May The Force Be With You

Many years ago, I bought a weird little religious plaque that said- "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." I got it for its tongue-in-cheek value; it seemed morbid and morose, but the words were written in a very romantic, flowery font. I put it next to a triptych of three open coffins and above my collection of animal skulls. Just to re-iterate, this was many years ago, and I have thankfully lost my fascination with the moribund.


In sobriety, I unearthed this plaque during one of my archeological expeditions in my storage. I laughed at my own expense, but then it hit me. We use words like repent or amend without ever really looking them up, and I have learned in sobriety not to simply assume that my version of anything is THE version, the only version. When I do that, then I am disappointed when the rest of the world does not act in accordance. So, I looked it up.


re·pent 1 (r-pnt)v. re·pent·ed, re·pent·ing, re·pents
To make a change for the better as a result of remorse or contrition for one's sins.


I had previously considered repent to be a state of being deeply, almost suicidally, sorry. And the whole saying- Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand- to mean, "you better be really, really sorry, cuz you're gonna die soon, mother f*cker!"


When I looked up the word repent, I realized how close it is to making amends. Not just to consider one's previous actions deplorable, but to take accountability and change them for the better of all. That altered everything for me. I realized, suddenly, what that plaque now meant, given the new information (bestowed on me in a moment of clarity and grace, allowing me to make the distinction between MY version of reality, and another possibility, which was infinitely more profound )...and it is this-


"When you realize the error of your ways, and set about making them right, then the kingdom of heaven IS at hand." Heaven here and now is available when we are able to repent, to make amends, to set the record straight. I personally don't believe in a heaven hereafter, or a hell down below, I believe it is right here, right now. And when we live right, we experience the kingdom of heaven here on earth. Even if you are not in recovery, this is a spiritual truism that affects us all. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."


In one program of recovery that applies an amends process, that requires that we clean up the shame and guilt our past, it says "you will be amazed before you are half way through. You will understand the word serenity, and you will know peace." When we seek the people we have harmed and set the record straight, clean up the wreckage and own our part in it, we heal our little corner of the world. And the more of us that do it, the more we heal the entire world.

For each of us that has gotten sober and made amends, I like to think of all the hurt that has been transformed. Thousands of people, maybe even millions, healed by the power of recovery. What happens in recovery doesn't stay in recovery; it ripples out into the masses and creates a better planet overall. That is why I like to call it a movement; its growing and expanding, affecting many people who are not having trouble with addictions, changing music, art, literature, movies with its message of hope. Recovery is light in a dark world. Its a force to be reckoned with, its truth and healing and love...and if that isn't heaven on earth, I don't know what is.

The Invitation

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

By Oriah

Stop hitting snooze on the alarm clock of love and wake up already

Love is almost like a video game. You get to the next level by mastering the first level, even if sometimes accidentally mastering it with luck rather than skill. And you sashay in to the next level with the exuberance of victory over the first, until you see that things are flying at you faster, and the skills that were necessary to accomplish the completion of the first are simply not refined enough for the second. And so it goes, layer after layer.

Like in the movie Inception, each level down into dreams gets closer to the subconscious, that spooky realm where everything lives- every memory, fear, hope, desire, every dream and nightmare- all swirling in a cauldron of you, and the collective, which is all the yous you have ever been, all conspiring to both help you attain another level, and also fail. Ego lives here. And so does soul.

I find these metaphors, pedestrian though they might be, sufficient enough to stand in for universal themes. There is a verbal roccoco and frothy emotionally sentimental way of decorating concepts about love, but I prefer to ground it all in moe palatable terms, and to investigate the phenomenon rather than be run over by it, puzzled and spinning.

First, there is the initial thrill of the first level, the falling, at first seeming effortless and almost beyond choice because the game sucks you in and allows many small victories to encourage you onward. “I got this,” we think, suckers that we all are. Then, BAM, next level, suddenly the stakes are higher, if you lose then all those snazzy points you worked for are gone, and moreover you want that feeling of mastery again, that exuberance that is so satisfying that so quickly departed upon entry to the next level. But new skills are required. (And I think most people stay in the first level, they don’t want to bring what it takes to go to the next, they want to continue in what they know and understand, and thus the curse of the human condition. Fear of what comes next, desire for what must be given up)

What happens is that the new skills are developed on that level, more quarters thrown in the video game (OG) to go back over and over again to learn what needs to be learned to master the second level. It gets tedious sometimes, frustrating. “How do I navigate this?” “I didn’t see this one coming.” “I can’t take this, I suck at this, I give up.” “I can’t give up. I want to see whats next. I want to be good at this.” “Fuck this.”

Then, the next level is attained, and falling, again. And even with the elation and the glorious ache of it, there is knowing that it heralds a new level, and new skills, and deeper trust. It gets closer to the subconscious, no longer content to frolic in shallow water. The subconscious, where archetypes roam, where a universal language is spoken and immortal dialogues take place in the primordial ooze of all potential, where everything we know and everything we don’t know we know waits to be discovered.

