One man’s view of wrapping up his earthly pilgrimage and being moved to tears by his gift of life. This is excerpted from the last interview of the late Terrence McKenna, shortly before he died at age 53 in 2000:

“I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you’d have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it’s a kind of blessing. It’s certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you’re going to be dead in four months, definitely turns on the lights. It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened and I got these diagnoses [of an aggressive brain cancer], I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.”

Hmmm, being moved to tears upon seeing a bug on the ground…. seems he was inhabiting the transcendent and poignant experience of being grateful for the gift of this one precious earthly life. Now, what do we do with ours? You have to have YOUR OWN experience of that level of gratefulness for the gift of our pilgrimage.

Farewell to all on this course, and happy trails. Thank you to the Gratefulness team (Hi Margaret) and to Br. David and David Whyte.

Shedding your shoes, as a metaphor, reminds me to Let Go and Let God. I have let go of the death-grip of my ego impulses and will-to-power and I have let go of an old American dream which has devolved.

The latest version of this “shed your shoes’ interpretation is that I have now moved from the United States and am living in southern Mexico for these past four months. Something has drawn me here, the import of which I am not able to completely fathom. I know there is a newly refreshed spirituality involved. Intuition and spiritual magnetism seem to be leading the way. Once I had let go of the old propaganda that the U.S. is (it was) the best country to live in and that hyper-capitalism was the best “system” for people to perpetuate, the move to Mexico arose rather naturally.

I find it hard to stomach how far to the “right” the U.S. has gone politically, vis a vis, Mr. Trump being the candidate of one of the two major parties. I think there is really just one party now, the business party, with two right wings, one further to the right than the other. Sorry to introduce politics into this forum, but Mr. Trump’s rhetoric is an exception to my usual restraint.

That political factor is one impetus for shedding my U.S. shoes, at this time. I am also an economic and cultural refugee, of sorts, from the complete commodification of almost everything — including the spiritual dimension — in the U.S., demo.gratefulness.org certainly notwithstanding.

This is not sour grousing and rationalizing. These seem to be real reasons to escape, let go, shed, the gravitational pull of a once great nation and instead head to the hinterlands of a more favorable spiritual climate, as I experience it in Mexico. This is not mere travel adventure.

Of course, Mexico has a boatload of its own political problems, so the political climate of the U.S. cannot account for my presently shed shoes. I simply feel the ground is holier here, at this time… Maybe a foolish thought.

We’ll see. I can only, Let Go and Let God, at this point and hope I am not consumed in the fire.

Dropping anchor…..

Is our essence untouched by outer circumstances?

David sets up his poem by relating he had asked his niece about her most profound moment on the Santiago (Santiago de la Frontera). Her reply was that it was just after completing the pilgrimage and she had engaged in the traditional ritual of letting go of something which she no longer needed, or could do without, and she left her shoes at the water’s edge. It was also traditional to burn something, so she burned some letters. This was taken by David to mean that these acts were symbolic of other lettings-go in life so that other guiding principles might emerge which would prove of the greatest importance as the newly-guided path continued.

What will I let go of? What will I burn?

I will relinquish my death grip on the extensive use of my ‘will-power,’ so that new ways and means of guidance can emerge; creating a will-vacuum. When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything like a nail. Relying almost exclusively on the tool of will-power does not allow for the wind and other graces to fill my sails.

What will I burn? I will burn the fear of not getting what I want or of losing what I think I have. Trust is a way of knowing. Do I want to fix what I see is wrong with me in the world, or do I want to go deeper than that? Do I want to actually go into the relationship that I currently hold with myself and the world? That is where the juice is; the real ‘me’. I am not sure most people, including me, are ready to do that.

I think of some other questions which David might have been posed to his niece, the answers to which might have spurred David on to new poetic expression. These include, what part of the pilgrimage carbonated your spirit; what was the most difficult part of the pilgrimage; did you experience things that were unexpected in your more common hours; what gave you spiritual or emotional help along the way; did you work through any lingering personal issues along the way; what pleased you the most; how did you handle the physicality of the pilgrimage day-by-day; would you like to have left something else at the water’s edge, had you had that something with you; were you able to suspend your usual judgmental self occasionally; were you ever scared; did you get what you came for; would you like to repeat the experience; do you feel your pilgrimage is adequately completed, for now?

Yet, mine is not merely to observe and pass judgment. Mine is to grab an oar, and row.

