One Rule to Live By: Be Good, Chapter 26: A New Paradigm for Our Crazy World

Chapter 26

A New Paradigm for Our Crazy World

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

—William Shakespeare

Being the kind of writer that I am with a gift for seeing both the beginning and the end of the ideas that I am given to explore in my writing (especially ideas for my spiritual musings that come to me like packaged truths), I had my suspicion where One Rule for Life: Be Good was going; but I did not want to think about it, because I had to get there first.

I’m not quite there yet, but I’m getting closer. I have to read Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief before I work my way around the corner; but all the same, I can no longer hold back the creative imperative of One Rule for Life: Be Good.

 I know that we need a new paradigm for our crazy world to live by that will be large enough to include every facet of the human condition, a paradigm that will allow everyone to grow in their destined purpose to wholeness and completeness, but I also know that this new paradigm will only be embraced by those whom life has made ready; and this was the inspiration for the following spiritual musing that I dared (it was foolish, I know; because it’s so far out there) to post on my Spiritual Musings blog Saturday, February 10, 2018:

On the Cusp of a New Spiritual Awakening

This is a spiritual musing that I look forward to writing. I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself. The idea came to me this morning as I was reading my newly minted copy of My Writing Life, the sequel to The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, while drinking my first cup of coffee.

Just as I finished reading Chapter 29, “Hemingway’s Brain,” which I concluded with stinging irony that suicide might be genetically encoded (this was a satirical put-down of psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Farah’s theory that Ernest Hemingway’s suicide was induced by chronic traumatic encephalopathy from the nine blows to his head that Hemingway got over his life-packed life), because Dr. Farah’s theory rested upon the unproven scientific theory that our personality is a by-product of our brain and can be affected by repeated blows to the head, which certainly can happen as extensive studies of football player head injuries have proven, but our personality is a fractal of the individuating consciousness of our essential self, which is not an epiphenomenon of the brain; our essential self is our true and immortal divine self, independent of our biology, and although our personality may certainly be affected by brain chemistry, our essential self imbues our brain with our evolving identity which is independent of our brain, and no sooner did I read the last line of “Hemingway’s Brain” and the title of today’s spiritual musing popped into my head— “On the Cusp of a New Spiritual Awakening.”  That’s how ideas for my spiritual musings come to me, out of the blue.

As I said, I look forward to writing today’s spiritual musing; but before I do, I have to watch a YouTube video again where the exceptionally gifted Australian psychic Alison Allan channels the higher self of well-known living people—Oprah, Shirley MacLaine, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Jim Carrey, George Clooney, Bill Murray and others, which proved to be not only shockingly mischievous and pruriently fascinating to watch, but absolutely visionary in its serendipitous discovery because it opened the psychic door to the higher self of every living person, which was totally new to the phenomenon of spirit channeling because psychic mediums only channeled the spirit of the dead, not the living.

Here’s how it happened. Allison had written down a list of names (departed souls) for her to channel on the Afterlife Interview segment of the Alison and Keri’s Shiny Show (as advertised on YouTube: “Kari Mena, Energy Healer and Alison Allan, Medium, are two like-minded people who want to share the experience of the spirit world”), and by mistake, Alison had written down Shirley MacLaine’s name, but as she went over her list she realized that she wasn’t dead yet; and when she discussed this with her co-host Keri, they were given the inspiration to try channeling the higher self of famous living people, and that’s how they “chanced” upon what will undoubtedly be a new frontier of the spiritual awakening that’s taking place in the world today, and which they even became aware of as Alison channeled the higher self of those famous people still living, because they both recognized that what they were doing was not unlike what the old pioneers did as they explored their new country (in Keri’s case, the America west, and in Alison’s case, the unexplored frontiers of Australia)—only they were exploring the undiscovered far country of the soul!

