The Lesson of the Lima Bean – CREDO LIII

   
In the winter of 1930, I spent a term at the Beaver School on Chestnut Street in Boston. I was eight years old, and my parents left me with my aunt and uncle in their handsome townhouse on Beacon Hill. I was bored with the curriculum, which involved a lot of playing with paper and paste and crayons, unlike the academic rigors of the Italian school in Rome. However, I learned one thing that has yielded me great insight as I have progressed with observing the hidden symbolic wisdom of processes. It was the lesson of a lima bean!

Each child was given a soil-filled paper cup and instructed to plant a lima bean in it upside-down. The cups were then lined up on the windowsill. Mine had the initials a.o. on it. We watered them, yet time passed very slowly. Eventually a little green shoot appeared in each cup. Then came the demonstration of geotropism. The teacher explained that it took extra time for the poor lima bean’s root to find the sun. We unearthed the beans and saw that the root had struggled by first plunging further into the dark earth before curling up and eventually breaking the surface to the warm air and light.

The symbolic metaphor for human consciousness is obvious and most profound in its implications. Fire is the element that shoots up as if wanting to reunite with its source, the sun. All vegetation from grass to trees needs sunlight and even grass grows vertically. So for us as human beings, the life that gives our bodies existence also yearns instinctively for its mysterious Source, whether we are conscious or unconscious of this. For most of us this can mean years of materialistic darkness. But we walk vertically and sleep horizontally. Physically our eyes see only one half of reality at a time – aha! So we have to consciously, perhaps, supply meaning to the half unseen. We need a mirror to see ourselves at all and two mirrors to see our backs completely.

In Istanbul, the delightful Sufi Sheik Muzzafer quoted to us: Allah says there are 77,000 veils between you and Me, but not a single one between Me and you.

Most of you are familiar with the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus? In it is the famous saying: As above, so below. Feminine wisdom, in terms of processes, also says, As below, so above! And as a Jungian I like to add, As within, so without! because no two people see the exact same thing. Each of us processes experience uniquely in terms of consciousness according to our charts, and now science tells us that each of us has a unique DNA which orders everything!

When I would go to the zoo in Rome, we bought a lump of stale bread to feed the animals and birds – and me. Yum! I remember asking my mother how come the same bread turned into fur and feathers, into elephants and me. My mother was stumped. Now we know. Perhaps this mystery of DNA sheds light on the bread and wine of the Christian Communion Service? Speaking of which, the climax of the Roman Catholic service is the revealing of the Monstrance. An ornamental golden radiant circular sunburst is raised, and its center is uncapped to reveal an empty white circle! The symbol in sacred geometry of Spirit Immanent. The mystery being that because pi never comes out, the area (pi r sq) can never be defined. I am curious to know if that is ever explained. Perhaps one of you could answer that? Jung’s definition of the psyche as a mandala or circular expression of the Self at its center yields the symbol for Spirit Manifest, which circle with a centerpoint, is also (aha!) the astronomical symbol for the sun and the metallurgic symbol for gold!! These are all little obvious matters that having eyes, we do not see.

Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, Shekinah in the Old Testament in Proverbs ( 8:22–31) is described as co-creator of the earth, “full of delight,” and wanting to be friendly to mankind. So is Tara, the Buddhist feminine counterpart to Wisdom. Her Christian symbol is the dove. The title of my book The Dove in the Stone is taken from a Hermetic treatise. The alchemists had to conceal their knowledge that matter contained Spirit, because it was heresy to say this and they could be put to death! So now you have all these philo-sophers (lovers of Wisdom) looking for the Philosopher’s Stone – and She is hiding in every stone, giggling. It truly is a cosmic joke. Petrus Bonus wrote: To find the Philosopher’s Stone, look with the eyes but see with the heart.

