#133. Beyond Religion and Psychology-- To Nature

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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

Post #133 is a collection of notes and comments on a 1990 book by Robert Aziz, "C.G. Jung's Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity."

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In his 1937 lectures at Yale, C. G. Jung talked about the “need to move beyond established religion and accept the challenge of immediate experience.”

As Aziz puts it, we need “to enter into a ritual with the sacred circle of the psyche.” By “ritual” here Aziz does not mean a ceremony but rather what we would call today a religious practice or a spiritual discipline.

His main point is extremely significant: that while Jung in 1937 saw the “ritual of immediate experience” taking place via direct encounter with the unconscious, today we see it as taking place via direct encounter with the external world as well, "with nature as a whole, in its entirety.”

---

Aziz says that Jung’s own inner journey was the means for opening up a new route to the outer world and that this is his deepest personal meaning. It is what Jung himself did “on behalf of all and for all.”

Jung's work with archetypes and his discovery of the active imagination process, for example, are obviously important. But what is of the greatest significance, says Aziz, is that Jung discovered how we can be, once again-- since the beginnings, thousands of years ago, of patriarchal dualism at the end of the Neolithic age-- rightly related to the external world of matter.

Aziz quotes Marie-Louise von Franz, with regard to philosophical and religious dualism, to the effect that the synchronistic phenomena uncovered by Jung provide empirical evidence for the non-duality of body and soul.

Aziz notes that we get this full picture of Jung’s life and work not from his formal writings so much as in letters, comments, and activities with his clients.

What it comes down to is that each of us must be a facilitator of the unfoldment of the events in nature.

---

For a religious person in the 20th century, the transition from institutional religiousness to ritual attention to the contents of the unconscious has been a big step.

Yet we need to go further: we must learn as well to be always and everywhere attentive to the flow of nature in the external world. As von Franz puts it, "to be attentive to the Tao in all its wholeness."

This is a real breakthrough.

It clearly ties Jungian perspectives with ecological consciousness and environmental awareness, and it verifies the tribal and specifically Native American perception of our need to be one with all nature, with “All my relations.”

---

A second important point Aziz makes is that Jung is able to provide an explanation of the mechanism by which an individual, being faithful to the individuation process in himself, is in fact able to have an effect for good on the whole of reality.

Jung says, "When an archetype, which is universal-- i.e., identical with itself always and anywhere-- is properly dealt with in one place only, it is influenced as a whole-- i.e., simultaneously and everywhere.”

Jung is saying that once changed in any one place, via the individuation process in a single individual, an archetype is changed permanently "always and everywhere." (And so there would seem to be a kind of natural selection mechanism at work for the evolution of archetypes!)

---

From Aziz's work, all that Jung has said about the significance of the individual for the salvation of the world is even more clear. And Aziz takes us further.

While the section dealing with the solitary individual's effects the whole, for example, is especially fruitful, it also helps us understand how a small group like a drumming group, or a larger group like an Orthodox Church parish-- groups which seemingly have no effect whatsoever on the mindset of Western culture as a whole-- can, by faithfully doing their thing, indeed “make a difference” in the renewal of society.

Aziz's point here is that we are not alone in our individuation process. We become who and what we are only with the aid of what he calls our "soul family," that gathering of kindred spirits around us which, he says, "is not created by accident or mere ego-motivation,” yet is “one of the great mysteries of the individuation process.”

---

Another major point in the book is that Aziz identifies individuation and the shamanic vocation.

He quotes von Franz to the effect that “The shaman is the most individuated, i.e., most conscious person of the group to which he belongs.”

Aziz describes the shaman as being distinguished by two main traits: an intense intuitive capacity for ecstatic states, and the ability to guide others.

He says that “the shaman suffers from the plight of his people” and that the individuating individual, like a shaman, deals with the archetypal spirit powers that the community needs.

It's not a surprise to see shamanism and the individuation process equated, but it's nice to have it spelled out so clearly.

---

With regard to this shamanic ritual "of immediate experience,” which today must take place via direct encounter with both the unconscious and "with nature as a whole," Aziz quotes von Franz again. She describes a contemporary religious person as one who is constantly trying to get a feeling for the rightness of whatever he/she is doing.

Such persons are constantly “looking for some sign from the Self," constantly "paying constant attention to the Tao."

He notes that prayer is efficacious "only when one is 'in the Tao.'”

---

As Karl Rahner says, “The great question of our day is not whether God exists but whether we are willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive to the Mystery which is always and everywhere giving itself to us.”

