Newborn

Gradually you perceive the Presence. And it is not what you had expected.

It comes not as a great cosmic event or stupendous alchemical achievement,

But rather like an innocent child.

The similarities are staggering: the ancients expected Christ to show up as a full blown king trampling down their enemies. But he was born in poverty and humility, helpless and dependent.

With the child there comes a question: will you surrender to the responsibility of caring for an infant? Will you go on together in love?

Though it has no diapers to change, this baby needs constant attention. It wants to feel welcomed, loved, and protected.

You realize that the “one thing needful” is not some object to be found or deed to be done. It is not an acquisition or accomplishment.

It is a relationship requiring self-sacrifice.

Maternal instincts emerge (a strange experience for a man!) Nesting, nurturing, accommodating – attributes of motherhood.

The habitual urge for distraction diminishes, for there is a newborn to care for.

One perceives life anew. The things that had seemed so important simply aren’t now. They were like winds buffeting the house at night, whistling through the corners - expressions of an archetypal pain that has but one answer, one salving. They could frighten because you felt alone.

And now . . .

You are not alone any more.

Good Friday

I surrendered to Lent this year. Embraced the fast altogether. Didn’t even pay attention to the “wine and oil” days when those ingredients were temporarily permitted.

This behavior wasn't motivated by an attempt to be good or spiritual. I just didn’t care that much about what needed to be let go of.

I also went to church a lot more, and for a similar reason. The things that could have been done instead didn't seem very important.

The fact is, I just felt tired of my life as it has been for so long, the appetites and activities of before. I felt weary of the world and its ways in me.

Midway through Lent, a friend invited me to accompany him for a retreat at the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Anthony in Florence, Arizona. This struck me as a sign from God.

Five days of  focused spirituality ensued.  We were awakened every night at 12:30 AM, then went into the church and prayed until 5:00 AM. The solemnity of the candle-lit interior, the calm movements of the monks revering icons in the dead of night and chanting (every word in Greek) - were all stupendously beautiful.

After a breakfast of beans and octopus I would stumble into the daylight, crouch among the saguaro cacti, and weep. My life history hung like a curtain of infamy before my eyes, a dark shroud of concentrated evil seemingly defying every aspiration of hope to be a whole and healed person.

And through this, a question presented itself again and again: what, exactly, is the “sacred”?

Is holiness only of the non-immanent God, something completely “other” than humanity, to which we have no access save through the mediation of a savior?

Or is it what we are already at the deepest level – that is to say, our very Being, which no one else can truly mediate?

Or is it both . . . or neither?

I believe life’s purpose is to respond to this ultimate question through transformation . . . by becoming, if this doesn't seem too presumptuous, the answer. The Hero’s Journey is not completed through a statement of faith or mere conceptual schematic, but experientially: begun in quiet humility, ended in triumphant ignominy.

Surely this is the message of Good Friday, for why else would the sinless Son of God be required to die on a Cross?

There is that within us which is destined to reign though born obscure, like Jesus.

Yet as soon as that royal child comes into existence, the powers of the world are out to get it, just as Herod ordered his soldiers to kill the baby Jesus. So Joseph takes the child and flies to Egypt, and into hiding.

The holy infant, the Truth of Being, is hidden from and persecuted by the self-serving humanity which each of us becomes outwardly. This divine child, having no place to rest and lay its head, is rejected and condemned.

Why is this so? Why does the Christ suffer Crucifixion?

Why does He who has authority to command ten thousand angels endure such humiliation? It is an extraordinary paradox, to which theology posits various contradictory interpretations.

Perhaps understanding of this comes to those souls who discern that they have indeed, like Herod, like Judas, like Pilate, persecuted, betrayed and condemned Christ in their own lives - both within and without.

And yet, that through doing so, they now stand at the foot of the Cross and can say with a conviction that was not possible before,

“Truly, this was the Son of God. “

Hen and Egg

The sense of Self needs to be released from bondage and emerge as a new creature, with a new base and foundation. Whether this is a psychological event or mystical one, it is definitely experiential.

In being felt, understanding deepens. There is a perception of actuality, of something real but transcendent unfolding. Belief does not seem to be a factor, neither abstract intellectual grasping.

It is like a mist gradually clearing and revealing the outlines of the moon, whereas before only a vague, diffuse light could be discerned. It is a natural movement manifesting as one returns over and over to a state of watchfulness, like a hen who broods over her nest waiting for the egg to hatch.

One senses how inappropriate and useless are any mechanisms attempting to force or hurry this process. All that is required, and all that is possible, is to diligently, mindfully watch.

"And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch" Mark 13:37

We need only be present, observing the energetic currents as they flow back and forth like waves at the beach or the tide in its rhythms.

This, it seems, is the real deal. This is where the action is.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

At last the old joke is actualized in one's own experience, when we realize . . .

. . . we are both.

The Hare

I was staring into a large aquarium in which a rabbit was sinking head-first toward the gravel bottom. The animal paused in its descent and looked out at me. I could see it was not distressed, and was in fact calmly holding its breath underwater. I got the impression it had been doing so for a very long time already.

