Archive for October, 2011

Julia Butterfly Hill: Living with Luna

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

Making a Difference: One Woman, One Tree and One World

for Common Ground Summer 2002

by Virginia Lee

Julia Butterfly Hill is one of those naturally charismatic people who life just happens to. A woman who is dedicated to living every moment of every day to its utmost fullest, she exudes a powerful energy, a passion for the truth that defied the Pacific Lumber Company until they recognized the error of their ways. Through her heroic efforts of living in a 200-foot redwood tree named Luna for 738 days, this majestic old-growth redwood and the forest around it was saved.

Her story is one reminiscent of David and Goliath out of the Bible, and well documented in her mesmerizing autobiography The Legacy of Luna (2000, Harper San Francisco). On the heels of this national bestseller, Julia has written a new book One Makes the Difference, which was just released by Harper in Spring 2002. In these pages, she  steps beyond her personal story, reminding us that we are all capable of greatness, we are all capable of acts of heroism for the love of the Earth. We are all players on the same team, and the prize is survival itself.

Refreshingly honest, straightforward and articulate, a conversation with Julia is as engaging—and challenging—as her life in a tree must have been. Whether speaking by call phone from a platform 180 feet above the ground in Luna or on her way to catch a plane at Dulles airport, the message is the same: Love the Earth, Live in the Moment, Have the Courage to be Your Higher Self. She makes it seems so simple. And it is. And at 28, her journey has just begun.

CG: Although you have probably told this story hundreds of times, would you tell our readers what inspired you to do the tree-sit in Luna?

JBH:  It began with a car wreck I had in August 1996 that made me re-examine my value system. I began a search to find out why I am here on this planet, separate from what my parents had taught me and separate from what society was teaching me. While traveling around the country with some friends, I ended up  in the redwoods of northern California and had a very profound and magical experience.

When I found out two weeks later that 97 percent of those trees are already gone, that lumber companies were still cutting them down at that very moment, and spraying massive amounts of toxic fuels, herbicides and insecticides on the logging sites, I thought, “I have to do something.” When I saw the devastation, I got an answer through my prayers. It was: “Julia, if you walk away from an injustice in the world, your inaction is just as much a part of that injustice as the actions of others.” I knew if I walked away, it would mean the same thing as cutting down another tree.

Before this moment in my life, I had never done any kind of direct environmental action. I didn’t have any experience other than the fact that I grew up with two brothers and no sisters, so I had climbed a lot of trees. When I heard that someone was needed to tree-sit in Luna, I volunteered. It wasn’t something I ever intended to do. It just sort of happened.

CG: Was that the breakthrough you had been seeking to understand  your higher purpose in life?

JBH: For me, it was. But in every moment of every day, the universe is calling us to rise to our higher selves. It’s just a matter of listening. So many of us just walk (or run) right on by without even noticing, because we are living in this society that is oriented to what I call “bigger, better, faster, now.” As a result, we miss numerous opportunities of creating really beautiful things in life. Sure, I did a really intense action, but it was only because I was in a place in my life where I could do that.

Every moment of every day, there is a chance for us to make a difference in the world, to live our lives for a higher purpose. I am sad that most of the time we miss it, because we are rushing by. One of the most valuable things that Luna taught me was taking the time to be still, to pray, to be willing to listen to what I receive. That’s important for all of us.

CG: Is that why you’ve written your new book, One Makes the Difference?

JBH: Absolutely. It’s my response to all the kind words people have said to me, like “Thank you, Julia, for showing us how one person can make a difference,” with the emphasis on CAN. My response is that every single choice we make in every moment of every day affects the world whether we see it or not. So make that choice consciously and make it count.

It’s not a question of whether we CAN make a difference, because we DO make a difference. The question we have to ask ourselves is: What kind of a difference are we going to make? Every day, we have the opportunity to be the hero and the healer —or be part of the pain and  suffering and destruction. That’s every single moment of every day. I really wanted to bring that consciousness that I gained in the tree down into the everyday hustle of our lives.

Any one of us is capable of greatness. Every moment offers the potential for greatness. I often talk to people about how we worship the celebrities in our society. What I call “celebrititis” is a disease where certain people are considered more special than everybody else. I tell people that I don’t want to live in a world with leaders and followers. I just want to live in a world with leaders. Every moment is a chance for greatness and it doesn’t matter if you’re the person sitting at a desk answering the phone or you’re the one (like me) with a microphone in your face.

CG: Julia, how did you get the name “Butterfly”?

JBH: When I was about seven or eight years old, I was hiking in the mountains of Pennsylvania and a butterfly landed on me and stayed for hours. It has been a part of my name ever since. I started calling myself Butterfly that day, because it stayed on me all the way home.

Later when I was in my teens, my friends started calling me Butterfly without even knowing about the experiences I’d had. There was another beautiful, crazy moment when I had been up in the tree for 100 days and there was a big rally, someone brought me a picture of a big beautiful orange butterfly, the species of which is actually named “Julia Butterfly.” Biologically, it’s the only genus of its kind, whose habitat is native to Texas, Florida and Central America.

CG: Would you say that the transformational quality of the butterfly is a metaphor for what has happened in your life?

JBH: Absolutely, we all have totem animals. Some of us see them and some of us don’t. I had a very difficult childhood, so the butterfly came at a very important time in my life and has continued to come at different times to help and guide me. It has been a very powerful totem and I am very thankful for it.

CG: Why do environmentalists sit in trees?

JBH: Direct action in all of its forms, whether it’s a person sitting in a tree or locked to a bulldozer, means that people are putting their bodies on the front line.  First and foremost, you must realize that direct action is a sign that every other system is failing. But it doesn’t mean that those systems cannot be healed.

Direct action is all about shifting consciousness in order to change systematic problems. When you see people putting their bodies where their beliefs are, because corporations are failing and governments are failing and consumers are failing, it brings a spotlight to that problem. Often that action will shift consumer awareness, for example into realizing that a forest is not a product. Often direct action will delay things long enough to give people working within the legal system enough time to get laws passed and policy changed.

Direct action is usually a last resort and it’s dangerous. But it’s the front line of consciousness. You don’t do it unless nothing else is working, when eco-systems are disappearing and communities are disappearing. We’ve seen throughout history that the greatest changes have happened when people were willing to put their bodies—and their beliefs— on the line. If their lives are being destroyed anyway, it’s a way of making a statement. And it’s a moral responsibility as a human of conscience.

CG: What do you think of the eco-terrorist movement as popularized by books like The Monkey Wrench Gang?

JBH: Eco-terrorism is not The Monkey Wrench Gang. Eco-terrorism is Maxxam Corporation destroying what little is left of our old-growth redwoods, spraying herbicides and pesticides over the forest floor. Eco-terrorism is Monsanto genetically engineering our food and our future. Eco-terrorism is a government that’s trying to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic Wildlife Refuge. And we have to hold them accountable for what they do.

CG: How did you break through the stereotype of prejudice that usually pits loggers against environmentalists?

JBH: That’s the crucial part. Psychologically, the stereotypes and labels are what make us create an “other.” Whenever we create an “other”, we can destroy it. The reality is that whether we like it or not, we all share the same planet together. We have to figure out how to get human with each other. For me, it was a matter of trying to relate to the loggers as human beings. I stopped talking to them about the issues and just began asking about their lives, things like “Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you have babies? Seen any good movies lately?”

Being human together is critical to creating change. It was Gandhi who said, “Although I have to learn to love my neighbor, I don’t have to like him.” We have to find that place where we can love all beings.

CG: It seems that you had as many issues with Earth First! as you did with Pacific Lumber. In retrospect, how did you reconcile them both?

JBH: As human beings, we’re always going to be diverse. It’s not about Earth First! or Pacific Lumber; it’s about being very diverse people in an very diverse world living on a very diverse planet. No matter what group or organization you deal with, there’s always going to be a wide spectrum of personality. How we deal with the conflicts that come up is what really matters.

Earth First! is an anomaly. Everywhere you go, it means something different. Some Earth First! activists are my best friends and there are other Earth First! activists who hate me to this day. Earth First! is not a movement of everybody who thinks the same way. The only way I can continue to work with different groups is by being honest and trying to respect diversity—even with people who don’t respect the diversity in me.  I have found that is what works the best. It doesn’t make everyone like me, but I am going to love people whether they like me or not. I often point out to people in the movement how ironic it is that we are working so hard to protect diversity in the natural world, yet we don’t tolerate it in each other. I don’t want a monoculture of a movement any more than I want a monoculture in the world.

CG: Do some people in Earth First! approach the movement as others approach a religion?

JBH: I try and look at it from the viewpoint of passion. Passion is very important, but it can sometimes keep us from seeing the truth. How often do we get into an argument with our loved ones, people we’re close to— maybe even married to, but the passion gets so intense that it’s like blinders on a horse. We can see straight ahead but we can’t see the larger context we’re in. The same thing can happen whether it’s in the logging community, in the direct action community or just in our everyday lives. That’s a challenge for all of us, no matter who we are.

CG: What is the greatest lesson you learned from Luna?

JBH: It’s hard to pick one thing because the whole experience taught me so much. It’s like asking me if I prefer my hands or my feet. My two years of living in Luna is so integral to who I am today.  If I had to choose one thing that encompasses everything I learned, it would be the understanding that love is a verb.

CG: How did you decide when it was finally time to come down?

JBH: When I was up there, it was an every day, every moment challenge. Every day I would ask myself, “Am I meant to be here still? Am I still being effective? Or would I be more effective on the ground?” All these questions would race through my mind.

But I had given my word that I wouldn’t come down until I had done everything I could to accomplish two goals:

1) Make people aware of what was going on.

2) Try to get the forest area I was in protected forever.

I couldn’t control other people, but I could control my own will. I knew it was going to take a lot more than just me sitting in a tree to protect Luna. It took 738 days to build the critical mass of consciousness necessary to save that tree. In the beginning when no one knew about it, it seemed like Pacific Lumber was trying to kill me. They hovered a twin propeller helicopter above my head that nearly blew me out of the tree. They cut trees directly around Luna, two of which crashed into her. They tried starving me out and shone spotlights on the tree 24 hours a day so I couldn’t sleep. They say they weren’t trying to kill me, but they knowingly took actions that could very easily have taken my life. They knew they were risking my life.

CG: Psychologically, what did it take to survive in a tree for two years?

JBH: Courage. When people say, “I couldn’t have done that.” I say, “I couldn’t  have done it either.” The origin of the word courage is “coeur,” which is French for heart. And that’s where our true strength comes from.

The stories of heroism that came out of September 11th, as tragic as that day was, speak the same truth. People did not run back into burning buildings to grab their stock portfolios. They risked their lives to save the lives of others. And that’s the courage that comes form the heart. Any of us are capable of greatness when the circumstances demand it.

CG: Did you feel any divine guidance throughout those two years?

JBH: I think divine guidance is always there. It’s just whether or not we’re awake to it. I’ve found in every moment in every day, ever since coming down, phenomenal teachers and guides in my life. The tree taught me how to awaken to that reality. We have divine help, inspiration and guidance available to us all the time.

CG: What has happened to Luna since you left?

JBH: The tree was attacked by a person with a chainsaw about a year after I came down. Luna had become a powerful symbol. And as is often the case when something becomes a symbol, it is vulnerable to attack.

CG: Do you have any idea who did it?

JBH: Yes I do, but the kind of evidence that would bring about a conviction is very controversial. Some people are just too afraid to come forward to testify. If I had been able to bring those people to justice, the thing I would have asked for from the court is not to send them to jail, because I don’t believe jail helps anybody. Instead, a better form of rehabilitation would be a few months of what I call peaceful activism and conflict resolution training. Then maybe add a few years of restoration work out in the forest, where they would have to help heal a forest that’s been injured. To me, that’s the kind of justice that fits the crime. I don’t really believe in punishment. I believe in solutions, I believe in redwoods and I believe in healing.

CG: Do you still see Luna?

JBH: I do go visit her regularly and she’s doing incredibly well. It will take longer than you and I are alive for her to grow back, but she’s alive. When a tree is over 1,000 years old, they don’t grow back very fast.

CG: What has it been like to return to life on the ground?

JBH: It’s just a new way of practicing the lessons I’ve learned. Some of it is easier than living in a tree and some parts are more difficult. Life is a blessing no matter where you are, every moment of every day. And I actually thrive on the challenges. A lot of people thought I was living some kind of fairy tale existence up in the tree, but it was anything but peaceful with active logging going on around me.

CG: Are you enjoying a more comfortable life?

JBH: I don’t think I know what a comfortable life is. But I have a glorious, joyful life that I am very thankful for. Things like walking down the street and seeing a tree root pushing up through the concrete is what makes me happy. I usually take the time to stop and cheer that tree on.

CG: If you were to have children, would you build them a tree house in the back yard?

JBH: First of all, I’m not going to have children because I know that every choice comes with a responsibility. I understand the magic of wanting to have your own child, but I also understand that we’re not doing a good enough job of taking care of the earth that we’re bringing those children into. On top of that, there are a lot of babies already here who need love. Personally for me, I tell people that if they want to have the experience of a child, have that experience with one. I honor that desire to be a part of the magic of creation. And then extend your love beyond that child and adopt those children who are already here.