Von Franz’s words help us to see that it is precisely by constantly paying attention, by constantly looking at our feelings and constantly watching for external signs, that we can “always and everywhere" be "sensitive and responsive” to the Great Mystery.

Such attentiveness is what defines a contemporary “religious person.”

---

The religious person in the 20th century has been called to make the transition from institutional religiousness to ritual attention to the contents of the unconscious. A big step, indeed!

And now there is a need to go further: we must learn as well to be always and everywhere attentive to the flow of nature in the external world around us.

And beyond that, says Aziz, there is one more thing to take into account: we especially must be attentive to the compensatory contents of both the unconscious and of external nature. Only by such a sensitivity to the compensatory contents of the "within" and the "without" of things will we be able to live in balance and harmony with all things.

---

Aziz notes that we are “in harmony with the forces of nature only when we consciously give up the ambition to be in control of them.”

This is precisely the same point Allan Chinen makes in Beyond the Hero with regard to the need for an adult male to be in right relation with the feminine. If a man is to move beyond the hero stage of patriarchy, he must give up his need, based on fear, to intimidate and control women.

It probably works the same way with all those things, besides women, usually considered evil by patriarchal dualism: matter, nature and the body-- and of course the unconscious.

---

“Harmony” means not needing to dominate them, precisely because one doesn't fear them. This seems to be a major insight because, I think, it is so simple.

To be "in harmony” means having such self-regard that you can treat others-- whether women and children, or your own body, or the natural world of matter, and even the unconscious-- with equality.

We can only be in balance with something if we are not afraid of it. Once again, what it seems to come down to is the gospel counsel, "Fear not."

===

Personal reflections

1. For several years now I have understood my present stage of development to be one of "not doing, but being."

Not, especially, writing or teaching in those areas that I gave a dozen years of my life to, starting back in the 80's. I am only to guard the center and keep the sacred fire. (More recently I have added the phrase “fast, abstain and exercise;” meaning daily exercise, little wine, and nothing to eat in the evenings.)

It is extremely difficult not to be concerned with doing, probably the most difficult thing I've yet been called to do in my life. Aziz’s explanations make it all somewhat easier to take.

-

2. Aziz says that just as "the shaman suffers from the plight of his people," so the individuating individual has to deal with the archetypal spirit powers that his community needs. Clearly my focus has been on living an authentic spiritual life independently of the confines of the religious institution. And dealing with a major related issue, the loss of sacred manhood and its healing recovery and affirmation.

I understand sacred manhood to be the embodiment of that masculine principle at the heart of the universe which is co-eternal-with-the-feminine and with which it unites in a harmonious balance of opposites for the fullness of epiphany of the Great Mystery.

      

For me, the deep masculine is especially imaged and personified as the Holy Male Ancestors, and in a less personal form, as the sacred fire.

I understand that when the archetype of the sacred masculine is embraced and ‘owned’ by me, it is permanently affected "always and anywhere," and that this is my uniquely personal contribution to the renewal and transfiguration of the world.

All this seems to be extremely important and healthy stuff.

I note that my present earth name, Hoc'oka, does not name myself as a safe place, but honors the whole cosmos as the hoc'oka of transformation.

While it doesn't fit anywhere, I need to record a quote from Jung on page 169-170 of Aziz's book that grabbed me: "Whether we are talking about doctor and patient, shaman and petitioner, analyst and client, teacher and student, you can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.”

Note that, here, as ever the concern is with being "of influence."(!)

---

3. Another book I read recently, Mitakuye Oyasin: "We Are All Related" by A. C. Ross (1989, Bear [Kyle, SD]), is said to be "a holistic approach toward white and native American cultures," and an exploration "of the similarities between Jungian psychology and thought."

It is described by the publishers as "A controversial and original treatment of comparative culture studies.” That puts it mildly. It is, in fact, for the most part pretty goofy New Age stuff.

But the author keeps saying, “and that’s what Native Americans think, too.” And I'm thinking that for the most part, he’s right.

      

An insight from the book: the author talks a lot about Atlantis and Wu (the Pacific Ocean counterpart of Atlantis); I can see that to many people this would not sound any sillier than my talking about a vision quest or the sweat lodge rites.

      

What stayed with me most is Ross' comment that "the "best way to help the world be in balance is to help people who have the same kind of problems you do."

I keep asking, what kind of problem(s) do I have? And keep coming up with the same answer as above: How is "being, not doing" of use? And how, especially, am I to contribute to the healing recovery and affirmation of sacred manhood-- without doing?

Aziz's book really is helpful.

