The Primal Apple of "Perhaps" - The Bite That Was, and Is, That Crunched & Keeps On Crunching, Thus Egos are Born from Such In Never Ending Search for "an agreed general theory of human unhappiness" Post-Edenic

"'It's good for the breath!"
With this she tempted Adam to death.  

Tis also true, though paradise is lost, 
something's to be gained with apple sauce. - Django Kamenstein

"If I wanted to give in weakly to the most utopian fantasy I know, it would be one that pictures a world-scientific body composed of leading minds in all fields, working under an agreed general theory of human unhappiness."
- Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil., p. 168

https://archive.org/details/EscapeFromEvilErnestBecker

"In his book “The Insistence of God” John D. Caputo writes about “Perhaps”. He says that “‘Perhaps’ is the abdication of faith, decision, ethics, judgement, and knowledge of philosophy and theology, a retreat to the safety of the indecisive and uncommitted.” - Terry Burridge (quoting Caputo), a damned good post, too:  

https://terryburridge.wordpress.com/2020/04/29/perhaps-2/

Chimayo, NM. Christmas 2016

. . . And a picnic in Eden is just apple after apple to rub our noses and tastebuds, o bitter bitter, in that rumored first bite that conjured fig leaves, first underwear in the universe, born of fruit but NOT "Fruit of the Loom" but, rather, fruit of the "let's get this consciousness thing evolving out of typhonic (primal nature brain) evolving into whatever this dis-aster aka ill-starred - mind is becoming to be having now clearly broken out of the brain pan of the skull and cosmos apparently reduced to zeros and X's though I still must buy toilet paper.

Ernest Becker's grim yet accurate "drawing" of the human hungry ghost condition :

"Sensitive souls have reacted with shock to the elemental drama of life on this planet...this bone-crushing, bone-drinking drama in all its elementality and necessity. Life cannot go on without the mutual devouring of organisms. If at the end of each person's life he were to be presented with the living spectacle of all that he had organismically incorporated in order to stay alive, he might well feel horrified by the living energy he had ingested. The horizon of a gourmet, or even the average person, would be taken up with hundreds of chickens, flocks of lambs and sheep, a small herd of steers, sties full of pigs, and rivers of fish. The din alone would be deafening. To paraphrase Elias Canetti, each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good." - Ernest Becker, Escape From Evil, pg 2

[DRIVE BY LECTURE/CONJECTURE AHEAD]

And as Becker accurately says in his always astounding book, The Denial of Death, we humans are creatures who cannot get over the fact that we are [conscious, creative]

"gods

who shit!"

W.R. Bion says that the tragedy (and hope) is that humans are creatures who have indeed evolved up from animal consciousness enough to intuit/know where it appears they (we, me) may be going but our bodies and nervous systems and psyches haven't evolved enough yet to handle the tremendous animal drives which still demand and command us all the time.

Ken Wilber accurately calls this our present "Centauric condition," our being at the centauric level of consciousness, half animal/instinct/unconscious and half human/rational-creative/conscious.

We are awake now to both, and must endure as best we can the conflict of these opposites that we are. I take comfort here in Christian existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel's "HOMO VIATOR" assignation, to soften Bion's bit o' bitters, which I hold to believe is an accurate assessment of the human species;

we are, as Marcel has it, homo viator,
humans-on-the-way, still evolving or, as centaurs, still trotting along.

With Becker's insight in mind, any inflation humans have is confronted by this insult of being "gods who shit". To think we are gods is to be inflated and thus to be gods who shit, says Becker, comes as a shock to our nervous system and its conscious dreaming of itself as humans. However, I find that the dream of the infinite, boundless container is an image of the alchemical container mentioned above in which the prima materia, the primal stuff, the "shit" begins to be cooked and ultimately, so the alchemical fantasy goes, is transformed into gold which signifies greatest value (which is an ever expanding hold which includes and does not exclude shit). 

Jung's discovery of alchemical symbolism in psychotherapeutic containers helps us, gives us faith in transformation into fuller humanity and creaturehood more consciously containing, tolerating and incarnating archetypal forces. Perhaps what is most transforming is the growing awareness of the infinite, boundless, unbreakable container which holds the "heaven/hell" experience of and of Nature (unconscious) and Consciousness (ego awareness), of ongoing warring human nature within and without. An intuition of, an experience of, this cosmic "hold" is transformational, indeed it reinforces faith in not only the values implicit in the very struggle to endure much less transform, but faith also in Existence as it is Itself. Psychoanalyst/writer Michael Eigen says that all (warring) capacities find their place within a primary faith."

I call this primary faith animal faith, the kind of faith that the animal has, say, when after the lion has hauled down one of its own; the herd just a few feet away from the mauling munching lion bends their heads back to the grasses to also feed life. That bending to the grass is the statement of faith: "Not today, Death. I live and eat. And shit. And I run when I must." Animal faith assumes, contains, that facticity that life/death goes on. Creation and creatures continue. All are contained in the boundless, infinite container which is not static but alive Itself, ever forming from universal material givens."

