The Dream that Heals and the River that Flows Through Us

Recently, just before having a scary medical test, I had a dream that I not only remembered afterwards in detail, but which greatly affected me. Actually, remembered might not be the most accurate way to describe what happened, because I was partly awake even while I was dreaming.

 

In the dream, I was visiting the city of my birth and wanted to call my parents. They were back in the home where I grew up, even though they had moved out of that house several years before either my mom’s or my dad’s death. And in the dream, I knew all this, knew they had died years ago. Yet, I still wanted to call them on the phone, but I had forgotten their phone number.

 

Suddenly, I was with a group of friends entering a restaurant not far from my parent’s old home, not far from my old home. The friends and I had reservations for dinner. But I decided to quickly walk to my parent’s house, tell them I would come by after dinner and stay the night, and I’d get their phone number.

 

When I got to the house, I looked in the front window. Both my parents were there. They were entertaining other couples. But they had a security guard at the door, a tall, strong man standing in a darkened area of the front porch. The guard knew about me, had heard stories from my parents. He even told me about his own son who was training in the martial arts. But he wouldn’t let me in without checking my ID. I showed him my driver’s license and he said I could enter.

 

As soon as I did, I was swept up in the feel, the atmosphere of the past. I was there, in my old home, with my parents very fully there, right there, and yet I also knew they were no longer alive.

 

Then I woke up. Somehow, dreaming this dream changed my whole emotional situation. I felt good, no longer afraid of the medical test, or maybe anything. It was not that I felt my parents could, now, speak to me. But seeing them made my past come alive ⎼ and was possibly telling me something about my future. About not fearing death, maybe? Or about fear itself? About reality?

 

We wander to so many places in our dreams, and we can dream and wander both while asleep and awake. Daydreams, and all manner of thoughts and images can run around our minds all through the day, accessing the same river of imagery as night dreams.

 

The dream clearly reminded me how much I missed my parents and that they were still with me, as me. And that includes so much more than their DNA. No one is perfect, but my parents, more than anyone, taught me to love. But was the security guard a gatekeeper to a mythic realm or heaven, or maybe a form of Charon without his ferryboat, taking my dream mind to the other shore? And why had I forgotten their phone number?…

 

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

Are We the Masked Species? What Can Wearing a Mask Teach Us About Ourselves?

What can wearing a COVID-mask teach us about ourselves and how we look at others? After almost two years of living in a pandemic, we could benefit by thinking not only about how wearing a mask can protect others from us, or us from a deadly disease, but about what mask wearing can teach us about ourselves, and relating to others.

 

We use the word person to refer to what we are and say we have a personality. The root word here is Latin, persona, meaning a social role, image, or a theatrical mask or appearance we wear in public. Psychologist Carl Jung used the term to mean the social face we present to others, a mask or image we create, or way to hide elements of ourselves. So, in a way we were the masked species even before the pandemic.

 

From antiquity, masks have been an important element of possibly all cultures. Most staged dramas began with performers wearing masks. In Ancient Greece, for example, the legendary poet, Thespis, was supposedly the first to put an actor on a stage and turn choral recitation into drama. He created larger than life masks that also acted like a megaphone. The first written stories were myths with existential and religious themes, about creation, life and death, heroes, and heroines. The first dramas were enacted myths, so drama emerged from religious ceremonies. But what happens when we wear an actual medical mask in public while doing everyday tasks?

 

Of course, politics also enters the picture, as the right-wing in the US and elsewhere have turned a medical necessity into a political statement, thus undermining the effectiveness of masks as simply a practical way to prevent the spread of a deadly disease. This influences how we respond to masks and perceive those who wear them, as well as undermines the value of rational, factual based decision-making. It purposefully turns the social sphere, the public commons into a stage for enacting a political and possibly even a religious drama.

 

Other people are no longer perceived as persons very much like us, but as characters in a drama. And when political leaders of one party threaten and call for violence against another party or against anyone who disagrees with them, that drama can too easily become deadly.

 

According to a research article by Frontiers in Psychology, COVID masks cover about 60-70% of the area of the face responsible for emotional expression. This makes identification of others or any social interaction more difficult. It limits the ability of other people to read our emotions and hear what we say, as the sound of our words is usually augmented by the sight of our lips moving and changes in facing expression. Consciously reading subtle emotional cues as well as the trustworthiness or honesty of others can be difficult enough for many of us without a mask. A mask obviously diminishes this ability.

