NO JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITION; THINGS DON’T HAPPEN FOR A REASON; GLUTAMATE AND SCHIZOPHRENIA

Lenticular clouds near Mt. Rainier
 
ODYSSEUS IN BARSTOW

 
If you knew what suffering awaits you,
you would stay with me and be deathless,
croons Calypso of the Tidy Braids —

but bronze-armed Odysseus 

only broods on the beach.
His gaze caresses the watery horizon. 


He wants his own life, its breakable glory. 

He wants to be Odysseus. We praise forever
the man who chose not to be a god.

Yet I wonder: would I choose a life  

rich with the journey, yet doomed to lap
at the shore of less and less —


I could sail an infinity of sunsets,

be it shipwrecked in Barstow, California, 

in a tract named Desert Meadows,

married beyond return
to a gun collector, TV on loud,
scrawny palm trees rasping in dry wind —



My morning walk, the hills carved in crystal. 

Petting the neighbors’ dogs and cats;
returning home to read about Odysseus.


I build a monument of pebbles
to the pebbles in Barstow, California.
Memorialize a dung beetle’s march, 


every cloudlet with its knife-blade shadow.
every fissure in the sun-struck ground. 

I trace faces of the dead in the dust —

the silent dead who sing life’s siren song: 
the mere joy of existence. Even in 
Barstow, caressed by the moonlight.

~ Oriana © 2015

Odysseus disguised as a beggar.
 

This poem is one of my personal favorites. I take joy in announcing that Nietzsche was wrong and what doesn’t kill you does NOT make you stronger. After a traumatic experience, you are lucky if your PTSD isn’t too disabling. It’s being happy and fulfilled and loved by the right person that makes you stronger. The less stressed you are, the better your health and your brain function.

In the same contrarian spirit, unlike Odysseus, if offered immortality I would take it, even at a price. I identify with Odysseus to a significant extent, but I would take immortality. Why? Simply so I could go on having consciousness. I enjoy the company of my mind. There’s never a dull moment; my mind keeps surprising me.

(True, there came a time when depression got to be repetitive and boring; that’s when I became fed up with it and ready to let go.)

I love my own mind. I love having a mind, having a consciousness. Always new adventures! And yes, I can imagine being shipwrecked in a dull place. I don’t need to be “where the action is.” I can take that for a short time only. The favorite part of every trip has always been returning home.

The worst deprivation? Not having a home (home = a refuge from stress; a place where I can be myself and do what I love doing). I am not a wanderer, except in the inner sense. I have to have a base camp, my queendom, my very own corner of the world. I'm like a cat: if I have a home, I am happy.

Remember that at seventeen I left home in a very big way. It wasn’t any kind of “running away from home.” Nor was it a hero’s setting out on a quest. I don’t identify with warrior heroes setting out to kill a dragon. I can’t imagine what woman could, even though the media have introduced female warriors, ludicrous escapist imitations of Superman — tall, athletic women who fight the forces of darkness. They never shop for groceries or change diapers. If such wonder women exist, I know I'm not going to run into them where I live.

Is there even such a thing as a heroine’s journey to begin with?  There are patterns in women’s lives: betrayal in love and self-discovery are frequent. Is self-discovery and simply “being yourself” a heroic achievement if you happen to be a woman? Is “having your own life” rather than being mainly a service person to a man still far from what an average woman ends up with?

All we can say is that there is no single “heroine’s journey.” But whatever these journeys are, they are not those of a “warrior princess.”

For a while I strongly identified with an “artist’s journey.” It took a bad wreck, and some related hurtful adventure, to end that particular phase of my life. Again, it was my mind that made me survive the end of what at first seemed infinite. My mind kept whispering that it was still there, and much larger than a device for writing poems, which was challenging but also terribly restrictive and time-devouring.

You may ask, “But isn’t a woman’s journey about love and family?” For most women, that may be true, and the supportive role needs to be honored as much as being the quester and achiever. But for a growing number of women, their journey is neither about achievement nor about raising a family.  

Still, there is the importance of affection. The longer I live, the less I worship achievement and the more I treasure affection. Looking at the clasped hands that survive of the statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaton and his wife Nefertiti and Beautiful (1350 bc), I feel that the most important part survived. 

 
Likewise, I’ve come to see cooperation as an essential part of achievement, not just the lonely individual struggle.

But, above all, life is much larger than “achievement.” That’s where “mere existence” comes in. It’s fantastic simply to be alive, taking in the astonishing world, both the outside world and the the thoughts mysteriously arising, like clouds passing through the sky.

Even in Barstow, to see the moon is a joy. To smell the wind. To hear the coyotes laugh in the hills.

As long as there is consciousness to take it in, just to exist is transcendent. 

 

HAROLD BLOOM: YAHWEH AND JESUS ARE INCOMPATIBLE; THERE IS NO “JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITION”
 
There is no Judeo-Christian tradition anymore than there could be, say, a Christian-Islamic tradition.

~ "Harold Bloom: All through the Hebrew Bible, the prophets perpetually proclaim that the Jewish people, that Israel, has failed to keep the covenant with Yahweh. Nowhere do they say what is palpably true on the basis of Jewish history and of human history in general, which is that Yahweh has failed to keep his covenant with the people.
I say in the book again and again that when Yahweh, which is the name of the high god ultimately in the Hebrew Bible, that when Yahweh is asked by Moses to give Moses his name and in the Hebrew, Yahweh punning on his own name, massively says, ‘Tell them that  [words in Hebrew] has sent you’, which is translated in the King James Bible ultimately as ‘I am that I am’, which I translate in order to get it into an English that will make sense, ‘I will be present wherever and whenever I choose to be present’, which also implies its rather frightening corollary, ‘And I will be absent wherever and whenever I choose to be absent’. It seems to me that he has chosen to be absent throughout most of human history, including Jewish history.

NPR: Well, if Jesus is like Hamlet for you, Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew Bible, comes closest to King Lear, a passionate, impulsive figure.

Prof. BLOOM: I think that Shakespeare probably founds his extraordinary figure of King Lear — irascible, jealous, intense, immensely awesome, angry, bereft, dangerous — on the Geneva Bible's version of — which is essentially not very different from what is now the authorized, the King James...

There are four different layers in the five books of Moses. The original strata of Yahweh as written by the author we call the Yahwist is of a remarkably impish kind of a person. He is not God the Father. He is something of a mischief maker. He conducts on-the-ground inspections all the time to satisfy his curiosity. He is very much a human being. He prefers the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden because evidently he gets hot as human beings get hot. He picnics on the side of Mount Sinai with Moses and 70 elders of Zion, who stare at him silently while he sits there silently and he eats and they eat. He closes the door of Noah's ark with his own hands. With his own hands, he buries his prophet, Moses.

And most of all, with his own hands, at the beginning, almost like a child playing with a mud pie, he plays with the moistened Earth and makes there a figurine. And then he breathes life into that figurine, and man becomes, as the Hebrew Bible says, a living soul and this is Adam. That is not what most people, I admit, think of as God.

God the Father is a later invention, on the one hand, of the Talmudical rabbis but primarily of Christian theology when they devise the Trinity, when Jesus of Nazareth, the more or less historical figure, has become an absolutely different figure, a Greek dying and reviving, God, a theological God. Yahweh is not a theological God at all. He is a human, all-too-human God.

The basic argument of this book, “Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine,” is that we have three very different personages or beings: the more or less historical Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew of the first century of the common era; the Greek theological formulation, or God, Jesus Christ; and the original God of the Hebrews, now greatly shrunken into God the Father, Yahweh, he who will be present wherever and whenever he chooses to be present and will keep himself absent when perhaps we most want him and need him. These three figures are so incompatible with one another that I don't believe it is possible to bring them coherently together in any single statement. They come out of totally different realms of discourse. Trying to think them together is really an act of psychic violence.

