The Bottle Game – CREDO LXXX

   
I learned about this game from Penny Harris in 1944. Penny was a petite woman of my mother’s generation. She knew M before I did, and he called her Nickel. Widowed and a mother of three sons, she was an heir to the Borden milk company, and had a lovely apartment on the upper east side of New York and a beautiful old home in Connecticut. Bill Regan, M’s closet companion, had been a close friend of her husband, and was now back at West Point teaching during the war. I mention these two because it reveals the kind of people that surrounded M. Penny was a Gemini and, as I was by far the youngest in the group, we became fast friends and almost like kids together. Penny struggled mightily with the highly erudite and esoteric material we studied. Her disposition was to being loving and generous. For instance, she gave M her own large bedroom in her apartment and slept in a maid’s room so that he would have the space for a meditation center and the comfort he needed for his work. He was already in his seventies when I met him. As it was up to me to translate the concepts and terminology of, say, the Kabbalah, by hindsight, I see that this was an introduction to my life’s work: helping the concepts of the Above make more sense to the Below. A kind of spiritual algebra … I was deeply touched when she once turned her beautiful blue eyes to me and said she wanted to be my child in our next lifetime! It was Penny who told me about the Bottle Game.

This was a game played at parties during the “Flapper” era of the post WWI days. It helped if the players were in a playful mood. As Penny described it, I began to see its value on an entirely different and symbolic level. I recommend it highly to any of my readers involved in giving workshops. It is certainly a good example of Sophia’s delight in making wisdom fun. Here’s how it goes: a row of eight empty bottles is set up about two feet apart. An innocent volunteer is chosen to prove that he/she can slalom the row without knocking over any bottle. This is carefully practiced three times. The volunteer is then taken to another room and blindfolded while the host explains the rules of the game. Then the volunteer is brought back and set exactly at the head of the row and challenged to slalom again while blindfolded. The other guests are instructed to make soft positive and encouraging remarks during the time the volunteer triumphantly manages to succeed. At the sound of applause, the volunteer removes the blindfold, and surprise!! No bottles!!!

The bottles seemed to me to represent many of the unconscious, built-in inhibitions we all absorb in our youthful development placed there by family, education, religious doctrine which are accepted, perhaps misunderstood, but left unexamined. As a workshop proceeds, it may be helpful for participants to list and perhaps discuss some of these. I will never forget one woman who burst into tears when she removed her blindfold. Her reason? “I was totally convinced that the bottles were there! How can a person be that wrong!” I rest my case.

I think we need to distinguish cultural mores and apply psychological and spiritual tolerance. An example is that a Muslim is permitted more than one wife, but Christians are not. An Orthodox Jew may commit a sin if he eats pork or shellfish, good advice in the light of trichinosis and a hot climate, but today it may seem unnecessary to others. I think I have already mentioned the factor that turned a boy into a lasting agnostic when he was forbidden to attend chapel wearing white socks at his boarding school. One of my own daughters was turned away for forgetting to wear her beanie! On a more serious note, the ubiquitous scandal of priests molesting altar boys has undermined their teachings of Jesus. On the positive side, the gradual shift in the acceptance of Christian women as priests in several Protestant denominations has only happened during my lifetime, and as a student of history, I find it fascinating that one century’s heretic is another’s saint (Joan of Arc, Mary Magdalen), and that goes for scientists such as Galileo and even some recent political leaders like Mandela. One of Pope John Paul II’s finest acts was his public repudiation of the condemnation of Galileo and Luther.

In closing, I really have to recommend the “Milk Stool Principle of Love, Wisdom, and Power” (Credo XXXVIII) that can help keep us more balanced and spiritually sound. The ‘Shalt-nots!” need to be replaced by our own positive personal conscience, responsibility and tolerance – my personal favorite being Buddha’s “The Noble Eightfold Path” (see Credo LXXI), which can apply to anyone. I am also partial to the kindness suggested in this Sufi counsel:

Before you criticize, pass your words through three sieves:
Are they true?
Are they kind?
Are they necessary?

lovingly,
ao

Buddhism, Jung, and the Ego – CREDO LXXIX

   
The following quote from the late Tibetan Lama Dudjom Rinpoche reinforces the message of a recent Credo, adding the spiritual application. I was struck by this as I was reading his book of lectures Counsels from My Heart. Here is what he said:

What is the root of all this, the source of both good and evil? The doer of all virtue is the mind, when it makes positive use of body and speech, its servants. The doer of all evil is also the mind, when it uses body and speech negatively. The root and cause of good and evil is in the mind itself. Nevertheless, in a sense, this mind of ours is something unknown to us. It does anything and everything, like a lunatic running here and there at the slightest impulse. This is how it accumulates karma.

