A Declaration of Spiritual Independence

“When freed from that which binds,
when the lust for life has come to
an end, one is not born again. He
is released now and forever.”

– The Buddha, Dhammapada

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Note: Some define “spiritual independents” as those who are unchurched or have left a mainline religious affiliation — like a third-way political party. For our purposes, “spiritual independence” means anyone who insists on critical thinking in religious matters.

On July 15, 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed the graduating students of Harvard Divinity School. As the ministers-to-be listened eagerly with freshly-opened minds, he told them, “Let me admonish you first of all to go alone, to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.”

He spoke of an “indwelling Supreme Spirit,” and of a vision, described by Philip Goldberg of the Huffington Post as “similar to that of the Eastern sages, where we are neither fallen nor depraved, and where divinity incarnates at every instant, not just once in the distant past.”

“God is, not was,” Emerson told the students, and each of us is “an infinite Soul” who is “drinking forever the soul of God.”

The graduates (and religion itself) were forever changed — their minds and hearts opened to a direct relationship with the Divine. The parents and faculty were angry and upset, and Emerson was banned from Harvard for over two decades.

If we are to claim spiritual independence for ourselves, then we need to cultivate a similar relationship with our Source. John Dominic Crossan writes about this kind of life in The Essential Jesus, saying it is the life that Jesus died for — a life “of human contact without discrimination and of divine contact without hierarchy.”

If we are to be truly free, we need to equip ourselves with the appropriate support on all levels and lines, and surround ourselves with the right types. We will need access to sound spiritual teachings, a free-standing system outside the mainline institutions, the right spiritual tools necessary to do the actual work, and the benefits of a rich community of practice.

Teachings

We’ll need teachings that help us to seek inspiration and guidance, and live with heart, for the road will be rough. They will need to be teachings that consider the health of the whole person (body, mind and spirit); that encourage not just temporary epiphanies and insights, but continual freedom (or moksha), spiritual liberation and unfolding, allowing us to “transcend and include” what has come before. They will need to be teachings that remind us to look within for the answer. Teachings that promote right behavior, right action and right speech; that allow for and encourage highly-developed lines of ethics and morality. We also need new stories, updated myths and well-drawn maps of the spiritual territory.

Summer Solstice: The Sacred Union of Father Sun and Mother Earth

This talk was delivered on Friday, June 19, 2015 as part of the Summer Solstice Service at Unity Campus St. Petersburg. It was followed by a chant of the mantra: “The Kingdom of God is within me; The Queendom of God is among us.”

stronomically speaking, Litha (Midsummer, Gathering Day, Summer Solstice) is the longest day of the year, representing the Sun God at his full power and utmost potential. In the sky overhead, ruling from on high — in his chariot, shining down upon us, giving light, heat and life to our Goddess, Mother Earth.

The term “solstice” is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because the sun seems to be literally frozen at its zenith overhead.

Father Sun and Mother Earth seem locked in this warm, life-giving embrace. And time has seemed to slow down so that we may honor that embrace and that consummation — the intimate relationship between God and Goddess, masculine and feminine.

Although the hottest days of the summer still lie ahead, from this point onward we enter the waning parts of the year. Each solstice (and equinox) marks a “turning” of the comic clock. To many cultures, the solstice can mean a limitation or a culmination. A climax or demarcation on the calendar. And even in summer’s beginning, we find the seeds of summer’s end. Each day the Sun recedes from the skies a little earlier, until the Winter Solstice (Yule) arrives and the days begin to become longer again.

Tonight, we honor the arrival of the Summer season, and celebrate the sacred union of God and Goddess, in which both of their energies are poured into the service and the substance of life.

We’ve done a lot in recent times to revive and give footing to the idea of the Divine Feminine. and rightly so. Spiritually and socially we have shifted to a place where female-ness is allowed it’s own voice, it’s own place at the table with integrity and without having to compromise any of its qualities or values.

Matthew Fox said, “If we liberate the Divine Feminine, she is deserving of a worthy consort — a cleansed and detoxified and resurrected Sacred Masculine.”

This union is of course reflected and manifested in our relationships. How we treat one another. Our partners, our spouses, our children, our co-workers, even strangers. It is a constant dance, sometimes tug-of-war, with one party exerting power or will in one moment, and the other party bending and allowing. But a healthy relationship is not one-sided. A healthy relationship is dynamic, is constantly growing and flowing, and allows for rhythmic exchanges in this power struggle.

We’re not talking about gendered men and women, we’re talking about the masculine and feminine energies that show up in us all.

