to the natural flow of Chi, and you feng
shui your life, a principle that came to me
when my love and I finally got rid of all
our old computers, printers, and electronics
in the disposal bin behind Giant Tiger
in the town of Midland Sunday morning,
that’s when it kicked in, the synchronizing
rhythm of the Feng Shui Principle, and
everything fell into place as our day
unfolded with all the grace of easy,
harmonious living.
My Study Window
and I see the whole world,
not literally, of course; but
a reflection of the world
we live in, and all the people
who inhabit it, everyone moving
about their own life and being
who they are and want to be,
and I smile at the quiet dignity
of nature’s way of making
this into that and that into this,
and something more, forever
evolving the perennial soul
of man in knowledge, wisdom,
and understanding; and one
day too, they will know who
and why they are.
an inner garden, which is private
and sacred, and an outer garden,
which is public and safe; but I
often forget that I tend two gardens,
and when I’m talking with people
I have a pedantic tendency to blend
my two gardens into one, which
only confuses people and puts me
in a bit of pickle, adding an alien
flavor to what could have been an
easy, salutary conversation.
A Long Way to Go Yet
I invested a lot of time and energy
reading his books and listening to his
lectures and interviews and writing my
own book One Rule to Live By: Be Good,
inspired by his bestseller 12 Rules for Life:
An Antidote to Chaos, but the questing
psychology professor no longer spoke
to me; not because he stopped being one
of the most provocative intellectuals
of the 21th Century, but because he had
given up his secret and had nothing more
to say to me but novel iterations of the
same wisdom, following his successful
bestseller with the hopeful sequel Beyond
Order: 12 More Rules for Life. But I
refused to admit it, until something Jung
said reminded me of how he would lose
interest in people when he discovered the
secret of who they were, the divine mystery
of soul-making essential to his psychology
of individuation, a secret so sacred that
it led him to say, in a moment of exasperation,
“Thank God I am Jung, and not a Jungian!”
And I moved on from the world-famous
mentoring professor, knowing full well
that as far as his heroic path had taken him,
he had a long way to go yet.
