Leia’s Cave

[Wildman's Quarters - living room]

NEELIX: 

Computer, access personal database, Neelix. 

File index two nine one. 

Hello, Alixia. I'm sorry it's been so many weeks since I've thought about you, but we've been very busy here on Voyager. I miss you. 

My goddaughter, Naomi, she's in trouble. 

We're in trouble. 

She may lose her mother. 

Alixia, you always knew the right thing to do, the right thing to say. 

I wish you were here to help me.

BILL MOYERS: 

What about The Female? 

I mean, most of the figures in the temple caves arc male. 

Was this a kind of secret society for males only?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It wasn’t a secret society, it was that the boys •had• to go through it. 

Now, we don’t know exactly what happens with The Female in this period, because we have very little evidence to tell us.  

In primary cultures today, The Girl becomes a woman with her first menstruation. It happens to her; I mean, nature does it •to• her. 

And so she has undergone the transformation, 

and what is her initiation? 

Typically, it is to sit in a little hut for a certain number of days, 

and realize What She Is.

She Sits There. 

She’s now a Woman. 

And what is a Woman? 

A Woman is a Vehicle of Life, 

and Life has overtaken her. 

She is a Vehicle now of Life. 

A Woman’s What It is All About; 

The giving of birth and the giving of nourishment. 

She’s identical with The Earth Goddess in her powers, and she’s got to realize that about herself. 

The Boy does not have a happening of that kind. He has to be turned •into• a Man, and •voluntarily• become a servant of something greater than himself. 

The woman becomes the vehicle of nature; 

The man becomes the vehicle of the society, the social order and the social purpose.

BILL MOYERS: 

So what happens when a society no longer embraces powerful mythology?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

What we’ve got on our hands.  

As I say, if you want to find what it means not to have a society without any rituals, read The New York Times.

BILL MOYERS:   

And you’d find?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:  

Well, the news of the day.

BILL MOYERS: 

Wars…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Young people who don’t know how to behave in a civilized society. Half the…I imagine that 50% of the crime is by young people in their 20s and early 30s that just behave like barbarians.

BILL MOYERS: 

Society has provided them no rituals by which they become members.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

None. There’s been a reduction, a reduction, a reduction of ritual. 

Even in the Roman Catholic Church, my God, they’ve translated the Mass out of the ritual language into a language that has a lot of domestic associations. 

So that, I mean, every time now that I read the Latin of the Mass, I get that pitch again that it’s supposed to give, a language that throws you out of the field of your domesticity, you know. The altar is turned so that the priest, his back is to you, and with him you address yourself outward like that. Now they’ve turned the altar around, looks like Julia Child giving a demonstration, and it’s all homey and cozy.

BILL MOYERS: 

And they play guitar.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

They play a guitar! 

Listen, they’ve forgotten what the function of a ritual is, is to pitch you out, not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time.

BILL MOYERS: 

So ritual that once conveyed an inner reality is now merely form, and that’s true in the rituals of society, and the personal rituals of marriage and religion.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL :

Well, with respect to ritual, it must be kept alive. 

And so much of our ritual is dead. 

It’s extremely interesting to read of the primitive, elementary cultures, how the folktales, the myths, they are transforming all the time, in terms of the circumstances of those people. 

People move from an area where, let’s say the vegetation is the main support, out into the plains. 

Most of our Plains Indians in the period of the horse-riding Indians, you know, had originally been of the Mississippian culture along the Mississippi in settled dwelling towns, and agriculturally based villages. 

And then they received tile horse from the Spaniards, and it makes it possible then to venture out on the plains and handle a great hunt of the buffalo herds, you see. 

And the mythology transforms from vegetation to buffalo. 

And you can see the structure of the earlier vegetation mythologies under the mythologies of the Dakota Indians and the Pawnee Indians and the Kiowa and so forth.

BILL MOYERS :

You’re saying that the environment shapes the story?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL :

They respond to it. Do you see? 

But we have a tradition that comes from the first millennium B.C. somewhere else, and we’re handling that. 

It has not turned over and assimilated the qualities of our culture, and the new things that are possible, and the new vision of the universe. 

It must be kept alive. 

The only people that can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another.

BILL MOYERS: 

Artists?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That artist is…his function is the mythologization of the environment and the world.

BILL MOYERS: 

Artists being the poet, the musician, the author, writer.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Exactly, yes. I think we’ve had a couple of greats in the recent times. 