The mind is the root of every defilement. It is here that anger is born; and from anger, every kind of hurt and injury to others: fighting, beating, and the rest. The mind is the soil in which all this grows: all malevolence, envy, desire, stupidity, arrogance, and so forth. That is why the Buddha told us to get a grip on our minds. Having realized that the mind is the root of all affliction, we must be vigilant in keeping it under control, holding down our defilements as much as we can. We have to be completely focused on this, gaining mastery of whatever arises.

The mind can move in a positive direction as well. . . . Through the practice of the Dharma, the mind can also accumulate the causes of its own liberation and that of others. Therefore, since the mind is the root of both good and evil, it stands to reason that it must be corrected and transformed. The examination of one’s mind is thus the principal feature of the practice.

The interesting point to me is that if you substitute the word ego for mind, you would hear Jung saying the same thing! He defines the ego by the psychological terminology of “center of consciousness” and also sees it as functioning through duality. (Astrologically, the brain is ruled by Gemini, whose glyph is II.) When we identify with our ego, we give it our name, and it serves us daily in making it possible to live in the manifest world. We do get an involuntary break every time we sleep or are rendered unconscious. It is the part of our psyche that constantly is having to make choices, not only in practical matters, but also in allowing ourselves to be influenced by the emotions Dudjom describes above. In terms of my diagram, the ego, that small circle divided by the circumference, half looking out to the world and half looking inward to the psyche, goes round and around searching. But there is a conscious decision that we can make that is helpful: meditation!

One of the purposes of meditation is to become aware of our ego or “monkey mind.” Every religion has some form of it. Many, though, confuse it with prayer which is active, whereas meditation is receptive, a surrender to something greater than one’s mind. At first, we usually have trouble concentrating, but eventually awareness grows and you ask, “Who is watching?” That is the breakthrough! Who indeed? In this magic moment the radius to the centerpoint of Jung’s Self becomes a reality in Hagia Sophia’s process of in-tuition. Holy Wisdom, Holy Spirit, name it what you will, is the “Only Way” (process, verb!) that connects us to that wick in us that holds the universal flame of Spirit. And, as Jung points out, this center dwells in (sigh!) the Unconscious! The mind can reason that there must be something going on, but what? “The Tao that can be defined is not the Tao.” So, to repeat what Jung said, “The longest journey for most of us is from the head to the heart.” To meditate is to visit a place of love and eventually a state of bliss. Now Teachers and mystics have all pointed this out in every culture and every age, one way or another, but Jung clothes it in psychological terms because so many of us are ego identified and unhappy, lost and not conscious of why. Now, I am probably stepping on many toes, because there are so many instructions and how-to’s to meditation, but, honestly, forget all that to start with – just light a candle, close your eyes, and sit and listen to and receive the Silence, “that peace that passeth understanding.”

One of my favorite stories is that of one of the greatest intellectuals in history, Thomas Aquinas, who pursued and exhausted the philosophical proofs of God. At the end of his life, he had a spiritual experience that knocked his socks off! He came out of it declaring that all he had written was “as straw”; he surely had gone from the mind to the greater mystery of the heart. The Hindus would say that he practiced jnana yoga, the path of knowledge. They also tell us that there are different approaches to that “Vast Certainty”: bhakti yoga, the emotional approach of devotion; raja yoga, the totally committed path, taken by priests, monks, and lamas. A fourth, karma yoga, is to live in the world and give all of the fruits of your actions to God – my path, for sure.

Another person, lesser known, I admire immensely is Brother Lawrence, who was a French lay monk in Paris in the 1600s. He wrote a small book called The Practice of the Presence of God. He felt closest to God in the kitchen! It is a paean of delight among his pots and pans and profoundly spiritual in its joyful practice. Perhaps Julia Child is his reincarnation!

In his honor, I have a brown plastic garbage can which held the ice at my wedding to my beloved Walter in 1980. It has a label pasted on top + Brother Lawrence +. So he is a real and daily reminder in my own kitchen.

