of God,
feeds me on the Spirit,
Shows me the glory of creation,
the nearness of God.
Heaven–here–
This is heaven,
the presence of God-
but we cannot see.
He helps me to see,
shows me the life of everything.
He is the old man standing in a dark portal.
I am brother to Christ
Eagle
Golden eagle
the eagle rests.
———-oh my baby, my beautiful baby. why did you have to die…
***
The classical Raja Yoga of Patanjali distinguishes three states along the continuum of settling which are called the “inner branches” of yoga. The first is dharana, holding on, during which the yogi strives to hold the object of concentration, returning to it each time the mind wanders. When the second state, dhyana, is reached, concentration upon the object is unbroken, “like a flowing stream of oil.” Finally, all mental fluctuations cease, trance is attained, and the yogi feels the mundane limitation have been transcended. Patanjali call this last stage samadhi. Note that, while in Buddhism the word samadhi is usually used as a general term for any state of one-pointedness, here in classical yoga it refers only to the very deepest of such states. Nor is the experience of samatha found only within meditation, the arts, sports, and other “secular” activities which require intense concentration and relaxation, may also touch upon this state.
i live beneath a river of clouds;
rain masses moving beyond my reach.
i watch the slipping light-boats
run their rapids down each
white-capped undulation in the sea.
here jetty rocks hold
for hanging froth,
for falling foam
from full-bent breakers,
the last leaping roar of ocean-going waves.
Samatha is merely a tool which facilitates the attainment of Nirvana. The word Nirvana literally means ‘extinction’. Not the extinction of self, but the extinction of the Klesas, the afflictions which prevent happiness.
sea
pull your sucking best,
waves and sea–
even if you held me firm in your limpid, liquid grasp,
I would,
from you or any holding hand,
be free
The Klesas may be broadly grouped under three headings; raga, dvesa, and moha. 1) Raga, desire, is the drive to repeat pleasant experiences. 2) Dvesa, aversion or antipathy is the rejection of unpleasant experience. 3) Moha is confusion and lack of clarity. Moha is responsible for our sense of limited identity and prevents us from noticing the subtle malaise and discomfort which underlie all experience.
i live in a clean corner
beneath a river of sky
a giver of clouds and torrents
a bringer of gentle whispers
in the evening breeze
Sustained Vipasyana leads to a moment of liberating insight when huge masses of moha fall away like chunks of concrete revealing a vista of freedom. In scholastic Buddhism, this is called “entering the stream of the nobles” or ‘catching on’, or ‘seeing one’s nature’, or ‘breakthrough’. At that moment, the wisdom eye opens, but wider for some than for others. In any case, it never closes again. This is no “peak experience” which later fades. It is a permanent change in perspective, a revolution in the basis of the mind.
i live beneath a river of dreams–
images and vast space
crowding between moments,
feelings that hold their claim in waking,
sights beyond the grasping heart
and more and more that can’t be held
by words
but only
in the stillness
and silence,
and roaring, crashing moan given by glacial Arctic ice flows.
… what is meant by no-self is becoming free from the concept of self, Satkayadrsti. And this is not quite the same thing as losing self nor does it necessarily even imply the absence of a concept of self.
…in other words, a thought, concept, mental image or memory has no hold over us if we always experience it totally (vipasyana) and yet remain relaxed (samatha).
i live beneath a flood of stars
knowing the daily round–
the morning prayers
and prayers to wash the dishes
again
and breakfast and serving it all and all and washing the clothes
and washing and prayers
for lunch, thanksgiving and praise the rite of it in the afternoon
chores that move us into night
(we carry our boats and move beneath
a river of night
a silent crew
marching, marching…
God knows where.)
Although in Mahayana, compassion is conceived of as on a par with wisdom, in practice priority is usually initially placed on gaining liberation. It’s just more efficient that way. …Further, after one is free from concept of helper, helped, and helping, there need be no feeling of chagrin or loss of enthusiasm when one’s efforts to help fail.
…Samatha and vipasyana then are tools for attaining enlightenment, a non-self-centered perspective. That perspective is a tool which facilitates the achievement of complete Nirvana. According to some Mahayana conceptualizations, Nirvana itself is a kind of a tool…
Oh, pluck the string,
climate of my dreams,
sound your timbrel,
that I may sing
of Elevations and river dreams
of all that is and all that seems.
…for as I wait
leaves fall glorious dead
magenta red
so much
blood, magenta red
so many friends
bruise red, glorious dead upon the damp ground
Finish my training Lord, for I must join the battle.
I go, in my mind’s eye, to a place in the desert that during my training I had discovered to be a place of power. Steph and I went there once.
I want to be there now …
I am there. There is a rock, a promontory, not very high, composed of volcanic mud; ancient, ancient mud from beneath an ancient, ancient lake long dried.
It is now a place where an eagle perches. I suppose because he can see so far to watch for game. For an eagle is always hunting. I want to go there now. When I arrive, we spend the night. I stand looking east. Somehow from that place, I am able to see,
I am able to see,… the war…
in the Middle East.
Through the light… Iraq.
Through the medium of light.
Some light. I see soldiers untrained, bombed, unprepared,
bodies torn apart, wounded, few that survive.
Tanks are coming I can hear them, can you hear them,
can you hear them
I can hear them so clearly, can’t you hear them,
I can hear the screams, the whine and the roar of huge machines, can’t you hear the screams and the huge machines,
can’t we stop the screams.
All for oil, 500,000 Iraqi must die,
George Bush and Saddam Hussein and their petty egos,
and the machines upon which they stand,
that 500,000 must die
a country devastated
the princelings of Kuwait pampered
the Lies sold to the American public,
the 500,000
can’t you hear the screams,
the cars and the oil
oil and cars
the factories
the lives enslaved to compete,
South Korea and Japan, the other’s will
to catch up in this
mad rush towards progress
mad rush towards security and comfort
the mad rush
Can’t you hear the madness screaming
as the tanks top the hill and roll in our direction
the leaves fall magenta red
blood magenta red
hardly dancing
to the damp ground.
TWENTY-SIX
Stephanie Visits the Monastery–
the baby died, Chris and Stephanie go separate ways… for a while, years. Stephanie starts dating widely. Often, when she is having sex with anyone, she is thinking of Chris. Afterwards, she usually felt submerged in sadness.
Musing, fantasizing, remembering several scenarios about family, sex, insight into Chris, their child, relationships in general, meditation, art. Then the monastery, the cloister inside one’s head.
________________________
…
The woods are, dark,
shadows, and cold moss, wet to the touch
of a hand breaking a fall,
and the bark is rough, scraping the skin.
The moonlit meadow, quiet to the silver-grey sound of the calling dove. Love, what is the end of it? Bracken covers the slopes to another level of trees. Dark leaves pricking beneath the feet. Why the quiet? The grass is indifferent to the time of night and hangs the same as in the day, firmly rooted among companion grasses. Even flowers don’t miss the loss of color and are never lost. What fields hold their friendship?
Dear God this is pointless… what is the point?
And the climbing vines, indifferent to the burden that they create, wrap around everything, themselves. Rodents use them to climb a tree. A breeze rustles dry leaves and green. A web, laboriously constructed, mysteriously construed to capture. A swipe of the hand wipes away the design. To form a larger design?
How dusty is the summer wood.
Moonlight falls on crushed bay laurel lighting the way for that particular aroma. Unnecessarily, of course. But it is the case.
Where is the way?
Berries unseen stain the passer-by and thorns rip cloth and skin. The light describes the knots of every branch and hollow, every plant and tree.
The source of love lies where?
…the drive in sex is the need of males to enter into females. And of females to be entered into. ? Both having qualities of both. But this is not just a physical need. It is a primal need to somehow escape the isolation in ourselves
find freedom in another.
(Oh yes, and to reproduce!)
Green, grey green, green every leaf of green and other color and
petals. So carefully made to attract, to accept. Doomed (blessed)
to the eternal reincarnation of attraction.
Or until the end anyway. Sings the gargoyle…
The flow of color is waiting for the turning of the grey,
from dark to light,
to the light of morning.
