Busting Out of the Bubble of Delusion (How All the Best Answers Can Pass Us By)

“Deluded by ignorance, man mistakes one thing for another. Lack of discernment will cause a man to think that a snake is a piece of rope. When he grasps it in this belief he runs a great risk. The acceptance of the unreal as real constitutes the state of bondage. Pay heed to this my friend…”

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from Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination

            It’s just the nature of the way our minds work that the world as we perceive it seems like a pretty important, pressing, and immediate thing. It’s really the tiny bubble of anxious circumstances that surround us – the bills we have to pay, the kids we have to pick up, the movies we ‘have’ to see, the politics we need to get our panties in a bunch about. In this ‘western’ society we live in, even when we expand our focus beyond that personal immediacy, we tend to look to mainstream media as the window to the rest of world – but in fact that is a tiny bubble of delusion, too. We end up getting our heads [literally] wired into a kind of sphere of presumed realities, when if we simply step back from it all and look at it objectively, we can see most of it isn’t really real at all.

What we all seem to have here is actually a perception problem – or let's call it a limited perception problem.

            There’s a lot of powerful forces that play with us in this way these days, what with all of the devices that we're constantly engaged with – hi-tech pocket belief-inseminators that enclose us in a kind of “protective and secure” bubble of reality, where our fears are managed by our ability to confirm what’s most comfortable to us. They don’t simply connect us to a very particular world, they monitor the complexities of our every reaction, and keep instant tabs on our fears and desires – in order to better form the realities they would have us presume. We walk around, staring at screens, surrounding our heads in a bubble of ideas that support a “safe” and entitled worldview—when just beyond the bubble’s confines, we clearly see that certain very very important things are going terribly wrong, and require some legitimate, immediate and principled attention too.

            Our mainstream media even goes so far as to constantly parrot that those profound values we’ve always taken for granted – values like honesty, sanity, responsibility, civility, and charity – are passé and archaic. We’re continuously told that we live in a “post-truth” world, when the actual truth we all know intuitively is this:  NO, WE DON’T.

We’re told that we have to look at things in one of two, or possibly three ways only, and by that volition we’re given the precious (democratic) gift of “choice,” when, in reality, if we’re only looking at the three choices presented in that one little bubble of delusion, we are actively surrendering a virtual ocean of far superior choices – the truly powerful potential we are actually swimming in all the time. That “acceptance of the unreal as real” is what “constitutes the state of bondage.”

It’s time for us to start paying attention to what we’re paying attention to!

“…illumining with the candle of our ego a bright circle of awareness, we also darken the remainder of the room…The process of making conscious thereby also makes unconscious…the ego concentrates into one pole the divine primordial half-light, thereby also darkening the divine.”

                                    James Hillman, from Senex and Puer

            The destruction of our planet's environmental balance, the willful vivocide of the planet’s biodiversity, the aggressive misappropriation of the Earth’s resources by a fearful minority, the rejection of the very values that keep humanity a going concern, and the suppression of Life’s collective intelligence, reason, and spiritual sanity are the ruinous symptoms of living in that little ego-bubble of delusion – of only casting light on to a tiny bubble of manufactured interests at the expense of keeping our real well-being, and our responsible stewardship of the planet and all the life on it, ignored in a realm of increasing darkness. We’re painting ourselves into a corner and trying to be happy cowering there because we’re essentially being brainwashed to think it’s the “best” choice we have.

Break out of that bubble now!

Turn away from that artificial technological reality, and place your faith in the miraculous underlying spiritual technology that supports and sustains all of being. Fear is what separates us, fear is what divides us – Love is our unifying reality. The presence of Love as a defining inspiration for change and growth is what must free us. The true reality of this amazing life is alive in that surrounding universe of infinite creativity—everything that isn’t within that tiny bubble of fear—the ocean of innovation, interdependence, and the energy of Love alive in all things, and available in absolutely every other direction we have to choose from—where all the spiritual solutions we need plainly are awaiting us.

“As you become more truly alive, you see an infinitude of universes, a beginningless, boundless sea of life, energy, and delight, full of goodness, aware of itself in its absolute ultimate peace and security, freedom and happiness.”

                                    Robert Thurman, Infinite Life

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct on this page or online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!

Why Do We Have to Die?

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”  Lao Tzu

I have the dubious distinction of having "died" three times, experiences I definitely don't recommend; and obviously, I didn't really die because I wouldn't be talking to you now. What I did do was to survive three "Near Death Experiences," each one completely different from the other; and since my books about it (and more), How to Survive Life (and Death) and How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying) were published, I've found myself answering a lot of questions about what death is, what it's like to die, and to the point of this piece: Why do we have to die?