“You know the nearer your destination, the more your slip slidin’ away.”

Weighing anchor….

Up periscope….

Posting something in these Ecourse sessions is always a Rorschach test for the person who participates. ‘What do YOU select and project from the video clip, poem and suggested questions?’

You cannot, not take a path. Often, the path takes you. We live in a motion-normal universe, from the sub-atomic to the intergalactic. The only thing that resists this notion is our ego, which, when change is afoot, usually elects not to jump with trampoline enthusiasm. Sometimes, on a path, we hit spiritual blind spots and reach (sometimes, in quiet desperation) for handholds beyond our manifest knowing. Often, the reach exceeds our grasp and we gain no glimpse of the spiritual handholds beyond knowing.

This longing for handholds is the spiritual equivalent of the blind man probing the air and ground with his cane. Is this repeated swipe in the vast spiritually blind realm why we must trust when we take even a small leap of faith? The faith and trust can be in ourselves (“Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, essay, Self Reliance), it can be in our fellow man (‘There is a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.’ Emerson again.), it can be in a power greater than ourselves hidden in the interstices of those spiritual blind spots. It’s in the cracks where that greater power can come in, when the time is ripe.

The way forward is sometimes a going sideways, as a sailboat beating into the wind. The journey of a thousand miles is made by the countless zig-zagging tacks with our spiritual rudder, rolling and tossing from the crest to the trough. Sometimes, there is no rudder. Sometimes, there is no true north. In the ocean of the spiritually blind, the one-eyed sailor is king.

Down periscope….

Up periscope….

‘…the inmost in due time becomes the outmost…’ Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Self Reliance.

‘Twas it worth the trouble, Pilgrim?’

In the movie, Jeremiah Johnson, the character, Bearclaw (an old grizzled mountain man who eeks out a singular living in the Rocky Mountains of America’s west in the 19th century by hunting grizzly bears) compliments Robert Redford’s character (Jeremiah Johnson, a relative newcomer as a mountain man) after not having seen each other for years. Sitting around a campfire eating rabbit in the snowy Rockies, Bearclaw offers his faint praise to Johnson: “Ya come far, Pilgrim,” says Bearclaw to Johnson; “Twas it worth the trouble?” Johnson replies with noble asceticism and stoic masculinity, “What trouble?”

This was after Jeremiah Johnson had gone through hell as a mountain man and trapper (incessant battles with Indians who were trying to kill him, seeing other settlers (pilgrims) massacred, acquiring – then losing – an Indian wife and adopted settler’s son in a retaliatory attack at his backwoods home he had built, having his home pillaged, battles with nature, severe weather and predatory animals, breaching his own honor code as to what he should not do and doing it anyway against his better nature and judgment, and many other hardships, physical and psychic). It is the emblematic re-telling of the Protestant-virtued rugged individualist, I-can-do-it-on-my-own, American myth of hyper self-sufficiency in the 19th century European pilgrim tradition.

That story, though romantically appealing, is just not my story. Mine is one of compromise, utter failures, one foot on the true path and one foot on a banana peel, circling the drain and mysterious 11th hour rescues to keep from going down , impressive accomplishment in collaboration with others, being whipped for non-conformity from the voices of orthodoxy, brooking the hostility and resistance of the cultivated yet brutish classes, seeking refuge in the tribe, and coming out of a series of arrested falls by the grace of some power greater than myself and which is above my will – culminating today in participating in my own evolution in collaboration with each of you in this Ecourse.

My series of experiences is probably more in the tradition of the fierce yet fragile English “pilgrims” bumping into Plymouth Rock and starting a very shaky Jamestown as a group than it is the Jeremiah Johnson rugged individualist, solo triumphant over the natural world and mankind, myth. Both, hard won pilgrimages to be sure.

That said, I do hope at the melodramatic denouement of my mortal pilgrimage I am able to respond, if asked, as did Jeremiah Johnson to Bearclaw: “What trouble?” Or, maybe Shakespeare’s line from, As You Like It: ‘Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.’

Down periscope…

1. In your own words, what does Wholeheartedness mean to you?

Hope this is worth a fast riffle for you. Up periscope….

Because of the proximity of his death, the late Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J. immediately comes to mind as someone who lived a wholehearted life for the majority of his 94 years, in and out of the church.

I first had to get myself into a contemplative state to do this exercise wholeheartedly, sans distractions. Wholeheartedness first triggers how we either do, or do not, express ourselves via speech, various art forms and writing. “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, essay Self-Reliance.)