In conclusion, I am just trying to point out that one can consider oneself of no consequence and meditation to be a lofty and unreachable pursuit, but that is not the case. Each of us, if we are alive and conscious, is precious and unique, so all it takes is to be conscious of the gift and ultimate purpose, perhaps, of consciousness. As the Hindu Dadaji put it, “God is making love in your every heartbeat twenty-four hours a day.”

lovingly,
ao

Radiant Dew – CREDO LXXVIII

   
We bought our home here in 1983 and called it Rosecroft. It is a very old white clapboard New England house whose history dates back to the late 1600s, according to the history we had researched. When we moved in, there was a tiny two-room addition, a cottage that had no cellar. We called it the Lovecot because most of our guests were lovers. We then bought an orange tented, screened gazebo that could be put up in spring and taken down for the snows of winter.

This gazebo had flagstones under it, a large round white table, chairs, and potted plants. I spent many happy hours in it with my Jung volumes open on the table, doing research and writing The Dove in the Stone and The Web in the Sea.

Walter, my beloved Polar Bear, and I had a habit in the summer of getting up very early and taking our coffee out to the gazebo, sometimes even in our dressing gowns. Then we would sit together blissfully looking out at the dew carpeting the green lawn, shaded in spots by the tall maples and pine trees that surround it. It still is a large unbroken glorious green today though the gazebo is long gone and the Lovecot sacrificed to a permanent annex to our house in which my daughter and family happily dwell.

I remember one glorious morning, looking at my husband with his white hair and handsome face, even in his late seventies, and watching a deep smile slowly spreading across it, followed by a sigh of satisfaction. “How rich we are!” he exclaimed. To which I responded, “If you want to be rich, count your blessings!” The chirruping robins agreed.

“Not just blessings,” said he,“Jewels! Jewels!” and he pointed to the sparkling of the dew on the grass. The sun was turning the tiny prisms of moisture into a carpet strewn with glistening diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and topaz. It was such a magic moment, I held my breath – one of those moments to make things conscious and share them with one’s Divine Guest. How rich, not only in the jewels of the radiant dew, but in the love we shared, the good sharp taste of hot coffee, and the consciousness of being conscious in the first place!

Grace falls like the dew … Just think about the nature of dew itself. It is moisture so fine, it refreshes everything in nature that it touches, almost daily –every blade of grass, every leaf, every flower, cobweb, creeping thing, every rooftop, in short, the entire landscape. It is miraculous by nature of its tenderness. Unlike rain which can in excess flood and destroy, dew’s function seems to cool, heal, and truly, like grace, calm those that it silently blesses. It does this in total silence and most of us, including myself, take it for granted.

So before this summer ends, I just thought to suggest that it would be nice to get up early one morning and notice this great gift given so freely and maybe even see those jewels strewn by nature that make us richer than rich, because once truly received, nothing can steal them nor can you lose them. Trust me, their radiance has fallen upon your heart,

lovingly,
ao

Swiss Teaching Methods – CREDO LXXVII

   
Years ago, before left/right brain theories developed, the Swiss were already masters of insight when it came to teaching kids. As I taught children for 18 years, I tried to emulate some of their techniques. Here, briefly, is a summary of their approach in what would be the equivalent of sixth grade up. They knew that some children learn best by hearing and others by seeing. If you can remember where roughly on a page you read something you and I have primarily visual memory; if you remember spoken directions for how to find an unknown street with ease, you are blessed with auditory memory. If you have both, you are truly blessed!

I will label A for auditory; V for visual.
1. A – The teacher introduces a new topic to the class verbally.
2. V – The teacher writes short notes on the blackboard.
3. The students copy these in their own way into their Schmierheft, an uncensored scribble copybook.
4. For homework, the student turns that information into tidy complete sentences in a Gutes Heft, a good copybook, which even sports a protective paper cover.
5. A – An informal spoken review next day; V – possibly reinforced by students at blackboard, as in math.
6. A midweek written quiz, corrected by comments and numerical grade in math.
7. An end-of-week written test, requiring self-expressive summary of the topic, as in history or grammar, or free composition. Geography involved hand illustrated maps. Again graded by comments; math by marks.
8. Eventually, an exam! with both numerical grades and comments.
Oddly, there were few textbooks but we were encouraged to read real storybooks.