There
is the cooing seldom heard of the gentle, and female dove.
In the trees that hold the cooing is the lisping whispering
dialogue of trees.
Lisping whispering dialogue of trees and grass.
Dialogue of trees and grass,
Beneath the grey
beneath the grey and light
light grey of moonlit night
comes the morning light
and the cooing of the dove
gentle and seldom heard female dove.
Puck, quicker than light, carries flowered venom and arrows that wound. Is he about, still to infect the wrong lovers with the wrong love?
The gentle female dove sits on top of her cage preening her feathers and maybe lice, indifferent to lovers.
Her time will come.
Each soft blade of the sharp-edge grass and the bramble
rambling along the wooded hill fills with wonder a lover lost from
her love.
For dark is the wood
and dark, dark is the…
Well, it is cool here and not so bad really. Morning will come anyway and day gentle or not
“Jonathan, laid low in death…
delightful you were to me,
your love for me was wonderful,
surpassing the love of women.”
Morning will come anyway,
Oh, not the turn of a clock morning
this global, always starting in circles morning,
but the dawn-burst, day-hint blue
in our souls that signals down the storm to a whisper
gently bouncing across perception,
mummering,
forgive the hurt
forget self-pity
forgive the source of the hurt and the pity
then come you
in your glory to the light of this resurrection.
(hmmm…..)
We wander past several doors, then we come to one with sheets of paper stapled to it. I took one and read-
Hyacinths sweetly rise between green leaves.
Unexpected rain fills that rose in receptacle outside the window,
lip full.
Secluded, you and I rest.
The room is cool to our moist warmth.
Cyclamen blooms flutter above their clumsy leaves.
We are tiny blades breaking harsh clay.
You, the patience of winter,
the silence of spring.
I, broken bits of rock that are the soil.
Raindrops tap at our window and we answer.
After reading the poem et al, I open the door. There is a young couple in bed. To the left of the bed was a white, flowering cyclamen plant near a window. Pictures of lion cubs were pinned on the wall. The man and woman were talking.
Yes it was really great.
Yes, it was good, you are very good.
MMMMMMM
I don’t think…
You are just so…
Thanks… We, have to talk… about…
That felt so good, thank you.
We shouldn’t do this anymore.
What! Why not? What are you talking about?
It’s hard for me to tell you…
Tell what!
Maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a while.
Why, for God’s sake?
I’m not in love with you. I thought we could… I thought that it would grow. You were interested and I was curious about you. Now you are making love and I am not in love with you. We can’t go any further. I am becoming less involved rather than more so. The lovemaking is great, you are a very good lover but… I am just becoming less involved rather than more so, as I had hoped.
Why didn’t you say this before.
I didn’t know before.
Of course, you didn’t know!
Here I closed the door. I never called him again, though I promised that I would. I should have called or something.
I climbed a tree not thinking roots,
died in the fall
without belief in spring
was back for summer
in time to sing
summer songs of brown arms
and bright shirts.
I have seen the year through,
watched each season pass a needle’s eye
looked piece by piece for reasons larger than…
and lost the thread
if not the tear.
Deep? I cannot speak of deep. In the vast eternal, vast to the touch. I cannot say the word too elusive for confinement tiny as cannot be seen. No quantity, no measure. It’s here, it fills me, surrounds me, pulls me up. Then a glance, a turning glance, its gone. It is real, unseen, it is lost, never lost, it insists to be known, then disappears. It professes friendship then runs somewhere. What turning, what turning of the heart will allow uninterrupted vision. It completes, it leaves me hungry…
Love?
God?
It must be God to be so attractive
I climbed high not quite ready
for the higher bird nests of spring
and loved the warm moonlight hunting
of time past midsummer’s night.
I fell
into leaf closets
ran after leaves scuttling across the front porch,
(my baby running after dry leaves)
all the way to the last leaf blown into someone else’s yard
until sparkling patterns of
Christmas hangings hung,
shiny bulbs shone
sometimes clacking and rolling on the tile floor
from living room to kitchen and under where the bees
are busy again making honey.
I fell
again into the dry dust of summer and silence
waiting for harvest…
I remember about dying. People I knew. Some of them I miss beyond telling. So, I won’t. There was one dog though, that we kept. I was too close to it. I was, but I have a feeling about death… It was a wolf of a dog. My father and brother cried when this dog died. I covered him with a cloth. It was late afternoon, and still hot. The dog was down the hill from the house. I went down about 5:00 P.M. to see if the medicine had had any effect. He was unconscious but breathing hard in short hard grunts. It was very hot and there were flies, big metallic green and black. He had moved himself to the cool beneath the honeysuckle vines away from the house. I returned to my work, then, came back an hour later. I could see from the stairs that he wasn’t breathing anymore. I walked over, nudged his shoulder with my hand. He was already getting hard. I went to the house to put on my shoes and get a shovel. Then walked down the hill to get the big wheelbarrow. I parked it next to him. Just a little too close, because when I tried to lift him, holding him by his two front legs and the opposite back one I wasn’t able to swing his one hundred pounds up, quite high enough without hitting him against the rim of the wheelbarrow.
There was no loss of dignity in this. The whole process seemed natural. The second lifting succeeded in placing him with his tail just over the front end. I wheeled him down the hill as I had so many other loads in the wheelbarrow. I missed the ruts and braked for the steep parts.
There is a place clear of brush about fifteen feet from where the road curves at the bottom of the hill with scrub oak all around and where it is very green in the spring. I decided to dig there. Now, the weeds and the earth are dry. The ground is hard with a layer of rock and gravel just under the surface. I looked at the dog for size, then began digging. After the first foot, the earth was soft except for many rocks. My parents came home then. They looked small next to their car on top of the hill.
“What are you doing?” one asked.
I didn’t want to reveal my emotions. They were tender, however resigned. I had been expectant of this death. My feelings were such that I did not want to destroy their clarity or privacy by talking about them.
“I’m digging a hole for the dog.”
Mom picked some flowers from the garden and walked down the hill, picking wild flowers as she came. The husband watched from above.
“When did he die?” she asked.
“About six.”
“How did you get him into the wheelbarrow?”
“Just picked him up.”
She stood on the road next to the wheelbarrow holding the flowers in front of her. I was sweating from the digging. I was not used to this kind of work but I wanted to do this.
“Better hurry up, the flies are terrible.”
She was right. Dad came down and over to the grave.
“At least he’s out of pain now,” he said.
“Nebo had it worst. Blitz here, was only sick for two days.”
“He was old enough though. How old?”
“About fourteen.”
“It’s just as well. He’s out of pain now.”
I kept digging, throwing the dirt above the hole just up the slight hill and at both ends. The dirt covered yellow, dusty grass and knocked down the green mustards.
“Do you want me to dig for a while?”
“No, that’s alright, you’ll get your good clothes dirty.”
I had to straddle the hole now and bend very low to reach the bottom.
“Get down inside and use your knee for leverage.”
“The hole’s too small.”
I shoveled several more spadefuls, then stepped down into the grave and tried to shovel that way but it was too cramped.
“Let me shovel for a while.”
“You’ll get dirty. The hole’s too small and the shovel too short to do it this way.” I stepped out.
He was walking away.
“I’m going to change my clothes. I’ll be back.”
I didn’t pay attention to him going up the hill. The digging was easier now. But, I still had to stop every few minutes to rest. My shoulders and face were blotched red from the unusual exertion. “He’d better hurry up before it gets dark,” I thought. The sun had already set. The evening was warm after the hot day. It was now clear and pleasant. Quail were calling from the cherry trees.
When I wheeled the barrow up to the grave, I looked away so that I would not see the dog hit the bottom after he fell. It was just a fraction of a second. He landed perfectly. Dad returned and started to fill in the soil while I went to the pump to wash the wheelbarrow. I came back and stood next to Mom. When Dad was done she put the flowers on the loose, dry dirt. We all walked up the hill together. Quail were whispering in the wild cherry trees.
“I should have brought the car back down. We could have rode up.”
“It’s a beautiful evening to walk. I’d rather walk up.” I said.