Well, apparently I came back to give you some good news, and some bad news, all based on my (painfully obtained) understanding of it. The good news is that we don't really die, spiritually speaking, we only die to this life of flesh and bones and blood (but many of you suspected as much, I'm sure). The bad news is that we do have to die – our souls seem to require it. On top of that, we have to die in a number of different ways, none of which are all that pleasant, and all of which seem designed to accomplish the same thing. Here's what I mean by that:

If you've ever been around a loved one who's dying, or if you've ever been gravely ill or injured yourself, you know that there's no bluster left in your game in those moments. No claim to fame or fortune remains at all relevant in that grounding bubble of unfortunate reality. What's realized then is a state of absolute humility, where there's no longer any external importance attached, no pretense of "winning"–even though you really are, in a way, because you're free. That state of absolute humility is really a state of grace. You are reduced to the simplest condition of egoless selfhood – the state of simply being who you really are.

Counterintuitively, from that point on everything becomes possible, because in a way, you're starting over. In the grand–call it cosmically spiritual–picture, this happens in a big way when you actually physically die (reincarnation-wise, that is). But first, let's look at the other ways, the other "deaths" our souls require. Let's consider the 'living deaths' that also cause us to regenerate a new, unavoidably more authentic life. Let's look at the difficult times that lead us to be "born again" in this life.

When we witness the death of our family or friends. When a lover or spouse has a change of heart, and decides that they have to leave us and move on to their own new life. When a job or serious expectation we have suddenly, unexpectedly vaporizes – these are all "deaths," of a sort, that cause us to reconsider who we thought we were, and to consider anew who we may have to be from here on. Each death of this sort opens us up, strips us down, and makes us teachable about how we can change and improve our lives on that most important spiritual level – unattached to the material definitions and expectations that have failed to make us happy.

When we learn those hardest-of-all lessons – that our material, ego-based outsides aren't what's really important; when we "die" to that superficial sense of ourselves, and let go of who we thought we were, we instantly expand into Consciousness, and it suddenly becomes possible to become who we all authentically are – not as separate, searching individuals – but instead as loving, giving, creative, contributing pieces of a divine wholeness. Expressions of a single, love-based reality.

Now, let's get back to when we actually die physically. According to the Tibetan Buddhist monks (who really do know all about this stuff), if we don't learn these lessons on a spiritual level, and continue behaving like human animals, delusionally feeding from one desire to the next, we'll be reincarnated as a wild beast, most likely. In the meantime, we'll destroy ourselves, each other, and our planet. Quite a setback on either count, you can be sure.

When I had my experiences I lost my earthly body, and I lost my material identity, but I never lost Consciousness. Instead, I was folded into it. In two of my three NDEs, a new life effervescently expanded around me, I was liberated from the constraining limitations of the material life, and seemingly anything became possible. 

So, I'm afraid we do have to die to this difficult form – in a number of difficult ways. That's the deal here, this is a difficult life. But if we, in a way, embrace death – our many "little" deaths and our one "big" one – they will liberate us to our new, unimaginably amazing and wondrous potential, in this life or our next.

And that (I have learned, the hard way) is why we have to die, and have to keep dying. Our souls require it to merge us into our greater life in Love and Consciousness – into a life beyond our wildest dreams.

"Without a dying to the world of the old order, there is no place for renewal, because…it is illusory to hope that growth is but an additive process requiring neither sacrifice nor death. The soul favors the death experience to usher in change."

James Hillman, Suicide and the Soul

So it does appear that our souls "favor," even require, these 'death' experiences to enter the state-of-being that we think of when we think of "Heaven" —you've got to die to go to Heaven, everyone knows that. And everyone has had a taste of "Heaven on Earth" at one time or another in their life, so we know it is possible to find it here and now (in a much easier way...). We look into the guides to getting there in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), now available from Llewellyn Worldwide.

Read a related article: Suicide and the Superficial Self, at Gaia's "Spiritual Growth."

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct on this page or online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!

The James Hillman Tribute: To a Life of Passionate Participation

            Saturday, May 4th 2013 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, there was a tribute to my late uncle (by marriage) James Hillman, the preeminent Jungian psychologist and philosopher, presented by his wife Margot McLean. For a man of James' academic stature, you might expect a gathering of global dignitaries and the cream of Higher Education, and there you would not have been disappointed. The surprise came not from who was or wasn't there, but rather from what the participants brought to the occasion. 