*

Musical exit ramp for homo viator, a compass, maps with Rest Areas and Comfort Stations, Starbucks or other preferred coffee joint, wifi, a place to park and sleep, or head into woods nearby to erect a tent, unroll the sleeping bag to slum or slumber, incessant thrum and hum of man on the way traffic, "on your own, with no direction home / Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone" - Mister Dylan, blisters on 'is fingers.

"What you see is what she ate." O MY!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIjr7wphX8

Regarding the Apple's History, A Theological Trifle, After Emily Dickinson - Django Kamenstein:

"It's good for the breath!"
With this she tempted Adam to death.


Properties of the apple are renowned since
their eating made it a greatly frowned upon thing. 
Still, it is not without its lovers.
But for an apple's charm we would live boring lives, 
never a fling or two to alarm the pear, 
and we all know an apple will never harm 
a teacher's pet, its fables to lure
the imagination, that Golden One's 
strength to subvert us to the core.

Let's eat the jelly of sin and tell it! 
William Tell's a good shot! 
Let's split the Apple in the pot 
and stew it for Eve's sly.
Even so our breath is sweet.
Tis the tart one of death 
from which we'll all die.

Tis also true, though paradise is lost, 
something's to be gained with apple sauce. 

even Stevens - an epoché...'seen in a purple light...purple on purple sets around...'

"...seen in a purple light...arranged with big hands...

 its heroic attitudes...purple on purple sets around..." 

- whittled Stevens, Wallace - from 'The Snow Man'

"Husserl's term,

epoché,

the negative move
whereby we bracket
the world,

is not a “step”
hat we do first in
effort to prepare
ourselves for the
later “step,”

reduction proper;

rather, the bracketing

and the move
whereby we drive
the self

back upon itself,
the reduction proper,
occur together."

- Wikipedia - BUT reading this out loud, and slowly, by god and blackbird, I swear, no complacencies or Pinot Noir, it sounds like Mr. Stevens, thusly I shape the text, or try, to appear as, perhaps to be, a poem by the maestro late of Hartford.

Symphony No. 66, Hymn to Glacier Peak, Op. 42 —Alan Hovhaness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ3Wm5HiTrE  

><><><><

"A being entangled in time is also entangled in narrative"

- found quote anon. random

for Valerie -

Again, upon Kingfisher's wings I blow these kisses, 
this music, your patient ear awaiting the purist pearl, 
for you were once the bequeathed, escaped girl 
without fear of oceans, this one between us which 
now must be overflown to reach you.

10 years ago - 

perfect timing as I now sadly 

resistantly prepare to return to the City, my street, my box tomorrow leaving these high mountains and, yes, and presently falling Hallelujah SNOW on new purple buds on gray tree limbs - 

I was hanging 

in epoché out my 5th floor (top floor) window, new buds demonstrating as event that "spring can really epoché me, up the most" as verb, as -ing, reducing me moi to "WHA'?'s rumored magick invisibly within worlds within worlds alla sudden purple winks.  

'Hood drunk, I stagger down stairs wanting to, eager to, embrace every tree, caress each car hood, ornament or no, shake hands with stoop rails, bless every/each concrete crack, crooked smiles' explicatives all, anything goes cuz Wallace Steven's "purple light" ignited an explosive tho unitive storm outside (though there is a rumor that there is no outside) yet inside (ditto rumor con-iterative), beside/outside myself with outsized ecstasy just as I was only a few moments ago feeling depressed that I must leave this majestic overwhelming and reorienting mountain ridge to urban inanity when I bleary see tiniest snow flakes teasing into spruce green giving in, waving, gently from snow weight.

Today, from pallet I leap up, tighty whiteys, slide open the glass doors and run into the, another, event, end of April gift of snow before I go to god knows what waits post 6 hours drive below, south of this daily high north steep hills embrasure, ribs tip top ridge winks spruced up dividing sky from here-below. I laugh near brown but just greening grass that, in my boy joy, that I have managed to unconsciously put on my flip flops in my laughing free fall forward toward flakes but the wet rubber scrunch-scrunch per step accompanies the otherwise silent worship service of nearly naked me growing ever pinker in the cold, knees shaking for, what? freeze or joy. Both, I venture.

So. This old picture of me leaning into changes 10 years back to, officially old me, now just turned 73 - who? me? - and/but still capable of ecstasy all the better and indiscreet (but whom? not trees) "in me draws" on a ridge dipping steeply to brook and boulders incapable of slander...unexpected grace, a gift to bolster me as I prepare for departure for the daily disruption of utter crowd crash, push, rush, muster, blah blah the live-long bray masses, all the shhhhushhh - endings of metro- schizo- mundo pressed down and shaken together - call it democracy - what you wanna or will but as for me, my hermit now riz and riled, all smiles for gratuitous nature's snow, new buds equanimous (fun word to say - real fast 3 times), zennish, like Angelus Sileiius's rose, "budding without why" unlike myself though I expire, I mean ASPire, too often a child's prayer cuz life stares one down, at least, life-leased at best, me down. But for the moment I'll bleat, clap hands, sing praise.

Hang on to present it, then, arrive in thither city eventual - withered/embittered.