For me, I experience the magic of creation every day so I don’t have to bring a child into this world as a validation of who I am. When my life settles down and I have some kind of a space that allows me to nurture, then I will adopt children. And I will probably adopt children who are at an age when no one wants them anymore. And about the tree house—if they wanted one, we would probably build it together.

CG: Would you talk about your love/hate relationship with the media?

JBH: First of all, it’s important to know the difference between the mainstream corporate media and what we call the alternative press. Mainstream media is funded by corporations who have a vested interest in people NOT becoming proactive. So, it’s very difficult for writers who have a lot of passion for the story, because their mandate is to print an article that is not too controversial. For me, it’s been difficult to spend two hours with a writer, and then see what comes out on the other side.

I tell people that I don’t expect them to either believe or not believe in what I’m doing. That’s not what I’m asking for. But some writers are so concerned about being unbiased that they don’t tell the whole truth. They’ll skirt around facts that would hold people accountable because they want to seem unbiased. To them I say, why even tell the story?

The biggest function of the mainstream corporate media today is to feed our society’s addiction to entertainment. We’ve created this dynamic where the media entertains people rather than informs them, so we spend more time covering stories about what Hollywood celebrities are wearing than about which corporation is polluting our children’s lives. The truth is that we are products of our environment. From the moment we are born, we are conditioned to want entertainment. We are like sponges who absorb the advertising that is fed to us, especially to our young people. The media defines our values, from what we eat and drink, what we drive to what kind of clothes we wear.

That’s why an important part of shifting consciousness is to encourage people to change how they view the world. That’s why all of us becoming a voice in the media is crucial, and not just accepting what the mainstream feeds us.

CG: As a naturally private person, what has it been like for you to be the focus of so much public attention?

JBH: That’s been one of the biggest gifts of myself I’ve had to give to the world, being willing to put myself in the spotlight and stay there. It is really brutal. People only know me in the context of what the media portrays, so they don’t stop to think that you don’t climb into a tree to get attention. Even as a little kid, you climb into a tree to seek solace and solitude. Originally, I went into the tree to be alone. Being in the spotlight all of a sudden was a real shift for me. I was never the kind of kid who dreamed about being a star. It’s not in my personality.

The celebrity aspect of all this makes it difficult, but I also see it as a blessing. Being in the spotlight can warp people really easily. But because I don’t particularly like it, it helps keep me grounded. It helps to keep me human and it helps me stay real.

CG: How do you see yourself?

JBH: I see myself as a person deciding to offer my life in joyous, loving service to the world.

CG: Would you call this a spiritual path?

JBH: Spirituality is not a way of life. It is my life. The path is me, it’s the sun shining down on the path, it is everything. It is not even just a path. It is the whole experience of being who I am.

I tell people that my religion (which to me is the way I practice my spirituality) is love. And to me love is a verb. I think that all the “isms” have served their purpose in our world, but that now they are becoming detrimental. They are creating labels and boxes that separate us, instead of bringing us together. When they were first created, it was a way of defining things and connecting with them more. But I think we’ve already gotten to that point and now we’ve gone too far.

If you like to breathe, you’re an environmentalist, like it or not.

CG: Did living with Luna make you an environmentalist or have you always been one?

JBH: My family was a group of accidental ecologists, because we were very poor. As a family of five, we only had one plastic grocery bag full of trash at the end of the month. It wasn’t because we were environmentally conscious, it was because we were poor. It was a part of my consciousness without realizing it was a part of my consciousness.

I didn’t know anything about the world because my father was an itinerant preacher. All I knew about was religion. I didn’t know that I needed to be awake and be active in the world. Because I didn’t know to even question it, until I found out what was happening in the old-growth redwoods. Through finding that out, I began to learn about what is really going on in the world. I tell people that this isn’t our Earth, it’s us Earth. We are the planet, and it’s up to use to make it a healthy place.

Activism is about all of us; we’re all activists. Every moment of every day we’re changing the world. Are we going to choose to be positive conscious activists or destructive unconscious ones? No one is perfect, but it’s better to be part of the solution than part of the problem.

CG: Have you ever considered taking on the protection of the Amazon rain forest?

JBH: Sure, I’ve thought about taking it all on, but I’m just one person. On a slow week right now, I get 25 requests for my help from commentates around the world. And sometimes it goes up to 150. I can’t do it all.

But I may be going down to Chile, Argentina and Ecuador. I know some people sitting in trees in Ecuador right now. I’m would like to try to go down and get some support for them and hte forest.

CG: Have you ever considered a career in politics?

JBH: I’ve definitely considered it. I consider everything that comes to mind. You know, stranger things have happened.

CG: In your mind, what is the greatest threat of globalization?

JBH: I think we need to be careful about what words we use to define globalization. The reality of globalization is the Big Bang, Creation, and whatever way you relate to the beginning of Life. Since the moment of inception, we’ve been globalizing. Micro-organisms have been spreading across the face of the planet for millions of years.

But corporate globalization is a phenomenon unto itself. Corporations are not people, even though they have given themselves identities. They are machines which have been given a specific purpose to fulfill, and that is to make a profit. And unfortunately, because they are not human beings, they don’t come with a heart or a spirit. There’s no value for compassion, respect or care for the common good. And as such, corporate globalization is massively exploiting the people and cultures of the planet, in order to fulfill its mission.

That’s why we have to look for solutions in our own lives, by supporting local businesses, buying locally grown food, using local services and resources. Every penny we spend is vote on the future of the planet.

CG: Who is the intended audience for your new book, One  Makes the Difference?

JBH: The intended audience is anyone from any walk of life who can pick this book up and learn some new things, as well as be reminded of some things they may have forgotten in the bustle of everyday living. More than anything, I want whoever reads this book to be inspired to be a agent of positive change in the world. There’s something in here for kids, for adults, for hard-core environmentalists—and maybe even something for CEOs who want to change the way they operate their business. It’s possible to make a profit and protect the interests of the planet. I believe that there’s something in this book for everyone.

CG: If you had one minute to speak to the whole world over television or radio, what would you say?

JBH: I would say to think of love as a verb. I would tell people that ecology and economy both come from the same root word oikos, which in Greek means “house” or “home.” The only way our true economy is ever going to work is if we put our love into action by protecting our shared home for everyone.

I would list a couple of examples of places where they have held up economics as an excuse for exploitation and then show the reality of what happened as a result—places like the Pacific Northwest, the Amazonian rain forest and Papua/New Guinea. I would show examples where ecology has not been respected in the name of economics, and how that has destroyed people’s lives.

Then I would try to grab as many people as I could and bring them into the camera, and say, “By the way, these are all people putting love into action.”

CG: What do you think it would take for the principles of economy to work in harmony with the principles of ecology?

JBH: For people to take their money back. As long as corporations continue to make a killing financially, they’re going to keep on doing it. As long as they have incentive to exploit, they’ll continue to do it.

I tell people that the world is going to change one of two ways: It’s as if we’re building this big beautiful house with all the things we could never possibly need. But if you take a closer look, you’ll realize that we are using the foundation to build the house. And the foundation can’t support it. Either enough of us will become conscious and restore the foundation or the house is going to collapse. Either way it’s going to change. Those of us who are choosing to live joyous, conscious lives of loving service right now are putting pieces of that foundation back into place. we’re building a new kind of home. And if the big house crumbles, our humbler, smaller one will make it through. But then again, the big house might not crumble. To quote a Turkish proverb from One Makes the Difference: “No matter how far you’ve gone down the wrong road, turn around.”

CG: What do you plan to do next?

JBH: Anything is possible. I climbed into the tree on December 10, 1997. If you had asked me in August what I would be doing at Christmas,  I wouldn’t have seen what was coming. I do believe in strategy, I do believe in analysis. I majored in business in college and I enjoy using the logical side of my mind, but I also have a very strong belief in magic. We can’t see everything. And if we try and plan things too much, we’ll plan ourselves right out of the possibility of something incredibly beautiful happening in our lives.

But to answer your question, I’m working on promoting youth activism right now. The young people today are the leaders of tomorrow.

CG: What kind of world will we be living in 20 years from now?

JBH: That depends on who reads your article, and who doesn’t. And what choices they make from this moment forward.

Virginia Lee was Associate Editor and served on the Editorial Board of Yoga Journal from 1980-85, and has been widely published in magazines ever since. She was a regular interviewer for Common Ground from 1992-2004. She has also written two books: The Roots of Ras Tafari published by Avant Books of San Diego in 1985, and Affairs of the Heart published by Crossing Press of Freedom, CA in 1993. She currently lives and works in Santa Cruz, CA.

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Wavy Gravy: The Clown Prince of Consciousness

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Wavy Gravy reflects on a lifetime of peace, love and play

for Common Ground Spring 2003

by Virginia Lee

Wavy Gravy has been many things to many people. To some, he’s one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, made legendary in Tom Wolfe’s classic ’60s novel, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. To some, he’s the guy who kept the vibes together at the Woodstock music festival in August 1969. Yet to others, he is the founding visionary of the Hog Farm, which survives as an urban commune in Berkeley to this day as well as on a 900-acre ranch outside Laytonville, CA.

To a whole different group, he’s a guiding light, having helped save millions of people from blindness through his work with the SEVA Foundation. For terminally sick kids in a hospital, he’s a clown who makes them laugh when they are in pain. On the political scene, h works diligently for Nobody for President, for whom peace never goes out of style.

And to the likes of Bob Dylan, Ram Dass, Robin Williams, Patch Adams, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, and a list of countless others who are all legends (both famous and infamous) in their own right, he’s just an old friend. And to his wife, Jahanara, he has been a loving and loyal husband for almost 40 years. To his son, Jordan, he is a father like no other. And to the kids who go to Camp Winnarainbow every summer. . .well, it just wouldn’t be the same without him.

Oh yes, and he’s also been a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor.

In deciding who to feature for Common Ground‘s issue on Play, Wavy Gray is the obvious flavor of the month. It was a real privilege to interview him at his home in Berkeley, just days after the peace rally in San Francisco in January 2003. In the privacy of his bedroom, surrounded by decades of hippie memorabilia and Woodstock posters, we were transported back to a time that left an indelible imprint on those who lived through it, and left the rest of the world wondering what happened.

A marvelous raconteur and storyteller, Wavy Gravy will take you on a magic carpet ride, all the way from those nostalgic times to the present. Be spontaneous and spend a few moments with a living legend. You’re either on the bus or off the bus.      

CG: How did you get the name Wavy Gravy?

WG: That name came to me in fall of ’69, after the Woodstock music festival. We were invited to Texas, after having returned to our little 12-acre ranch in Llano, New Mexico only to discover that half the hippies in the free world had moved to our place to live with us forever. Fortunately, we had this offer to go to Texas where they were having a rodeo and a rock festival at the same time, and there was a little friction. In fact, I understand that cowboys were driving through the rock n’ roll campground dragging these big metal hooks attached to ropes, intending to snare freaks in their sleeping bags. Since we had the reputation of running the Please Force at the Woodstock music festival, they had sent a convoy of buses for us. When we got to Lewisville, Texas just outside Dallas, we drove immediately to the rodeo grounds where I got to share some herb with the rodeo clowns and recruited them to our side.

We went back to the rock n’ roll staging area where the police weren’t letting anyone in unless they had long hair. We chased the police away, took over and let all the cowboys drive in and set up camp on the tops of their cars. I remember getting onstage at the concert and complimenting the chemists of Texas, who came to the drug-free tent to sniff the incense and giggle.

I had fallen asleep, and suddenly I was being prodded by the mayor and the police chief to get up because their daughters had gone skinny dipping in Lake Dallas and they just couldn’t deal with it. All these kids in Texas had seen skinny dipping at Woodstock and they wanted to do it too. The mayor was saying to me, “You showed the world at Woodstock that you could police yourself . . . ” and I could just feel it coming.

So I said, “Well, you’ve got to let me use your boat and maybe give me a truckload of watermelons for the free kitchen.” Immediately he threw me the keys to his boat and I grabbed a Hog Farmer who was an old salt, put on my Mae West persona, got a loudspeaker and took to the surf.  I jumped into the water next to the first nudo and yelled, “Ahoy, nudo. If you want to stay high, you’ve got to put your pants on.” He says, “OK,” then I told him to swim over and tell all the others. So I was going all around the lake doing this, until the sun was setting a lazy peach and there isn’t a bare ass in sight. Even though my throat felt like raw hamburger, I say to our driver, “Well it looks like we’ve done it.” I am smug. Then right at that moment, out of nowhere came a naked water skier with a hard-on and I yelled, “Follow that sonuvabitch!” We just chased him round and round the lake until we ran out of gas, and laughed and laughed.

Then we made our way back to the free stage where there were about 96 conga drummers onstage. I just took the mike and said, “Hi, this is Wavy Gravy.” I don’t know where it came from, but a bunch of people started dancing around me. At that point I saw one of the rodeo clowns being sold a joint for $6, so I continued, “This is Wavy Gravy, and I see this clown being ripped off who was really helpful to me. Can we have all the pot in the stage please?” Then the conga drummers started chanting, “All the pot on the stage, all the pot on the stage.” The next thing I knew we had this big pile of weed. So these guys jumped up onstage, stripped to the waist, started rolling joints and kept throwing them out to the audience.

