Do what is you through clear knowledge of who you are.

The sense of self helps direct the power of choice. Choice is amazingly powerful. Each choice we make, however small, is packed with the future. Habitual mental and emotional clarity is very, very important. Each choice you make creates new circumstances, requiring more choices. Original choice starts the ball rolling and subsequent choices result in the details of your life. 

If original choice stems from your nature, from your fullest self, the choices you make will lead you into circumstances that are good for you. Your outer life will reflect that inner order. You will engage in satisfying commerce with your surroundings and situation. Begin with your nature and you will come back there. Too often original choice stems from fear or from some other distortion. Invariably, the chain of subsequent choices leads into circumstances that are not satisfying. Begin in fear and you will come back there. 

The law of choice-begets-choice can lead you into a mess, but it can lead you out again. 

The path of bad choices begins with a vague or weak sense of self, a lack of connection to the what-is of you that can only be found in the now. 

Learning the skills of self can take a long time. Few of us really get it from the beginning. Most of us make

 choices based on something other than your nature. So, you have to deal with your situation while trying to redirect the momentum of your life. All of a sudden you have a huge amount of work to do because you've clued in to the fact that your situation is not what you want and that only you can change it. 

Above all else it is our nature to grow. So, even when we operate in a way that reflects our nature, we're in for struggle. Knowing who you are does not eliminate the challenge of being who you are. But it makes you more efficient. It sharpens your instincts an engrains confidence. It helps you to not just face the work, but get the work done. It's not possible to fully grasp or predict 

the implications and potential outcome of each choice you make. It is possible to know what feels right, to check in with that habitually, and then to trust it. When that process is working, you've got your sense of self. 

Sometimes choices made firmly from my nature will lead me into difficulty, struggle, darkness. Sometimes, usually even, the harder path is the right one. The difference is in your ability to hear your heart speak, to hear the "inner command," to hear yourself calling from down that dark path, to do what is you through clear knowledge of who you are.

Ever forward. 

Cultivate your humility and you will shape a situation compatible with your nature.

Cultivate your humility and what is true about, the what-is of you, who you are, will sprout. Cultivate your soil, your humility, and your creativity will happen like a flower on a tree. It will become as irrevocably true of you as the color of your eyes. Cultivate the now and opportunity will sprout. Cultivate your humility and you will shape a situation compatible with your nature. All things will fall into place and you will have what you need. You will have access to yourself and be able to share yourself with the world. This will make a world conducive to this process. You don't have to "do." You will find yourself doing. You simply have to be. The doing is a by product of the being. But being is not easy because who we are is painful as well as magnificent. If you think just being is easy you probably aren't doing it. 

Escape from this process is tempting, subtle, easy to do and hard to recognize. 

When you choose a fantasy of what you wish would be over what is, you cease to function. When you  choose a fear or a memory of what you wish had never happened over what is, you stop perceiving reality. You are not connected to, not even seeing the world around you. You may as well be watching television. Your vision, your dreams, are clues to who you are, markers indicating where to put your energy. But even these can provide escape. When you lift off into hopeful or hopeless tripping on your dream without staying connected to the now, your dream, your precious vision, has turned on you and led you astray. The way to subvert this hijacking of your dreams by the escape mechanism is to cultivate the now, cultivate what is true about you, and to constantly reestablish contact with it through practice. In this way your dream stays rooted in the ground of your being, which is rooted in the Ground of all Being. 

And that's the real trouble with escape: it prevents your god self from emerging. And it's sneaky. It happens without you even noticing. A mind trained to escape will always and habitually seek a way out of the now. Often for no good reason. A mind trained to escape will abandon some perfectly nice experience in favor of a fantasy, possibly even a negative one. This mind is just doing what it does: escape. But if you cultivate the soil of your self by staying connected to it through practice, by enduring the sting of painful self knowledge, the glory and challenge of your destiny and the full revelation of your self-in-the-world will flow out of you like water from a fountain.

Ever forward.

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The full self is what you find every time you enter the now.

The tree of self grows from the humus or soil of your being: humility. In humility, the tree grows. Practically, this tree is your thoughts and behavior, the choices you make, and the situations in which you allow yourself to become involved. Once you are an adult, there is no aspect of this tree that is not your responsibility. But this responsibility is not so easy to manage. It requires a strong, clear sense of self.

The sense of self functions just like the sense of humor. A sense of humor is the ability to recognize funniness when you encounter it. With a strong sense of self you recognize yourself. You are able to find yourself at any given moment under all circumstances, manage your weaknesses, and access your strengths. You feel your way, reflexively, into the truth about yourself no matter what you feel, no matter what is happening around you. From the place of self you can endure or enjoy any situation fully.

The full self is what you find every time you enter the now. That's why going to the now is vital for inner growth. Only there can you see what you really need. Nature and life provide access to the now through pain, shock, sudden joy. But the sense of self helps you find your way back there on purpose. What you do every time you step into the present is reestablish your connection to yourself. A lie cannot live in the now, in the now there is only 'what is.' There is only truth. It's like a place we wander away from. While we're gone we experience all kinds of illusions, cravings, dissatisfactions, distractions. When we return we find reality happening. We find the truth. We find the self. It may be unpleasant, even unbearable, but it's real.

But the now is also the seed bed of realization. Any possibility is just a possibility until it takes root in the now. Once that happens, the merely possible becomes actual. Real change, real growth, real relief from suffering, real joy, take place only in the now. A strong sense of self is connection to the now, where all the information we ever need is available. With a feeble sense of self, all experience of the now is reduced to a default minimum and deliberate access to the now is difficult. As the sense of self grows, so does the ability to access and remain in the now. 

Rooted in the self, in the now, a person can distinguish between the subtle forces of distraction and the steady hum of reality unfolding. With strong sense of self the negative people and situations become easier to see, to manage or avoid. People who would hurt or manipulate you can't approach undetected. You will know that this man or woman is not for you, that this situation is not for you, and you will have the strength to act on your own behalf. In the same way, you will know and respond to good things, healthy situations. You become heliotropic toward the sun of healthy, creative life. 

Much of the difficulty endured by the weak sense of self simply disappears when that sense of self is strengthened. Bad situations are nipped in the bud and do not trouble you. You may not even recognize them. You may never have known them for what they were, but you will feel their absence in the form of freedom, peace, energy and a tendency toward joy. Life will still contain vicissitudes, but you will not confuse these vicissitudes with the length and breadth of reality. And you will not confuse them with yourself. This posture will become more and more stable as your sense of self grows. To cultivate the soil of humility is to nurture the sense of self. If you do this the weeds of distraction wither and die. Your weaknesses become accessible and available to development. Your strengths move to the surface and stand at the ready. The lies you have heard or told yourself about yourself are deactivated, gelded of power, and cease to be operative in your choices and attitudes. When you cultivate humility, you develop a soil in which only truth can grow.