The operations of the mind have got to become extremely distorted in order to bring the more or less historical Jesus, the Greek theological God Jesus Christ and the human, all-too-human God, Yahweh, into some coherent relationship. The normal processes of thought are being disturbed, and an act of imposition is taking place.

NPR: Now you write that a Messiah who is God and who dies on the cross as an atonement for sins is irreconcilable with the Hebrew Bible. Why is that?

Prof. BLOOM: Yahweh does not commit suicide. And if one is to take the argument of Christianity, then Yahweh is, in effect, committing suicide through his supposed son. Yahweh also does not, even as a descending dove upon a human female virgin, bring forth a son. This is material that comes to one out of Greek and pagan traditions but has nothing to do with traditional Judaism.

I quote the great scholar of Hebraic matters Jacob Neusner as saying, "Judaism and Christianity are different groups of people talking different languages about different Gods to very different people." There is no Judeo-Christian tradition anymore than there could be, say, a Christian-Islamic tradition.

Whether 50 years from now, there will be of the 14 million now self-identified Jews more than a mere scattering, I would not be prepared to say. What that means about the existence of Yahweh is also a very interesting question. He is, after all, covenanted. Would he survive the disappearance of the Jewish people if that, indeed, is what happens? I do not know. I may, as I say, lack trust in the covenant, but though I keep asking Yahweh to go away, I say so many times in this book, he won't go away. He haunts me.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5048309

Oriana:

It struck me way back, in my teens, that no Hebrew prophet speaks of Yahweh as “my father” —  it’s The Lord, it’s “Boss.” Then comes Jesus, who seems to be a messenger of an entirely different god, a non-punitive god (there are exceptions, but the non-punitive god shines through)  — a god endowed with radical non-judgment and compassion entirely uncharacteristic of the times. I agree that trying to reconcile the two testaments is an act of psychic violence. And it doesn’t work. As Bloom observes, Jesus is a dying-and-resurrecting Greek mystery god. Yahweh is not the sort of  deity who’d commit suicide, even with the idea of resurrection later. He’s too full of ego for that.

I like Bloom’s parallel between Yahweh and King Lear. I would add: the need for flattery. That’s a very strong trait the two have in common.

*
ALREADY THE GNOSTICS OBJECTED TO THE RETENTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
 
The observation that the Old Testament and the New are incompatible is not exactly new. The Gnostics were a major group who said, "Look, no way was Jesus the son of Yahweh. Yahweh is evil. Jesus is the messenger of the true god." They were entangled in the imaginary, but at least their true god (Pleroma, or "fullness") wasn't as distasteful. There was also a major figure of Sophia, Wisdom, who also was the Divine Feminine. The Gnostics were seen as such powerful opposition to the church that they were exterminated. As usual, Catholicism triumphed by exterminating the opposition. The first time they failed was with Luther (there was of course a price on his head).

There were other voices calling for letting go of the Old Testament god and making Christ the sole deity — but those were mainly “heretics” who got burned at the stake. Then came Swedenborg, who doesn’t make an explicit case for dropping Yahweh, but simply pays no attention to the archaic deity. Swedenborg’s god is Christ. But Swedenborg did not attract many followers. The denomination exists to this day — I stumbled into a Swedenborgian church in Boston — but to avoid extinction, the church has latched on to New Age concepts.

Still, the voices calling for liberation from the Old Testament exist, but they are feeble and scattered. I think the movement will gain strength in the coming decade: why don’t we just drop the Old Testament, and make Christianity about Christ? Let’s take only those stories which we find inspiring (this would mean excluding some of the New Testament too). Let’s focus only on that which we find uplifting, which helps us live. But that’s still a huge step, and people are still too timid. And most people are too indifferent, and don’t want to think about the difficult issues. And after all, which are talking about choosing between two unreal beings!

By the way, the selective approach would mean that we don’t “revere” the ancient texts as revelation — or else claim the authority to decide which stories we will accept. That is close to saying, “We will decide what in here strikes as as holy and gives us moral guidance; the rest is an  archaic encumbrance.” It would be an admission of how human, all too human, the whole enterprise is. We would know we are dealing with mythology. 
 
*

The elevation of Jesus to the status of deity required the invention of the Trinity. Well, a binary deity was possible, but three was a magical number, and the Greeks were already familiar with one god in three forms, though this seemed a more female pattern: Maiden-Mother-Crone.

The divinity of Jesus was precarious, given the Jewish origins of Christianity. There could hardly be a greater blasphemy to the Jews than to say that Yahweh had a mortal son with a mortal woman — though later this son sat on the right hand of Yahweh, and was actually co-eternal with his father, his stay on earth having been only temporary. The church was defensive about the concept of the Trinity. We were warned against trying to use reason (because reason will always choose against god, and god must be chosen at any price) — but we were especially warned not to even try to understand the Trinity. It was forbidden to think about the Trinity.

Fortunately children have no particular inclination to contemplate the mysteries of the Trinity. I was more interested by far in why “Mr. God” (as we politely called him) was hiding — why didn’t he show himself, why didn't he speak, or at least give a sign? Why didn't he answer prayers? Those, to me, were the burning questions, and not the Trinity.

Even so, I was suspicious of the foreign, Hebrew roots of Christianity. Why were we learning about a remote place with camels and deserts, and people who worshiped by slaughtering lambs?  And back then I didn’t even know that the Catholic mass was based on the Temple ritual of animal sacrifice. But that gets into yet another angle of the awkward fusion of the Old and the New Testaments. Even as a child I sensed that it was not a good fit.


STEPHEN MITCHELL AND “THE REAL GOD”

Mitchell: “People have been trying to rationalize God’s lies for thousands of years. These stories are very powerful and are at the root of our culture. But you have to realize that the God of Genesis is a human creation, and not the God at the center of the universe,” says the celebrated translator Stephen Mitchell in an interview with Psychology Today, November/December 1996. Later he speaks of “the ultimate intelligence of the universe, which some call God or Tao.”

Mitchell states that he believes that there is absolute justice in the universe, but not in the sense of punishment and reward — more in the sense of surrender to whatever happens and bearing it with grace, without resentment, trusting that all is as it should be (I dare say: here is someone who didn’t grow up under a dictatorship, raised by an Auschwitz survivor . . . who, by the way, was not broken by her camp experience, in a way bearing out what Mitchell says)

Mitchell’s wife, Byron Katie, said about him, “Stephen is brave enough to be married to the impersonal.” Maybe more and more people are becoming brave enough to regard the divine in impersonal terms, but there is still a craving for a someone or something “out there” that cares. We can’t help it: we want the universe to be friendly.

 
“SPIRITUAL NO MORE”: TO HEAVEN AND BEYOND    (redux)

The last time I set foot in a New Age bookstore I happened to be in Encinitas, that Mecca of New Age eclectic esoterica. In one of the several Lotus-something bookstores, I saw the title “To Heaven and Beyond.” AND BEYOND — as in Bed, Bath, and Beyond, a realm beyond mere bedrooms and bathrooms, new horizons that open as you part the shower curtain.

“To heaven and BEYOND.” Heaven is not enough any more. Heaven is so yesterday!

I stood there with a smile on my face – and suddenly the title of my third book came to me. You see, years ago I had an unforgettable dream of trying to save the manuscripts of my three wisdom books from the fire — then realized they were charred beyond salvaging and I’d have to re-create them. The title of the first one was The Serpent and the Dove (“Be ye as subtle as the serpent and gentle as the dove”).

It took me many years after the dream to “see” the titles of the other two books. The title of the second book was to be Letters to a Middle-Aged Poet. The third book remained a puzzle until the doors of perception were cleansed that evening in Encinitas and I saw it: Spiritual No More.