I hope this cheers you up a wee bit coming at such a devastating turning point in history. My beloved Walter and I used to take our coffee cups out in the early summer mornings and look at the jeweled dew drops on the grass, and murmur “If you want to be rich, count your blessings!”

lovingly,
ao

The Fire Escape Epiphany – CREDO LII

   
In 1945, during the war, I finally had a space of my own – a flat in a very old building in Greenwich Village on West 13th Street. It had a fireplace and looked out on a cobbled stone courtyard in the back. I had met my teacher M, and I set up a small altar on top of a small bookcase in my bedroom. I could sit on the daybed and meditate. I was twenty-two.
It seems that the teacher/preacher archetype was always in me. In Rome when I was seven, on those Sundays Grandma King was unable to go to church, I would put a shirt of my father’s on backwards, and lead a service. I am told that I would solemnly pronounce “Yeah verily” and one of my sermons advised, “Always share what you don’t want yourself!” I would line up my three stuffed animals at the foot of the bed and teach them in three different languages according to their places of origin, and so forth. My beloved grandfather Basil King had been rector of Christ Church in Cambridge but had died when I was five. He was my first father figure and I thought God had his face. That might have had something to do with it, or maybe it was another life, or the fact that I have the Sun in my Ninth House of teaching and preaching. Who knows? But that has been my lifelong vocation, and if you are reading this, I am sure that most of you have had a similar sense of following some mysterious bent in your life.
But back to a Sunday morning. I was alone, conducting the Communion Service from the Book of Common Prayer, blissfully unconscious that “communion” usually implies other people! Maybe my sincerity pardoned my ignorance, but after the bread and wine, I tidied up and, since it was a lovely spring day, I opened the window and climbed out onto the fire escape that descended to the cobbles below. And then came the epiphany. I glanced up at the sun and realized

THE SUN IS SHINING AND IT DIDN’T HAVE TO!!!

Out of nothing came this primal YES! This blew me away. And then I realized that there has to be a YES before a NO sounds, because a NO has to have something to deny. We can deny negatives endlessly but they add up to spiritual tautologies. As my Grandpa King overheard William James point out to a friend on a trolley car, “Nothing is the only resultant of that which is not!” Ahem.
The physical sun is the primal source of Light and Life. No wonder it was worshiped by humanity through the ages. If its light went out, it would take only eight minutes for our earth to be plunged into darkness, cold, and death. It rules the heart in our physical bodies. On another level, it rules Love. It represents the one element – fire – that the more you give away, the more there is. Jung’s ‘Self’ is like the individual wick in each of our candles, but the flame on each, our Divine Guest, is the same flame! For Christians, it is “the Light that lighteth every man,” and that means all human beings, not just Christians – aaaaaaargh! That should be obvious – how long will it take for human beings all over the world to realize this simple fact! Love thy neighbor, he IS thyself! This simple truth should break our hearts as we witness the fundamentalists of so many religions killing each other! When in doubt consult nature, said Paracelsus, the alchemist.
This very morning, I watched a theologian on TV talking of the fascinating importance of the recurring number 7 in both the Old and New Testaments. He failed, however, to mention the octave in music or the colors of the rainbow or the Sumerians’ discovery of the 7 days in a week based on the motion of the moon and the menstrual cycle of women. An omission that would have strengthened his argument!
Speaking of alchemy, the illuminated (sic!) MS called Splendor Solis ends with a picture of the physical sun looking sideways hinting at the “Sun behind the sun” . . .

Needless to say, today is Sunday! Domenica, dimanche, the day of the Lord.

Lovingly,
ao

Dead Alive! – CREDO LI

   
You may have seen her on TV. A hurricane victim in Texas standing in her totally wrecked house, wearing a dirtied white shirt, blue shorts – a woman in her thirties. At her feet the pet carrier she was unable to retrieve containing her two dead puppies. She told the reporter she had lost everything, had no place to go and no way of going – a poster person for what confronts each one of us at the moment of our death. But she is alive and so are many others. What is the psychological impact on such individuals? Could anything positive be said? The answer, I truly believe from personal experience is yes! She is still living.

When my so beloved husband Walter died, what struck me again the next morning, were his toothbrush, his dressing gown, his notebook open on his desk with a pencil laid across it . . . every thing left behind! A permanent situation.