This cloud of smoke went up and just then the announcer says, “B.B. King is here with his bus. He’s gonna play for free. Can we clear the stage?” It was before one of my multitude of back surgeries, so I got up slow, felt this hand on my shoulder and looked up. There was B.B. King. He looked at me and in his deep baritone voice and says, “You, Wavy Gravy?” I thought for a moment and say, “Yes, sir.” He says, “Well, Wavy Gravy, I can work around you.” He leaned me up against his amplifier and whipped out Lucille. Then Johnny Winter came out from the other side and they just played until sunrise. It all turned into celestial jelly, the Lord’s jam and a tiny tip of Texas went to heaven.

When we came back to California, I had a grant teaching improvisation to neurologically handicapped kids. When I went to meet this new bunch of kids and introduced myself as Wavy Gravy, all the professors came running in and said, ” Keep that name! You just saved us a week’s orientation.”

But I have to watch it when I make phone calls, because if I say Wavy Gravy, the operators can get nervous. But if I say, W. Gravy, then they sometimes ask, “Are you him?” Then they help me make extra calls.

CG: What’s it like being an ice cream flavor?

WG: Ever since I became an ice cream flavor, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal stopped calling me Mr. Gravy. They call Meatloaf “Mr. Loaf” and Sid Vicious “Mr. Vicious.” But they call me Wavy Gravy since I was a food product.

But now I’ve been retired as a flavor of Ben & Jerry’s since I wasn’t cost-effective. It was the most expensive, complicated ice cream flavor ever known to humankind, but the public response has been such that they’ve had to create an e-mail address (wavygravycomments@benjerry.com) for all the requests to bring it back. All the royalties went to a fund to send homeless kids to camp.

CG: What was it like being with Ken Kesey?

WG: Oh goodness. When Ken Kesey passed away, there were all these calls early in the morning and the TV reporters were circling the block. It made me wonder, “Who is it this time?”

Ken gave me my family values, which really surprised a lot of people. In The Last Supplement to The Whole Earth Catalog, he wrote this whole thing about honoring your father and your mother. So I immediately called up my parents and had a really great talk with them. When they both passed away shortly afterwards, I called Ken and really thanked him for that. And he said, “It’s all the simple, obvious stuff that a lot of people miss.”

When he died, I wrote a haiku poem:

                  They say Kesey’s dead,

                  But never trust a pranskter—

                  Even underground.

When they published that in Rolling Stone, they left the “but” out. So I had to send them a letter asking if they had seen my but. Then it got published again in its entirety, because if you take a syllable out, it’s not haiku anymore.

CG: How did you become one of the Merry Pranksters?

WG: I’m trying to remember. I was with an improvisational theater group in San Francisco called The Committee, and we began to do little acid tests out at Muir Beach. I may have run into Kesey before that though, when I was living in LA with Tim Hardin. Once he kidnapped me and took me to Babbs’ spread in Soquel (somewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains) and made me watch 50 hours of bus nonsense about the first cross-country trip they made. I had to put toothpicks in my eyelids to stay awake. It was mostly endless hours of Mike Hagan’s shoes since he was too stoned to point the camera properly.

That was the odyssey that Tom Wolfe wrote the book about.

CG: What do you think of Tom Wolfe’s book, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?

WG: The book is a classic. But in that book, I get credit for putting the acid in the Kool-Aid in Watts when 28 people committed themselves. For the record, I never put any acid in any of the Kool-Aid. In fact, that was something that Kesey and I disagreed about, and what eventually caused a separation between the Pranksters and the Hog Farmers at one point. I believe that no one should ever receive psychotropics without their knowledge.

CG: For those who don’t know, what was the “electric Kool-Aid acid test”?

WG: The electric Kool-Aid acid test in Watts was held on the eve before psychedelics became illegal in the USA. We had these two large galvanized garbage cans full of Kool-Aid and I said, “OK, let’s get this straight. The Kool-Aid on the right is for the kids. And the Kool-Aid on the left is the “eee-lectric” Kool-Aid. Now let’s go over that again. The Kool-Aid on the right is for the children.” But people were dancing for six hours straight to The Grateful Dead and got so thirsty that they didn’t pay attention to what they were drinking. They just grabbed something wet and things eventually started to melt down.

At one point this young woman started absolutely freaking out. She started wailing, “Who cares? Who caaaaaares?” Ken Babbs took the best microphone there and shoved it down her throat and into everybody’s DNA goes, “Who cares?” I remember crawling to a microphone and saying, “Some sister is unglued, and perhaps we might want to help glue her together again. I’m going to go looking for her, so meet me where she is.”

I took off and found her 20 minutes later in a little side room. She was still wailing “Who caaaares?” I knew a few people there and others I didn’t.  Suddenly we just all joined hands. She dropped her mike and she turned into jewels and light, and then we turned into jewels and light. And that’s when I passed the acid test.

CG: How do you define an acid test?

WG: It’s a palette for human consciousness, where you can revolve, evolve and dissolve. When you get to the very bottom of the human soul, where the nit is slamming into the grit, and you’re sinking, but you reach down to help somebody who’s sinking worse than you are, then everybody gets high. And you don’t even need acid to figure that one out.

Let me tell you another story. My wife and I were living on Lemon Grove Street in Hollywood. Tiny Tim was in the back room and we were working on an evening show called “The Phantom Cabaret.” There were a lot of other amazing people there too. We were doing our first public event in southern California which was called the Lord Buckley Memorial sunset. We had sent these great little invitations out with a Lord Buckley quote on it:

“The flowers, yes the flowers.

                  But the people are the true flowers.

                  And it has been a pleasure to have momentarily

                  strolled in your garden.”

There was a little map with directions how to get to this beautiful mountain top above Topanga Canyon. It was a lot like Sugarloaf in Rio de Janeiro. The land was owned by Lewis B. Marvin III, one of the heirs to S&H green stamps, and he had given me his mountain top for this free celebration.

But the day before the event, it was pouring rain. The phone kept ringing and people were asking, “What about the sunset?” I said, “Let’s see what it’s like in the morning.” So, I go downstairs in the morning to see 50 or 60 people in day-go clothes in the kitchen cooking eggs. The Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters had arrived to do this acid test show and Tiny Tim was beside himself. In his British accent, he sputtered, “Mr. Neal Cassady knocked on my door, saying he wanted some grass. But he was standing on a whole lawn full!”

It kept raining and raining all day long. So finally I said, “Let’s call off the sunset go to the acid test thing.” But as it got more towards dusk, Ken Babbs (who was Kesey’s lieutenant) said, “Look, if you really want to go to that mountain top, let’s go.” So a bunch of us drove up there, in the rain, up this winding dirt road until we got to a metal sign that read: Police Dog Training Course (not many people go beyond that sign). When we walked, there was this beautiful house that he had built by hand, with a piano in the ceiling that would come down on a hydraulic arm. There were even birds living in the piano. The minute we got to the summit, the rain stopped, and there was the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen in my life.

Ever since then, through rain, snow, hail, sleet, earthquakes, fires, whatever, if our name is on a flyer saying we’re going to do something, we do it no matter what—if five people are there or 500 or 5,000 or 500,000. In hindsight, we were always so much richer for the experience. So I encourage people to do what they say they’re going to do, no matter what else happens. Sticking with it is part of the acid test.

CG: How did the Hog Farm get started?

WG: We had moved to this little cabin in Sunland, California and we got a call from the Pranksters. (Kesey was on the lam in Mexico, hiding out after a marijuana bust.) The Merry Pranksters and the Grateful Dead wanted to come over and pose with us for the cover of Life magazine, which was doing a story about psychedelia. While the photographer was shooting the pictures, Ken Babbs stole the bus and took off to join Kesey in Mexico. So suddenly, my wife and I in our one-bedroom cabin, had 40 house guests. And the landlord came by and went totally nuts. So, we were evicted.

But in the land of kitchen synchronicity, a neighbor came by an hour later and said, “Old Saul up on that mountain had a stroke, and needs somebody to slop them hogs!” So we were given a mountain top, rent-free, if we would take care of 50 hogs. And they were huge animals, about the size of this bed. We drove up to the top of the mountain in the dark and I stood out on this knoll looking at the lights of Burbank. And then the knoll suddenly stood up and started walking. I was standing on the back of a big, black sow! So that was the birth of the Hog Farm.

On Saturday nights we would all work the Shrine auditorium in LA where all the big rock shows were happening and all the great rock n’ roll bands of the ’60s would perform. We had a late show called The Single-Wing Turquoise Bird, when we would do energy games with the audience. Every Sunday we would have a free celebration at the ranch called Hog Sunday. It was always a different theme, and people would call from all over southern California to ask what the theme was. One Sunday it would be kites (even if there was no wind), another Sunday it was the Hog Farm country fair with holding-your-breath-underwater contests, kissing booths and that kind of stuff. Another Sunday, Tiny Tim came and 100 people built a theater for him out of nothing in about two hours. On Mud Sunday it just rained and we had sliding contests in the mud. One Sunday we had a hog rodeo, when we painted up the hogs and rode ‘em. And one day we had this great Buddhist priest come by who taught us a prayer to spread love throughout the valley. That worked pretty good.

We shared all our money too. One guy was a computer analyst, my wife was an actress in Hollywood and I was teaching improvisation at Columbia pictures and to brain-damaged kids at Cal State. At Christmas, the mechanics bought us a bus and we painted it up. We got some more buses and then were extras in a movie made by Otto Preminger called Skidoo, with Jackie Gleason and Groucho Marx as God. You could call it Otto Preminger’s acid movie.

Then we got all the buses on the road and began this adventure called the Hog Farm & Friends in Open Celebration. It was very similar to the acid tests, except that people would provide their own high. We didn’t supply any psychedelics, but what we did supply was a palette for human consciousness. We would visit college campuses and would be simultaneously sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Inter-Fraternity Council. It’s the only thing they agreed on all year.

We would park the seven or eight buses in our caravan on a football field and the kids would be knocking on the buses in the morning asking when things were going to start. We’d say “Well, grab a wrench.” We would eventually set up these enormous geodesic domes with overhead projectors and microphones, and we would get 500 people working on one painting. It was a whole event to show that the audience was the star.

Then we got asked if we wanted to help do this big music festival in New York State. And that would be Woodstock. I said we were going to be in New Mexico, and the guy said, “That’s alright, we’ll fly you all in a astrojet.” A month and a half later we were in Aspen Meadow above Santa Fe celebrating the summer solstice when this guy shows up with aluminum briefcase full of plane tickets. So 85 of us and 15 Indians were soon on a jet to Woodstock.

When we spilled off the plane at JFK airport in New York, the world press was there with all their cameras flashing. One reporter says to me, “Oh it’s the Hog Farm. You guys are here to do security.” I thought, “My God, they’ve made us the cops.”  And then I asked him, “Well, do you feel secure?” When he says yes, I say, “You see, it’s working.” When he asked me what we were going to use for crowd control, I said, “Cream pies and seltzer bottles.” And they all wrote it down!

I remember that the promoters wanted to know how many armbands we would need for security, and Babbs asked, “How many are you expecting?” They said, “It could be hundreds of thousands.” He said, “That’ll be sufficient,” and they all went nuts. We finally agreed on 300. But then we kept printing them up on our own with a potato. The logo was a flying pig printed on a red arm band. Whenever we would go out in the big crowd, we would have about 20 of them in our pockets. If we saw someone acting responsible, we’d give them three or four. So by the time Woodstock was over, a lot of them had been drafted into the Please Force.

CG: In your opinion, what was the Woodstock era all about?

WG: At Woodstock, everybody realized that they weren’t alone. They were all coming from little towns somewhere. Then Janis Joplin got on the mike and said, “If you have any food, share it with your brother and sister—and that’s the person on your right and the person on your left.” People got a deep print about what sharing stuff was all about. Even today, whether they are a stock broker or a street person, they still have that print. In a lot ways, it was the birth of Woodstock nation, a group of people who all experienced life the same way. And Bill Graham realized that rock ‘n roll was big business.

CG: Does that consciousness still exist?

WG: I don’t know, in some ways we’re just talking about the good old days. I like Kurt Vonnegut’s definition that history is a list of surprises. But there was an awful lot of peace and love at the anti-war rally I just went to in San Francisco this weekend—and a lot of creativity. The heartening thing that there was a pretty diverse population of old folks, middle-aged folks and youth. This gives me nostalgia for the future.

CG: Does the Hog Farm still exist?

WG: We’re sitting in the Hog Farm right now, at our hippie Hyannisport right here in Berkeley. We’ve been here 15 years or so. We also have a 900-acre ranch up in northern California near Laytonville, which is where we run Camp Winnarainbow. I’ve been doing Camp Winnarainbow for 30 years, where I do two four-week sessions every summer for kids—at 150 each. The kids are from 7-14, and 25% of the kids—even now without the Ben & Jerry money— are there on some form of scholarship. That’s an awful lot of young people who are going through our gestalt—a circus and performing arts camp where they get a chance to learn about timing and balance. I call it survival in the 21st century or how to duck with a sense of humor—and a little compassion.

CG: What is the philosophy behind your Camp Winnarainbow?