Ever forward.

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Self begets self.

The Old English language used the same word for tree that it used for truth. The word was treow. The word humility shares its Indo-European origins with the word humus, soil. Taken together these facts form a useful idea: just as a tree grows from the humus of the forest floor, so the truth grows from humility, the soil of our being. 

Truth here has nothing to do with morality or who's right and who's wrong. It's truth about the self, what is true and what is not true about me. Who I am, and who I am not. Truth in this case means simply 'what is.' Knowledge of this truth comes from taking care of the soil of our being, the humus of self, humility. It comes from bearing witness to what is actually going on in my inner condition, and in my outer life. It means discovering and accepting the good and the bad without judgment, avoidance, or attachment. 

To do this frees me to simply be who I am, which will allow all my potential to rise to the surface uncluttered by the desires or illusions I have about myself. Self begets self. When I cultivate humility, the truth emerges, enabling more humility, and so more truth. This cycle of self is continuous and leads us into ever deeper knowledge of ourselves, through ever deeper revelation of who we really are.

It's a painful process, a mythic process, because it requires a passage through death. You have to allow little parts of yourself to fall off and die. But these little parts do not die in vain. They fall to the ground of your being, decompose, and return to your inner soil the energy they previously consumed. This energy can now nourish the truth of who you really are. We tend to think of letting go as loss. But it isn't. To let go of something that you can't have, or that doesn't serve you is to give it a chance to become something you can have, that does serve you. In this way even my delusions can be helpful, and my broken dreams can help enhance my life. But it's painful. It's a dying. Unless the seed falls to the earth and dies... .

The ground of our being is supported by the Underground, the Divine. In the deepest place the soil of self mingles with the Soil. This is where the primal energy comes from, up through the soil of self into the roots of the tree that gives shape to that particular expression of God which is me, my life. This tree is you living through the seasons of your life, letting your leaves flower and fall to nourish you at the roots with energy originally derived from the Divine. To tend the soil where this tree grows is to foster access to that Energy. In this way the tree becomes strong and beautiful with roots that reach deep and limbs that stretch and flower to their fullest. 

Ever forward.

 

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Maturity is pure self engaged without obstacles in maximum being

Humus is soil which cannot become any more basic. The corresponding state in a human being is maturity. Like humility, maturity is basic-ness. Maturity is pure self engaged without obstacles in maximum being. It's the full blending of attributes, the full integration of energies, capacities, darkness and light, into a fully functioning whole self that has itself and its relationship to the Divine as its frame of reference in relating to reality. The mature person is symbiotic with others and within herself, and functions according to the now.

But since the word mature is a verb as well as an adjective, it is a process as well as a state of being. The human experience is both. We experience and exhibit maturity in moments, and we go through it all the time, ever more deeply, ongoing. Full maturity requires exposure to more and more aspects of the self, and the acceptance of those aspects into the fold of the whole. This process, this search, is the mythic path, the road to the god self deliberately undertaken.

In maturity, no single aspect of a person is can dominate. Fear and strength work in balance, in reference to the whole. In this state, the great creative power of the universe flows freely through a person. Whether that person is angry, sad, confused, happy, does not matter. These things are felt, expressed clearly and fully, without the snags of hesitation or embarrassment, and above all without apology. The full self is present in the mature person, with all faculties and capacities at the ready. This person is part and parcel to the creative power of the Divine, capable of and inclined toward the small, daily thoughts and actions that manifest the Divine in the world.

What is often taken for maturity is merely solidification. It is acquiescence to -- even the championing of -- the status quo. But real maturity is the ability to function in the status quo while sustaining a deep, real belief in and commitment to its undoing. Real maturity enables you to work with functional hope of success toward the unlocking of magnificence, toward the transformation of the world into that venue of human greatness it is meant to be. The mature person is receptive to the clues and promptings of the Divine in his own unfolding, and through that to the unfolding of the unfinished creation.

A mature person has come from the childlike ability to perceive the world with wonder, through the trials and rigors of the status quo, full circle to wonder again, but with knowledge of the obstacles in his mind and heart that hinder the fullness of his life. This person has undertaken the mythic path. This person remains in a state of readiness for the extraordinary, even while grappling with the monsters of the status quo. To believe yourself capable of anything requires maturity, because only with maturity can we be open to possibility in a world where possibility is the enemy.

Ever forward.

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In a world where there is no humility, there can be no humanity, and God remains invisible.

The word humanity derives from the same Indo-European origin as the word humility. Humanity is the thing most true about each of us. We are all human. Before nationalities, before politics, before religion, philosophy, or even myth, there was humanity. Humanity, human-ness, is the thing from which all these other things proceed. Underneath the things that separate us, the learned things of division, there is the thing that binds us together, the innate thing of unity.

But humanity is not a given. It exists only as seeds until we decide to make it happen, until we decide to grow it, to spread it around and remove the obstacles to its fertility. So humanity is our most basic characteristic, but without proper care, it dies. A world where humanity is dead is monstrous and cannot be managed. We are bound together by our humanity, for good or ill.

The seeds of humanity are the same for us all and by cultivating these seeds we can make a world that prospers filled with individuals who thrive. It only works when each person, each human, propagates humanity by tending the seeds in their own day to day. These seeds draw life from the soil of our being, the humus, humility, which is irrigated in the deepest, unseen strata by the Divine.

Compassion and forgiveness are the seeds. The general act of planting them is called love. These seeds lie dormant until we cultivate the soil in which they grow, humility, our most basic state. If we do that, humanity is the harvest. This harvest nourishes a flourishing world of creativity, prosperity, communication, mutual benefit.

By cultivating humility we begin to contend with the grubs and nettles that stifle humanity: our lack of compassion, our lack of forgiveness. In the absence of humanity, fear and judgment grow instead. These things hinder fullness of life, dream building, satisfying relationships, a prosperous world. But the interesting thing about the seeds of humanity is that by planting them, we transform the soil in which they are planted -- namely ourselves and therefore the world. The grubs and nettles of fear and judgment find no nourishment in tilled humility sown with compassion and forgiveness. They whither and disappear, leaving room for humanity to take root and grow.

