The Voice from the Megaphone Falters

The Voice from the Megaphone is brash, relentless, and drowns out the sounds of all living things.

“We are the producers of the food that starves you, the water that makes you thirsty, the medicine that makes you sick, the wealth that impoverishes you, the homes that kick you out into the street, the clothing that humiliates you, the knowledge that hides the truth, the security that threatens you, and the freedom that keeps you in prison.

“You will keep no god before us, and you will assimilate your body to our machines, your will to our machines, your mind to our machines, your spirit to our machines, and you will give your children to our machines.”

The voice from the megaphone falters, only for an instant, barely perceptible. The quaver of the megaphone is just enough to betray a well of fear.

A distant voice is heard, becoming louder, becoming more, becoming many, increasing.

“We reject you. We reject you. We reject you. We reject you from our bodies, we reject you from our minds, we reject you from our hearts, we reject you from our homes, we reject you from our relationships, we reject you from our families, we reject you from our spirits.

“We are the producers of the food that nourishes, the water that soothes, the medicine that heals, the wealth that enriches, the homes that shelter, the clothing that protects, the knowledge that illuminates the truth, the security that banishes fear, and the freedom that liberates body, mind, and spirit.

“We will heal ourselves, and then we will heal you.”

Tribe: A glimpse into the inner world of cats

When I first moved to Serafina, NM, 20 odd years ago, it was a place of raw magic. Coyotes, foxes, bobcats and mountain lions carried on their business as they had for millennia, and eagles and hawks shared the skies with ravens and crows. The ghosts of history crowded the night shadows: the priests and weavers of the ancient Pecos pueblo, the settlers backed into a desperate siege atop Starvation Peak, the desperadoes escaping the laws of the Royal Spanish Crown or the United States marshals... all was whipped by a relentless Westerly wind into an electromagnetic haze of magical aura that radiated up through the hard red clay and tenacious prairie grasses.

That's what it was like when I bought an old stone house built in 1918 by legendary stoneworker Miguel Ortiz, and his now-famous musician son, Cleofiz, together with the St. Claire family, settlers from the East who did not last a generation in the harsh environment, the family scattering after the father was killed by a fall from a horse. I met descendants of both families in the area, where history just hung about like a cloud that thickened, never dispersing.

The house had been abandoned for over a decade, and not terribly well tended for a decade before that, and was in an advanced state of disrepair. The story of transforming that forlorn and abandoned place into a warm and gentle home has formed a great chapter of my life, and one that I shared with my family. But this is not that story.

When I first spent a night in the house, it became immediately clear that rodent control was the problem in need of most immediate attention. Traps, live or otherwise, require tending, and the magnitude of the infestation was beyond management. Poison was out of the question... both on grounds of introducing an unnecessary toxin into the environment, and the problem that mice who have eaten poison tend to die in inaccessible locations, from which they will broadcast the shame of their assassination with relentless olfactory assaults.

I felt the best solution was to begin acquiring cats.

I went to an animal shelter and adopted a tabby and a big furry dark-haired cat that resembled a Norwegian forest cat. I had been reading the marvelous Skywater, by Melinda Worth Popham, about a clan of coyotes living in the Southwest. The elderly couple in this wonderful novel give whimsical names to their coyote friends that come from brand names they see on litter that blows through their Sonoran desert home: Kodak, Doublemint, Brand X. Inspired by the book and my frequent lengthy sojourns down the endless New Mexico highways, I decided to begin naming my cats after the state mottoes on license plates. So my first cat, the Norwegian, was named First in Flight, after the Nebraska plate, or “Firsty” for short. The tabby, with a brick-red nose, I named Famous Potatoes.

For several weeks, Firsty and Potatoes were in cat-heaven, spending every night hunting mice and gophers, and I endured the sounds of crunching bones late into the night. Although both were indefatigable hunters, it became clear that they would need help. In Santa Fe, I adopted a long-haired gray mother with her kittens, a few weeks old and still nursing. I named the mother Constitution State (Consty), the female kitten Vacationland (Vacey), and the boys Ten Thousand Lakes (Tenny) and Great Lake State (Grady; after my home state). I brought them home, but was dismayed that Firsty and Potatoes were extremely unhappy about having a new mother in their home. They were very tolerant of the kittens, but Potatoes ruthlessly terrorized the mother, who spent her days hiding in the basement, but came up nights to nurse her kittens.

In those days, I believed that a short, free life was better than a long, captive one, so I let the cats in and out at will, even though I knew the surrounding areas were filled with wild dangers for a domestic animal. It was Consty who first chose that path. She waited until her kittens were fully weaned, then headed out into the wilderness, and I never saw her again. Some time later, Firsty followed suit, and Potatoes and Consty's young offspring had the run of the house. By this time, Vacey, Tenny, and Grady had grown into feisty young hunters in their own right, and the rodent population of the immediate environs of the house had dwindled to endangered status, for which I was not sorry.

When the young siblings were just over a year old, I began to plan to have them spayed and neutered. Serafina already has a terrible problem with abandoned pets, and I certainly did not want to contribute to that epidemic. But some muse of nature whispered in my ear: “don't spay the female just yet. Let her have one litter, and raise them all here together.” I followed that muse, and did not have to wait for Vacey's second birthday before she was sauntering around the house with a belly full of growing kittens. There is no mistaking the pride in her walk and the pleasure and satisfaction that she felt, basking in the sun, feeling the young lives wiggling around inside her. She loved to show off her belly, and enjoyed inviting me to feel the life within her. When she was ready to give birth, she climbed right on top of my bed in the morning, and I considered the price I would have to pay for new blankets, and decided it would be worth it. Vacey gave birth to five kittens right there on my bed. Each was a tremendous, helpless, messy miracle that sat bewildered, then unerringly dragged itself toward mother's breast. The last came out and did not start breathing. I had been braced for tragedy, and held my breath along with the motionless kitten. Then with a start and a sigh, the last kitten begin a labored respiration, and crawled with the others toward her mother's breast. Four girls: The Natural State (Natchy). The Garden State (Gardy, but later changed to Zsa-zsa for her poofy white hair and vanity). The Land of Lincoln (Linky). And the one whose state-name I have forgotten, because her later antics led me to begin calling her (for reasons difficult to explain) “Splodgy.” Then there was the boy: The Show-Me State (Shomes).