WG: We actually didn’t write down the philosophy until long after the camp was developed. Years ago, it started out as daycare for Sufi kids in the Mendocino woodlands. My wife studies Sufism and I felt bad that a lot of the Sufis who had kids couldn’t go to the meditations and workshops. So I said, “Give me the kids.” I had this wonderful friend, Surya Singer, who was a juggler, tightrope walker and theatrical director and we slowly started creating Camp Winnarainbow. We moved it one camp away in the Woodlands because I discovered that the parents did better without the kids and the kids did better without the parents. Then it began to snowball year after year.

It’s basically a circus and performing arts camp where kids learn juggling, tightrope and trapeze, unicycling, tall stilts, and improv everything from Shakespeare to dance—which ranges from hip-hop to swing and Afro-Haitian. What we’re trying to do is not so much to develop little star performers—although it does happen—but rather universal human beings who can deal with anything that comes their way with style, panache and compassion. And I think we’ve been pretty darn successful about that.

Over the years, parents have said, “When are you going to do something for us?” And so, about a decade or so ago, we started doing Winnarainbow for adults, with the motto that it’s never too late to have a happy childhood. It’s just like kids’ camp, except that you don’t have to brush your teeth, you can stay up late and you can procreate (if you’re not too noisy). We set it up in a circle of 16 teepees, but if you want more privacy, there are campsites where you can bring your own tent.

Adult camp is held during the summer solstice and we have a beautiful unicursal Cretan labyrinth that has evolved over the years. It was first created by myself, some campers and counselors for a cosmic event perpetrated by Jose Arguelles, the one who instituted the Harmonic Convergence in the late ’80s. We created the labyrinth for that event and we work on it every year. We bring more rocks and line it with beautiful white river sand, with crystals and flowers growing in the center. If kids do well at camp and their good deeds are mentioned during the evening circle seven times in a two-week period, then they get to walk into the labyrinth and get a crystal to take home.

Since the beginning of camp, the policy has been that if you got in trouble, you’d get a strike. And if you got three strikes, you were out. But you could work off strikes too. It has to be a safe space for everyone.

To quote the Camp Winnarainbow philosophy:

“We work to create a living environment of love, safety and harmony. Camp life teaches responsibility for one’s own behavior and develops confidence, inner security and appropriate self-expression. We encourage respect for oneself, other beings and the environment. We value the uniqueness of each individual, within the diversity of racial, cultural, economic and religious backgrounds that comprise our camp community. Camp Winnarainbow provides a training ground to nurture leaders for a peaceful, harmonious and sustainable culture.”

During the adult camp, we have a rock concert, a kick-the-Cannes film festival—these are all things that have evolved out of nothing. We have this enormous tent filled with costumes, so for kick-the-Cannes, people figure out a celebrity they want to be and they all get interviewed on the way in. And of course we have film critics who watch all the films, too. We also have a 350-foot waterslide that we got from Marine World/Africa USA when they moved from Redwood City to Vallejo. And we have Beach Blanket Bingo at the lake, which is called Lake Veronica; the raft’s name is George.

CG: How do you raise the money for all this?

WG: I do a lot of fund-raising every year, for both Camp Winnrainbow scholarships and for SEVA. I’ll do anything for a good cause.

CG: What is SEVA?

WG: It’s s non-profit organization dedicated to preventing blindness all over the world. It’s what we’ve put on many benefit rock concerts to raise money for. In 25 years we’ve helped sponsor over 2 million eye operations and includes a diabetes project and buffalo restoration project with Native Americans. We work in Chiapas and Guatemala bringing by developing agriculture and bringing in potable water, also in Cambodia and Tibet, with the blessing of the Dalai Lama. Ram Dass is one of the founders of SEVA and he is on our advisory board.

CG: Do you still see Ram Dass?

WG: He’s doing better now since his stroke. He’s still in a wheelchair, but I got to see the Rolling Stones with him and the World Series. He’s doing all right. He’s even doing his Ram Dass tour again, without so many pregnant pauses.

CG: What is the role of play in your life?

WG: Play is just a matter of passing time creatively when you don’t have to do anything. And to turn work into play, you take a task and then approach it creatively. But there are a few guiding principles:

         Whatever you do is right.

         Your first original thought is your best thought.

         Make stuff up as you go along.

         Support each other.

         When you let the wind of creation blow through your heart,

         Good stuff will happen.

CG: What does it take to be a clown?

WG: The job of the intuitive clown is to go into the really hard spaces, to take really negative stuff and turn it into fun. So, I’ve spent years in the children’s hospitals. I became a clown when I was asked by a bunch of doctors to show up at the Oakland Children’s Hospital and cheer kids up. I had a multitude of back surgeries, all of which I tried to deal with as much play as possible. They used to put me in these big body casts, and the first one we painted blue with stars all over it, and we called it the all-star cast. Then we covered another one with money from all over the world, and that was the cast of thousands.

When I went to the children’s hospital, I was still in a fair amount of pain. Somebody on the way out the door handed me a red rubber nose. After awhile, I met this clown who was retiring from Ringling Brothers and he gave me his big giant shoes. Eventually I began to acquire the patina of a clown. Then one day I had to go to People’s Park for a political demonstration and didn’t have time to take off my makeup. That’s when I discovered that the police didn’t want to hit me anymore, because clowns are safe. They don’t feel threatened by clowns. At the Republican convention in Kansas, I bought out every red nose in Kansas and Missouri and helped the under-the-counter-culture surround it with clown noses on. The police were dumbfounded.

CG: Do you see yourself as a kind of Patch Adams?

WG: No, Patch Adams is Patch Adams. He teaches at Camp Winnarainbow. His son has been going to camp there for many years. He’s another kind of clown.

I used to open for a piano player in Greenwich Village named Thelonius Monk, doing standup comedy back when I was a teenage beatnik. And Monk used to tell me, “Everyone is a genius just being themselves.” So it’s my job just being the best Wavy Gravy that I can be.

CG: Do we all have an inner clown?

WG: I think it’s possible. It’s matter of discovering the inner clown and bringing it out into the world. It takes a little nudging and giving yourself permission to come out. But my own proboscis works pretty well most of the time. I noticed that I wasn’t wearing any makeup at all and hardly put on a nose at the peace rally over the weekend, but I wore a peace sign on my front and had a flower in my hat and was walking a fish on a leash.

CG: Speaking of the peace rally in San Francisco, how can we use the principle of play to prevent war?

WG: I keep trying to put more play into the peace movement. I got to do a really nice evening conversation in New York City with the young people who organized the first “Not in Our Name” demonstrations in Central Park. We talked about using more creative imagination in peace rallies, rather than having just a bunch of people talking at you. Pure play is just spirit blown through your heart. I think you can raise everybody’s consciousness that way. I always say, “Dare to struggle, dare to grin.”

In every available circumstance, you’ve got to put yourself on the line for what you believe and ask, “How can I approach this creatively?” It began with the young kid during the Viet Nam era who took a flower and stuck it in a gun barrel. That was a powerful and magical statement.

Once when I was at a Lawrence Livermore Lab demonstration, I decided to go at them with a phalanx of Santa Clauses. I was busted at Diablo Canyon as Santa Claus. And also as the Easter Bunny. When the police finally dove on me, I pulled out a “Get Out of Jail Free” card and it cracked them up. I knew the police didn’t want to be photographed arresting an Easter Bunny. And I almost got into the weapons lab because of that.

You have to take every situation as different, because it always is different. Just let the wind of imagination blow through your heart and something will appear. Your first instinct is always right.

CG: Shakespeare often used the role of the fool as a voice of wisdom in his plays. Do you see yourself in a similar way?

WG: I was a fool. And I’m still nobody’s fool, especially in my Nobody for President campaign. That’s the role I’ve assumed.

CG: You manage to effectively use humor in politics. How did you come up with the “Nobody for President” campaign?

WG:  In 1968, we ran the Pig for President. She was the first female black-and-white candidate. She even had her picture in Time and Newsweek. In 1972 we actually ran a rock for president and a roll for vice-president. At different rallies we would cook up jelly rolls or cinnamon rolls and pass them out. So you could always eat the vice-president. That was the plan. Because the roll kept changing. Then one day I spaced out the rock in a taxicab in New York City (it was a great rock from Mount Ararat). We ran ads on the radio and in the Village Voice asking “Have you seen the Rock?” And that’s when the Nobody for President idea came up my spinal telegraph.

Nobody’s perfect. Nobody keeps his campaign promises. Nobody bakes apple pie better than Mom. Nobody should have that much power. Nobody abolished the draft. If Nobody wins, nobody loses. During the Nobody for President campaign, Nobody drives up in the back of an open convertible, then Nobody gives election speeches. We’ve done it for every election since 1976. In the last one in 2000, Nobody was actually president for awhile.

CG: Will Nobody run again in 2004?

WG: Absolutely. Nobody’s still perfect.

CG: Do you believe in campaign fund-raising?

WG: Well, Nobody works for nothing, but we do sell buttons. When Ram Dass became Nobody’s guru, he asked what he could do. And I said, “Sit here. The bumper stickers are $1 and the buttons are 50 cents.”

CG: Do you ever get depressed after hearing the morning news?

WG: Sure. Thich Nhat Hahn is one of my teachers and after my last major surgery, I asked my son to paint something on the ceiling over my bed. So I wake up every morning, open my eyes and there’s the word “SMILE” in gold letters. It’s the first thing I see. So if I’m really feeling bad, it just cracks me up.

CG: How do you look at the downhill side of life?

WG: One of the great tasks as I journey into geezerhood and watch as many of my contemporaries enter into the sleep that rots (or what we refer to as Patrick Henry’s second choice) is to approach the ceremony of demise as sacred play.

I have a few lines for that. One is an ad in the paper that said: “Used tombstone for sale. Splendid opportunity for family named Ginsberg.” Or how about, “Fate is like a kick from a blind camel. If it’s a hit you’re dead. And if it’s a miss, you live until you’re senile.”

Suffering sucks, but death is like a Get Out of Jail Free card. It has really bad press, but if it didn’t, more people would want to try it out. So, I think you’ve got to do your full term. Tim Leary called death changing your address.

CG: How do you want people to remember you?

WG: Activist, clown and frozen dessert and a temple of accumulated error.

I’m an old guy who just stuck with it.

CG: What one thing are you the most proud of in your life?

WG: Probably for Camp Winnarainbow and the way it has evolved. There’s a whole legion of young people who have come in and figured out how to run things. My job is to just be there to play and find new things to light them up.

CG: Is it possible to have too much fun?

WG: I don’t think so, but I’m working on it. I think there’s always just enough. Too much and it will spill of onto somebody else.

CG: If you could broadcast one message to the world, what would it be?

WG: Let me sing you a song called “Basic Human Needs:”

                  Wouldn’t it be neat if the people that you meet

                  Had shoes upon their feet

                  And something good to eat?

                  Wouldn’t it be fine

                  If all humankind had shelter?

 

                  Basic human needs, basic human deeds

                  Doing what comes naturally

                  Down in the garden where no one is apart

                  Deep down in the garden, the garden of your heart.

                  And wouldn’t it be grand if we all would lend a hand

                  So each one could stand on a free piece of land?

                  And wouldn’t it be thrilling if folks stopped their killing?

                  And started just tilling the land?

 

                  Basic human needs, basic human deeds

                  Doing what comes naturally

                  Down in the garden where no one is apart

                  Deep down in the garden, the garden of your heart.

                  What a great day it would be if everyone could see

                  If no one was blind unnecessarily,

                  Cause it’s hard, yes it’s hard

                  to be blind—and disabled.

 

                 Basic human needs, basic human deeds

                  Doing what comes naturally

                  Down in the garden where no one is apart

                  Deep down in the garden, the garden of your heart.

                  If folks started sharing, instead of comparing

                  What each other was wearing

                  And wouldn’t it be swell

                  If people didn’t sell their Mother, Earth.

 

                  Basic human needs, basic human deeds

                  Doing what comes naturally

                  Down in the garden where no one is apart

                  Deep down in the garden, the garden of your heart.

 

Virginia Lee was Associate Editor and served on the Editorial Board of Yoga Journal from 1980-85, and has been published in the alternative press ever since. She was been a regular interviewer for Common Ground from 1992-2004. She has also written two books: The Roots of Ras Tafari published by Avant Books of San Diego in 1985, and Affairs of the Heart published by Crossing Press of Freedom, CA in 1993. She currently lives and works in Santa Cruz, CA.

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Stephen Levine: Conscious Living, Conscious Dying

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Stephen Levine: Conscious Living, Conscious Dying

for Common Ground Spring 1995

by Virginia Lee

CG: Do you believe in the concept of a soul mate?

SL: The concept of a soul mate gets in the way of finding your soul mate. I think that everyone’s soul is one. By asking about a soul mate, you imply that there is such a thing as “not a soul mate.” If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside anyone. And when you find your soul, it’s already mated to the soul of the other. When the clouds part, the sun shines.

CG: How did you and Ondrea meet?

SL: We met at a Conscious Dying workshop I was giving. She came there to get ready to die. She had terminal cancer. She had actually worked with dying patients longer than I had, so she knew the ways of working with others. But her own body had come to the end of its rope. That was about 16 years ago.

We’ve been together literally since the moment we met. It was all heart. We didn’t really know we were together until after we had been together all weekend. Then when the workshop came to an end, I said, “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

CG: Is everyone capable of a conscious relationship?