There were no long-winded inventories of James' accomplishments and awards. Scant mention of his many literary successes, the countless people he had helped through his patient therapeutic practice, or the legions of students he had educated. It wasn't even mentioned that he had served as the Director of the Jung Institute, and that his re-imaginings of Dr. Jung's ideas revolutionized psychology, injected new life into the archetypal mission of the modern gnostic, and reanimated the mystical dance around academia that Dr. Jung himself had struggled with his whole career – these facts were only briefly touched upon. 

Instead, during the course of the afternoon, the intellectual feats and rigorous excursions into the human psyche placed second to Uncle Jimmy's demonstrated love of a great joke well told, and his late-in-life devotion to tap dancing – two pursuits possessing the syncopation and joy that arises from the expression of pure being, from a rhythmic persistent and passionate participation in Life. Kla-tappity, tappity, tappity, tap tap! and a beautiful punchline – there it is!  And apparently no one, not even the most elevated academician in attendance, had shown up with anything else in mind other than simply getting right down to the heart of the matter.  

Along the way we were given that insight, so precious in any human story, into a childhood and young life, into the struggles and trauma and family dynamics that fashioned the spirit of a man who would spend his life delving into the mysteries of the human psyche; and leaving us to wonder, did he ever understand his own? Can any of us truly know ourselves? What lies at the heart of those shifting, elusive personal motivations that seem to define each of us outwardly?

Our friends, our families, our paths are hewn out of the "stuff that dreams are made of," karmatic partnerships and forgotten agreements – a program for personal evolution hashed out in a dimension that can only be tentatively experienced from this perspective of life.
  

The testimony, pentimento, and presence of every person there revealed the truth beneath our shared surface in a way that Uncle James, or any other philosopher – or even poet – can only hope to approximate with words. That truth held within the simplest truth of being:  This is all miraculous, and we are all miracles.  Friendship, laughter, and unexpected tap dancing stole the show from academic reason, and instead induced a sense of wonder at the real power that one man's spirit could carry.

Naturally, in a group with the sensibilities you'd expect to come together and celebrate one of the great explorers of the soul, most everyone there was pretty much on the same page. It's a page found fairly deep inside all of our own books, amongst one of many dog-eared pages that we have all read and reread, written and re-written over and over, hoping to get to that heart of the matter ourselves.

But there it was, within that moment together, unmistakably illuminated by the light shining from one elemental man's life:  Beneath the surface of everyone present, from the possessors of all the keys to those who've clearly had to jump out a couple back windows; from the accomplished to the unknown to the silly rich and noble poor – the shiny, the ancient, the aloof and outgoing; under our outfits and hair-dos and don'ts and eyeglasses and shoes, there was what Uncle Jimmy was writing about, what he'd been tap dancing on top of through all those chapters and passages –

When we peel away the skin that forms around this life, that seems to contain and define it and ourselves, we find our greater self – that expansive well we all spring from together. There is the scintillating, effervescent, joyful field of being whose name we come closest to when we call it Love. Everyone everywhere knows it intuitively, but only gets to occupy it on rare occasion. Everyone there knew it and felt it too. This was one such occasion.

A personal hero of mine, Coleman Barks, the poet and translator of the great Sufi poet Rumi, was there, among the many others whose lives are to be celebrated as well. I introduced myself to him, to thank him for the gifts I'd received from his work, at once he said "pull up a chair,"  and immediately it became clear that here was a man whose heart had been permanently pried wide open by the essence of the timeless poetry that he'd been channeling for years.

Mr. Barks and Rumi prove that there are words that can express this invisible thing we share, and I was reminded of a piece of Rumi from his book Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion that describes (with lotus-like architecture similar to that found in the Upanishads) a room within the heart with a window from which one can actually behold The Divine. It is available to all of us, the one requirement being that you have to find your way into that room.

Occupying that precious address requires a persistence and passion great enough to realize the eternal self in all things; a willingness to participate in the constant upheaval and revelation that comes about by living a life worth living, and letting go of it with the kind of grace that Uncle James had. The spirit of all the day's presenters completed the portrait of a man who helps us kick in the door to that room, when we need to; when only breaking in allows us to discover the heart of the matter. Acquiring that view is an inside job indeed.

At the gathering afterwards, I realized that at least for that one moment in our earthly lives, we were all in that room together. It is a very nice view to have shared with such a nice group of people. Thank you James, and thank you Margot, for opening the window for us to look through. 

