New poem: "The Reifying Gift of Gnosis"

 

The Reifying Gift of Gnosis

 

It was a mystery the great psychologist

could not fathom, and it haunted his inquisitive

mind; but one day—it always happens this

way! —happenstance introduced C. G. Jung

to St. Brigitta of Sweden (1303-1373) who

had a vision of the devil’s insatiable greed

that solved his baffling mystery of soul’s

resistance to understanding—and my mystery

as well, as the deafening silence to my poetry

on the secret way of life revealed; and when

I read C. G. Jung’s letter to Dr. Hans Schmid,

his friend and pupil—no less coincidental

than his own discovery of St. Brigitta—I leapt

with joy at Jung’s realization that understanding

was a murderer of the soul; and it bothered

the great psychologist no more, as he allowed

every soul to be the keeper of its own secret

until life made it ready for the secret way

that dispelled their sacred mystery with

the reifying gift of gnosis.

 

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Georgian Bay, Ontario

 

 

New poem: "The Puzzled Psychologist"

 

The Puzzled Psychologist

 

He came to me in a dream holding

a book in his right hand that I had just

written but not yet published (his pipe

was in his other hand), and we sat for

hours (time is not the same in dreams

as here) and talked about The Way

of Soul, which was the title of my new

book that had captured his interest enough

to visit me in my dream; and the first

thing he said to me, with a look of awe

and wonder in his awake, small eyes,

was, “How in God’s name did you figure

it out?” He was old in my dream, eighty

or more, and it confounded him how one

so young and unlettered in the ancient

texts could puzzle out the mystery of life

that he was still working out. “Simple,”

I said, “if you can believe it. I was tired

of being who I was not, and I came back

to live my same life over again to become

what I was meant to be; like an acorn seed

that one day must become an oak and not

a maple, apple, or any other tree.”

 

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Georgian Bay, Ontario

 

New poem: "A Puzzle No More"

 

A Puzzle No More

 

Called to a path that’s next to impossible to leave

when it can do no more for soul, like Gurdjieff’s

teaching of “work on oneself” that he called

by various names—the Fourth Way, the Work,

the System, the “way of the sly man,” and “esoteric

Christianity,” or the pilfered age-old spiritual

teachings of “soul travel” with its guiding presence

of an “Inner Master,” or the comprehensively

brilliant secular way of “shadow work” and Jungian

“individuation,” it puzzled me why; but one day

it dawned on me that fear of change keeps soul there,

and it’s a puzzle no more why such great teachers

like Gurdjieff and Jung have this tenacious hold

on soul that’s crying in silence to be set free

from its waning, comforting security.

 

Friday, February 2, 2024

Georgian Bay, Ontario

New poem: "It's All In the Doing"

 

It’s All In the Doing

 

“It’s all in the doing,” he said to her;

“that’s how you accrue the meaning

that gives your life purpose.” Puzzled,

she stared; and not knowing what

to say, she beckoned him to explain.

Smiling, he answered, “It’s a mystery

that cannot be explained; that’s why

Lao Tzu said, “Those who know do

not speak.” But this only puzzled her

more, and she politely replied, “Let’s

make up the beds so I can get on with

my day.” With a smile on his face, he

repeated: “It’s all in the doing; that’s

how you accrue the meaning that

gives your life purpose.”

 

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Georgian Bay, Ontario