When I taught students in the ’60s and ’70s, I noticed a distinct shift in the collective classes from V to A! This was probably due to the increasing use of television, which is not received by the linear or left brain, and the changing emphasis on music and the hippie movement, in general. The kids became freer, more creative, self-expressive, and far less motivated to read texts and cough up facts. They were becoming more A. TV is viewed as a whole picture. This raises the question of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese characters . . .

On a personal note, I suffer as a grownup not from dyslexia but from dyscalculia, the reversal of numbers! As I learned math in three foreign languages, Italian, French, and German, I was subjected to 88 = as acht und achtzig (eight and eighty) or quatre-vingts huit (four-twenties eight) etc. The nightmare for me was Kopfrechnen (head reckoning). One had to stand alone in front of the class and answer things like take 2 multiply by 5; add 26, sechs und twantzig, etc, etc. The result has been problematic in the extreme! I was called to the IRS because in copying from page 4 to page 1, I reversed numbers! I drove my beloved husband Walter nuts reversing telephone numbers and balancing checkbooks! Now that I am alone, I have to double-check from phonebook to dialing all the time. Sigh!

In addition, since my stroke 13 years ago, I have been unable to write with a pen, and so the quotations for my Commonplace Book Vol.VIII have to be entered by someone else. I find that I have no clear recollection of what is copied!

I learned from a professional friend that if you are driving a car and see an arrow pointing left, you read that with your right (imaging) brain; if a sign says LA GUARDIA AIRPORT, you read that with your left (linear thinking) brain. One way you can tell if you have a preference for linear memory is that if you read something in the newspaper, you will remember if it was on the left or right page and approximately where. For those who hear traffic directions to a location and can remember them, you know you have a right brain preference. A hopeless situation for yours truly but

lovingly,
ao

Words of Comfort – CREDO LXXVI

   
I came across a message I received some years ago and stuck in my Commonplace Book Vol.VIII. It is handwritten and I found it in the bottom of a desk drawer I was emptying. The words came today to comfort me yet again as I seem to be evaluating all my failures at the end of this life. And I think they are worth sharing because all of you who receive these CREDOS, I intuit, are trying to grow, to become wiser, better, and of greater service to others. It seems to be a message for any one of us who tries so hard! These are seeds that may not grow for a while if not needed, but just know that if you read this, you have them now in your Unconscious!

Here it is:
Stop preceding the Love of God
with your own self-judgment!
Accept the healing waters, let them flow crystal clear
as a freshet in the sunlight.
Release, release, release – know that
you are bathed in Love.
Accept this though it come to you
from strange directions and in strange ways
You are not alone.

lovingly,
ao

The Catena Aurae: Teachers – CREDO LXXV

   
The Catena Aurae is the Golden Chain often referred to as the succession of Socrates-Plato-Aristotle-Alexander the Great, but it has other implications as well. In generation after generation there have been great Teachers, hidden and revealed, who have passed down esoteric truths for the enlightenment of those ready to learn from them.

The image of the chain links not only these great and wise masters in every culture throughout history but can also be applied to all those wise men and women who have influenced you and me, either formally or informally, in person or in print or any of the many new ways of communication. It is like a slowly moving river of invisible love offering itself to all that thirst.

We need to pause and reflect on the influence such may have had on our lives, to realize that each was born a child and had to grow up, often under difficult circumstances, and had to learn and realize and grow and benefit from learning the hard way. For this we need to be profoundly grateful; to pause and think how we, in turn, can pass on the good we have received.

When we think of teachers, our first thought goes to education and school. As I went to several different schools in different countries, I was exposed to a great many different teachers. I was blessed to encounter four great educators. They all had something in common and I will try to explain this in Jungian terms.

1) They taught not from ego to ego alone but from Self to the Self of the student! This means the basic difference between being an in-structor, one who builds in the structure of the pertinent discipline, and being an educator. This word comes from Lat. ex ducare, to lead forth, to make conscious the unconscious of the student. As I profited from this insight over the eighteen years I taught kids myself, I realized at the end I really had not taught them anything but perhaps had engineered a few attacks of insight – those magic words “Aha, I get it!”

This puts the words of Robert Browning’s poem to mind and might explain, by hindsight, M’s prescient mentioning of Browning to me on the first solitary encounter I had with him:

      IMPRISONED SPLENDOUR
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception – which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and to KNOW
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.