The alternative is the world where the seeds of humanity are not planted, the soil of humility not tilled. In that world we are cut off from that deepest strata of our being, the layer where the Divine first mingles with us, first begins to reveal itself to us by giving us the being through which we perceive it. In a world where there is no humility, there can be no humanity, and God remains invisible.

Ever forward.

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Humility is the soil from which the god self grows.

The word humility is often taken to mean something like submissiveness, subservience, or low self esteem. Maybe passivity, not standing up for yourself, holding yourself back, or even self negation. These are distortions, misinterpretations of the outward appearance humility can sometimes present. Humility is seldom recognized for what it really is -- a state of pure possibility, of receptivity to true creative power.

The word humility shares its linguistic origins with the word humus, as in earth, soil, the forest floor. Humus is more fully defined as soil that has so decomposed that it can't break down any further. It is the most mature, most basic soil. This is the true nature of humility. Humility properly understood is the soil of who we truly are, our most basic state, the place where possibility lives. To be humble is to have access to the ground of your being. To cultivate humility is to cultivate that ground. The more humble we are, the richer that ground will be. It is the soil from which the god self grows.

Humility is the attitude, the mental and emotional orientation that accompanies and makes effective the practice of the present moment. To practice the present moment is to tend the soil. Humility is the state of mind and the necessary posture for participating in the creative power of the Divine. It is the state of connectedness to your own potential, and the state of readiness for the action of the Divine in your life. There is no delusion in humility, no avoidance, no self hate, no judgment of self or others. There is no room for these things. Humility is perception cleansed of these distortions, and action purified of the falsifying effect these things have on our motives. To the mind characterized by humility, everything simply is. Humility is a state of undistracted consciousness. And that is the most powerful thing in the world.

The power of humility is in its practice. The practice of humility brings release of the self from the prison of ego, preconception, judgment, delusion, hesitation, fear. Humility is the basic human orientation of cooperation with the Divine, and provides the basis for all patience, kindness, love, compassion, forgiveness. These things are all emanations of divine power. It is only through humility that we become capable of them, and through their practice, capable of manifesting God, of unleashing the god self on the world.

And humility is the mental state most receptive to reality and to extraordinary possibility. So, it is humility that makes possible the realization of our dreams. It enables cooperation with the Divine in their achievement. Humility is the ability to let your dream be shaped according to what is, and to be joined to the great dream that is everything. In humility you can find your true place, your true expression, free of ego-driven demands on what those things should look like. Humility is the ability to respond without resistance to the role of the Divine in your unfolding.

Ever forward.

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Myth itself caught in the act.

The Boyne Valley, north of Dublin Ireland, is home to a place called Newgrange. There, in the middle of a field, stands a tumulus. At two-hundred and fifty feet across, and forty feet high, it spans an entire acre and is thought to be at least five thousand years old. On the southeast side an entrance opens into a sixty-foot passage that leads to a beehive shaped chamber, twenty feet high, at the heart of the mound.

Each year at the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year, the first rays of dawn strike a specially crafted window above the entrance, and the stones shape the light into a point on the ground. As the sun rises, this pointed band of light grows longer and longer, creeping along the floor of the passage until it reaches the chamber, sixty feet inside. There it proceeds to drive out the subterranean darkness with light bright enough to read by, and sustain the light for more than a quarter of an hour. Then, the chamber fades to darkness again, and the line of light recedes back down the passage just as it came.

To see the event on the day of the solstice you literally have to win a lottery. But I've twice been to Newgrange, twice followed the sixty foot passage to the chamber within to see the electric-light simulation. It makes the point and it leaves the imagination to feast on what the real event must be like.

Just building the tumulus was an act of mythic magnitude. There are ninety-seven stones surrounding the base of the mound, and each would have required a separate adventure just to find it, never mind bring it back. Each one weighs about eighteen tons and came from as far as twenty miles away. The quartz that adorns the entrance (literally tons of it) probably came from Wicklow, seventy-five miles to the south. All this at a time when Ireland was a vast primeval forest and it was dangerous work just hiking to the next village. And it would have taken at least three generations to plan and build the tumulus, so the visionaries never saw the completed project, and the people who finished it may never have known the visionaries.

All that effort. A one hundred year project that must have impacted the time and resources of an entire society, in a world where time was precious and resources hard won. Just to fill an underground chamber with light? I don't know what they meant by it, but Newgrange remains the greatest symbol for the mythical nature of human experience that I have ever come across. Better than any actual myth I've read. So simple, as basic as it gets, and yet so complete. There is no human situation for which the illustration is not relevant. Light literally penetrates the earth and fills the darkness with illumination. It is us. By taking the mythic path we enact this process in our own lives. We allow light to flood the inner self and bring into view that which was before hidden in shadow. And so much remains hidden.

Earth, stone, light and darkness. Human striving. Myth itself caught in the act.

Ever forward.

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We are all worshipers in the Cult of the Known

Fear and judgment surround us like a fence. We live inside this fence, in seeming safety, keeping the fence itself at a distance. This is the Cult of the Known. We revere the known and stay inside it because the only way to go outside it is to venture through our own fears and move counter to our own judgments. We are all priests in the Cult of the Known, and we construct worldviews in homage to it, in hopes it will keep at bay the forces beyond the fence.

But any world view is just a set of opinions. These opinions may be shaped by experience or preference, maybe by example or pressure from others. But opinions they remain. No matter how progressive or expansive the worldview, it's still a closed system ultimately surrounded by the fence of fear and judgment. In the end, it's fear and judgment that give shape to any worldview. 

Some of us are very good at accepting others. And it's a good thing to constantly expand your world view. But even better is to dispense with it altogether, to stop looking at the world through a lens and just start looking at the world. If we had no fear or judgment we would have no worldview. We would have only an adventurous spirit and a tendency toward acceptance and compassion. All we could do would be to reside in the now, take situations as they come, and respond from the heart.

That's why the masters have always warned us against opinions. "Do not judge," Jesus said. It's one of the few commands he actually gave his followers. He recognized the human cult of the known and knew it had to be dismantled. This seemingly simple command, so easily reduced to a mere nicety, carries in it all the power needed to transform the individual and the world.

Fear and judgment prevent that.

Once you recognize your fears and judgments, you recognize the edges of your perspective. This recognition often happens through disturbance. When our boundaries are assailed by something challenging, a religious or moral difference for example, we can feel disturbed. Very often this awakens fear and we resort to judgment. Not discretion, not compassion, but self-preserving rejection of the thing causing the disturbance. Also known as judgment. Judgment is simply a technique for dealing with fear. It doesn't cause growth or healing, it just takes the edge off and in the end it helps fear to grow, or worse, converts it into hatred.