The kittens grew up with their mother, their two uncles, Potatoes (who only just tolerated the invaders, but knew that she was outnumbered), and me. It was the presence of this extended family of cats who all grew up together, along with my personal solitude at that time of my life, that afforded me a unique window into the inner world of cats. Their family dynamics revealed an incredible complexity and range of emotion and relationship. I am forever grateful for what I learned from having the chance to watch them grow up together, and grew quite a bit myself through them.

As the cats grew, they explored and became comfortable with the vast and wild semi-arid world around them. The older generation were the uncles Grady and Tenny, and of course Vacey the mom, all of whom were very close in appearance to their mother: long-haired dark gray cats, though Tenny sported a tiny splash of white on his chest. Of the younger generation Linky, Zsa-zsa, and Natchy shared their mother's long hair, and Shomes and Splodgy took their mother's uniformly gray coat. But another genetic influence was clearly at work: Zsa-zsa and Natchy were gray and white, Linky was black and white, and Shomes and Splodgy both had short hair.

I was surprised at how far from home these cats would wander. I would often spy Potatoes off hunting, not alone, but with the neighbor's cat, Sox. Because of the absence of shrubbery or tall grass, I could see Potatoes and Sox hunting together a good half mile away, up on a small rise. Potatoes and Sox had become inseparable friends, but Sox would never come over to my house. Rather, Potatoes would spend her lazy days loafing around my house, but when she felt adventurous, would go over to the neighbors' and, according to the reports of the neighbor, loudly announce her presence until Sox came out. Then the two of them would head off to their favorite hunting ground together, not coming home until late evening.

I would often go for walks on the hot dry days, meandering over the surrounding fields, not worrying about the local ranchers who owned them, since they were seldom about. I would explore the deep arroyos that channeled dozens of yards deep into the otherwise flat plain beneath the mesa. They were an endless maze of high red-clay walls with sandy bottoms, lined with stunted Juniper trees and Pinones. Tenny, now a mature and confident hunter, loved to follow me on these walks. At first I was very concerned. He would follow me well over a mile from the house. He would become obviously thirsty and tired, resting and panting often under juniper trees.  I would carefully plan my path to skirt by areas where I knew there would be surface water, since I worried about my long-haired companion becoming dehydrated under the hot sun. But he displayed no interest in the water, and only wanted to follow me wherever I went. I found this attachment deeply touching, and felt very connected to my devoted little friend.

As the cats matured together I was witness to several events that elucidated a rich world of family dynamics that I had never known existed among cats. One of the first such events was when I saw Tenny teaching his nephew and nieces about the art of hunting. I was sitting in the house near a large window, and happened to notice all the young ones outside in a circle around Tenny, who was the center of their riveted attention. I saw that Tenny had a mouse, and as I watched, he tossed the mouse up into the air, caught it in his claws, and bit the back of its neck. He did this several times, all the while conscientiously making eye contact with each of the young ones who were watching.

When a cat catches a mouse to share with the clan, the victorious hunter brings the mouse to the feeding area, calls out loudly in a distinctive voice that brings everyone running, then brags, and eats his or her favorite parts (each cat had a favorite part of the kill – for which reason Zsa-zsa also carried the nick-name “head-eater”) while selfishly guarding the kill from everyone else with aggressive, full-mouthed growls. But after this brief bragging session, the hunter shares with everyone. Even Potatoes, the out-clan, was welcome to a share.

But the session I was watching through the window was different. There was no dinner-call, no bragging, not even any eating. It was a demonstration. Tenny was teaching. Like a good teacher, he held center stage and modeled the lesson, all the while making sure all the pupils were paying attention. There was no mistaking what was going on. I feel very privileged to have witnessed what I think few have seen: A domestic cat deliberately teaching a learned skill to the next generation.

The youths of the clan were quick studies. Within a few months, there was not a rodent to be found within a mile of the house. Working in teams, the cats also killed gophers, which are a tough adversary. I once saw two of the cats corner a gopher, and were in the process of killing it, and I took pity on the wounded gopher and decided to rescue it. Confronted by two adult cats, the gopher was bleeding from the face, but otherwise strong, and ready to fight to the finish. I got a shoebox and put on some welding gloves, and moved in to rescue the prey. Far from grateful, or even intimidated by my much greater size, the gopher went into full attack mode and tried to bite my hand off! I was most impressed by his strength, quickness, and ruthlessness, and grateful that I had thought in advance to put on the thick gloves. I took the gopher to the shelter of a woodpile, but I never knew if he survived the night. In later years, when I took to keeping the cats indoors, I came to realize how great a role my cats had been playing in gopher-control, and how much damage a family of gophers can do to a delicate landscape.

But for all their skills, the youth were still inexperienced and given to excess of excitement. One of the most stunning displays of coordinated hunting I have ever seen took place outside my northern window, around a pool of water in the driveway. The summer rains had brought a small bird to bathe and drink in a pool that still persisted in the afternoon sun, and the little bird felt confident of his safety in the open area that provided no cover for predators for several yards around the pool. Any attacker would give ample warning for the bird to simply fly up into nearby trees. But this little bird was unprepared for the intelligence and cunning of the talented Vacey and her daughter, Linky. As the bird bathed, I noticed the two of them closing in from downwind, from paths at right angles to one another. Their coordination was marvelous. When the bird nervously looked in Linky's direction, Linky froze and Vacey took a step forward. Seeing nothing moving, the bird would resume bathing, glancing in Vacey's direction. then Vacey would freeze, and Linky would advance a single step. They proceded in this way for a good fifteen minutes, until both cats were, amazingly, within two feet of the bird, on completely open ground with no cover, in broad daylight, the bird entirely unaware of their presence (though I must say, acting a bit nervous). It was then that youthful exuberance overcame the patience of the master hunter. Young Linky could no longer stand the tension. She pounced suddenly at the bird. But the distance was still too great, and the bird escaped Linky's grasp, flying unharmed, but shaken, into the tree.

Although the prowess and teamwork displayed by this hunting duo was astounding, I was even more amazed by what transpired next. Young Linky, having enjoyed the hunt despite her failure, trotted up happily to her mom for a kiss. Instead, Vacey smacked Linky on the head and turned her back and walked away. Linky sat morose for a little while, then walked off on her own way. The humanity of this interaction was captivating. Having worked hard as a team, Young Linky had blown the hunt at the last minute, and gotten a swat and a scolding from mom. The mom's anger, the daughter's sadness at the reproach... these were not mere anthropomorphism, this was a view of a complex interaction not just at the core of being human, but at the core of being alive in this world of challenges, victories, and woes. It was scene that could have transpired in any home anywhere.