“Look out for rattlesnakes. They like to come out in the evening like this.”
It is all so clear to me. I had to bury the animal. I will have to perform that service for many.
The bell is ringing
I must awake
lectio is over
I must awake
The time is nearly vespers
the time is to prepare for night
to await the coming
and await the coming
await the coming of the light.
My grandmother lost 3 of her 9 babies as infants.
Good bye sweet little baby, baby
good bye.
HERMITAGE
When I finally got permission to visit Chris at the monastery for a few days, The Guest master put me in a cell on the edge of a canyon full of trees, redwoods, sycamores and oaks, brush, flowers, and poison oak. All sorts of wild creatures live in this canyon. I hear their calls and see them sometimes. I must live among them to know the silence that permeates even their raucous cries.
The grass around my cell contains tiny, salmon-colored flowers–perfect blossoms that close up in the evening. Today, I spent a warm, peaceful afternoon weeding in the vegetable garden.
Deep canyon, dry in the California dry way of the north, luxuriant of redwoods, oaks and bay laurel trees spreading above the fern-covered rabbit tracks, deer runs and snakes. There are few tracks for human kind down to or up from the bouldered stream. The canyon does not invite. But it will accept a visit. Maybe it’s not even necessary to go there. Maybe all I should do is sit on my hill and watch the canyon, getting to know the animals that come up. Sit, waiting, waiting. Stephanie, waiting, even in the working is the waiting. For what? For what! Oh, I know, I know well enough. Still, the waiting. it’s not so long since… ohhh.
Peace. Stillness. Having been there once makes the waiting and the faith both easier and less patient. Even now it’s here. I am waiting for the turning, for the turning and the healing, not so far away, not away at all. Even the Liffy is backed up and waiting! Well, “all will be well” Oh yes, well. But when? Now. The cows are coming in for milking, now…. Tell me again.
“Wake, awake, for night is flying”
In each full-turning
of each full day
there are leaf fall many
many opportunities…
Then come you in your light, and glory in the light of this
resurrection.
Our body is an integral part of our spirit. What we do with one effects the other.
The fog has risen up the canyon through the trees and space empty but for just enough air…
from the ocean 2000 feet below this
hermitage. The breeze is blowing, thunder is breaking
upon us from the mountains higher up.
One must also love the mediocre. Sometimes the mediocre can be deadly, so can genius. Either can be holy. There are realms within that need to be explored, both delightful and terrifying.
Ah, but this is a cruel– a carnal place. We can only hope in God.
I had a conversation with Chris. He is going through so much. Doubting himself. Questioning everything.
Chris:
Homosexuality??? What is it? What is it? Why can’t I see? Death. Sex. Is it homosexuality then? Is it that? What does it mean? But I investigated that. I spoke to that first counselor about it. He said that it was common. Then he told the senior council that I had been active in the Gay world. All I had said was that I was unsure of my sexuality. That I thought I might be… Strange man. That caused a lot of trouble at school. Professional breach. Enough! I know that I am something other. But what is it then? Take this blindness away. I can’t stay in a monastery. I don’t want to be married. I have rejected the usual heterosexual role. I have rejected the alternatives. I’ve given up art to be a monk. The superiors are dubious about that. Is my “artistic temperament” too strong to give up, or even make secondary to monastic life? What the hell is an “artistic temperament”? How could I give up art if it was so important to me? It was my identity. Now I am neither an artist nor a monk. I’m a fighter and an athlete. Not much use here. I don’t even have any identification sexually since I have rejected both the alternatives
For now anyway. What’s left? If you have taken this much, Lord, then why not take the rest as well. Must I wait even for death.
silence
Stephanie:
Calm down, Chris. That is all a little melodramatic. You are obviously not physically effeminate. You are normal physically. I should know. What’s going on with you?
Chris:
God, yes! I am struck into waking by my dreams. Others seem to be walking in their sleep, in comparison. Blown, whipped by a leaf-tearing wind. Washed by a current; untouchable, all-embracing invading stream, invading my furthermost retreat. Invisible presence, yet blinding. Moved, carried, carried to a most real land of total embrace. I fear the flood, welcome the deluge.
Fire has eaten the veil and purged the sanctuary. One moment will fall upon the next. Creeping, cascading into this black hole of time until time is lost and a moment will neither follow or lead but perhaps extend into every dimension
… losing perspective giving a total vision of love.
I am struck into waking by my dreams, he whispered.
I think that it is this place.
A holy place. It brings up all our issues. Maybe I’m having a breakdown. Maybe I should leave here. Leave them in peace.
Stephanie
Chris, I remember once in Utah, in the morning just before sunrise I walked on a frost covered field. There was a new moon, just a sliver stationed above the blue, mist shaded hills. A herd of elk were resting and grazing in the pasture below the hills. Then, they ran. No, they flowed over the uneven field. They leaped, flowed over the fence then they were gone. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. Yet, sometimes even that seems blunt compared with what I was experiencing as the contents of the tabernacle, the sanctuary, the Church.
Stephanie moves past her memory of that conversation with Chris.
Silence is the most consistently significant experience.
Red-leafed maples,
have cried the death of this year’s green delivery.
Hills are mottled grey
beneath the waiting
of a cloud-shaded day.
It’s as if something had changed
or was about to change…
within the silence
and the dying
within the creation of fall and spring
like a worship of holy things,
still in the singing of Godly things.
A rising,
a stepping over,
beyond earth and fall
to spring without the Fall
and that is all… and All.
The drops of precious water cast up falling, always. Marriage of instinct to spirit, a glorified body. The since-time-began conflict has purified each, prepared their reunion. The light is increasing, there is no way to say what I see. Empty space throbs with the presence, invitation, to a land of response and rivers, all flowing to the source. The physical is made whole. Is no longer transitional. Love fulfilled on earth rewarded with eternity, completion. His glance burns away blinding arrogance.
Alone. Fascination with the working of self. Alone to seek inside. What or who? God. When? Now. What strange mountain light. What mysterious image of passing flight… “Lies in the field once plowed… Dreams stranger than…” I am most interested in self as an always present realm for investigation. Not the superficial, egotistical self anymore, the facade that we make out of our talents, fears, and misunderstanding of ourselves, but the unique self that God has made for his love. I have looked inward to dwell in that internal and inviolable realm. This interior is one with the entire creation since they both share the same ground. The cohesive agent of all matter and non-matter, that force by which the universe is held in creation. That attention. To be this self is to be with God. From this base one can not only follow the first commandment to love God, but the second as well to love one’s neighbor as one’s self because that is exactly what they are.
We walk along the beach, there are no peaches or mermaids singing,
human voices only wake us,
fine; to sleep, to sleep
dreaming can be a tricky business as well
But now, since I’m awake, perhaps there is a “breast high shoal in which to dive,” or “angels to beget” and work to do, painting, poems, books or the cloister. That enclosed exterior manifestation of the interior life. Yes, there is still a chance…
A word, Lord
give us a word, the good word.
In thy kingdom
remember us, o Lord,
when you come into thy kingdom.
The choir IS
finally quiet.
Ancient oak and oat cover the hills, tiny green blades issue between massive waves of yellow and grey, fallen oats, silent trees, stable to my mobility–stable. The mysterious relationship between the specific situations and their general context continues to mystify and attract me. It is most religious. Sin not sought, serves to drive one by its very imperfection towards… Sin not flippantly sought, but fallen into, is a tool to polish our humility, clarify our vision.
As each moment passes it joins the wash of history that is the same as the flood of our un-conscious and spiritual being. The flood comes into time as it flows through the recognition of our conscious mind. A religious experience is one that need not necessarily include either emotion or intellect and is such that it includes and transcends both. We view Being as one who views the vast ocean but only notices an oil slick. The ocean does not lose for our lack of vision. The only one who is gaining is the oil slick and it can’t appreciate the attention.
This is the place to deal with the religious issue. Life is the sacrament and creation is the voice of God. Somehow I intuit that the solution to the most deadly modern problem lies here among the stones and plants, animals and– us.
Oh, this ungainly groping for the hand of God.