Now's this evergreen event-plummet fresh from cooler blankets to slightest blanket, rather, thinnish fabric, of snow.

Did I say "zennish"? at same time 'm swollen, swelling still, mit Bacchanal JOY in tremblin' withers.

Did I say "Praise"? a verb, the better sounded than noun-ed. Where's my crown? that crow black stares me down, almost here it think, judge, "Effusive."

So be it. For the moment I take refuge in EFFUSE, a flake with countless flakes near scrub shrub, limbs, needles, toe wiggle and tidd-ly my thinks. I'll not budge (am not, I signal to Judge Crow, me projecting again, a friggin' budgie but nod, not eye blink, pretend a bird.

Or, better, I'll Stevens-conjure a blackbird or more (who's counting). Both Judge C. and me the better for the not-banter though I'll stammer on into city of me where from my window I count crows at the foot of a water tower mirage impression that they are turning it, a visage even Stevens would take note of, un-grim himself (me, projecting again) and allow.

Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring - Bach Cantata No. 147 - scroll down to cut number 10)

[All -photos by Warren Falcon.  All rights reserved]

REPRISE: Sin-eating, Transgression and the Trivialization of the Sacred

Seated gargoyle in the Cathedral of Mirepoix, France.

The Learning for Life Group essay, "Mavericks, Schmavericks! Dime a Dozen - What We Need Are Real Transgressors!" is extracted from "Sin-eating, etc."...you may scroll down to the section entitled "Transgressors Serve, Ignore-ance, The Mythology of Transgression" although it is best to read it in the greater context of the entire essay. 

[This is a reprise of an essay published on 7/10/o8.  I still hold by it, with it.]

Part Two of this essay may be read [click] here, To Sing From Fragmentation: A Scapegoat's Song

Garden sculpture in Santa Fe, NM Christmas 2015

C. G. Jung, from Memories, Dreams, Reflection

**

But wherefore could I not pronounce 'Amen'? 
I have most need of blessing and 'Amen' stuck in my throat" —William Shakespeare, from Macbeth 

My friend, my friend, I was born doing 
reference work in sin, and born 
confessing it. 

This is what poems are: 

with mercy 
for the greedy, 
they are the tongue's wrangle, 
the world's pottage, the rat's star. 
— Anne Sexton, "With Mercy for the Greedy" 

All lies and jest. 
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. —Paul Simon, "The Boxer"

People will do anything, no matter how absurd to avoid facing their own souls. —C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Collected Works, Vol. 12, par. 126.

A man will go far to find out who he is. —Theodore Roethke, from "In a Dark Time" 

I'm gonna ride to the West where the fence commences
and gaze at the moon till I lose my senses. —from the song, "Don't Fence Me In"

**

An Outstanding Invitation to the Dispeptic Banquet 

I am a sin-eater, a transgression taster, a veritable trespasser's tratatoria of degenerate degustation, digester of daimonic dishes and damaged just-desserts. And, yes, I swallow. As a blues song sings it, "...it's a dirty job, baby, but somebody's got-ta do it!"

But I'm not the only sin-eating thug in the people business. When cogitating about what I might want to say regarding transgression an immediate image of one of my heroes rushes to mind as first conjured in Peter Redgrove's account of his therapeutic work and apprenticeship with the late John Layard, Jungian analyst extraordinaire. Redgrove writes:

Very early on... I was lucky enough to meet a great and widely known analyst, John Layard...a striking man, in his late seventies when I met him. He had snow-white hair that was worn long and flowed over his collar like steam boiling from a pot. His face in repose had a profound listening quality, and he was very tall. In the centre of his forehead, just above the eyebrows, was a small, round, skin-covered hole in the bone, like a third eye-socket. It was a bullet-hole, from when he had once tried to commit suicide, and you could tell if you had managed to interest him because it would beat with a pulse like a drum. When he knew you well, he would take out his denture for comfort, and then you could see that when he was absorbed in what you were saying he would salivate copiously...he told me he was a sin-eater, and that was why his mouth watered. I protested in the name of common sense; he replied, 'We've had enough of that. What we need is uncommon sense.' --pgs xiii-xiv, from the "Introduction," The Black Goddess and the Sixth Sense, Paladin Books, 1989

Upon first reading this striking image of an elderly Jungian psychoanalyst formerly suicidal with a bullet-hole in the middle of his forehead toothlessly salivating proclaiming to be "a sin-eater" to his client and student, I laughed outloud in gleeful and relieved recognition of someone to whom my inescapable humanity could easily relate, bullet-hole and what led to it, saliva and appetite for sin-eating, all, along with his reframe of sin and transgression -- how devilishly tasty! And how un-New Agey, un-New Thoughty, not at all "spirituality LITE", un-clinical psychologically, irreligious, irreverent and utterly human with sulpher and brimstone tints and tones, his very crusty humanity not any longer laden or at least less laden with the burden of an impossible moral transcendence. All the while vibrantly humorous and deadly serious, bullet hole attesting to the seriousness Layard took his work, that of his clients. And nevermind the transference and counter-transference!! Sin-eating is serious business but not without boundary-breaking irreverent-for-the-gods'-sake humor. Humor, latin for "fluid." A sense of humor, a sense of fluid fluidity, of flow. Currents. Implication of heights (air currents) and depths (molten earth core magma flow, water currents). 