Keeping those energies in a constant flow, a constant balance. Allowing them to feed, sustain, nurture each other as well as to challenge and push against each other when the time is right.

A Brilliant Matrix: The World of Religious States and Stages

The “Faith of the Seven” in the capital of Westeros (Game of Thrones).

Game of Thrones is a sprawling violent, bloody snapshot of a medieval fantasy world where different kingdoms and bloodlines struggle for control of the much-coveted “Iron Throne” — a seat in the capitol that rules all Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

It’s also a detailed glimpse into a fictional world in spiritual transition — from ancestral nature religions to a mythical/numerological polytheism to an emerging (and much-contested) monotheism. If you watch Game of Thrones, you’ll notice that there is a lot of time spent explaining the religious motivations of the characters. It’s as if religion itself is a character in the story. The characters may offer “seven blessings” to their loved ones or curse their enemies to the “seven hells” — the number seven representing a set of archetypes based on social and spiritual virtues (Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone, Stranger). At the same time, some characters are bent on appeasing the “one, true God” — the nascent and wrathful “Lord of Light” — through the blood and fire of human sacrifice.

Throughout the story, what the characters believe and how they interact with and interpret the actions of others begins to change based on what they begin to see with their own eyes. And to hear this kind of religion described, you might think that these forms of worship, these outdated modes of spiritual expression, so rooted in mythology and superstition, have long passed from our society. I can assure you, that in some corners of our planet, these types of nature-based and/or polytheistic religion (or variations of them) are still very much alive.

“Integral” Spirituality is part of a lineage that is woven through many teachers (Sri Aurobindo, Haridas Chaudhuri, Alan Watts, Ken Wilber, et. al.). And very recently, religion (or the interpretation of religious experience) that is rooted in post-modern and pluralistic structures has done much to synthesize some of our more sacred and socially held values that have long been viewed as opposites — ideas like east and west, science and spirituality, inner and outer, masculine and feminine, the individual and the collective, grasping and sitting — it is an emerging spirituality, not of either/or, but of both/and.

However, it’s not all rose-colored radical inclusivity. Implementing pluralism as its own practice, while avoiding the accusations and actual pitfalls of syncretism has proven to be difficult. Integral spirituality needs to honor the differences we find in the various religions and it does so not by comparing the human experience of gods and goddesses to the experience of blind men with an elephant, or minimizing the paths of tradition by winding them up the same mountain of “spiritual Oneness.” It succeeds by making a clear distinction between things like cultural history, creativity and mythology, human rights and freedoms, communities of practice, states of awareness, stages of consciousness, lines of development or intelligence, personality and gender types, and so on.

We will look at two of those here — stages and states — and hopefully gain a better understanding of how Integral spirituality allows us a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the relationship with our Self, with those around us and with the Divine, or Spirit-in-Action.

Stages of Consciousness

First we’ll look at stages of consciousness. These stages have been imagined as a vertical line (or nested hierarchy of circles).

This is how cultures have mapped the development or unfolding of our own worldview as we move from birth to death. These stages, according to Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything, move us from egocentric (care and concern for the self) to ethnocentric (care and concern for the family or the community) to worldcentric (care and concern for all beings).

It’s best illustrated with something called Spiral Dynamics. Developed by Don Beck and Chris Cowan, this model proposes the idea that the consciousness of all beings (as well as all societies or groups) unfolds in a spiral that oscillates between self-interest and concern for the group, and is continually expanding while incrementally including more and more perspectives.