And the weight I didn’t even know I was carrying fell off me, and a feeling of great joy enveloped me as I ascended into clarity.

Now I can agree with Mary Oliver’s “You don’t have to be good” if I translate it into “You don’t have to be spiritual.”

Furthermore, I’d like to translate “what the animal of your body loves doing” to “what your mind loves doing.” If my mind is happy, my body is also happy.

I had this thought before, but now the realization was complete: instead of attending lectures on emptiness, chanting, meditation classes and the like (all wonderful for those who find nourishment in those activities), I needed to spend more of my time doing what I loved doing. Insights tend to have a stunning simplicity. Mine was: FORGET “SPIRITUALITY.” JUST DO WHAT YOU LOVE DOING.

Well, of course, a friend indulgently smiled. That stuff is for people who still haven’t figured out what to do with their lives. And I did, quite a while back, but I kept having crises and doubting my vocation.

I love having insights, especially life-changing paradigm shifts. Imagine — released from having to attend lectures on emptiness! No more chanting, unless seized by a sudden nostalgia for those vibrations setting up an odd tingling in my nose . . .  No more the stench of incense, which I always hated, going back to my Catholic childhood. No more twangy music, no more wind chimes jangling my nerves.

The energy and sense of effortless accomplishment that comes from doing what you love, and afterwards, blissfully tired, falling asleep smiling to yourself — it’s a magnificent surprise. It’s “beyond heaven,” that dull place with nothing to do. It’s the bliss of knowing, pardon the trite expression, that you are on the right path.

You can imagine people’s consternation when they’d say to me — out of habit, I suspect — “I'm a spiritual seeker,” and I would calmly reply, “I'm not.”

I wasn’t trying to shock or offend. I was trying to give them the courage to drop the cliché. It’s OK NOT to be a spiritual seeker, to be on a perpetual quest. Perhaps you’ve already found a place where you feel at home and do your best work. That place won’t necessarily remain the same for the rest of your life, no. But life will evolve as it will, quite without the aid of seeking aid from “spirit guides.” If anything, that’s trying to be too controlling. The unconscious does its best work without such meddling. Just wait.
I realized that all my “spiritual” thrashing around — normally described as “seeking” or “quest” — was like staying in a relationship with the wrong person. And there is a terrific difference between a “default” infatuation and being in love with the right person.
 
JOSEPH CAMPBELL’S “SPIRITUAL PRACTICE”

Some people are likely to ask, “But isn’t writing your spiritual practice?” No. To me writing is writing. It’s not a ritual. It’s not the least bit like prayer (at least as I’ve experienced prayer — practically the opposite of writing, which wells up from the unconscious, and progresses by a “stairway of surprise,” as Dickinson put it).

For me writing is writing, just as a tree is a tree. How magnificent to see a tree as a tree, in its beautiful tree-ness, and not a “manifestation of the Spirit.” I see only the tree and the wind in the leaves, and love the tree as a tree and the wind as wind.

Others are welcome to see the tree as the Spirit, or Gaia, or the more archaic Earth Goddess, or Intelligent Design. “It’s a free country,” as people in Milwaukee were always telling me (oh Milwaukee, the city where I learned to say “It’s a free country,” as well as quickly mastered all the “bad words” in English).

From a poem of mine:

The same moon moved between
darkness and light-wounded clouds,
winter’s hungry Wolf Moon,

adding phantom beauty to beauty.
“That is all,” the master said.
That is all but it is splendid.”

*


 
as I see the Spirit of Milwaukee

I don’t have any special time set aside for writing. It’s not a practice – it’s writing. I write whenever quiet opens up and thoughts arise like the flight of an owl. Non-fiction prose is effortless, inspiration abundant. With poetry, it’s been more of a love-hate relationship. In the case of poetry, I write if the knocking of words inside my head becomes too painful to ignore.

Deep reading actually comes ahead of writing. Joseph Campbell was once asked, “What kind of spiritual practice do you have?” He replied, “I underline in pencil sentences in a book.” Now that brings a big smile to my face. Yes, that’s my “spiritual practice” too.

At the same time, I am happy to announce a new arrival in my scriptorium: a heart geode – it could also be called a womb geode. It’s gorgeous: beautifully polished, lined with a wealth of amethyst crystals. It’s the most beautiful thing in the house, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned. We carry on little conversations, the geode and I.  “Amethyst” means “not intoxicated.” In the past, my chief intoxication has been delusional, depressive thinking. Amethyst, a philosopher’s stone, keeps me cool-headed. How can I sweat the small stuff with such beauty next to me showing me what’s really important?

Crystals. Geodes. This may sounds like a throwback “spirituality.” But that’s the part of me that has always worshiped beauty. Creating and sharing beauty is at the center of my vocation. Beauty for the sake of sheer delight in beauty — not beauty as “spirit” or “pathway to the divine.” Why try to put unreal labels on the real?

Tree as tree, amethyst as amethyst. A crystal I can endow with a personal meaning, but above all a crystal whose physical structure is more profound that any theology. All actual beauty is more profound than any pathetic, world-rejecting theology (and they all reject the world for the “beyond,” don’t they?).

A friend observed, “So you too are a crystal-waving rationalist. Welcome to the sisterhood.”

At last I belong.

**

DOES EVERYTHING HAPPEN FOR A REASON?
 
When people have to cope with difficult situations in their lives, they sometimes reassure themselves by saying that everything happens for a reason. For some people, thinking this way makes it easier to deal with relationship problems, financial crises, disease, death, and even natural disasters such as earthquakes. It can be distressing to think that bad things happen merely through chance or accident. But they do.

The saying that everything happens for a reason is the modern, New Age version of the old religious saying:  “It’s God’s will.” The two sayings have the same problem – the complete lack of evidence that they’re true. Not only is there no good evidence that God exists, we have no way of knowing what it is that he (or she) wanted to happen, other than that it actually did happen.  Did God really will that hundreds of thousands of people die in an earthquake in one of the world’s poorest countries? What could be the reason for this disaster and the ongoing suffering of millions of people deprived of food, water, and shelter?

Why do people find it reassuring that the Haiti earthquake happened for a reason such as the will of God, when such terrible events suggest a high degree of malevolence in the universe or its alleged creator? Fortunately, such events can alternatively (and with good evidence) be viewed as the result of accidents, and possibly even of chance.

The idea that chance is an objective property of the universe was advocated in the nineteenth century by the great American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, who called this doctrine tychism, from the Greek word for chance. Scientific support for the doctrine came in the twentieth century with the development of quantum theory, which is often interpreted as implying that some events such as radioactive decay are inherently unpredictable.

Even if events that affect human lives do not happen by quantum chance, many of them should be viewed as happening by accident, in the sense that they are the improbable result of the intersection of independent causal chains. The deaths in Haiti, for example, came about because of the results of many causal chains, primarily (1) the historical events that led to millions of people living near Port-au-Prince, and (2) the seismic events occurring in the tangle of tectonic faults near the intersection of two crustal plates. These deaths were accidental in that the intersection of the unconnected causal chains was unpredictable.  Neither history nor seismology are random, but their intersections often are so unforeseeable that we should call them accidental.

The doctrine that everything happens for a reason has intellectual variants.   The German philosopher Hegel maintained that in historical development the real is rational and the rational is real. Similarly, before the recent meltdowns in the financial system, it was a dogma of economic theory that individuals and markets are inherently rational. Some naïve evolutionary biologists and psychologists assume that all common traits and behaviors must have evolved from an optimizing process of natural selection. In history, economics, biology, and psychology, we should always be willing to consider evidence for the alternative hypothesis that some events occur because of a combination of chance, accidents, and human irrationality. For example, Keynes attributed financial crises in part to “animal spirits”, by which he meant the emotional processes that can make people swing between irrational exuberance and pessimistic despair. 