 

How much does a mask become a blank slate for us to project our own personal dramas? We all know how deeply important how our face looks is to most of us. Especially today, with so many suffering from anxiety and trauma, we can feel extremely sensitive, self-judgmental about how we look, afraid of the tiniest “imperfections.” …

 

**To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Using Mindfulness and Empathic Imagination in Teaching the Story From Day One

I’d like to share with you what I learned from teaching a middle school class called “The Story From Day One,” which integrated mindfulness and visualization exercises with the language arts curriculum.

We often teach myths as merely literature, divorced from the cultural, spiritual, and historical context. But we pay a price for this approach. It limits the depth of meaning students can derive from their study.

Combine this with the narrow focus on the now that social media can foster, and students easily feel isolated on an island of self, cut off not only from their contemporaries, but from a sense of the continuity of life. They have little grasp of how their lives today emerge from yesterday.

 

Suggested Myths to Teach in Your Class

 

In my Story From Day One course, we read several myths from around the world, of creation, of tricksters and of heroes, including:

 

Integrating Mindfulness with Academic Content 

Start lessons with a mindfulness exercise so students can calm and clear their minds, better understand how their inner lives affect their outer ones, and notice how they respond to words, stories, and other people.

After mindfulness practice, ask questions that challenge assumptions and reveal what was hidden, so each lesson becomes the solving of a mystery. For example, before teaching a class on language or vocabulary, ask:

 

How can words (mere sounds or collections of marks on a page or device) mean anything?

Do words have meanings, or do people give words meanings?

Imagine a time when words were almost magical, when to give your word was deeper than a legal contract today. If you felt your words were like magic, how would that change how you spoke? (Share this old Eskimo poem.)

 

To read the whole post, please go to Mindfulteachers.org.

Teaching The Story From Day One

I’d like to share with you what I learned from teaching a middle school class called ‘The Story From Day One,’ which integrated mindfulness, visualization and inquiry exercises with the language arts curriculum.

We often teach myths as merely literature, divorced from the cultural, spiritual, and historical context. But we pay a price for this approach. It limits the depth of meaning students can derive from their study.

Combine this with the narrow focus on the now that social media can foster, and students easily feel isolated on an island of self, cut off not only from their contemporaries, but from a sense of the continuity of life. They have little grasp of how their lives today emerge from yesterday.

Kieran Egan, educator and author, advises in his wonderful book Imagination In Teaching And Learning: The Middle School Years, to design lessons with a narrative structure, understanding not only the skills and knowledge we want to develop but the transcendent qualities in the subject studied.

To excite students, especially middle school students who are still close to, if not seeped in, this age of magic, and who have a natural yearning for adventure and awe: Use stories of facing the extremes of reality and limits of experience, of heroes braving dangers and encountering wonders, to connect to and utilize students’ romantic imagination and emotional awareness to better understand course material.

A good way to begin is with Gilgamesh, the protagonist in the first written epic story, recorded sometime around 2100 BCE. Gilgamesh is the first literary hero, actually the first greatly flawed superhero. The story also introduces a precursor to the biblical Noah and the flood, as well as central themes that have filled literature ever since.

First There Was Breath, Then There Were Words, Then There Were Stories.

The first step in teaching mythology, literature, and language is to create the space in the classroom so language comes fully alive to students. Where they feel as well as examine what they say and read.

 

To read the whole post, click on this link to the ImaginEd website which published this piece.

The Wasteland of Today

“April is the cruelest month, breeding

            Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

            Memory and desire, stirring

            Dull roots with spring rain.

 

So begins The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, first published in 1922. It is considered a landmark, one of the most important poems of the twentieth century.  I disagree profoundly with the author’s political and religious beliefs, yet find the imagery truly beautiful and able to reflect today’s world in startling ways.