For those of us who have had a near-death experience, there is a gift. Your values are changed for the rest of your life. On October 9, 1949, I almost died from hemorrhaging after a miscarriage. My blood pressure went down to 3, and I found myself in outer space looking down at the earth, the size of a dime. (Strangely, it seems Emerson and Jung, decades later, had the same trip!) A black cloud engulfed me and a voice asked: Can you love enough??? As if the world depended on my answer, I screamed YEEESSS! which is what I was whispering on the operating table, as I came slowly back to consciousness. I woke to find myself surrounded by hot water bottles and that big round light about 6 inches above my body. They brought me hot sweet tea to suck through a pipette. As this happened about midnight, the rest of the night I lay on my bed watching a nurse with a death’s head kindly pressing air bubbles up the dripping tube attached to my arm. When she had walked in, I thought she was death come for me and I turned in fear to the wall. Then I knew I had to look at her with love and so I did and received the love back from her all night long. In fact that nurse died three days later, but I have never forgotten her. But the interesting thing that happened was that though I was so weak I could only move my fingers, I felt strong enough to lift the city of Paris! There was a total reversal of where one’s life force resides!

This was the beginning of my reversal of values. Like an old fashioned photo negative, all the darks were light and the lights were dark! The importance of physical things diminished and the abstract and emotional ones increased. The psyche made the soma a physical container of hidden enduring values – hard to explain! This lasted fully the three years of being an invalid that followed. The reminder came back to hit me anew with a shock when my husband died, and, of course, as I confront the certainty of my own celebration of “Aberduffy Day.” As I approach my 86th birthday, I feel the necessity of sharing the insight that dying alive holds the magic of a permanent shift of values. Astrologically, Scorpio rules death, resurrection, and recycling, and its opposite sign is Taurus, the sign ruling material possessions and earthly manifestation!

The bull of Merrill Lynch is in the news today. The “stock market” is in question. It is no longer “bullish.” Believe it or not, I did the chart for the advertising director of Merrill Lynch years ago and asked him if they were conscious of that bull’s symbolic significance. He said he didn’t think they had a clue.

I suspect that for most of you reading this, it will come as no surprise that the global economy and the four elements involving weather – fires, floods, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and droughts – all seem to be challenging humanity to change its sense of values collectively! Or else!

This is already happening. Some of the wealthiest people are now engaged in helping others, and many of the new younger generation are waking up to the joy of serving and helping others. So, as our election approaches, perhaps the matter of ideals can acquire more significance. I sure hope so!

I want to explain the importance of that woman absolutely stripped of everything but life and what her example can prove to us, and also to point out that by sharing my personal near-death experience, I hope you will accept that I am not just mouthing platitudes but have walked my talk as best I could, like many, many others in this world, including you who are reading this.

In the end, as I learned from my darling Walter, all we leave behind, for better or worse, is what we give.

Lovingly,
ao

The Spiritual Sport of Shadow Catching – CREDO L

   
Jung defined the Shadow as the unconscious complex in the human psyche that holds its negative aspects. We project these outwardly onto others in a judgmental and critical manner. In layman’s terms, “It takes one to know one!”

There are three things to remember about the Shadow:
   1) Shadows prove a source of light. A YES must come before a NO can deny it!
   2) There is a collective Shadow as well. Bush projecting an ‘Axis of Evil” onto other countries is a good example.
   3) If you are mortal you have one. Every one of us also has a physical “blind spot.”

In psychology, the term “light Shadow” is sometimes used to describe the projection of untoward admiration of positive qualities unconsciously inherent in the admirer himself/herself. This can occur in the so-called ‘transference’ in the analysand/analyst setting or in the disciple/guru relationship. And here is a way to tell a good Guru or Teacher from a bad one. The good Guru will only hold up a mirror to help you see that what you recognize there is already in yourself. The fake one will accept the admiration and become increasingly inflated until he comes to a sad or bad end. There have been any number of these tragedies in recent years. I call it the Guru disease.