VALUES SYSTEM	COLOR	DESCRIPTION
Archaic	Beige	Primal, instinctive, survivalistic. Food, warmth, sex and safety. Origin: 100,000 years ago.
Tribal	Purple	Loyalty to the tribe, magical/animistic beliefs, family rituals and blood oaths. Observe customs and cycles. Sacrifice is made for the tribe. Origin: 50,000 years ago.
Warrior	Red	Impulsive/egocentric beliefs, self-interest, self-expression, only the strong survive, domination and rebellion, kingdoms and heroes (negatives: gangs, the “terrible twos”). Creates change through the use of power. Origin: 10,000 years ago.
Traditional	Blue	Authoritarian beliefs, law and order, good and evil polarized, mythic/literal interpretations, ethnocentric, “my country right or wrong.” (positives: ordered meaningful existence, absolute truth, rightful living). Sacrifice is made for truth. Origin: 5,000 years ago.
Modern	Orange	Self-reliance, rational/scientific worldview, achieveist/strategic beliefs, “life is a game,” risk-taking. (positive: the Enlightenment, industrial revolution, negative: capitalist exploitation, environmental devastation, mechanistic view of life/the universe). Creates change through manipulation. Origin: 300 years ago.
Post-modern	Green	Communitarian/egalitarian, worldcentric, social justice, world peace, deep ecology, human rights, religious pluralism, multiculturalism, communes. (positive: birth of the internet, negative: hatred of hierarchies, disdain for competition). Sacrifice is made for consensus. Origin: 150 years ago.
Integral	Yellow	Integrative, enlightened self-interest; flexibility, functionality and responsibility; all value systems are valid, holarchies, value-based hierarchies (good, beautiful, true), systems thinking, “Third Way” politics. Creates change using knowledge. Origin: 50 years ago.
Mystical	Turquoise	Holistic worldview, a balanced system of interlocking forces, body/mind/spirit approaches to experience, global networks/global solutions. Identifies with collective mind or unified, evolving whole. Sacrifice is made for the planet/all beings. Origin: 30 years ago.

States of Awareness

States of awareness are simply the layers of what we call the “self” or the “body.” They have been taught by the world’s faith traditions to be viewed as concentric circles or sheaths (i.e. the koshas) that begin with the physical body and expand (or deepen) to include more energy (i.e. prana), more matter, more Spirit.

1. Gross Body – Sensory awareness, waking state
2. Subtle Body – Extra-sensory awareness, energetic body (Qi, shen, prana), dreaming or altered states
3. Causal Body – Formless awareness, the Soul, the Overmind
4. “State that is all states” – Non-dual awareness, Turiya, Divine Milieu, Spirit, Atman

The thing to be aware of here is that someone can be at the highest peak state experience — blissed-out, in a state of rapture — yet themselves be at a Traditional (ethnocentric) stage, a blue value system or lower. And the opposite is also true (higher value systems, and a lower or more narrow energetic body). An example might be the “enlightened” Zen master (inhabiting higher states of awareness) with a highly-developed line of morality and ethics, who is generous and humble, yet who holds strong cultural biases — racist or homophobic beliefs.

Alchemy Fest 2015 [Photos and Video]

photo by Tanya Sharkey

Thank you so much for making our 10th Annual Alchemy Fest event an amazing celebration of transformation and community. We’re already looking forward to next year.

Thank you to our leadership team and to the rest of the planning committee and all the volunteers. This event would literally NOT be possible without you. Thank you to all of our vendors and sponsors. This event could not happen year after year without your contributions and financial support, and we appreciate you so much.

We saw over 400 attendees over the course of the day, over 90 pre-sold tickets (the most we’ve ever had), 36 completed Green Cards, 3 big raffle winners and 38 satisfied vendors (again, a new record).

I can’t say how happy it makes me to see that this community and family-friendly event continues to grow and stay true to its mission of connecting and showcasing amazing and talented LOCAL people while honoring Earth Day, the arrival of Spring, the spirit of transformation, and so much more.

Thank you, again. I know that next year will be even bigger and better and I know that we will cross paths in the meantime to create more meaningful and transformative events and experiences (though not quite as labor-intensive as this one) for the members of our community.

You have my sincere gratitude.

Looking forward,
Joran

photo by Cassidy Brooks

Obscure Belly Dance by Caroline Hekate.

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Words of Thomas Merton

“If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic: and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it.” – Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Spring Equinox: A Time of Creation and Resurrection

Let’s get the death talk out of the way, shall we?

In Buddhism, we are constantly taught to die to our attachments (things, desires, thoughts) and also to the ego.

In Islam, there is not much written about what happens after Yawm ad-Din (The Day of Judgement), but one is expected to die to oneself at least figuratively, to put aside pride and ego and fully submit to the loving and redeeming power and glory of Allah.

And in Christianity, we are taught that through Jesus’ death on the cross, all of our sins and transgressions and pain died with him, and that on that day we were forgiven for good.

I recently came across something in Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, called the Shevirah, or “the shattering.” It teaches that there were seven original energetic centers or “seeds of light” hewn into the universe, and just as the seed casing of a plant must die and decompose before the plant springs forth, the seeds of the Shevirah must also shatter. This gave way to new and more complex forms, an unfolding that continues to occur throughout the universe, an unfolding whose center is now everywhere. And this sustained state of shattering, when applied to our lives, is a form of dying to oneself.