Step back then! I'm salivating and the flow is heavy. Liver, transgression and consciousness all flowing together. Coughing confluences. Noir-ish nuances. Outright offensiveness. Keep a spit cup nearby. A spit cup, for those saintly and civilized ones who wouldn't deign t0 know, is kept near at hand to spit snuff or tobacco chaw into whilst one partakes of the gravy and the levity of the nicotinic leaf, and sin. Leaves aren't too far from sin. Just ask Adam and Eve, first transgressors who brought consciousness out of divinely legislated unconsciousness by obeying the consciousness bringer, Lucifer, Light-bearer (The Creator Deity forbade eating of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil). 

All consciousness, then, is transgression. 

If you haven't noticed, one can become keenly self-conscious when transgressing. Thus the leaf coverlets on the Primal Progenitors as the first underwear in the Garden of Eden. I recently asked a colleague why Adam and Eve covered their genitals and not their asses since there is so much shame about anality and shit. She answered wisely, "You don't cover what you can't see." But I transgress, I mean digress. Back to sin-eating, consciously doing so which is really the parson's proffer, the psychotherapist's prerogative, the healer/counselor's pretense and pressure.

But let me begin at the beginning again with a confession again:

I am a sin-eater. Until only recently I secretly salivated a la Layard yet publicly pretended to be an abstemiously lite though contrary poetaster of the luxurious foie gras of the Seven Deadlies (Seven Deadly sins), a munching momser at the veritable smorgasbord of cultural culpas and egregious condiments, those musky, putrid, odoriferous offal-awful morsels of eclectic human sin, mine own, others. Foie gras, the liver from which it is made, is an acquired taste for most humans, a rich, bitter, more than slightly turned odor-of-shit flavored organ meat; a friend from South Africa recently told me that lions always eat the liver of a kill first, and fight for it. Male lions have first dibs since the liver appears to be the most tasty of organs out of the plethora of organ choices. It seems Nature makes liver top choice on the menu for beasts. Why should we uber-animals with consciousness be any different?

The liver as we know converts toxins in the body into harmless substances thus it's rich poisonous flavor which is absolutely and dangerously delicious. Prometheus, that forward seeing thief (his name means "foresight") of Greek mythology, stealer of divine fire and meaty morsels intended for the gods, bringer of forbidden consciousness and therefore of culture to mortals was punished for his transgression by being chained to a rock where an eagle (sometimes a vulture) would eat his liver by day only to grow back at night to be fed upon once again come daylight. Prometheus had the gall to break divine law and appropriate fire and sacrificial meat for humans, a titanic transgression, his being a Titan afterall. 

Edward F. Edinger, Jungian analyst writes: 

"Prometheus' story gives us profound images of the nature of emerging consciousness. First there is the process of separation, which determines what belongs to the gods and what belong to humankind, the ego gaining increments of meat, or energy, for itself. Then humanity is provided with fire, one could say with light and energy: consciousness and the effective energy of will to carry out conscious intention are created. However, there was a fearful price for this, because the acquisition of consciousness was a crime, as described in the myth, and its consequesnce was to generate in Prometheus an unhealing wound, the wound inflicted by the eagle/vulture by day--during the time of light and consciousness. This particular detail indicates that consciousness itself is the eagle/vulture, the wound producer. Prometheus pays for the consciousness of humanity with his suffering." (pg. 12, The Divine Drama, The Inner Meaning of Greek Mythology, Shambala Press1994). 

Prometheus committed hubris (inflated pride aka being like, equal to the gods) and though the gods punished hubris they secretly understood it admired it seeming to repeatedly pull for it by their restrictions, laws, taboos clearly laid out for mortals and the lesser gods thus guaranteeing transgression since laws, boundaries, taboos beg for transgressors. Though punishment is meted out there are rewards to the punished, sophia (wisdom) being the greatest reward in Greek religion. Sophia/wisdom, humanly gained from human sinners, gifted even the gods who eventually evolved/transformed into Greek philosophy and its pursuit, philos = love, sophia = wisdom, the love of wisdom. This sophia is not derived from the gods above but derived from human sin and sufferings within and against the laws/taboos/boundaries set by the gods who themselves did not obey what they imposed upon mortals and the created world. Thus we learn that transgression, going beyond the bounds, crossing over the border, brings or can bring consciousness and wisdom. Suffering punishments for far seeing, seeing ahead, just plain animal curiosity ("what does that apple, that liver, taste like?") going for the forbidden fire, brings consciousness for transgression equals consciousness eventually.