Then I woke up and mulled over this peculiar dream, wondering what it was trying to convey. Water is a symbol of spirit, but why would a rabbit be spending time in that?

I picked up my current book, "Man and His Symbols" by C. G. Jung, then flipped a page and immediately read: "The second stage of human life is characterized by the Hare, in which the individual is starting to become socially adapted."

Hmmm. A rabbit, then a hare?  Seemed a bit on the synchronous side.

That night I went to a lecture on the Mayan calendar. At the front of the room was a statue of the Mayan fertility goddess Ixchel, characterized by - guess what? - a rabbit!

Whoa. Synchronicity seemed to be closing in. It appeared that my unconscious was pretty determined to communicate something to the rest of me. Was I getting the message though?

Perhaps it was saying that denial of one's life is an act of self-betrayal, and that inner light needs to be taken from under the bushel basket and allowed to shine.

Or maybe, that to assume oneself "not good enough" is to pronounce God a failure - a deity capable of making mistakes.

Or that staying stuck in a developmental phase allows primal wounds to remain unhealed, and that a soul's journey needs to be understood, accepted and embraced so it can be set free from wherever it is trapped.

Possibly it was just pointing out the obvious - that my creativity and sociability have been submerged long enough and it is time to express them in a new and fertile way.

So I opted for an experiment:

I headed to a Goodwill thrift store to see what might be there as confirmation. I knew this would have to be pretty special - not your typical Easter bunny or cartoon rabbit figurine. It would have to really fit the sober synchronicities that had already been presented.

So I went in like someone picking up a layaway, as though I already knew what was there.

And inside I found . . . a hare

Not looking not down toward the bottom of the fish tank,

But rather up . . . toward the stars.

Dragon Breath

Our real need is not to feel “good” in some fleeting, transitory way, but rather to integrate the experiential journey that brought us to where we now stand. This process may be painful, yet it is necessary for assimilating and viscerally comprehending the implications of that vast trek.

We need to trace the currents and sub-currents of psychic events that have composed this journey and discern the overall shape of their flow. We need to understand how our reality has been formed, deformed and reformed in the process, in order to see ourselves as we really are. We need to reach a more sober and stable energetic state, in which emotional and intellectual movements are coherent with our life-intent.

We should not position our attitudes such as to be indifferent about what has happened. Nor sink into useless condemnation and justification – either of ourselves or others. Rather, we should embrace the experience in its entirety, as its parents and co-creators.

Our darkest shadows have played out onto both the personal and world stages. Yes, we have witnessed the amazing and incomprehensible, not to mention the utterly repugnant.

We have in fact found the enemy, and he is in fact us. Yet any response short of responsible acceptance is a denial of truth, a pushing back into the unseen and the unconscious of what we paid dearly to bring into the light of awareness.

In our bodies, in their very cells, we feel the energetic reality of existence, the dynamism fueling each step that manifests in this moment of decision. Here is the power to go forward, to “move on” with confidence and composure. The dragon has breathed its fire into our lungs and enflamed our hearts.

Yet, whatsoever we deny about our experience and ourselves depletes the future by depriving the present of the rich complexity of all-possibility. With such immense power, we can easily bury ourselves in an early grave.

Or . . . we can build a mountain from which to survey this world

Anew . . . and from on high.

Someone Who Knows What to Do

The Potter

The priest announced that Lent was nearly half over and that we should “redouble our efforts.”

What “efforts”? To not eat meat or dairy products? I am fasting, diligently in fact. But it seems like no big deal.  Certainly no herculean effort.

Of course, true "fasting" involves more than that. Its purpose is to cleanse the whole person of toxins, both physical and spiritual.  Beyond not eating certain things, it should include the obvious no-no’s - like not breaking the Ten Commandments.

Yet none of this, even if perfectly executed, would necessarily evidence spirituality or wholeness. What do fasts and renunciate behaviors really matter to God, who looks at the heart?

What counts is my inner state, and this remains an impenetrable fog of un-reconciled, un-reconcilable dissatisfactions that coalesce into a yearning for the warmth of true love - a yearning that has never been met. I feel like a child weeping in the dark that sees itself as both unloved and unlovable, longing to appease a Parent that long ago showed (or so I’ve come to believe) that this was ultimately impossible.

Perhaps from time to time a temporary reprieve occurs, an experience of sharing and affection with someone, maybe even a fleeting moment of happiness or peace.

Then the darkness swirls back in. Despair hits again – and in that same old spot which is already bruised and wounded beyond all hope of healing.

The world then seems a weary and miserable place, and life itself no great gift.  But such an attitude is pure ingratitude, despondency.  What to do?

I am advised to “resist the devil” and to be submissive to God's omniscient will. I am reminded that the created object has no right to critique its Creator; the pot should not demand explanations of the Potter who formed it.

What consistent counsel! How very much like what my own parents drove home with their incessant mantra about how children should not “talk back” when scolded or disciplined.