Supernovae leave elements behind in great explosions that seed other solar systems, planets and even our own bodies. Every being leaves something behind as food for others. Einstein said “no energy is lost in the universe” and Hildegard of Bingen said “no warmth is lost in the universe.”

Ostara/Easter is not about celebrating death. Yes, death is an inseparable part of the cycle of life and needs to happen for new growth to occur. But, death is celebrated plenty in our culture. We celebrated death in December during the Winter Solstice when we entered the Void, the darkness, the silence. When we were witness to the death of the Sun God at the hands of the Earth Goddess.

And now we celebrate his return.

Easter is about what comes after death. This time we celebrate resurrection — what fills that darkness, silence and emptiness after our denial, elimination and renunciation has occurred. We celebrate our own resurrection from the forms that no longer serve life, and the resurrection of the Christ within us. That’s what we celebrate now. This time allows us to focus on what we choose to carry forward, and to meditate on the new abundantly healing light and energy, the new and invigorating ideas, the new faith in ourselves and the self-love that fills us up and make us whole and that will sustain us for another year.

Make no mistake, spring is a time for celebration. It’s a time when day and night are at equal length, a time when things are in balance. But they are also at a tipping point — tipping towards the light as days are becoming longer and the Earth (at least in our hemisphere) begins to warm up and bring forth new life.

The spring equinox (or Vernal equinox) is a sacred time, when we turn our attention to the dawning of a new year, to new birth and growth, the coming harvest, abundance and fruition, to the long-awaited rising Sun God in the east.

And we celebrate the goddess, Eostre, by decorating and dyeing bright and colorful eggs. By breaking our fast with sweets and chocolate. By surrounding ourselves with the 4-footed creatures of the Earth (the rabbit, the deer) and the winged creatures of the Air (the duck, the eagle).

And we recognize Spring as a time of new life — within and without.

So, today, we celebrate three things — the new year, the coming of spring and resurrection.

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The New Year

In many traditions, this is the start of the new year. The Roman year began on the ides of March (15th). In England and Ireland, between the 12th and 18th century, March 25th was the day the calendar reset. And, the astrological year begins on the equinox when the moon moves into Aries — Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac, The Greek Ares is the equivalent to the Roman Mars, March is the month of Mars.

The Coming of Spring

This equinox also marks the beginning of the Spring season. In Greek mythology, it is the time when Zeus and Demeter are reunited with their daughter, Persephone (who had been abducted and trapped in the Underworld for six months) and a time when the earth is once again crawling with life. The month of March also contains holidays dedicated to the great mother goddesses: Astarte, Isis, Aprhrodite, Cybele as well as the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary on March 25th. The goddess and the divine feminine get to show off a little bit in spring — manifesting herself in the blossoms, the leaves on the trees, the sprouting of the crops, the mating songs of the birds, giving birth to new life in all its forms.

Resurrection

We also re-tell and celebrate the myths of the resurrected Gods — Attis, Adonis, Osiris and Dionysus — who like Christ die and are reborn each year. They are sons of a God and a mortal woman. They are saviors who are sacrificed. They are the fruit and vegetation, that die each year (at harvest) and are eventually reborn.

In metaphysics, we are taught that the crucifix represents the “crystallization of two currents of thought — the inner (vertical) current of Divine Life and the cross current of human limitation and the mind of the flesh.” The intersection of these two currents is the center of action that is our being. It is in that crux, or that cross, that we encounter the final overcoming. The birth of the I AM that occurs in “the place of the skull.” Golgotha (the site of Jesus’ crucifixion) was called the “cranial place” or the “place of the skull.”

Building the New World Conference Comes to Radford University

UPDATE: One-day passes to BTNW are now available for as low as $75.

Educators, scientists, economists, peace activists, and futurists from around the world will join Barbara Marx Hubbard, former Vice Presidential nominee and matriarch of the New Age movement, to present lectures and workshops at the “Building the New World” conference. BTNW will focus on the reality that humanity – and all life on Earth – is threatened in multiple interconnected ways and that we must quickly implement rational and novel solutions to meet these unprecedented challenges.

Hubbard’s “Wheel of Co-Creation” is the focus of the conference. The Wheel contains eleven interdependent sectors of society: (1) Education; (2) Communications; (3) Art; (4) Economics; (5) Peacebuilding; (6) Governance; (7) Health; (8) Environment; (9) Infrastructure; (10) Technology; and (11) Spirituality. BTNW organizers and over one hundred global co-sponsors contend that all these cultural categories need to be updated/upgraded in order for humanity to avoid a dystopian future.