What strikes me as odd is the consensus that anything is really real. In the sense that we mostly take for granted that we live in a solid, static, predictable world that does its own thing and we just try to fit in the best we can. The fact for me is that it is all a divine exchange, constantly creating situations that challenge the spirit, spirit constantly creating situations that challenge the soul, the darkness trying to get us to believe that there is only this and nothing more- it is the intent of the dark side, absolutely; it is it’s only job, and it never sleeps. It never tires. It is not only as smart as we are, it has us believing, too often, that it IS us. We carry it inside us, and listen to its voice and act on it as if that was our own thought. It wants to lead us into darkness. Away from the light. It wants us to believe the lies and the hype, to keep us from the truth. Because, I think, there is no reward if there is no struggle. The more we go towards the light, the more we master the levels, the more intense the game gets. Darkness gets more clever, more crafty, more cunning. It has to; as we get to new levels, so does it, right along with us. But without that, we would not get the the level of soul mastery that will allow us to be what we were truly meant to become. Transcended. Pure harmony. One with God, which, in effect, means we are God, we become God again, on a soul level. There is nothing more important, and yet so few realize this. This is why we are here. Not to be distracted until death by personality. To come to God through principles.

Love is this. To be loved is amazing, but to love is the key to all the levels, it’s the magic coin that gives special powers in the invisble realm where all the work takes place. Not just romantic love, but where else is anyone so challenged on such a personal note? Who else but our beloved will bring out every deep seated insecurity, every trust issue, every conceivable character defect? All these tools of the darkness, attempting to prevent the soul from reconnecting with the source, are in full force in a relationship. And maybe one of the most decent concepts that get lost in the idea of commitment (in that most people fear commitment more for what they lose access to once they are all in) is the idea that you have agreed with another person to go the distance, to go as deep as you can go, to continue to do battle with the darkness that is brought up in the relationship; in effect, you are a team, working towards the most spiritual level of all- where God in me connects with God in you, and allowing a sacred space for that to exist, a new world, which can only happen inside a relationship. There is so much to distract from this; the shallow diversions of the ego- desire, the handiest tools of the darkness, like catnip, so easy to divert an individual from the real work. And fear, the other handy tool. Its hard to survive this- Darkness weilding its power tools, desire and fear, running amok in a new relationship, trying to destroy the divine spark. And not just any Darkness, The Darkness. Tailor made for you. Stamped with your own seal of approval. Your very own ego.

Then there is the soul which wants nothing less than ecstatic return to God. It is like a piece of God inside that throbs with a great longing to be reunited with its lover. And so it does also love love, because God is there inside the other if the obstacles can be overcome. The soul is The Lover, and the Darkness is so able to take that soul longing for God and cunningly fill it with desire for other things to satiate it- material posessions , ambition, addictions, obsessions- like giving a screaming baby a pacifier when it wants its mother’s soft nipple and milk. Eventually it accepts the substitute because the same motions are present. We are so lucky in AA, at least, to have access to another level, to reunite with the soul and recognize the Ego as having fooled us, allowing us to take a sincere yearning for a spiritual experience and warp it with toxic substitutes. The gentle Soul, lifetime after lifetime, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. Love is the great battlefield of triumph over evil, in its best and most pure aspect. Oddly enough, this is never even really seen topside. As if the relationship takes place above the water, while dragons are slayed and wars are waged invisibly just below- ancient combat, immortal victories and epic defeats. And on the surface, we are going to dinner, fucking, talking, texting. Rarely realizing what lies below the surface. As above, so below. And vice versa. Life is but a dream. But love is the alarm clock.

I couldn't have said it better myself....

You gotta have soul
By Tom Robbins

Mental Bungee-jumping may not be your sport of choice, but there’s a cerebral ledge that sooner or later each of us has to leap off. One day, ready or not, we glance in a mirror, cuddle an infant, attend a funeral, walk in the woods, partake of a substance Nancy Reagan warned us to eschew, chance a liaison, wake in the night with a napalm lobster in our chest, read a message from the pope or the Dalai Lama, get lost in Verdi or lost in the stars – and wind up thinking about our soul.

Yes, the soul. You know what I mean.

Popular culture to the contrary, the soul is not an overweight nightclub singer having an unhappy love affair in Detroit. Nor, on the other hand, is it some pale vapor wafting off a bucket of metaphysical dry ice. Suffering, low-down and funky, seasons the soul, it’s true, but bliss is the yeast that makes it rise. And yet, because the soul is linked to the earth (as opposed to spirit, which is linked to the sky), it steadfastly contradicts those who imagine it a billow of sacred flatulence or a shimmer of personal swamp gas.

Soul is not even that Cracker Jack prize that God and Satan scuffle over after the worms have all licked our bones. That’s why, when we ponder – as, sooner or later, each of us must – what exactly we ought to be doing about our souls, religion is the wrong, if conventional place to turn.

Religion is little more than a transaction in which troubled people trade their souls for temporary and wholly illusionary psychological comfort (the old “give it up in order to save it” routine). Religions lead us to believe the soul is the ultimate family jewel, and, in return for our mindless obedience, they can secure it for us in their vaults, or at least insure it against fire and theft. They are mistaken.

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It’s a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.

Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing.

But say you’ve inflated your soul to the size of a beach ball and it’s soaking into the Mystery like wine into a mattress. What have you accomplished? Well, long term, you may have prepared yourself for a successful metamorphosis, an almost inconceivable transformation to be precipitated by your death or by some great worldwide eschatological whoopjamboreehoo. You may have. No one can say for sure.

More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn’t get any better than that.

By Tom Robbins Esquire, October, 1993=