So, our amazing and supposedly all-powerful God is just as insecure as my human mother and father, who in their surpassing maturity could not endure a child’s expressions of helpless grief and rage.

I want to forget them all.

To hell with parents and lovers and deities that need a person to be “just so” in order to merit their affection and approval – which they never give 100% anyway.

To hell with wagging one's tail in order to placate another person's misplaced fury, and betraying oneself over and over and over in the process.

To hell with carrying the burden of not being good enough, strong enough, smart enough, together enough . . .  anything enough.

To hell with being held responsible for how someone else is feeling, as though whatever is wrong in that person's life is my fault.

Let the dead bury their own dead.

Soul Sweets

One’s outer life is like a seed that must die for the soul to live fully. As Jesus said,

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit” (John 12:24).

When this “death” of the egoic person occurs, some sorrow is natural. The soul has - until then - completely identified with its external life. The soul has sympathized with it's struggles and problems, and imagined existence to be nothing more than this.

But the demise of the outer man signifies that a vital transformative process is occurring: namely the birth – or rebirth – of the whole man. The germination of that seed represents a quickening the soul, an awakening to its essential reality. The soul turns away from an externalized, incomplete projection of itself manifested as the ego, and devotes itself to birthing the seedling of Being.

As God first breathed life into the soul, so in a sense the soul had also breathed life into the ego. The ego became the soul’s reflection into this world, the mirror through which it came to see and know itself, to differentiate between truth and falsehood, most especially through the process of “sinning.”

Sins typically produce judgment upon those who commit them by those who do not, but rarely do they result in real understanding, wisdom or compassion. It is only one’s own sins, personally committed violations of the spirit of life, which teach those things. The soul, through its instrument the heart, must - and invariably does - experience the pain of “transgression.”

In fact, it longs for this pain. It fervently desires the fullness, the wholeness, the depth as well as height, of all experiences that God has made possible. The soul is “born” a babe, innocent and naïve, yet only through sorrow’s door may it venture into the household of the King. Only after having tasted humility via a seemingly self-imposed exile from the Light of Love can it appreciate the glory of divinity.

The rags of its human apparel must be discarded at this formidable entrance. Yet it is through having borne and worn such forlorn garments that the soul has gained its power. By undergoing the journey through profound darkness, it learns to perceive the unimaginably wondrous - that it, a creature, was made in the very image of God Almighty. Thus humbled and strengthened, it prays the ultimate prayer - for union with God.

St. Teresa of Avila speaks of this state in The Interior Castle:

“True union transcends all earthly joys, exceeds all earthly delights, surpasses all earthly satisfactions. You can tell from experience that this joy has a very different source of origin. The difference is like feeling something with the skin of your body or the marrow of your bones. I think that hits the nail on the head. I don’t think I could say it any better than that.”

As the holy Light dawns, it is felt as much as seen, for the soul’s powers of knowing are of a different order from those of the ego, of the conceptual man. They radiate throughout the body and convert the entire organism into a unified instrument for communicating with the divine.

Like an ant, which from outdoors on a blade of grass detects a grain of sugar dropped upon the kitchen counter, the soul distinctly perceives the infinitely subtle “sweetness of God.”

“Oh taste and see that the Lord is good,” says King David (Psalm 34:8).

Seeking this sanctified sweetness, the soul moves unflinchingly past its personal sorrows toward the eternal nourishment, using every faculty at its disposal. Thus, even the skin and the marrow of the bones become required participants in the mystery of communion and union with the divine.

And the incarnation of God into human form occurs once again . . .

. . . this time in us.

Soul Food

Outer experiences are really inner experiences. Whatsoever happens on the external level derives its significance and perceptual impact from our inner state. When we are not comfortable within, nothing without can bring comfort.

Teresa of Avila suggests this in “The Interior Castle.” Describing conditions in the Fourth Mansion she writes,

“If we find peace where we live, there is no conflict that can disquiet us.”

One way to come closer to peace is to stop considering one’s outer life as a realm where things go wrong, problems which are resented and resisted. It is actually possible for conflicts and crises to produce the very energy needed for inner growth.

John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus then said,

“He must increase but I must decrease,”

The outer person should lead progressively to the inner one, decreasing while the latter increases. The Christ Self is the germ of the seed which, as it begins to grow consumes the nutrition of the surrounding seed material.

Our “lives” as we know them, our ego selves – are food for the emerging Self within. If we understand this, crisis and catastrophe lose their threatening power and appear as sources of transformational energy for the seedling soul growing toward the light.

This awareness brings peace where we live.

Conflict can not disquiet us when digested into soul food.

The Inner Child

The “Inner Child” mythology is usually presented in terms of a wondrous and beautiful being within that we would automatically love and adore.

My encounter with this person inside wasn’t like that. In fact, as it became more experiential than theoretical, I discovered the Inner Child and I were very much at odds. We glared at each other from a distance suspiciously.

The adult taunted, “You’re the kid that your parents rejected! They didn’t like you so why should I?”

While the Inner Child spat right back, “You’re the adult who has screwed up his life. Why would I want to grow up toward you?”