I think of James Joyce as such a revealer of the mysteries of growing up and becoming a human being. 

And for me, he and Thomas Mann were my principal gurus, you might say, as I was trying to shape my own life. 

I think in the visual arts there were two men whose work seemed to me to handle mythological themes in a marvelous way, and one was Paul Klee, and the other Picasso. 

These two men really knew what they were doing all the way, I think, and had a great versatility in their revelations.

BILL MOYERS: 

You mean, our artists are the mythmakers of our day?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The mythmakers in earlier days were the counterparts of our artists.

BILL MOYERS: 

They drew the paintings on the wall

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes.

BILL MOYERS: 

— they performed the rituals.

So the goddess conceived an image in her mind, and it was of the stuff of Anu of the firmament. She dipped her hands in water and pinched off clay, she let it fall in the wilderness, and noble Enkidu was created. There was virtue in him of the god of war, of Ninurta himself. His body was rough, he had long hair like a woman's; it waved like the hair of Nisaba, the goddess of corn. His body was covered with matted hair like Samugan's, the god of cattle. He was innocent of mankind; he knew nothing of the cultivated land.

Enkidu ate grass in the hills with the gazelle and lurked with wild beasts at the water-holes; he had joy of the water with the herds of wild game. But there was a trapper who met him one day face to face at the drinking-hole, for the wild game had entered his territory. On three days he met him face to face, and the trapper was frozen with fear. He went back to his house with the game that he had caught, and he was dumb, benumbed with terror. His face was altered like that of one who has made a long journey. With awe in his heart he spoke to his father: 'Father, there is a man, unlike any other, who comes down from the hills. He is the strongest in the world, he is like an immortal from heaven. He ranges over the hills with wild beasts and eats grass; the ranges through your land and comes down to the wells. I am afraid and dare not go near him. He fills in the pits which I dig and tears up-my traps set for the game; he helps the beasts to escape and now they slip through my fingers.'

His father opened his mouth and said to the trapper, 'My son, in Uruk lives Gilgamesh; no one has ever prevailed against him, he is strong as a star from heaven. Go to Uruk, find Gilgamesh, extol the strength of this wild man. Ask him to give you a harlot, a wanton from the temple of love; return with her, and let her woman's power overpower this man. When next he comes down to drink at the wells she will be there, stripped naked; and when he sees her beckoning he will embrace her, and then the wild beasts will reject him.'

So the trapper set out on his journey to Uruk and addressed himself to Gilgamesh saying, 'A man unlike any other is roaming now in the pastures; he is as strong as a star from heaven and I am afraid to approach him. He helps the wild game to escape; he fills in my pits and pulls up my traps.' Gilgamesh said, 'Trapper, go back, take with you a harlot, a child of pleasure. At the drinking hole she will strip, and when, he sees her beckoning he will embrace her and the game of the wilderness will. surely reject him.'

Now the trapper returned, taking the harlot with him. After a three days' journey they came to the drinking hole, and there they sat down; the harlot and the trapper sat . facing one another and waited for the game to come. For the first day and for the second day the two sat waiting, but on the third day the herds came; they came down to drink and Enkidu was with them. The small wild creatures of the plains were glad of the water, and Enkidu with them, who ate grass with the gazelle and was born in the hills; and she saw him, the savage man, come from far-off in the hills. The trapper spoke to her: 'There he is. Now, woman, make your breasts bare, have no shame, do not delay but welcome his love. Let him see you naked, let him possess your body. When he comes near uncover yourself and lie with him; teach him, the savage man, your woman's art, for when he murmurs love to you the wild' beasts that shared his life in the hills will reject him.'

She was not ashamed to take him, she made herself naked and welcomed his eagerness; as he lay on her murmuring love she taught him the woman's art For six days and seven nights they lay together, for Enkidu had forgotten his home in the hills; but when he was satisfied he went back to the wild beasts. Then, when the gazelle saw him, they bolted away; when the wild creatures saw him they fled. Enkidu would have followed, but his body was bound as though with a cord, his knees gave way when he started to run, his swiftness was gone. And now the wild creatures had all fled away; Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart. So he returned and sat down at the woman's feet, and listened intently to what she said. 'You are wise, Enkidu, and now you have become like a god. Why do you want to run wild with the beasts in the hills? Come with me. I will take you to strong-walled Uruk, to the blessed temple of Ishtar and of Anu, of love and of heaven there Gilgamesh lives, who is very strong, and like a wild bull he lords it over men.'