By pushing through fear and judgment we push our own envelope. We reject the Cult of the Known in favor of adventure beyond the fence. By embracing the disturbance and upheaval of challenge at our borders, we evolve our worldview into obsolescence. The best world view is not to have one. Without it acceptance of others and self is inevitable. Without it we can exist in a state of constant surprise. We can live here, now, and manage the details as the heart commands.

Ever forward.

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The mythic path and the No. 15 westbound

Riding the bus can reveal some interesting things about how you live your life. Suppose you need to get somewhere important, like a job interview, and you have to take a trolley, a bus, and a train. Suppose further that you're not familiar with the public transportation system in your city. What's your attitude? What's your approach? Do you plan ahead so that you'll have a clear idea of the timing, and what to expect? Do you wait patiently at the stops? Do you assume, until presented with evidence to the contrary, that you'll make all your connections and arrive on time?  

 

This is the mythic path in a nutshell.

 

On the mythic path, you have a pretty clear idea of where you're trying to go, and it's important to you. You have vision. The way to get there is unfamiliar and holds its share of uncertainty. The better prepared you are, the more you'll be able to relax. But apart from preparation, all you can do is respond to circumstances. Those circumstances can take time to emerge, so you have to be patient. And how you proceed depends on what those circumstances look like, so you have to trust. If you're really good at patience you're less likely to go crazy in the waiting, and you'll be alert to changes in circumstance. If you're really good at trust you'll move forward assuming it's all going to work out, until you hear otherwise, at which point you'll deal with it. You'll also be better able  to weather disappointment, enjoy progress, and learn from setbacks.

 

The way you respond to the seemingly ordinary experience of taking a multistage public-transit journey to a job interview can reveal a lot about how you go through life. Do you work on the assumption that everything is going to work, or do you work on the assumption that everything is going to go horribly wrong? The answer to that question is extremely important.

 

Ever forward.

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It is far better to be driven mad by vision than to go mad for lack of it. Yet one or the other awaits us all.

The sense of possibility is one of life's major gifts. It makes all the struggle valuable. But striving for vision will bring a form of madness, a level of focus that helps you keep going in the hard times. A willingness to endure, to continue, after a rest perhaps, but always to continue. This toil leads somewhere. It is the mythic path.

But its nemesis lurks: the madness that accompanies lack of vision. This madness dulls the sharpness of being, results in the status quo, and puts a negative, hopeless connotation on the word "dream."

It may have been mad of Odysseus to leave Calypso's island. The struggle ahead of him was epic. But his vision would not let him rest. And the alternative was worse. The alternative was madness combined with stasis, resulting in a world of shrinking possibilities.

Ever forward.

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The mythic path begins and ends in the present moment.

The present moment can be like an arena of battle. If it were always a pleasant place to be we would never leave it. But the truth is the present can be a rigorous experience. The present is where reality lives, and reality can be hard. In fact, reality can be hard even when it's good. Most experiences, from the bitter to the delightful, touch on limitations that make it hard to fully experience life.

The present moment is an entrance into the tunnel of transformation. The mythic path begins and ends in the present moment.

All my insecurities live in the present, that's why the tendency to escape it, into some form of distraction, is so strong. It's hard to stay in your body, on the ground, when what you are feeling is painful. It is by remaining in the present that we truly experience who we are. It is there -- in the present -- that we are strongest, most effective at engaging the painful parts of experience, and most capable of fully experiencing joy.

Ever forward.

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Life is Making

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a poem called Mythopoeia. That's pronounced myth-o-pee-a. In that poem he builds on the Nordic idea of the storyteller as "maker." He refers to poets and storytellers as "legend-makers," "little makers" who participate with their craft in the Divine Making of creation.

Looking at the world as it is, it's hard to think of humanity as participants in the act of divine creation. But yesterday I helped out with a creative writing workshop for kids, run by the Spells Writing Center in Philadelphia. As always, I was struck by the quiet, undeniable energy of children bent on creation. There's nothing quite like a child rapt by the vastness of possibility. That clear-eyed face, frowning with concentration, peering into imagination, oblivious for a time of the pen and paper, assures me that it's the kids, not the adults, who stand the best chance of saving the world.

We grown ups are great for making changes in how things work. We make a difference in that we choose which messes to clean up. We do this in the world and in our inner condition. That's important, but it's not what I mean. Kids with access to creative time and space, who have guidance and encouragement are changing the very fabric of human consciousness. They're not doing repair work, they're laying foundations that are healthy to begin with. An army of kids who create will fashion an army of adults who can really lead. They are, literally, creating a brand new world.

But kids don't think about that. They just create for the sake of creating. A kid will write a two page story complete with an illustration just because she wants to. That's the most powerful form of creation there is. The kind that needs no reason, has no purpose. A vision forms in the child's mind and he follows it. That energy is raw and enough of it will shake the ground. This is the missing ingredient in adult society: pure creativity for its own sake.

But we adults can do it, too, if we want to. We just have to work at it. We have to let go of the need to make money at it, or to be good at it. We have to become at ease with the sense of exposure that goes along with any act of creation. I'm certain it's just a simple lack of practice. You can get good at expressing yourself. You can become fearless in developing your talents. You can reap the benefits of daily acts of creation. But it takes practice.

It's important to look at society as the sum total of the personalities it comprises. If we keep encouraging kids -- all the way to adulthood -- to spend time creating, exploring ideas, discovering their talents and abilities, we will change the world. We will stop the wars. We'll figure out poverty and pollution, because we'll have raised a breed of decision makers who can see. At long last we'll have a generation of true human beings, a tribe of people who know who they are because all along the way they've been doing what it takes to find out.

Ever forward.

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If you want to penetrate the Underworld of your being, you have to face the Hydra.

According to legend, the Hydra was a nine-headed beast that guarded a gate to the Underworld. Hercules faced it as one of his Twelve Labors, and found that each time he managed to cut off one of the heads, two more sprang from the wound to replace it. Maybe worst of all, one of the heads was immortal and even Hercules could not destroy it completely.

This legend provides a great metaphor for the mythic journey into the inner condition, and the struggle involved in uncovering and liberating the self. The Hydra's immortal head symbolizes the ongoing nature of the struggle, and the fact that we must, unavoidably, experience our fears and exhibit our dysfunctional behaviors in order to progress through them into wholeness.