Of course, the materialistic scientific community pooh-poos this field of inquiry, but the social paradigm of personal meaning is shifting so quickly today—what with all the mind-expanding shows in the movie industry, television, Netflix and other social media networks with themes dealing with reincarnation (Cloud Atlas, starring Tom Hanks), recurring parallel lives (Before I Fall, modeled on Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray), and numerous SF movies that extend human life beyond our five senses—that the recalcitrant soul-denying scientific community is beginning to cave, which books like Proof of Heaven  by Dr. Eben Alexander, M.D. and Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian L. Weiss, M.D., written by established medical doctors who once held onto the theory that we do not have an autonomous self that exists independent of our physical body are proving, with more personal stories of OBEs (out of body experiences), NDEs (near-death experiences), and after-death memoirs like My Life After Death: A Memoir From Heaven, by Eric Mendhus, coming out every day; and, at the risk of sounding immodest, I can even cite my own parallel life story in my memoir The Summoning of Noman and my intensely personal novel Healing with Padre Pio, which was inspired by the spiritual healing experience that I had with the gifted psychic/medium who channeled the departed spirit of St. Padre Pio. The times are changing so rapidly that I can almost hear Bob Dylan’s squeaky voice singing in my ear: “For the times they are a-changin…”

            But old dogs die hard, and it will take some time for the higher frequency energy of this new spiritual awakening to break up the stifling consciousness of belief systems that keep social consciousness trapped in fixed mental attitudes, like the unproven scientific belief that our reflective self is a by-product of our  brain, and there’s nothing anyone can do about this because life is an individual journey of self-discovery, and not everyone can make the shift in their personal paradigm to this new awakening; but it’s happening all the same, as adventurous souls like Alison and Keri are proving…

The Internet is here to stay, and however it evolves in this rapidly changing world it will continue to expand the horizons of man’s thinking like nothing before. When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid 15^th Century, it ushered in the modern period of human history, playing a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution; and it laid the material basis for our modern knowledge-based economy and spread learning to the masses; but the Internet, a highly evolved technological version of the Gutenberg press, opens us up to a whole universe of learning, giving us instant information as it springs forth from the deep founts of human consciousness, like the serendipitous discovery that Alison and Keri made two years ago in 2016 by daring to channel the higher spiritual self of famous people still living; and as surprised as I was in their discovery, so were the spirits that they channeled.

For the record, the Alison and Keri YouTube video that inspired the idea for today’s spiritual musing is titled: Shiny Show E6: Contacting Higher Selves of Famous People, which is worth watching, if not for the information, which is mind-boggling, at least for the sheer entertainment, which is hilarious; and just to show how surprised these people were when the gifted Alison intruded into their spiritual space by calling upon their higher self, let me quote their exact words:

The comedian and actor Jim Carrey’s higher self was called first, and Jim Carrey, one of the fractals (personalities) of his higher self’s multiple fractals, responded to what Alison and Keri were doing: “How naughty this is,” he said, annoyed but somewhat amused; and Alison got the distinct impression that Jim Carrey compared what they were doing to making love with the neighbor’s wife…

When Alison called Oprah Winfrey’s higher self, Keri, being the annoying little brat that she is, asked Oprah if she would plug her Shiny Show, and Oprah replied: “Baby steps, baby steps.” And just as she was leaving, because she didn’t want to reveal any more than she had to and only appeared to Alison out of courtesy, she said to the girls that she was going to be one hell of an interview when she crossed over, if the Shiny Show was still around, that is…

And then Alison called Shirley MacLaine’s higher self (whose books I had read and loved, my favorite being Sage-ing While Age-ing with The Camino a close second), and Shirley MacLaine, being her characteristic feisty self, said: “What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is ridiculous. Good fun, but ridiculous. You’re busting the chops of all the rules by doing this; and it’s fun, but—it’s funny, but it’s naughty.” And when Keri asked her how she felt about how the world had finally embraced her spiritual views (on reincarnation and UFOs), Shirley MacLaine replied: “It’s about bloody time…”

And then Keri asked Alison to call the heartthrob actor George Clooney’s higher self, and he simply said, “Seriously girls? Come on? Moving on, girls,” and he left…

Steven King’s higher self was called next, and the famous author crossed his arms and furrowed his brow and gave the girls a studied look, and said: “There’s a book in this…”

And then the celebrated scientist Stephen Hawking’s higher self was called, who didn’t mind appearing, and Alison asked him a question that had been on her mind ever since she read his book A Brief History of Time. Stephen Hawkins was born 300 years to the day that the famous Galileo Galilei died, and Alison felt that Stephen was the reincarnation of Galileo, which he confirmed; then Keri asked him about his theory that there was no God, and he replied, “It’s just a game…just because you say there is no God does not change the fact that there is a God,” and he told the girls that he would be back in the not too distant future…