Organizer Rev. Laura George, J.D., Executive Director of The Oracle Institute and builder of the Peace Pentagon, explains, “Futurists have been theorizing and opining for decades about the myriad challenges of the 21st Century. Now, BTNW is asking global thought-leaders to provide concrete and pragmatic solutions with the power to lead humanity into a more utopian future.”

Organizer Glen Martin, Ph.D., recipient of the Gusi International Peace Prize and Head of the Radford Peace Studies Department, adds, “BTNW will encourage attendees to reach beyond their particular area of interest or expertise and begin the process of synthesizing data across multiple disciplines. This emphasis on networking will underscore the need for real action via transformative and cross-platform solutions.”

The conference features a diverse and accomplished line-up of speakers, including: The Millennium Project Director Jerome C. Glenn, Huffington Post columnist Valerie Tarico, Ph.D., economist and futurist Robin Hanson Ph.D., “Peace Musician” Yuval Ron, best-selling author Charles Eisenstein, Shift Network Director of Peace Philip Hellmich, Indigenous Grandmother Mona Polacca, Federation of Damanhur Ambassador Shama Viola, Integral Church founder Joran Oppelt and PROUT Yogi Dada Maheshvarananda. Dozens of intentional communities also are participating in the conference.

BTNW will take place at Radford University in Virginia from May 28 to May 31, 2015. Cost is $375.00 (students $250), which includes a 4-day conference badge, all meals, and dorm room on the Radford campus. For more information and registration: www.BTNW.org.

Top 5 Reasons You Should Attend Interfaith Events

His Holiness the Dalai Lama with members of the Dunedin Interfaith Council on the steps of St. Pauls Cathedral in Dunedin, New Zealand on June 11, 2013. Photo/Jacqui Walker

Interfaith gatherings — in the form of peace marches, prayer breakfasts, demonstrations, panel discussions, academic conferences and inter-religious ceremonies — have grown in popularity over the last 5 years.

If you have seen one of these events advertised in your community, you may have thought it was a nice thing for other people to attend, but that it wasn’t for you. Or despite all the advertised information, you may have only noticed the word “faith” and thought, “that is an event for religious people or people who belong to a certain religion.” I assure you that neither are true.

Interfaith events may feature representatives from the various spiritual traditions from around the world, but they are certainly intended for — and convened around — everyone. An interfaith event may include attendees from religious and non-religious groups, atheists, scientists, politicians/city officials and academics. They may even include atheists or religious “nones” (those that don’t identify with a specific religion). These voices are gathered to engage in ongoing conversation about how to communicate effectively regardless of our differences, or how to respect the opinions of others, or ways to achieve peace in the world through non-violent means, and it is your perspective — and your voice — that deserves to be included.

Interfaith conversations can include such topics as ethics and morality; love and compassion; service to the community; climate change and global warming; personal spiritual practice such as prayer or meditation; social justice; human rights issues for women, children and minorities; or liturgy and the history of ritual as it relates to cultural and religious traditions from around the world.

But don’t fool yourself into thinking that these conversations are dry, academic, monotonous and uninspired — like some sermons or speeches tend to be. Most of these events are lively and passionate (sometimes heated), are fun and inspiring and most times involve great food and a focus on community.

Here are the top 5 reasons that you should start attending interfaith events:

1. Conflict resolution

No matter what model you’re using — the “Four S’s of Interfaith” or the “Interfaith Triangle” — using conversation to defuse violence and tension through peaceful means is something that we need more of in the home, the workplace, and the world. Using words to solve our disagreements and learning to take the role of other is one of the best examples we can set for our peers, our communities and our children. Peace begins with you.

2. It expands your own awareness

Discussing topics like spirituality and religion with others allows you to see the world through their eyes. And learning about others’ feelings, cultures and opinions helps you become more aware of the various perspectives that comprise our world. Allowing others to feel safe and encouraging them to share deeply — including sometimes personal details — is also a way to foster interpersonal connections that can bring about an expanded sense of awareness within your family, neighborhood and your community. By expressing and sharing together in this safe space, we are contributing more wisdom to the world — more goodness, more truth and more beauty.

3. It’s for a good cause

There is no equivalent of a “mega church” in the interfaith community. Most of these organizations are grassroots, very small and run by a few volunteers who are dedicated to a mission of unity and world peace. Most of these events do not benefit the individual faith communities, but give directly back to the community they are hosted in, donating proceeds to local charities and encouraging others to do the same. The charities are usually connected to universal concerns like human rights, hunger, poverty, the homeless and the abused. Consider showing up early and helping set up chairs or staying late and striking tables. It’s for a good cause and will be greatly appreciated.