These were events that reflected relationships and a shared culture, but more than that, there were relationships that evolved and deepened over time. Some were simple: Linky loved her Uncle Tenny more than anything. She would follow him around, and wherever he would plop down for a nap, Linky would plop right down next to, or on top of, her favorite uncle. But this affection did not entirely go both ways. Tenny, the champion hunter and master of his domain, preferred to nap alone, or on my chest. So as soon as Linky settled down next to or on top of him, Tenny would get up and find some other lonely spot to relax. But Linky would just get up and follow him, and this slow-motion chase would continue all day long, until Tenny finally tired of moving around and suffered his niece to lie next to him. Finally they would both fall asleep, and seldom would I find Tenny asleep without his devoted tag-along right there next to him.

The most complicated relationship was with Dad. Dad hadn't abandoned his family once the kittens were born. I often would see a huge tomcat hanging around – not too near the house, he wasn't very domestic – whose short, black and white hair precisely matched the genetic variation of Vacey's litter. I learned from neighbors that the tomcat was well-known in the neighborhood as a vagabond and opportunist, taking meals and shelter where it pleased him, and, as I later learned, maintaining his territory against all intruders with incomparable tenacity. I also learned that he had been given a name by the locals, and his name was Pete. Pete the Jazzman.

I always knew when Pete paid his occasional nocturnal visits to the house. Every cat in the family had a distinct relationship with Pete, and his presence changed the dynamics entirely. Tenny despised Pete as a rival male and as his sister's paramour, and sometimes quarreled with him. but Tenny knew a losing game when he saw one, and seldom endured more than a few light scratches before throwing in the towel and beating a noble retreat. Shomes, however, had serious issues with Poppa. As the only male child in the family, and the largest cat in our clan, perhaps it was inevitable that Shomes should be destined to be locked in a lifelong Oedipal rivalry with his father, the undisputed lord of his dominion. Like Tenny, Shomes was no match for Pete, and could do little to defend himself against the huge aggressive tom. But unlike Tenny, Shomes was unable to relinquish the confrontation. Again and again he would go up against his father, as if he were Luke Skywalker and Pete were his Vader, and the howls and curses could be heard for miles. On the morning of every night that Pete visited, poor Shomes would have torn up ears and a bruised and bloodied face that often required medical attention.

Vacey's relationship with Pete was less competitive, but no less passionate. It was through Vacey that I always first became aware that Pete was in town. By a sixth sense, she detected his presence, and was out the door like a shot. Soon the pandemonium of repressed rivalries and passions would erupt across the whole clan, and after the fighting and the caterwauling died down, would come the lovemaking. And oh, such lovemaking! The passion of Vacey (who was a tiny cat all her life) and Pete could be heard well into the next county, and they would be at it all night long. In the morning, an exhausted, but somehow calmer and happier Vacey, would laze around the house, looking wistful and a little cross-eyed, her hair a mess and not a care in her soul for food, mice, or anyone or anything. I never saw what happened between the two of them, but whatever it was, it took a lot out of her, and gave a lot back to her as well. I knew it must have been on such a night, now years ago, that the younger generation had been conceived, and the result of such a night that had led Vacey to proudly parade about the house with her bulging belly, and leave five tiny gifts in my bed.

But the member of the clan with the healthiest relationship with her father was Natchy. After all the fighting and lovemaking and crying and bravado, if I would wake up late in the night and steal a look out the window on the night of Pete's visit, I would infallibly see Pete and Natchy sitting together on the porch. They would always sit together like that, silently, right next to each other, just touching, and gazing over the moonlit fields. What feelings they shared we can only imagine, but it was plain to see that they enjoyed being close together, being quiet together, and never an aggressive look or sound passed between them.

One of my neighbors killed Pete the Jazzman. She boasted of it to me, not knowing that he was the father of my kittens and a dynamo in my clan. I never told her, either. The neighbor said that she had seen Pete out in the yard, murdering her kittens. She said he had already murdered others of her kittens, and now she had caught him in the act, and captured him alive, and taken him to Starvation Peak and abandoned him there. It was a cruel and cowardly act. But I could not deny that Pete was capable of such atrocity, and had no reason to believe the neighbor was lying. She was very upset about the murders, and I did not want to complicate matters – and wasn't even sure I understood the matter. It was too much for me, and I was silent. The neighbor said that by abandoning him, she had given him a chance to live and create a new life for himself somewhere else. But he was never seen again, and I knew that dumping Pete in a strange land, where he did not know where the water was, where the food and shelter were, what were the habits of the predators, and whose territory was whose, was a death sentence. She knew it, too.

Can I blame her? Can I blame him? Pete beat up his son, intimidated his brothers-in-law, had a love-hate relationship with Vacey. He murdered kittens, who were probably offspring of his rivals, just as male lions do. I don't think he was an abusive father or a draconian tyrant. He was cat father, and a ruler of a feline territory. I judge neither Pete, who was defending his own line, nor the neighbor, who was protecting her own kittens.

A few years after Pete's death, we came to understand how hard he must have fought, and against what adversaries, to maintain his territory. During the Reign of Pete the Jazzman, we never saw a stray cat anywhere near our house. After his death, strangers began to haunt the area – big, tough feral males with gigantic heads and barrel chests. These were the rivals he had kept at bay. But for all their ferocious appearance, we found these strays to be unagressive. They had no romantic interest in our ladies, and did not fight with our lads. But they would sometimes come in the house and help themselves to the food bowl. By then my family lived with me in the Serafina house, and we named the newcomers, who had become fond occasional visitors: Roberto and Buster.

One year a feline plague broke out across our area. Many cats died, and many of ours disappeared. Also, heavy rains brought an abundance of rabbits and roadrunners, and these brought a population boom among predators: coyotes and mountain lions who boldly marched into the domesticated world. We began to see the wisdom of keeping our cats confined indoors for their protection. To our surprise, they did not protest much. Most of these cats lived fifteen or sixteen years, and the oldest, Natchy, we brought with us when we left New Mexico and came to the Northeast. She spent her last days in our apartment there, and quietly passed away under a bookcase.

So now the clan headed by the matriarch Consty, that learned so much and endured so much together, are only a memory for us who survive them. And the raw magic that once held sway over the land of Serafina is diluted a little. But the glimpse these creatures offered, into a complex world of rivalry, devotion, passion, contentment, joy, and family dynamics remains a cornerstone of my human experience. They are always part of me, and I hope to offer others a view into the tribal world of cats.

