Crossing Nebraska

It is dangerous to engage in mystical practice before having attained adequate ego strength to safely do so. This is an important idea that I attribute to C.G. Jung, although I can’t offer any more detailed attribution at the present time. If we scratch just below the surface of such a statement, it appears to contain a contradiction: Since mystical practice involves dismantling or casting aside our egoic constructs and defenses, it would seem that not having fully formed ego strength would just put us that much further along! Is that dangerous, or is it advantageous? Digging further, however, we can see that, since mystical practice can involve the dismantling of everything the practitioner might have assumed about the world and him or herself, there is the distinct danger of a precipitous descent into nihilism – the darkness of utter meaninglessness. Thus, I must begin this post with a warning: If you are young and without a solid sense of how you fit into this world, if you are str...

I suspect that anyone who’s lived an appreciable number of years will have come to know that darkest of places that we can know – with life as we’ve known it but a fast-fading memory, and life as we think it will be forevermore seeming like the darkest, coldest hell that can ever be imagined. Do you know this place of which I speak – the Void ? I was still a teenager when I first encountered it. Whatever Christian faith I’d known up to that point had crumbled and I’d not yet cultivated much of anything to take its place. In that place of in-betweenness was everything abhorrent to the human mind: meaninglessness, aloneness, joylessness… Some might be quick to refer to such an experience as “ the dark night of the soul ”; but to label it as such is at once to minimize it. For to assume that one’s soul is experiencing some tribulation that will eventually bring it closer to God, or to oneness, or to whatever it is that one might still believe in is to presume that there is ...

Missouri is often referred to as The Cave State for its many caves and grottoes formed by groundwater percolating through the limestone bluffs and hillsides. As such, in my youth I came to be a bit of a spelunker – not as much as was my friend, Mike, mind you, who seemed to have some special inside knowledge with respect to cavern whereabouts, but close. I’ll never forget the last excursion we went on together. Yes, it was the last one because, to tell you the truth, I don’t much like being stuck.   We were actually in a very well-known cavern, one known for having a “back door” up amongst the rolling hills far beyond the yawning main entrance. This time, however, we were off in a side passageway that we were hoping might have a similar, but as-yet-undiscovered, back entrance – perhaps a sinkhole at the bottom of a nondescript hollow or something. For some reason that I can no longer recall, I led the way. Maybe we flipped a coin, or maybe I was the stockier of the two of u...

Dear friend,   You have come to question what all of this means: your life and love, your toil and entertainment; your tears which give way to laughter which give way to tears all over again; the ceaseless frenzied activity that you’ve been invited to join – activity that you fear will only serve to keep you occupied until such time as you return to dust, as all of life, as mighty civilizations, as entire species inevitably turn to dust, over and over again.   Young friend, you now stand peering into the dark, cold abyss of meaninglessness. Congratulations! Yes, congratulations. For you, young friend, are alive – fully and truly alive. Oh, sure, we’re all alive (until, of course, we’re not), but to live nobly on the brink of this cold and dark abyss is to be fully and truly alive. This and this alone will be your rock.       I know, I know..., these words must hardly sound like the kind of rain that can turn the desert that you are fee...

Some years ago, with my future entirely up in the air, I loaded my bike and some gear into the back of a rented car and headed west. At the time I had only the sparsest of itineraries and no real time frame to speak of. Yes, I would return the rental car to a certain place on a certain date and, yes, I would then cycle out to the coast before meandering back home. With the exception of those few parameters, however, everything was up in the air. The route that I would take, the challenges and the people that I would meet, the despair and joy and insights that would arise along the way – these were all just aspects of an awesome mystery unfolding moment by moment, and I with it. In my more enlightened moments I’m able to see that all of life is like that, and that realization fills me with great joy. Ah, but in my dark and small-minded moments I manage to forget it all. It’s funny how great truths can so easily be forgotten. Speaking of great truths… I remember the first time I b...