SL: Yes. That’s like asking, “Is everyone capable of paying attention to what’s happening as it’s happening?” Everyone also has blocks to paying attention as well. It’s what we call our personal history.

If two people have the intention of having a conscious relationship, that’s what they’ll have. Even with the purest intention to stay as conscious as possible, all the hindrances, all the confusion, all the balancing of accounts, all our mislearnings block our capacity to learn in that moment.

I don’t think that everybody wants a conscious relationship, and I wouldn’t even say it’s right for everybody. You have to evolve to a place where that’s the only thing you do want. You don’t want another unconscious relationship. And it’s not just that you don’t want to be in pain anymore; you don’t want to create more suffering for anyone else either.

Consider all these human beings that we have in our past that we have labeled “unsuccessful relationships.” Remember that those human beings too — just like us — only wanted to be happy. We’re all in this. It’s not like one person is right and the other person is wrong.

It’s a matter of finding somebody who has the same goals that you do, and wants to work in the way you want to work. Ondrea and I often say that in order for a relationship to be really successful in the widest sense of the term, you have to want God more than you want your partner. And “God” isn’t necessarily the right word for everybody. Let’s just call it the Truth. There has to be something deeper than romantic love.

CG: How do you define conscious relationship in terms of the “triangulation” you refer to in your book?

SL: Conscious relationship happens when two people come together and use their relationship to become more conscious. Triangulation happens with something that is bigger than our small desires, needs and fears. And that thing becomes the apex of the triangle.

In the beginning of a relationship, the tip of the triangle is the relationship itself — seeking and finding trust, seeking and finding heart in your beloved. Then your beloved becomes The Beloved. In traditional devotional literature, the term “mystical union” usually means “union with God and yourself” or “union with the God within.” What we are saying is that you can have a mystical union with the God in your partner.

When we are setting up that triangle, the couple forms the solid base, but the highest truth is in neither one of us. Neither of us are right and certainly neither of us are wrong. But we can explore what’s going on between us to find the Truth.

I remember a story about a person who was very ill and went to his Zen master for advice. He told him about his pain and his difficulty. The Zen master said, “Stop looking for relief. Just look for the Truth.” Similarly, when you form the triangle of a conscious relationship, you’ve stopped looking for relief; you’re looking for the Truth. Eventually, the apex of the triangle becomes the foundation. And the relationship itself becomes the basis for exploring the unknown and enters into triangluation with our deepest nature—the Divine.

CG: How is relationship the most difficult of all yogas?

SL: It’s not on your own terms. You can’t space out and fall asleep. If you’re not fully present in every moment, you’ll catch fire.

CG: What role do children play in a conscious relationship?

SL: They are right there between every breath, like a big mirror. Nothing will wake you up to what you’re holding onto like a relationship. And nothing will wake you up to your smallest holdings like a relationship with children.

CG: What if the children are from a former marriage?

SL: All children are from a former marriage. Even your own children are from a former marriage. Just think about where your head was at when your children were born and then look at where your head is at 15 years later. That was a former marriage! Especially if it’s really alive, it’s a marriage of this moment.

One of the sadnesses of being born in a materialistic culture, most of which is in the world of becoming, is that you think you are your body. That tendency is reinforced, and from that belief comes the fear of death.

But if you think you are your body, then you will think that your children’s bodies are extensions of your body. But they are a gift, just like this body is a gift. We don’t own them, nor can we control them. They confront us in the places where our heart isn’t open. And when it is, they reinforce and reward in us the joy of an open heart. There’s no pool that Narcissus likes to look into longer than the gene pool.

This stuff about children being blood and not being blood is very sad. It’s a sign of an absence of evolution. What it means is the closure of the human heart. If you do not see your stepchildren as your own, you are seeing those children as one step away. The degree to which you see your children as “stepchildren” is the degree to which you live in hell. The degree of separation is where your actions come from. It’s the depth of your depression and it’s the depth of your own self-hatred.

Helen Caldecott used to say a wonderful thing. She said that there is no such thing as American babies; there is no such thing as Russian babies; there is no such thing as Mexican babies. There are just babies. They’re not your children; they’re not my children. They are simply “the” children. When you stop seeing them as “my” children and see them as “the” children, then your capacity to work on yourself expands. You begin to see that it’s not “your” anger or “your” fear around children, but it’s “the” anger and “the” fear. Let’s eliminate all the pronouns.

CG: What is the role of sex in a conscious relationship?

SL: Whatever role it takes. Different people have different relationships to sex. There are some conscious relationships where there is very little sex at all—or none. But there’s also the kind of mystical union where a couple has become more like brother and sister than lovers.

And there may be others where sex is a constant need to unite and go beyond identification with the body. Those who have done a lot of work with meditation have already been able to reside in the realm of sensation without calling it the body, and sexuality takes on another dimension.

If sexualtiy is only in the bed, orgasm is the very least you can get out of it. Above that there is a high-energy ecstasy, a clarity that is similar to a high seratonin state—like a crystal clear night when the stars shine through. And that comes from commitment. Sexuality can be an incredible expression of commitment.

CG: Would you say that sex can be a barometer for the intimacy of a relationship?

SL: Sure. But it isn’t just a matter of where the relationship is at. It has to do with your state of mind at the moment. Two people can be totally connected but at a certain moment be working on some issue of their own. Perhaps not having sex is the most real thing you can do in a moment like that. Not forcing anything. Not creating anything, but just allowing God to be present.

CG: Can a state of mystical union exist between memebrs of the same sex?

SL: I’ve seen at least as many—if not more—states of mystical union among homosexual couples than heterosexual ones. First of all, they’ve already had to go through an enormous amount of shit in their lives. I think it has sensitized them to other people’s pain. And the commitment of these relationships is so strong—sometimes 15 or 20 years. I see people standing by their dying loved ones who are healed in their process. I can honestly say that I see more genuine love on the deathbed of gays than heterosexuals.

Ironically, when you ask people on their deathbed what are their greatest regrets about life, one of the three you hear most often is, “I should have divorced my partner.” We hear that ten times more from heterosexuals than from homosexuals. It’s sad, but it’s not a surprise. It shows that human beings just aren’t meeting each other.

CG: How can a couple change the patterns of how they practice sex?

SL: Sometimes it’s just a matter of changing roles. Whoever is normally the initiator of sex, the initiator of ideas in the relationship is usually the person who leads when they dance. We do an exercise where we switch the lead. The person who usually leads is not allowed to lead. When I give my lead to Ondrea, I have to laugh. I’m stepping all over my own feet. I have not learned, at a certain level, how to just let go and let it be—in a dyad. We laugh like crazy. It makes us see how we’re synaptically addicted to control. And it’s a very important one when we’re talking about sex.

Do an experiment in consciousness. Whoever usually initiates sex, stop. And let the other person initiate sex for a month.

CG: Do you think that monogamy is essential in order for a conscious relationship to work?

SL: Absolutely. Without exception. In fact, if that question even comes up, the notion of mystical union and conscious relationship is completely inapproriate at the time for that individual’s evolution. If someone is still wondering about that, they’re not coming from the heart. Monogamy is not something that can be superimposed. My teacher said that you can get the power of celibacy through a committed and monogamous relationship with one single person. Without that, the idea of conscious relationship is premature. Ask yourself, aren’t you in enough pain as it is?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were just two people in the love bed—not a parent, not an ex-lover, not the kids in school who beat you up? That’s monogamy, and it’s a monogamy of the senses, too. If someone tells us that they want to be in a conscious relationship and not be mongamous, we just say good luck.

CG: Do you believe that people ever outgrow each other?

SL: It’s not so much that people outgrow each other, it’s just that they grow in different directions.

CG: If one partner is inclined toward personal growth and the other one isn’t, should they stay together or separate?

SL: Well, certainly the best way to encourage your partner or your children to meditate is to meditate. Of course people grow at different rates. Even in a committed relationship where two hearts are truly one in the beloved, both have to continue their own spiritual practice. If you don’t continue to do the practice that has prepared you to enter the dyad, then it won’t work. You can’t let your personal practice go. It is the basis of the relationship.

CG: Do people ever fall out of love?

SL: Of course. All the time. Moment to moment. Part of the teaching of relationship is to open your heart in hell. Sometimes you feel like you just don’t want to do it anymore. It’s too hard. Sometimes you feel like saying, “I’ve had enough of this. I just want to screw, drink tequilla and have a taco. I want to sit in the sun.” We’ve all seen how much suffering we’ve caused ourselves and others with that attitude. It’s an unwillingness to let go of your own suffering. Then you get to a point where you’re not going to buy into the demands of Narcissus anymore. That still small voice inside becomes more and more distinct.

CG: Is there such a thing as a conscious divorce?

SL: Conscious divorce is the flip side of a conscious marriage. It has to do with ongoing forgiveness and being discreet. You don’t go bad-mouthing your partner after a divorce. If you do, you’re simply vomiting up your pain. But don’t think you’re really talking about the other person. That person is nowhere near the center of what you’re talking about. You’re really taking about your own pain—about feeling abandoned, about feeling unloved; not feeling heard and not feeling trusted; feeling wounded and unhealed.

CG: Is it possible for people to be friends after a divorce?

SL: I was divorced 20 years ago. I was the best man at my wife’s remarriage, and I am the godfather of one of their twins. It’s a sign of maturation on both our parts. She had as much to do with it as I did. She and I couldn’t have been more wrong for each other. Sometimes divorce has more heart in it than the marriage ever did.

CG: How can divorce be part of your healing?

SL: It’s the pain that finally ends the suffering.

CG: What should a person do if they are in an abusive realtionship?

SL: I must say something very clearly to anyone reading this: If you are in a relationship where someone is physically hurting you—just leave. If you can, leave. Don’t fool yourself by saying it’s never going to happen again. Believe me, it’s going to happen again. There is nothing spiritual about being letting yourself be abused.

Some people think that if they’re a good Buddhist, a good Hindu or a good Christian by turning the other cheek, that they’re a better person for it. That’s baloney. It’s not okay to let someone be abused—even if it’s you. Just get out and follow your dharma.

CG: How can a person avoid making the same mistake?

SL: The deeper your awareness, the more you’ll be able to see old patterns when they arise. If you’re in a really bad relationship that just doesn’t work, get out of it. It’s as simple as that. Then use the time between relationships to heal. Go into your own heart and sharpen your perception of what’s going on in your own body, mind and spirit.

When you come to your next relationship, you can expect those old patterns to arise. If you’re going to try and deny that they’re coming out of you by blaming them on your ex-partner, you’re going to have a rude awakening. Or maybe it will be a rude sleep. The work we do on ourselves in the interim is what our future partner is looking for.

CG: Do you believe that each relationship builds on the next?

SL: Yes, if you’re paying attention. Everything brings us to now.

You don’t even know what’s available until the voice of love replaces the voice of anger. There needs to be as much concern for another’s healing as for your own.

CG: How would you rewrite the traditional wedding vows?

SL: I would add, “You take on my suffering and I take on your suffering. We commit to swim across the reservoir of each other’s grief—and not drown in it—rather swim to the other shore.

Until death do us part is the least of it. And the part about “to love, honor and obey”? All the slavery stuff that’s in the wedding vows has got to be rewritten. In a sense, the person who commits to that kind of thinking isn’t the person you want to marry. How about, “I stand on my two feet and you stand on your two feet, and then we’ve got four feet on the ground.” Then you’re really stable.

I think that the traditional wedding vows are really ridiculous and that it’s important for people to write their own. In our vows, which are published in Embracing the Beloved, we just commit to staying as present with each other as possible. Remember, this is my third marriage—and Ondrea’s second. You learn an awful lot from where you weren’t.

CG: How has your previous work with death and dying influenced what you are doing now?

SL: It makes you pay attention to the moment. So often people haven’t lived the lives they seemed to live. Someone can appear to be Mahatma Gandhi to the world, but when you look into their lives and see the wreckage with their children, their parents and their siblings, that’s where you can see the Truth. Most people who are successful in the world are generally less successful in relationship.

CG: How do you define a successful life?

SL:  Looking back on life, so seldom are people praised for simply having had a successful relationship. It’s not encouraged in men, and it’s not encouraged in women either. Personally, I’d rather be successful in relationship than successful in the world. A successful relationship in this culture just means one that just didn’t get divorced. Some of the most unsuccessful relationships I’ve ever seen are with people who should have gotten divorced 20 years before.

A really successful relationship is one that’s so alive, you just don’t know what’s going to happen next. When stuff does come up, which it inevitably does, it lasts two minutes instead of two weeks. A good relationship doesn’t require a lot of entertainment. A good relationship is a miracle in this world.

When Ondrea and I look back at our arguments, I just start laughing out loud when I see how absurd they are. Considering the scope of what we’re up to, even in this tiny little life, to spend even a few moments out of love is really crazy.

We are really all a little crazy. What we do to ourselves causes us so much more pain than satisfaction. There’s very little satisfaction in the world, because people think that satisfaction comes from desire. The only time you experience it is in that fraction of a moment when your desire is satisfied. And why? Because for that millisecond, the desire is absent and you can see beyond the mind. What we call satisfaction is a glimpse of our true nature.