4. Good conversation, good people

Interfaith events are not strictly educational, they are highly social and in some cases may put you in a situation where you have to think before you speak. This is great practice for the real world (especially the workplace). These gatherings usually attract a wide array of people from different backgrounds, cultures and walks of life. Introduce yourself to everyone you can and listen to their stories. Yes, you might learn something from passively observing a talk or panel discussion, but without an audience (or someone to ask meaningful questions) these conversations can be a lot of head-nodding and back-patting. Raise your hand, let your voice be heard. Interfaith events also attract people who are open-minded and who are willing to work out their problems (internal and external) through peaceful means. Be careful, you may unexpectedly find a new friend.

Foolishness and The Kingdom of the Bad

THE FOOL

The archetype of the fool or the clown shows up in most every well-known story with a beginning, middle and end. This character appears in dramatic work in various forms from the “Wise Fool” of the Greek Tragedies to Shakespeare’s spritely Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Dori in Finding Nemo.

These “foolish” characters typically provide comic relief and serve as a foil or sense of conscience to the protagonist. They do not follow society’s ways, are usually not the most fashionable and always speak the truth. They are transgressive and free in sometimes dangerous ways. They invite us to wear masks — or to take off our masks and live a life without labels and ideals. The fool, according to Joe Bunting (The Write Practice) is usually a “lowly” character, and sometimes a blank slate, that will reveal the character of others based on how they themselves are treated. Sometimes an antagonist we thought was our friend will show their true colors by betraying or mistreating the fool, usually in the final act.

In Shakespeare and the Human Mystery, J. Phillip Newell writes, “The fool is calling us to be truly ourselves and points out the falseness of what we have become. He is not, however, over and against his hearers. Rather, he invites them to discover the fool within themselves. In All’s Well That Ends Well, when Paroles says that he has found the fool, the clown replies, “Did you find me in yourself, sir?”

In ancient Egypt (as early as 2400 BC), clowns served a socio-religious and psychological function in the court, with the role of priest and clown traditionally being held by the same person.

In many Native American cultures, the Trickster God is represented as Coyote, a sacred clown. During certain ceremonial performances, masks are made of clay and worn for each direction of the medicine wheel and a Heyoka (a mystic, medicine man or outsider) plays the role of the backwards clown, doing everything in reverse.

There is, within Christian circles, those known as “Holy Fools” or “Fools for Christ.” These are the ascetics, mystics and outcasts that give up their worldly possessions and flout society’s conventions. The Hindu equivalent would be Avadhuta (The Sanskrit word for people who “do not identify with their mind or body, names or forms, a person held to be pure consciousness.”). Elsewhere, in Islam there are the Qalandariyya (whirling dervishes) and Malamatiyya (Sufi mystics with a staunch belief in self-blame).

The first card of the Major Arcana Tarot deck is that of The Fool. It shows him in all his youthful innocence stepping off a cliff and into the unknown without judgement, but also without wisdom. He is the embodiment of a new beginning. He is actively sacrificing his past. And he is represented by the number Zero. 

As George Leonard writes in his classic Mastery, zero is “the fertile void from which all creation springs, the state of emptiness that allows new things to come into being.” The fool represents what is known in Zen Buddhism as shoshin or “beginner’s mind” — the attitude that makes real learning possible.

At the end of his life, when making his own funeral arrangements, Jigoro Kano (the founder of Judo), asked to be buried in his white belt. The white belt is the symbol of the lowly student just beginning their study. It’s what you wear when you know absolutely nothing. The world’s highest ranking Judo master asked to be memorialized with the marks of the beginner.

While the fool archetype continues to be used abstractly as a metaphor and a device in storytelling or Jungian psychology, the actual court jester has been replaced in modern society by professional comedians. Comedians such as Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., George Carlin and Bill Hicks allow us to laugh at ourselves and our society by holding up a mirror to the “falseness of what we have become.” This humor comes from speaking the truth and crossing cultural norms. In some cases (Carlin and Hicks) they speak truth to power in an attempt to shake up the political systems of the day.

THE CLOWN

And then there is the beloved clown.

According to circus expert Hovey Burgess, the most prevalent character clowns in America are the Hobo, the Tramp, and the Bum. The Hobo, in particular, is described as being “down on his luck, but maintaining a positive attitude.”