2) By extension, of course, the Golden Chain involves more than one way of teaching, the most important aspect of all: teaching by example. Looking back 65 years to my spiritual Teacher M, he personified that. For all the years I knew him, I never saw him angry or depressed or careless. He had the knack of being totally present to each of us, of being kind and even fun. Yet there was always a transpersonal dignity and implicit knowing about him. A steady Light and source of Love.

In writing this, now that I am 86 years old, I realize how short I fall in living up to that example! I was 21 when I first met him, and looking back I realize the only gift I had to give him was my ability to make him laugh. As this was in the midst of WWII, he had few occasions for laughter but calling him fondly “Dr. Gumblegurk” helped. I think I was a granddaughter of sorts for him and there was that kind of love between us. He was the inspiration for Gezeebius in my The Beejum Book.

3) Just in terms of educating children, my greatest debt of all is to A. Bronson Alcott, whose two books I discovered – unread for over a hundred years – in the stacks of the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, and which 35 years later I managed to edit and republish in my book How Like an Angel Came I Down. He was the eccentric father of Louisa May and a Concord friend and conspirator of Emerson and Thoreau. He had the most compelling approach to the education of children and prefigured Jung in many ways in his belief that the psyche of a child is not a tabula rasa, an empty slate. In the appendix of my book, I give hands-on ways I implemented my own teaching of children in fifth, sixth, and especially ninth grades in private schools on Long Island. I am still in touch with some of them today! I feel I was repaying those four teachers I encountered during my rebellious childhood! Each of them saw through all that and summoned my Self, such as it was, and encouraged with trust, responsibility, and no nonsense affection. Many years later I wrote this poem:

      GROWING
The hell I knew had human eyes
angels that were demon wise.
Pain to beauty, beauty's pain
rounded wisdom round again.
Love came down in hate's disguise;
life it is that never dies;
Love it is that tries and tries.
Child and demon, demon's child,
innocent and running wild
stropped for seizing heaven's prize.
When hell is telling, heaven lies;
when hell is selling, heaven buys.
We struggle dreaming struggle's dreams
and reaching where our wisdom gleams,
the child within us cries and cries.

lovingly,
ao

Voluntary Simplicity – CREDO LXXIV

   
My granddaughter Rowan gave me a copy of a workbook with the title above. It is extremely compelling, containing short articles by different authors and topics for discussion. I was especially struck by the following excerpts and think they are worth all of us considering, given the state of the planet.

Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are “very happy” has declined slightly, from 35 to 30 percent. We are twice as rich and no happier. Meanwhile, the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has more than doubled, and increasingly our teens and young adults are plagued by depression.

I have called this soaring wealth and shrinking spirit “the American paradox.” More than ever, we at the end of the last century were finding ourselves with big houses and broken homes, high income and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger. (David Myers)

SOME SIMPLE TIPS TO REDUCE CONSUMPTION

Before you buy …
Ask yourself these questions:
• Do I really need it?
• What are ALL the costs over its lifetime?
• Can I afford it?
• Are the resources that go into it renewable?
• How long will it probably last?
• Is it recyclable?
• Do I have one already that could be fixed or repaired?
• How many hours or months will I have to work to pay for it?
• Am I prepared to maintain it for its entire lifetime?
• Is it worth it?

Avoid the Mall …
Go for a walk; talk with friends. Fact: There are more malls than high schools in America.

Become an advertising critic …
Don’t be sucked in by efforts to make you feel inadequate so you’ll buy more stuff you don’t need.

Splurge consciously …
A few luxuries can be delightful, and they don’t have to be expensive.
[Source: Affluenza: The All Consuming Epidemic by Wann, DeGraaaf and Naylor © 2001]

As a result, I am busy clearing my house of much stuff that is no longer being used but might be useful to someone else. This is not a noble gesture on my part but in truth a necessity, as I am old, handicapped, and with greatly diminished need for “stuff”! As I once remarked in my wiser teens: Virtue is really enlightened self-interest! A sensible observation, if I do say so, as it cleanses one of pride.

I will keep this short today because it recommends multum in parvum, or there is much to be found in little! Granted, on a national if not a global level, this points to a different economy, not one based on spending so much on acquiring material but in paying more attention to things that matter more. Note the word matter has more than one meaning! But that is another matter for a future Credo!

lovingly,
ao