Creating a linear narrative with a list of accomplishments in the classic obituary format didn’t work for me either. As an alternative, I decided to approach the exercise as if my life had ended that very day and simply write whatever came to me in response to the event. Here is the result:

obituary 12-11-11

he was a horse of a different color
he was an army of one
he was a stone on a river bottom
he was a bird that fell out of the nest.

he was an A student
he was the smartest guy in the class
he was a tax deduction
he was a paycheck.

he was a castaway
a fugitive
a superhero
a cowboy
a jet pilot
a soldier
a time traveler
a family of astronauts
a secret identity.

he was an alien from another planet
who fell to earth.

he felt confused a lot
he felt like he didn’t belong
he felt like something was missing
he couldn’t wait to grow up
even after he grew up.

he fell in love with women
who didn’t love him back
he fell in love with women
who lied to him
he fell in love with women
who cheated on him
he fell in love with women
who didn’t appreciate him
he fell in love with women
who couldn’t see him
or let him be who he was.

he lived for 15 years without loving anyone at all
(he never saw that one coming)
he kept trying
he got tired of trying
and sometimes he stopped trying
but he never stopped looking.

he wanted to help
he wanted to make a difference
he wanted everything to be better
for everybody
he couldn’t understand why people lied
so much and so often
when it took so little effort
to tell the truth
he couldn’t understand why people were
so mean to one another
when it took so little effort
to be kind.

he was a prisoner
he was a punching bag
he was a scapegoat
he was an exile.

he was a flower in a jar
a damaged romance
a beast in the night
a cave full of bats.

he put it all on the line
he gave everything he had
to everything he did
he lived at the edges of his edges
he fell many times
and was broken many times
in many ways
but he always got back up.

he was a sand castle in a tsunami
a beam of moonlight landing on a blade of grass
an erupting volcano
a still mountain stream
a quiet moment that passed
in the twilight.

now the wave that brought him here
has taken him back
he was ahead of his time
he was ahead of the pack
he was never sure he mattered at all
but he did.

(PDF version)

For reasons I can’t fully articulate or even understand, this poem feels incredibly personal to me and I feel incredibly vulnerable, almost naked, sharing it. I declined to share it in the men’s group the first time we brought our obituaries in for discussion, saying I was unhappy with mine and planned to rewrite it. However, there was no rewrite because when I sat with the task, nothing else ever came through, and I finally decided that what I’d written must be what I was supposed to write at this time.

I would still like to write that rosy “dreams fulfilled late in life” obit, and maybe I will at some point, but I guess I had to write this one first.

the windows are dirty
the doors are locked tight
the altars are built
of barbed wire and bones.

the wind blows through
the rain pours in
the bells don’t ring
the dead don’t die.

the child in the corner
looks for his shadow
his eyes are frozen
he cannot cry.

(PDF version)

forgotten animals
speak to me
in forgotten languages
forever preserved
in forgotten dreams.

(PDF version)

What I see in this drawing is an expression of the tension between expansion and contraction in the context of the ongoing struggle of the inner impulse to open against the ever-enclosing force of external constraints. In the moment captured by this image, that impulse to open, to grow from the inside out, seems to be more powerful than the external forces pressing inward toward the center, as the energy radiating outward from within shatters an outer shell that is no longer large enough or strong enough to contain it.

This is a color-reversed version of yesterday’s drawing. It has quite a different look than the other one and quite a different feel as well. Kind of amazing to see what a difference reversing the colors makes. They almost seem like two entirely different drawings when compared side by side, but I like both of them and would find it hard to choose one over the other.

This one is about 30 minutes old. The obvious and superficial answer to the question “where to?” is that I’m off to another day at work in about ten minutes, but it’s clear to me that the question (and the state of mind, spirit, and psyche) expressed in this drawing is much larger and far deeper than that.

I’m still kind of amazed to see the sort of information that comes out when I simply let the lines form themselves into images. Maybe from now on when someone asks me how I’m doing, I’ll just draw them a picture.

Today’s selection is another product of my ongoing experiment with automatic drawing. The symbols, which were drawn from left to right, are a mysterious mix of the familiar, the unfamiliar, and the nearly familiar. The title came to me immediately after the last symbol was drawn.

This was the 32nd of 32 drawings I made on the first morning of the daily art making assignment given to me by my therapist on April 30.

At the end of our last visit, my therapist gave me an assignment to make some art for 30 minutes every morning right after I get out of bed. The first morning (yesterday), I made 32 drawings in 30 minutes. I began each new drawing with no conscious intent to produce anything specific, simply letting my hand move the Sharpie around on the page and allowing whatever wanted to emerge to emerge. In some cases I drew with my eyes closed.