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#126. Humanity's Oldest Religion

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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

Post #126 offers thoughts about what we can know of primordial religion by way of Navajo stories connected with the sweat lodge.

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The Navajo Hunter Tradition, by Karl W. Luckert. U of AZ Press, 1975. [Reviewed, November 1992.]

I've seen this book mentioned numerous times, but I was prejudiced against “agricultural” Native American cultures, so never pursued it previously.

It turns out to be a very exciting book. Extraordinarily confirming of a number of insights I’ve arrived at over the last few years. And it was written 20 years ago. [And here in 2012 it's been 20 years since I wrote those words.]

Navajos were hunters until quite recently. They are related to other northern Native Americans (such as the Tlinglit of British Columbia) who migrated from Asia only about three thousand years ago.

The Navajo somehow ended up in the Southwest US and took up the farming practices of pueblo peoples only since around 1500 AD. So a strong strain of their earlier hunting culture mythology still survives, if tenuously.

The author is passionate about preserving the hunting culture values he has been able to uncover. His is a History of Religions perspective, with a great respect for mythology. He studied with M. Eliade in Chicago.

-

Some main ideas. Hunter religion is the historical “mother” of all religions. It is the oldest religion of mankind, it has been developing for perhaps three million years.

One of the author’s informants [individuals who supply anthropologists with data] has passed on all he knew specifically to preserve it “for the young people from all over the world.” The two informants were living, of course, when the author did his research; but two extensive texts, recorded in the early 1990s by the Franciscan friar, Berard Haile (one of the foremost authorities on Navajo anthropology) were also used.

The earliest layers of the mythology reveals what the author calls the primal stage of “pre-human flux.” Out of this stage developed the hunter gods, some of whom later still were “defamed” (labeled “evil” in agricultural times). Of special interest may be the development which the author calls “geographization” of the hunter mythology.

The collection of texts is hard to read. But their interpretation is fascinating. (And more than just that!)

The “pre-human flux” is a kind of uroboric unity (although the author doesn’t use that term), when all things were considered related and their external forms inter-changeable.

The creation of the world came after this stage, and more or less fixed the external forms of the various “peoples” as we know them today.

Human awareness of the prehuman flux is “the oldest still discernible coherent view of the world,” the “most basic in the history of man’s religious consciousness.” [In contemporary terms, it is the very oldest, the "proto-cosmology."]

And this archaic-hunter view of the world has been preserved in vivid formations among Native American groups. Examples from non-Navajo groups-- Plains Arikara, the Tlinglit and Eskimos-- are offered.

In that primordial era prior to humanity, the game animals were pets of certain divine owners who hoarded them. There were also divine predatory hunters. A divine hunter, by trickery (he changed himself into a puppy!) was able to free the “pets” to make them available for hunting.

In the process, the game which had been tame pets became wild game animals-- with especially good hearing and sense of smell, by which they can escape the hunters.

It’s important to remember that all this happened “in illo temporare,” before humans, and has the value for human hunters of being “man’s Wholly Other.” The creative event resulted in an abyss between human hunters and that utterly other world of the pre-human flux. It can be overcome only by “powerful and sacred people.”

Not surprisingly, sex is at the heart of it all. A female-- sister, sometimes wife, of the divine hunters, who are axiomatically male-- goes off with the divine game animals, to mate and produce more of them, as well as to attract male game to her male hunter brothers/husband.

She tries to avoid having them kill her fawns, but one of the hunters does, of course; usually the youngest, causing her eventually to go off permanently with the animals.

It is well worth reading the stories provided by the author’s informants about all this. This story is apparently is nothing less than the origin-myth of the Great Mother!

---

Now comes the really fun stuff! Guess what the means of access to the pre-human flux is, for contemporary human hunters? The sweat lodge!

The author says it is known to nearly all North American native peoples, and distributed over a vast triangle from Alaska and Labrador to Guatemala. But it “has not yet been thoroughly studied.”

The best information the author can find comes from W. W. Hill (1938), that Navajo hunters sweated both before and after hunting. It caused a “complete reversal of the psychology of the participants.” They became wolves, ”human wolves,” skilled predators, they became like the game animals they hunted. Only after the hunt, in the post-hunt sweat loge, could the Blessingway songs be sung again.

Blessingway is the foundational way of hozo, life-giving balance, beauty, etc. Huntingway, with its killing and death, is to be kept quite distinct from it.

The main point is that “the ceremonial sweating of the Navajo hunters meant participation in the pre-human flux, transformation into the divine predator animal.” One informant says, “Out hunting you have no fear of other hunter animals... you are one of them.”