One of the things that has struck me is that the Shadow sheds light on Christ’s advice to love our enemies! An enemy carries the mask of our Shadow projection. The very thing we abhor is what we deny having in our own selves so, in that sense, we should be grateful for our enemy carrying that particular projection! Ah, but what if the enemy really is evil? Well, Jung provides the answer. If you are projecting your own shadow, you get “hot under the collar.” One might add that if you are not, you might even have some compassion because of the karmic suffering surely awaiting the person.

I, myself, tied myself in knots with the following: I was only intolerant of intolerance! I projected this especially onto Cardinal Ratzinger when he was acting as Defender of the Faith! I learned my lesson when I was rebuked in meditation with the advice that rather than get angry with him, I should pray for him. The end result has been that ever since he has become Pope, I actually am almost charmed by him and rejoice that as my own intolerance has diminished, so – it seems to me! – has his tolerance of other faiths increased. Please understand that all this has taken place within me and my own past judgmental projections. I have never met the man nor had any influence whatsoever on the Vatican! The closest I came to trying was when I wrote to protest the excommunication of Matthew Fox many years ago, when my collar sure was hot.

Sixty-four years of astrology has taught me that no two people process experience in the same way and has convinced me of the wisdom of “To understand is to forgive.” So now I am more tolerant even of my lapse of intolerance! And I caught that particular aspect of my own Shadow. I made it conscious.

Jung has also reminded us that as we illuminate the smallest bit of our personal Shadow, we are also withdrawing that much darkness from the Collective one! So perhaps the task of the coming Age is to attempt to do this more collectively. This is the archetypal task of Pluto/Hades. The god was the ruler of Hell. Both the Latin and Greek names mean “riches,” and the redemption of the Collective Shadow implies the redemption of all the crimes and cruelty in history – the Herculean task of the Cleansing of the Augean Stables. There is gold hidden in that nigredo. Nature calls it (ahem ...) fertilizer!

So how do we make these bits of our Shadow conscious? By non-judgmental self-observation of our ego reactions. The Sufis have a word for those petty negative things we think and do. They call them nafs. At almost eighty-six years of age, I don’t seem to have the energy to break those Ten Commandments, but I am a whiz at Sinning-on-the-Installment-Plan! And the sum adds up. The Sufis also suggest:

Before you speak, put your words through three sieves:
    Are they true?
    Are they kind?
    Are they necessary?

That’s a good place to sign up for the spiritual sport of shadow catching. Just start observing yourself reacting in your thoughts and why you are thinking them and what you are doing as a consequence. It’s an application of that First Reader “See Spot Run!” “Watch me finding fault!” After applying this a while, you suddenly ask yourself, “Who’s watching?” Aha!

I realize, by hindsight, how my mother prepared me for this game. I remember how when I was three years old and was having a royal screaming tantrum, she would drag me in front of the hall mirror and force me to watch myself! After a short time, I would start to giggle at the spectacle and be ready to surrender. Fast forward to my forties, I remember looking out my window on a grey November day, heartbroken, despairing with years of unrequited love, utterly hopeless ... when an imaginary violinist appeared playing a tragic melody and softly singing “Woozoo, woozoo, WOOZoo!” Aaaargh! But despite my utter misery, I discovered a level of consciousness that was observing me suffer! Then, thanks to Jung, I realized in a flash of insight that it is the ego that is suffering, and I grasped the words of Christ in the Gnostic Gospel of John counseling us “to learn to suffer and not to suffer”! So it becomes gradually possible, on occasion, to watch ourselves identifying with our ego. At least it is a first step to a higher level of consciousness. No, it did not solve my problems right then, but I glimpsed a new way of finding a solution. For me, it was finally to find the Beloved within, which may have made it possible for the miracle of meeting and wedding my “Polar Bear” Walter, and for our living eighteen precious years as white-haired Philemon and Baucis.