What light is this…
We are still being born. Art is artificial form that points a truth. Monasticism is artificial form in which people try to live the truth. Religion is a structure through which the Spirit might breath: whitened bones breathed to life, to fullness of human potential in the Spirit. Every particle of Creation and empty energized space is available to work our salvation. Not necessarily from a personal will, but because God’s living presence charges everything with his purpose. None of this alleviates the pain, the thrust, the need.
Hawk
Glide
Pause
Hover
glide on the hunt
Hawk undisturbed
by any secondary purpose or considerations
earned more than my admiration.
Terror
Not ready for holiness
pray,
for peace.
I feel blessed to have had this time to walk through a wood in the Fall, with you. The day has moved in a ether of moist wood smells, the gentle clattering of leaves, the peace of light filtered through leaves green, leaves– blood-magenta red and leaves glorious dead upon the damp ground. Soon, the wealth of the New York Art Museums. Then, the plains of Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, the cities of China…
The eagle wings gently into spreading night. The black Cormorant screams its black whistle above the afternoon cliffs. Wave and wave of white-capped swells flood the sea. Light sails the wind carried waves. Having fasted and having prayed, I am ready for the feast, fresh and clean.
Learn the craft– This I vow
Learn the way– This I promise
Learn the art– This I swear
Of shape-shifting in fire
Of transformation in light
Of conversion in love
When the time comes, to change
“There’s no place where it’s likely to go better”
It’s now
‘Shanti…
Shanti.
Shanti’
My meetings with Chris during this visit to the Meditation Center were otherwise uneventful. I liked the Meditation Center very much where he was living. He was all into monastic practice and trying very hard for physical celibacy. So our meetings were, shall we say, limited. But good. We talked a lot, which we hadn’t done before. And not just about problems.
Strangely, that we did not talk about the baby. We had before. Not that we didn’t need to again, but we just didn’t.
TWENTY-SEVEN
MEXICAN EARTHQUAKE I
THE SPELL
Things might seem a little strange here. The violence and all… THIS IS WHERE THINGS GET MIXED UP. The point here is not straight historical sequence, but breakthrough to the other world and what we brought back. This is what actually happened, so it doesn’t quite make sense. Are you sure you don’t want to skip this? Really.
1.
I met Fr. Chris when we were both in the seminary together. He was a strong, intelligent personality. He was very dedicated to helping people and to the Arts. We both had the same Christian name. He appreciated very much that I was an artist, complimenting my paintings highly. In fact, he bought a large one. “Theotokos,” (Mother of God). That and a subsequent mural that he encouraged very much were my first artistic “objects of power” in my other vocation. Or should I say, the fuller understanding of my priestly vocation. An “object of power” is some ‘thing’ that has psychic, magical or spiritual power of its own. Why? Who knows? This concept underlies the understanding of how fetishes, mandalas, and icons operate.
He had expressed interest in my art in the seminary. After he was ordained and was out working in a parish, I remembered his interest and sent him a picture of the painting, “Theotokos.” When I put the photo and the letter in the envelope, I remember that my consciousness shifted a little bit and I felt that something momentous was being engaged. I knew that some ‘power’ was being sent along with that letter. Perhaps our fate was sealed with closing that envelope. He bought the painting. From that point we shared a tragic destiny.
2. (Remember, these are early ingredients of the spell.)
My first parish assignment as a priest was in Santa Ana, California. It was a mostly Hispanic parish. Immediately, my new superior sent me to Mexico to study Spanish. When I left for Mexico, I had every intention of learning Spanish.
I didn’t.
What did happen in Mexico was this:
In Cuernavaca, I discovered that handsome city and the nearby village of Tepozlan to be powerful in the ways of the “energies.” Really powerful. Not long after arriving I had a vision/realization, a ‘message,’ if you will, that told me if I stayed I would be badly hurt or would die. Some great harm would come from staying. I refused to believe it. I wanted only to fulfill my assignment and not cause trouble. I cannot emphasize this last point strongly enough. However, in my heart I knew the premonition was true.
My first weeks there were highly ‘energized.’ During the second or third week I had six strange dreams. The first three were powerful flying dreams– one that I controlled from a waking state. The fourth dream resolved problems in my mind that I had with my pastor, my then current religious Superior. The fifth dream was about my home and family; my parents were represented as spirit animals. There were other such animals but the dream concluded with a big deer-like creature coming over the hill. But the sensation was wild, really wild. Dangerous. With this, I knew that the energies were out of control. I was nearly overcome.
In the sixth dream, I was a fledgling golden eagle. That seemed to complete some stage of initiation. (My seminary training included not only theology and pastoral training, but elective studies in tantra and shamanism– the way of the warrior.) Tantra is the combination of magical rituals and religious philosophy in India. The way of the warrior for me, is an interior attitude of “impeccable” action.
Then, during an exploration of downtown Cuernavaca, I ate some food that made me very ill. I seemed to sense that something psychic was happening, although I couldn’t say at that moment that I knew this would eventually allow me to go home before real damage happened. The following Saturday, a week later, I was well enough to visit downtown again. I went into a little chapel that I had seen in passing at the end of a crowded alley, at the top of a flight of stairs. I was delayed from entering by a”sadhu,” (holy man or merely a crazy transient?) And an immense, white dog, (Cerberus?) with pink eyes; guardians for the other world. (Vainglory? Perhaps?) The transient was dancing joyfully, wildly, to rock music. He frightened me. He looked straight into my eyes, then went away. The dog was quiet until he saw me in the crowd and began to bark wildly. I finally got by and entered the chapel. I sat to pray and then noticed a statue. It was a special statue, subject of much adoration and petition from the faithful. It was a painted wood statue of Christ that I had seen in a dream, when I was in college, tens year before! That dream was of particular power and eventually led me to the monastery. I had never been to Cuernavaca before this trip. It was the same statue that had come alive in my dream and looked at me, mesmerizing. Yet, how disappointed it seemed to be in the worship of the world. Disdainful, not of the worshipers per se. The great sacramental vision of religion has given way to rationalism, fundamentalism, and sentimental piety. Business and technocracy control everything material and thus religious institutions. Media …. well, you know the story.
By now I was sick every day and had just enough energy for classes. I slept the rest of the time. I decided to take a few days off to go to Oaxaca because I sensed it was a place to rest, to recover and to wait. For what, I did not know. I went there and I waited. A priest I had met and with whom I was traveling shouted in his sleep our first night there, “Here it is!” in Spanish and I believed him. I stayed and continued to wait, though the priest and I parted the next day. That afternoon I met a young man from the United States in the market place. He described himself as a yogi, a disciple of a tantric guru of good reputation in the U.S. and I described myself as a priest. We hit it off and began a spiritual exchange that went on for several days. We did some kundalini energy exercises; cathartic –a great exchange.
I returned to Cuernavaca. I became very sick once again and finally had to return home much altered and mystified by my experience. But this will not be the last trip to Cuernavaca in the course of building this spell.
3.
Over the following year, I had increasing trouble with migraines again. In a migraine complex one’s blood vessels dilate, which can cause debilitating anguish in one’s brain and body. I have had migraines since I was 10 years old, but infrequently. They’d grown worse in recent years. I went through the various neurological and psychological therapies. In fact, because of the migraines, I first went to the psychologist who introduced me to the study of the “energies”. Now, perhaps the conflict between this natural spiritual vocation and an official, too narrowly proscribed role of a Catholic priest, or just the normal tensions of parish life, produced great stress. The migraines increased to three or four ‘screaming’ episodes a week. Deadly. But the medications were more dangerous than the migraines. During this time, in the midst of full-blown migraines I started to have certain realizations. I began to equate the agony of the migraine experience with the suffering of people in the world, and then to the agony of creation’s mysterious evolution. This seemed more than sympathy, but empathy. Associated often with the agony of the migraine’s physical effects was a sense of clarity and beauty and insights.
4.
During this same time, I had two experiences that have characterized and helped form much of my attitude about religion and human identity. The first has to do with the cure of a man suffering from intense pain. During our healing session, the man from my parish described the “cure” as a mental image of a bubble of pain that passed from him up my arm, then disappeared. There were no drugs involved with this cure.