Constructing the Black Sheep

In the Family, One may begin to occupy the position of the Black Sheep by degrees. It may begin with a slight and subtle distinction: One is envied by siblings; One is slightly favored by the Mother; One is mildly rejected by the Father; One manifests a recessive family trait in the body or in the psyche. One may also occupy the position of the Black Sheep immediately, born a second sibling and Biblically rejected by the elder, or born an unwanted child whose very existence is a reminder of violence, folly, or regret. The initial impulse of rejection originates in the Family, since One's innate need is for acceptance.

This impulse first being felt, One's natural inclination is to reject the condition of rejection, and to insist upon the natural condition, which is acceptance. This second rejection may be felt by the Family as One's rejection of the Family. Rejection has now compounded upon rejection, displacing the natural condition of acceptance. Now rejection becomes the dominant pattern of the family relationship, and the condition of acceptance is lost, becoming only an unfulfilled longing, a nameless ghost that haunts One's image of the Family. Despite its unnaturalness, rejection becomes the only pattern that One knows. One has accepted the condition of rejection.

Once accepting the condition of rejection, One begins to act in the role of the rejected. One may, consciously or unconsciously, adopt stances and mannerisms that contradict the norms of the Family. In a working class family, One may adopt a stance of affected erudition. In an intellectual family, One may become averse to school and learning. In an abstinent family, One may carry out hedonistic indulgences. In a family rife with addictions, one may become vehemently abstinent. The particulars of opposition don't matter. They may, in an immediate sense, be damaging or beneficial, but the deepest act of self-harm was already present: It is the acceptance of the condition of rejection.

As One acts in the role of the rejected, One begins to give concrete form to rejection. The Family can use the acts of opposition to justify its rejection. The Family can now claim that the rejection originated in the rejected, and can relieve itself of the responsibility for the rejection. The Family devolves responsibility onto the rejected. One is blamed for One's own rejection.

As rejection and blame compound upon themselves, the Family may enter a condition wherein One becomes so rejected and blamed, and has become a repository of so much negative judgment, and has undertaken such powerful acts of opposition, that One becomes the alien other. The alien other is so completely rejected and detached from the Family that it is not even conceived of as human, let alone as a member of the Family. In the condition of the alien other, One becomes a receptacle of projection for the dark matter of the Family. In whatever way the Family has defined itself, the alien other is defined as the opposite. A family that creates for itself a strong mythic identity must, in the process, reject whatever is outside that identity. This rejected material becomes incorporated as the Family Shadow. Values, religion, politics, philosophy, language, all find their opposites embodied in the alien other. As One has accepted the role of the rejected, One becomes complicit in One's own construction as the alien other, accepting the projections and judgments of the Family. One has become the incarnation of the Shadow of the Family. One has become the avatar of the Devil.

The identity of a family is crafted in story. At gatherings, the Family retells old stories that are well known to all members, in an act that does not convey information, but affirms identity. Stories both reflect and construct the characters of the Family members. As One evolves from the rejected family member to the alien other, and One becomes the recipient of the shadow material of the Family, the stories surrounding One begin to reinforce that image. In the mythology of the Family, One has become the archetype of the Family Shadow: The Black Sheep.

Like all mythological images, the Black Sheep is charged with meaning at multiple levels. Superficially, it stands for a member of an otherwise strongly homogeneous group that nevertheless stands apart from the group. There are well-known psychological studies that explore the Black Sheep as a metaphor for group identity, and the threat posed to group identity by an insider who rejects the group identity –  a threat that is greater even than that of  outsiders who reject the group identity. At other mythological levels, the sheep is Black because it is the recipient of the Shadow; It is the obscure, unknown, and incomprehensible alien other. It is a Sheep because it is a Sacrifice.

The Sacrifice of the Black Sheep is the next phase in One's development within the Family. One is cut off, One is sent away or moves away, One is unwelcome, One is disinherited and disowned. The Sacrifice of the Black Sheep is, initially and superficially, gratifying to the Family. Having become the recipient of all of the Family's negative energy and judgments, the Sheep is burned, and the Family is thereby cleansed and purified. But this satisfaction is not naturally enduring, because the negative contents of the Family were not really disposed of through the mechanism of projection and sacrifice. The negative contents originated in the Family, and continue to reside there. They will emerge again. But it is possible for the Family to remain in a state of contentment after the Sacrifice of the Black Sheep, if the Family can maintain a sufficient barrier of denial to reinforce its mythic identity. However, such a family is prevented, by that very barrier of denial, from healthy and meaningful growth. The Sacrifice is comforting, but also crippling.

The Sacrifice of the Black Sheep is a loss to the Family as well as to the Black Sheep. The Black Sheep loses its natural connection to the Family, and lives isolated except to the extent that One can create a new family of One's own and strive to interrupt the cycles of rejection and alienation that have characterized One's birth family. But the Family has lost more than a member. For in the Shadow resides content that is invaluable to the growth and depth of the Family. Without it, the Family cannot grow, and is ensnared in a condition of arrested development. For this reason, Jung teaches that in the cave of the Shadow, there is a terrible dragon, but also a treasure of great value. Among the qualities rejected by the Family as it defined its identity are those that are necessary for growth and development. For what is growth but to become what one was not? Growth requires acceptance of what has been formerly rejected. A family that has highly conservative values may find itself bound and restricted by its own conservatism, and may be unable to progress to an improved situation without the ability to tolerate difference. A family that has extremely tolerant values may find itself persistently harmed because, without some level of discrimination, it accepts the unacceptable. Where will the conservative family find the tolerance it needs to grow, and where will the tolerant family find the rigidity it needs to protect itself? Where has that gone that the Family decided not to be then, but that it needs to become what it needs to be now? It has been projected into the shadow. If the Family has committed the Sacrifice of the Black Sheep, it is burned and gone forever. The Family is bound like a tree with its branches in the earth.

The alternative to the Sacrifice of the Black Sheep is the discipline of acceptance. As a human being needs to embrace the shadow in order to grow, and in order to avoid being ruled by its distorted manifestations, so must a family. Acceptance, tolerance, love, and forgiveness are the attitudes we need to embrace the Shadow in ourselves and in our families. For This One or That One, the time may be too late – the alienation too complete, the Sacrifice already made. In that case, One can only proceed with diligence to interrupt, rather than perpetuate, the generational cycles of rejection. One can also pronounce and name the Sacrifice within One's birth family – a pronouncement that, by the same mechanisms that gave rise to the Black Sheep in the first place, is almost certain to be rejected – but which nevertheless at least allows One the authentic completion that comes with speaking the truth.