After Stephen Hawking, the actor William Shatner’s higher self was called, and the first thing Captain Kirk said to the girls was, “To boldly go where no-one has gone before, ladies,” a reference to that famous line from his Star Trek show. And then he added, “Wait till you get over here. This is the real Star Trek…”

And then Keri asked Alison to call up the actor of the SF Matrix series, Samuel L. Jackson’s higher self, and he said to them: “Whatcha you girls doing now? What the hell you doing? Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.” And Keri asked if they were breaking some spiritual law with their playful foray into the far country of the soul, and Jackson replied: “You’re breaking some big spiritual butt. You’re opening doors that are never going to close, girls. Once the word is out there, every f—r is going to be doing it…”

And then, to my absolute delight, Alison called up the three candidates that were running for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders, and they all confirmed what Stephen Hawking said, that it was all just a game; but Donald Trump said something that puzzled the girls but spoke to me: “All is not what it seems, ladies. Don’t be fooled by what’s in the brochures…”

Donald Trump won the presidency and has been stirring the pot ever since, shaking up the American political system like no other president before him, which is probably the best thing that could have happened to the dangerously polarized American system; but that could be a whole musing in itself, if ever I am called to write it. Suffice to say, there’s an electrifying spiritual awakening taking place today, and I’m happy to be part of this new phase of human evolution, however bizarre it may appear to be.

———

         

This is why professor Jordan Peterson was called to write 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and I was called to write One Rule to Live By: Be Good; the good professor to satisfy our need to know what the hell is going on out there and provide a road map for all the wayward souls looking for direction and purpose to satisfy the longing in their soul for wholeness that religion, science, and politics cannot satisfy, and me to provide a new paradigm for this crazy world of moral relativism, identity politics, and radical political correctness gone mad that Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos will prepare one for, a paradigm that embraces all dimensions of the human condition, like the multi-dimensional nature of man and redemptive laws of karma and reincarnation. An unbelievably presumptuous proposition, I know; but I am a servant of my muse…

One Rule to Live By: Be Good, Chapter 25: Integrating the Sacred Back into Society

CHAPTER 25

Integrating the Sacred Back into Society

I went online the other evening to see if any new videos on Jordan Peterson had been posted, and I came upon a new podcast by Rebel Wisdom (The Peterson Paradox, May 28, 2018), hosted by David Fuller, who used to work for Channel 4 News and BBC; and he said something to Rafia Morgan, the newest member of the Rebel Wisdom team, that captured the imperative of Jordan Peterson’s message. “For me,” said David Fuller, “he symbolizes the potential reintegration of the sacred into a society that I think has really lost its way in this kind of materialism and has cut us off from a really deep part of ourselves—the religious, the mythological, the spiritual, all these sorts of ways that we used to make sense of the world and I think speak to something really deep in ourselves…”

I couldn’t agree more. How, when, and why society began to compromise its spiritual values for the security of the material life does not really matter to me (that’s for academics like professor Peterson to work out, which he attempted to do with his ground-breaking book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief); what has always concerned me was the purpose of my existence, the same question that haunts every soul that has evolved as far as nature can take them. But in today’s world of postmodern nihilism and political correctness gone mad, to even mention the word “soul” seems to violate some unwritten code; and this is the reason Jordan Peterson has drawn such a massive following—because he’s waking people up to their disconnection from the ground of Being and self-transcending values that will reconnect them with their essential self. But Jordan Peterson is far too wise to be so specific about God, soul, and the afterlife; and like his hero Carl Gustav Jung, the good professor has couched his hierophantic message in the safe paradigm of behavioral science and psychology, which he taught for many years at Harvard and U of T. This is why he hesitates to admit that he believes in God, soul, and the afterlife, which only adds to his mystique.

Jordan Peterson knows that reconnecting with the Logos is a personal responsibility, which he addressed in his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos; but because this reconnection with the source of our essential being (see how difficult it is even for me to use the word God in this nihilistic climate of today’s crazy world?) is a personal responsibility, we will all eventually come to the realization of our immortal self and the Logos in our own individual way, like the poet William Wordsworth who awakened to the life principle of the Logos through his love of nature, as he tells us in The Prelude:

To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower,

Even the loose stones that cover the highway,

I gave a moral life: I saw them feel,

Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass

Lay bedded in some quickening soul, and all

That I beheld respired with inward meaning.