The fear of these clowns extends beyond “Pennywise” from Stephen King’s It or serial killer John Wayne Gacy. It is a deep-seated societal fear. A 2008 study at the University of Sheffield in England was conducted with 250 children ranging from 4 to 16 years of age. The children were shown various renderings of a hospital redesign, including a variety of wallpaper. Unanimously, the children rejected or showed aversion to wallpaper featuring clowns.  

Fear of clowns could be as simple as the fact that most clown behavior is considered to be transgressive or anti-social (the hobo, the tramp, the mystic, the saint). Would you want your child visiting with the old medicine man near the edge of town with charcoal and ashes painted on his face? 

Some behaviorists think that this aversion may be due to something called the “uncanny valley” (the dip in the graph of human reactions to other human-like forms — like androids, animatronics or computer animation — that ranges from acceptance to revulsion). It’s a measurable probability that the exaggerated features of a clown’s face (big red nose, huge eyebrows, exaggerated smiling lips), may be “lifelike enough to be disturbing, but not realistic enough to be pleasant.”

Another reason clowns might strike discord in the hearts of men and women might be the same reason that others love them — that they show us too much of ourselves, including the failure (or the monster) within.

Duncan Trussell and Johnny Pemberton on a 2015 podcast, discussed how some clowns-in-training are constantly berated and insulted, and live in what is called “the kingdom of the bad.” They are the physical embodiment of failure, living perpetually in moments of sadness and disappointment, and they are to live there without fear. They have surrendered and accepted their own utter vulnerability to the Cosmos.

Trussell compares this to when you are “working and getting dirty.” You may be making every effort to stay clean, but you keep getting dirtier. It isn’t until you surrender to the dirt, and accept that you will just “be dirty,” that you finally are able to release into the moment — into the flow of the work itself and be present.

A former colleague of mine, Matthew Belopavlovich, worked as a clown for Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus. He described specific clowning routines that were designed to communicate this futility of the human condition. 

In one routine, a clown was set up in an office-like setting, with two cubicles opposite each other. His task was to move boxes from one cubicle to the next. Once he had eventually, through repeatedly failed attempts, finally accomplished this, and without any further instruction, he realized that the next logical step was to move the boxes one-by-one back to the original cubicle. And therein lies the surrender to the moment, the releasing into the flow of life. 

The other routine was a female clown, seated in front of a vanity and applying her makeup. It was made clear to the audience that she was awaiting a potential suitor — possibly another clown. As she attempted to preen and style herself to unexpected and often hilarious results, it became clear that her beau was a no-show. The routine ends on a bittersweet note with her playfully wearing cooked spaghetti as a wig and undoing her glamorous makeup. At first glance, the female clown seems to have tried and failed to improve her appearance and attract this suitor, but upon closer inspection, here is someone who has surrendered not only to the moment of “now” but also to their own inherent perfection.

DUALITY

Trussell states that if the clown lives in the “kingdom of the bad,” that there must be a “kingdom of the good” and that both realms, the “good” and the “bad” are dependent on human attention. This duality depends on the “bad” being held in opposition to the “good” and in the clown doing things in the perfectly wrong way. 

“When you sit in it,” he says, “there is a redemption that happens.” 

There is a shift from the profane to the sacred once you finally stop resisting what you are. 

This level of surrender takes honesty and immense courage. Only the fool can be fully immersed in the tragic beauty of each moment.

In Tibetan Buddhism, this keeping-life-at-a-distance is called avidya or un-intelligence. It is when we choose to identify with space and time as solid and static as opposed to open and flowing. If space and time are made of consciousness, then avidya is ignorance, or ignoring the intelligence of the Universe.

Chogyam Trungpa describes this relationship as a monkey who is trapped in a house whose walls are held together by the monkey’s own attachment and desires. The monkey may “escape this self-contained cycle of imprisonment” by developing “panoramic awareness.” 

In Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, he writes, “Panoramic awareness allows the monkey to see the space in which the struggle occurs so that he can begin to see its ironical and humorous quality. Instead of simply struggling, he begins to experience the struggle and see its futility. He laughs through the hallucinations.”

How many are willing to laugh in the face of their own attachment — to laugh through their hallucinations?

Are we willing to (as H. Emilie Cady instructs) “let go of the lesser in order to grasp the whole in which the lesser is contained?” 

Are we willing to step off the cliff into the unknown without judgement and without wisdom? 

Are we willing to create a new beginning by actively sacrificing our past? And is this surrender what will finally make real learning possible?

Are you, in this moment of “now,” willing to greet the day wearing only your white belt and some cooked spaghetti? 