In the hunting myths recounted in the book, the act of the freeing of the game animals being held captive as pets of divine hoarders itself begins in the sweat lodge. The pre-human divine hunters-- in need, since the game was being hoarded-- got the divine hoarder to come to their sweat lodge and so “found him out.”

In the sweat lodge, the mystery of pre-human flux is reduced to a level of stability, to the lowest common denominator between gods and men, where the gods can be dealt with.” (p 146) (For me personally, this is probably the most significant line in the book. I hope eventually to be able to write something about it.)

Even today, the goal of sweating is the same: to draw the gods close, where they “commune with man as kindred people” and become “obligated to help the earth-surface people.”

---

Two non-Navajo examples of the sweat lodge as return to relatedness and the equality of humans and divine-animals are given.

in the Midewiwin, the candidates are totally identified with Bear (singing “I am the bear spirit” at the beginning of the sweat lodge initiation ceremony). In the Ghost Dance, the archaic sweat lodge was retained “as a kind of Wailing Wall,” a place of lament, symbolizing “transformation and re-creation of life.” (Amazing stuff!)

---

One more big idea: The author says, “A simple description of a shaman might be ‘the intellectual leader of a group of archaic hunters.’ Every hunter shamanizes to a degree... and every hunter is a trickster.”

“All shamanic trance journeys are only natural extensions of ordinary hunter trickery into the dimension of pre-human flux, the realm of the spirits.”

---

Some odds and ends [quotes by the author]: “Information on how to kill deer correctly was given to the hunters by the victims themselves.”

“Pre-human flux as a reality can still be experienced in the sweat lodge. My informants all prefer to talk about their hunting ways in the sweat lodge.”

“Pre-human flux remains a coherent worldview clear into our time, implying all the while a monistc or wholistic theory of man.” [Today we would say "non-dualistic."]

“The ever present possibility of pre-human flux transformation by changing clothes has eliminated the need for a well-developed body/soul dualism.” ["Changing clothes" seems to be a way of saying "changing skins." I.e., becoming the human-divine creatures we can become-- via the sweat lodge rites.]

---

One final idea. There is an extensive discussion on the development of the hunter gods into what we know on one hand as Owners of the Animals, Lord of the Hunt, etc. and on the other as Horned God, Satan, Evil One, etc. [But] No simple summary is possible. What a book!

===

There is a highly specialized followup to the author’s Navajo Hunting Tradition about an exorcism ceremony.

The book is A Navajo Bring-Home Ceremony, The Claus Chee Sonny Version of the Deerway Ajilee, by Karl W Luckert. (Museum of Northern AZ Pr. 1978.)

An ajilee ceremony is a kind of exorcism of craziness. The term can include everything from being sex-crazed to “driving around in a pickup truck.”

I was able to follow very little of this book; the author presumes a great deal of familiarity with the various “chantways” or "sand painting ceremonies." This one (the ajilee) lasts five nights. What's preserved today represents only half of the original ceremony, since somehow the other half got associated in people’s minds with witchcraft and was dropped by respectable shamans.

Of interest: the ceremony ends with the one who is being healed stripping and washing first his hair then his whole body in a sacred suds solution.

There is a final private ceremony where he and the shaman go “behind the hill” for a pipe ceremony where again he strips and this time has sacred smoke blown all over his body. (If the ceremony is to exorcise sex craziness, smoke it blown on the patient’s genitals, a rite which has become known in popular language as “roasting it.” )

This book really doesn’t add anything to the wonderful ideas of the previous book, although it is another example of “geographization,” which might be of interest.

===

There is also a third and much later book by the same author: Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire, Karl W. Luckert (SUNY Press, 1991).

This book’s subtitle is “Theological and Philosophical Roots of Christendom in Evolutionary Perspective.”

The point is that specifically Christian thought not only has its well known Hebrew father but also a much, much less well known Egyptian mother.

The author-- yes, the same Karl W. Luckert!-- makes his case well. But to even attempt a summary is foolish.

This book is exciting. It is nearly unbelievable that the author of Navajo Hunting Traditions and A Navajo Bring-Home Ceremony also has such an excellent grasp of Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Neo-platonic thought. He talks about the homoousian controversy and the Monophysites, for example, with no less confidence than he talks about the early shamans as hunting band leaders.

Nowhere else, ever, have I encountered an author so well informed and interested in the kinds of things I’ve been pursuing in recent years. His field is History of Religions; he was a student of Eliade at U of Chicago.

If only some Jungian would tune in to Karl Luckert. What a wonder the results of that match would be!

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#117. Addiction & Ritual

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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note:sam@macspeno.com

Post #117 is about the relationship between drug use and sacred ritual.