But if the real isn’t rational, how can we cope with life’s disasters?  Fortunately, even without religious or New Age illusions, people have many psychological resources for coping with the difficulties of life. These include cognitive strategies for generating explanations and problem solutions, and emotional strategies for managing the fear, anxiety, and anger that naturally accompany setbacks and threats. Psychological research has identified many ways to build resilience in individuals and groups, such as developing problem solving skills and strong social networks. Life can be highly meaningful even if some things that happen are just accidents.  Stuff happens and you deal with it.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hot-thought/201002/does-everything-happen-reason-0

(from another article)

 “WHATEVER the origin of our belief in life’s meaning, it might seem to be a blessing. Some people find it reassuring to think that there really are no accidents, that what happens to us — including the most terrible of events — reflects an unfolding plan. But the belief also has some ugly consequences. It tilts us toward the view that the world is a fundamentally fair place, where goodness is rewarded and badness punished. It can lead us to blame those who suffer from disease and who are victims of crimes, and it can motivate a reflexive bias in favor of the status quo — seeing poverty, inequality and oppression as reflecting the workings of a deep and meaningful plan.

Not everyone would go as far as the atheist Richard Dawkins, who has written that the universe exhibits “precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” But even those who are devout should agree that, at least here on Earth, things just don’t naturally work out so that people get what they deserve. If there is such a thing as divine justice or karmic retribution, the world we live in is not the place to find it. Instead, the events of human life unfold in a fair and just manner only when individuals and society work hard to make this happen.

We should resist our natural urge to think otherwise.”

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GREAT CHANGES I’VE WITNESSED OVER THE DECADES
 
I’m pondering the great changes I've witnessed:

less abusive child rearing — I think this is the foundation of many other psychological changes

more respectful treatment given to the average person (the "dignitarian revolution" — human rights for everyone, greater kindness to animals); women’s right, children’s rights, animal rights

the older generation is more affluent than the younger one; a reversal of help between generations

greater cultural diversity, an opening up of America to cuisine beyond hamburger and meatloaf, and various kinds of "artsiness"; the decline of religion, the conservatives losing the "culture wars”


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HIGH LEVELS OF STRESS-INDUCED GLUTAMATE IN BRAIN MAY KICK-START SCHIZOPHRENIA

An excess of the brain neurotransmitter glutamate may cause a transition to psychosis in people who are at risk for schizophrenia, reports a study from investigators at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) published in the current issue of Neuron.

The findings suggest 1) a potential diagnostic tool for identifying those at risk for schizophrenia and 2) a possible glutamate-limiting treatment strategy to prevent or slow progression of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders.

 In patients who progressed to schizophrenia, the researchers found the following pattern: First, glutamate activity increased in the hippocampus, then hippocampus metabolism increased, and then the hippocampus began to atrophy.

Theoretically, this dysregulation of glutamate and hypermetabolism could be identified through imaging individuals who are either at risk for or in the early stage of disease. For these patients, treatment to control glutamate release might protect the hippocampus and prevent or slow the progression of psychosis. Early intervention may prevent the debilitating effects of schizophrenia, increasing recovery in one of humankind’s most costly mental disorders.

In an accompanying commentary, Bita Moghaddam, PhD, professor of neuroscience and of psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, suggests that if excess glutamate is driving schizophrenia in high-risk individuals, it may also explain why a patient’s first psychotic episodes are often caused by periods of stress, since stress increases glutamate levels in the brain.”

http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2013/04/17/high-levels-of-glutamate-in-brain-may-kick-start-schizophrenia/

The worst thing to give a schizophrenic is an upper (e.g. amphetamine). The brain makes its own natural "uppers." Dopamine and glutamate are excitatory neurotransmitters. Dopamine is in part converted to noradrenaline, another excitatory neurotransmitter. In the acute stage of schizophrenia, the brain is OVER-EXCITED. What follows is burn-out. But there is a genetic component as well, so stress reduction/de-excitement can probably help only so much. But even so. 

ending on beauty:

TWO OWLS IN LOS ANGELES

They fly over the roofs
in a ghostlike flight;
disappear into a tree

like the night into the night.
Then they perch in parallel,
each on a TV antenna.

Absolute in upright stillness,
silent overlap of feathers,
urn-shaped bodies on the metal branches

that draw signals from the pale city sky,
the owls are ambassadors,
come to relay messages

even to us,
unvisited as we are
by the gods.

Only my lover and I,
meeting here in secret,
see them.

~ Oriana © 2015 




THERE IS NO JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITION 

Darlene:

The interview with Harold Bloom is powerful. “Trying to think of them [Yahweh and Jesus] together is really an act of psychic violence.”

SANTA CLAUS FOR ADULTS

Oriana:

One attempt to avoid the psychic violence of putting together a god of punishment with a god of mercy has been to get rid of the god of punishment (GOP) and retain only Christ — Swedenborg is among those who tried. This is emotionally much more comfortable, but it reveals wishful thinking with screaming clarity. A convincing deity should be not exactly as we'd like it to be, not simply a mirror of our desires. But then if god is an emergent phenomenon, as some have argued (on the basis of chaos theory, no less — science!), then it's surprising that anything but a sweetheart kind of god, totally nurturing, purely benevolent, has not universally emerged. It's a minority belief associated with liberal Christianity, and liberal Christianity is declining fast, while the punitive fundamentalist churches are the only ones to have shown growth.

It seems that, on the whole, children who grow up in nurturing families are attracted to the idea of a merciful god (and tend to grow up to be politically liberal), while children who grow up in punitive families tend to believe in a punitive god and become politically conservative.

But it’s possible that a merciful god is more obviously non-existent — a Santa Claus for adults — unless you admit it’s an imaginary friend you create now and then to help you in crisis situations. Likewise, if you start thinking about matters such as “Does it really make sense that Eve was created from Adam’s rib?” — without expecting to be thrust into hell for asking that question — you may distance yourself from the mythology a lot sooner, and stop attending your nice, liberal church. I’m speculating here. 

As an aside, 12-Step programs realize that many (perhaps most) people were raised with toxic theologies, so they encourage imagining the kind of god you’d like to exist — again, a Santa Claus for adults. For some, it apparently works! Having a supportive group seems to be a primary factor behind what effectiveness those programs do have, but the idea of a helping, benevolent deity may also be of use. The brain is very flexible, and will usually do whatever serves survival, never mind the pursuit of truth. 

SUFFERING FOR NON-BELIEVERS

WHY I DIDN’T COMMIT SUICIDE

                         Let us then begin
                         to walk toward infinity.
                         ~ Chuang-Tzu, The True Book of the Southern Flower

I slipped into my body’s warmth
as into a snug glove,
closed my eyes,
tucked in the blanket’s soft dark.

Suddenly a blackness
blacker than the night,
blackness like black lightning,
the edge of a scream:

my death.

I sat up, mouth open –
blackness
poured out of my throat.

Then far away I saw
a light brighter than any star.
Stepping on nothing
I began to walk
toward it until I fell sleep.

It was not a white fire
on the other shore,
pointing to something else.
There was nothing else.
I didn’t believe in God.

But a question had been asked.
My answer was blackness,
and that light
seemed another answer.

A friend once asked
why I didn’t commit suicide.

There was no need to.
In death I’d seen my life:
a pathless way across darkness
and the calm, inexhaustible light.

~ Oriana © 2013

The event described here took place when I was 25. I didn’t write the poem until I some ten years later. And even then I didn’t have the complete clarity I have now: this vision was produced by my brain in order to soothe me. It was effective at that moment. Later I thought a lot about it -- unforgettable!  But I never equated it with external reality.