If the answer is yes, then you may be ready to find the fool in yourself.

The Birth of Ego, The Fall of Man

One of the key concepts in many religious traditions is the idea that man has fallen or broken away from God. It’s considered by some to be the “ascending” form of religion — where we reach up or return to a state of Oneness with the Divine, as opposed to “descending” forms of religion where God is present or manifest in Nature and heaven is on the ground at men’s feet. This state of “falling away” or brokenness is commonly illustrated with the idea of Original Sin, or as it is called in Tibetan Buddhism alaya-vijnana (translated as Store Consciousness or consciousness that “contains all the traces or impressions of the past actions and all good and bad future potentialities“). This is the birth of the ego and the point at which our mind itself starts to distance itself from its true (or original) nature.

We are born clean, perfect and brand new, filled with light and unwrapped for all the world to see. We are born without language, without memories, without bias and without prejudice. We are born fearless. It is the world around us that attempts to work its way inside our mind, bringing along with it the concepts (and in some cases contagious ideas) like fear and bias.

George Leonard in his book Mastery, writes that a baby learning language for the very first time exists in a state of playfulness, a state of nonsense — throwing every manner of random sound against the void — until certain sounds are positively reinforced by the community around them. If there was no positive reinforcement, language would not develop as it does. He also states that the opposite is true, that by trying to control or negatively reinforcing sounds created from this state of blissful awareness, we instill self-doubt and fear in the child, and slowly begin to chip away at this state of blissful awareness. This sense of playful exploration, of pure creativity and imagination is eroded away by those around us simply through the act of (sometimes unconscious) positive and negative reinforcement.

It is only when we reach the post-conventional stage of psychological development (adolescence into adulthood) that we have the opportunity to unlearn this conditioning.

There are those who read scripture and sacred texts literally (33% according to Pew Research). Those that think Jonah literally lived in the belly of a whale for three days or that Noah was able to corral two of every living animal onto a boat. And, there are those who think that a piece of fruit may have contained all the knowledge of the world. Picture an apple packed tightly with not only the sugary flesh of the fruit itself and all its nutrients — its DNA — but also with the entire alphabet of your respective language, the entire number line in both directions all the way to infinity, entire systems of knowledge like law and medicine, potential systems of knowledge (that didn’t yet exist) like physics and astronomy. There are those who believe that when Eve took a bite of the apple, it was this knowledge that infected her. That she now possessed a download of ethics — a framework for interpersonal relationships, when according to myth itself, interpersonal relationships beyond that of our two protagonists weren’t yet known. This moment according to scripture was a transgression of spiritual law, attempting to take knowledge from the tree, the source of life, from higher spiritual planes, from God himself and use it for human ends. However, there are hundreds of ways to interpret this scripture.

There are those who may read it politically, and as an attempt for the patriarchal structure of the time to control the existing (and still very much emerging) storehouses of knowledge in the world. There are those who may read it as a fable to their children, encouraging them not to overreach their boundaries or expectations or not to elevate themselves above their spiritual station or social class.

There are also those that, in an attempt to frame this story biologically, view it as partial at best when considering our homosexual, bisexual, and transgender sisters and brothers. Is this a story that they can identify with? And, if this is a partial picture of the biological diversity and sexual/gender identity — if it’s not “true” biologically, then what else might it be about? Maybe it’s the polarity of the male/female or masculine/feminine drives in all of us. Maybe it’s about the battle being waged by God and the devil over the souls of our illustrious couple in that garden paradise. Maybe it’s all of the above.

Some interpret all scripture figuratively. There are those that perceive the whale as a construct of Jonah’s unconscious mind or a symbol of something larger than himself. There are those that perceive the initial bite of that apple as the first appearance of what we have come to call Ego. Eve was immediately self-aware, and immediately perceived herself as something other, something other than perfect, something that needed work. And this is one of the many effects of the ego, it convinces us that we are not our true or original nature. It convinces us that our mind can fix it, that our mind is in control, that there is a “self” to be preserved in an impermanent world.

We must find a way to inoculate ourselves against these effects. Fear and self-doubt and attachment are all viruses of the mind and highly contagious. And unless we have in place a rigorous practice that is constantly renewing and strengthening our spiritual and psychological immune system, we are at risk of being infected by the idea that we are broken or sinful, that we are anything less than connected directly to God, anything less than apertures of light and energy and Christ Consciousness, of formless Buddha Mind, energy that as it evolves, assists God himself in becoming self-aware.