How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is now available, from Llewellyn Worldwide and can be ordered online here. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere – but ask for them both at your local bookstore!

On James Hillman: Au Revoir, and Hello to Uncle Jimmy.

Week before last, my uncle (by marriage) James Hillman – Jungian analyst, scholar and teacher, champion of the psyche, and "renegade" psychologist passed away into the world that comes after this, venturing into a dimension that I'm certain he's currently delighted to discover, given that he'd always dedicated himself to the most profound explorations of life [and death] with all the impetuousness and willingness to be amazed that was his nature. (I didn't know him all that well, but I knew that much for sure.)

I met him first six or seven years ago at a Hillman family reunion at his home in Connecticut with my then-fianceé-now-wife, his niece; again at his eightieth birthday; and then when he attended (...and boogied on down) at our wedding, with his wonderful wife, Margot McLean.

On our first meeting, I was in a formative part of a personal re-configuration, of sorts, doing lots of meditation and reading, but not knowing yet that I'd be called to set down my own personal explorations and discoveries, much less how to go about it. I'd cursorily examined some of his writing (The Soul's Code was in my then wife-to-be's bookshelf), and while he spoke so authoritatively of the same wilderness that I wanted to describe, I found myself more than a bit confounded.

Here was the voice of a true explorer into labyrinthine reaches I'd only just recently been opened to, but speaking in a language that I found nearly indecipherable. It was the language of an academician of the highest order, and as such seemed dense and elaborately logical to me, at the time. But I also saw that it was the welcome language of a Jungian mystic, a popular Gnostic, and a playful articulator. As it was very deep stuff, I began to recognize him as a sort of Jungian Jacques Cousteau of the psyche, diving into the imagery of mythic imaginings, bringing colorful, long lost archetypes to the surface and joyfully rubbing them clean for closer examination. That was his contagious joy of discovery.

He found me on the fringe of the family's reunion activities, perusing the books on his shelf and work table and asked,"Well, what do you think?" I answered that I thought it was a remarkable thing to undertake, "describing the indescribable." His eyes widened and looked straight into mine, "Describing the indescribable," he repeated, "...I suppose so." He smiled (he was always smiling), jumped up and ran off to his duties, to the happy ritual of organizing his family's past and present.

I never got the chance to have the conversation with him that I would have liked to have had—about ourselves, and our relation to all of it; about what I took to be his redefinitions of karma and reincarnation; his marvelous rejection of the intricacies of prescribed psychology, and his instead gleeful embrace of so many of the heroic and romantic idylls of mythology and lost civilization that I'd always wished I could define myself by, when I was a child...when I was that "acorn" growing toward what my life might ask me to become.

Here was a man (suddenly my uncle), who'd given to the entire world that rich and provocative opportunity for self-definition, who'd opened the trap door to that amazing underworld of fantastic self-configuration, embellished and defined by the shared timeless imagery of our psyches. He was a kind of wiry, jocular 80 year-old Heracles, pushing the glasses up on his nose, wrapping up his labors and splashing around like a kid in this gnostic reflecting pool we call Life on Earth. Wrestling with the demiurge was always that much fun for him.

All that had seemed so complex to me at first now winnows itself down to a very direct, playful formula for living... with me dressed in a toga, with a scuba mask, and maybe eagle feathers—and a sword, and a chariot (with Krishna driving, that would complete the picture). Anything to help describe me to my self—or vice-versa.

"It's important to ask yourself, "How am I useful to others? What do people want from me?" That may very well reveal what you are here for."

James Hillman

Enormous respect arose out of the realization that so many of the "amazing" discoveries I thought I was discovering for the very first time were merely simple, commonplace blips and bits of the contents of what his life's work contained. Just a couple out-of-the-way corners of his inexhaustible imagination. Ego jumped in, as usual, and told me "you'll never be that," but then that would be missing Uncle Jimmy's point, wouldn't it? You can be. You are now. We all are!

"Sooner or later something seems to call us on to a particular path...this is what I must do, this is what I've got to have. This is who I am."

James Hillman

It was, after all, his life's work, and whenever I saw him, he most definitely was not working, but instead was taking part in a kind of ongoing celebration of all of Life's moments with the same logical attention to detail – the significance of that very moment, the nuances of storytelling...and always the setting-up of a good joke. There was that Zen fun, the updated Laughing Buddha (with a Jewish twist), invoking the joy of the eternal moment.

"Just stop for a minute and you'll realize you're happy just being. I think it's the pursuit that screws up happiness. If we drop the pursuit, it's right here."