This dynamic was unexpected and troubling. I didn’t know how to interpret it until it I realized it was symbolized in the life and Passion of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was the embodiment of sinless innocence, of divine beauty incarnate, yet He was rejected to the very death. Isaiah wrote:

“He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

The Inner Child is not merely “me” at a younger age. It seems to be a self, the Self, the expression of divinity incarnate that is nevertheless rejected and despised by the worldly egoic “me.”

The Inner Child is actually in a sense the Master of this organism, to whom the ego should, and eventually must, surrender its control.

Here is the archetypal conflict, in which some form of crucifixion is predestined and inevitable.

Shadows

Peter Pan remained a child because he had lost his shadow. Without his shadow something was missing, some important information about who he was and how he fit into the world of substance. Without a shadow he could not grow up.

Under certain circumstances a person might appear to have several shadows, such as when walking under a set of street lamps in the night. From whatever source light is coming, there is the side of us that is illumined and a side that casts a shadow – a side that remains out of sight.

In terms of the psyche, this shadow side is most often unconscious to its owner. Yet it still influences events. Indeed, being unrecognized and unmonitored, it can have a tremendous effect, yet remain incognito. A person feels at the mercy of powerful but incomprehensible forces.

Like Peter Pan, the child within us is in search of its shadow because it knows it needs to grow up.  It wants to expose this seeming monster, which is really nothing other than the unseen dimensions of its own self, to the light. It craves to become fully consciousness in order to be free of the fear of an “other” that doesn’t really exist as a separate entity.

As the process of individuation progresses, the shadows that had formerly been invisible (until they fomented some crisis, at least) begin gradually to grow more opaque. They can be felt and even seen to some degree.

Wendy sews the shadow to Peter's toes and it becomes part of him, reflecting his place in the world of beings. Its ability to create havoc is contained.

When this connecting, this embracing of the shadow happens, we can make conscious choices about its influence in our lives.

And we begin to understand that the shadow is not merely ours,

but us.

Feast

For lunch there is a can of kippered snacks. I hold it in my hands and images of herring appear, darting through the cool vastness of the sea.

With reverence and appreciation I consider the freedom these creatures have relinquished in order to be with me today. In return I offer them a continuation of their life as part of mine.

I feel a movement of grace between us, the energy of acceptance passing from my hands into their flesh and back again.

Some people do call this practice of blessing food, “Grace.”

We commune in silence, the fish and I, each surrendered in our own way to the mystery and magnitude of life.

The moment is magic . . .

As before the can is even opened,

This simple meal of kippered snacks

Becomes both a prayer

And a feast.

Nostalgia

Nostalgic thoughts seem a bit like fat wormy things twirling through the ethers. They don’t have fangs or long claws, because these are not necessary. They don’t need to be fast and furious to be accepted. Nostalgia is virtually irresistible and knows it. So those thoughts can be slow and lazy about coming along.

At least, until a person reaches a certain level of discernment. Before then, nostalgia worms can enter easily into a person’s thought field. They pass nearly undetected because of their sedating seduction into feeling something “familiar” that is “missing.” A person opens to this impression, falling through amnesia into the Neither-Either Land of What-Is-Not.

Neither-Either Land is a pretend place of limitless unfulfilled promises or possibilities: those which never happened and those which will never happen again. A wanderer here is overwhelmed with yearning for what he thinks can never be or could never have been.

Such visitations to N.E.L. generally happen many times. It is as though one must hope every last God-forsaken hope, and experience those hopes dashed ad infinitum, until the face of perpetual disappointment is beheld and known in every feature.

Such a stark image of hopelessness is intolerable even though, or perhaps because, it is ultimately false. The wanderer eventually realizes that anguish cannot be appeased through nostalgia, and that there is no release from the dungeon of despair until he is able to answer the following question in the affirmative:

“Do you really want to live . . . now?”

For one who is adrift in Neither-Ether Land, this is by no means an easy reckoning. He will almost certainly say, with grim determination, “No, I do not!” Because nostalgia posits that life in this moment is life without something he wants but cannot have.

And so, disappointment carries him further and further down into the realm of dissolution, where the hardened brick of impossible desires is broken bit by bit into tiny meaningless particles. When there is nothing left to hold onto, then suffering loses the power to possess.

This is the nadir of the dark night, the point at which the forces of light begin to increase. Faint at first, felt rather than seen, more of a fragrance than a vision, dawn trembles through the void.

The wanderer gradually perceives that something has changed. The seemingly endless darkness begins to wane, the mortal chill to warm, the fog of confusion to disperse.

Light brings discernment. Even a candle’s flame can make a blackened room negotiable. Shadows appear, illuminating form.

Before, nostalgic thoughts were invisible until actually felt as intrusions. Now, their wormy shapes can be seen and no longer seem inviting, but rather tedious and tiresome. Consequently they find no receptive landing place.

And with attention embracing the Now, the energy of the Present blows them away like a wind.