          This is why I came to believe that life is an individual journey, despite how one comes to this enlightened realization, whether it be through poetry, professor Peterson’s lectures and/or his book 12 Rules for Life, or Gurdjieff’s teaching that awakened me to the moral imperative of the Logos (the secret way that Jung saw in his practice and recognized in the ancient Chinese teachings of the Tao); because, when all is said and done, there really is only self-initiation into the mysteries of life. And if I may, let me illustrate with a spiritual musing that I wrote for my fourth volume of spiritual musings (The Armchair Guru) how my own individual way kept me connected with my essential self, and the Logos:

The Longings of Our Soul

It’s curious, how life works; one day we find ourselves being pulled to a new interest, as though we need the knowledge of this new interest to satisfy some longing in our soul, and when we have explored this new interest we find ourselves being pulled to another interest to satisfy another and perhaps deeper longing in our soul that beckons our attention.

This insight came to me yesterday as I listened to the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist/author Chris Hedges as he was interviewed by Bill Moyers. I came upon Chris Hedges by chance online, and his political perspective fascinated me so much that I had to explore what he had to say, as though his iconoclastic point of view revealed the deep dark shadow side of politics that I longed to know more about; and I watched half a dozen or so interviews of him speaking about one or another of his best-selling books—The Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, and Days of Revolt and others; and he was so articulate on the dark side of human nature (especially corporate America) that I couldn’t stop watching, however depressing his worldview proved to be.

In the Bill Moyers interview, Hedges reveals that the dark shadow side of life has made him an angry man, but he is a good man who wants to do his part to help set the record straight; and he paid a heavy price for his journalistic integrity, like losing his job at New York Times for being too honest. But that’s his calling, and he has the courage to walk his talk; which got me thinking about the longings in our soul that keep calling us to new interests. This, then, is the subject of today’s spiritual musing…

In my novel Healing with Padre Pio, which was inspired by my new interest in spiritual healing that initiated ten spiritual healing sessions with a gifted psyche medium who channeled St. Padre Pio for my novel, he told me that “life is all about growth and understanding,” which to anyone over forty should be so obvious that it could almost be considered tautologous; but to what end? That’s the question everyone wants answered, and one remarkable man did answer it.

C. G. Jung, one of the founding fathers of depth psychology (the other was Sigmund Freud, but Jung went much deeper than Freud with his discovery of the collective unconscious), said: “As each plant grows from a seed and becomes in the end an oak tree, so man must become what he is meant to be. He ought to get there, but most get stuck.” Given this realization, which took me many years to affirm with my own journey of self-discovery, it appears that the teleological purpose of our life is to become what we are meant to be, complete unto ourselves like an acorn seed becoming an oak tree; but how can we become what we are meant to be if we do not satisfy the longings in our soul?

“He ought to get there, but most get stuck,” said Jung, speaking to the natural process of individuating our own identity through life experience; and it seems to me that we get stuck when we don’t take the initiative to satisfy the longings in our soul by exploring new interests that will help us to grow into the person we are meant to be and realize our destined purpose of wholeness and completeness.

“Nature will only evolve you so far, and no further,” said Gurdjieff, an enigmatic mystic philosopher who introduced the western world to a radical teaching of self-transformation that I lived for years and wrote about in Gurdjieff Was Wrong, But His Teaching Works, and the only way to become the person we are meant to be is to take evolution into our own hands to complete what nature cannot finish, and we take evolution into our own hands by taking the initiative to explore new interests; that’s how we satisfy the longings in our soul to become what we are meant to be, our true self whole and complete.

I took the initiative many, many times; but sometimes taking the initiative to explore a new interest can cost one dearly, like the time I explored an offshoot Christian solar cult teaching that did irreparable damage to my eyesight by practicing the solar techniques of looking into the sun (mornings and evenings) whose rays were said to be imbued with the sacred Logos which one needed to nourish their spiritual body, a very dangerous teaching which one day I may have the courage to write about in a novel I’m going to call The Sunworshipper; but only if my oracle insists. Otherwise I don’t think I’ll ever write it.