That is the mythic path.

If you want to penetrate the Underworld of your being, you have to face the Hydra.

The Hydra can't be killed. However bitter it may be to simply experience fear and insecurity, the real strength of these things, the real strength of the Hydra, is its ability to engage us forever, to keep us fighting at the entrance of the Underworld without ever going in.

As a symbol, the regenerating heads reveal the futility of responding with brute force to an encounter with insecurity. Too often we respond to our fears by attempting to bully ourselves through the experience. This lack of self compassion strengthens and invigorates the Hydra. To berate yourself for your insecurity is to feed the Hydra. To reject yourself in favor of the opinion of others is to feed the Hydra. To constantly give fresh battle to the heads of the beast helps the Hydra fulfill its mission: to prevent you from entering the underground of your being, and to keep your God self from entering the world.

We have to circumvent the power of insecurity and pain -- the power of the Hydra. To do that we must experience these things, go through them, and keep going. You have to follow the trail of the Hydra back to its lair, to the source of its strength, in the Underworld.

Ever forward.

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The hunt for liberation starts with yourself as you are right now.

When you tread the mythic path you will endure many rigors. The first is this: you can only begin where you are. The hunt for liberation starts with yourself as you are right now. This is far more challenging than it seems at first. To see yourself, really see yourself as you are can be brutal. You will need to admit at least to yourself, that you’re still afraid, still angry, still capable of inappropriate behavior, whatever it is that's true of you. But self acceptance is the very bottom line. You have to accept the shape you're in. Only then can you grow, heal and become transformed. You must not blame, judge, hate, ignore or in any way reject yourself. These things result in staying put in your weakness, your limitation, and your pain.

On the mythic path, it's likely that your first task will be to treat yourself with compassion. No "don't be stupid." No "why are you such an idiot?" No "don't be such a baby." And above all no "other people have it way worse than you." Developing the ability to respond with compassion to your own insecurity could take a long time. You need to be prepared for that, and willing to do it because until you do you won't grow. You can yourself be the worst, angriest, most negative nay sayer you will encounter. You can yourself be the greatest danger you will face. But on this journey you cannot afford to make an enemy of yourself. And unless you practice the art of self love and compassion, you will.

Ever forward.

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If we choose to pursue comfort we may achieve it. But we will not discover life that way.

By deciding to view life as a mythic endeavor, we accept the hard work. No mythic goal was ever achieved without pain. That's a big part of what makes it mythic. Those who will not struggle cannot live a consciously mythic life. If we choose to pursue comfort we may achieve it. But we will not discover life that way. We will not uncover who we really are because to do that requires certain specific things, all of which bring struggle. We must discover and develop our talents. We must apply ourselves to creative expression that is more than occasional. We must attempt build a dream based on the impulses of our hearts. And above all we must love one another. A mythic endeavor requires the construction of an interior life, with an awareness that habitually interprets my exterior life and discovers there meaning and trajectory.

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when we allow ourselves to show forth, the little things we fear will go wrong tend to burn up in the fire of our beauty

The name Odysseus is taken to mean "Son of Pain." It's thought to be based on the "middle voice" of the Greek verb odussomai which means "to feel anger toward, to rage or hate." The "middle voice" is important, because it means that all the rage and hate is a two-way street. It's not simply taken or received, it's both. The one doing the raging is also raged against.

In his version of The Odyssey, Robert Fagles makes an interesting clarification in his notes to the text. He points out that the verb odussomai resembles another Greek word: ôdinô, which according to Fagles means "to suffer pain, especially the pain of labor -- as the rigors by which the hero brings his identity to life."

Fagles regards the word Odysseus to mean "'man of pain' but both active and passive, doing and done to, agent and victim both, inflicting and bearing pain yet somehow born himself in the process." One of Fagles' citations points to a margin note found in an old manuscript of The Odyssey. The note "of uncertain but ancient date," occurs alongside Odysseus's description of a boar hunt he went on in his youth. (Book 19 in The Odyssey.) The boar wounds Odysseus and Odysseus kills the boar. The note, in Greek, is a comment on the meaning of the scene. It reads: "When he grew up -- when he odysseused."

This ancient commentator turns the name itself -- Odysseus -- into a synonym for growing up. Each of us could just as easily insert our own name to describe our process of growth and emergence. Everyone except me that is, since my name has already been hijacked and now means the exact opposite of the point I'm trying to make. Thanks.

But it's important that one of the oldest western documents we know of, one of the pillars of our perspective has long been recognized to contain this basic truth: we become who we are by taking and inflicting pain. The story, among other things, is a tale about emerging from the acquired details of what we have been taught, and uncovering from that dross the natural glow of who we actually are.

Odysseus is his own frame of reference. He's a bit of a loose cannon, but he's doing it. Each of us needs to become his, her own frame of reference. I'm talking about the reflexive, habitual ability to choose for ourselves, based on our own experience, and according to the deep stirrings of our own hearts. Regardless of what other people think. We have to be able to do so honestly and without pretense. This is a vital ingredient to full life. Building that frame of reference into a trustworthy instrument is a big part of the task. And it's during that process that mistakes get made. Once we're up and running, we tend to treat people with the kindness and respect that goes hand in hand with true individuation. That comes when I feel secure in life, and security only happens if I dive in and undertake my personal odyssey.

One of the hallmarks of being your own frame of reference is the willingness to make mistakes. Those of us who fear making mistakes also fear being ourselves. We don't want to get it wrong. And as a result we do. We get it horribly wrong. But when we allow ourselves to show forth, the little things we fear will go wrong tend to burn up in the fire of our beauty. This crossing over can seem terrible. It can seem like a raging beast to be defeated or outwitted.

Odysseus just goes along, in search of himself, being himself with abandon, until he arrives home to his Penelope. He's proud of who he is. One of his objectives in life is to be known as Odysseus. Along the way he hurts people and gets hurt. He does some brutal things and undergoes some real brutality. He makes some terrible mistakes that get people killed. But it's a story, a dramatic portrayal. The Odyssey uses extremes to describe what it's like to be a person: one misstep and you can get hurt. Another misstep and you can hurt someone else. The important thing about Odysseus is that he's doing it.

Here in the twenty-first century, we share with Odysseus a common objective: to be known for who we are. The only way to do that is to be who we are and there's the rub. Sometimes being yourself brings pain: for yourself, for others, or both. Most often it's because someone can't take your radiance. When you are yourself you're a light in the world, regardless of how you feel. Any difficult feelings are simply a result of the conditioning you've undergone. If you exhibit confidence you are a true menace. People who lack confidence will be unbalanced by your presence. If your real self happens to be noticeably different from your surroundings you will undoubtedly arouse the fear of those who can't handle or have not discovered their own individuality.