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The following is a summary of a summary, about the relationship between drug use and ritual which I wrote it in a verse-like reflective style in July 93 when I was attending a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar in D.C. The seminar was on the Victorian context, both scientific and religious, of Darwin's Origin of Species, and since it lasted four weeks, it was a wonderful opportunity to meditate and think about this book which I'd originally read a year earlier. I am grateful to the author!

Drugs, Addiction and Initiation: The Modern Search for Ritual

by Luigi Zoja. (Boston: Sigo Press, 1989)

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CHAPTER ONE

The modern world differs from the ancient

essentially

in that it lacks initiatory rites;

it lacks rites of communion with the sacred

via ritual passage from death to new life

for personal regeneration.

Other than by Eliade,

the problem has hardly ever been addressed.

Groups can offer initiation,

but they quickly become institutionalized;

they do not satisfy the seeker.

The seeker is someone who is unhappy with society.

He seeks fellowship ("All my relatives!")

and a master.

Authentic initiation

requires understanding of death as transformational.

It's no coincidence

that both perspectives are lacking in our society,

which is one of "psychological stasis,"

of immobilization within the individuation process

at the stage of conventional routine.

All hierarchical patriarchy is, in fact, static;

so initiation is intrinsically counter-hierarchical

if not [as well as?] counter-patriarchal.

Drug use and initiation are similar archetypal processes.

But drug use is ineffective as initiation;

because it omits the second of these three essential phases:

       1) awareness of the meaninglessness of one's current state.

        2) death to one's previous context, identity, routines.

        3) rebirth, facilitated by ritual and community.

(Just as Hopcke's work with gays--

Men's Dreams, Men's Healing, by Robert H. Hopcke

[Boston and London, Shambala, 1990], helps us

to understand non-gay non-patriarchal maleness--

so does this study of addiction.)

===

CHAPTER TWO

Addicts are prone to group phenomena.

They especially are lonely.

Like the rest of us, they seek connectedness

with "all our relatives,"

and the consequent 'meaningfulness.'

To brag about taking drugs is a step in the right direction.

Claiming identity, role, a personal sense of self

and one's social function,

are expressions of archetypes.

Males need initiation to a greater degree than do females. (Women are "brought monthly to the door of the sacred.") Once-- indeed, for 98% of human history!-- all males everywhere experienced initiation.

Addiction is an attempt to be somebody,

not an escape from reality but an attempt to enter into it.

Addicts see the present cultural context as unreal.

Today it is almost impossible for young people

to feel useful or to have any hero-ic ego-identity--

because of the culture's rejection of death.

Without risk, life is dull; males need to fight to live.

For males, fullness of personhood is not given but won.

Archetype-spirits address individuals;

modern culture offers little possibility

of risk and responsibility.

Thus the resurfacing, ever more irrationally,

of the violent, destructive, repressed hero archetype.

===

CHAPTER THREE

Drug addiction is the mis-use of a substance,

the expectation of mystical/magic results

(of communion with the sacred).

The addiction process has three factors:

       1) physical, biological habit

       2) psychological habit

       3) presence of sacred (= "meaning" = identity/role).

Most drug treatment programs are ineffective:

they reduce addiction to the first two factors.

If an addict frees himself from #1 and #2

it is because he finds a new #3 within.

Otherwise, a new EXTERNAL #3 takes over

as religious fanaticism, compulsive overeating, etc.

Drug use is caused by the absence

of the experience of the sacred.

What is missing is the means of access to the sacred.

Kids turn to drugs in hope

of transformative/initiatory experience.

===

CHAPTER FOUR

Drugs function as messengers from the other world;

when a culture is collapsing, drug use becomes widespread.

Primitive cultures balance conscious and unconscious.

European invasion upsets the balance:

conscious and unconscious get polarized.

(The invaders take the pole of rationality,

tribal people are left with the irrational.)

Drugs seem to activate the need

for a ritual setting for their use.

Jungian/Archetypal psychology sees the mystical overtones

of drug use as the activation in the culture at large

of the need for renewal.

Three aspects of initiation rites:

       purification;

       isolation, especially from the opposite sex; and

       direct relationship with nature, especially trees.

(This makes the sweat lodge the number one

desirable rite of our time! [At least for men.])

In the cultural crisis of the 1960/70s,

widespread use of hallucinogens was openly linked

with need for renewal

by turning to Native American cultures

founded on shamanic initiation/visions.

Having been betrayed by our leaders,

we seek regeneration where we can find it.