Years later I read Jung on salvation being a journey toward the star within. I wouldn’t  use the word “salvation,” but I did experience something of this journey. Knowing which way to go meant everything.

If someone wants to call my “cosmic vision” a hallucination, I have no problem with that. Extreme emotions can cause hallucinations, often very interesting ones. The human brain has its amazing ways. 

*

Yesterday I entered a cloud bank enveloping the Coronado Bridge. The fog was thick enough to require headlights. And the city of Coronado was in fog too. With events of my life making me think of limbo, I thought, “I’ve entered the cloud of unknowing.”

Twenty minutes later, Coronado basked in the beautiful November sunlight, warm, almost coppery. You can’t be completely unhappy in light like that.

*

Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial. ~ Nietzsche

It still takes Nietzsche to say something as politically incorrect as this, and as exhilarating. Do we need “mystical” explanations of the universe? I think we can enjoy the mysterious without multiplying useless metaphysics.

I am thrilled that it's finally OK to reject mysticism and not provoke a storm by saying there is no soul nor the "beyond." When someone dies, he remains in the memory of others -- and that to me is an awe-inspiring neurobiological mystery. The underworld of our dreams is stranger and more fascinating than any idea of the afterlife. 

 *

I remember a TV interview with Ayn Rand, a public atheist. I’m not a fan of most of Rand’s ideas, but I admit I was impressed with her intelligence and her courage not to hide in agnosticism. “Now that you’ve become a widow,” the host began, “now that you’ve lost your husband, do you understand why people believe in god?” I admit I don’t remember Rand’s exact reply, and realize that I’m using her striking statement because that’s the one that engraved itself in my memory: “I define god as that which is the highest, and you don’t lose that.”

“That which is the highest” will of course differ from person to person. I’m also reminded of Ezra Pound’s

That which thou lovest best
remains,
that which thou lovest best
shall not be reft from thee.

 
*
~ After becoming disabled in an accident I did wish there was a consciousness -- or whatever you want to call a god -- to bargain with. That was a stressful, life altering event, but it did not change my beliefs that stem from logical reasoning and education.

I am an atheist in a fox hole.

~ I'm sorry to hear of your accident and subsequent disability. I was diagnosed with stage III/IV cancer two weeks ago (I'm 47 years old, the cancer will be better staged tomorrow when I have major surgery) -- and as an atheist I also didn't have even the teensiest tiniest little bit of epiphany or conversion or repentance or whatever it is that these people think I was supposed to have. I'm not in a foxhole although I am facing my own mortality in a very real way. I definitely have fears (mostly about how my death would affect my wife's life), but I'm still rational. To your good health (and mine too) -- cheers.

~ I live marginally above the poverty level on disability income due to an organ transplant. I have a number of health problems resulting from the illness that caused me to need a transplant including brittle bones which have resulted in my spine slowly collapsing upon itself leading to chronic pain. I have to take very expensive medications and that leads to anxiety over losing medical benefits through budget cuts, bureaucratic whim, or other things. I have problems with hernias from the transplant operation that need to be surgically corrected every few years. My partner does not have health insurance and is a cancer survivor. That leads to a lot of anxiety because we can't afford to pay out of pocket for the yearly screenings he needs to be sure his cancer is not returning.
So, I'd say my life isn't very "comfortable." I have a lot of stress both physical and mental to deal with and yet, I do not run to a god praying. I rely on my own wits, the help of family and friends when necessary. I'll leave the begging and pleading to imaginary friends up to charlatans like [name omitted]

~ I don't know about anyone else but when I'm under severe amounts of stress, religion and God are the last things that I think about. Then people use the phrase with you that “God never gives a person more than they can handle.” To which I always replied “God's pushing their luck then.” To appease them. The whole time thinking that God's not the one giving me all this stress. My boss is giving me these piles and emails. Bills are taking all my money. Time is breaking down my home so it needs repairs. It’s not God. It’s people, weather, and time. Medicine and science makes me better, not God. Praying for God to help me doesn't do anything. Asking my family and friends to help me does. I believe in karma not God. I believe in being a good person & helping others less fortunate. That will make me stronger, not praying for strength. I have a hard time understanding, sympathizing, or empathizing with my family of religious driven people.
 
~ readers’ comments following an article rebutting the idea that under severe stress non-believers rush to religion (the old “No atheists in foxholes” argument) 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201104/rebutting-more-outlandish-statements-about-atheists

an abandoned church (St. Boniface in Chicago)
 
*

Is suffering a test of atheism? Yes, this is a deliberate play on the old phrase that suffering is a test of faith (cf the story of Job). Studies indicate that the more suffering (poverty, illness, job insecurity), the more religiosity, and the more contentment in one’s life, the less interest in the supernatural. Atheism has been called the ultimate white privilege and a luxury stemming from a comfortable, secure life. The idea of “no atheists in foxholes” has been questioned; not so the finding that, aside from the rich districts of Johannesburg, there are virtually no atheists in sub-Saharan Africa.

Study after study has found religiosity correlated with hardship. Among the comfortable no one seems to miss the missing god. Who needs god when you are happy? You’re too busy being happy to think about metaphysics. If you have a strong need to express gratitude, you can always thank the universe and the people you love.

Happiness makes god as unnecessary as Stephen Hawking says he is. No new lovers wish to put Jesus at the center of their relationship (Jesus, let’s not forget, advised people to leave their spouses and children and follow him, since the end of the world was about to begin). But the argument as old as that of Satan in the Book of Job insists: just something take away your happiness and security, and we’ll see what happens to your faith (or atheism).

In the case of Job, however, Satan’s logic was the opposite of modern thinking: the Adversary (introduced as one of the sons of god) pointed out to Yahweh as the latter boasted of his faithful servant Job, that Job had every reason to be pious: he’d been blessed in every way. But take away his blessings, and he’ll CURSE god to his face. Not beg for mercy, but CURSE.

But Job’s response turned out to be quite complex. He continued to protest his innocence, which, his friends warned him, was to accuse god of injustice. Eventually he cursed the day he was born -- a milder form of cursing god, who presumably willed it that Job be born. And then, receiving no rational answer about the true cause of his suffering but only a narcissistic rant boasting particularly of the leviathan the behemoth as supreme marvels of creation, Job realized that he’s dealing with a dangerous lunatic who needs to be appeased with praise.

In a milder, modern version of Job, popularized by Rabbi Kushner, when bad things happen to good people, those good people who have enough remnant belief can turn to a new concept of god for comfort. Not for physical help -- this god will not break the laws of nature -- but for emotional solace of knowing that god cares and suffers with you (the idea of a happy, serene god is Eastern, not Western -- not counting the old pagan gods enjoying themselves to the hilt).

Making god suffer with me is the last thing I’d want. So I turn to music instead. In fact, my brain does it automatically, playing its own selections. Recently I was hit with major stress. I was startled to hear the International in my head, in Polish. I always loved the tune. Then I heard the Ode to Joy. And the Marseillaise. A Chopin impromptu. And on and on, until only Happy Birthday to You was left, which I quickly dismissed in favor of more Ode to Joy, all the time marveling at my brain’s attempts to soothe me. I don’t feel alone: I have myself. 

*

My own experience of suffering has had a convoluted history. It’s not even been entirely about suffering versus contentment, but about ideas versus ideas.

I suffered most during my twenties. I cried a lot (daily) and thought about suicide a lot (daily). Still, I never prayed. It simply didn’t occur to me. I don’t remember ever thinking of god during those years. There is some possibility that maybe I did, but later forgot. If so, I probably asked, “Why have you abandoned me?” (But I don’t remember asking that; I had real abandonments to come to terms with.)