Transgressors Serve, Ignore-ance, The Mythology of Transgression 

Transgressors serve. And are served up by the "righteous", the wannabe gilded guru-ic gossips, those glib spirit entrancers, those chin-charmers dime a dozen, those Metro-mancers who plant golden, mass produced flags in the "transformation" business staking their claims of imminent domain in the new gluttony that is now "Spirituality, Inc." from lofts to loony toons, the "enlightenment business" with TV talk show hosts proclaiming the latest best-selling "Secret and Esoteric Science" designed to gain material stuff and, of greatest value in that racket, projections of "Power" with money attached. There will be no dirth of these who so easily via magical thinking with no critical thinking whatsoever please the desperate, the greedy, the forsaken ready to "worship at any shrine impulses toward perfection" (Artur Rimbaud) which are promises for transcendence but most often dissociation and bypass of the problem of the shadow side of existence, of good and evil. 

Transgressors bring that disowned shadow and underworld value, that which has been left out of official culture, secular and "spiritual", of families, clans, cults, groups, communities, nations. They are scapegoated but at first usually ignored. John Layard, mentioned above, said that the crime of Oedipus, whose myth our Western culture is built upon, is ignorance-- ignore-ance (pg. xiv). Every rebel, maverick, criminal, rule breaker represents a lost value or a new value which has been ignored by the collective. They may be punished, they will be punished, but in the end the punished one will become wise or has the potential to become so and, that not happening, some child or two or three or more will be born or will arrive from some other shore having crossed a border legally or illegally and the old collective values shall fall to the new values brought in by the invader transgressors. 

Religion, myth, dreams, society historically and currently are full of those mythic transgressors who bring about a new value, a new order, or herald one to come. Jamake Highwater in his book, The Mythology of Transgression, speaks of two kinds of transgressions, theological, which is a breaking of the absolute laws of god, and mythological, which is "a metaphor suggesting a process similar to metamorphosis: an act that brings about transformation. The line crossed by a mythic transgression is a boundary of consciousness at the same time that it is a boundary of collective mores...such boundaries are called "reality" (pg. 44), ruled by an ideology or theology or philosophy (all of which are believed to be absolute). Mythological transgressors are always perceived by the collective as theological transgressors and are always considered threats, criminals, and are punished. Highwater pointedly continues: "...transgression [from the theological eye] is generally understood to mean an action that is morally subversive. A transgression is closely associated with the religious idea of damnation...we reproach them as sinners. And the more "terrible" the transgression, the more we reproach them. We may ridicule them, disdain them, beat them, imprison them, banish them, or we may even kill them. But the worst of all possible punishments is doubtlessly our attempts to redeem them: to change them from their sinful ways to our blessed ways...Sartre said that "hell is other people." In matters of dogma [theological or psychological] he may have been right (pg. 42)." 

In sum, the mythological transgressor leaves the known, received and sanctioned "Walled City" of norms, of the socio-psycho-sanctimonious collective in order to bring about revelation and transformation. The archetypal hero's journey always leads to revelation and transformation. Highwaters says "the crucial turning point of any (hero's) adventure is that moment when a man or woman breaks away from the commonplace world in order to act out a sense of self. It is this decisive act of disjunction from the commonplace, of departure from the known world, that represents the essential act of crossing the line, of breaking the rules and trespassing beyond the familiar world. That trespass represents the hero's willingness to pierce the protective walls of the community. It represents the daring [and Promethean "gall"] to make a precarious passage beyond the walls by doing that "one thing" that is forbidden (pg. 41)."

Trials and Trivializations 

"One cannot be too cautious in these matters, for what with the imitative urge and a positively morbid avidity to possess themselves of outlandish feathers and deck themselves out in this exotic plumage, far too many people are misled into snatching at such "magical" ideas and applying them externally, like an ointment. People will do anything, no matter how absurd to avoid facing their own souls." -- C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Collected Works, Vol. 12, par. 126. 

It is obvious that theological transgression is found amongst the theologically/metaphysically inclined. It is also found in so-called secular groups. Whether self-identified as sacred or secular both have their own absolutes which are wielded "god almightily" creating pompous accusers holding psycho-sanctimonious straw courts in dithering dockets where the transgressor without legal representation is expected to give account or be banished. The masses become the judges, the leaders capitulating to them while all along complimenting the horde on "how well they are doing." Power struggles ensue as to who has "the Truth" and the "sleuthy toves" do "gyre and gimble in the wabe (Lewis Carroll poem)." Jabberwocky and juggernauts, assaults on the "Truth" become assaults in truth designed to punish and scapegoat and to empower the self-chosen ones. The only revelation brought forth is of blame, shame and, most usually, immense hypocrisy and ongoing relentless gossip amongst the alpha spiritualists. Power over the group is grabbed in the vacuum and consolidated. Meanwhile the sinner/transgressor is exiled which in a real sense is a grace for the tried and convicted, an escape from the whirlwind of offense, pretense and obsessive rumination of paranoid leaders (paranoias passed off as intuitive revelations, of course, thus ensuing trials and punishments are divinely ordained and the paranoic hands remain "pure" in their minds, behinds bared for others to see) and their obedient castrati. Committees form to give official "truths" and self-serving "spins" all the while the grinning skull upon which they stand blindly grins at the charade. The exiled one is not heard from again. Nor does the righteous throng want to hear from him or her having born in scapegoat fashion the "sins", the unconscious, unintegrated shadow of leaders and group. With a chant and a blessing the "redeemed" and "enlightened" march in goose step to commoditized, Westernized, narcissistic "Oms" with best-selling tomes in armpits, a spiritual deodorant for sure, guaranteeing financial prosperity in Macbethian hands which, as Ernest Becker points out in his astounding Escape From Evil, are vain attempts to deny death and finitude where we all leave behind us fuming piles of excrement which betray our animal nature and impermanence. Meanwhile the glib Winter Queen and King of Commonplace spouting "spiritual platitudes" and mystico-sprach (hypnotic entrancing nonsense) disguise dark ways of power marching on into infinity in even spiffier, shinier packages even more of a commodity for the new gluttony which is "spirituality" now become co-opted, trivialized rituals which once were sacred to indigenous people the world over. 

