All ONE's Divine Relationships

     Chances are you've heard of this one Mythic story (and there are many more like it).  It starts with an eternal and noble soul in this SELF-made garden paradise (right away creativity and expression establish the psychic norm of All is ONE).  ONE time (even though there wasn't a concept of time yet) the eternal being was walking in the garden (in a sensory yet unconscious Relationship with its own image) when All is ONE transformed into a concept - All ONE - and then into an experience - Alone (probably not possible for eternal beings but the story, like all "otherness," has its own purpose).  In response to this Aloneness (the original glimpse of consciousness) the eternal being followed its creative, expressive nature and made a second eternal being (out of some sort of garden material), again in its own image.  So now the garden had a significant "other" to relate to the next time ONE came to visit.
     Out of the ONE comes Two.  Two, however, soon needed something to do (the seeds of Calling were already present) and so was given the task of naming All the "otherness" in the garden.  Two was also given the privilege of using the "otherness" of the eternal garden (of course this "use" meant the killing and eating of the "otherness" but there isn't conscious differentiation of Life or Death or Need in eternity so it wasn't a psychological dilemma).  After Two finished naming All, which took an eternity, All One again transformed into Alone (the incessant stirrings of consciousness).  So Two goes to ONE and says, "Hey, everything in the garden here is really nice and convenient and well-cared for but something's missing."  ONE thought this over for an eternity.  ONE knew that up to now All was still unconsciously ONE.  But ONE also knew all about, and even predicted, Two's experience of the Alone transformation.
     ONE smiled in a peculiar way and then, out of different (as yet undifferentiated) garden material, created a third eternal "other."  ONE knew the timeless truth that out of ONE comes Two; out of Two comes Three; out of Three comes all things - consciousness.  Of course, it wasn't long before Three's Calling and Internity sensed and acted upon conscious discovery, expression and connection with ONE.  And ONE knew from the beginning that Three would choose the genuine purpose of walking the Hero's path.  ONE also knew that Three would consider hanging around in the eternal garden utterly meaningless.  That knowledge was behind ONE's peculiar smile.  That smile expressed ONE's eternal Love as Three said "YES" to consciousness and "YES" to Being Human and "YES" to a life-long relationship with Creation.
     In this way Three's consciousness brought Divine Relationship into the world.  Three then began to differentiate the Potential and mysterious duality of All Life.  Three's consciousness learned to honor the original sacredness of All that was revealed in the garden.  Three's consciousness of time and space impelled projections and introjections of sorrow and joy and fear and desire in the Experience of being alive.  Three courageously said "YES!" to Death because to do so made Perceptions of Life possible.  Without Three's consciousness ONE and Two would still be All ONE and Alone in the unconsciousness of the eternal garden.
     This Myth, of course, corresponds to the unconscious symbiotic union we all experience at the beginning of Life.  The garden story describes the psychological birth of Being Human.  The garden story, as a living Myth, is about bringing ONE's divinity - the images, energies and emotions - to full symbolic consciousness of and atonement with individual and collective Life.  Anything less than Mythic interpretation of this garden story is madness and puts the soul's nobility at odds with circumstances - All ONE's Divine Relationships.