When she had spoken Enkidu was pleased; he longed for a comrade, for one who would understand his heart. 'Come, woman, and take me to that holy temple, to the house of Anu and of Ishtar, and to the place where Gilgamesh lords it over the people. I will challenge him boldly, I will cry out aloud in Uruk, "I am the strongest here, I have come to change the old order, I am he who was born in the hills, I am he who is strongest of all."'

She said, 'Let us go, and let him see your face. I know very well where Gilgamesh is in great Uruk. O Enkidu, there all the people are dressed in their gorgeous robes, every day is holiday, the young men and the girls are wonderful to see. How sweet they smell! All the great ones are roused from their beds. O Enkidu, you who love life, I will show you Gilgamesh, a man of many moods; you shall look at him well in his radiant manhood. His body is perfect in strength and maturity; he never rests by night or day. He is stronger than you, so leave your boasting. Shamash the glorious sun has given favours to Gilgamesh, and Anu of the heavens, and Enlil, and Ea the wise has given him deep understanding. f tell you, even before you have left the wilderness, Gilgamesh will know in his dreams that you are coming.'

Now Gilgamesh got up to tell his dream to his mother; Ninsun, one of the wise gods. 'Mother, last night I had a dream. I was full of joy, the young heroes were round me and I walked through the night under the stars of the firmament, and one, a meteor of the stuff of Anu, fell down from heaven. I tried to lift it but it proved too heavy. All the people of Uruk came round to see it, the common people jostled and the nobles thronged to kiss its feet; and to me its attraction was like the love of woman. They helped me, I braced my forehead and I raised it with thongs and brought it to you, and you yourself pronounced it my brother.'

Then Ninsun, who is well-beloved and wise, said to Gilgamesh, 'This star of heaven which descended like a meteor from the sky; which you tried to lift,- but found too heavy, when you tried to move it it would not budge, and so you brought it to my feet; I made it for you, a goad and spur, and you were drawn as though to a woman. This is the strong comrade, the one who brings help to his friend in his need. He is the strongest of wild creatures, the stuff of Anu; born in the grass-lands and the wild hills reared him; when you see him you will be glad; you will love him as a woman and he will never forsake you. This is the meaning of the dream.'

Gilgamesh said, 'Mother, I dreamed a second dream. In the streets of strong-walled Uruk there lay an axe; the shape of it was strange and the people thronged round. I saw it and was glad. I bent down, deeply drawn towards it; I loved it like a woman and wore it at my side.' Ninsun answered, 'That axe, which you saw, which drew you so powerfully like love of a woman, that is the comrade whom I give you, and he will come in his strength like one of the host of heaven. He is the brave companion who rescues his friend in necessity.' Gilgamesh said to his mother, 'A friend, a counsellor has come to me from Enlil, and now I shall befriend and counsel him.' So Gilgamesh told his dreams; and the harlot retold them to Enkidu.

And now she said to Enkidu, 'When I look at you you have become like a god. Why do you yearn to run wild again with the beasts in the hills? Get up from the ground, the bed of a shepherd.' He listened to her words with care. It was good advice that she gave. She divided her clothing in two and with the one half she clothed him and with the other herself, and holding his hand she led him like a child to the sheepfolds, into the shepherds' tents. There all the shepherds crowded round to see him, they put down bread in front of him, but Enkidu could only suck the milk of wild animals. He fumbled and gaped, at a loss what to do or how he should eat the bread and drink the strong wine. Then the woman said, 'Enkidu, eat bread, it is the staff of life; drink the wine, it is the custom of the land.' So he ate till he was full and drank strong wine, seven goblets. He became merry, his heart exulted and his face shone. He rubbed down the matted hair of his body and anointed himself with oil. Enkidu had become a man; but when he had put on man's clothing he appeared like a bridegroom. He took arms to hunt the lion so that the shepherds could rest at night. He caught wolves and lions and the herdsmen lay down in peace; for Enkidu was their watchman, that strong man who had no rival.