In the best of circumstances, we may recognize the process before it runs away with a member of the Family. We may change rejection to acceptance, blame to forgiveness, wounding to healing. But do we have the strength, the courage, and the discipline to embrace our Shadow and change the course of our lives? The dragon is fierce, but the treasure is of great value.

A Personal Metaphysics and Cosmology (Draft)

I. Onto-epistemological Cycles and a Definition of Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a term that is not well defined in usage or scholarship. This being an exposition of a personal metaphysics, with the understanding that universal conclusions in this domain are not possible, I adopt also a personal definition of metaphysics. With only general allusion to such discourse as has been generally set forth, I allow that metaphysics consists of the study of the personal divine, the universal divine, and the relations between the two.

I claim that there can be no universal conclusions with regard to that domain, and it is in this sense that everything here set forth belongs to the personal – theories, definitions, and conclusions that relate only to my personal individuality, perception, and deduction. No universal conclusions are possible because of the circularity of onto-epistemological cycles. That is to say, what we determine is real (in the sense of being a universal conclusion (our ontology), is limited by those means of producing knowledge about the world that we accept (our epistemology). But similarly, our epistemology is limited by our ontology. Thus, ontology and epistemology support each other in a self-affirming cycle. Each person acquires, perhaps through a combination of cultural transmission, reflection, and personal evolution, a particular onto-epistemological cycle. Groups of individuals find greater or lesser coherence among their distinct onto-epistemological cycles, and form associations (religions, ideologies, schools of scientific thought) that then reinforce the core cycles of individuals, as well as developing into a group cycle.

But none of these onto-epistemological cycles, individual or group, can establish universality over contrasting cycles. Since contrasting cycles have incompatible epistemologies, the conflicting ontological claims of incompatible cycle groups cannot be established through the production of knowledge. Since contrasting cycles have incompatible ontologies, competing epistemological methods cannot be resolved on the basis of their differing conclusions about the world.

Human inquiry is thus left in an overall condition of metacognitive dissonance, wherein groups and individuals make starkly contrasting claims about the world that are proven to the satisfaction of the onto-epistemological cycle in which they exist, but outside that cycle can gain no traction. This condition seems loosely to be a consequence of Godel's Theorems of Incompleteness and Undecidability, as set forth in his On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Other Systems (1931) in which he concludes, among other things, that no formal system of logic that is at least as complex as elementary number theory can prove its own consistency. Formal systems, whether algebraic, geometric, or philosophical, consist of a set of axioms and a set of rules of inference. Theorems are provable if they can be produced by a series of applications of rules of inference to a subset of the axioms. But both the axioms and the rules of inference are essentially arbitrary, and conform to the expectations of their creator rather than any universality external to the system. As an example, Euclid considered the proposition that only one line can be drawn through a given point, parallel to a given line, to be necessitated by the conception of “straightness.” All of Euclidean geometry is built on that assumption. But when that axiom was discarded, an entirely new geometry was discovered that was essential to the understanding of general relativity. Like all axioms, the fifth postulate was arbitrary and limiting. In logical systems, the axioms behave like an ontology, the rules of inference like an epistemology, that encloses the system within an onto-epistemological cycle. What is inside the cycle is valid within the system, and what is outside it is invalid within the system, but not in any universal sense.

Thus, even in the most rigorous of rational systems, claims can only be made with respect to a given onto-epistemological cycle, and no universal claim is possible. For this reason, I conclude within my own onto-epistemological cycle that no universal conclusions are possible regarding anything, and in particular, none are possible within the contentious, evidence-poor, and ill-defined domain of metaphysics.

But this does not mean that all reason and discourse are futile. Quite the contrary. It is through reason and discourse that we construct a consistent and definable paradigm. Such a paradigm functions like the personality's ego: It is self-centered and resists integration into the universal, but it is essential to coherent existence. If we utterly abolish ego, we cease to exist as an individual, and if we utterly abolish reasoning and discourse as subject only to limiting cycles of the individual, or at best, a large group of individuals, then our sense of the world likewise disintegrates into incoherence. Such discourse and reasoning must, then, be seen as constructive and beneficial, but also must be seen as limited by its own self-reference. Of course, this exposition itself falls in that domain, and both the nature of onto-epistemological cycles and the conclusions that belong to my own particular cycles should be seen in that light.

Under such lengthy disclaimer, I consider that there is a personal divine, a universal divine, and a relationship between the two. I take this to form not the universal definition of metaphysics, nor even the personal definition that I adopt, but a personal definition – meaning one among many possibilities – that I am adopting at present. Likewise, the metaphysics and cosmology here described are not claimed as the universal metaphysics and cosmology, nor even the personal metaphysics and cosmology that I have adopted, but a personal metaphysics and cosmology that I adopt under these conditions for now.

II. The Emergence of the Personal Divine

I take the whole of the modern scientific method to represent valid epistemology inasmuch as it recognizes its own limitations to what is observable and measurable. The scientific method makes no claim to knowledge outside its own domain, but that domain is very limited, so if we are to make any metaphysical claims, they must lie outside of the scientific method. I require any such claims to be compatible with the scientific method, since science is the refined application of observation, and if what we conclude is contrary to observation, then I feel there would be little to which to anchor our conceptions. Metaphysical claims must pass beyond the observations that cannot reach their domain, but must be nevertheless grounded in those observations.

Scientific methods are not nearly as restricted and linear as many seem to believe – and that is the failing of an educational system that has a vested interest in presenting a reductionist view of the world. Quantum mechanics, chaos theory, emergent complexity, swarm intelligence, and a modern understanding of evolution are far from reductionistic, and allow for the emergence of very rich and surprising interactions among the elements and agents of the universe.

Emergent complexity is the reverse process of entropy. Ilya Prigogine did work in what he called dissipative systems, which are characterized by a gross net increase in entropy that allows, and even encourages, local decreases in entropy that manifest in the form of self-organizing systems. The Earth is such a system, because every hour it takes in tremendous amounts of highly organized energy in the form of sunlight, and dissipates it in the form of radiant heat. In this vast flow of entropy, it is possible, perhaps even likely, for eddies in the flow of entropy to develop, and here systems tend to become more, rather than less organized. This is one of the new understandings that has impacted the science of evolution: that the evolutionary progression of systems from less to more organized is a natural consequence of the earth as a dissipative system. In fact, we expect systems to become increasingly complex until the sun stops shining about five billion years from now.