If you are in the United States, we have the secular-sacred First Amendment right to wholehearted expression (and thus to, wholehearted, not crabbed, thought). It is a Constitutional right that limits the government’s power to shut you up, make you verbally tow a party line, or restrict the spoken, written or artistic expression of your adulthood (or childhood for that matter). Outside of that limitation on government power to quash expression, the First Amendment freedom to express ourselves is not guaranteed in the non-governmental realm.

How much do we self-edit, when what we would really like to say is more pointed, critical, controversial or even rude and harsh – yet scrupulously honest, as we see it? “Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.” (Emerson.) Do YOU express yourself wholeheartedly in most situations; at work, with a significant other, in a meeting, with any group which you consider your community, on TV in a political circumstance, at church or other places of assumed orthodox verbal propriety? Do you call ‘em as you see ‘em. Really?

Wholehearted speech and expression is my first circle of wholeheartedness. It seems to be closely allied with the courage (coeur = heart) to express yourself, wholeheartedly.

To think and act wholeheartedly is to be released from: skepticism, weak curiosity; to be released from distractions caused by an attitude of, “yeah, but.” It is to be joyfully absorbed in whatever it is you are concentrating upon and being possessed of the gift of “must-do-it;” “I was meant to do this,” my calling. At this stage of my life, if something is not a definite, “yes,” then it is most likely a “no,” and I should let it go; it means not being half-hearted & not having a hardened heart, either; having a carbonated approach to a mission or activity; perhaps wholeheartedness (or wholeness) is not how-much-you-know, but how little (Rumi – “my eyes are small but they see enormous things.”).

A soft vision comes now of friends overnighting in a caravanserai and sitting around the campfire in a wholehearted, intimate, conversational communion, letting the campfire’s heated, flickering message lead the way; wholeheartedness can be sinking a taproot into the sacred or holy, as you understand and experience the sacred.

Wholehearted (and lighthearted) life goals: to experience unendurable pleasure, infinitely prolonged (with robust health), concluding in — death by astonishment. Is that too much to ask?

Wholehearted chores at this moment:
I am just finishing “deep cleaning” the kitchen of my new rental house in southern Mexico which was last occupied by someone who did not care to do any deep cleaning. It is obvious they did not clean, wholeheartedly, anything in the kitchen. The refrigerator had a completely food-stained interior on every surface, with old food in jars that had an inch of mold in some. Same for the freezer. The outside of the refrigerator looked like it was retrieved from the Pompeii ruins.

The remainder of the kitchen was in similarly unpalatable shape this morning. After at first being offended that someone would leave a kitchen like this for someone else to deep clean (not to mention my default setting of being judgmental about someone who would live under those dirty conditions), I consciously just paused, settled down and thought of the opportunity I had to do some wholehearted cleaning and to be one of the beneficiaries of it – really, that is what happened. After all, I was the only anti-entropic force to be in the kitchen today. After about three hours, the refrigerator is now spotless inside and out and it looks like a new appliance. All the old food was tossed. It feels really good to open the door and look inside. I took a “before” photo, just to remind myself of the value I added as a function of wholehearted cleaning. It is so nice not to carry a resentment and, to have a clean refrigerator…. A two-fer of simple gratitude for today.

2. What qualities do you associate with being fully present?

Equanimity; self-absorbed, yet almost cosmic, bliss — tranced out perhaps; harmonized mind, body and spirit; trusting myself – that what is true for me is true for much of mankind at any given time; allowing the universe to work me (I have spent far too much time working it); grandeur, generosity of spirit, awe, communion; absence of alienation or separateness; opening yourself to whatever ‘it’ is; gut-level freedom from fear, resentment, self-pity, hurt feelings and all negative or offensive emotional baggage; disciplined and noble silence; a soul that is Roto-Rootered of clutter, corruption, guilt and shame (ah, doesn’t that feel better?); spiritual liberation; letting the demons out of their cages and wishing them well as they go somewhere else (don’t let the door knob hit you on the behind on your way out). Less, can definitely be, more.

Immediately below is from Br. David, when he was doing dishes at a Zen monastery he was visiting in California, I believe. Forgive me (and please correct me) if I have mistakenly misrepresented the setting for this wonderful observation. I believe this was a sign above the dish sink there which Br. David read:

“We should listen to the sound of the water and the scrubbing,
to the various sounds the dishes make when they hit each other.
The sounds of our work tells us much about our practice…

Most people dislike dish washing.
Maybe they can learn to appreciate the touch of the wooden bowls,
the pots and mugs and everything they handle,
the weight of what we lift up and set down,
the various smells and sounds.

