Maybe You Have Everything You Need

MY UPCOMING PERFORMANCE IN NEW YORK CITY

Join me as I read poetry

at The Strand bookstore
828 Broadway, New York City
7:30 pm on Friday, September 13

I'll be opening for three crazy-good poets:
Ariana Reines
and
CAConrad
and
Zoe Brezsny

Here's the info.

In the meantime, check out Ariana Reines' sensational new book
A Sand Book, and read my review of it.

Here's my favorite book by CAConrad:
ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness

Find poetry by Zoe Brezsny right here.





Here's a link to my free weekly email newsletter, featuring the Free Will Astrology horoscopes, plus a bunch of other stuff, including good news, lucky advice, and tender rants. It arrives every Tuesday morning.

Read past issues of the newsletter.

Sign up here for your free subscription.





The people I trust the most are those who are always tenderly wrestling and negotiating with their own shadows, making preemptive strikes on their personal share of the world's evil, fighting the good fight to keep from spewing their darkness on those around them. I aspire to be like that.





SHADOW SCHOOL

You're a gorgeous mystery with a wild heart and a lofty purpose. But like all of us, you also have a dark side -- a part of your psyche that snarls and bites, that's unconscious and irrational, that is motivated by ill will or twisted passions or instinctual fears.

It's your own personal portion of the world's sickness: a mess of repressed longings, enervating wounds, ignorant delusions, and unripe powers. You'd prefer to ignore it because it's unflattering or uncomfortable or very different from what you imagine yourself to be.

If you acknowledge its existence at all (many of us don't), you might call it the devil, your evil twin, your inner monster, or your personal demon. Psychologist Carl Jung referred to it as the shadow. He regarded it as the lead that the authentic alchemists of the Middle Ages sought to transmute into gold.

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Astrologer Steven Forrest has a different name for the shadow: stuff. "Work on your stuff," he says, "or your stuff will work on you." He means that it will sabotage you if you're not aggressive about identifying, negotiating with, and transforming it.

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The shadow is not inherently evil. If it is ignored or denied, it may become monstrous to compensate. Only then is it likely to "demonically possess" its owner, leading to compulsive, exaggerated, "evil" behavior.

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"The shadow, which is in conflict with the acknowledged values, cannot be accepted as a negative part of one's own psyche and is therefore projected -- that is, it is transferred to the outside world and experienced as an outside object. It is combated, punished, and exterminated as 'the alien out there' instead of being dealt with as one's own inner problem." -- Erich Neumann, *Depth Psychology and a New Ethic*

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The qualities in ourselves that we deny or dislike are often the very qualities that we most bitterly complain about in other people. So for instance, an old friend of mine named Mark had a special disgust for friends who were unavailable to him when he really needed them. But I was witness to him engaging in the same behavior three different times, disappearing from the lives of his friends just when they needed him most.

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"Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event," said Jung. If you disown a part of your personality, it'll materialize as an unexpected detour.

Everyone who believes in the devil is the devil . . . .

READ THE REST OF "SHADOW SCHOOL"





HOW TO KICK YOUR OWN ASS

How-to-kick-your-own-ass lessons are available at 2:20 of this video.

How-to-kick-your-own-ass lessons are also available at 7:30 of this video.

Here's the "Kick Your Own Ass" anthem.





WEEDS CAN BE GOOD

It turns out that some weeds are good for flowers and vegetables, protecting them from predatory insects. So say horticulturalists Stan Finch and Rosemary Collier, writing in Biologist magazine. When the bugs come looking for their special treats -- the plants we love -- they often get waylaid by the weeds, landing on them first and getting fooled into thinking there's nothing more valuable nearby.

So for example, when cabbages are planted in the midst of clover, flies lay eggs on only seven percent of them, compared to a 36 percent infestation rate on cabbages that are grown in bare soil with no clover nearby.

This could be a useful metaphor in working with your own versions of impurities and interlopers. Make sure there are always a few chickweed or henbit weeds surrounding your ripening tomatoes.





LOVE YOUR ENEMIES?

The Bible quotes the radical first-century religious activist Jesus Christ as follows: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." Sounds like he had a good strategy for working with his shadow.

Here's a corollary to Christ's injunction to love thy neighbor as thyself: "I will love the dark, difficult side of my neighbor -- not just the attractive, friendly side -- and I will encourage it to express itself in constructive ways."





WANT TO GET YOUR PERSONAL ASTROLOGICAL CHART READ?

If you want your personal chart done, I recommend a colleague whose approach to reading astrology charts closely matches my own. She's my wife, RO LOUGHRAN. Her website is here.

Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and technical proficiency in horoscope interpretation. She is skilled at exploring the mysteries of your life's purpose and nurturing your connection with your own inner wisdom.

In addition to over 30 years of astrological experience, Ro has been a licensed psychotherapist for 17 years. She integrates psychological insight with astrology's cosmological perspective.

Ro is based in California, but can do phone consultations and otherwise work with you regardless of geographic boundaries.

Check out Ro's website.





PERSEPHONE'S OTHER STORY

In the best-known version of the Greek myth, Persephone is dragged down into the underworld by Hades, whose title is "Pluto." But in earlier, pre-patriarchal tales, she descends there under her own power, actively seeking to graduate from her virginal naivete by exploring the intriguing land of shadows.

"Pluto" is derived from the Greek word *plutus*, meaning "wealth." Psychologist James Hillman says this refers to the psyche-building riches available in Pluto's domain. Hades, he says, is "the giver of nourishment to the soul."





