Blame it on Santa

Could it be that the collapse of faith that our country has experienced over the last fifty or so years was "all because of Santa Claus?"

A case could be made...

Ah, the baby boom generation...Never has a generation been given so much; or destroyed so much...

The gauzy, sweet world in which the children of the Greatest Generation were brought up was meant to be a correction to the childhood-stealing grim realities that their parents experienced coming up; a world of global economic depression and war. Picture perfect families in picture perfect homes experiencing picture perfect holidays was the goal in this new time of plenty. Santa, being the beloved old icon of goodness that he is, had a field day during this era of Ike, Uncle Walt and Uncle Miltie.

One of the first traumas that the children of this prosperity encountered was when it was discovered that their beloved Santa was not "real." The idea that all their striving for the approbation of this jolly old elf was for naught was the first chip in the "perfect" veneer of the crafted world made for them, and in true child fashion, they kept picking and picking at the veneer as they developed until the dirty "truth" was exposed beneath the whitewash of "lies" that their parents had so carefully wrought.

School, government, families, church, every bastion of order and faith was first doubted, then exposed, then decried, then abandoned to some degree or another.

And the soulless miserable "truth" was left for generations to come...Hallelujah...

Somewhere along the way we lost the distinction between "true" and "factual". As science became our new faith we lost the fine art of symbolism, of myth, of understanding through story and image concepts too large and unwieldy to be perceived in mathematical formulae.

Perhaps none of our religious myths are factual, but many are true. There is no way to verify many facts in such an ethereal field, but we do know that we are here, products of some great mysterious power, little pin pricks of mortal energy in a vast and roiling complex of ever transmogrifying power, given five faulty and failing tools with which to try to perceive and make sense of it all. The X factor here is that we can share our findings, not just with our fellow mortals toiling through the void, but with all of the ones who came before us who bothered to pass on what they knew, and with those whom we hope will follow after us. The thing that works best for us it seems, is when we have a "why" in which to put our faith in to help to muddle through the "what" of reality. The trick is in our perception: if you believe too factually in the myth you become a jihadist zealot. To make it work for you takes a bit of a poetic approach. Why did Christ speak in parables, or stories, rather than just espousing dogma?

Part of the problem for modern folks is we are too in on the sausage making. We know how movie magic is done, so movies, as swell as they can make 'em look these days, seem to leave us flat all the same. It is hard to imagine the days when people ran screaming from the image of a train moving at them on a movie screen, or wondering if "they" really trained a giant ape to perform King Kong. Even the most casual fan can bore you to tears with the facts about green-screen technology employed in film today. Yes, we know that The Wizard of Oz is fake; a bunch of Hollywood hoofers, midgets and drug addicted starlets all made up and dusted with pixie dust to create an illusion. But does that mean that the movies' values, the beliefs in friendship, honor, loyalty, courage, etc. etc. are false, too? This is babies and bathwater territory.

I tell my kids about Santa because he is fun. He is a symbol of societal justice for children: the good shall be rewarded, the assholes punished. That is a healthy thing. I don't make a big deal about how "real" he is. They have fun with the dream of Santa and who am I to rain on that parade? If I see things are getting out of hand, I will try to correct the course while still keeping the "truth" about why we have Santa around, what purpose he fulfills. The same with all the other bigger questions to come: there is a collective wealth of wisdom and power in our institutions, only a fool would toss them all away because they utilize illusion to illustrate their values. The biggest gift I can think of to give my kids is the power of discernment when dealing with the shitstorm of information that they are going to be subjected to while moving through this world; a lot is junk, some of it is gold.

Which is just, in reality, a very pretty, shiny, rock...

Merry Christmas to all!

Common Myth Conceptions; or, Jung At Heart

"Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition." -C.G. Jung

In my post entitled "Questions, No Answers" I posed a series of questions concerning the soul, its' nature, and the central proposition of whether it was something that was truly believable or not. It may have seemed a bit psuedo-mystical or too cute by half, but my primary aim was to try to slap enough questions together concerning the soul to jolt the reader into truly thinking about his spiritual self; not as some philisophical parlor game, but as a real force within, an essential part of our selves that by its' nebulous nature is often ignored or not even considered to be real.

I can remember the first time I felt "aware" of something within me that I later came to regard as my soul. It also happens to be the first peak experience I can recall. I was around six or so, playing alone in the back yard of our old family home on a fine autumn day. It was cold and windy, but the sun was shining brightly in a blue sky. I was wearing a red fuzzy sweater which kept me quite cozy, and lying on the tin roof of a homemade doghouse, watching the amber leaves blow around against the blue sky, full of expectation of a trip to some relative's house that we were going to undertake later that day. I felt a huge welling of joy at the beauty, the promise, and the security of the moment , and I thought to myself, "I will always remember this moment of this day." And of course I have. I have felt all of those emotions at various times before and since that moment, but that moment was so unique because I felt a one-ness and some kind of cosmic approbation that I have only felt on rare occassions since.

These are the moments where we glimpse something of the infinite, when our "higher consciousness" speaks to us. Colin Wilson is a very interesting and provacative author who has synthesized much of the thinking of the philosophers, artists, and mystics who have grappled with the "Big Questions" of humankind, and he posits a very interesting theory about conciousness. In essence, it is this: There are three aspects to our conciousness; the conscious, our thinking, left-brain, everyday awareness that you consider you; your subconcious, that primal, right brain , involuntary area that can only communicate to you in dreams, symbols, and hypnogogic states, and what you might call a superconscious, the higher force that is considered your soul, the spirit that incarnates the flesh and bone machine of your body, and perhaps the immortal fragment of the infinite spirit that comprises the universe.

Absurd Good News is the way the regular consciousness momentarily grasps some notion of the superconsciousness, all the aspects of our "self" align like some astrological event and we feel ourselves in our full potential. I feel our spirit and our relationship with it are the starting point of any quest for "enlightenment", because only if we are in tune with that part of ourselves can we begin to examine our spiritual relationship with God.

On the subjects of God and religion I hope to explore in depth as this blog unfolds, but for now I would just like to say a word on belief, because this is key when discussing matters of the spirit. In our scientific rationalistic world there has been a great schism that has occurred because so much of the content in the great religious works clearly could never have factually happened as recorded. A confusion has occurred that has done a great disservice to spirituality. Much of what is contained in spiritual literature is the Truth, even if it never happened. Material that was meant to instruct in that deep, symbolic language that works on different levels of conciousness has been either fanatically accepted as factual , or discarded as superstious bosh; both of which throw the baby out with the bath water. I will often quote things that I have found to be true from different faiths; this doesn't mean I have endorsed all the dogma of that faith; it means that I believe in Truth when I hear it. No particular faith is true, but all faiths are a path to Truth. I don't think that it is so important what you believe ,as it is important that you believe. As regards the soul, a big positive "yes" of belief knocks down all the barriers and greenlights progression much better than the halting "maybe" of a coy dabbler , waiting to be wooed into acceptance.

The question becomes: if we know that peak moments are our best moments of communion with our spirits, what can we do to have more of them? Is there a way, or do we just have to take them as they come? Where do we turn to? Inward, through meditation, maybe? Or outward, through consulting the mystical wisdom of all the pilgrims who came before us? Perhaps go right to the souce: prayer...Or all of the above?

We'll take a look in future posts...