Swarm intelligence, or distributed intelligence has been the subject of much study at the Santa Fe Institute, among other researchers and groups. Distributed intelligence is often studied in relation to bee hives or ant colonies, in which the hive or colony solves complex problems (such as construction of an arch or finding the shortest path among pollen sources) that none of the individual organisms can solve on their own. The hive or colony behaves like a brain whose individual neurons have legs and can go walking around on their own, but are nevertheless just cells in a larger brain.

Distributed intelligence is a form of emergent complexity, a form of organization wherein a collective system behaves in ways that are qualitatively different from the subsystems that compose them. Early work in emergent complexity was done by Murray Gell-Mann (also at Santa Fe Institute) on the emergence of magnetic polarities in heated ferromagnetic materials, but was quickly recognized to have much more general applications. Stuart Kauffman (guess what? Also SFI!) applied Gell-Mann's ideas of emergent complexity to biological evolution, and showed that living systems “adapt to the boundary between order and chaos.”

Consciousness is also a form of emergent complexity (applications of complexity and chaos theory to consciousness study are a specialty of Allan Combs of the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Graduate Institute). None of the individual cells of the brain/body system appear to have the property of consciousness, but in the system as a whole, consciousness arises. There are simpler biological parallels, one of the most basic of which is cardiac muscle fibers. A small number of living heart cells in a petri dish will contract in unrelated rhythms, but when a certain critical number of cells is reached, they all began to pulse in synchrony. Synchronization is not a property of any one or even any small group of cells, but emerges spontaneously when a large enough group of cells are brought together. There are also non-biological examples of emergent properties. Temperature, for example, is not a property of any individual molecule in a substance. But when the motions of the molecules are taken collectively, temperature emerges as a simple and measurable property that behaves according to the laws of thermodynamics, which are quite different from the laws of mechanics obeyed by the individual molecules.

If consciousness emerges as a collective property of the cells of the body, this can be taken as the personal divine. It is divine in that it is unpredictable, miraculous, and far beyond the simple association of systems that make it up. It is personal in that it pertains to a particular body, constructed as distinct from its surrounding environment.

III. The Emergence of the Universal Divine

But that distinction is somewhat arbitrary. Recent studies in human bacterial colonies have revealed the astounding observation that the average human body contains about nine times as many nonhuman bacterial cells as it does human cells. That is, every “human body” is composed of only ten percent human cells. Indeed, the conception of a human being as an individual is quite misleading. In point of fact, a human being is a walking ecosystem. From what part of this ecosystem does consciousness emerge? Or does it depend on all of it?

Furthermore, beyond the individual, organisms are subsystems within biomes and ecosystems. If the theory of swarm intelligence is correct, it is quite reasonable to suppose that a super-consciousness emerges within biomes and ecosystems of which the individual organisms may be only dimly aware. It is possible, and I take it to be so, that the individual organisms would be no more conscious of the superconsciousness in which they participate than are the cells of our brains aware that they are part of a human being who is reading or writing about metaphysics. Biologist Sally Goerner takes this notion to an extreme, but I believe correct, point at which intelligence is generally distributed throughout the universe. That is, after ecosystems, planetary systems, galaxies, and galactic clusters may contribute to an emergent superconsciousness. This is what I take to be the universal divine.

IV. The Role of Evolution

Fundamental to all consciousness and living systems is evolution, the process whose simplest elements are reproduction, mutation and selection, but whose emergent properties are vastly more complex than those three simple elements, in the same way that the complexity of the world around us far surpasses the simplicity of its composition of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Evolutionary process is very general and does not apply only to biological systems. Technology and computer codes develop under the same three forces, and I consider the evolution of story into myth to follow similar lines. Investigations along these lines have been conducted by the Generalized Evolution Research Group (GERG) which included Allan Combs and Sally Goerner, but is not currently an active organization.

Another level of the complexity of evolution as a process is its self-reference. Self-reference is a fundamental property not only of consciousness, but also of very interesting logical systems, including Godel's aforementioned theorems (See the tremendously interesting Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter, 1979) . Self-reference is intrinsic to evolution, because every organism carries within it an image (in the form of DNA coding) of itself. Moreover, it is not only the agents of reproduction that evolve under an evolutionary process but the evolutionary process itself – that is, evolution evolves. Moreover, the process by which evolutionary process evolves itself evolves, and so on ad infinitum. The evolutionary process is thus highly generalized and self-referential at infinitely many levels. It is thus fertile ground for emergent properties, including the properties of consciousness and intelligence.

This is what I feel is most missing from the popular reductionist view of biological evolution. There is nothing haphazard about evolution, and randomness plays very little role. In terms of what can be demonstrated rationally within observation and deduction, the limits of this are outlined in Stuart Kaufmann's extraordinary The Orgins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (1993). His conclusions suggest a startling level of deliberate strategy in the process of mutation. But my own metaphysical conception of evolution goes beyond that. I unite Goerner's notion of universally distributed intelligence with a conception of evolution as a highly complex self-referential process with emergent properties to conclude that evolution is an intelligent process. In fact, it is the most intelligent process, since our own intelligence is a mere by product of it.

Thus is laid out my conception of the universal divine: It is the distributed intelligence of the universe itself, consciously involved in the process of creation through evolution, which is the essence of its own being. Should I call it God? Why not? This conception neatly resolves the contention between intelligent design and evolution, by claiming that evolution is none other than a process of intelligent design. My conception is differentiated from creationism in that as I see it, the creator is not distinct from the created – we are one and the same – and that the act of creation is not a singular act that is concluded in the past, but is an ongoing act of which we are even now a part of the unfolding.

V. Toward a Metaphysical System and Inquiry

Thus I see the personal divine as our own consciousness, complex, shining, miraculous, and luminous, an emergent property of the body as a moving ecosystem, and the universal divine as that continuously creative, inconceivably luminous process of the unfolding of the universe in time. Our relationship is one of inclusion and participation. We are a product of that universal consciousness in the same way that ants are included within the colony, but the universal consciousness is also a product of the individual consciousness in the same way that the colony only exists because of the ants that comprise it. The part contains the whole, and the whole contains the part.