He was merry living with the shepherds, till one day lifting his eyes he saw a man approaching. He said to the harlot, 'Woman, fetch that man here. Why has he come? I wish to know his name.' She went and called the man saying, 'Sir, where are you going on this weary journey?' The man answered, saying to Enkidu, 'Gilgamesh has gone into the marriage-house and shut out the people. He does strange things in Uruk, the city of great streets. At the roll of the drum work begins for the men, and work for the women. Gilgamesh the king is about to celebrate marriage with the Queen of Love, and he still demands to be first with the bride, the king to be first and the husband to follow, for that was ordained by the gods from his birth, from the time the umbilical cord was cut. But now the drums roll for the choice of the bride and the city groans.' At these words Enkidu turned white in the face. 'I will go to the place where Gilgamesh lords it over the people, I will challenge him boldly, and I will cry aloud in Uruk, "I have come to change the old order, for I am the strongest here."

Luke’s Cave

What’s in There?

Only What You Take With You.

“ We choose mentors throughout our lives : 

• Sometimes Consciously, Sometimes Not;

• Sometimes Wisely, Sometimes Not. 

The point of this book is to understand this process and to •improve• it. 

— When selecting a mentor we must be aware of what it is we •want• from them. 

— When we are selected •as• a mentor we must know what the role entails. 

One of the unexpected advantages that my drug addiction granted me is that the 12 Step process of recovery that I practise includes a mentorship tradition. 

When you enter a 12 Step program, you have to ask someone else to guide you through the steps, or ‘sponsor’ you. 

This typically induces an unwitting humility; few people would say ‘Hey, babe, it’s your lucky day – I want you to take me on a spiritual journey.’ 

Usually one feels a little shy on asking someone to sponsor them, a little meek, a bit like you’re asking them on a date. 

In undertaking this we accept that :

• Our previous methods have FAILED, 

• That we need HELP,

• THAT our own opinions are INFERIOR TO THE WISDOM OF THE MENTOR and hopefully •THE CREED TO WHICH THEY BELONG TO.

In 12 Step custom the sponsor teaches the sponsee the method by which they practised the 12 Steps; they replace their own sponsor, and they give to another what they have been given. 

Whilst it may bear personal inflections, it is sufficiently faithful to the original program to inhere its power. 

The same, I note, is true in martial arts traditions, there’s a lineage and a system that is carried from teacher to student. 

Clearly there are parallels in academia, but anyone who’s been to school knows that mass education can be pretty inconsistent and the average harried educator has too many bureaucratic and financial burdens to mindfully endow more than a handful of pupils with the elixir of mentorship. “

Excerpt From

Mentors

Russell Brand

“Dreams of flying appeared in the collective unconscious before the reality of flight existed in technology, and I suspect that if we understood our dreams better we would use our technology more wisely . . .

I suggest that we contemplate what our children look at every Saturday morning on TV. One of the most popular jokes in animated cartoons shows the protagonist walking off a cliff, without noticing what he has done. Sublimely ignorant, he continues to walk - on air - until he notices that he has been doing the "impossible," and then he falls . . .

Daedalus who, imprisoned in a labyrinth (conventional "reality"), invented wings and flew away, over the heads of his persecutors; and Icarus, the son of Daedalus, who flew too close to the Sun Absolute and fell back to Earth. Like Porky Pig walking off a cliff, Icarus' fall contains a symbolism many have encountered in their own dreams . . .

Daedalus means "artist" in Greek . . . Daedalus, inventor of wings that took him from Earth to Outer Space - why does he represent Art, instead of Science? . . .

The genius of an artist, Aristotle says, lies in his texne, the root from which we get our word "technology"; but texne basically means skill or craft, or the ability to make things that never existed before. Negative entropy, i.e., information . . .

The musician and the architect, the poet and the physicist -- all inventors of new realities -- all such Creators may be best considered late evolutionary developments of the type that first appears as the shaman. Please remember that shamans in most cultures are known as "they who walk in the sky," just like our current shaman-heroine, Rey Skywalker.

The ironies of Swift and Aristophanes, and the myths of the fall of Icarus and Donald Duck, indicate that the collective unconscious contains a force opposed to our dreams of flight. This appears inevitable . . .

But what if we begin to regrow healthy organs of Poetic Imagination and flight? What if we "put on wings and arouse the coiled splendor within," as Liber Al urges? . . .

Joyce did not name his emblematic Artist merely Daedalus, but Stephen Daedalus -- after St. Stephen the Protomartyr, who reported a Vision and was stoned to death for it . . .