Warehouse Feast

The sky is dark and overcast, moist as with the sweat of invisible beings. I pass through an industrial part of town - warehouses, empty parking lots, motionless trucks with lights and motors off. There is no nightlife, no movement, nothing whatsoever to invite visitors.

In times past this passage would have seemed depressing. But tonight the aesthetically dull has acquired a spiritual vitality. My awareness of the seemingly ugly scene passes beyond conventional mental filters and lands in strange new territory.

So much of the world remains unperceived regardless of how often we look at it. We see the outer surfaces, the shapes of things, but miss their essence, their magic, their "life."

Life? Yes, even old bridges and scarred buildings have life. They vibrate with the impressions of events that have happened in them and on them and around them. Of the people that have walked and talked, lived and perhaps died there.

Even the most drab and unimportant of structures has its own story, flavor and fragrance. And this neglected tale is thrilling if a person can get clear and close enough to sense it.

Because it speaks, in its own inimitable way, of the mystery of human life. Of the depth and height, the amazing richness, texture and intensity of

the spirit made flesh.
And so . . . I caress the moment's experience like a lover,

Feeling into it, yearning to penetrate its subtle essence and be nourished thereby.


Tonight there is FEAST among the warehouses,

Yet very few are crowding toward the table.

Raising Lazarus

Now there is peace in the graveyard. The dust is settling and the sun can be felt, if not actually seen.

Lazarus stumbles out of his tomb. He heard a voice - someone calling.

That voice was not plaintive, but insistant, even demanding:

"Lazarus, come forth!" it said.

And so, he comes. Somewhat reluctantly, perhaps. Death is a relief, after all.

All life's agony and pain finished at last.

"Loose him, and let him go," the voice commanded.

So Lazarus finds himself blinking in the light of day, weak and stinky after four days of playing dead. Four days of bugs crawling on his skin and nipping at his eyes.

Someone unwrapped the grave clothes around his hands and feet. He stands wobbly and hesitant, uncertain what to do.

What's your next move when you've gone on to the other side? When life's greatest mystery is a secret no more?

What do you do when there is nothing left to fear?

When you are not scared of being hurt anymore?

When you've lost everything already?

. . . Oh bliss!

. . . Oh joy!

Journey's End

It came to me of leaving the track of thought that runs in circles - continuous fears about the future, anguish about the past.

Another way was shown that did not go back and forth. It was more like an open window.

And the message above the window was this:

"We let you take that path to its hardest ending so you would know what death was. So you would know how deeply the grave was dug from which you are called to arise.

For those who are comfortable in their graves do not seek resurrection - the slumber of seeming is enough for them. Only those who taste the bitterness of dying yearn for rebirth into life."

The former track fades, along with its forays into dreamy, nightmarish elsewhere.

Whereas the way that was shown extends not into what was and what might be.

This way has no destination, no movement, no goal, no expectation.

It's journey has ended.

Debt Free

In his book The Authentic Tarot: Discovering Your Inner Self Thomas Saunders describes a person’s life as a “play” in which growth toward self-knowledge should unfold through three great “acts” of experience. Act Two, in which one’s inner conflict and conditioning is reflected out into external circumstance to be resolved, is where some get stuck.

Saunders writes:

“The only way we get off this eternal, spinning and not so merry-go-round of Act II is to begin the process of forgiveness. This means forgiveness of mother, father, sister, brother and everyone else in our life, which ultimately means self-forgiveness. Only when we are released from the burden of blame, playing ‘victim’ and this meretricious obligation that we must make a gift, will we be able to complete the play. Otherwise Act II will still be unfinished when we come to the end of this life.”

Pretty scary thought: to come to “the end of this life” without having accomplished what this life is for. And surely it is not “for” making money, achieving success or accomplishing grand things, although these may occur incidentally.

It is for being whole, for becoming who we truly are and always have ultimately been. And forgiveness is the key.

Such forgiveness is of a different order than what one normally imagines by that word. It is not merely voicing sentiments, however genuinely felt, but rather releasing others of their obligations to us. It is freeing them from the unilateral commitment we made on their behalf that they would become “better,” which is to say, able to meet our conditions.

Of course this unspoken commitment is mostly unconscious. We don’t speak of it; we only feel vaguely unsettled and upset. Perhaps we have deeply held residual anger, a smoldering grudge whose flame never dies because of wounds received at someone’s hands.

We are convinced that this supposed assailant needs to apologize, needs to try to “make things right” with us. But maybe they won’t or can’t, or even if they did it would not be enough. Their words of apology would be as ineffectual in soothing our souls as our words of forgiveness in soothing theirs.

At the same time we know that others expect the same of us – the apologies, the groveling humility, the fruitless attempts to make things right by somehow becoming BETTER.


Thus, we all endure an ongoing and perpetual sense of both owing and being owed. For how can any of us pay off our “creditors,” and how can they pay us off? How can anyone prove that they merit unconditional love?

Maybe leaving Act II of life's play begins when a person suddenly “gets” that such proving is impossible. What is owed simply CANNOT be paid back - by anybody, to anybody.