[Earlier] Military defeat and incarceration of NAs

led to the disappearance of hunting, battles,

and rites of the individuation process (VQ).

(How all this is so important especially for males!)

The results: sickness, alcoholism and suicide.

Drug addiction and suicide were a form

of minimal preservation of self-dignity: self-destruction.

A solution was sought in the Ghost Dance,

and after Wounded Knee in peyote cults,

both are highly symbolic spontaneous initiatory movements.

(Clearly, my own developments, too,

might go the way of the Ghost Dance.)

This is a good book:

with its interpretation (from Jungian viewpoint)

of the chaos of the 60s as need for recovery of initiation,

with its naming of NA shamanism

as the source turned to for help,

with its understanding of Wounded Knee,

with its emphasis on male needs,

with its insights into the kind of environment

conducive to initiation rites.

===

CHAPTER FIVE

Drug use is a rejection of the dominant culture.

But the pattern--

a "high" and release of tensions,

followed by "crash" and hangover--

is an inversion of the initiatory death-rebirth process.

Addiction is initiation into un-life.

It is darkness, passive self-destruction,

death without renewal.

It is like the manic-depression cycle.

Manic phase is empty vitality,

"like a new-born, greedy for life,"

seeking of ever-new experiences continually begun

at the expense of previous unfinished ones.

Depression phase is ego tied up in mourning and sadness.

Analogy: pathological consumerism is addiction,

like the manic inability to stop.

It cannot accept loss or decrease in goods or services,

it has only forward development:

constant growth, never ending accumulation of goods,

the in-ability to see meaning

in sadness, limitation, death.

The addict's continual need for bigger and better doses,

the empty vitality of the manic,

and the pathology of cultural consumerism are all one.

Especially for creative people

(an example of how complex all this is!),

the hangover, with its guilt, sadness and death,

may be desired as much as

the carefree stage of happy drunkenness.

Somehow, my earthwalk--

the earthwalk of the cosmos embodied as me--

makes the initiatory process available to others;

it is a Rupert Sheldrake-like breakthrough,

which somehow enables others to follow.

A condition laid on this one was

he may not start with the death experience

of sadness at the loss of sacred.

He sees why:

his earthwalk is the sacred becoming available.

===

CHAPTER SIX

Shamanism is the alternative

to the rationalism and pathological consumerism

of western culture.

The recovery of shamanism

goes hand in hand with male renewal,

the re-grounding of the male psyche.

===

CHAPTER SEVEN

The least destructive use of drugs

is found in primitive societies where--

protected by accompanying rites, traditions and guides--

it contributes to personal growth.

The most destructive use is in modern Western society

where there is no humility

and no reverence for traditional myths and teachers.

In the context of consumerism--

loss of the sacred and absence of ritual "containers"--

drug use tends to be solitary

and without cultural integration of any forthcoming visions.

Consumerism is born when

sacred gives way to profane,

ritual to obsession,

archetype to stereotype.

(! A one sentence summary

of what is most painful about contemporary society!)

In the manic/depression polarization,

the depression pole--

mourning, sadness, death-- is denied,

while the manic pole--

unlimited growth, indefinite and unending increase

of production and consumption-- is defined as goal.

The life-rhythm of enthusiasm and reflection is destroyed;

only the manic enthusiasm is permitted:

a denial of death which results in death,

like a psychological cancer.

The suicide of the addict is ultimate consumption.

The addict's slow suicide is a non-ritual

and non-productive (negative) sacrifice.

In our excessively one-sided world,

drugs can be a substitute for religious experience

in that a 'quasi-numinous' may be contacted.

But it is in fact a pseudo-numinous

in that it lacks 'meaning.'

(Gillette and Moore call the quasi or pseudo sacred the 'limnoid':

it feels good, it is refreshing and entertaining,

but it's not transformative.

It is pleasure without reorientation,

suffering without insight,

because it is located OUTSIDE the individual.

I.e., exactly as Zoja says,

that if the addict frees himself from the physical-biological

and the psychological habit,

it is because he finds a new transformation within.

Otherwise, a new EXTERNAL #3 takes over

as religious fanaticism, compulsive overeating, etc.)

===

CHAPTER EIGHT

Two main groups of drugs:

"more sacred" hallucinogens,

which activate symbols in the unconscious,

and "less sacred" (amphetamines, alcohol, etc.),

which "alter the ego-superego relationship."

Alcohol is more accepted socially in the West,

for its resultant highly valued extravert social behavior;

hashish is equally valued in the East,

but for its introvert effects.