The theist temptation emerged later, when I was in my thirties and my suffering lessened from acute to chronic. Thinking about religion was a luxury stemming from easier life. In my late twenties, I was too busy suffering to think about religion. Only later, when I was less desperate, I had enough leisure and material security to indulge in a “spiritual quest.”

Equally important, or possibly most important, the New Age movement was exploding. We were deluged with books on astrology, Tarot, synchronicity, intuitive healing, visualization as a tool for accomplishing “anything you want in life,” chanting for prosperity, and the “course in miracles.” You want a miracle? Scores of authors presented their recipes for “manifesting” a miracle.

How seductive those ideas were! Relax: life should be effortless and magical. “How to Live a Magical Life” was an actual book title, typical of the mentality of those years. It's enough to think about something and you'll “attract it” into your life. Suddenly I heard and read the opposite of what I had in childhood: not condemnation for being sinful, but "You are wonderful! You are magnificent! You have unlimited potential! You can be anything you want to be!” And of course the enormously seductive idea that what we are REALLY afraid of is our greatness.

And those books and magazines, even though I was browsing in them “just for fun,” smuggled in a new concept of god (sometimes called the Source or the Universe, which made it a lot more palatable): a totally benevolent deity (or universe) that wants you to be happy. Not the vengeful archaic deity, not the angry god. This was a friendly, happy, serene god, vaguely having something to do with quantum physics (or whose existence could allegedly be proved if only we understood quantum physics). The door of theist doubt was creaking open. Possibly the “real god” was somehow inherent in the universe, a friendly “ground of being” -- all you needed to know was the “laws of life” such as the Law of Attraction.

The priests and nuns of my childhood never suggested that god wants us to be happy. On the contrary, “God sends suffering to those he loves.” Suffering was holy; it was good for you. If Jesus suffered, then you should be glad you are suffering also. And the more you suffer in this life, the less time in Purgatory, since you have already “pre-suffered.” When I left the church, I thought this embrace of suffering went by the wayside, along with seeing myself as a wretched sinner and the rest of the masochistic nonsense.

But did it? True, I never saw suffering as redemptive. I knew it too well to think of it as ennobling. Did a bad knee ever make anyone a better person? Or a headache raise anyone’s thoughts to a higher plane? Or chronic depression lead to altruism?

*

Hangs by a thread --
Whatever it is. Stripped naked.
Shivering. Human. Mortal.
On a thread thinner than starlight.

By a power of a feeling
Hangs, impossible, unthinkable,
Between the earth and the sky.
I, it says. I. I.

And how it boasts
That everything that is to be known
About the wind
Is being revealed to is as it hangs.

~ Charles Simic, section I of “Two Riddles”

Yes, that boasting about how suffering imparts insight and knowledge. As if insight and knowledge never came from positive experiences.

*

Yet how come I had no interest in happiness, and in fact despised it? Why was the image of a fasting nun a lot more attractive than the image of a foodie enjoying dessert? The ascetic/heroic ideal always had more appeal. When a friend said, “My number one goal is to enjoy life,” I quickly turned away to hide my bottomless contempt.

And yet, strange to say, the same friend, who happened to have asthma, said she didn’t want to see a cure for asthma. Science should not try to find cures for diseases, she said. “Suffering is good for us. It makes us more spiritual.” Otherwise, I guess, we’d just enjoy life, which was supposedly her greatest desire. Of course all of us are bundles of contradictions, but in some that condition is more blatant.

I think there are two opposite currents in the modern culture, though they have less and less to do with religion.

SPIRITUAL NO MORE

Whatever the hidden influences, the short answer to the question of whether my atheism was tested by suffering is no. Intense suffering did not “lead me to god.” Would even more intense suffering had done so? No, it would have simply killed me. Instead of walking out of the hospital, I would have been rolled into the morgue.

(And there is no “mystery of death.” When a pet dies, no matter how beloved -- no matter how much we acknowledge the animal’s consciousness, feelings, and unique personality -- do we ever speak of the mystery of a dog’s death?)

New Age concepts had much more impact, I blush to confess. Ah, the joy of seeing of signs and wonders everywhere, the sweet feeling of being “guided by the universe”! Who wants to let go of that? And how sweet it was to hear that I was not a worthless sinner, but a magnificent being! Again, it wasn’t a matter of what I wanted. As before, with time new ideas entered my psyche, and the wishful thinking of my borderline New Age phase fell to pieces. 

Spiritual no more! The surprise was that hard-core atheism was not a bleak desert. An increased appreciation of life has followed my second “de-conversion.” A mellowing, yes, in the sense of greater affection for myself and loving my quiet life -- all this after decades of thinking that my life went wrong, that I made a fatal wrong turn into nowhere instead of the rich life I so much desired and had the intelligence and education to lead. Me, loving my life and interested in enjoying that quiet? Not desiring the noise of fame? It still shocks me to realize that I have reached a Yes on that.

THE GREATEST HERESY: NO AFTERLIFE

It's amazing how much follows from accepting that this life is it: it's now or never. For Dante and for Dostoyevsky, heresy did not mean saying there is no god; the real heresy was saying that there is NO AFTERLIFE. Once you accept this "heresy," you don't want to waste time! Or opportunities for rich, memorable experiences. I had to reinvent myself once I truly accepted that "this is it."

Gustave Doré: The Circle of the Heretics: Farinata in a flaming tomb. Farinata did not believe that the soul was immortal. 

*

Another important thing that follows from the insight that this life is all there is is what could be called "the culture of empathy." It's not just our earthly life that becomes infinitely precious to us. Others also become more dear. We are in this together, so the only thing is to help one another and be as affectionate as possible. War makes no sense. Not building flood protection makes no sense, and a lot of other things that now imply we don't fully value human life.

I’ve lost the attractive promises of Catholicism, and the even more attractive lies of New Age. But “that which is the highest” has remained.

ANOTHER DREAM ABOUT MY EXECUTION

All of us at a long school desk.
We’re told to tilt back our heads 

and slowly say, “Ouch, mother.”

A capsule is dropped down our throats

sometime during the vowels.

I fade out. Yet soon I walk, I love
the ash trees silver after rain.
The downtown hovers, half-cloud,
the bridge across the bay
spun with beams of light.

This is my world, my pearl,
my kingdom within and without.
And dying in the night, what is it
but a new self being born
to help us carry the questions.

I wake up refreshed 

in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Since childhood I have climbed
mountains; my sinews and bones
know that going downhill is the killer,

not the drunkenness of heights.
I have died more than once,
and look: I walk, I dream.
Siehe, ich lebe, “See, I live,”
I repeat after Rilke,

in the exquisite, horrifying tongue
of those who were executioners.
How close leben sounds to
lieben, the long liquid notes
of the same song:

Siehe, ich liebe, 
See, I love: it’s the story
of my life, of many lives.

~ Oriana © 2013

*

Wittgenstein: Don’t think. Look!

TO HEAVEN AND BEYOND

Why the Inferno is the most interesting part of Divine Comedy

While the Purgatorio and especially the Paradiso tend to bore the modern reader, the fascination with the Inferno, that “Canticle of Pain,” only keeps growing. One reason for its literary success is vivid imagery wed to a concise narrative. When we call a landscape or a scene “Dantesque,” we mean something resembling the Inferno – never his tedious Paradiso.

Let’s consider this passage showing Bertrand de Born, a famous troubadour (1140s – 1215) who finds himself in hell for ‘sowing discord.” The sowers of discord are paraded before us in various degree of mutilation (“as they tore others apart, so they are torn”). The most mutilated of all is the prophet Muhammad, whom Dante regarded as a sower of religious discord. But let’s turn to Bertrand de Born, met by Dante the Pilgrim and his guide Virgil in the 8^th Circle of Hell:

I saw it there; I seem to see it still –

a body without a head, that moved along

like all the others in the spew and spill.