You will experience alienation, fighting, hurt feelings and the insistence that you stop being yourself. It can happen in social groups, between friends, and most especially inside the family. It is this potential for discomfort and pain that keeps many people from ever experiencing who they really are. This means they are cut off from their own true potential, forced to reject or deny their own dreams and feelings. This is no way to live. But it's very common.

This unnatural state is the breeding pool for cruelty, disregard and greediness. Without access to our true selves we cannot act or even think on positive behalf of others or the world around us. We become acquiring machines. Anyone who is kind, who cares and exhibits concern through action, that person has some kind of access to herself which fuels her goodness. A shoot, a seedling of her true nature lives in her heart. The mythic life consists of cultivating that seed. Look at the truly cruel: they are cut off from themselves. Look at the truly loving: they have full access. Most of us are somewhere in between.

One of the hardest things to learn is that the hurt feelings of others are not your responsibility. Other people's feelings are THEIR responsibility. It's typical that we place responsibility for our pain on others. It's typical, and it's wrong. I do not advocate deliberately hurting people. I advocate courtesy, respect and kindness, but all the while being yourself. When that arouses the pain in others, as it inevitably will, that pain is theirs to deal with, not yours. Like Odysseus, you're just being yourself.

The idea of rejecting yourself in favor of protecting someone else from their own feelings is destructive. And it's disrespectful to the other person. When you seek to protect them from life you're saying to them, "You can't handle life as it really is. You need me to make this decision for you." If you were to actually say those words to that person, you'd probably make them angry. By leaving them alone with their feelings you're saying to them, "I trust that you are capable of managing your own feelings as a fellow adult in this world, and you don't need my protection."

When a person experiences their feelings, that person has a chance to grow, to become more free, to release more of their radiance into the world. It's not up to you to make people grow, but you have no right to stand in the way of that growth out of some arrogant belief that you know what is best for them. Or worse, out of some knee-jerk response that makes you try to avoid an awkward situation simply because it's awkward, regardless of the fact that it helps someone else avoid reality. That's the worst form of self preservation, the kind that serves no one, including yourself. The kind that, in fact, robs everyone involved of a life-giving experience.

To give birth to our true identities as people of light and goodness, we have to live. And living is hard if you really do it. It's a risky, tricky, messy situation we're in. It's called the human condition. Huge structures and systems have been contrived to avoid it, to fabricate an alternative. But you can't long escape the deep pool that underlies all experience, not if you want to have life to the full. The ones who thrive here, the ones who walk with confidence in their being are the ones who accept that and just dive in.

Ever forward.

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The mythic life leads me into deeper knowledge of myself

The motive for engaging in life on mythic terms is the Utter Self. It's the self we dream about, the one that is free and confident in all situations, even in failure. The Utter Self is what lies beyond our limitations, it's the prize for engaging and enduring those limitations with courage and perseverance. It is our potential unlocked. It treats everyone with respect, kindness and forgiveness because that's how it treats itself.

If we live mythically we will always be setting off on new adventures, constantly engaging new challenges to our inner safety, and constantly discovering that we are more then we thought we were. The Utter Self is the prize at the end of each of these quests, and it is always worth the struggle. As life goes on and we connect more and more with the Utter Self, it leaves more and more of itself behind, visible in the everyday world. As we proceed along the mythic path, we become more powerful, more grounded, more naturally ourselves. We unleash the Utter Self upon the world.

The mythic life leads me into deeper knowledge of myself. It gives me access to areas of my being that are always there, but of which I am not always conscious. The more self aware I am, the more potent I am in carrying out my own life. The more readily I can tap and maximize my strengths and build on my weaknesses, the more clearly I can connect with and participate in my life's path. I become more present and more capable of opening up to the influx of divine energy that is constantly flowing through me, seeking to take the unique shape that only I can give it. The more deliberate I am about this process, the more it will manifest.

There is an old Hopi saying (borrowed by President Obama early in his campaign): "We are the ones we have been waiting for." The meaning of this saying is different for each of us and hangs on our ideals. It's valuable to ask what it means to you, because it's a great window into the relationship between who you are, and who you want to be. What are you waiting for? What is that elusive ideal and what does it mean that you feel it's absence?

"I am the one I've been waiting for." This goes straight to the heart of the mythic life. All benefit flows from connection to self. Any good I can do for my neighbor or for the world begins with that vital connection. But I have not been merely waiting for it. I have been searching for it. In the mythic life, I have gone in pursuit of it. I endure my fears, my anxieties, my insecurities, my limitations, all in the effort to find it, to release it into my life. The Utter Self.

It is me I've been praying to -- that part of God that is me. There is an aspect of myself that is connected to God at all times. All the true spiritual practices are intended to open up the flow of this interchange, me with my God-self, me with God. All true myth tells the story of how this can be achieved. It is the most basic pattern of reality as we experience it in this life and it's symbols are everywhere. Birth and death. Sleeping and waking. The cycles of the seasons, the planets and the stars. We make passage after passage deeper into our selves, dying all the deaths large and small that slowly leave us bereft of our illusions, so that we may begin to perceive the truth and live in freedom from the lies born of fear.

I am the one that I've been searching for.

In the movie Angel-A, Andre askes the mysterious woman who has been helping him if she is an angel. She tells him, "I'm you. I'm you as you really are." We are all angels, beings of power and light. Our struggle here is meant to show us that, help us discover that, to assume that role in the world. It's different for each of us, but our talents and dreams are clues to what it will look like when we find it. The Utter Self is simply me as I really am, my God-self, as I will discover time and again along the mythic path.

Ever forward.

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A mythic life requires trust in the path

Mark 6:7-13 (Fifteenth Sunday in ordinary time)

The mythic content of this gospel passage can’t be overstated. The key line is “He instructed them to take nothing for the journey... .” This reading touches the core of the mythical experience:

Trust.

A mythic life requires trust in the path. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu instructs his reader to literally rely on the circumstances of battle to provide victory. This is truly strong medicine. Applied to life, this approach contradicts pretty much everything the western mind is trained from childhood to do: be in control and leave nothing to chance.