St. Benedict, the Patriarch of Western monks,
writes that in a monastery every pot and pan should be treated
with the same reverence as the sacred vessels on the altar.”

3. Where or when do you show up most wholeheartedly?

Researching and learning as a 21st century autodidact; having any honest singleness of purpose; intimate, honest conversations; dance class; wild, wonderful, noble nature; during spiritual studies; listening to music in an intimate setting – not a commercial one – and joining in when I can. Learning to live in a new country, as I am now doing.

4. How does showing up wholeheartedly impact you? Others around you? The world?

It’s the fun way to do things; I have had the good fortune to have changed the world (in a minor vein, but nonetheless changed the world) because I entered into a lawsuit with complete wholeheartedness and was provided with the gift of some kind of grace for the enterprise; creating an intentional community, consciously, for 15 years; You can’t keep it unless you give it away. What goes around, comes around, including wholeheartedness. The karmic view of life.

5. What kinds of visible and invisible help do you enlist in your life?

Visible help usually involves a tool or technology (especially the internet) or people. Often, as to people, I get professional help as needed and I keep in mind SAK (somebody already knows), and try to find who might be that SAK person so that I don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

As to invisible help, I pray, I meditate and contemplate, I read, I try to wrest out of myself something which can be put in tangible form (like writing). I try to make the unknown part of me, known, the strange to be made familiar and, sometimes, to make the familiar strange, just to keep the mind nimble. I enjoy the internet, which is the invisible, cloaked in this magic machine. Physical separation and invisibility can just be a local illusion.

Now, think about where you are holding back.

6. When are you least likely to allow “the intensity of your presence” to come forth? Are there patterns you notice about this?

When I am afraid or hurt, especially when trust is breached, I close up like a sea anemone being touched. When I have flung the experience of being grateful over the cognitive horizon and fallen back into the gravitational pull of default emotions of fear, resentments, hurt feelings, shame. When I used to drink too much, trying to fill that spot about 2 inches in from my solar plexus which I only later learned could not be filled by booze, but only by some kind of gut-level spiritual/psychic/cosmic connection. Drinking wine is fine; drinking to fill that hole is ignorance.

7. What feelings or situations keep you from wholeheartedness?

See #6 above. I tend to give others a presumption of their trustworthiness, then let them de-select themselves from the ranks of the trustworthy if that is what they decide to do. Anything that alienates me from others or from some power or force greater than myself.

8. When you are holding back, what impact do you think this might have on you? Others around you? The world?

When young, I engaged in the good ol’ American work game of: “I will work just hard enough to keep from being fired, and you will pay me just enough to keep me from quitting.” That sucked, and was certainly a holding back, half-hearted way to engage in work. Alas, I was young and dumb. Now I am old and dumb, a much better deal, especially since I get the internet and a smart phone. Your power is in your wholeheartedness.

“Not Here

There’s courage involved if you want
to become truth. There is a broken-

open place in a lover. Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp

compassion in this group? What’s the
use of old and frozen thought? I want

a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.

We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change. Lukewarm

won’t do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here.”

Above is from, Soul of Rumi
by Coleman Barks

When you are consciously withholding (secrets or powerful emotions) that have some sort of human, communal import, you become alienated, sometimes from yourself, sometimes from others or from your sense of the sacred or holy, whatever that might be. Alienation is the price we pay for consciously withholding that to which someone else is, by virtue of their similar and common humanity, entitled to know because of some spiritual law which I am unable to fully articulate. Confession, privately or openly, is good for the soul and helps close the circle of human intimacy and empathy.

9. What kinds of visible and invisible help would help you to live more wholeheartedly?

Visible help: people of all stripes; technology, mostly the internet and, public transportation. Sometimes, you just have to throw your hat over the fence and go chase it. When you commit to something, all sorts of interesting things (including people, often unexpectedly) come out of the woodwork to aid in your mission. The grace of great (and small) things helps. I honestly pray for such grace, when I think of it. I tend to rely on visible help more than invisible, but I have certainly increased petitions for the latter, when they are proffered to help further someone or something other than my own self interests and ego-centrism. Praying for more for me, has never worked.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.”

— Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi – 13th century

Down periscope…