The second experience involved a young girl who had had what could be categorized as a spontaneous shamanic initiation. She had no religious background and was from an mostly uneducated family. It is unlikely that she could have known about such things as “shamanism”, but what she described to me are the universal “symptoms” of shamanistic initiation. She altered consciousness naturally. She felt pushed into the another world. She felt as if she was being torn apart. When she came back, she became recognized as a wise person by her peer whom she was able to help with her new found insights. This reinforced my developing belief that shamanism is part of an atemporal, universal human inheritance and not solely the property of Stone Age tribal peoples, (or of New Age dilettantes). I determined that shamanistic intuition remains a vital, active force in the modern world.
5.
At this time a more intimate involvement with our shamanistic heritage was progressing in me as I had the following dream about a black widow. I was in a room at some kind of party. A young man with blond hair was talking to me. We had some kind of teacher/student relationship. A black widow came out from under his collar walked around his shoulder, across his chest to the open shirt neck. I moved to brush the beast off. (I have a particular aversion to Black Widows.) I brushed it, rather, down inside his shirt. Either I am dangerously clumsy or this was a necessary interiorization of whatever the spider and the boy represent for me. (Perhaps the boy is the androgynous other world guide of ‘religious studies’ fame. Perhaps, the boy and the spider represent that venomous ‘power’ in me.)
The scene of the dream shifted to another room where there is a large ark-like box about the size of a small car. It is a dusty, black, wooden box. On one side are many various sized shelves, windows and doors. Out of one such portal four black widows walk onto one of the adjacent shelves. Three are very healthy. The fourth is somehow spasmodic. The three healthy spiders raise themselves up on their back legs and from a black telescope like appendage spray me with light. The dream ends.
Late the next evening I was telling a friend about this dream. While telling the tale I began to dream! I told my friend that I was dreaming as I spoke to him, rather shocked about the dual levels of consciousness myself. Then, I continue the conversation by describing the dream. The four black widows turned to crystal. They seemed to be some kind of transmitters, mystically, to the contents of the box because the walls of the black box become transparent, in fact disappear and are replaced with not only a vision of the universe, but a sensation of eternity itself. Wonderful.
I did not suspect anything esoteric about black widows. I had been bitten five times by a black widow when I was in a Zendo meditating a couple of years before. At that time, I had had an image of a black fang piercing my back before I got sick or the wounds were discovered. I never saw the actual spider. I never felt the bite. A doctor later diagnosed the species.
The Migraines were terrible. I determined that this migraine problem must be resolved. Medical therapy hadn’t worked, so I would try something spiritual. Pilgrimage appealed to me since I had traveled as a pilgrim many times in the past. It was for me a major spiritual technique to engage the powers of the unconscious, of the gods, of God.
6.
Subsequently in meditation, over a period of months, I located a place along the eastern border of Turkey that held promise. So, I made arrangements to go there. This story has already been told. I will repeat however that this experiment was successful in that I was cured of migraines for a long time and this approach seem to work. Added to that, on returning home I was informed that Stephanie had conceived our child. Oh, God…
Well, let’s keep to the point. This is an experiment that curiosity, intuition and need encouraged me to make. The point is to alleviate the suffering of the world and/or to facilitate this poignantly dangerous moment in our evolution. The Helping Spirit, my familiar, that I called upon to work this magic was the Holy Spirit and the method is an extended form of geomantic thurgery. (Geomantic=earth energies; thurgy=the ‘working’ thereof.)
This is what happened:
After returning from Turkey, I was sent, for the second time, to Cuernavaca in Mexico to study Spanish. The mountains above the city are powerful indeed. And a nearby village, I mentioned before, is known to be a center of Mexican witchcraft; might be benevolent or hostile. I went there one day and visited an old Aztec temple in the strangely formed rocks above the village. I felt in that visit a strong psychic companionship with the place, perhaps some of the population. I started a ‘ritual’ there that continued on and off for three days. It included a fierce migraine–the first since eastern Turkey several months before. Then the Mexican earthquake hit. It lasted at least five minutes and devastated Mexico City. 10,000 to 20,000 people died.
I don’t think that such ‘co-incidences’ as the ritual and the earthquake are directly related. At least, I hope not. But perhaps the shaman moves in the heart of creation, so participates in creation in a different way; perhaps loses qualities of normal personality; becomes nature or a force of nature. There was a connection that I cannot quite describe. Perhaps later.
In any case, this is the first of a series of disasters that I associate with this experiment. The connection is that while in Mexico, I did the drawings of mountains shaking and started drawings for a mural of the Resurrection: Christ bursting from the earth. It was dedicated during the Rite of Light at the beginning of the next Easter Vigil. The mural was the iconic heart of the experiment. It was to gain considerable attention a couple of years later. This, the second work of art associated with Fr. Chris, as you will see. It depicts a fully developed and powerfully active Christ.
7. SICKNESS AND SALVATION
On Good Friday of that Holy Week, the day Christ was crucified, my friend Fr. Chris was accused of molesting altar boys and had to flee his parish. Even though there never was any “skin on skin” contact, still some level of crime was engaged, apparently. I have long felt fatalistically connected to him. I supported him. One cannot cut a person off because of illness or sin. ‘Christ came for sinners not the just.’ ‘The Good Shepherd leaves the flock and seeks the lost sheep.’ And so on… But as well, I ‘sensed’ this to be a moment of tremendous ‘power’ and ‘energy’. Considering that Chris was accused of relatively little, when compared to real sex offenders, he managed to get his name and the Church involved in nationally broadcast and often repeated news stories as well as a legal nightmare.
I felt that this was a special occasion. We had to respond in a special way. But my understanding was intuitive and I could not explain to my superiors what I did not yet understand intellectually. They did not respond well to what must have seemed to them my very confusing behavior. “Why wasn’t I satisfied with regular parish life? Why did I need to go on these pilgrimages? What has all this esoteric stuff got to do with mainstream parish ministry?” Perhaps they would have recognized what was happening if they had followed a different spiritual path. Spiritual pilgrimage and esoteric ritual do not usually appeal to institutional managers. Though the bishop was patient and counseled me to reconsider when I finally began to take the action described below. His benevolent influence was not to last much longer.
8.
Before the news about Chris’s problem broke, there was this disturbing event. I had begun the mural. The scaffolding was up. The drawing was on the wall. But one day I developed a headache, a migraine. First since the earthquake in Mexico. The second since Turkey. This was January 1986. I couldn’t work that day. I felt terrible. In the middle of it, in a daze, I got up from my darkened bedroom and went outside to look at the mural wall. The whole street next to the mural wall, including the adjacent intersection, was cordoned off by police barricades. I investigated further. A truck going through the intersection, had flipped over and killed its driver. There is a little dip there, but cars going very fast usually only scraped their fenders. For the truck to flip over seemed oddly tragic. I sensed that it had something to do with an ancient dynamic of sacrifice. An ancient and spontaneous ritual to empower the ritual that the mural came to represent with the life energies of the one sacrificed. A gesture made to communicate with the god’s by sending such a person as a highly favored ambassador. A communion of blood sacrifice. That’s the theory. I found the idea repugnant. I dismissed it from my mind immediately. But it came back. I’ve never been able to think of that incident in any other way. (I fear for myself the madness of an unrestrained egotism and vanity. Yet, this most real danger of a warped ego is always present in any attempt at “power” or excellence or even goodness or beauty. Whatever the case for humility, my sense was that accident was a dedicatory sacrifice demanded by the process of the spell–however it may offend my moral sensibilities. I don’t know who the victim was but according to the lore, sacrificial victims go directly to the highest blissful heavens. I hope so.)
My rather dogged “support” of our “fallen” brother who had that problem with the altar boys, himself a victim of abuse, earned me a leave of absence from my diocese. Without my intending it to be so, my friend’s troubles became a means of freedom to continue work on the rest of this ‘ritual’ craft. I both wanted that freedom and I wanted to stay in the diocese as I was, to be a “good priest.”