Those of us who have no avocation for martyrdom must learn, when we realize how much neophobia remains built into the contraptions of "society" and "the State," the art of surviving in spite of them. In a word, we must "get wise" in both the Socratic meaning of the phrase and in the most hardboiled street meaning. Neophobia functions as an Evolutionary Driver, forcing the neophiliac to get very smart very fast."

Robert Anton Wilson,

Email to The Universe

 

 BILL MOYERS: You visited some of the great painted caves in Europe.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Oh, yes.

BILL MOYERS: Tell me what you remember when first you looked upon those underground caves.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, you didn’t want to leave. Here you come into an enormous chamber, like a great cathedral, with these animals painted. And they’re painted with a life like the life of an ink on silk, the Japanese painting. And well, you realize the darkness is inconceivable. We’re there with electric lights, but in a couple of instances, the concierge, the man who was showing us through, turned off the lights and you were never in darker darkness in your life. It’s like a, I don’t know, just a complete knockout of, you don’t know where you are, whether you’re looking north, south, east or west. All orientation is gone, and you’re in a darkness that never saw the sun. Then they tum the lights on again, and you see these gloriously painted animals. A bull that will be 20 feet long, and painted so that the haunches will be represented by a swelling in the rock, you know, they take account of the whole thing. It’s incredible.

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever look at these primitive art objects, and think not of the art but of the man or woman standing there, painting or creating? I find that’s where I speculate.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Oh, this is what hits you when you go into those caves, I can tell you that. What was in their mind when they were doing that? And that’s not an easy thing to do. And how did they get up there? And how did they see anything? And what kind of light did they have the little flashing torches throwing flickering things on it, to get something of that grace and perfection? And with respect to the problem of beauty, is this beauty intended, or is this something that is the natural expression of a beautiful spirit. You know what I mean? When you hear a bird sing, the beauty of the bird’s song, is this intentional, in what sense is it intentional? But it’s the expression of the bird, the beauty of the bird’s spirit, you might almost say, and I think that way very often about this art. 

To what degree was the intention of the artist, what we would call “aesthetic,” or to what degree expressive, you know, and to what degree something that they simply had learned to do that way? It’s a difficult point. 

When a spider makes a beautiful web, the beauty comes out of the spider’s nature, you know, it’s instinctive beauty. 

And how much of the beauty of our own lives is the beauty of being alive, and how much of it is conscious intention? 

That’s a big question.

BILL MOYERS: 

You call them temple caves.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Why temple?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Temple with images and stained glass windows, cathedrals, are a landscape of the soul. You move into a world of spiritual images, that’s what this is. When lean and I, my wife and I, drove down from Paris to this part of France, we stopped off at Chartres Cathedral. There is a cathedral. When you walk into the cathedral, it’s the mother, womb of your spiritual life Mother church All the forms around are significant of spiritual values, and the imagery is in anthropomorphic form God and Jesus and the saints and all, in human form.

BILL MOYERS: In human form.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Then we went down to the Lascaux. The images were in animal form. The form is secondary; the message is what’s important

BILL MOYERS: And the message of the cave?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The message of the cave is of a relationship of time to eternal powers that is somehow to be experienced in that place. Now, I tell you, when you’re down in those caves, it’s a strange transformation of consciousness you have. You feel this is the womb, this is the place from which life comes, and that world up there in the sun with all those … that’s a secondary world: this is primary. I mean, this just overcomes you.

BILL MOYERS: You had that feeling when you were there?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I had it every time. Now, what were these caves used for? The speculations that are most common of scholars interested in this, is that they had to do with the initiation of boys into the hunt. You go in there, it’s dangerous, it’s very dangerous. It’s completely dark. It’s cold and dank. You’re banging your head on projections all the time, and it was a place of fear. And the boys were to overcome all that, and go into the womb of the earth. And the shaman, or whoever it was that would be helping you through, would not be making it easy.

BILL MOYERS: And then there was a release, once you got into that vast, torchlit chamber down there. What was the tribe, what was the tradition trying to say to the boy?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That is the womb land from which all the animals come.

BILL MOYERS: I see.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And the rituals down there have to do with the generation of a situation that will be propitious for the hunt. And the boys were to learn not only to hunt, but how to respect the animals and what rituals to perform, and how in their own lives no longer to be little boys but to be men. Because those hunts were very, very dangerous hunts, believe me, and these are the Original men’s rile sanctuaries, when: the boys became no longer their mothers’ sons, but their fathers’ sons.