 

During this hard winter of 2018, I long for spring, but fear it will never come—or, even worse, fear that the meaning of spring will be forever violated. I think of spring as renewal, as a “sea of green” (Beatles) pushing out the “dull roots” (T. S. Eliot). I might be reminded of old memories and longings. But what I see around me, politically and otherwise, is a modern version of the kingdom of the mythical, wounded Fisher King described in Eliot’s poem. The King was made impotent possibly due to crimes in his court, including the rape of some of the women. Eliot speaks of Philomel, a girl whose tongue was cut out after being raped by her brother-in-law. She was then transformed into a nightingale—the male of the species can sing and lament, but the female is mute:

 

“The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king

            So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale

            Filled all the desert with inviolable voice…

            Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

            Spread into fiery points

            Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.”

 

Instead of fishing, Trump plays golf and watches right-wing television. His wound grows from his shortsightedness, greed and misogyny. He has bragged of using women and his court hides those who would do the same, like Rob Porter, the one-time White House chief of staff. Yet, the women of the “me-too” movement of today are not mute, and might provide the force that heals our land.

 

            What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

            Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

            You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

            A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

            And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

            And the dry stone no sound of water.

 

This is the world Eliot saw, but Trump’s vision is a twisted brother to it. As he said at his inauguration: “But for too many of our citizens… Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation…” Except he is the one leading those who lay waste the land. He violates the laws that would protect us, our air and water, and sells off our common lands to oil, gas, and other corporations to be stripped and mined. When the water meant for all is stolen, sold off to private corporations, the soul is desiccated, and becomes like soil without water. What could possibly grow from this “stony rubbish”? Trump drives the nation toward bankruptcy, driving up the debt, giving to the rich even more riches, giving to the military instead of public education or infrastructure, and trying to take from most of us the services and income put away for retirement.

 

Eliot bemoaned the modern age and the “rule of the mob” and yearned for a more aristocratic time. Although Trump likewise yearns for another time, to “Make America Great Again,” to make America whiter with himself as the ruler, he is just the kind of uneducated, selfish, and superficial person Eliot bemoaned. He is a man who knows only “broken images” of life. His vision is born of isolation and madness. Other people can only comfort his soul by bowing to it. And when the leader is mad, the whole nation suffers. What crimes can be committed, what morals violated, by a mad ruler?

 

“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

            Speak with me. Why do you never speak. Speak.

             What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

            I never know what you’re thinking. Think.”

 

There is such loneliness here, such a desire to be able to hear and feel what another person feels, such closeness to a mental breakdown. Can’t anyone reach me? No matter what is said, the world is mute.

 

“Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head?“ Eliot asked this of the reader of his time. For us, once again we hear a man who cannot feel the life of others. No speech can touch him, so he blatantly lies to and uses others for his own gain. Lying so blatantly is like reaching out with a hand made of dust to a person made of shadow.

 

            “…I will show you something different from either

            Your shadow at morning striding behind you

            Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

            I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

 

This is our ultimate fear today—that a mad ruler will reduce us to mere shadows becoming dust.

 

The poem ends with the Fisher King, a wound in his side or groin, sitting at the shore, with “the arid plain behind [him],” and thinking about setting his lands in order. It ends in a sort of chant, borrowed from Hinduism, which raises the possibility of a path to renewal:
            “Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyatta.

                        Shantih Shantih Shantih.”

 

Translation: “Give, show compassion and control yourself.

[Find] Peace, tranquility,” or find what T. S. Eliot translated as, “The peace that passeth understanding.” (from Philippians 4:7).

 

I think the only way to set our nation in order, and bring spring rain to the dried land, is to look clearly at what is happening around us, and to feel that others have an inner life similar to, yet different from, our own. They, like us, feel, suffer and ache for joy. Such feeling is the water of life. It is only through noticing this feeling that our connection with, and need for, others becomes clear, our deepest intelligence is awakened, and our ability to act effectively is realized.

 

Kindness is not weakness but wisdom.

 

*This post, originally written in February, was published yesterday by OTV Magazine. To read the whole post, click on this link. Enjoy.

The Story From Day One

Words were once magic. They did not speak about ideas but were acts of creation. You said ‘sun’ and a sun appeared. You said ‘happy’ and it was so. You said ‘devil’ and you ran. (See Eskimo poem, 160) Students are seeped in or not far from this age of magic. If they’re lucky, even in high school some of this magic still sticks to them.