Whatever I wanted, I was removed from my parish, a traumatic experience and given three months leave that summer of 1986, “to cool off.” I then continued the ritual without distraction.
9.
I ‘sensed’ that the destination would be Yemen and that I was to start in wild lands of Montana. Finding such places is a process to lengthy to describe here. In Montana I was to test some of the meteorological aspects of how this spell was developing.
This was the third rain ritual of the season. There seemed to be a definite relationship between the ritual and the rain. It seemed like an assent from God. Something larger than my conscious intention is building. (I am priest to this harsh love. It is the way of the warrior’s care. The Great Old Man, guide/archetype, travels with me in this.)
10. Now Yemen.
I arrive there on the plain of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, south of Saudi Arabia. Felix Arabia. Immediately, I felt a powerful sense of revulsion, foreboding. There was something terrible in the surrounding mountains. Opposition of great magnitude.
Then I almost had a sexual encounter. High arousal but no climax. Terrible regret followed. Regret that I had even come that close. But thus humiliated, I was free for a while from the usual ego delusions of being in control. Perhaps that was required to accomplish the larger ritual. The energies were up. I began a small ritual at twilight. I felt completely lost, completely off balance and overwhelmed by the presence in those mountains. I wanted out. Instead of staying two weeks, I wanted to leave immediately. As in the earlier rain ritual I laid out pictures of the mural, burned incense, experienced fierce anger fired by the frustrated sexual arousal. A challenge is sent. All the elements of the spell were present but I was barely conscious of them. They work on their own with a ‘deeper than conscious’ assent. (I realize that I am interpreting in a seemingly arbitrary, irrational way. But the more “rational” norms of interpreting experience take us, in my opinion, only more smoothly to the worse, even ultimate destruction of the world by nuclear holocaust or environmental degradation–through a very rational technological materialism.)
Since I arrived in Yemen I had a series of spontaneous visions. In these, I have a staff of iron, now, with a throwing strap of leather. I strike the earth, again and again. The visions came to me repeatedly. I strike the earth with the staff again and again. At one point I am exhausted by this action. Two saint bishops come to my aid. One is St. Augustine. I’m not sure of the other. The last vision as I board the airliner to leave that place, is of planting the iron staff in the field of battle, the plain of Sanaa. It is challenge to the adversary. Or, was it merely arousing another dragon.
Yemen. Very disconcerting.
Around that time, the day I was in Yemen, a lake in Africa exploded. A gas cloud from beneath the water rises then descends the sides of that mountain to kill everything for miles around. Other disasters follow. I fly to Paris. Take a train, then hitch-hike to Spain where I am to meet my mentor, Panikkar. When we meet, a drought of several months breaks with a big rain. (Fires had burned the forests around the monastery on Mt. Serrat near Panikkar as well as the forests around my favorite monastery in Big Sur. ) I tell Pannikar the story of my day in Yemen. Curiously and unknowingly I tell the tale on St. Augustine’s feast day. A letter from my diocese is waiting for me at Panikkar’s home, advising me strongly to come back to California. I feel that I am meant to go. Panikkar thinks as well that I should return.
The day I return home, my father has a heart attack. There is an airliner crash in the town just north of where I am staying. There is riot involving thousands of people on the beach just south of that house. Quite a welcome home. My father is dying. It is obvious that I must stay here for a while.
My diocese asks what I intend to do. I take a parish assignment. I intend to stay. I am reluctantly given a car and time to deal with my family situation. Not long after that, the car’s engine bursts into flames while I am driving it into a parking lot. My father dies amidst very beautiful shamanistic signs. These are terrible, poignant moments.
My new parish assignment is with one of the worst pastors in the Southland. It didn’t work out. I came to understand why the four previous priests in this assignment left before the completion of their assignment. The new bishop offered me a new parish or the old one. Or, freedom…
I chose freedom. The bishop released me from my parochial duties leaving me free to pursue other, more esoteric interests for a time.
11. Next Summer
As I was preparing to leave on pilgrimage to balance the effects (disasters) of the previous summer, while visiting my mother near San Francisco, she and I drove to Mendocino on the northern California coast. Before we left on this drive I sensed that I should take certain magical objects with me; something of a ‘ritual’ nature was happening. That day an earthquake struck nearby on the northern coast where we drove and a giant tornado, one-half mile wide, swept across the plains of Canada where I was going. With this the pilgrimage kicked in. That was clearly the sense of it.
As I said, the purpose of this pilgrimage was to balance last year’s journey that involved raising that dangerous “dragon” in Yemen. This year’s pilgrimage is dedicated to and placed under the patronage of the Blessed Mother, she reportedly being rather good for dragons, purity (of intentions), and refuge. Unusual storms and other such phenomenon seem to be associated with the rituals of this process. I don’t believe that the rituals caused them but somehow were intuitively synchronized to creatively take part in them in a way that re-defines our humanity and shapes the future. I can only describe this re-definition as “shamanistic.” Perhaps it is something else. But even that is not sufficient, since I believe that we are involved in a ‘re-e-volution’, or at least a re-evaluation of what human personality is.
The destination of this pilgrimage is the holy precinct of Denali Mountain in Alaska. (Mt. McKinley) The purpose is purification and balance; to energize the projects that will occupy this period of freedom given me by my superior.
Since this story is told elsewhere, let me say simply here that this difficult but powerful and beautiful pilgrimage began coincident with a small earthquake in Mendocino where I was driving with my mother, a huge half mile wide tornado in Canada, where I was headed, and later concludes in L.A. with an all-night vigil, just minutes after which, an earthquake, 6.1 in magnitude, struck Southern California. Thus the pilgrimage ended as it began. Though, the sacred mountain still looms in my imagination.
—-I called the storm, I evoked a war.—-
12. POISON AND VISION
I had met two young martial arts adepts earlier in the same summer on this last pilgrimage. I had earlier befriended their instructor (sifu) and with his introduction moved rapidly into an easy aquaitance with these seemingly uninhibited gentlemen. In fact, the timing was such that they were of great help at a significant moment of tension regarding my priestly vocation and my bishop. But there is poisonous, sickening aspect to this friendship.
(A.) The sifu reacted jealously to my too easy relationship with ‘his’ disciples and forbade it, though he had just made the introduction.
(B.) One of these fellows, John, invited me to a 4th of July celebration with his family at the beach. It was a pleasant day. However, the following night I ended up in the hospital emergency room with an as yet undiagnosed illness.
(C.) In the fall during the journey mentioned just above, I had discovered that there was in New Mexico a type of Native American medicine man whose specialty could heal a serious sparring injury to John’s back. As soon as I left the pueblo in New Mexico, I was struck with what became exhaustion and something like a terrible flu.
(D.) When I delivered the information about the healers to John in northern California, I contracted a terrible case of poison oak.
(E.) Later in the same autumn, I went hiking with two other of these martial friends. I walked through a patch of nettles. Next day my legs became a mass of running sores and one eye became swollen as the systemic infection spread in the same areas as the previous case of poison oak, though the nettles had not touched those places. There was a painful genital aspect to this infection, as they swelled to three times their normal size and when they shrank the singular member shrank to considerably less than before. Humorous, indeed!
This nettle infection and consequent allergic reaction was resolved like this. These heretofore “friendly” meetings with these martial artists followed by illnesses struck me as a pattern. In realizing this I determined to enact a ritual of healing and protection part of which involved a ceremony in honor of the Blessed Mother. (She still being good with dragon energies.) I did the ritual and the next morning three of the important and strong women in my life called to order me to go to a doctor. One of the women even came up with a doctor who wouldn’t charge this impoverished priest for medical services. This doctor was Irish, a bit odd, very nice, terribly Catholic, with a major devotion to Our Lady. He quickly set about a cure that had me healed in a couple of days. The wounds as they healed looked like burn wounds.