Like the parable Jesus told of a king frankly forgiving a subject who had no means of repaying his vast debt, the only real option is to write the whole thing off.

But this kind forgiveness is not a “word” thing. Nothing needs to be said at all. It happens silently when we decide that no one owes us what we thought they did.

In a serene glimpse of how things really are, we understand that no one needs to pay us back at any time, in any form. We no longer expect an apology, acknowledgement, appreciation . . . or even love.

This experience of forgiveness changes everything. Those we had held under obligation are allowed to go, to totally leave in every way. Contracts are negated, Commitments absolved, agreements released, ties cut, karma unwound.

They can walk away and never look back . . . debt free.

Saint Nicholas

December 6 is when St. Nicholas is commemorated within Christianity, as this is the day on which he died in the year 346. St. Nicholas has become associated with many noble activities over the centuries, the most familiar of which is gift-giving. He is the model for the contemporary Santa Claus that children love.

But it is St. Nicholas’ reputation as a rescuer of travelers that can speak to all, not merely the young at heart. There are numerous stories and legends of him saving seafarers from calamity and death.




It is no great stretch of the imagination to conceive of one’s earthly life as a voyage in a fragile ship upon a tumultuous sea. Often the compass seems to have stopped working, guiding stars are not visible, fog and mist obscure the horizon and monsters from the deep have raised slithering tentacles over the bulwark in search of someone to devour.

Or so it seems.


Where are we going and how are we to get there? These are life’s fundamental questions, and only the very wise or the very ignorant think they know the answers. Yet when the deck of our boat pitches at the mercy of a raging storm, even issues of direction and navigation lose importance. Staying afloat becomes everything.

So the image of St. Nicholas helping weary sailors is comforting, even for the seemingly landlocked.

For we are all somewhere “at sea,” trying to steer our small craft through great difficulties to a safe harbor.

And if we believe someone cares enough to reach out and help us, our journey becomes more hopeful.

The Great Dance

The body spoke calmly to the mind and heart as one whose foundation is the very earth. It spoke kindly, gently - yet in words firm and immutable as a mountain’s root.

“Do not hide your sorrows in me,” said the body. “Do not seclude here the grieving which neither your thoughts nor affections can bear.”

“Why not?” asked the mind, somewhat indignant, while the heart carefully pondered.

“Because if you do,” said the body, “I must accept such stiffening intrusions obediently. Yet I yearn to dance instead. I would move to the joyous rhythms of life, allowing the music of divine madness to ripple and rumble through every cell of this temple which I am. I would set chakras shimmering and auras radiating. I would quiver with the everlasting energies of eternity. Deliver me from your sadness and you shall witness the Great Dance of Being!”

“I am nearly persuaded,” the mind allowed, “yet a smallish matter occupies my attention. I would set you free even now, but cannot spare the moment necessary to secure your release.”

“A smallish matter consumes my senses as well,” admitted the heart. “No bigger than a pea is it in the grand scheme of things, yet a true princess would feel it beneath a hundred mattresses.

“And what is this ‘smallish matter’ which is nevertheless so large that that it overmasters you both?” inquired the body.

The heart glazed and glanced, then both muttered askance:

“Why, it is but a memory.
A remembrance like a Rose
With thorns for its foes.
It snags our attention
And pricks our intention
leaving nothing to spare
For the joy that you mention.”

The body considered the poetics of the wounded heart and troubled mind, and spoke to them thus: “Look upon me whom you so often have disdained and disregarded. Do you know what lurks just beneath the surface of those sufferings? It cannot be well seen by such eyes as yours, but reach forth and touch. Feel the raw essence which emanates from the core of me.”

So heart and mind reached into the body, beneath its pack-load of perturbing, problematic protuberances. And in the quiet, contented, profound depths within, a wonder occurred.

. . . the Great Dance began.

The Tortuguero Monument

Reproduced below is Carl Johan Calleman's article about the relationship between the Tortuguero Monument 6 and the Mayan end date:

When I started my independent research on the Mayan calendar late in 1993 not a single inscription from the ancient Maya was actually known which would describe what would happen at its so-called end date. All that was known were the various descriptions of the beginning date of the Long Count, notably in the inscriptions in Palenque, which said that the First Father then “erected the World Tree”.

Irrespective of this dearth of information, I started to develop my theory about the nine levels of evolution, the nine underworlds, and the various days and nights that generated their wave movements. I simply assumed that the significant Mayan pyramids had been built in nine steps because they were symbolic of nine levels of creation, each effected by seven days, or seven creation gods. I then found that with such a model an enormous amount of historical facts started to make sense if they were seen as results of cosmic energy shifts.

This however could be seen to be true only if the nine levels all ended at the same time, similarly to how some of the Mayan pyramids had a straight back. It thus seemed obvious that the understanding of such energy shifts must have been the basis of the prophetic tradition of the Maya. This was of course not how traditional Mayanism saw it, which essentially treated the calendar and the various deities associated with it as superstitions. Yet, I came from a different scientific tradition, and was primarily interested in if the Mayan time cycles and deities were true reflections of reality.