"Was I too glib about spiritual things?" - Theodore Roethke 

A most difficult sin to eat, mea culpa mea culpea maxima mea culpa, is the trivialization of the sacred into purchasable commodities and self-improvement programs where self appointed and self aggrandizing wannabe high priestesses and priests of the Mammon Feast dressed in "outlandish feathers" and "exotic plumage" can be hired at exorbitant costs usually of pocket and psyche/soul . Harvey Cox speaks sharply and surgically accurate to this trivialization of sacred traditions into possessions to be purchased with enlightenment and money guaranteed if the chela/student follows the rules doing it all correctly, using the credit card copiously, all the while curtsying to a "namaste", "peace and blessings" and a "praise the Lord". Cox prophetically writes in the 1970's (all prophets are transgressors in their day):

"If there is any fault to be allocated, it lies not with the victims [of commercialization of spiritualities] but with the buyer-seller nexus within which the new Oriental religious wave is marketed. Despite what may be good intentions all around, the consumer mentality can rot the fragile fruits of Eastern spirituality as soon as they are unpacked. The process is both ironic and pathetic. What begins in Benares as a protest against possessiveness ends up in Boston as still another possession. Dark Kali, the great and terrible destroyer, whose very glance can melt the flesh of the strongest warrior, whose slightest breath can stop the pulse and paralyze the soul, finds herself dangling from bracelets with all the other charms.

No deity however terrible, no devotion however deep, no ritual however splendid is exempt from the voracious process of trivialization. The smiling Buddha himself and the worldly-wise Krishna can be transformed by the new gluttony into collectors' trinkets. It was bad enough for King Midas that everything he touched turned to gold; the acquisition-accumulation pattern of the new gluttony does even more. Reversing the alchemist's course, it transforms rubies and emeralds into plastic, the sacred into the silly, the holy into the hokey...(a) changing of the gods into consumer software..." -- pg. 134, Turning East, The Promise and Peril of the New Orientalism, Harvey Cox, Simon and Schuster, 1975.

There are no easy solutions at hand, no "correct courses" to follow to counter and dilute this commercial Moloch unleashed now almost around the world entire. I counsel humility before the juggernaut and that "rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born" (William Butler Yeats, from "The Second Coming"). I counsel abjuring glibness and triviality regarding matters of matter, psyche and spirituality. I absolutely counsel shadow work, shadow work, shadow work which does not mean banishing instinctual aggressive, erotic and warlike selves to "spiritual charm school". Owning these aspects or at least entertaining them at table, doing dream work true, staying focused upon the profound dilemma of human existence and its/our contrariness not only cultivates authentic humility while being utterly human but also creates possibilities of creative, dynamic tolerance and possible eventual integration of opposites. Evil and suffering will not be "workshopped" nor turned away with "magical passes" and "spiritual" slight of hand or mind. 

We suffer. And suffering is not a lie. And currently, perhaps throughout human history, humans resort to momentary entertainments, even "spiritual and occult" entertainments, to assuage suffering which eventually foster an even more desperate emptiness for spiritual entertainments, of which intuition is one of the most chiefly misused and abused, ultimately failing to authentically fulfill. Like toys, expensive or cheap, the empty hole and voracious toothy mouth of "hungry ghostness" is not satisfied when authentic powers of mind are turned into what Trungpa Rimpoche calls "spiritual materialism". As Jung says, "...far too many people are mislead into snatching at such "magical" ideas and applying them externally, like an ointment. People will do anything, no matter how absurd to avoid facing their own souls." -- C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Collected Works, Vol. 12, par. 126.