Given all this, I had to consider the possible inappropriateness of this “martial” connection in my life. Perhaps the sifu who initiated these young men into the mysteries of Chinese occult and martial arts had set “wards” about them that affected me thus. (Perhaps this is all mere coincidence. So many coincidences.) One Christian friend found in this an opportunity to warn me away from these martial arts acquaintances. Perhaps I was barging into areas for which I was not yet well enough prepared. The Sifu is admittedly a sorcerer. But I recovered and in a couple of years he ended up in jail for technical child molestation. He wasn’t really guilty of anything but foolishness, though. He was practicing tantric accupressure techniques with someone under age. The law and opportunists interpreted that as molestation. He accepted a lesser verdict, rather than spend the tens of thousands of dollars on a trial and the years–rather than the plea bargained 8 months–in jail that he would receive if he lost the case.
One must be so very careful.
My exposure to esoteric Chinese Martial Arts initiated very strong reaction in me; poison oak and other attacks. On the other hand, maybe these energies are just powerful and I have to develop strength and tolerance for it. I continued my friendship with the two young martial artists because I liked them and I had hoped they would join in our task.
13.
In the midst of all this, another realization occurred to me. As I was driving out for the hike in the desert with these two martial artists that included the nettles episode, I related the story about having been bitten by a black widow to my two martial hiking companions. It started when I was in a Zendo on a Zen meditation retreat. During one long meditation I had a vision of a black claw piercing my back. The next day I was discovered to have five open wounds in my back that a doctor later attributed to a black widow spider. No spider was ever seen or otherwise felt. I convalesced for two weeks, developed a staph infection and blood poisoning, convalesced another week. During that time I had moments of wonderful heightened consciousness. I also told the story of the Black Widow dream that I had one night which started up again and continued next day while I was awake as I recounted the dream to a friend. In this dream four black widows were not only something frightening but seemed to infuse me with a kind of light. Then they became crystals on an ‘Ark’ like box that transformed into a vision of eternity.
As I was telling this story to those potentially poisonous gentlemen about a poisonous event that occurred five years before, I realized that this had been a kind of shamanic initiation; I had been chosen by a Black Widow. She was my ‘animal spirit helper’, my ‘familiar’, who would help me work the ways of ‘power’, poison and healing. And has. I see her as the feminine, creative, ‘earth’ aspect of God.
Soon after, I hitch-hiked across the country. This is now December 1987. On the way back I stopped in Zuni. I was shown a picture painted by that Indian artist of a spider standing over an island. It is the mythic grandmother spider standing over the island of existence mentioned in American Indian legends. She is the Creator and Guardian of creation. She is the Guide (along with the Twin Warriors) of evolution in Pueblo Indian myth. Tantra is also defined as the “web”, indicating the connectedness and purposefulness of all things. So the spider image is not so negative after all.
I am repulsed by poisonous spiders, snakes and plants, but see them as also part of God’s creation and somehow I seem perhaps chosen by them. Certainly I have been affected by them. The trick is to turn poison into catharsis and creative vision. It seems to require remarkable, perhaps tragic, sacrifice. Spiders spin two kinds of webs. One is for entrapment. The other is for traveling!
That concludes the basic list of ingredients for this spell of drinking poisons. Its effects now continue with increasing momentum.
Later in that spring I was planning an exhibition, to conclude my stay as artist-in-residence at an Episcopal parish in Long Beach. The month before the event about which there was to be a certain amount of press coverage, another related story broke. A woman who lived just across from the mural that I had painted on the back of that church in Santa Ana, took the Church to court to have the mural removed. She felt offended that the figure of the resurrected Christ was not only nude but seemed to be sexually excited. (She was also offended by the deep blue background.) I certainly did paint the figure of Christ nude and there is an abstract suggestion of genitals. That is orthodox, necessary and not unusual in the history of Christian art. But it is so abstract that few would be likely to find anything sexually arousing in it. The image reflects much about those who are looking at it by their reaction to it. The fact that there are two 12 foot mirrors at the bottom of it indicates that theme very clearly. The sexual excitement seems to me to be a natural part of a normal, healthy, human response to what has to be the most exciting of total human experiences, the Resurrection. When I actually painted it, I was not clear about Our Lord being sexually excited. I don’t mind that some think that He is aroused. It’s quite natural. The public reaction was amazing. According to the newspapers, this lady spent $20,000 in lawyer’s fees trying to get the mural changed. The local paper ran a front page article, with full color picture. Several other papers picked it up. A national wire service did as well. There were stories on national T.V. and caravans of people began filing past the church. (Nobody paid any attention at the completion of the work three years earlier.)
All this rhubarb came just two weeks before my exhibition; first in fifteen years and a major turning point in the pilgrimage. The newspaper reporters began calling me just as I was planting a prayer pole and lighting incense at its base in front of the Episcopal Church compound where I was to have this exhibition. These were times of high magic. The mural was the icon of the Yemen experiment and was the image that answered a prescient call to the service of culture and the world that had brought me off the pilgrim’s path 10 years earlier. From there I entered the seminary and ministry in that diocese where the mural was eventually painted. The mural represents an ‘object of power,’ a shamanistic technique that will depict and engage true human identity through the image of the Resurrected Christ. It, symbolically, is an answer to the disastrous side of human technological genius. This is at the heart of the experiment. If there has been any effect in the unconscious depth of Being, it is already happening. In some spiritual way these happenings are connected with the Tantric energies that have been building for some time. I am not proposing another cerebral theology here… Something else yet to be identified
[TWENTY-EIGHT]
YEMEN AND THE FLIGHT TO INDIA
Imagination, reality, myth incarnates, PERHAPS to salvific effect
…involves an unexpected visit to Luxor in Egypt, where omens of great benevolence are met. Then, we visit the Sinai desert and 3rd century Christian monastery of St. Catherine’s. Next, we fly to Yemen where they confront terrible violence, are drugged, exposed to mystifingly Celtic and sexual experiences with a very surprising result. We are advised to leave for India.
Getting to Yemen required flying first to Cairo to obtain a visa from the Yemeni consulate there. The airline sent our luggage to Paris and took a week to find it. It took that long to get our visas anyway. Once, while waiting for all this, we went horseback riding across the Sahara to a particularly ancient pyramid. We made friends with the family who owned the horses and stayed that night in their house. My window looked out directly into the face of the Sphinx several hundred yards away. The moon was full that night. We returned about three in the morning. I stayed at the window until sunrise, watching. However many times one sees these monuments they maintain a unique and powerful presence in my imagination.
Still our visas were not ready. So, we decided to take a couple of side-trips. The first was up the Nile to Luxor and Karnak. As we started out, I realized that I had been traveling to this destination for a long time. I had waking visions of an elephant, of a great elephant lumbering slowly but determinedly along the shore of the ocean. I remembered that I had been having these visions all during our trip, but had paid no attention. The elephant knew unquestionably its destination. The destination had something to do with a wonderful golden light that I had first seen while doing some energy work with Chris several months previous. Now the elephant seemed to be nearing the “place” of that Golden light. Luxor. The Hindu Elephant God, Ganesh, is the aid of pilgrims. He is also the Vedic mundane-divine integration. In Africa, the elephant can be the shaman’s ‘spirit guide animal’.
We arrived in Luxor and took a hotel just south of town. Our windows led out to a balcony that looked across the Nile to oasis like farms on the other side and the vast barren desert beyond. The Nile here is randomly embroidered with a negligee of floating plants: cities of lilies; no islands, populations, continents of lotus, moving as if carelessly choreographed; pushed and pulled, eddied and twirled by that ancient current.
We visited the usual sights: Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, the Karnak light show, the rest. It was hot. Very hot. What would one expect for August in the Sahara? There had been for such a long time a barren sense of waiting. Long, tedious, often lonely waiting. Now, the heat and more waiting. It all seemed endless. No great affair. But somewhere inside it, I felt a great sense of arrival, completion of the preparation. I saw the elephant/god enter the realm of golden light. I identified completely with the god. Wonderful, wonderful, joyous light. I don’t know what this means for the journey, for Yemen. Is it preparation? Is it conclusion? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. If it is conclusion, then I’m ready. If that is what it is. It is peace, absolute peace and meaning. I made a medicine bundle and threw it in the river. Then we left.