 

This insight helps explain why young children love myths and tales of ancient civilizations so much. Without such words, there would be no myths. Without myths or a similar context, there would be no words. Myths are magical words sculpted into storied beings and worlds. Myths are not and should not be taught just as literature but as the art of world creation. We need to teach students to try and understand these worlds, and try to understand and enjoy the great differences in perspective they represent. Understanding these differences in perspective teaches us what it means to be human. William Erwin Thompson said myths are not just read but enacted. And Joseph Campbell said they are stories that you live. They are, or once were, sacred. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God…”[John 1:1, Genesis 1:3]

 

So much of our lives are lived within words that we forget their magic. This was true in the past and is still true for many of us in the present. Plus nowadays, more of us use and think of words from a distance. We study words, how they can be implements of construction and destruction. This study brings word histories and meanings to the surface but also might keep us close to the surface, obscuring depths of experience.

 

I used to teach a class called The Story From Day One. It began with worldwide myths of creation, heroes and tricksters. I loved to share stories like the Haida (Native American) “The Raven Steals The Light,” and Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Beowulf. Sometimes we read Grendel and Ishmael. Or, if it was middle school, Whale Rider. And we ended up with a contemporary novel like Animal Dreams.

 

Many people I know have an urge to learn more about their family roots. One goal of the course was to reveal the roots we all share. Imagery we use even today can be traced back to works created by ancient humans in the Paleolithic art caves. For example, images of bulls, horses, snakes and other animals, horns of plenty, venus figurines, all can be seen in the caves. The snake becomes the Greek Hermes. The bull becomes Zeus, born in a cave in Crete. The venus figurines become goddesses, like Gaia and Aphrodite. Modern heroes, heroines as well as monsters and figures of evil and can be traced back to mythical figures.

 

One such figure is the Sumerian Gilgamesh, the protagonist in the first written epic story, recorded sometime around 2100 BCE. The character, Gilgamesh, is the first hero, actually the first greatly flawed superhero. Much about the story is very familiar to us. It tells about a very powerful but out of control, egocentric, and sexist King, who oppresses his people until the gods send his opposite, Enkidu, to wrestle with him. Enkidu, a seeming monster created by the gods, is a wild man who runs naked with the animals until he is “civilized” by sex with a priestess. (If you teach this, you’ll need an appropraite way to discuss this early episode of sex.) She cuts his hair, introduces him to human food, and tells him of Gilgamesh. Enkidu turns out to have “a good heart.” He goes to the walled city of Uruk to end Gilgamesh’s oppression of women. He wrestles Gilgamesh until the two become deep friends. The story is about facing monsters and facing grief, death and urges for immortality and what can be learned from all three. The wise man of the story is Utnapishtim, who is very much the biblical Noah. The women evoke later mythical figures of Greece and other patriarchal cultures, like the Sumerian Inanna, a jealous goddess becomes the Babylonian Ishtar and the Greek Aphrodite. There is Shiduri, the tavern keeper, who turns out to be a sybil or soul guide. These myths introduce archetypes, patterns of human thought and behavior. The archetypes and imagery are not just literary devices to create a good story, but perceptual devices. They reveal what guides how people view their lives.

 

Students, especially in high school, too easily feel isolated on an island of self, cut off not only from their contemporaries but from a sense of the continuity of life. They have little grasp of the wealth of possibility human history can illustrate. They have little grasp of what they share and how they differ with early humans. I attempted in this course to give an intuitive sense of these possibilities, through literature, meditation and imaginative exercises, and an intellectual understanding, by analyzing and discussing the historical context of each work studied.

 

In meditation, there comes a magical moment when you realize you have drifted. You are being mindful, aware moment-by-moment of thoughts, feelings, sensations—and before you know it, you lose the awareness. You are gone, lost in a thought and the story it has to tell. Then you return and realize: “I am drifting.” What do you then do? Do you berate yourself for getting lost and drifting? If you do, you get lost once again. Or do you stay with the awareness, let your mind clear, be free from any thought? You then take in the whole situation. Everything gets to be included in that moment. All that went before, everyone and everything. Yet, nothing need be said.

 

This is our challenge today, and it has always been our challenge. Do we allow ourselves to learn enough from history and other sources so we can assimilate the lessons and let our minds take in the present situation with clarity? Or do we forget ourselves again and again with thoughts of attack and retribution? We can get lost in the stories we have created or we can live with an awareness of the magical possibilities of mind. Which will it be?

 

 

*The photo is of ancient Troy, in modern Turkey.