"The task of the first half of life is to attain sufficient ego strength to leave parents and enter the world. This strength becomes available in the second half of the larger journey of the soul."
So what are you waiting for?
The experience of the Middle Passage is not unlike the waking to find that one is alone in a pitching ship, with no port in sight. One can only go back to sleep, jump ship or grab the wheel and sail on. At the moment of decision, the high adventure of the soul is never more clear. In grabbing the wheel we take responsibility for the journey, however frightening it might be, however lonely or unfair it may seem. In not grabbing the wheel, we stay stuck in the first adulthood, stuck in the neurotic aversions which constitute our apparent personality and, therefore, our self-estrangement. At no point do we live more honestly, or with integrity, then, surrounded by others yet knowing oneself to be alone, the journey of the soul beckons and we say “Yes” to it all.
James Hollis, The Middle Passage
So what are you waiting for?
go on, put it on. . .
I want to apologize for putting you in the middle of a conversation without really explaining this idea very well. (I don't think I understood it myself). I tend to leap before I know what's going on. It's only later that meaning comes as I begln looking at my actions with the goal of understanding of them.
And so today, a day after the private launch of this new "sync" endeavor, I think I'm beginning to understand The Mask of God now. Throughout my stumbles this fall and winter, after lighting myself on fire and blowing myself up, I've come upon a new philosophy that I think "The Mask of God" embraces. A place of empowerment. The dream space to bring into material existence the type of life and world in which one would want to live. Not an escape mind you, but an embracing of reality. Presence.
I think this group project is something that asks to be launched publicly as a venu for exploring a post revolutionary world. Let's say you understood what was wrong with the world, how would you behave in a new one?
I've been reading a book by a Jungian analyst called The Middle Passage (and this is a bit of a noodle baker here, because the sync of course is that The Middle Passage that people know of and what you hit when you google it, is the route slave ships took early in the 18th century--sounds like pay dirt to me, of course noting how lightly one would have to tread using literal slavery as a metaphor for the imprisonment of self by ego). This analyst (Dr James Hollis) posits that adulthood is divided into two halves. And thus life is divided into three portions. Childhood is defined by the trait of "Magical Thinking" which leads to the first adulthood which is characterized by "Heroic Thinking". The first adulthood is all about the development of the ego. (The Jungians don't believe we can have consciousness without it.)
Then we reach a plateau at midlife when it seems like all the newness and meaning begins to drain out. The dark night of the soul. And this is when the real adventure of life begins. This is when we set out to find our true self, moving beyond our egoic persona which is a false mask, a collection of roles, a construction built by forces that we as children had little or no control over. We move on toward the true self, again employing the magical thinking of childhood to reach our goal, which for lack of a better word, might be god. Interestingly, the idea of one's god is often shaped by the type of parents a child had. Cold, distant? A loving savior? Angry, punishing? (these are psychological complexes!)
Joseph Campbell often wondered what it would mean to humans if there wasn't a personal God. No plan, no personified being, just the mysterious source of life. On one hand, that's empowering, but on the other, that means that there is no one to save us, but ourselves. This is the mask of god. Putting it on is embracing the source of the mystery that is in all of us and beginning the soul's high adventure!
I think this is what this new project wants to be and do. True Gnosis? The idea of heaven ON earth? God not in the house but is the house? (But does this somehow invalidate "sync" by letting go of the notion of a personal god with a plan? No. The self wants to be found. The unconscious self employs the law of attraction to get our attention. The mystery in us calls us to see its illusory web that it spins and weaves, that which we call "sync", connecting the various fragments together in a net of knowing.) Sync is the bridge that leads us on this adventure to self.
As I explain this notion that I'm teasing out of the dream-space, I see that I have a block of marble before me that wants to be a blog post explaining the idea. An introduction. My intent is to work on this over the course of the next couple days and see if I can't get something that explains this new project completely. The idea that we have chosen to make this solitary journey that we must undertake alone, together.
Because together, we are The Mask of God.
anyway, have fun
it's yours now to put on
take care
and remember,
"Life is not a disease, and death is not a punishment."
and remember,
"Life is not a disease, and death is not a punishment."
en