I cannot conclude without adding another glimpse of my mother in her old age. I was in one room about to enter the one in which she was struggling at her desk to tie a string around a package. It was a very frustrating attempt and she was clumsy. I watched her shaking her head and sighing, “Poor dumb beast!” Aren’t we all!

lovingly,
ao

A Test for Inflations – CREDO XLIX

   
If you read the previous Credo, “Ecce Ego,” you may remember the bit about waving to passing cars. Well, the very next day, I hobbled all the way up to “Trivia,” so-called because three dirt roads meet. The Latin word came to mean “idle matters” because in ancient Rome people would stop and get out of carriages or off their horses to gossip and exchange news. This spot became a turning point for my darling husband and me and, as old as we were, he would play the same game under the big tree there. He would start looking in all directions. I would ask why? He would say, “I’m looking for a maiden.” I would offer innocently to help, whereupon he would exclaim joyously, “I found one!” and then he would hug and kiss me.

My Polar Bear is gone these ten years and the tree is now a stump surrounded by ferns, but I was determined to get up there again. Suddenly a car came by and stopped, and a middle-aged woman got out of the car and effusively thanked me for the months of waving! She said it cheered her up, that it was so special, and could she take my picture? Naturally, I was struck by the synchronicity and the place. In fact, I was delighted!

On my way home, though, I was struck by that word special and its implications. I remembered the words of Christopher Whitmont, my analyst, wise mentor, and later beloved friend. “When you receive a compliment, don’t deny it! Count to ten and offer it up [to your Divine Guest]!” This keeps one from the ego trap of false humility and sends the credit rightfully back up to its source. Oops, watch out!

That night I pondered about the difference between special and blessed. In the familiar “Hail Mary” prayer, Mary is said to be blessed among women and blessed is the fruit of her womb, Jesus. The prayer could certainly have used the word special or unique but it doesn’t. Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig, a Swiss Jungian analyst, wrote a very important book on the Shadow called Power in the Professions. It speaks of the dangers of inflation and the pride of feeling powerful and superior. As many of us are in the helping professions or know someone who is, it is a timely reminder of a potentially unconscious attitude. So often we can refer to patients or clients as “cases,” which suggests an “I-it” approach rather than the “I-Thou” one Jung insisted upon. Jung actually called analysis a maieutic process (note the four vowels!), which means midwifing or helping the patient to give his/her own insight birth.

Then, of course, there is the opposite called negative inflation and the spiritual no-no of scrupulosity in which we consider ourselves the absolute worst person in the world, which is an insult if ever there was one to our Divine Guest!
I think I may have told the story of a client I had who had this problem. We were in the basement of an analyst’s home. I quoted Christ’s words “No man hides a light under a bushel basket.” Her eyes widened in amazement for, unbeknownst to me, there was a stack of bushel baskets in the corner behind me!

This reminds me of another synchronicity in another basement of another analyst’s house. I may also have recounted this before. I was quoting the Hindu guru Dadaji, who said, “God is making love in your heartbeat twenty-four hours a day.” At that moment the furnace went on and the woman, who suffered the same negative inflation, reported that for the rest of the tape she was recording, it went “thump, thump, thump”!

We all need to remember those comforting words! So you can see how blessed I have been by the wise counsel of so many. I hope I can avoid inflation when people call my white hair a sign of wisdom. I can honestly say and will repeat that the more I know, the more I know I don’t know!

lovingly,
ao, about to sign up for cackling lessons!

Ecce ego, mitte me! – CREDO XLVIII

   
Then I heard the Lord saying, who shall I send? Who will go for me? And I answered, Here am I; send me. Go and tell the people:
   “You may listen but not understand
   Look and look again and not know....”
Their wits are dulled, their ears are deafened and their eyes blinded, so having eyes, they do not see, having ears they do not hear, having wits they do not comprehend, so that they may awaken and be healed.
       – Isaiah 6:8-10

As most of you know, I was blessed in meeting my Teacher in 1944. At that time, he told me that there are Teachers unseen around us always trying to guide and help those of us wanting to be of service. Innocently I asked, “How does one get in touch with them?” And he answered, “All one has to do is pray sincerely and volunteer!” He laughed and added, “You’d be surprised how quickly you’ll be put to work, even if it is only a small thing to start with ...” Then he added, “There is nothing spooky about this, the door always opens out, the commitment is only between your own heart and Spirit. But they can’t interfere, you have to ask.” And I thought of Christ’s words, “Knock, and the door will be opened!” It seems they cannot help us unless we ask, and I still have problems remembering that because I feel unworthy. However, it seems to be a spiritual requirement.