BILL MOYERS: Don’t you wonder what effect this had on a boy?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, you can go through it today, actually, in cultures that arc still having the initiations with young boys. They give them an ordeal, a terrifying ordeal, that the youngster has to survive, makes a man of him, you know.

BILL MOYERS: What would happen to me as a child, if I went through one of these rites, as far as we can…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, we know what they do in Australia. Now, when a boy gets to be, you know, a little bit ungovernable, one fine day the men come in, and they’re naked except for stripes of white down that has been stuck on their bodies, and stripes with their men’s blood. They used their own blood for gluing this on. And they’re swinging the bull-roarers, which are the voice of the spirits, and they come as spirits. The boy will try to take refuge with his mother; she’ll pretend to try to protect him. The men just take him away, a mother’s no good from then on, you see, he’s no longer a little boy. He’s in the men’s group, and then they put him really through an ordeal. These are the rites, you know, of circumcision, subincision, and so forth.

BILL MOYERS: And the whole purpose is to…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Tum him into a member of the tribe.

BILL MOYERS: And a hunter.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And a hunter.

BILL MOYERS: Because that was the way of life.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, but most important is to live according to the needs and values of that tribe. He is initiated in a Short period of time into the whole culture context of his people.

BILL MOYERS: So myth relates directly to ceremony and tribal ritual, and the absence of myth can mean the end of ritual.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: A ritual is the enactment of a myth. By participating in a ritual, you are participating in a myth.

BILL MOYERS: And what does it mean, do you think, to young boys today. that we are absent these myths?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, the confirmation ritual is the counterpart today of these rites. As a little Catholic boy, you choose your confirmed name, the name you’re going to be confirmed by, and you go up. But instead of having them scarify you, knock your teeth out and all, the bishop gives you a mild slap on the cheek. It’s been reduced to that, and nothing’s happened to you. The Jewish counterpart is the bar mitzvah, and whether it works actually to effect a psychological transformation, I suppose, will depend on the individual case. There was no problem in these old days. The boy came out with a different body, and he’d gone through something.

"Property is theft," Hagbard said, passing the peace pipe. 

 

"If the BIA helps those real estate developers take our land," Uncle John Feather said, "that will be theft. But if we keep the land, that is certainly not theft." 

 

Night was falling in the Mohawk reservation, but Hagbard saw Sam Three Arrows nod vigorously in the gloom of the small cabin. He felt, again, that American Indians were the hardest people in the world to understand. His tutors had given him a cosmopolitan education, in every sense of the word, and he usually found no blocks in relating to people of any culture, but the Indians did puzzle him at times.

 

After five years of specializing in handling the legal battles of various tribes against the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the land pirates it served, he was still conscious that these people's heads were someplace he couldn't yet reach. Either they were the simplest, or the most sophisticated, society on the planet; maybe, he thought, they were both, and the ultimate simplicity and the ultimate sophistication are identical. 

 

"Property is liberty," Hagbard said. "I am quoting the same man who said property is theft. He also said property is impossible. I speak from the heart. I wish you to understand why I take this case. I wish you to understand in fullness." 

 

Sam Three Arrows drew on the pipe, then raised his dark eyes to Hagbard's. "You mean that justice is not known like a dog who barks in the night? That it is more like the unexpected sound in the woods that must be identified cautiously after hard thinking?" 

 

There it was again: Hagbard had heard the same concreteness of imagery in the speech of the Shoshone at the opposite end of the continent. He wondered, idly, if Ezra Pound's poetry might have been influenced by habits of speech his father acquired from the Indians—Homer Pound had been the first white man born in Idaho. It certainly went beyond the Chinese. And it came, not from books on rhetoric, but from listening to the heart— the Indian metaphor he had himself used a minute ago. 

 

He took his time about answering: he was beginning to acquire the Indian habit of thinking a long while before speaking. 

 

"Property and justice are water," he said finally. "No man can hold them long. I have spent many years in courtrooms, and I have seen property and justice change when a man speaks, change as the caterpillar changes to the butterfly.

 

Do you understand me?

 

I thought I had victory in my hands, and then the judge spoke and it went away. Like water running through the fingers." 

 

Uncle John Feather nodded. "I understand. You mean we will lose again. We are accustomed to losing. Since George Washington promised us these lands 'as long as the mountain stands and the grass is green,' and then broke his promise and stole part of them back in ten years— in ten years, my friend!— we have lost, always lost. We have one acre left of each hundred promised to us then." 