Relationship is really the greatest of all danger sports. When you think of it, people do danger sports because they make you pay attention. You jump of a cliff with an aluminum brace and a handerkerchief over your head, you call it hang gliding. You jump out of an airplane and call it sky diving, or dive off a tower with a giant rubber band around your ankle and call it bungee jumping.

Why do people do it? Because it makes them feel alive. What makes you feel so alive? You’re paying attention. That’s all. Well, relationship will make you pay attention. If you don’t, you’ll suffer.

CG: How dos a person best deal with the death of a relationship or the death of a loved one?

SL: They are two very different things. The death of a relationship can be more painful in some ways than the death of a loved one. Take a woman who’s been married 40 years. Her husband is out shoveling the walk and dies of a heart attack. We see her at the hospital, lamenting the death of her husband and she is full of love for him. Her life is shattered to pieces.

Then there’s the woman who’s been married 20 years whose husband ran off with the secretary. Both of them wake up to an empty house in the morning, but one has been rejected. If someone dies, your relationship is actually maintained. I think that the sense of loss is broader if someone leaves you than if someone dies. The level of grief and the level of distrust in life is greater. Not always, but very often.

CG: What do you mean when you say to love your pain, love your disease, love your illness?

SL: I don’t mean love it; I mean to send love into it. We know people who are doing “forgiveness meditation” on their tumors. They’re finding that by sending softness into their illness, it begins to release and open as it’s bathed in mercy and loving kindness. Instead of reacting to illness with hatred, we try and recondition people to respond to it with love. That way, healing can take place. We are teaching people to enter with mercy and awareness into those areas they have withdrawn from in fear.

CG: Is that the essence of miracle healing?

SL: One of the problems with the word “miracle” is that it sounds as if it’s out of reach to the average person. Everyone is capable of a miracle. Remember that we work in terms of “healing” more than we work in terms of “cure.” Healing is learning to bring your mind into merciful relationship with the illness in the body. That way you can live with it.

Sometimes pain and illness is not meant to removed. You can’t second-guess God. Rather than praying for it to go away, it’s often wiser to pray that you learn as much from it as you possibly can. That way, illness is not an emergency. I am not trying to save anyone. I am not wise enough to know what I would be saving them from. But I am wise enough to know that death is not a problem. Sometimes it’s better to practice the laying off of hands.

CG: What do you mean when you say that we are all wounded healers?

SL: I don’t know anyone who does not show attachment to their pain. Pain is a given; suffering is not. Suffering is the way that we don’t deal with pain. So I think everyone is in pain, everyone is wounded. I don’t think you can be a very effective healer unless you’ve been wounded first.

CG: Is the meditation you practice with Ondrea based on finding your spiritual center?

SL: There is no “center.” Everyone is going mad trying to find their center. But there is no solid center; our center is nothing but space. And that space is me and that space in you is not “our” space; it is “the” space. The more I can touch the space in me, the more I can experience your space as well. There is only the heart in space, and that is where we can really connect.

When you find one person for whom God is as much in the forefront as He is for you, you and that person create a new world. I’ve come to see that what one person can do in this world is really remarkable. What two people can do when they’re focused is ten times greater. You can amplify spiritual power by putting it through two lenses instead of just one.


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Thomas Moore: Food for the Soul

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

for Common Ground Spring 1994

by Virginia Lee

On the heels of his bestseller, Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore expands his soulful perspective into the mysterious realm of human relationships in his newest book, Soul Mates. Moore’s previous works include The Planets Within, Rituals of the Imagination, Dark Eros, and A Blue Fire. Internationally recognized as an authority on archetypal psychology, mythology, and the imagination, Moore lived for 12 years as a Catholic monk before receiving his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in Religious Studies. Most sacred to Moore is a very private and quiet life with his family in western Massachusetts—an ironic contrast to the endless demands for public appearances that accompany his current success. Graciously, Moore gave an hour of his time to Common Ground for the following interview.

CG: What is the difference between “soul” and “spirit”?

TM: The words themselves aren’t that important, but it is important to know the difference. In my mind, “spirit” is a state of divine perfection that exists beyond the human plane of existence. It is something we all strive to realize in this life whether it be through religion or the highest reaches of human potential, whereas, the “soul” is what we are given to work with in our life on earth. The soul delights in the messy conditions of life’s entanglements, and relationship is the place where the soul works out its destiny. Simultaneously, religion recognizes pain and failure as important in the soul’s deepening and sophistication. That’s where soul and spirit merge.

There’s nothing new about this information. Carl Jung and James Hillman have said the same thing. There’s a kind of spirituality that tries to sublimate ordinary human experience, and remove itself from life. That’s very valuable in its own way, but is very different from the path of the soul— which stays close to human experience and thrives on relationship. Essentially, the spirit is what is divine in us, and the soul is what is human.

CG: What do you mean by “alchemy of the soul”?

TM: “Alchemy” means that certain substances go through a process of transformation, which brings out the color and flavor of the material itself. By alchemy of the soul, I mean that we transmute at the level of our emotions and our imagination what we experience through life. We actually change our feelings, our thoughts, our long-held beliefs about the way things are.

Alchemy is different from growth. The idea of growing and developing is more a project of trying to become something with a goal of perfection in mind. Whereas, alchemy is more of a natural process itself, wherein the inherent qualities of something are revealed. A person’s soul can go through some really significant changes through the alchemical process—like anyone who has gone through a serious illness. The power of the experience leaves them forever different. They still appear to be the same person, but a major shift has taken place.

CG: Would you say that every crisis in life has a hidden gift?

TM: There’s a tremendous amount to be gained through what appears to be adversity. If we don’t allow these crises, these challenges to take place, then we remain fixed in life and never really ripen or mature. It’s human nature to cling to what’s safe and familiar. The choice is between being safe and allowing these transformational processes to happen.

The life of the soul is dynamic—always moving toward a deeper, more subtle place. What I’m really saying through my work is to honor what’s happening in your life rather than trying to take the safe way.

CG: How does a person become “sensitive to the sacred” in life?

TM: Becoming sacred is supposed to be the job of religion. It teaches us how to live the sacred life in the everyday world. Hopefully, we go to church or temple to learn about ritual, to learn how to pray. But that notion exists on an ideal level and it’s  not what is really happening in society today.

CG: What has replaced the function of religion?

TM: Nothing as far as I can see. Unfortunately, what has replaced it has not been about the sacred—rather it has been about the profane. We have moved that function of ritual in our lives to drugs, sex, rock n’ roll. And some of that ritual has been pretty effective. Just look at the phenomenon of rock concerts. Fortunately, music has provided us with much of the soul work that we need to experience. There’s something sacred in that.

But I also think that we have translated a lot of the outdated religious functions into the secular realm of modern psychology. In my work, one of my implied criticisms is that we give too much power to therapy and psychology. We lose the sense of the sacred as a result.

CG: Do you think it is wrong to use the psychological method—which is logical in nature—to understand the soul which is illogical in nature?

TM: Essentially, yes. By nature, the soul is mysterious, and that’s its beauty. It’s not something to be figured out.

CG: What do you mean by the “mystery” of relationship?

TM: I use “mystery” in an older sense of the word. My degree is in the History of Religion, so to me, “mystery” is a very special word which refers to the ineffable, the unexplainable dimensions of life. Mystery is powerful, magical, and positive—and it embraces all of life and death.

Mystery is not a problem to be solved, which is how we often think of it in our modern language. We get so caught up in solving mysteries, in solving problems that all we connect with is narcissism and ego. We have this illusion that if we solve all our problems then we’re on “top” of it all. Whereas, in the sacred life the point is to be “under” it all, to be so enthralled by the mystery of life that we can surrender our control to the divine. Again it’s a matter of honoring the unexplainable and letting it just be there—it’s a matter of living with our unsolved mysteries.

This also applies to relationship. Relationship is more than just setting up a structure for people to live together. It’s more than what anthropology and sociology imply. When people come together there’s a tremendous sense of destiny. It’s a mysterious process when people describe when, how, and where they met.

And even more mysterious at times, is how they stay together. That’s what evokes the more sacred part of relationship. Many cultures have honored family life with rituals and shrines to their ancestors. There’s a great deal of respect for the mystery of what keeps a family going. It acknowledges the fact that what goes on in a family is more than just maintaining a “family unit” of four people living in the same household. Family life teaches that you are part of something greater that has an ongoing destiny unto itself.

CG: How can people keep the magic alive in their relationships?

TM: Human nature is infinitely profound, and no one of us ever really knows what is going to come up and emerge. The soul is constantly trying to find a new direction in life. Honoring that phenomenon in oneself and in another is a mutually nourishing process and is the core of relationship. What I am suggesting is to live much more radically than the way we live— to live more by the intuitive signs we see in life than to live by logic.

CG: What is the function of destiny in relationship?

TM: We’re all destined to be in each other’s lives, whether it’s someone you’re divorced from, or an old friend you never see anymore. Still there’s destiny at work and I think it’s worth considering how profoundly affected you are by this individual person—whether or not you want them in your life on the surface level. Destiny has brought them to you.

CG: Do you believe that we are the sum total of all our relationships?

TM: No, I don’t think so. Our relationship to history and nature is as important as our relationship to other people. We are not really the sum total of our relationships because there is some inexhaustible thing that emanates from a divine core. Our relationships flow in and out of that. Rather than reflections of ourselves, I’d rather think of the people we meet as reflections of human possibilities. As we get to know other people, we are enlarging our sense of what humanity is.

CG: How can we understand Jungian archetypes through our relationships?

TM: I’m not really Jungian nor am I an analyst. I just happen to be a student of human nature. But to refer to Jung’s autobiography, he says that everyone we meet is written in our destiny, so that every time we meet someone it is a remembrance. It’s a very Platonic view. Plato says that all our experiences are reminiscences of memory rather than new experiences.

CG: How would you define a “soul mate” and how do you identify one?

TM:  A person can only know a soul mate through their intuition. It’s more than a personal project you have with another person. People who make a project out of finding a soul mate are on the wrong track. Some misinterpret my book thinking I’m describing a reincarnational kind of thing. And I don’t really intend that at all.

In my book I give the following definition: “A soul mate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communicating and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace.”

CG: Is there just one soul mate that each of us is destined to be with?

TM: No, I don’t think so at all. In fact, some people tell me that their mother, or their sister or brother is their soul mate. I don’t think a soul mate necessarily has to be found within a romantic or intimate relationship. In fact, my intention is not to sentimentalize relationship. I think we should keep the notion of “soul mates” as something flexible and transparent so that we don’t become too rigid and lose what “soul” is all about in the first place. After all, “soul” is the mystery in relationship.

CG: You say that intimacy is food for the soul, yet why do you think there is such a fear of intimacy in so many relationships? What can people do to overcome this fear?

TM: Intimacy really does nourish the soul—all kinds of intimacy. Just one intimate conversation can make life worth living. If it’s so great then why would people be afraid of it? I think that a lot of us live out of anxiety with a rather tenuous hold on our own individuality and independence—and a fear of losing ourselves in another person.

In talking to groups I often talk about this dynamic between dependence and independence. When I say that I’m thinking of giving a workshop so that people can learn how to be dependent, everyone laughs. Our culture is more interested in people who are independent at the moment. But I think it’s important to be both. As a society, intimacy threatens our independence and individual identity.

CG: In your book you discuss the contrasting values of “flight” and “attachment.” Would you expand on that more?

TM: My intention was to speak positively for both of those feelings, which is what I try to do with everything I see that is divided. There are advantages and value in both “flight” and “attachment.” It’s only when they are split that we worry about which is “wrong” and which is “right.”

On the other hand, “detachment” is an approach to life that is favored by the more spiritual point of view. I want to emphasize the value of attachment—of being attached to your home, your family, where your grew up, or a car you’ve driven for years. It’s OK to hesitate to discard these things in your life because you’re attached to them. Acknowledge those attachments and live life according to them. I don’t always see the value in being spiritually “strong” and running over those attachments. One of the reasons our society is so mobile and transient is that we aren’t rooted enough.

Soul and spirit need to carry on this constant dialectic with each other, so that neither of them is wounded by the other. We live in a time when soul is constantly wounded by all our attempts at spiritual progress.

CG: How do you integrate the two?

TM: First you need to learn to appreciate them, which is why I am writing these books. Many of the people who come to my talks are used to listening to spiritual presentations of various kinds, chastising them for their attachments. I try and tell them to get back some of what their souls have lost—their homes, their family, their past—whatever they have given up.          The soul cherishes what’s real and close to home, not these things that are faraway and romanticized. Yet we need to value the soul without denigrating the spirit. The two are really meant to enhance each other, to co-exist like heaven and earth. Religions have been saying this for centuries.

CG: What is the significance of the sailboat on the cover of your new book?

TM: I have a few thoughts about that. I like the fact that the people can’t be seen too clearly. I want to look at relationships without looking too closely at the person. To focus to much on personality is a distraction I think.

The other image I like is that of the wind, which is so unpredictable in nature. It’s something you can’t control. When you go sailing, you just have to work with the forces and elements that are there, and not worry about doing it “right.”

We are so hounded by people who imply that we have to be responsible for everything that happens in a relationship. But being in a relationship is not something you learn how to do in a class. It’s about discovering how to surrender and allow spontaneity—to just let the wind blow and take you somewhere without being afraid of being swept away. And if you don’t work together as a team, you don’t make it.