I am sharing this because I am convinced that if you are reading this either you are already committed or wondering how to go about it! As I look back over the 64 years that have passed since that conversation, I can see that Ecce ego, mitte me has been the motto of my life, through ups and downs, and a series of inexplicable synchronicities, many of them connected to Jung, I might add.

My path eventually led me to the Hebridean island of Iona and its monastery, founded by St. Columba, and eventually I traveled to Lindisfarne, on the east coast of Northumbria, founded by his disciple St. Aidan. There I found a statue of Aidan with the motto carved into its pedestal. This was over thirty years after my meeting with M.

I associated the Here I am! for years with the boy Samuel in the Old Testament, but last Sunday the full quote from Isaiah came to me as I was listening at 6 am to a homily on TV! And this was the impetus for this Credo, because the state of the world in general seems so awful, so many people suffering in so many places, and so many people, alas, in our own country oblivious to it all, and we here wondering what we can do about it!

The answer I get always is the same – 1 x 1 x 1: “What you do for the least of thy brethren, ye do it unto me!”

Needless to say, I volunteered, and over the years as some of you know, life got pretty interesting. I think it is best described by Joseph Campbell as “the night sea journey”! But I am willing to wager that is true of you who are reading this. We have to suffer and learn not to suffer. On the other hand, each of us is now equipped to come from a real place, because when we are asked to help someone else, we have been there and we are not mouthing a psychology text! For me, this means trying to connect with anyone who comes into my life, however casually, in a real way.

I observed and learned this from an experience in an airport hotel at 5:30 am when my husband and I were having a quick breakfast in a dreary eating place with plastic tables and chairs. The other customers all seemed to be sleepy salesmen. It was a grey and hopeless kind of day. One by one, these men would pay the cashier, who happened to be a middle-aged woman with grey hair.

As each guy came up, I heard her pleasant voice asking them how they were, commiserating about the weather but assuring them with a laugh that it would get better, and so on. Her loving warmth was amazing and I drew Walter’s attention to her as well. She never failed to draw a smile from the customer. When we went up to pay our check, my darling Polar Bear put it best. He said to her “I hope you know that you bring the sunshine into this room.” Her face lit up. She said to us, “Thank you, I try to do my best.” The fact that this happened about twenty years ago and still inspires me, is a testimony. Her gift is still giving.* Come to think of it, all the best teachers I have known have taught by example. It’s not what they say alone but who they are.

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, “My only religion is kindness.”

This obviously is the first step. Each of us has a unique way of serving with different skills, professions, opportunities. The point is that little “pook” of love makes all the difference. The trap for the Age of Aquarius is that it is so transpersonal and needs the balance of its opposite sign, Leo, ruled by the Sun, the source of love. We may get a Social Security check but there is no love in the envelope. One pays the turnpike toll and a little green light says “Thank you.” Mother Teresa said wisely, “I believe in person to person, and that God is in everyone.” The first is praxis and the second is theoria! I noticed yesterday, as I thankfully can still hobble with two sticks up and down the dirt road adjoining my home, that as I wave to the infrequent cars that pass me, I waved six times. One car stopped, and a familiar nameless man cheered me on; two truck drivers and a woman waved back, and two strangers sped by looking straight ahead. Not bad. When I would drive up and down the coast of Western Ireland, it was never ever less than 100%. That’s where I learned the custom.

So now I sign off on a computer, hoping you may somehow receive the pook of love hidden in.

lovingly,
ao!

*I can’t resist relating another extraordinary incident: I had lectured to a Jung Society in Milwaukee, and my husband and I had to catch a very early bus back to Chicago, where I was teaching at The C. G. Jung Institute in Evanston. We were in a dingy, grubby smoke-filled waiting room with about fifteen sleepy people, including a young mother with a three-year-old boy. In the midst of the silence, the child’s voice suddenly proclaimed, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!” Everybody was startled, to say the least, and the little boy giggled and hid his face in his mother’s shoulder. She smiled.