Hallucinogenic effects don't fade so quickly,

don't result in (physiological) addiction,

and don't mimic the manic/depression cycle.

They allow an extended dialogue with the symbols produced;

more accurately, with the archetypes behind the symbols.

Thus they can be initiatory and healing.

The non-hallucinogens result only

in "hypertrophy of the ego":

the experience of power or treasure once held but now lost,

inflation followed by feeling of exile from the Garden.

Since ancient times, initiatory drug use

is almost exclusively for males.

Drug abuse appears primarily in individuals

who do not know how to accept life or "the human condition."

They can't face it. And can't face that they can't face it.

Thus they substitute consumerism for initiation.

Results: job & income loss, ruined health,

damaged emotions, damaged spirit.

Widespread contemporary alienation and despair

is accounted for by the absence in our society

of transformational ritual.

===

HOW RESTORE THE INITIATORY PROCESS?

Initiation always exists as a need.

It is more likely to be sought by individuals,

alone and in unique situations,

especially by those with "restless natures"

urged on by "gut instincts."

Basic stages of human life-- birth, mating and death--

are still 'observed' or 'attended,'

but have lost much of their initiatory overtones;

they tend to lack one or more of the aspects

necessary for initiatory rites:

the sacred, irreversibility, and lack of alternative.

However (and what an awesome statement this is!),

the archetypal nucleus of transformational ritual

is waiting for a more auspicious time

to achieve harmony with the dominant culture.

And neither lack of initiatory institutions

nor the loss of the sacred

can weaken it.

Eventually it will cause the creation or restoration

of appropriate channels

able to provide the ritual framework needed and desired

if not by society as a whole,

at least by some, the truly interested.

What can I say!

Here is this one's situation clarified

as a condition of the universe,

not just as a deficiency on his part!

===

Other possibilities...

#1: Falling in love

can also be initiatory.

It is not an ego activity

but an activity of the unconscious,

a compensation for what has been repressed

by our society's ubiquitous rationalism and positivism.

It is initiatory in that is does not so much

unite one with the beloved

as renew the one who loves.

It even shows a profound, if frustrated, need for ritual.

While not yet sufficiently culturally adapted

to satisfy the need for initiation,

it can help to counter-balance

the one-sidedness of our culture.

With will power and ego strength, falling in love

can become real and irreversible,

one's beloved a sacred object.

===

Possibility #2: Faithfulness to one's everyday life.

Being neither sentimental nor pessimistic,

the details of one's everyday life,

even soul-less, repetitive activities,

-- 'owned'--

can become sacred.

It is hardly a new idea

that faithfulness to routine can be sacred ritual.

But its is new that it can also be transformational.

===

Possibility # 3: The long, gradual and difficult process

of self-discipline needed to undergo psycho-analysis.

===

NOTES: CONTEXT, NEEDS, PERSONAL, WONDEROUS QUOTE, ???, MORE!

THE CONTEXT. Ours is a non-transformational culture.

No initiation. Psychological stasis.

Instead of dynamic life-giving union

of consciousness and unconscious,

we have one-sidedness.

The irrational goes underground and finds expression

in violence and addiction:

the external and internal self-destruction

of negative heroes.

Violence, vandalism and addiction result

when people, males especially, lack ritual context

for initiation to adulthood.

Persons unhappy with the culture

seek regeneration via drugs

because they don't know about initiation.

Drug addiction and pathological consumerism are one:

they are the manic pole alone,

lacking the reflective pole of the manic/depression rhythm.

The culture is one-sidedly manic

as well as one-sidedly rationalistic.

Creative people may seek the depression pole

as a way of balancing the only-manic.

The constant growth called for by pathological consumerism

is accumulation, "development" in the real-estate sense,

not individuation via the death/rebirth experience

of initiatory transformation.

The culture has cancer and is dying of its illness.

Some kill themselves:

the addict's suicide is ultimate consumption.

To a great extent, the dying culture's patriarchal religion,

with its emphasis on important aspects of one's life

having already been done by another,

is at fault.

===

NEEDS: Initiation, rituals of transformation:

regenerative rites of death/rebirth.

Communion with sacred, with "all my relatives,"

the resulting sense of meaning (identity/purpose)

given via archetypes.

The alternative to cultural stasis and empty 'vitality'

is Paleolitihic shamanism, as preserved in NA traditions.

Our greatest need: recovery of a grounded/sacred manhood,

via initiatory rites (like vision quest).

Without visions, men die.

Manhood is not automatic, it has to be 'owned.'

Males intrinsically need initiation.

Both shamanism and non-patriarchal manhood

need recovery simultaneously.