SEEDS ARE NOURISHED IN THE DARK

"Suffering can't be avoided," James Broughton told Jack Foley. "The way to happiness is to go into the darkness of yourself. That's the place the seed is nourished, takes its roots and grows up, and becomes ultimately the plant and the flower. You can only go upward by first going downward."

—James Broughton





WHERE YOU STUMBLE


"It is by going down into the abyss that you recover the treasures of life," wrote Joseph Campbell. "Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."





POETIC JUSTICE

"As is demonstrated by a wealth of historical examples, every form of fanaticism, every dogma and every type of compulsive one-sidedness is finally overthrown by precisely those elements which it has itself repressed, suppressed, or ignored."

—Erich Neumann





MAKE THE UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

—Carl Jung





My book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia got quoted by Marianne Williamson.

Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson posted an extensive quote from my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia on her Facebook page

Here's the piece that Marianne Williamson quoted.

On this page you'll find links to a lot of other material from my book that you can read for free.





GRACE EMERGES IN THE EBB AND FLOW

Pronoia doesn’t promise uninterrupted progress forever. It’s not a slick commercial for a perfect summer day that never ends.

Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow.

The waning reveals a different kind of blessing than the waxing.

But whether it’s our time to ferment in the valley of shadows or rise up singing in the sun-splashed meadow, fresh power to transform ourselves is always on the way.

Our suffering won’t last, nor will our triumph.

Without fail, life will deliver the creative energy we need to change into the new thing we must become.





PLOT TWISTS THAT DON'T RELY ON CONFLICT

Ursula K. Le Guin writes: "Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options.

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"No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing.

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"Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing."

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This book contains a host of short stories that escape the Nihilistic Netflixization of storytelling and hew to Le Guin's parameters: https://tinyurl.com/yyvchxee





A LITTLE BUT NOT A LOT

Experiment: keep checking yourself for irrelevant, self-perpetuating negativity and bitterness.

A certain degree of negativity and bitterness is sensible, even necessary. You can't stay healthy without cultivating a medicinal dose of the stuff.

But it's in your interests to cultivate just the amount you need, no more.





HOW TO HAVE A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE

The teacher Rudolf Steiner had a devotee who complained that after years of meditating and studying sacred texts he had not yet had a spiritual experience.

Steiner asked him if he'd noticed the face of the conductor on the train on which they were riding. The man said no. Steiner replied, "Then you just missed a spiritual experience."

My interpretation: You can expedite and intensify your education about spiritual matters by noticing the beauty and holiness in the most mundane things.

Also, this: Every event that happens is an opportunity to meditate.





YOU'RE IN SACRED SPACE RIGHT NOW

No matter what comes along, we’re always standing at the center of the world in the middle of sacred space, and everything that comes into that circle and exists with us there has come to teach us what we need to know.

—Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape





INSIDE INFORMATION

“What you seek is seeking you.”
Rumi





THE END OF SPIRITUALITY by Jeff Foster

My yoga mat has disappeared into the ground under my feet.

My ashram has become the coffee counter, a bad joke exchanged with the barista, a friendly smile creeping over a frozen face, and the whole world willing us along.

My temple is the shopping mall, the dentist’s waiting room, the empty meadow in the morning with its soft yellow light and virginal air.

My guru is the incubating roar in the belly, the melancholy of the evening and the hope and despair of raw existence itself.

Nothing needs to be added.

My enlightenment is the ordinary moment, this mundane experience drenched in the sweet nectar of my own attention.

My origin is the breath and the breath is my destination.

My lineage is the hungry cat greeting me on my evening walk, ambling beside me awhile, rubbing her fur against my shin, her fur soft like the cashmere blanket grandma used to wrap around us as the nights came in early, fur becoming skin, and the cat nonchalantly moving on to peruse a discarded sandwich wrapper, and me walking on.

My spirituality is deep in the earth; it is in the mud, the heat, the bowels, the awkward and the inconvenient, the cry for mother and the courage to penetrate unexplored regions of the psyche. It is the yearning for home and the happily exhausted return.

My bliss is nothing the mind could ever grasp, not in a billion years of searching.

My joy is simple, like those who have lived a full life and are ready to die.

I lie down in the meadow, my backpack my pillow, my hands entering into the silky, sticky grass, my entire life reduced to a single thought and memory and momentary vision, and then that is gone too, and I am gone with it all, replaced by the meadow itself, its soft yellow light and its clean invigorating air, its hope and its promise, its fullness and its mercy.

Do not look for me. You will not find me here, or recognise me if you do. I am invisible because I have become all that is seen and all that is known and unknown still.

I do not practice spirituality. I have been destroyed, deconstructed, de-boned and born again, reconstituted as man, formless as form. I have been recreated inseparable from this ordinariness, resurrected with the birds belly laughing on the electric wires at dawn.





Fate Bait

Sometimes we have a strong sense of what our destiny is calling us to do, but we don't feel quite ready or brave enough to answer the call. We need a push, an intervention, a serendipitous stroke—what you might call "Fate Bait."

FATE BAIT is a person or event that awakens our dormant willpower and draws us inexorably toward our necessary destiny; it's a thunderbolt or siren song or stage whisper that gives us a good excuse to go do what we know we should do.

Do you have any ideas about how to put yourself in the vicinity of your fate bait?