This drawing, which I have entitled “embryo”, was one of my favorites. The big circle was drawn first, with eyes closed. The figure in the center followed, with eyes open.

Today’s poem on video is “use everything” from my upcoming book Scapegoat’s Cross: Poems about Finding and Reclaiming the Lost Man Within.

This is one of my personal favorites from the new book and one I like to revisit whenever I feel like life’s getting to be a little too much.

For more poetry on video, visit my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/rickbeldenpoet.

My poem “winter prayer (solstice 2010)”, written and posted here on the blog a mere ten days ago, is the featured “Poem of the Issue” in this week’s edition of The Austin Chronicle. Now that’s what I call a quick turnaround from creation to publication! Click on the image above to see the poem as it appears in the print edition of the Chron.

(PDF version)

my dreams float
just below the surface of consciousness
like ice floes
drifting out to sea.

invisible as gravity
insatiable as imagination
they are the wings that hold me to this earth
they can take me anywhere
but they always bring me home.

I’ve written previously about the essential part that dreams and dreamwork played in the genesis and development of my first book, Iron Man Family Outing. Dreams are such a rich source of information. They often express and correspond to major awakenings in our lives. Today I’d like to share some of the basic ideas and strategies I’ve learned in working with my dreams over the last twenty years.

Recall and Record
The first step in working with any dream is to remember it. One of the best ways to encourage and improve your dream recall is to make a habit of recording whatever you remember from your dreams in whatever way is best for you, whether it’s writing, making a voice recording, or doing some artwork. Your record of the dream doesn’t have to be polished and perfect; the point is to capture the important elements and flow of the dream, as well as your own experience as the dreamer, as best you can.

Some folks have a hard time remembering their dreams. They may say “I never have any dreams” or “I have dreams but I can’t remember anything.” But in my experience, there’s always something you can use as a starting point, even when you’re certain there isn’t. You may wake up with a feeling, an impression, or an image in your mind. You may awaken with a vague recollection of a person, a place, or just a word that came to you while you slept. That is your starting point for working with your dreams. Record it somehow. If you do just that much, consistently, you’ll notice that your dream recall begins to improve and you’ll find that you can remember much more than you thought you could.

It’s best if you can record something from your dreams, even if it’s just a few words or sentences, as soon as possible after waking up, while the information is still fresh and easily accessible to your waking mind. For many of us, finding that kind of time in the morning is a real challenge. But even a few minutes of recording basic information, if practiced consistently, can improve your dream recall significantly and put you in a position to return to the dream later in the day if you choose.

Deepen your understanding
Here are two suggestions, based on my experience working with my own dreams, that may help bring you closer to your dreams and deepen your understanding of them:

1. Give each dream a title. This will be, in essence, its name. Naming things is important. Can you imagine a child, or a pet, or a movie without a name?

2. If you’re making a verbal record your dreams (either written or audio), do so in the present tense. This is a good technique for keeping your dream alive. It draws you back into the experience and activates your memory of additional details, both as you’re writing/recording it and later on when you read/hear it.

Every element (person, place, and thing) in every dream is alive and has knowledge and a point of view. Some elements are more articulate, are more complex in nature, and have more to say than others. But nothing in any dream is merely an object without consciousness. One way to gain a better understanding of a dream is record the dream from the perspective of one of the other players in the dream, i.e., someone or something other than yourself.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’ve just had a scary nightmare about being chased through the forest by a wolf. You’ve written out a recap of the dream but you’re still freaked out and having difficulty understanding what it’s all about. You could try re-recording the dream from the perspective of the wolf. Write in present tense and give that version of the dream its own title. You can do the same thing from the perspective of anything in the dream: the trees, the sky, the other animals in the forest, etc. If you let these elements of your dream speak for themselves, you will gain new insights you never expected.

I purposefully chose a scary dream scenario with a threatening character for this example because I’ve learned that the things that seem the scariest, the most threatening, and the most negative in my dreams often actually carry, contain, or embody useful information that I very much need. So there may be times when it is useful, before chasing that monster away, to ask it, “Who are you? Why are you here?” It may have a story to tell you that you never expected to hear, and a gift for you that you never expected to receive and didn’t even know you needed.

Learn your own language
I don’t trust dream dictionaries and have not found them helpful. They tend to be too general, too specific to someone else’s experience, or both. They also tend to take you out of the moment and cause you to doubt your own experience as the dreamer.

The language of your dreams is unique to you, but it has basic features that are common for all of us. Each dream is composed of numerous elements (people, places, things), and each element is composed of one or more (often all) of the following aspects:

* universal (shared) aspects, which are often referred to as archetypal
* cultural aspects (also shared), which are specific to a group time and place
* personal aspects, which are yours and yours alone
* contextual aspects, which are the product of a specific time and place in your life

At best, a dream dictionary might provide some information about the universal aspect of a dream element, but no element in your dream, or anyone else’s, can be reduced to a single aspect without losing most of its meaning.