In the beginning of my scientific carreer in the seventies I had thus been mentored by a member of the Nobel committes in Stockholm and had then at least indirectly seen how science operates from what arguably is its highest level. This meant among other things zero tolerance for making up theories from “beliefs” without empirical facts to back them up and constant emphasis on experimental reality checks. At least professionally this has remained my mind set ever since and the fact that some people believe that Jesus was born on December 25 or that the Mayan calendar ends on December 21 does not constitute proof for me that this is actually the case.

The idea that there were as many as nine Underworlds was for a long time criticized by some who said that there was only one cycle of a longer duration in the Mayan calendar system, namely the 5,125 year Long Count. Yet, already then there were some indications that the Maya had recognized nine steps of evolution. It was for instance known that the Long Count was sometimes referred to as ruled by the Six-Sky-Lord, indicating that it was the sixth level, and that there were names for time periods beginning with that of the first of the nine levels, the hablatun.

Based on these indications of nine levels I proposed my theory since it could be empirically substantiated from human history even though some thought that it was not orthodox enough. Somewhat later, in 1996, Mayanists however started to decipher Monument 6 in Tortuguero, only some 50 kilometers west of Palenque, which would further strengthen my model of nine levels of evolution. For the first time an inscription was found that seemed to refer to what would happen at the end date at least from the perspective of a Mayan king around AD 670.



The text segment describing the descent of
the Bolon Yookte from the Tortuguero monument 6.
Drawing by Sven Gronemeyer.





More broadly this inscription only gained attention in 2006 and its final text according to David Stuart, who is an expert on Mayan glyphs, reads essentially like this: Tzuhtz-(a)j-oom u(y)-uxlajuun pik (ta) Chan Ajaw ux(-te’) Uniiw. Uht-oom ? Y-em(al)?? Bolon Yookte’ K’uh ta?

or translated to English: “The Thirteenth ‘Bak’tun” will be finished (on) Four Ajaw, the Third of Uniiw (K’ank’in). ? will occur. (It will be) the descent(??) of the Nine Support? God(s) to the ?. "

As is common with such ancient inscriptions they may be difficult to read partly because the glyphs are effaced (which is the case here) and partly because the meanings of the glyphs are not unambiguous. The critical part from our perspective is the deities (or deity) called Bolon Yookte, who at the end date would “descend.”

To understand how to interpret this I think it is important to know two things about ancient Mayan deities. The first is that they were not as personalized as for instance Roman or Nordic deities, who were perceived to act more or less as individuals. A Mayan (or Aztec) deity instead typically symbolized a cosmic force associated with a time period and the mythologies of these peoples really describe fairly high level impersonal cosmic relationships.

Hence, we know how the ancient day-signs were carried by daybearers, deities that were associated with particular days. Time periods, gods and day-signs were thus more or less interchangeable and it depended on the context how they would be expressed. The second thing to know is that these deities could easily split into several different deities and vice versa depending on whether the context called for the whole or its parts to be expressed.

This is almost certainly the case with Bolon Yookte, which can be seen as a whole deity with nine parts or as nine parts constituting a whole. Bolon Yookte is at the same time a whole and its nine parts because Mayan cosmology is essentially holistic and looks upon everything in creation as connected.

John Major Jenkins in 2006 wrote an important and interesting article about the Bolon Yookte: Comments on the 2012 text on Tortuguero Monument 6 and Bolon Yookte Ku, http://edj.net/mc2012/bolon-yokte.html, where he summarizes epigraphic information about this deity called Bolon Yookte, which according to the abovementioned inscription will descend at the Mayan end date.

Among other things he cites an article by Gillespie and Joyce that states that Bolon Yookte was called “the God of the Nine Steps” and also that this was a deity that was present already at the beginning of creation as can be seen from the famous Vase of the Seven Lords. He also cites Eberl and Prager, who said that the Bolon Yookte was associated with the underworld, wars and conflict.

Really what this is telling us is that the structure of Nine Steps of evolution, Nine Underworlds, has existed from the very beginning of creation, what we in modern terminology would call the Big Bang. The Tortuguero Monument 6, and Jenkins study of their meaning, thus provides a perfect verification of the theory I proposed fifteen years ago. The Bolon Yookte are the Nine levels of evolution carried out by the nine underworlds.

These nine Underworlds are then obviously also associated with the Seven Lords of Creation (the seven DAYS) as can be seen from the famous Mayan vase. Moreover, as we know from history, all of these Underworlds are associated with conflicts and wars, since shifts in cosmic energies generate shifting balances of power and as a result, warfare. To me, the relationships between these Mayan deities provide a model of evolution that has been verified by massive empirical evidence. Because of this connection to reality this is crucial information for humanity at the present time and not mere mythical relationships.

What this inscription means is that on the end date there is not just one cosmic power that will manifest, but Nine and that these were symbolized by a Nine-Step pyramid that was Bolon Yookte – The God of Nine Steps. It is also clear from Jenkins’ article that Bolon Yookte was associated with the World Tree, which especially my forthcoming book The Purposeful Universe will demonstrate as the source of all creation – not as a myth, but as a reality.