Together, they are the alternative

to the pathological consumerism

and patriarchal stasis of our culture.

Because it focuses on purification by same sex groups

in a natural setting, the sweat lodge

is the "rite of choice" for our time.

We know that it is in fact becoming widespread,

that the universe is calling forth sweat lodge leaders!

===

PERSONAL. My archetypal image, shamanic trickster,

which also can be expressed as axis mundi and bear-walker,

has a two-fold focus,

for a long time he's called it the "double round"

(in contrast to the great round or retort of alchemy,

usually interpreted as maternal).

Clearly, such a focus, as weird as it has sometimes seemed,

is apparently right on target for our present situation.

Faithfulness to a contemporary shamanic vocation

is itself initiatory.

I have a very strong injunction against allowing myself

the indulgence of choosing the depression pole only

as a way of balancing the one-sided manic-ness

of the culture.

Ordered to "not mourn or hate"

but to walk the earth with the sacred pipe

is to be ordered to not be in un-balance,

but to be in balance

and thus make balance present/available.

Concerning the identity of earth-walk and pipe rites:

I am to choose, own,

accept in freedom moment to moment--

not just endure--

the details of my life as sacred:

to en-soul the soul-less,

to give my 'yes' in freedom to the concrete details

of the life I have be given.

Those details are in fact the mystery's self-givings

no less than the archetypal spirit-powers of sacred visions,

their acceptance is indeed no less transformational.

(9 July 93: And that specifically applies to HRHS.)

At an auspicious time, the INITIATION archetype

will provide its own appropriate channels.

I'm to be one of them,

called to provide the context of initiatory rites

for owning sacred manhood.

Those interested need to know, somehow;

but I am not to act on my own.

I must wait for the universe to act.

I'm no longer embarrassed by all this,

but I still think it is outrageous.

(10 July 93. I no longer think it's outrageous.)

===

A WONDEROUS QUOTE: "The archetypal nucleus

of transformational ritual

is waiting for a more auspicious time

to achieve harmony with the dominant culture."

From Chapter 2: As shaman-trickster--

life-giving axis mundi, bear-walker--

his path is the Good Red Road of the sacred pipe.

Somehow pipe rite and earth-walk are one and the same:

proclamation, actualization and celebration

of the archetypal image of life-giving transformation.

Once he is cheered,

he will be radiant epi-phany, glowing phallos.

===

In the cultural crisis of the 1960/70s

widespread use of hallucinogens was openly linked

with need for renewal

by turning to Native American cultures

which are founded on initiation/visions of shamanism.

(Having been betrayed by our leaders,

we seek regeneration where we can find it.

(This sense of betrayal, until fairly recently.

is not one I've been especially conscious of.

(In the male renewal literature,

there is great emphasis on one's woundedness.

This betrayal is a major aspect of my wounding.

(9 July 93, NEH/Darwin, DC. I recognize betrayal,

especially by the religious institutions,

as an aspect of alienation

which I've come to recognize as my 'wound.'

(The alienation is precisely because of the need

for connectedness with All, specifically via ritual;

this alienates me from the culture and, alas,

from the religious tradition as well.

I express a fear: that, clearly,

my developments, too,

might go the way of the Ghost Dance.

The addict's continual need for bigger and better doses,

the empty vitality of the manic,

and the pathology of cultural consumerism

are all one.

Especially for creative people

(an example of how complex all this is!),

the hangover, with its guilt, sadness and death,

may be desired as much as

the carefree stage of happy drunkenness.

(I don't think this is me,

but it could have been.)

Somehow, my earthwalk--

the earthwalk of the cosmos embodied as me--

makes the initiatory process available to others:

a breakthrough which somehow enables others to follow.

A condition laid on this one was

he may not start with the death experience

of sadness at the loss of sacred.

He sees why:

his earthwalk IS the sacred becoming available.

Just now-- it was 9 July 93-- he realizes

how significant this book was for him.

===

One more note.

Drug use is caused by the absence

of the experience of the sacred.

WHAT IS MISSING IS THE MEANS OF ACCESS TO THE SACRED.

Kids turn to drugs in hope

of transformative/initiatory experience.

See essay "Women’s Stories, Women’s Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality," by Caroline Walker Bynum, in Anthropology and the Study of Religion, edited by Robert L. Moore and Frank E. Reynolds. (Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, Chicago, 1984).

The author, a professor of History at U of Washington interested in medieval female mystics, makes an excellent case for the fact that while transformative experience may be absolutely necessary for male growth and development, it isn’t for women, for whom Turner's ideas about liminality, etc. don't apply.

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