The cover suggests that life is an odyssey, a journey to unknown ports of call with many unforseen delays along the way.

CG: What in your opinion makes a good marriage?

TM: I don’t like to give prescriptions or diagnosis. There isn’t any one thing I can point out. If I could back away from the question a bit, I would like to take marriage out of the personal. What the ancients knew is that the whole world needs to be married. We need to get the Republicans and the Democrats married. We need to get the Blacks and the Whites married. We need to marry the intellect to the  body. We are surrounded by differences that need to appreciate each other and want to be together. Marriage is really a state of connectedness and co-operation.

We prepare for marriage by enriching our imagination. That way we can come to marriage with rich textures to weave our lives into the fabric of family life. Marriage is not all about interpersonal dynamics, a notion which tends to get us swamped. I think we could handle our emotions better if we saw marriage as something which holds the whole of life together. In that way, marriage is truly a service to humanity.

CG: What is your opinion about the current notion of “dysfunctional” families?

TM: I really don’t have one. Some people read my work and think that there is an implied criticism of the recovery movement. I don’t like the word “dysfunction” because it is such a mechanical word. I have a hard time seeing a human being as something that “functions” like a machine. We have passions and struggles, questions and answers, but we don’t function.          Again, dysfunction seems like another problem that we are trying to solve. It’s another project to get involved in. I think that psychology tends to pathologize us; we think that we’re sick because we’re not doing things “normally.” All these connotations of dysfunction bother me a great deal. But I really don’t have any particular criticism of the recovery movement because I don’t know it. There is so much more of life to live than to be focused on these narcissistic issues.

CG: What is a healthy way to look at the ending of a relationship?

TM: I don’t know that there is a “healthy” way. There may be good, unhealthy ways of doing it too. Feeling the pain is an unavoidable part of it which you just have to go through. To me, the point is to be able to embrace the experience of ending. It’s a death experience and exists beyond what’s personal.

It touches on the mystery that life is full of endings—a mystery that nobody can explain. Life is not perfect. It’s full of death and  sickness, failed careers and failed relationships. And it’s OK to be thrown by these things. The challenge with endings is to live through them and not run away from the pain of the experience. The powerlessness, the despair does something profound to us, it changes us. It’s the alchemy of the soul at work.

CG: Do you advise people to look for the “gift” in their loss?

TM: I am very cautious about making it sound too positive. There may be a gift, but at the time it seems that there is no gift whatsoever. And if you imply to someone in the midst of this kind of pain that they should see it as a gift, they’re only going to feel angry and alienated. Just let it be what it is. Hang out with the feeling of pain and despair for awhile. You can’t cheat the experience by thinking you’re going to get something from it. The “gift” usually comes further down the road. Often the idea of finding the gift in your pain is a very sentimental one, and that’s not what my work is about.

CG: Can we ever really transform or transcend the conditioning of our past experience? If so, what does it take?

TM: I see past experiences as food for the soul, and not something to be transcended. We can dip into the past, not to solve the problems of what may have happened but to tell the stories of our personal history. It’s a form of imagination. If the memories are not used as explanations for our life, they can be used as a very rich source for reflection on the nature of life—even if they are painful. It’s the mystery of what human life is.

Consider Hamlet and the pain he lived. You can read Hamlet  over and over again, and still get more from it. Your own personal history is the same. You will remember your childhood differently at 20 than you will at 40, or even 60.

I’m not sure that psychology does that. I think psychology is constantly looking for explanations. I think that this obsession with cause and effect is what destroys imagination.

CG: How has James Hillman inspired your life?

TM: He has had a tremendous influence on me through his ideas, his writing, and his friendship. We have worked together in many venues, in many places. We will be giving  a workshop together at the Open Center in New York this Fall. I think he’s truly the great genius of psychology in this country. I haven’t met anyone who has been able to apply such a free and original imagination to the whole history of imagination. He doesn’t treat psychology just as something scientific; he is equally devoted to philosophy and the arts. There is a a very profound education behind his work, which includes a healthy orientation to Jung‚which I appreciate.

As a personality, he is very different from me. He is very fiery and strong, while I am rather quiet and retiring. He’s right in your face. In many ways, he is my mentor.

CG: What do you think is our greatest challenge as human beings?

TM: There’s an ancient riddle in eastern philosophy which says: “It’s only by losing your soul that you gain it.” If we could learn to let go of what we think is so important in life, and stop trying to fulfill all our plans, we might actually find what we are looking for.

CG: What has been the greatest challenge in your life so far?

TM: At the moment, my greatest challenge is dealing with public life. I am not someone who wanted fame and fortune, but now I have it. Having a family, and being a writer requires a lot of time for solitude. I like having a private life. Yet at the same time, I am trying to respond to the world at large, which is the greatest challenge I have had to deal with so far. Ironically, it’s been hard to find time to take care of my own soul.

Virginia Lee was Associate Editor and served on the Editorial Board of Yoga Journal from 1980-85, and has been widely published in magazines ever since, including Harper’s Bazaar. She was a regular feature writer for Common Ground from 1992-2004, and has also written two books:  The Roots of Ras Tafari published by Avant Books of San Diego in 1985, and more recently  Affairs of the Heart published by Crossing Press of Freedom, CA in 1993.

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Sam Keen: Telling Your Life Story

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

Fire in the Belly

for Common Ground Summer 1994

by Virginia Lee

Sam Keen is a prolific author who has written no less than thirteen books about what it means to be human in the 20th century. An advocate of what he calls “autobiographical philosophy,” Keen believes that it’s possible to read the underlying currents of our times simply by understanding your own psyche. According to Keen, we are all living holograms, and can find answers to the deep questions of life simply by telling our own stories.

Sam Keen is so well educated, it has taken tremendous effort to “unlearn” some of the attitudes ingrained by his extensive academic training. With degrees from Harvard Divinity School, and a doctorate from Princeton University, he was a full professor by the 1960s. Through the process of defining his personal mythology, Sam Keen began to write his many books, the more well-known ones being  The Passionate Life, Inward Bound, Your Mythic Journey, Faces of the Enemy, and his recent bestseller, Fire in the Belly. This summer, Bantam will publish his latest work entitled  Hymns to an Unknown God, which promises to be a thought-provoking sequel challenging our conventional notions about spiritual life in the 1990s.

Interviewing Sam Keen was both a privilege and a challenge. On the heels of an early morning interview on Good Morning America, we met at a restaurant at 7:30 am in San Francisco. Knowing that Sam Keen had been an interviewer for Psychology Today in years past, I was in awe of someone who possiby knew the art of interviewing better than I. He put me at ease immediately with his gracious Southern charm and we were instant friends. What follows is a delightful yet provocative conversation.

CG: What is “autobiographical philosophy” and why is it something we can all use?

SK: What gives our lives dignity and meaning is  our own autobiography. But telling our own story is not something that we’re taught how to do. If we learn how to mine our own experience, we can find answers to the great questions of life.

When my own naîve faith in Chrisitianity first failed, I was thrown back on my own experience. My life was a mess. I was in psychotherapy at the time, but even that didn’t help me answer the very deep questions. So, I began to interrogate my own experience and explore my personal mythology. Out of that I began to write my books—back in the 1960s.

When we’re dealing with psychology or the life of the spirit, I have come to greatly distrust supposed experts who don’t  talk about themselves. That’s one of the phenomena you find with gurus and cults—they won’t talk about themselves. They sever ties with friends and family in an effort to erase personal history. It’s as if they’re not human. I use my life as as a kind of mirror, a hologram of the age I am living in. How do I know what the spiritual tensions and crisies of our times are if I don’t read it off my own psyche? I am very much a believer in the autobiographical method.

CG: Would you say that what we all have in common as human beings is the human condition?

SK: That’s true, but what we also have is the gift of our own uniqueness—the uniqueness of our own story. That’s what gives us the sense of inhabiting our own lives. I think that the majority of people never get inside their own lives. It’s as if someone else has already written the script for them. We’re given a legacy of stories and expectations about who we are from the time we are born—from our parents and from our culture—a tradition which may or may not fit who we really are. Most people dedicate themselves to living out those stories for an entire lifetime. And defying the myth is often interpreted as cultural rebellion or familial  betrayal. That  is the difference between living mythically and living autobiographically.

In The Passionate Life, I distinguish between the five stages of life: the child, the rebel, the adult, the outlaw, and the lover. When you’re a child, you’re living out the myths of your parents and your society. And when you begin to rebel, you rebel against them. But as you go into adulthood, you go back to that conditioning and take a responsible role. Often midway through life, especially if there is some crisis, the question arises: “What is my life all about? What do I really want?” And that’s the outlaw stage, when it’s time to begin writing your own story.

The lover stage comes when you discover that you are a part of the human condition, and you can’t separate yourself from other people. That’s when you overcome the need to do things “right” in order to justify your existence, nor do you need to make someone else wrong in order to be right. There is no more “enemy.” That attitude can apply to political and religious identities as well as individual ones. You realize that you are a part of all humankind.

CG: To what do you attribute the current renaissance in spiritual life and simultaneous wane in religious life?

SK: That’s what they asked me on “Good Morning America,” and only gave me three minutes to answer. We’re in the middle of an enormous change in the cultural mythology by which we live. It’s as significant as the change from the nomadic life of hunters and gatherers to the domestic life of agriculture, then to the consumer life of the industrial era. We are now living in the post-industrial age. We are the first culture to ever live our way through the materialistic dream. As a rule, western culture is extremely rich. We have more than anybody has ever had in world history.

One would think that the desires would cease. But not only do they not cease, they are not satisfying. It’s almost a rule that you can’t get enough of what you never wanted in the first place. Our culture has reached the end of the myth of progress. We cannot continue to double the world’s population and live with more advanced technology—without polluting ourselves out of existence. Everything is telling us that the way we looked at the world in the 19th century doesn’t work. First of all, it’s unture. Ecology is probably the best proof of that. The notion that we are separate from the rest of the world, and that there are no consequences for our actions is an illusion.

I think that American culture is very privileged. We are getting a chance to change. We have the political freedom and material abundance to consciously  look at other options. But it makes no sense to try and return to the ways of the American Indians or an isolated Tibetan Buddhist culture such as found in Bhutan. We need to find a post-industrial relationship to the natural world, not a pre-industrial one.

CG: The American psyche has always been based on glorifying the individual—with plenty of space and resources to do that. Do we need to start thinking more in terms of community? Is that what is implied by the “Aquarian Age”?

SK: That’s absolutely right. And incidentally that’s where the mainstream media totally misses the point of the spiritual movement. They think it’s all about “inner experience.” It’s not about inner experience; it’s much more about finding a community of people you belong with. There are different spiritual tasks that go with each age. Discovering individuality was a great task for humankind, but that is not the task of our age. Our task is to discover our connections with all life—human or otherwise.

Unfortunately, we are somewhat spoiled by the notion of entitlement, that we simply deserve the best life has to offer without having to work very hard for it. And that applies to spiritual life too. Americans want “enlightenment-to-go” out of some weekend workshop, or a three-minute byte on television. Ours is a fast-food culture that demands instant gratification.

CG: How can the experience of a “vision quest” enhance everyday life in the 20th century?

SK: First of all, you have to separate the pseudo-Indian trappings from what actually happens. The majority of people in the US have never been in a place without electric lights. They’ve never been quiet for a whole day. The importance of the vision quest is the age-old cultivation of solitude in a natural environment. You don’t have to act like an Indian to make it work.

I invented the Inward Bound part of the Outward Bound experience. We would take people out on “solos,” and they would have very profound experiences. If you take away all the external distractions, a person has to face things. I remember one day in Big Bend, Texas when I spent a whole day by a brook in a canyon without as much as a pad of paper. I will never forget that day. It revivified my sense of time.

So much of life in the spirit has to do with being quiet—of paying attention to and savoring life. People need to invent miracles in direct proportion to the decay of their sense of wonder. So I say, belief in angels is for people who have never really looked at a ruby-throated hummingbird. If you don’t see the miraculousness of every day, then you’re going to have to invent some kind of weird story. If you don’t see the beauty of terrestrial beings, then you’re going to invent extra-terrestrials. A vision quest is the return to a state of silence that gives you a chance to look at the smallest things. It put you back in touch with your sense of wonder.

CG: Is this essential to creativity?

SK: It’s not the same thing as creativity. It’s what has to happen before creativity can take place. I do not create the ruby-throated hummingbird. Rather it is a gift to me. What I create comes out of gratitude for that experience. The Christians call it the “eighth day of creation.”

CG: How does someone take the experience of a vision quest or any altered state and bring it into everday life?

SK: In the first place, throw out the concept of “altered state.” When you get on the subway and shut out your senses, that is an altered state. An “altered state” is a meaningless term. Consciousness is always altering. Most people who are looking for a “peak” experience haven’t taken any time to look what’s in the valley.

CG: What is the “common boundary” between spirituality and psychotherapy?