Thus, shudder of shudders, Jung counsels "facing your own soul." Soul means psyche. Work with the psyche for which one with rare exceptions needs a guide, inwardly and externally. Pray to be guided to a sin-eater, a Layard type who does not ignore human imperfection nor pretend to piety and god-almightiness. Look for a bullet-hole drumming in intent attention, salivation and "uncommon sense." Find someone who, like you perhaps are experiencing now, is "beyond the fence", having lost her/his senses in order to gain them anew along with "uncommon sense." Abjure commercial promises and platitudes and be wary of trance-mongers selling quick abbreviated journeys to enlightenment with guaranteed prosperity to follow. "Somewhere over the rainbow" is just that, "somewhere over the rainbow", for in the end, once again, one returns, or can, with courage and consent to lose one's "bauble-babbling deities" to Kansas, ordinary and mundane, praising in creaturely astonishment the majesty accessible in ground, in hands, genitals, eyes and skin. Revelations in the spore and more abound. Land here in the physical universe assenting to suffer and bear witness to the spectrum of joys and horrors which create exquisite and ordinary responses for we are indeed creatures of response in a universe which appeals to us as creatures of response to authentically respond. We may curse (we WILL!). We may praise (we WILL!). We may question (we always SHOULD!) and more but conscious humanity, all-too-humanness, is enough. More than enough. We really don't need yogis and saints and fainting spiritual Blavatskys afraid of toothy, meaty existence. The spine of an edible leaf screams, too, when we chew. And we leave it fuming behind us in testament to life and death just as odiferously as the once-was- flesh injestions of living energy called food. Contrariness is who we are. We gaze at the star of our personal sky, cry "Why?" and "We Wee Oui" amidst the scry and scree of our being here just one being amongst numberless beings in an expanding universe. 

Praise is always a transgression, a boundary break which takes us beyond ourselves all the while delivering us and the universe 
unto and into our very selves. 

WE become the loci, the axis mundi through which the streaming universe courses and a means amongst jillions through which we may share that coursing with others.

[The image at the top of the essay is a scanned postcard from Mirepoix, France once in my possession. It depicts a gargoyle/demon and is located in the cathedral of Mirepoix, France. I have tried to find information on the photograph online but so far to no avail. It is a striking image and I love it since I believe it brilliantly depicts the "therapist's/counselor's shadow self."]


Books cited:



What is a sin-eater? Taking Applications...no benefits but individuation...

[From wisegeek.com, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-sin-eater.htm]

A sin-eater is a traditional type of spiritual healer who uses a ritual to cleanse the dying of their sins. The sin-eater absorbs the sins of the people he or she serves and typically works for a fee. As the sins are usually consumed through food and drink, the sin-eater also gains a meal through the transaction. Sin-eaters are often outcasts, as the work and the sin-eater is considered unsavory the work of which is usually thought to lead to an afterlife in hell due to carrying the unabsolved sins of others. The Roman Catholic Church regularly excommunicated sin-eaters when they were more common, not only because of the excessive sins they carried, but also because they infringed upon the territory of priests, who are supposed to administer Last Rites to the dying according to Church Doctrine.

The sin-eater saves the dying not only from hell, but also from wandering the earth as a ghost - thereby performing a service for the living as well. In some traditions, sin-eaters perform their work for the moribund, while in others, the ritual takes place at the funeral. The sin-eater is usually associated with the British Isles, but there are analogous customs in other cultures as well.

A sin-eater typically consumes bread as part of the ritual of taking on the dying person's sins. He or she may also eat salt or drink water or ale. Sometimes, special breads are baked for the purpose of the sin-eating ritual, perhaps featuring the initials or image of the deceased. The meal is sometimes passed over the dead or dying body or placed on its breast to symbolize its absorption of the person's sins. The sin-eater may also recite a special prayer.

Some cultures have customs that are similar to sin-eating and may have evolved from more traditional forms of the ritual. Instead of a designated, outcast sin-eater serving a village, for example, the deceased's nearest relatives may perform the service, as was once traditional in Bavaria and the Balkan Peninsula. In the Netherlands and some parts of England, ritual baked goods were given to the attendants or pallbearers at a funeral. This latter tradition lived on for a time in New York. Today, the custom of the sin-eater has largely died out, though it is often referenced in popular culture."

For more about sin-eaters read wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin-eater 

Saint in the Flames.  Cathedral Statue. Tlaxacala, Mexico

With Mercy for the Greedy

by Anne Sexton

For my friend, Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession

Concerning your letter in which you ask

me to call a priest and in which you ask

me to wear The Cross that you enclose;

your own cross,

your dog-bitten cross,

no larger than a thumb,

small and wooden, no thorns, this rose—

I pray to its shadow,

that gray place

where it lies on your letter ... deep, deep.

I detest my sins and I try to believe

in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,

its solid neck, its brown sleep.

True. There is

a beautiful Jesus.

He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.

How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!

How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!

But I can’t. Need is not quite belief.

All morning long

I have worn

your cross, hung with package string around my throat.

It tapped me lightly as a child’s heart might,

tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born.

Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote.

My friend, my friend, I was born

doing reference work in sin, and born

confessing it. This is what poems are:

with mercy

for the greedy,

they are the tongue’s wrangle,

the world's pottage, the rat's star.

—Anne Sexton, “With Mercy for the Greedy” from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). Copyright © 1981 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr. Reprinted with the permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171274

"Still we call this Friday good" - "Only a God can still save us!" - "Amor Carnalis is our dwelling-place."