It held the severed head by its own hair,

swinging it like a lantern in its hand;

and the head looked at us and wept in despair.

It made itself a lamp of its own head,

and they were two in one and one in two;

how this can be, He knows who so commanded.

And when it stood directly under us

it raised the head at arm’s length toward our bridge

the better to be heard, and swaying thus

it cried: “O living soul in this abyss,

see what a sentence has been passed upon me,

and search all Hell for one to equal this!

When you return to the world remember me:

I am Bertrand de Born, and it was I

who set the young king on to mutiny,

son against father, father against son

as Achitophel set Absalom and David;

and since I parted those who should be one

in duty and in love, I bear my brain

divided from its source within this trunk;

and walk here where my evil turns to pain,

and eye for an eye to all eternity:

thus is the law of Hell observed in me.

Canto 28, tr. John Ciardi

Gustave Doré

“It” is the headless body, no longer a “he.” In Italian, “lantern” is the beautiful word “lucerna.”

The “law of hell” in Dante’s Commedia is contrapasso – “counter-suffering” or maybe “equivalent suffering” or “symbolically correct suffering.” What Bertrand de Born actually says is Cosi s’osserva in me lo contrapasso.

Francesca and Paolo da Rimini were once unlawfully joined; now they are stuck together, unable to separate, tossed by the whirlwind (which reminds me of the song by Charles Aznavour: “Love at last you have found me. Now the storm begins.”)

Below: another example of contrapasso: the circle of fortune-tellers in Canto 20. Now their heads are twisted backwards, so they see only what’s behind them. In life they tried to see into the future. Now their sin is “reversed” – some might say, not reversed but literalized, since now they can’t see what’s immediately before them, compelled to walk backwards for all eternity.

Giovanni Stradano: The Fortune Tellers

Of special interest in Canto 20 is Dante’s show of pity for the sinners and Vergil’s reproach:

Reader . . . ask yourself

how I could check my tears, when near at hand

I saw the image of our humanity

distorted so that the tears that burst from their eyes

ran down the cleft of their buttocks. Certainly

I wept. I leaned against the jagged face

of a rock and wept so that my Guide said: “Still?

Still like the other fools? There is no place

for pity here. Who is more arrogant

within his soul, who is more impious

than one who dares to sorrow at God’s judgment?

The modern reader is of course moved by Dante’s weeping, and dares to feel compassion for those who suffer -- a matter of empathy that is taken for granted in our relatively comfortable and secure age. The Commedia, however, was written during hard-hearted times when public executions by disemboweling, being broken on the wheel, and the like hideous tortures were popular entertainment, the whole town or village gathering at the market square, the on-lookers jeering at the victim. The idea of compassion was centuries in the making; life had to become more secure first and, paradoxically, less overwhelmed with suffering.

It’s only natural that when earthly life is mostly unhappy, people yearn for bliss in heaven. But Christian heaven was never depicted with any specificity. For one thing, humans need variety, and that’s just where images of heaven are deficient. Duration of any mental state is an important determinant of the pleasure it can provide. If pleasure lasts too long, it becomes painful. Unless there is sufficient variety, an eternity of harp-twanging heaven morphs into hell. William Blake spoke about this:

Time is the mercy of Eternity.

Without Time’s swiftness,

Which is the swiftest of all things,

All were eternal torment.

Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents, makes this acute observation:

“One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the plan of ‘Creation’. What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is by its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon. When any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it only produces a feeling of mild contentment. We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things. Goethe indeed warns us that ‘nothing is harder to bear than a succession of fair days.’ But this may be an exaggeration.” 

Not having lived in Southern California, how did Goethe know that endless sunshine is a form of torture? Come to think of it, he lived for a while in Italy. But there is nothing like Southern California if you want to discover how much you love clouds and rain. By the way, Freud really makes a good point about happiness. The most intense kind is based on contrast. Fortunately there is also contentment and a sense of well-being.
 

A TRAGEDY FOR THE IMAGINATION?

Has it really been a tragedy for the imagination, the loss of Satan and hell for many (perhaps most) of educated readers? Milosz lamented that we lost the metaphysical “second space” – in John Lennon’s famous words, “Above us, only sky.” Heaven and hell are now thought to be states of mind, and not actual places (actually Milton said much the same, noting that the mind can make “heaven of hell, and hell of heaven”). Wallace Stevens lamented it too, though not from a believer’s viewpoint. Yet his lament is even more poignant:

Phantoms, what have you left? What underground?

What place in which to be is not enough

To be? You go, poor phantoms, without place

Like silver in the sheathing of the sight,

As the eye closes . . .  How cold the vacancy

When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist

First sees reality.

~ Walace Stevens, “Esthétique du Mal”

Of course for an astrophysicist, and basically for any scientist, this world – the reality of matter and energy – is totally fascinating and rich with mystery, beyond what believing in ghosts and angels and devils could provide. (This is off to the side, but I love what a friend said about religion and politics: “It’s when a politician says Satan that you know he’s crazy.”)

TO HEAVEN AND BEYOND: “SPIRITUAL NO MORE”

Let me mention that recently I happened to be in Encinitas, that Mecca of New Age eclectica. In one of the several Lotus-something bookstores, I saw the title “To Heaven and Beyond.” This totally amused me, something I needed at the end of a day full of idiotic frustrations it would be a sin against the reader to enumerate. 

“To heaven and BEYOND.” Heaven is not enough any more. Heaven is so yesterday!

I stood there with a smile on my face – and suddenly the title of my third book came to me. You see, years ago I had an unforgettable dream of trying to save the manuscripts of my three wisdom books from the fire – then realized I’d have to re-create them. The title of the first one was The Serpent and the Dove (“Be ye as subtle as the serpent and gentle as the dove”).

It took me many years after the dream to “see” the titles of the other two books. The title of the second book was to be Letters to a Middle-Aged Poet. The third book remained a puzzle until the doors of perception were cleansed that evening in Encinitas and I saw it: Spiritual No More.

And the weight I didn’t even know I was carrying fell off me, and a feeling of great joy enveloped me as I ascended into clarity.

Now I can agree with Mary Oliver’s “You don’t have to be good” if I translate it into “You don’t have to be spiritual.”

Furthermore, I’d like to translate “what the animal of your body loves doing” to “what your mind loves doing.” If my mind is happy, my body is also happy.

I had this thought before, but now the realization was complete: instead of attending lectures on emptiness, chanting, meditation classes and the like (all wonderful for those who find nourishment in those activities), I needed to spend more of my time doing what I love doing. Insights tend to have a stunning simplicity: forget “spirituality.” Just do what you love doing.

The energy and sense of effortless accomplishment that comes from doing what you love, and afterwards, blissfully tired, falling asleep smiling to yourself – it’s a magnificent surprise. It’s “beyond heaven.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL’S “SPIRITUAL PRACTICE”

Some people are likely to ask, “But isn’t writing your spiritual practice?” No. To me writing is writing. It’s not a ritual. It’s not the least bit like prayer (at least as I’ve experienced prayer – practically the opposite of writing).

For me writing is writing, just as a tree is a tree, and not a manifestation of the Spirit. Others are welcome to see the Spirit in it, or the Earth Goddess, or Intelligent Design. “It’s a free country,” as people in Milwaukee like to say (at least that’s where I learned the saying, along with all the “bad words” in English). I see only the tree and the wind in the leaves, and love the tree as a tree and the wind as wind.

From a poem of mine:

The same moon moved between

darkness and light-wounded clouds,

winter’s hungry Wolf Moon,

adding phantom beauty to beauty.

“That is all,” a master said.

That is all but it is splendid” –

*

Below: as I see the Spirit of Milwaukee

I don’t have any special time set aside for writing. It’s not a practice – it’s writing. I write whenever quiet opens up and I feel like writing. In the case of poetry, I write if the knocking of words inside my head becomes too painful to ignore.