In light of the Tortuguero monument I feel the model of Nine Underworlds and Thirteen Heavens can only be denied by someone, who completely ignores not only the actual Mayan inscriptions, but also the massive empirical evidence of how the Mayan calendar system is connected to reality. If instead this body of evidence is recognized it is however easy to see how in their mythology the Maya would interchange deities, time periods and cosmic energies in a way that can now help us make sense of evolution and how it has played out in biological and historical reality.


The Bolon Yookte, the Nine-step God with its Nine Underworlds, as this is symbolized by the Pyramid of the Jaguar in Tikal. The Nine Underworlds will all be completed, “the Bolon Yookte will descend”, at the same time and to symbolize this synchronistic event the pyramid has a straight back. Photograph by the author.

The verification from the Tortuguero monument that the ancient Maya looked upon the end of creation as the simultaneous descent of Nine different deities, or manifestation of nine cosmic forces, is however very timely as we are now on the eighth level of evolution and soon about to climb up one step to the ninth level, the Universal Underworld. It is not an exaggeration to say that for many people now their future will directly depend on knowing exactly how the energies of these nine levels will be playing out.

Today it is thus crucial to know about this basic structure of evolution, Nine Underworlds and Thirteen Heavens, and the exact timing of activation of the different wave movements of creation. That nine deities will descend (nine cosmic forces manifest) simultaneously at the end date is thus no longer an unorthodox idea, but instead the only meaningful explanation that can be given to Tortuguero monument 6.

What this means is also that the Bolon Yookte mentioned at the Tortuguero monument is not about a single event occurring only at a specific date. It is instead about nine different wave movements, each generated by the Seven Lords of Creation (the seven days in each Underworld) going back to the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) when, as Jenkins also points out, Bolon Yookte was already present. Thus, any viable theory about the meaning of the Mayan calendar needs to be able to account for such long term evolutionary processes, spanning up to 16.4 billion years.

As a consequence, serious researchers need to take their focus off from what might happen on a single day, the end date, since this can only be understood in a much larger context. From this perspective it is thus a problem that especially many American “experts on 2012”, along the lines of the upcoming Hollywood movie 2012, have committed themselves to some physical event that they associate with the singular December 21, 2012 date, such as a pole shift, a galactic alignment, a volcanic eruption, an asteroid impact, a solar flare or some other (usually not very well-founded) idea of what may happen on this particular day.

Given the total unreasonableness of such ideas, especially in light of the Tortuguero monument, is it not time that they instead start considering an evolutionary model for the Mayan calendar that is consistent with this monument? “2012” has for too long been a playground for pseudo-science and the many unfounded “singular day” ideas blur the fact that the end scenario of the Mayan calendar is really about a socio-economic transformation resulting from processes influencing human consciousness. It is thus about the human beings themselves and how we co-create the birth of a new world and not about any geological or astronomical event that we only would be observers of anyway.

There is of course a reason that, as I pointed out before, no one advocating the October 28, 2011 end date has ever advocated or been lured into advocating that this date would be “the end of the world.” This is that this date emanates organically from an evolutionary process and is not associated with any real or purported physical or astronomical event. It is simply the day when the universe after nine major quantum steps, starting with the beginning of the universe, attains its highest energy state and there is no logical reason that this would mean the end of the world.

It is just an evolutionary completion point when Bolon Yookte fully descends. When it comes to the many events that have been purported to be associated with the singular December 21, 2012 date on the other hand it is not surprising that they invite speculations about the end of the world. If you for instance propose that this end date is about a pole shift or a giant burst of gamma rays from the galactic center, why should people not believe that this could be the end of the world? To propose physical events is like asking for the mainstream media to create fear and hopelessness around the real transformation that is about to occur.

I thus believe it will be people at large that will suffer most from the neglect of the understanding we may gain from the ancient Maya, which as we have seen speaks about the fulfilment of a composite of nine evolutionary forces, the Bolon Yookte Ku, and not what happens on a single day. Because of all the confusing information focusing on December 21, 2012 that is already out there I feel however that people will start to align with the true end date of October 28, 2011, not because they realize that the energetic end date logically must be 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13 13 Ajaw or that the 4 Ajaw end date was the result of politics much like the placing of the birth of Jesus at December 25 by the Christian Church.

People are instead likely to come to accept the October 28, 2011 date in practice simply because they will not be able to deny the actual wave movement of energies that they themselves are experiencing, especially in the socio-economic realm. Yet, for those seeking to consciously co-create the birth of a new world a knowledge of how the cosmic energies lead up to the October 28, 2011 date will be instrumental, simply because without it no understanding of how the new world will be born, and how this is timed, will be possible. Hence, the activation of these energies, and their preparatory phases in the Galactic and Universal Underworlds will, as always, take place according to a very precise relative timing until the Bolon Yookte, the nine underworlds, will “descend”, manifest fully, and create the foundation for a millennium of peace – the end of the Shift of the Ages.