I find many spiritual doctrines to be useful guides in interpreting knowledge, being, and right action in the world, and these also form a part of the relationship between the universal divine and the personal divine. There are the Great Teachers, including Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Mohammed, and the unknown thirty-six Tzadikim believed to exist on earth at any given time, anonymously holding the greatest and purest wisdom for all mankind, among many others. Since each of us is the co-emergent center of the universal divine intelligence, each of us can serve as a conduit for that consciousness – only to the extent that our personal divinity (ego) does not interfere with the transmission. But since without ego the human personality ceases to exist, there is always interference, and the teachings are always corrupted. Thus the Upanishads teach that all dharmas are pierced by adharma.

So it is with all sacred scripture. There is not one sacred scripture I have read that does not contain both a pure and perfect wisdom, and also a corruption – both a dharma and an adharma. And how are we to tell which is which? Only by means of our personal divine consciousness, which is connected to the universal consciousness, but only through the distortions of ego. So what are we left with? Only our own onto-epistemological cycles. But as we reflect and interact, these evolve and grow as does any evolutionary system, and through the divine intelligence of that evolutionary process, we can hope to approach a glimpse of pure reality.

There is also guidance in the collection of cultural wisdoms offered by humanity. Thus, I find much of value in indigenous systems of thought, including what is usually called European Paganism, the pre-Christian indigenous wisdom of Old Europe. I find paganism and indigenous thinking particularly compelling because these systems combine the two seemingly contradictory notions of the objective observation and systematization of nature (on which indigenous survival depended, and which forms the backbone of modern science) and of a living, spirit-animated world of diverse conscious elements, not all of which are easily accessible. It should be clear how those notions co-exist comfortably in my personal onto-epistemological cycle, and form the basis of it.

I likewise seek understanding of right action in ancient teachings, in observation of nature, and from within my own divine soul. I believe with the Buddhists that compassion is the basis of all ethics, with Jesus that the greatest imperative is to love those who hate and harm you as well as those who love and help you, and with the Taoists that the natural state is closest to the divine. It is nothing other than my own divine soul that tells me that these are the parts of these teachings that resonate for me. I don't agree with everything that the Buddhists say, or the Christians, or the Taoists.

I also agree with the Buddhists and many others that it is desirable to follow the path of nonjudgment. But to say that nonjudgment is “desirable” is already a paradox, so can there be a teaching, or not? The ultimate difficulty and ultimate simplicity of the path of nonjudgment are well expressed by the Zen Koans of the Blue Cliff Record and the unteachings of the Heart Sutra, so I am drawn to them as points of departure for reflection and meditation.

I find that conscious reflection and meditation are deeply enhanced by relationships that are based on conscious witnessing and mutual trust within a container of safety. I am blessed in my life with many such relationships, one of which is so honest and life-affirming, as well as passionate and mystical, that it is itself like a portal to the universal divine. May everyone be blessed with such a relationship, and if not, at least with someone with whom they can dialog in trust. It is in dialog that our personal divine selves can meet, bear witness, and perhaps glimpse a view outside the limitations of our own cycles of perception.

Understanding Dreams (I found myself this morning)

The understanding of dreams is an important process in the deepening of the wholeness of ourselves. Yet it is seldom easy, and often it feels like dreams are telling us something that we cannot quite grasp. Attempts at developing a universal lexicon of dream language are generally unsatisfying. Even the best interpretive frameworks, such as those of Jung and Castañeda, are often foiled by our most significant experiences in the dream world. Because dreams are rooted in very personal experience, they strongly resist universal categorization and interpretation. They speak a language, and they follow a logic, yes. But it is not a universal language or a universal logic. It is a personal language and a personal logic. Therefore, the key to understanding dreams lies in a personal journey to understand the uniquely individual language of one's own dream author, the Self.

Here is an example of how this language works, and the discipline necessary to learn it.

In the dream I am a student at a vast and multidimensional academy, where many people come together to study art, science, language, and all the human endeavors. I am in a gathering with students and teachers, and I remember that I have two bass lines to learn. I think of the sheet music, I can visualize it in my head, but I have not committed it to memory as I know I must do. I speak to one of the professors. “I feel like I am working as hard as I possibly can, but no matter how hard I work, what remains to me to do is still impossible.”

The professor is kind and reassuring. “It feels like that for everyone while they're in a challenging academic program.”

“Yes, but I've been feeling like that for twenty-five years.”

“Aren't you in the FINSEL program? Don't you have to review four musical pieces every week for that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why not drop FINSEL? You don't need it.”

I realize the professor is right. I don't need FINSEL. Dropping it would make everything easier, and I would finally be able to relax a little. But I also have an immediate sense of attachment; the program is very important to me. I understand that it requires much time, attention, and discipline, but it is also part of who I am and why I am here. I could drop the program, but I will not.

When I awake, I remember the particulars of this dream, especially the strange word, “FINSEL.” I know that the feeling of being overwhelmed by work and obligation is a representation of very real waking anxieties and exhaustion, but what could this strange word mean? Although I never saw the word written in the dream, and in any case, I am seldom able to read or work with figures in a dream, still I knew that the word was an acronym. Its letters stood for something, or it was a contraction. But of what, I could not imagine.

I meditated on the dream throughout the morning (thankfully, it was a Saturday). I related it to my wife after breakfast, and began exploring the rest of the imagery. There were Jungian quaternities: four musical pieces in a week. The week is also a quaternity, since there are four of them in a month. Then there was the mention of “twenty-five years,” a quarter of a century. The two bass lines are a semi-quaternity. In the Jungian framework, such ubiquity of quaternities suggests a very significant dream of individuation. Already, I had no doubt of the dream's personal importance.

In the dream I was able to read music, though with difficulty. This was true in my waking life many years ago, but no longer, as I had left off performing written pieces in my teens, and had branched off into writing and performing my own music, intuitively rather than analytically, and without the benefit of formal writing. Nevertheless, music remains a central part of my personal self-expression, as it has been most of my life.

The dream's FINSEL program was a music program, and the students with whom I was speaking in the dream were music students. I thought I recognized one of them from my mathematics classroom of the waking world. I thought about that student, then remembered an incident that had occurred the day before in a calculus class, which happens to have a fair number of musically inclined students. Several of the students were getting permission slips signed to go on a field trip to a local engineering firm called “Boehringer Ingelheim.” I thought the name was funny, and it reminded me of the song, “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.” I tried to sing the song, substituting the name of the engineering firm for John Jacob's but I could not remember how the song went. I enlisted the aid of the students.