From Here to Internity

     Myth-making is an ancient human endeavor.  (To really understand the important story of Myth-making one needs to study Joseph Campbell's work for about 80 years.  I only have 56 years remaining in my own studies!)  Jung refers to myth as one of the earliest forms of science.  Myth-making, after all, is the discovery, expression of, connection with, and attempt to find meaning in the fact that every single one of nature's species-specific phenomena are pushed to be and live.  (Consider a blade of grass pushing through the pavement.)  This Calling to life reveals and reflects how the internal and external potentialities of all nature are in a cyclical life-death-rebirth participation with the power of nature.  In other words, the life of nature and the nature of life contain relationships that demand specific tasks of consciousness and fulfillment from every organism, whether a single cell creature or complex human being.  As I understand it, the scientific and mythological task of "Being Human" then is to consciously acknowledge the sacred life-death-rebirth story contained within all of nature's relationships.  In the words of Joseph Campbell, Myth-making is the capacity and intention "to wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe." 
     My conviction holds that "to wonder" about ourselves and the universe is a process of always going forth from, and returning back to, Internity.  In the beginning, as newborn unconscious potential, our sensory systems go forth as projections and return as introjections.  With every projection and introjection cycle one's Internity finds an expanding relationship to image and a new experience of energy and emotion.  Each time this cycle occurs there is a centering of consciousness within the newborn.  With each centering of consciousness the seed of ego takes root within Internity.  Sometime late in the first year of life the ego begins to consciously differentiate between the perceptions of self and otherness.  Around two years-old the ego begins to consistently declare, "I Am!"  The ego's consciousness of images, energies and emotions then goes through the innumerable physiological, psychological, social, mental, emotional and spiritual transformations of an individual lifetime.  And every transformation is a symbolic microcosm of the terrible and fascinating life-death-rebirth relationships that we each share with the universe.  Mythically speaking, the story of consciousness demands the ego's declarations of "I Am!" but must also involve movement toward discoveries of the deeper SELF (the unconscious).  From Here to Internity, therefore, always includes some level of both conscious and unconscious processes as we all go forth from and return back to wonder.
     The PBS series with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell called "The Power of Myth" starts with these words spoken by Joseph Campbell.  I don't know if it's his poem or not but for me it sums up part of what I'm trying to write about in this blog.

"We have not even to risk the adventure alone
for the heroes of all time have gone before us.
The labyrinth is thoroughly known.
We have only to follow the thread of the hero path.
And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.
And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.
And where we had thought to travel outward,
we shall come to the center of our own existence.
And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

     The adventure is Here and Now and it's ours alone.  Truly following bliss, "the thread of the hero path," is not all happy-go-lucky or fun and games but if it's a genuine Calling it is the right path.  One's ego, which is often emotionally unstable (more on that later), too often "thinks" the symbolic labyrinth is filled only with dark and scary threats to its own limited existence - the Minotaur.  But, as the words above say, if the conditioned ego will heroically risk the experience of self for the genuine adventure of SELF what's found is "the center of our own existence" - Internity.          

Myth

     I think the word "myth" is too often used to describe a falsehood, a fantasy, an untruth.  Misunderstanding and misusing the word that addresses the most fundamental discoveries, expressions, connections and meanings of life is one of our first clues to the limited and limiting human condition these days.  But the words falsehood, fantasy and untruth only describe the death of myth.  The truths of a living myth are intense revelations and reflections of divine image.

     I've learned how to conceive of a living myth from several different sources.  They each describe the power of myth as clues to our deepest potential; as our souls and bodies being composed of individual elements which were already present in the ranks of our ancestors; as turning inward and getting the message of the symbols; as the natural and indispensable intermediate stage of cognition between conscious (ego) and the collective unconscious (the deeper SELF); as opening our eyes to the kingdom spread-out before us; as the center being everywhere; as always and everywhere having a divine link with the infinite Guest we often call soul; as embodying an essential and finding meaning in life via what we each already embody; as welcoming the sacrifice; as a way to make sure that beyond our deaths we leave behind psychological remains that continue to serve love; as kindling a light in the darkness of mere being; as becoming fully human in this spiritual experience of being alive.  Myth is an attempt to describe the divine image within each one of us and surrounding each one of us; to realize (make real) and then bring forth one's genuine discoveries of potential, expressions of relationship, connections to experience and meaningful perceptions of it all; to find atonement (at-one-ment) between conscious information and the daily glimpses of the collective unconscious; to give form and the power of transformation to our most natural ability - imagination.      