SK: I think that there is very little boundary between psychotherapy and spirituality, but you need psychotherapy to clean out the subconscious garbage first before you can make much progress on the spiritual path. Psychotherapy deals with the way your psyche has been put together, especially in ways that don’t work. These days it’s called being “dysfunctional.” The life of the spirit exists beyond all that, beyond individuality and the illusion of an egocentric universe. Life in the spirit means being connected to all other beings through a heart of compassion. Psychotherapy is a necessary first step. Look what happens when people go into the spiritual life without doing the psychological work first. Look at what happened with EST, or Rajneeshpuram, or the Zen community in San Francisco. We’ve seen these spiritual communities blow up one after another. All these disciples are people who needed authority, who wanted father figures and then of course hated them. Then there’s all the sexual intrigue between gurus and disciples. It’s all unresolved psychological stuff. Psychotherapy is very important if you want to clean out the basement.

CG: Does one evolve from psychotherapy into a life of the spirit?

SK: Yes. That is the natural path of evolution. And you don’t have to go through psychotherapy either. The work of writing your autobiography—and discovering your personal mythology—can achieve the same thing.

CG: How do you see the relationship between music and spirit?

SK: That is a complex subject. Mickey Hart of The Grateful Dead  is working with the power of music and the divine. He is reviving the link between drumming and ecstatic states—inducing a trance if you will. Western religion repressed any form of trance or percussion, a phenomenon which has existed in many cultures of the world (among the Africans and native Americans to mention a few).

Sacred music in our culture almost always has words. I was brought up in the church, and the hymns still move me deeply. Hence the metaphorical title of my new book, Hymns to an Unknown God. There are many things that don’t resonate with me about Christian doctrine, but there’s a core experience with the hymns that has a profound power in my psyche—which I honor. Music enables the human spirit to fly free, beyond the conventional boundaries of daily life.

CG: What do you think of people who are mesmerized by rock concerts?

SK: It’s both good and bad. Loss of self is always part of life of the spirit, but it’s also part of the demonic life. Was Woodstock a holy experience? People have been killed at rock concerts. The greatest experience of self-loss ever was choreographed by Hitler. There are a lot of trance states that can be destructive. So, you have to ask (like Plato asked): “What’s the difference between divine madness and demonic madness?”

CG: How do you tell the difference? How do you deal with the pitfalls of spiritual path?

SK: Answer this question: “Does your experience develop a life of greater comprehension and compassion toward all living things?” William James used to say, “It’s easy to create a religious experience. But it’s very hard to create a religious life.” The real test is: “What kind of a life does it create?”

That’s the problem with drugs. They can give you a very temporary high, but then it goes away. We now know that there’s a very limited place in the life of the spirit for the use of drugs. If overused, they create a destructive form of ecstasy.

CG: Is the same true of people who are dependent on cults and gurus? And if so, whose fault is it—the disciples or the gurus?

SK: Both. Most of the gurus don’t have any real power. When I wrote for Psychology Today , I interviewed a lot of them. They talked about being free of needs and desires, but if you watched their entourage, most of them couldn’t survive without their disciples. They were like children; they didn’t have an adult life. They couldn’t even tolerate real dialogue. That’s not power. It’s co-dependence.

I deal with this in my new book, Hymns to an Unknown God , in the chapter called “Constructing a Bullshit Detector.” The first thing I look at is the personal life of the teacher: Do they handle sex, money, and power in an open and upfront manner? I don’t care how holy they are. One teacher of Tibetan Buddhism was a drunk. It wasn’t “crazy wisdom,” it was alcoholism. Call a spade a spade. Another Indian guru had sex with teenage boys and girls. It wasn’t “tantra,” it was statutory rape. Ask whether a spiritual community is producing more open individuals, or have they divorced themselves from the “real” world? A sure sign is: Does it break up marriages and families? Be suspicious of eliminating “attachments” to loved ones and “erasing personal history.”

CG: What is the best way to deal with the spiritual “dead-ends” one encounters on the path?

SK: When you’re in the shit, stay in the shit. Look at your illusions. Look at what lead you into it. I wrote a whole book about this. It was called Inward Bound . Boredom is a very important emotion. So is despair and disillusionment. When you’re in it, stay there. We want the dark night of the soul to last no more than ten minutes. Part of the spiritual path always involves the dark night of the soul.

Maybe you have to find out that what you have done with a guru is idolatry. What you have given your trust and commitment to is totally inappropriate. When you get disillusioned, you have to explore your own capacity for idolatry. You have to ask yourself, “Why was I willing to sell my soul for a sense of false security? How badly did I need it? What void am I really trying to fill?” The “dead-end” is how you find the other road. Hitting a dead-end is not an excuse for giving up. That’s just going back to an unexamined life.

If you’re on the spiritual path, you’re not going to be disillusioned  once. You’re going to be disillusioned again and again and again. It’s like rowing a boat. As long as you keep pushing your illusions behind you, you make progress. Every year, every week I discover new illusions. All the gender stuff for example—I was brought up under this illusion that I had to be an American man.Until we die, and maybe even after, we are constantly uncovering our illusions. We thrive on illusions, layers and layers of them.

CG: In what way is ecology part of the spiritual path?

SK: Ecology is a central spiritual disciple to the coming age. A spiritually aware person needs to embrace thr principles of ecology as well. If you go beyond your own ego into the life of the spirit, you see how connected everything is—and that is the basis of ecology. The myth of progress puts our species at the center of the world, and that’s not the way it is.

The science of ecology has shattered that illusion. We have more science of the spirit than we’ve ever had. We now know scientifically what for other generations was a matter of faith.

CG: In your new book you say that “the old war between science and religion is over and the romance has begun.” How can that bring about peace in our time, and encourage humans to let go of their age-old cultural enmity and racial hatred?

SK: That’s really two different questions. You can bind people together in a technological world order, and that may have very little to do with overcoming enmity. The Bosnian Serbs and Croats have pretty good communication devices, yet they’re still out slaughtering each other.

Even though the war between science and religion may be over, the battle is still raging with those who believe in the myth of progress. It’s over in theory, but many people haven’t yet realized that they can stop fighting. If the age of technology is not infused with spirit, it will become demonic. Control without compassion is a frightening thing.

Knowledge doesn’t save us from ourselves. Even though we may know scientifically about the sex life of spiders, that hasn’t make us more ecologically responsible. It’s a matter of the heart. It’s a matter of conversion to a more compassionate life. And I don’t think that happens automatically. What’s required is a curriculum for compassion.

It’s something you learn before you’re six or seven. Just as you are taught to hate all the same enemies your parents hate, you have to be taught to love. I addressed this question in a book I wrote called Faces of the Enemy.  We systematically teach people to hate. That’s what prejudice is; that’s what we call propaganda. So, that’s why we have to teach people to love. I strongly believe in a curriculum for learning empathy and imagination—love. We can’t assume that it’s something that’s going to be learned at home, because in many cases, that kind of love isn’t there.

There’s a mechanics to love and a mechanics to forgiveness. We’ve got to learn how to forgive. Someone’s got to teach us how to do it. We’ve got to learn how to feel how another person really feels—in the body, not just in the head. I think CQ (compassion quotient) is as important as IQ. I think that education should deal with moral issues and questions of the heart as much as math and science.

It should begin as early as the first grade and include things like conflict resolution and  self-defense for girls. A lot of gender problems would be cleared up right away. I’m not talking about religion either—religion is very different from educating the emotions. I would teach about geography of the emotions, just to identify the difference between sadness, boredom, anger, and resentment. It would do a lot to reduce emotional illiteracy. Moral education in schools could provide a whole new type of career.

CG: Can you discuss the role of passion in life? Would you say that passion is an essential part of spiritual life or its worst enemy?

SK: I spent an entire book trying to define the nature of passion; it’s called The Passionate Life. I think that passion is an essential part of spiritual life; it’s the desire to know God.  Augustine says, “Love God and do what you want.” Passion needs to come out of the core of you, and is something that integrates you with all life. Let’s face it, passionate people are a pleasure to be around.  When the Hindus talk about dispassion I think what they really mean is non-attachment—which teaches you to approach life without grasping for it. Perhaps “joy” or “enjoyment” are better words. Life is simply better when it’s juicy than when it’s dry.

We have to distinguish between passions and addictions, although sometimes they can look the same. Addiction has a character of desperation, while passion has the element of desire. My abiding passions are things that expand me rather than contract me, and increase my sense of possibility. My current passion is the flying trapeze—something I discovered at age 62. It waters the rest of my life, and leaks into everything else. It makes me a better father, a better lover, a better philosopher, and a better writer. If spirit is the breath or wind of life, passion is the fire. Without passion, the inner life is pretty cold and dry.

CG: Please talk about your evolution as a writer and how it parallels your personal life.

SK: They are one and the same. My writing is drawn completely from my personal life. I do not have one part of me that writes and another part that lives; there is no distinction between the two. My books are just reports of a journey in progress—my latest being Hymns to an Unknown God..

I’ve written thirteen books. The first one was called Gabriel Marcel ; the next was Apology for Wonder , then To a Dancing God , followed by Voices and Visions  (a collection of Psychology Today  interviews). The Passionate Life  came after that, then Inward Bound, which is about dealing with the geography of emotions (especially the blue ones). Your Mythic Journey  is about how to uncover your own mythology and write your own autobiography. And then there was Faces of the Enemy andFire in the Belly.

CG: What is your greatest advice to men? To women? To children?

SK: Read Fire in the Belly . Men and women really have to study each other in a way that we haven’t before, to become interested in what the other’s experience is. And then we have to drop it, simply get off the special privileges of gender. Give it up. To hell with gender. Write your own autobiography. No one should have to ask the question: “Am I manly—or womanly—enough?” Each of us should ask: “Who am I?”

And I don’t buy the notion that there are men with “feminine” traits, or women with “masculine” traits. It’s just a lot of Jungian confusion. Just because I want to hug my daughter, does that mean I’m feminine? Hell no. It means that I love my daughter. It’s just something that I do. As soon as we can stop labeling our conduct as masculine or feminine, we are free to be ourselves. Once again, when we can get rid of dumb language, then new experience can come.

CG: How can we disarm the traditional roles that gender-script the behavior of men and women?

SK: Read Fire in the Belly . As much as we need education about emotions and morals, we need education about gender. We need to clarify all the misconceptions and misinformation—everything that contributes to the crippling effect of gender. It starts before first grade; it starts in the nursery.   We’re all in the middle of it. We’re all shaped by it, and misshaped by it. Perhaps the one thing I didn’t say clearly enough in the book is that we need to stop making money off gender, to stop fanning the flames of the gender fires. There are too many people making money by keeping other people angry—both men and women. I call it the professional gender mafia.

We hear that men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, and that bullshit is from cows. I think  that psychological philosophies like that are enormous over-simplifications and completely miss the point. I deal with this issue in both Faces of the Enemy  and Fire in the Belly . It goes back to warfare: Men are trained to be violent, and women are trained not to be powerful. Sure, that training is going to do something to your mind.

Yes, there are different communication strategies, but it’s rooted in something far deeper. It’s not genetic, it’s not biological, and it can be changed. But it takes honesty on both parts: Men have not been honest about their violence toward women, and women have not been honest about riding for free—especially in regard to the war system. The payoff for the wars we fought is that we got to go to the mall and buy nice things. The war system has given us material benefits, and until we get honest about that, it won’t change. Both sexes need to mutually share in the management of violence. That’s why I support women’s self-defense and model mugging. That way women can be competent in dealing with evil in the world—right from the start—and doesn’t need to rely on a man to protect her.

CG: How do you deal with your own daughter in this way?

SK: My 14-year-old daughter is now doing flying trapeze with me. At a very young age, I wrestled with her in a game called Papa Lion and Baby Lion. I wanted to make sure that she could hold her own physically with men, and that she knew it was a very womanly thing to do. My 35-year-old daughter is a martial artist who runs her own Aikido school in Brazil. With my eldest daughter, I had to overcome my fear of touching her, especially during her adolescent years. It’s confusing when incestuous feelings arise.

CG: Would you say that Fire in the Belly   is your greatest work?

SK: No. I only have one book. It’s just been written thirteen times. My work is like a Persian rug. I’ve been working on the same vision my whole life. It’s one work that captures different aspects of the pattern.

CG: How does the revival of goddess worship fit into the spiritual picture?

SK: It’s a bad idea. Feminists taught me that to talk about God the Father was a political statement. When we use gender language in regard to God, it’s a statement intending to get power over the other gender. If the feminists want to turn it around, I don’t like it. We simply shouldn’t use gender language.

I suggest that we eliminate the use of all personal pronouns in speaking of the divine. As soon as we stop using the cheap language, we have to find some real language. We’ve got to really think about what we want to say. I also point out the fact that when God was feminine, she was kind of a bitch. She liked human sacrifice and thrived on blood. Blood was necessary for creativity in goddess worship. We had Her for a long time before we had God the Father. The Goddess had her time in early human history, and God the Father has had his time, so now I think it’s time to retire them both. We should also retire the idea of Mother Nature. There’s nothing feminine about nature either. Let’s simply retire all gender pronouns from inappropriate places. We should no longer say “mankind” when we mean humankind. Let’s not talk about the ultimate ground of our being in terms of “he” and “she.

Virginia Lee was Associate Editor and served on the Editorial Board of  Yoga Journal from 1980-85, and has been widely published in magazines ever since, including Harper’s Bazaar. She was a regular feature writer for  Common Ground from 1992-2004, and has also written two books:  The Roots of Ras Tafari published by Avant Books of San Diego in 1985, and more recently  Affairs of the Heart published by Crossing Press of Freedom, CA in 1993.

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