James Hillman

Being a strong believer in the seamlessly continuous nature of life and death, and death and life, I'm looking forward in getting to know Uncle Jimmy better, and asking his help with my own awkward spelunking, in hopes I'll surface with some self-defining evidence from those "other worlds" that we've all inhabited, that focus themselves right here and now. Maybe I can joyfully rub the muck off of those bits and blips, and give them a good once over.

I've pulled together a few locations for you to explore James' life and ideas, and sincerely hope you do. The Wikipedia entry is pretty straight-up and does contain a bibliography. Of particular note are the two really wonderful interviews with Pythia Peay on HuffPo, and Scott London on his excellent site. The YouTube piece is great, but nothing I found really communicates just how funny he is...Enjoy! ...and thank you, Uncle Jimmy.

How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is now available, from Llewellyn Worldwide and can be ordered online here. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere – but ask for them both at your local bookstore!

Tales: Channel Surfing the Cascading Ethics

"Only that which can destroy itself is truly alive." Dr. Carl Jung

I was watching a show on PBS called Nova Science Now "How Smart are Animals," which had some wonderful demonstrations of animal intelligence and emotional sensitivity, but didn't manage much more human awareness concerning the quality of our animal partners' consciousness than existed in the '60s, back when Dr. John Lilly was doing a lot of the same things with dolphins as was shown on this show documenting "the latest" science can offer. It tended to depict intelligent animals as performers - the standard egoic human-enhancing context.

"...not from a law being passed, but from each human understanding innately that these are ancient, sentient earth residents, with tremendous intelligence and enormous life force. Not someone to kill, but someone to learn from."

Dr. John C. Lilly, about dolphins

But still, it demonstrates expanding global awareness to even allow that animals are much smarter and more conscious than people (corporate media) dare to admit. We're the only ones on the planet who have to wear clothes, go to school, get jobs, eat processed food, worry about our baldness (or facial hair), or try to find God. Who's really got this Life on Earth thing mastered - us, or the "lower" species?

We may not fully realize this truth until they're all gone. But I think we will. In fact many more people than publicized know plenty about animal consciousness already.

"Denial is the acceptance of ignorance as truth

through force of will."

At the same time, on The Biography Channel, there was a show called "Mediums: We See Dead People," that investigated irrefutable evidence supporting the validity of human psychic abilities; even to go so far as relating psychic powers to quantum non-locality and wave function, suggesting that there is an extra-dimensional field of accessible information within the Time/Space Continuum; and suggesting that this human form temporarily plays host to an extra-dimensional spiritual being.

Of course, all that's been very well known for thousands of years, but the knowledge has slowly, deliberately been covered-up by egoic commercial and political forces, so they could use it for their own designs. It's not covered-up anymore. It's on The Biography Channel.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing

There is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense."

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273)

On yet another news channel, a young Egyptian man describes the composition of the crowds of his country's revolutionary protesters: they are young; they are educated; they are tech-savvy; they are peaceful; they consider themselves part of a global community; they are tolerant, and open-minded; and they have had enough of unethical behavior from political leaders. In short, they are the human consciousness movement that is growing exponentially in our world today.

The "power elite" is being backed into their corner, making their last stand, as the huge shadow of rising global ethics covers them, and their corrupt hegemony begins to unravel. It's obvious to everyone, except only the most intolerant, self-centered, and closed-minded minority. When these changes become inevitable, materialists squirm and consolidate, and create the conditions for their extinction in the coming tsunami of ethics, and the Great Flood of the human spirit.

"We need to work on the world, so it will not be so oppressive." James Hillman

In a wonderful interview in HuffPost, even my crafty, wise, and very congenial uncle (by marriage), Dr. James Hillman, preeminent Jungian analyst, author, and social commentarian, suggests that the "Super Rich" are considering the ethical alternative to bottomless greed and elite criminality, but his assertion is framed within the corporate media context of right and wrong, black and white, us vs. them - a context which he rightly condemns. That frame is far too narrow for what's going on here, as the spiritual consciousness of this planet, and all life on it begins to dynamically coalesce into material ethical reality. The standard of exploitation will be destroyed, and a new world will arise.

The truth is not black and white; it's not even shades of grey. The truth can be seen from all the way out in space, where, in some other planet's space-based telescope, it simply appears as a small, round ball of blue.

"The common name for God used by the sages is HaMakom, "the place." God is the place of the world, the field in which all things arise and return."

Rabbi Rami Shapiro, on The Pirke Avot