Deep reading actually comes ahead of writing. Joseph Campbell was once asked, “What kind of spiritual practice do you have?” He replied, “I underline in pencil sentences in a book.” Now that brings a big smile to my face. Yes, that’s my “spiritual practice” too.

At the same time, I am happy to announce a new arrival in my scriptorium: a heart geode – it could also be called a womb geode. It’s gorgeous: beautifully polished, lined with a wealth of amethyst crystals. It’s the most beautiful thing in the house, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned. We carry on little conversations, the geode and I.  “Amethyst” means “not intoxicated.” In the past, my chief intoxication has been delusional, depressive thinking. Amethyst, a rationalist stone, keeps me cool-headed. How can I sweat the small stuff with such beauty next to me showing me what’s really important?

A friend observed, “So you too are a crystal-waving rationalist. Welcome to the sisterhood.”

At last I belong.

**

My special thanks to Sarah for the lines by Blake and for the “crystal-waving rationalist sisterhood.” 

And thanks to Marjorie for "Fish of the Day." 

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Lilith:

The new blog speaks directly to me. Even my dreams are telling me I need to face the fact that I have been dabbling in various spiritual practices over the past few decades as a way to not go completely into my atheism, perhaps holding out for something else that might really be "out there."

What would it be for me to just forget spirituality?  Some spiritual practices (meditation) etc. have brought me great pleasure, particularly during eras of my life when nothing else was bringing me pleasure.

Oriana:

I envy your for having experienced pleasure in meditation. I have found meditation extremely difficult and maddeningly boring. I could do a "listening" meditation (e.g. traffic and other random noises) and experience some slight pleasure, but never the bliss that some people report. For bliss, I go to music and nature, and of course good books, though it’s pleasure rather than bliss – except after a period of reading deprivation.  

I too once dabbled in “spirituality” – in California, who hasn’t? I’ve had a few interesting experiences, but once a more clear sense of my vocation as a writer emerged (though it was never just a straight line – always zigzags and spirals – now poetry, now journalism, then back to poetry, then into prose, etc.), there simply was no time, and delving into astrology, say, lost appeal. There was no longer time for this dubious stuff, and I wasn't gaining any real nourishment from it, any true wisdom.

Oddly enough, I was given a gift of a Polish New Age magazine, and found it a quantum level of sophistication above what I’d learned to expect. The articles used the various disciplines (should we call them “occult” or “spiritual”? is going to a psychic – and I suspect psychics are becoming more popular than psychotherapists – spiritual or occult? that’s another issue here) as platforms (I almost want to say “excuses”) for discussing psychology, mythology, history, art, and philosophy. There was also quite a bit of humor. I could see that the magazine was slanted toward the educated.

But I’m glad I basically dropped it all. It was a drain on my time and a distraction. Yes, it’s possible just to drop “spirituality.” If I ever miss it, I know where to find it. I can understand the popularity of psychics among the educated. It’s not the claims that these people can hear messages from the dead or from the fairies and so forth. That’s what I call the platform. It’s that something unexpected is likely to be said, something “out of the blue” that can change our whole perspective. Another benefit is getting empathy. And the atmospheric touches such as various crystals and other magical objects, silk and velvet, the low lighting – it’s not the sterile semi-medical setting we’ve come to associate with various “helping professions.” So I can see some positives. A bit of irrationality can be so soothing, e.g. the idea that "there are no accidents." Of course we want to believe in an ordered universe. And then there is the lunatic fringe, and books stuffed with the most outrageous nonsense allegedly dictated by extra-terrestrials, and stories of abusive and downright dangerous gurus. 

But all this is minor stuff. You hit on the important issue when you say that “being spiritual” may be holding out for something else that might really be "out there." In the West, the whole “spiritual” business started with the body/soul dualism for which Plato tends to get more blame than anyone else, except perhaps Descartes. Yet already John Locke, in his 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding. suggested that it wasn’t necessary to posit a material body inhabited by an immaterial soul. We might just as well suppose that matter is capable of producing mental life.

In modern terms, we’d say that mental life results from brain function. We don’t think we have an immortal mind – we realize that the mind is not a thing, but a form of brain function. But because of millennia of ignorance about the brain, and our great longing to believe that death is not the end of us, many people believe that we contain an invisible little self that survives our death and goes somewhere afterwards, hopefully to paradise or at least to the “astral world.” In Islamic paradise, the soul even gets to have sex with beautiful virgins. It’s interesting that only Judaism, at least before being influenced by Christianity, has managed to avoid wishful thinking about the afterlife.

“All is matter” and “all is spirit” are both obsolete positions. What works best is the assumption that matter (specifically the brain) has evolved to be capable of producing mental life (a process, and not a thing). Once we drop the ancient baggage of an immaterial soul as a thing separate from the body, we still have all the richness of our mental life. Atheism does not deny that richness. The brain keeps on working as it always did. But we are forced to recognize that “this is it.” There is no “pie in the sky,” and thus we better not waste the “now,” the unique moment of our lives. That’s all we have, “but it is splendid.”

Charles:

I love the “Spiritual No More” section.

Art, not politics and not religion, is the universal language of healing.

Oriana:

Yes, art that is real art – not propaganda or pointless uglification – something that hushes us into delight. Art lifts the mind to a different mental plane.

I love all men who dive. ~ Melville


Scott:


The pictures by Doré are among the most haunting of all illustrations, especially of Dante and Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner.' ( I only wish  he could have done Moby Dick, I believe he could have captured Ahab  perfectly)


Your mention of Zen brought to mind the 'kinder, gentler' aspects of the world's main faiths. Of course, the Quakers come to mind, as do the Sufi's.( There needs to be a conference in Jerusalem of leading Quaker and Sufi elders!)


The older I get the more convinced I become of poetry's power  to awaken one to a new awareness of the beauty and joy of the world. Kazantzakis comes to mind as well, his bold 'Odyssey' is a quest into  the deep corners of the mind; as Melville would say, 'I love all men who dive.' We all must dive and dive deep, life is indeed a wonder and something to be treasured every day....and your blog is one I count as  one of those wonders to treasure.


Oriana:


Yes, I think Doré would have been the perfect illustrator for Moby Dick. Doré knew how to render emotions. I love the Melville quote. Yes, if only we could have the “kinder, gentler” sorts of faith. I think they are emerging. The old hell-fire based religions aren’t working anymore, and both “gentler faiths” and humanistic life philosophies are emerging. It takes time to make a full transition to loving the world instead of rejecting it. It takes generations of living in relative peace and comfort.


Perhaps it’s too daring to use words like “paradise.” It’s religion that taught us to think in terms of extremes: heaven and hell. Maybe the goal should be modest: more good days than bad days. More kindness than meanness. Imagine: interactions that are 90% kindness. This leaves room for occasional melt-downs, but not habitual falling apart and taking it out not necessarily on someone, but on yourself (I was an expert in taking it out on myself).


Basically I’m in agreement with Ginette Paris who says, in Wisdom of the Psyche, that it’s still early after the death of god (the traditional toxic god), and it will take generations to form viable philosophies that can sustain us through life’s challenges. And I am all in favor of taking all the wisdom and poetry we can find in the past, including religious traditions. I’ve just been told not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. To me the supernatural elements are the bathwater, and the baby is the wisdom that can sustain us. The Golden Rule is the main example.


And the bathwater – well, we enjoy the Greek and Norse myths without any need to worship Zeus or Wotan. I think the Judeo-Christian stories will eventually be appreciated in the same manner, though they are more disturbing, e.g. Abraham’s blind obedience when he’s told to sacrifice Isaac. There will have to be a lot of collective thinking on how to deal with the toxic part.