On deeper scrutiny, however, and with the mythical dynamics of life in mind, it becomes clear that this is exactly what Jesus and Sun Tzu are counseling: leave nothing to chance. In their view, we are more at risk of something going wrong if we try to control things, rather than letting the path lead us, require choices of us, and provide the necessary information to handle those choices.

It depends on your motive. Are you trying to get through life safe and sound, with no cuts or bruises, in a manner that is predictable and secure? Are you trying to be as comfortable as you possibly can until you die? Or are you trying to surrender yourself to participation in your life’s purpose, willing to undergo gaps in security and periods of mental anguish? If the latter, then you leave all to chance by trying to control your situation. You stifle the workings of destiny. You curtail the natural flow of your life.

“Just a walking stick,” Jesus says. That’s all you can take with you. A simple, practical tool for the road. He wasn’t naive, after all. His disciples had a lot of walking ahead of them. “And if they won’t receive you, shrug it off and move on.” In other words, sound judgment. Trust in the path has nothing to do with blindness or wishful thinking. It’s hard, nuts-and-bolts work and a daily grind. But a grind with purpose. Apart from a few simple tools, trust and sound judgment are pretty much it.

In his novel Damien, Herman Hesse tells his reader “your destiny loves you and wants you to achieve it.” This is the wisdom both Sun Tzu and Jesus reveal to their adherents. No matter how difficult things get, no matter how scary, allow the path to lead you. This is the core value of the mythic perspective, and the organizing principle of a mythic life.

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You have to choose to change. If you don’t you’ll never be free.

Everyone who ever made progress on their inner condition had one thing in common. They decided to change. They decided to do the work. You have to choose change. If you don’t you’ll never be free. It’s astonishing how many people choose to keep the shackles on. How many people wander in the half light, rooting around in their minds and lives searching out the little pockets of relief from the fear and insecurity they feel, instead of doing something decisive about them, instead of standing up and putting their shoulder to the wheel. 

The slavery dance consists of side stepping the work, spending precious energy hunting out ways of avoiding what must be done. One sign of it is the knee-jerk denial that I could be subject to such slavery, the “I’m fine” argument. “It’s not that bad.” “That person has it so much worse than me, who am I to complain. I should consider myself lucky.” These are all arguments in favor of slavery. The hallmark is the refusal to choose deeper freedom. 

Inner slavery has built in mechanisms of self preservation. These mechanisms are there to kill anything that might induce us to take a chance. They are designed to protect us from pain and failure. The trouble is, it is through pain and failure that we grow and become free. Too often, after what seems an intolerable, crippling bout of insecurity, the resolve to change flares up, only to be gently stifled as the pain of the experience subsides. The march of numbness resumes until, inevitably, the pain flares again. People live in this cycle their whole lives, never taking the matter in hand and setting off on the journey to peace and freedom. 

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu calls the battle field “the ground of life and death.” This is a mythic perspective. Myth portrays the matters of life and death. It describes life in its most basic terms: to live or to die.  The same energy has to drive the search for inner freedom. There can be no room for half measures, no credence given to the excuses that dull the edge, numb the pain just enough, and make it so easy to stop. Chains are chains, however small they seem, and they are keeping us from something. Unless I break free I will never know what.

We are made for freedom but it is a mythic undertaking. It truly is and that’s the only way to see it. It never happens accidentally and it can’t be accomplished except with determination. Life is the path to freedom’s gate. This labor is the great task assigned to each of us whatever else life may bring. On this quest, each fear, each insecurity, each limitation is a monster lurking and each one of us who takes this road is a questing hero venturing the wilds of our own interior in search of liberation. 

Ever forward.

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The hero’s journey of life requires individuation from family.

Mark 6:1-6 (Fourteenth Sunday, ordinary time, year B)

The hero’s journey of life requires individuation from family. This can be difficult, even bitter, but it’s a crucial moment in the unfolding of a mythic life, and in the evolution of consciousness. Not everyone reaches this point in their development, and not all who do make the passage. In Mark 6:1-6, Jesus does. He returns to his home after having been abroad, teaching and healing in other places. He goes to the synagogue and starts to teach the people, but even though he blows them away with his wisdom, they reject him.

They’ve known him from his birth after all, and they know his family. Who does he think he is?

Anyone who leaves home to follow life’s lead will experience a sense of strangeness upon returning. They have grown, changed, seen more of life than their previous world view could account for, and this leaves them thinking and feeling differently from the people who raised them or watched them grow up. It’s a major moment, a mythic passage. It’s the moment when we realize that as adults we must stand alone with our perspectives and live on terms that may not be shared by the culture that raised us. We can no longer rest in the predictability of the family system or the social circle. A dream, a vision of life requires more.

This theme of individuation gets a lot of column space in the New Testament. In Luke 14:26, with extreme hyperbole, Jesus enjoins his disciples to hate their fathers, mothers, wives and children in favor of the Kingdom of Heaven. In Matthew 12:48-50 he disowns his mother and brothers in favor of those who do the Father’s will. This is Jesus illustrating the true cost of becoming who we really are. He knew the importance of standing on your own two feet and being yourself without reference to others, even to family. This movement into true independence of self, where we genuinely move beyond the influence of blood and culture was critical to the life Jesus called his disciples to lead: the mythic life. 

And it was no less significant those on the receiving end. The people who know us may resent our new consciousness, or fear it. It might be as simple as questioning a daughter’s choice to eat organic foods when “regular food was always good enough before.” But it can be far more significant. In Luke’s version of the Nazareth story the people don’t simply ignore Jesus, they try to kill him. (Luke 4:16-30.) 

It takes a mythical perspective to recognize this moment for what it is: a dark passage into deeper communion with reality. It can feel like leaving family and friends behind, but it isn’t. It’s actually the only way forward into loving them according to your fullest potential. We must be who we truly are if we are to give to others all we have to give. We must constantly be discovering our gifts if we are to share them. We must constantly be discovering our talents if we are to develop them. We must constantly be encountering our limitations if we are to overcome them. 

The mythic life is one dark passage after another. The hero’s journey will always lead us further away from who we think we are, closer to who we actually are. The only way to proceed is to undertake the quest, to recognize life for the adventure that it is. Consciousness is constantly making greater demands, constantly requiring more of us, constantly challenging us with more rigorous circumstances. The true hero is always outgrowing his old life. He will outgrow his home and family while remaining in love with both. Once it begins there is no going back and the momentum builds toward the next dark passage. All anyone can do is participate, face the rest of the adventure, and experience life to the full.

Ever forward.

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Understanding life in mythic terms is crucial to transformation.