The Sinai. The drive was long and uninspiring. But the valley surrounding Moses’ Mountain is ignited with wonder. The White Fire was there. The shamanic presence was there. The surrounding mountains brood and nurture in a way nothing short of the maternal. The ancient monastery at the foot of the mountain is dedicated to St. Catherine and the Virgin. The whole area throughout history has been named for the moon Goddess, “Sin”. The “Wilderness of Sin” it’s called. The air at this altitude is cool, the breeze fresh and strong. The sense of the place is gentleness, care. Here, one does feel preparation. I was happy to be there and felt ready now for Yemen.
After Stephanie threatened the Yemeni consulate with a complaint to the U.S. Embassy, they finally granted our visas. We completed our dusty stay in Egypt and flew to the capital of Yemen, Sanaa. Leaving the airport, I was invaded with a feeling of dread, of sickness, of regret, almost of despair. I couldn’t localize these emotions. It was simply my sense of the place, its dragon. I couldn’t indulge such sensations though, since we had to locate someplace to stay and deal with all the rest that accompanies arrival in a new place. Actually, I like the people of Yemen that I met and enjoyed the mud brick skyscrapers for which Yemen is famous.
But my sense of the place is violence. There was a movie out in the U.S. not long ago called “Blue Velvet”(1986?). The sexual violence of that movie expressed something of the malicious aggression I sensed when first in Sanaa.
Soon after arriving, I began to have a series of spontaneous visions. These occurred unexpectedly and continued throughout our stay. They were of myself in a “great monk’s robe” with a staff of steel. I’m striking the ground over and over with the staff. It is some kind of shamanic action. There are leather straps hanging from the top of the staff. Sometimes I used these to help strike the ground with greater force. I seemed to be challenging something. I was completely intent on what I was doing. I was on the Plain of Sanaa. There was no city there. I was alone. Toward the end of our stay in Yemen, I, in the vision, was becoming exhausted. Then two Saint/bishops came to aid me. One was St. Augustine. The other was unidentified. They act to console and strengthen me.
We checked into a room at what was once a posh hotel, now decrepit. Then we all went for a walk in the marketplace. Chris and Stephanie went off to look for antique Arab jewelry, and I went to find the incense shops. Yemen is the ancient, famous source of frankincense and I wanted to get some. I met, in this process, a young Italian man. He was an international salesman. He seemed friendly and helped me with these transactions. We hit it off pretty well. He spoke some English and Arabic. We had chai in a little tea shop, then determined that we wanted to try out the variety of incense that we had just purchased, so we went back to the hotel. I had earlier set out some pictures of the Theotokos. We had brought some lit charcoals and proceeded to arrange all this on a table in the room. We put on the first incense. A wonderful, full, resin smell drifted through the room. It was late afternoon, warm but not oppressive. The young Italian burned some substance that he had brought with him. I don’t know what it was. Sticky sweetness filled my mind. The room was becoming dark. The furnishings vague. I became very tired. I was sad somehow. Somehow, I could no longer quite grasp where I was. I lay down on the bed. He lay on top of me. I passed out of consciousness. I came to consciousness firmly in the embrace of a powerful man, not the Italian. We were naked. I resisted. But he simply overpowered me. He took me. I don’t mean just sexually, but some other way. It seemed like my father, but wasn’t exactly. He took me. And I have never been the same after. I passed out.
Not out of consciousness. I dreamed I was laughing. Next it was Stephanie. She was in the room. We embraced. Lay together. For hours. We were one… Dreams… She a goddess, I, a god. I was a king. We are in a palace long ago somewhere on the Mediterranean. We are in a room with a window over-looking the sea. In one corner of the room. She and I kneel before a niche that contained her image in the form of the snake. It is a very positive, light-filled ambiance. But then through the window, one could see our harbor filling with enemy war galleys. Our palace is in a panic. We have only a small navy. They send out a small ship to test the strength of the enemy. It is overwhelmed. The enemy takes the harbor. The goddess disappears. The palace is taken. I am taken prisoner with a group of other men. The enemy warrior prods me in the back with a spear. We see distant mountains. Some in the group of prisoners are planning to escape there. I debate to join them.
That vision ends. I am with Stephanie again. Our embrace is of divine duration. Then she was the man. Such profound fraternity . Closer than brothers. Closer than family. Extensions of one another. Excursions into one another. Were one, the same. Then it was Chris and Stephanie. Then blinding white light seemed to explode from our loins. The pain in my body, first in the perineum, then all over was excruciating. The light, like liquid, enveloped our bodies, our being. Invaded everywhere, filled us, filled the room, exploded and disappeared as the real… as someone rushed frantically into the room.
The Italian was gone. The room was clear of incense smoke. There was only the harsh glare of light from the neon in the hall, that filled the room with the ugly shadows of a cheap hotel room a long way from home. It was three in the morning.
The person who burst into the room was another guest. He and Stevie had gone to visit the local market place looking for gifts. I didn’t really know him at all. But now he was desperate. He pulled me up. Tried to explain something, but had to stop, calm his breathing. Then he got it out. Stephanie was gone!
Gone?! What do you mean?
Gone. Disappeared. Taken. Kidnapped.
What are you talking about? Don’t be crazy. What’s happening?
He explained: “We had been walking in the market looking at ethnic wares. We were approached by a youngish Italian man. He knew the market well and showed us the best shops. Then he took us to a tea room. It was very beautiful. Carved wooden walls, heavily embroidered curtains across the windows. Beautiful lush oriental carpets. We drank the usual Chai. It was drugged. Stephanie slowly faded out of my vision.”
Then I remembered. It was from my own drugged experience. Like a dream. I seemed to be in a forest, I was running naked. It was twilight. I was chasing deer. One in particular. A stag. It would sometimes stop, turn to look at me catching up, then bound ahead. It was like that all afternoon. It seemed to go on for days. There was nothing for me but the chase. Then I became the stag. And I laughed, as if I finally understood something very subtle but very important. I don’t know how to describe how a stag laughs. But I laughed inside that powerful, swift body. And I ran. No longer pursued or pursuing. I ran for the exhilaration. Then it was twilight, I found myself standing over the stag. It was killed by my spear. I was bathed in its blood. I went to Stephanie covered with blood. She was waiting for me. She was prepared to receive me. I came to her. It was more than love. It was like the copulation of two universes. White stars exploding. The earth created fecund all over again with all manner of living things. Our embrace seemed to last forever. I couldn’t stop. I seemed to be dying. Then she was like a spider, withdrawing from me. She was still in human form but carried the energy of the spider. I was limp and dying on that web of oriental carpets in the room.
I came to consciousness. I could see Stephanie struggling in the grip of two amazon-like women. The Italian man was with them, but he was dressed like a woman. Now he looked like a woman. They took her. I called out to her. She screamed to me. But I could hardly move. I tried to rise but fell back unconscious. When I finally came to, I ran back here to find you. I didn’t know what else to do. I was desperate. All my training to protect people, to defend, and I couldn’t even move.”
I notified the authorities, went through endless paperwork and interrogations. Did not tell them about my visionary experiences. A search was mounted. After several excruciating days, nothing was turned up and I was invited to leave the country. I didn’t want to go, until I had this vision/dream. I saw myself and saw a vision that I had in the dream. A dream within a dream. I was once again the Great Robed Monk striking the ground with his steel staff. But this time he planted the staff in the ground on that plain of Sanaa, leathers trailing in the wind. The challenge is made. Whatever great being or ‘power’ dwelling there is roused. That is why we came to Yemen.
I wake from the dream slowly and know that to find Stephanie we must go to India. I don’t have any other lead. I decide to follow the dream. We will go to India. I will speak to my Tibetan friends there. I will find these women who have taken my friend.
I board a plane. I fly to India. To a place in the north. The last scene of the dream is in a mountain place. A place of great power.
There was something else in the dream. Something that I only remembered later as we were on the train from Delhi to the mountains above Dehra Dun. Something that I did not tell before. It came unexpectedly. I knew that Stephanie was pregnant by both of us. (?) Twin warriors. Grandmother spider was there. It was in the dream. But I hadn’t remembered. That baby is what the women want. But why?
Why does birth always have to be surrounded by death? So much death and disaster as you shall see.