 

"We may not lose," Hagbard said. "I promise you, the BIA will at least know they have been in a fight this time. I learn more tricks, and get nastier, each time I go into a courtroom. I am very tricky and very nasty by now.

 

But I am less sure of myself than I was when I took my first case. I no longer understand what I am fighting. I have a word for it— The Snafu Principle, I call it— but I do not understand what it is." 

 

There was another pause. Hagbard heard the lid on the garbage can in back of the cabin rattling: that was the raccoon that Uncle John Feather called Old Grandfather come to steal his evening dinner. Property was theft, certainly, in Old Grandfather's world, Hagbard thought. 

 

"I am also puzzled," Sam Three Arrows said finally. "I worked, long ago, in New York City, in construction, like many young men of the Mohawk Nation. I found that whites were often like us, and I could not hate them one at a time.

 

But they do not know the earth or love it. They do not speak from the heart, usually. They do not act from the heart. They are more like the actors on the movie screen. They play roles.

 

And their leaders are not like our leaders. They are not chosen for virtue, but for their skill at playing roles. Whites have told me this, in plain words. They do not trust their leaders, and yet they follow them. When we do not trust a leader, he is finished.

 

Then, also, the leaders of the whites have too much power. It is bad for a man to be obeyed too often. But the worst thing is what I have said about the heart. Their leaders have lost it and they have lost mercy.

 

They speak from somewhere else. They act from somewhere else. But from where? Like you, I do not know. It is, I think, a kind of insanity."

 

He looked at Hagbard and added politely. "Some are different." 

 

It was a long speech for him, and it stirred something in Uncle John Feather. "I was in the army," he said. "We went to fight a bad white man, or so the whites told us. We had meetings that were called orientation and education. There were films.

 

It was to show us how this bad white man was doing terrible things in his country. Everybody was angry after the films, and eager to fight. Except me.

 

I was only there because the army paid more than an Indian can earn anywhere else. So I was not angry, but puzzled.

 

There was nothing that this white leader did that the white leaders in this country do not also do.

 

They told us about a place named Lidice.

It was much like Wounded Knee.

 

They told us of families moved thousands of miles to be destroyed.

It was much like the Trail of Tears.

 

They told us of how this man ruled his nation, so that none dared disobey him.

It was much like the way white men work in corporations in New York City, as Sam has described it to me.

 

I asked another soldier about this, a black white man.

He was easier to talk to than the regular white man.

I asked him what he thought of the orientation and education.

 

He said it was shit, and he spoke from the heart!

 

I thought about it a long time, and I knew he was right.

The orientation and education was shit.

 

When the men from the BIA come here to talk, it is the same. Shit.

 

But let me tell you this: the Mohawk Nation is losing its soul.

Soul is not like breath or blood or bone and it can be taken in ways no man understands.

 

My grandfather had more soul than I have, and the young men have less than me.

But I have enough soul to talk to Old Grandfather, who is a raccoon now.

 

He thinks as a raccoon and he is worried about the raccoon nation, more than I am worried about the Mohawk Nation.

He thinks the raccoon nation will die soon, and all the nations of the free and wild animals.

 

That is a terrible thing and it frightens me.

 

When the nations of the animals die, the earth will also die.

That is an old teaching and I cannot doubt it.

I see it happening, already.

 

If they steal more of our land to build that dam, more of our soul will die, and more of the souls of the animals will die!

The earth will die, and the stars will no longer shine!

The Great Mother herself may die!"

 

The old man was crying unashamedly.

 

"And it will be because men do not speak words but speak shit!" 

 

 

Hagbard had turned pale beneath his olive skin. "You're coming into court," he said slowly, "and you're going to tell the judge that, in exactly those words."

EARTH-0

When you are ready to listen, Your Beatrice will appear. 

Clark Kent, I Know You’re Secretly Superman!

I Know Everything About You.

I Offer You One Ultimate Chance to Save Her! 

But We Must Leave This World Now Before It’s Too Late!

Sometimes I get the feelin'

She's watchin' over me

And other times I feel like I should go -

And through it all, The Rise and Fall

The bodies in the streets

And when you're gone, we want you all to know

We'll carry on, we'll carry on

And though you're dead and gone, believe me

Your memory will carry on

We'll carry on

And in my heart, I can't contain it

The anthem won't explain it

A World that sends you reeling

From decimated dreams

Your misery and hate will kill us all

So Paint it Black and Take it Back

Let's shout it loud and clear

Defiant to the end, we hear The Call

To Carry On.