Karma Yoga – CREDO XLVII

   
Jung’s coincidentia oppositorum is a Western expression of a profound universal truth: the manifest world consists of opposites and so does every human psyche. Whether it’s reality and its meaning or ego and Self, the yearning to unite them needs a third (the Transcendent Function is the tab to every zipper!) If you turn the letter Y upside down, you have the idea in its essence. But that’s just the beginning. The word “yoke” comes from the Sanskrit for yoga, which implies this same process of uniting expressed by Hindus for centuries in various ways. The basic purpose of yoga is to reunite each of us from the distress of separation from the atman or Spirit. In the West, we would say God, Christ Within, Jung’s “Self” or, as I call it, our Divine Guest. The etymological roots of our word “religion” are the Lat. re-ligare, to bind back, which is another way of putting it.

For centuries, Hindus perfected various processes to enable this, and they realized “different strokes for different folks.” Here are a few briefly defined:

1) Hatha Yoga – perfecting the physical body as an instrument through postures and movements to reach higher consciousness. This is the best known yoga in the West because it also results in good health.

2) Raja Yoga – the monastic vocation of monk or nun, considered the royal road to this union.

3) Jnana Yoga (pronounced gnana) – the most difficult path of the intellect. Thomas Aquinas is an example in the West.

4) Bhatki Yoga – the path of loving devotion expressed through all the arts devoted to personal praise of God and gratitude. This was popular for us in the ’70s with chanting of “Hari, hari Krishna!” and the first popular introduction of Hinduism through the Beatles. For many it led to a deep commitment to its spiritual goal and an exposure to the others mentioned above. I find it helpful to remember that the polytheism of Hinduism was to help discern the various aspects of the ineffable One, Brahman. This gives choice for individual needs. Gods and goddesses in all faiths represent the personification of archetypal processes and go by different names in different cultures. To realize this can deepen our understanding of so-called pagan religions. When some of us pray to St. Anthony to find something or St. Jude to help a hopeless case, it is much the same concept. We are, after all, human beings and it helps to have Spirit come to us through a human being as a shining instrument. We are blessed in the great ones who have come to us through the Ages in different times and different cultures. They surely all deserve appreciation rather than selective rejection.

And then there is 5) Karma Yoga – the humble layman’s path. Years ago, I read the definition:

To practice Karma Yoga is to live a life in the world and give all of the fruits of your actions to God.

“Aha!” said I to myself, “that’s for me! I can do that.” So, fervently I began to review my day every night and to try most sincerely to find anything I deemed worthy to offer up. About ten days later, I found myself getting more and more depressed! I despaired. What was I doing so wrong? I carefully reread the definition several times, and I suggest that you, the reader, do likewise. What word had I missed?

It was the little word ‘all’. What does that word imply? The whole Schmier! That would mean one’s failures, as well! Oh dear!

By unconsciously sorting so carefully, the you-know-what was piling up behind my door! No wonder, I was depressed. This yoga was intended to make one conscious of both success and failure, and the necessity for honestly saying “I blew it!” yet be willing to keep trying. Karma means cause and effect.

Now as an old lady, I realize that I am unable to break most of the Ten Commandments and so am resigned to sinning on the installment plan! The Sufis have a word for this, so I’m not off the hook. They call it the nafs – those nasty little things one does or thinks or says. They even have a wise proverb:

Before you speak let your words pass through three sieves:
    Is it true?
    Is it kind?
    Is it necessary?

Were we to follow this counsel, think how many of the printed and spoken words we could eliminate with one mental delete!

Needless to say, all three great Western religions have various ways of dealing with guilt-relieving confessions, but the Episcopalian one I grew up with has the ghastliest one of all. It goes like this:

Dear Lord forgive me for all those things I have done that I ought not to have done and for all those things that I have not done that I ought to have done!

For me, that second one is a psychological abyss! Beware of falling into it.
It is as bad as defining yourself by what you are not!!

Sigh.

Out to the garden with my ego to eat worms!

lovingly,
ao