“You guys are musical types, you know the song 'John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,' right?”

About five students immediately burst into an enthusiastic rendition of the song. And yes, this is the sort of thing that typically happens in my calculus class.

“OK,” I said, delightedly, “ now substitute 'Boerhinger Ingelheim' for 'John Jacob Jingleheimer.'”

They immediately did so, and as they joyfully belted out the lampooned marching song, I began conducting. Another student exclaimed, “Look, Reese is conducting!”

“Sure,” I said. “I was in band in high school, too. I learned how to conduct 4/4 time: Floor, wall, wall, ceiling!”

All of this transpired during less than two minutes, while students were working out a calculus problem. Having had our fun – pedagogically useful, since a musical tangent can serve to stimulate the divergent thinking necessary for difficult mathematical problems – I redirected the students' attention to their work. But there had been a connection among us during that moment. Many of the students had not known about my musical background, so sharing that with them enabled us to connect in a new way. Moreover, in that experience of singing suddenly and joyfully together, there emerged that pure and transcendent feeling that is the dissolution of boundary. No longer were there teacher and students in the room, nor even persons isolated by their individuality, but a consciousness that blurred even the boundaries of self, so that something transpersonal emerged: The Collective Consciousness.

This was not the only musical connection I had with students on that day. In a different period of the school day, I was with students during what is called “advisory period,” which often functions rather like a socializing study hall. During this period, some students were using a laptop to look at Soundcloud, a website where amateur and professional songwriters post recorded music. Looking over the students' shoulder, I was surprised to see them using Soundcloud, since not many students do. I had never told any student that I have a Soundcloud page, but I suddenly felt moved to share, and suggested they look up my page.

The students did so, and were very surprised and amazed that their math teacher, whom they had known for four years, records and posts music that is modern enough to appeal to them (even though much of it was written and recorded before they were born). Several students liked it, and listened to several songs, and expressed great surprise and admiration. “I always knew Reese was a wizard,” one student said. Later in the day, one of the students to whom I feel close saw me in the hallway and said, “Reese, I'm telling everybody about your Soundcloud page. Everybody!”

I had always kept my musical activities private from the school, especially as some of the music is either aggressive or very personal in nature, and some has culturally subversive lyrics. On coming home, I somewhat nervously reviewed my page to see if there was anything that could jeopardize my career as a public school teacher, but I decided there wasn't, and in the end, I was glad that I had finally shared this part of my life with my students.

So. Only after reflection on the dream did I realize that two fairly significant events had occurred that very day, both of which had to do with connecting to young people in a school, through music. The import of the dream was beginning to assume definition. But I was no closer to understanding “FINSEL,” although my wife and I had each proposed several things having to do with music that didn't quite fit.

I reflected on the feelings I had experienced just after waking. In recent years, I have begun accumulating musical equipment, which I had left off for about a decade in a hiatus from music and recording. Now I had some recording equipment together, and had united it with things I had kept from my youth, and organized them into an efficiency studio built into a small desk in a corner of the bedroom. I had recorded a new song a couple of weeks ago, and had not put everything away yet.

On waking, I had noticed the amplifier, electronic delay unit, a notebook with scribbled lyrics, and a pedal effect, all stacked neatly, and a guitar and stand and coil of cords on the floor next to them. It had struck me how much this arrangement reminded me of how my bedroom looked twenty-five years ago, when I had still lived with my parents (and there was the “twenty-five years” from the dream). Indeed, three of the items of equipment were the same ones I had kept with me all those years; And the notebook, though only a few years old, was the same spiral type that I had always used in the past.

Here again was the musical connection to the past that had emerged twice on the previous day. I thought of how much I have changed and grown throughout those significant and transformative years, how I am not the same person now that I had been then. Yet there is a thread that runs through all of it, right to the root, right to the conception of my being. That thread is not music, but music is the perfect symbol of it. It is a touchstone to which I have always come back, and, like waking one morning and seeing an arrangement in my room exactly as it had been a quarter century ago, there I can find myself. Thinking of this, a thrill of excitement ran up my arms, caused my hair to stand on end, and tears to emerge in my eyes. My breathing became erratic and heavy, as though I could not get enough of the delicious oxygen that informs this life. I felt I was ready to jump out of my body and behold a series of incarnations from time immemorial.

FINSEL.

FIND SELF.

The instant I said it, I knew it was right. Even now, writing the words, after perhaps two hours of thinking and writing, I feel my face flush, tears well up, a rush of blood throughout my body. Everything about the dream was perfect. The people in it, the context, the images, the coded word, everything gave a perfectly clear message, and nothing was extraneous or unnecessary. Yes, my life has never been an easy one, and no matter how much I work, the work that remains to be done seems impossible, and this is how it has been all my life. Yet I have brought this challenge on myself by insisting at all times on a path that involved commitment to being authentic in the world, to finding and being myself and not anything else. This work has been demanding, sometimes crushing, but if someone were to suggest that I simply give it up to live an easier life – No, I would never do it. Not for an instant. All of the difficulty and hard work of my life has been worth it. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Even my worst mistakes were but steps on that path, and even those, I would not give up, if it meant abandoning the path of myself.

More than this understanding, there was something else that had brought an emotional climax to my whole body, mind, and spirit. It was not just the message that was significant in the dream. It was also the messenger. More important than receiving a needed missive about the condition of my soul, was knowing that there was someone to send that message. Like a shipwrecked sailor who receives a note in a bottle, the content of the note is not as important as the knowledge that there was someone who sent the bottle. Within the totality of consciousness that inhabits each of us, there is an intelligence that understands what is going on better than we do, and can help us through those dark despairs that haunt the human spirit. Indeed, that intelligence shows us that those travails and despairs are mere shadows, and that the fullness of our individual brilliance transcends them, though often we do not see. Some conceive this intelligence as an externalized deity, some as an internalized aspect of the Self. But internality and externality are properties of a three-dimensional, material world, not of the infinite-dimensional universe of which our physical existence is but an image. The soul transcends and crosses dimensions, and in a multidimensional universe, there is no inside and outside. There is no I nor Thou. There is I-within-Thou and Thou-within-I. The whole contains the part, and the part, the whole. Our dreams may tell us that this is so. We need only the diligence to listen.