When you are ready to listen, Beatrice will appear. 

A man I knew who was at this point on his journey asked me where his guide was. 

He needed her so badly. I suggested he look for her in his active imagination. 

When he did, she appeared instantly and she told him, “I’ve been waiting for you for twenty years. You only had to ask.” 

Beatrice will be there the moment you ask and are truly ready to listen.

Beatrice shows Dante the vision of the unitive world. 

She takes him through the rest of Purgatory and into Heaven. 

Then, at the last moment, she gives way to another guide, St. Bernard, which is puzzling. 

But Beatrice is the psychopomp — a wonderful medieval word for soul guide — who leads Dante through the deep levels of Purgatory into the vision of Heaven, a journey of wholeness and healing. 

Dante owes his success initially to Virgil, but primarily to Beatrice, who leads, inspires, and awakens him spiritually.

“I don’t really know what to say about my race, I’m so proud of them —

I love The Welsh with a passion that’s almost idolatrous, 

and particularly the South Welsh, the people I know best, 

and particularly the mining class.”

For I am Welsh, you know, good My Countryman —

Solitude and Community

  As an intuitive introvert, I rarely feel lonely when I’m alone. 

When I was in my early twenties, I took a job in a lookout tower, firewatching in the forest. 

I was alone on a mountain peak for four months, and I never felt lonely. 

Reality didn’t catch me there. 

I was not in danger of my Queen leaving me. 

But the moment I returned to civilization, loneliness descended on me like a landslide. 

How could I be so happy on the mountaintop and then rubbed so raw when I came back down? 

I didn’t want to live my whole life on a mountaintop—

I’m not a hermit. 

I had to go back and forth, as the King did, until the visionary life could finally stand the impact of the water of reality. 

The Queen in me had to learn to withstand the water. 

It’s a process. 

I believe that everyone who has touched the realm of spirit has had to go through this antechamber.

If you’re honest and perceptive, you can tell the difference between regressive loneliness, the first kind, and the ineffable second and third types of loneliness, where you sense and then see What You Cannot Yet Have. 

The second and third types of loneliness are nearly indistinguishable. 

If you can say exactly what you are lonely for, it will reveal a lot. 

Do you want to go back where you came from, to the good old days? 

Or have you seen a vision you can’t live without? 

They’re as different as Backward and Forward.

Dr. Jung said that every person who came into his consulting room was either twenty-one or forty-five, no matter their chronological age. 

The twenty-one-year-old is looking backward and must conquer it. 

The forty-five-year-old is being touched by something he cannot yet endure. 

These are the only two subjects of therapy.

Solitude

The Garden of Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem are the same place, depending on whether you are looking backward or forward. 

A person touched by Loneliness is a holy person. 

He is caught in the development of individuation. 

Whether it’s a development or a regression depends on what he does with it. 

Loneliness can destroy you, or it can fire you up for a Dante-like journey through Hell and Purgatory to find paradise. St. John of the Cross called this the Dark Night of the Soul.

The worst suffering I’ve ever experienced has been loneliness, the kind that feels as though it has no cure, that nothing can touch it. 

One day, at the midpoint in my life—a little like Dante—I got so exhausted from it that I went into my bedroom, lay face down on my bed, and said, 

“I’m not going to move until this is resolved.” 

I stayed a long time, and the loneliness did ease a little. 

Dante fell out of Hell, shimmied down the hairy leg of the Devil, went through the center of the world, and started up the other side, which was Purgatory. 

I felt better, but as soon as I got up and began to do anything, my loneliness returned. 

I made many round trips until gradually an indescribable quality began to suffuse my life, and loneliness loosened its grip. 

Nothing outside changed. The change was entirely inside.

Thomas Merton wrote a beautiful treatise on solitude. 

He said that certain individuals are obliged to bear The Solitude of God. 

Solitude is Loneliness evolved to the next level of reality. 

He who is obliged to bear The Solitude of God should not be asked to do anything else; it’s such a difficult task. 

For monastics, solitude was one of the early descriptions of God. 

If you can transform your Loneliness into Solitude, you’re one step away from the most precious of all experiences. 

This is the cure for Loneliness.

Excerpt from: "Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection" by Arnie Kotler.