Being a truth seeker, it was my nature to take the initiative wherever my new interests pulled me, like my interest in studying philosophy at university which led to Gurdjieff’s teaching of “work on oneself” that sparked my interest in the sayings and parables of Jesus, the mystical teachings of Sufism, Gnosticism, Buddhism, Taoism, Jung’s psychology of individuation, and a New Age spiritual teaching that I lived for many years but which I finally outgrew to devote myself to writing, a fascinating journey of self-discovery that I wrote about in The Summoning of Noman, followed by The Pearl of Great Price that  brought my journey of self-discovery to personal, and literary resolution.

But the pull of an exciting new interest that went a long way to transforming my life was long distance running, which I did for seven and a half years on Highway Eleven along the shoreline of Lake Helen in my hometown of Nipigon, Northwestern Ontario before I burnt out on a housing contract on the native reserve near my hometown that was too big for me to handle, and try as I may, I was never able to get back into running again which I miss dearly to this very day, because it was the most satisfying way to resolve my daily stress and grow in the consciousness of the person I was meant to be; but I did keep a journal from August 1, 1988 to January 8, 1989 to capture the daily flavor of my running experience, which I called Thoughts in Motion: Diary of a Holistic Runner, so I know from personal experience that taking the initiative to explore new interests nourishes the longings in our soul, and  I`m convinced that the more we nourish the longings in our soul, the more we grow into the person we are meant to be.

But one day we will all see that exploring new interests won’t be enough to satisfy the deepest longing in our soul for wholeness and completeness, as I painfully learned when I desperately needed to satisfy my deepest longing and did irreparable damage to my eyesight with that offshoot Christian solar cult teaching that promised instant nourishment of the Logos with its solar techniques; and that’s when the omniscient guiding principle of life calls us to complete what nature cannot finish by teaching us how to live our life unselfishly, learning to give back to life instead of always taking from life, because this is the only way we can resolve the paradoxical consciousness of our being and non-being and transcend our primal selfish nature that keeps us bound to our ego/shadow personality.

“He labors good on good to fix, and owes /To virtue every triumph that he knows,” said William Wordsworth, whose poem Character of the Happy Warrior became my ideal, because in the end all paths in life lead to the simple virtue of goodness; but that’s another spiritual musing for another day.

———

            When asked by David Fuller in the Rebel Wisdom podcast what he thought of Jordan Peterson, Raphia Morgan, who is deeply involved in spiritual growth work and is the co-founder of Path of Love, replied: “I think he’s somebody who gets the bigger picture and can weave things that would address real life concerns for lots and lots of people,” to which Fuller replied: “He’s carrying more than his fair share of the burden. He’s carrying a sort of flame for this reintegration of the sacred, for this great tradition, for all this stuff that has to be integrated for us to move forward. We have to get past this sort of naïve materialism, naïve scientism that someone like Sam Harris represents. It’s like, religion is stupid, and everyone else is stupid who doesn’t think like this. Whoa. Grow up. The arrogance. That is just ridiculous. And he’s carrying this. He’s the hero of the moment for this other way of looking at the world,” and Raphia Morgan responded: “We need a bigger wisdom that is more inclusive and that is not giving up taking a stand. It’s taking a stand for a higher wisdom that is more inclusive, that is willing to look at the right, that is willing to look at the left, that can find some kind of synthesis out of all that and stand on that and address the real issues and not just get lost in a kind of name-calling polarity that has been going on forever. It’s just so tiring,” and both Fuller and Morgan felt that Peterson was burning out because he had taken upon himself the burden of reintegrating the sacred back into our crazy world which he didn’t have to do alone, and they both felt that he was beginning to get dangerously polarizing in his message (hence their podcast, “The Peterson Paradox”); but again, if Jordan Peterson is getting dangerous it’s only in the most ironic sense, because he has to rally the Logos to bring some measure of respectable order back into the chaos of our world of moral relativism and power-crazed political correctness. That’s why he was called to his destined purpose; and as much as I fear for what the evil forces of the shadow side of life will do to keep him from integrating the sacred Logos back into society, I have great faith in his oracle…