Originally published 4/11/20 2:33 AM

All photos by Warren Falcon

Christ Crucified. A detail of a modern fresco of the Crucificion

Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art.  Bilbao, Spain

Miloz Zizek: "This brings us to the third position above and beyond the first two (the sovereign God, the finite God), that of a suffering God: not a triumphalist God who always wins at the end, although "his ways are mysterious," since he secretly pulls all the strings; not a God who exerts cold justice, since he is by definition always right; but a God who – like the suffering Christ on the Cross - is agonized, assumes the burden of suffering, in solidarity with the human misery. [1] It was already Schelling who wrote: "God is a life, not merely a being. But all life has a fate and is subject to suffering and becoming. /.../ Without the concept of a humanly suffering God /.../ all of history remains incomprehensible." [2] Why? Because God’s suffering implies that He is involved in history, affected by it, not just a transcendent Master pulling the strings from above: God’s suffering means that human history is not just a theater of shadows, but the place of the real struggle, the struggle in which the Absolute itself is involved and its fate is decided. This is the philosophical background of Dietrich Bonhoffer’s deep insight that, after shoah [Evil], "only a suffering God can help us now" [3] – a proper supplement to Heidegger’s "Only a God can still save us!" from his last interview. [4] One should therefore take the statement that "the unspeakable suffering of the six millions is also the voice of the suffering of God" [5] quite literally: the very excess of this suffering over any "normal" human measure makes it divine."

****

During Passover week, and today, again, on Good Friday, I just reread Zizek's surprising reinterpretation yet consolidation of an intuition early blinking in human consciousness, yielding slowly through aeons of dawning awareness, incremental, chronic, barely, yet significantly, yet not significantly enough collectively, that "only a Suffering God can save us." 

Lest "pomos" (post moderns) repel in reaction to the above, let them ponder the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, since his teaching is now more "the rage" in the West which, chief principle,- RAGE - being the bit(ter)coin of the day focus grouped for commercial success, alas, adulterates, if not undoes, the authentic facts revealed experientially in historical and present human history as well as that of creation itself, viz St. Paul's poetic utterance, that the "entire Creation, all creatures great and small, groan/yearn after its/their Originating Source/Force."

More simply, Thomas Merton's, "My heart yearns for its Referent."

This yearning, a love-sickness most mundane, and divine or, rather, within its mundanity divinity resides, in its hiding, it, love, is present all the more. And as there is a "resent" in "p-resent" part of that love-sickness/suffering is resentment-toward-absence. Thus, eventually comes rage. 

Suffering, indeed.

Zizek's essay is a Good Friday medtitation.. An ongoing enigma surely.. Zizek's not a Fundamentalist of any stripe or (un)kind. Thus the reason I was shocked, surprised, pleased, disturbed, moved when I first accidentally came upon this brief in my 2019 re-study (re- as in REal study) of Hegel. 

Zizek's use of one of the last recordings by Johnny Cash, When the Man Comes Around, to amplify his thesis, is brilliant and utterly "human, all too human". [See the link to Cash's performance in the comment section below this post].

Lastly -

Geoffrey Hill's, a bit, some verses from his "Tenebrae", perfect for a culture of gluttony verily toxically ungluton free and vastly bloated:

Veni Redemptor, but not in our time.

Christus Resurgens, quite out of this world.

‘Ave’ we cry; the echoes are returned.

Amor Carnalis is our dwelling-place.

O light of light, supreme delight;
grace on our lips to our disgrace.
Time roosts on all such golden wrists;
our leanness is our luxury.
. . . .
This is the ash-pit of the lily-fire,
this is the questioning at the long tables,
this is true marriage of the self-in-self,
this is a raging solitude of desire,
this is the chorus of obscene consent,
this is a single voice of purest praise.
. . . .
He wounds with ecstasy. All
the wounds are his own.
He wears the martyr’s crown.
He is the Lord of Misrule.
He is the Master of the Leaping Figures,
the motley factions.
Revelling in auguries
he is the Weeper of the Valedictions. 

Cathedral Repairs, Remote, Side Road, Gers. France

* * * *

 Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9IfHDi-2EA

**

A Grief Earned - An Ode Beginning & Ending With Lines From Shelley 

Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, 

I have been taken up into grief, the strange 
relief of clouds. Soon departed, I shall be 
once again returned to disquieted prayer, 
the proud monk to his rites rejoined such 
are covers for disjointedness. 

Adroit is the spoiled self touching only 
late that of Other, of Beauty, Adonais 
'dead then' when Mr. Shelley, once young, 
now always, has clung 'moderne', as much 
as, as soon as he can deny, spurn, return 
a Vision 'toward the vital air.' 

*

He has the advantage of an Eastern detachment.

I, meanwhile, to walls stick, to
sheets, this cup, full, cannot release. 

I step, my foot remains to boards, 
stuck, must walk inwardly restrained, 

halt, try to, misstep, the usual tread 
of, with, my heart. 

*

With heart will I to Guatemala go, 
a Mayan lover do some good, me there,

to active  volcanoes, deepest lake there
with creatures strange - axelotls, pink, 

delicate, 

and one fountain send where I need 
to go - there, continually letting 

the hollows go, release the tread, 
following, and the after-flow; 

feeling grief's all,
I follow to where all is fled... 

Healing sanctuary of Chimayo, New Mexico

January 2, 2016