     In this age, however, I think we've lost the necessary imagination for how a living and meaningful myth guides us in our daily psychological birth.  Sure, we have all kinds of religions that are founded on myth.  But too often religion becomes rigidly dogmatic and is then utilized to judge and justify beliefs and behaviors relative to some exclusive after-life instead of guiding the relationships to all life right Now.  I also think the historical and collective practices of too many religions have resulted in the sacred mysteries of the Earth being viciously reduced to expendable resources in a manipulative "holier than thou" quest to carry-out delusions of the "chosen" group.  Add to this the reality that the Earth is no longer the center of the solar system and much more ancient than many religions want to believe.  This scientific fact coupled with the lack of a living myth threatens to psychologically reduce our planet and the experience of being alive to mere interstellar good luck in an ever expanding cosmos.  And this boxed-in psychological perspective then leans perilously close to completely denying the relationships that define our role as stewards of the Earth's consciousness.  Consequently, without a living myth the spirit of the age has mostly failed to move beyond the poverty of dependence and independence toward more responsible and sustainable realities of interdependence and intra-dependence (Internity).  The externally focused egotistical pedagogy of it all then becomes even more rooted in oppression, addiction, trauma and shame while righteously running-off at the mouth and tripping over the emotional baggage between its legs.  Without a meaningful and living myth our psychological birth becomes instead a chronic limitation of human potential, relationship, experience and perception.  Without the divine revelations of a living myth the discoveries, expressions, connections and meaning of "How I Am: Being Human" forget how to look beyond the symbols, losing the beauty and intensity of our most important gift - imagination.

     I think the poet Kabir says it best:

To be a Slave of Intensity

Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think...while you are alive.
What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
Just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.



Sensational

      Let's be sensible here.  What's the sense?  To come to our senses.  Sensate focus.  Sensory deprivation.  Enough of this nonsense!  Trust your senses.  A sense of time and place and home.  Sensing vibe.  Sensing danger.  Beyond sense.  Common sense.  Sixth sense.  Senseless.  Good sense.  A sense of direction.  A sense of humor.  A sense of well-being.  Making sense.  I'm sure we can all think of many more variations of the word "sense" because we each have a sense for what it means.  And as obvious and important as the five physiological senses are - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching (there are many more, too) - it's also obvious that the process of sensing includes far more than physiology.  The Internity of "How I Am: Being Human," (discoveries of potential, expressions of relationship, connections to experience and the meanings of perception) is sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, always purposeful and without a doubt - sensational.
       Today Internity has me wondering about sensory deprivation tanks, meditation and dream states.  All of those experiences diminish the importance and functional norm of physiological sensations.  And without the stimulation of our time-space senses it seems that consciousness would also become unstimulated and therefore diminished.  But the opposite is true!  Sensory deprivation tanks, meditation and dream experiences dissociate from "known" sensations and usually enhance consciousness, oftentimes including images and symbols that one has never "seen" or other stimuli one can't possibly know through memory and has no clue how to interpret or associate or respond to (i.e., hallucinations).  I think these phenomena are best described as the return of consciousness to its original source - the ancient and ever-present collective unconscious (thank you Dr. Jung).
     Which brings me back to thinking about Internity and a baby suspended in the earliest sensory deprivation tank, mediation and dream state - the womb.  For me there is no convincing argument against the fact that the baby is having powerful sensations via the symbiotic union with mother's energies and emotions (which, of course, are in conscious and unconscious relationship with otherness).  And because the baby's ego consciousness (differentiations, attachments, identity, personal memories and dissociations, etc.) is still only a seed of possibility while in the womb and for several months after birth, I think it's likely that the baby is also experiencing sensational images of the collective unconscious that have yet to be seen and can't possibly be known, interpreted, associated or responded to.
     Therefore, my claim throughout this entire writing effort is that one's Internity, from the first sensations to the last, is both an a priori concoction of images, energies, emotions and symbols as well as an experiential condition of ego differentiations, attachments, identifications, personal memories and dissociations.  And it all comes from and returns to the original source - an ancient and ever-present flow of the collective unconscious.  In this blog I intend to consistently address Internity as a total reality of potential, relationship, experience and perception while also discovering, expressing, connecting and finding meaning in how the purposes of "How I Am: Being Human" are both consciously and unconsciously sensational.