Understanding life in mythical terms is crucial to transformation: of the world, of a culture, of an individual. Luckily, myth is basic. Everyone everywhere has access to it’s potency even if they can’t read. That’s because it’s all around us. Every moment of every day there is life and there is death. Every day the sun rises and sets, every year descends invariably into darkness and comes out again. It’s the pattern of reality, and if we look we’ll see this pattern unfolding in all the events of our lives. When we are practiced in the mythical perspective, we can set out for goals we might never before have considered. That’s because the idea of the unattainable begins to beckon like a challenge.

The Absolute has a separate language for each of us. A prayer language. But there are collective languages, too: the prayers of a religion, or the religion itself. But myth is the language by which the Absolute communicates with humanity as a whole. It’s deeper than religion, or ideology, or any teaching of any kind. Once the myth-mind is unlocked, the code cracked, my own life becomes mythic, a story filled with monsters to slay and treasures to seek. The religious teachings and the written myths of the ages start to resemble clues from the hand of God for how to thrive in reality.

Reading Lord of the Rings when I was twelve remains one of the most important things I ever did. The right information at the right time. Twenty-eight years later it still serves as a reference in the struggles of my life. I still go that story almost as often as to the Bible, to seek understanding, or at to least help me settle into adventure mode when all I can do is keep going. 

Ever forward.

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If it does not reside within you, do not believe it.

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If you could solve all the world's problems one at a time, which one would you solve first?

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Creation is an act of war

Every act of creation is an act of war. The mere development of talent is the most powerful weapon we have for enhancing consciousness. Each time we create, we open our eyes — and so the eyes of humanity — just a little wider.
 
Yet the more pure the creative act, the more powerful. So, in the war for consciousness, the best effort consists not in making war, but simply in making. It consists in creation not for the sake of consciousness, but for the sake of creation.
 
Ever forward.

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OS 10.me.2

revised 7/3/09

Here’s more from the TED conference given by William McDonough: “Our culture tortures itself now, with tyrannies and concerns over limits and fear, but we can add this other dimension of abundance.”

These “tyrannies and concerns over limits and fear” infest everything. All our systems, from the family to the nation, all our relationships, our work, our hopes and dreams, even our vacations. It's all built around prevention of loss. In the end they lead to a culture of fear. These fears in our primordial condition emerge insecurities emerge in social tyrannies and fear-based responses to existence. They color our perspective and give energy to our responses, so that our default setting is to assume and plan for the worst.

We build whole societies this way and when these societies live shoulder to shoulder, war is inevitable. We tend to ignore or even reject the abundance all around us. Imagine a world where the default human setting was to assume the very best will happen, and to plan for it.

Our tyrannies infest daily life in tiny little ways. Here’s an example: the social revulsion against telling someone they have hurt your feelings. The practice of telling people how you feel when they hurt you is not wrong. It’s difficult, so we call it wrong in order to avoid doing it. We call it “socially unacceptable” but the truth is we're afraid of it. It's dysfunctional because it stifles communication. If it stifles communication, it hinders relationship.

Imagine a world where we felt fear at the prospect of NOT communicating our feelings. I don’t mean shouting or getting in someone’s face. I mean respectfully, courteously explaining yourself. Try it. I guarantee you hold back. And I further guarantee you hold back not because it’s wrong, but because it’s scary.

The tyrannies are not basic to us. But the fears from which the arise are. To fix the situation, we must undertake the adventure into ourselves. The simplest fear or insecurity is an opportunity to take the first tentative step on the road that leads to your utter-self, the self you dream of when no one's looking.

That is a mythic journey.

Ever forward.

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OS 10.me

revised 7/3/09

I listened to a talk given by William McDonough to the TED forum called The Wisdom of Designing Cradle to Cradle. McDonough is a designer and his talk focuses on design principles conducive to a sustainable future. But he makes a great point that can be applied to emotional growth and the expansion of consciousness:

“As we look back at the basic state of affairs in which we design, we in a way need to go the primordial condition to understand the operating system and the frame conditions of the planet.”

Each of us has a primordial condition, an operating system, frame conditions. These things hold vital information that can explain why we fail, why we succeed, why we get angry under certain circumstances. Understanding these things can tell me a lot about what makes me feel threatened or secure. They are always there, under the surface, contributing energy to my responses and color to my perceptions. In order to effectively manage the details on the surface of my life, I have to understand the deeps.

Personal computer software provides a very useful metaphor for understanding this. You’ve got your operating system and you’ve got your applications. The applications are how I act, think, and speak in the day-to-day. It’s my relationships, my creative endeavors, my work, etc. The operating system is the underpinning on which the applications are placed. It gives my applications access to the computer’s memory and processors. It enables the applications to function. Or not. Photoshop can’t paint a pretty picture, however desperate I might be for my picture to look prettier, if the operating system is flawed or incompatible.

Here’s another angle: the operating system is universal, the applications are local. You use Word to write a novel; Word is local. You use Excel to track expenses; Excel is local. But the operating system is always there, influencing that local experience. The operating system is universal. It affects how I deal with all local circumstances. A broken operating system can’t fix itself, not even OS 10. It can’t even understand itself. But I can. I can look under the hood and find out what needs to change in my operating system to make my applications function properly.

Ever forward.

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Lose Some Sleep and Say You Tried

Recently I watched a film about the life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. It’s called Control, and I recommend it. In the previews that come before the film, there’s a trailer for a film called Joy Division, which features producers and members of the band. Someone in that line up says something to the effect of: “Most bands rehearsed and played because they wanted to be rock stars. Joy Division did it because they had no choice.”

When you listen to Joy Division, it’s clear they had something nobody else had at the time, or has had since. They were one of those unique, unrepeatable moments in music. So I listened to one of their songs recently. It’s called Autosuggestion. It seems to reflect the feeling a lot of people have, the horribly limiting sense that the world consists of preexisting grooves from which we each must choose, regardless of our creative impulse. Here’s how Curtis puts it: “Here, everything is by design. Here, everything is kept inside.” The other half of his message is clear: “Take a chance and step outside. Lose some sleep and say you tried. Meet frustration face to face.”

Not much more to the lyrics than that and the song is more than six minutes long. But it’s all Curtis needs to get his point across, and it’s all I need to get his meaning. Curtis seems to have been one of those people who had to “step outside.” His art was stronger than his hesitation and it seems he had no choice. People like that are a sign post for the rest of us, the ones who DO have a choice. The ones who CAN choose to stay inside. And I guess I have nothing to add.

Ever forward.

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