Dreams are so powerful, so rich, and so subtle, and they carry so many layers of meaning that they can be interpreted and understood in any number of ways. I don’t know if it’s possible to achieve a 100% understanding of any dream, and sometimes immediate understanding is not possible. I’ve learned that there are some dreams I just have to sit with for months or years before I understand what was being said to me. Some I never understand, regardless of how much time and effort I put into trying. I’ve come to the conclusion that some dreams are not meant to be understood, nor do they require it. They simply are.

Learn to listen
Dreamwork is about listening. It’s about forming a relationship with the sleeping part of yourself. When you listen consistently and honor what you are given, that relationship will deepen and you will be given more. And that sleeping part of you will begin to speak to you in your waking life more and more, and you will begin to know, more and more, who you really are.

Focus on what matters most
As your dream recall improves, you may begin to receive far more information than you feel capable of handling. You may find yourself having multiple dreams in one night, very long dreams, or dreams filled with an abundance of detail. You may even experience all of these scenarios in combination. This is a classic example of a good problem to have, but can also lead rather quickly to feelings of being overwhelmed, intimidated, and paralyzed by information overload.

If you find yourself in a too much information situation, you’ll have to make some choices. It’s a bit like fishing; you have to decide what to keep and what to let go. So how do you go about separating the big fish from the little fish in your dream life?

One of the most reliable indicators of a big fish is a recurring dream or a series of dreams with recurring themes, characters, locales, etc. A recurring dream scenario is a big bright flare being fired into the sky to get your attention, and certainly warrants high priority in your dreamwork.

Sizing the other fish is a bit more complicated and takes practice. Some dreams will simply feel more significant than others, but even in those cases, some editing may be required to avoid losing your focus in a maze of details and sidetracks, however intriguing they all may be. You may find it helpful to develop some dreamwork shorthand techniques, such as setting a limit on the length of your narrative for the dream (e.g., one paragraph, three sentences, etc.) as a way to contain the dream and keep your focus tight. Another approach worth exploring is the use of poetry and poetic language, which can be a very efficient way to capture the most significant narrative details as well as the deeper information (feelings, imaginative elements, etc.) present in a dream.

Still, no matter what approaches you use, it’s inevitable that you’re going to have to let some of your dreams go, if only because of the ongoing demands of waking life. However, it’s been my experience that important information communicated to me by my dreams will be restated over and over, often in different ways, until I get it. So if you lose a big fish now and then, don’t worry. It’ll probably keep nibbling at your line until you reel it in.

Learn processes and techniques
Processes and techniques developed and documented by others can be a valuable source of assistance in your dreamwork practice. But bear in mind that not every process and technique works well (or at all) for every person. Your own experience will be the best measure of whether a given approach works well for you and is worth continuing, or not.

With that caveat in mind, here are a few reading suggestions that may help you progress in your dreamwork:

* Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert A. Johnson
* Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill: Using Dreams to Tap the Wisdom of the Unconscious by Jeremy Taylor
* Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams by Eugene Gendlin
* A Little Course in Dreams by Robert Bosnak

Work with others
One of the best ways to expand and enhance your experience and understanding of your dreams is to work with others. The assistance of a knowledgeable dreamwork guide can be a powerful catalyst in the development of your personal practice and help you reach new levels of understanding and appreciation of the information you’re receiving on a nightly basis.

Group dreamwork is another approach that can accelerate and deepen your insight into your dreams, as well as giving you the opportunity to help others improve their understanding of the dreams they share, and to learn from them.

Have fun and enjoy the ride
Dreams are a tremendous source of wonder, inspiration, and insight. They provide us with a nightly connection to the ongoing, transcendent mystery of life and being that is at the core of every human experience. Whether we’re aware of our dreams or not, they’re always with us, every day and every night, giving us hints into the underlying truths that lie just below the surface of our everyday existence. They can take us anywhere, but they always bring us home. So when you’re working with your dreams, however you choose to go about it, don’t forget to have fun and enjoy the ride.

I’m especially pleased to see “party girl dance” posted. It’s one of only three poems I’ve written in 2010 and one of only five I’ve written since breaking my right wrist and shoulder (my writing arm) in October 2009. The last eleven months have been pretty tough for me as a writer (and as a person), and there haven’t been very many moments during that time when I’ve felt that mystery element at work in me that I have to feel in order to write a poem.

Back in January 2009, I wrote, “Writing, for me, has always had the qualities of a trance, a charm, a spell.” The fall I took eleven months ago broke more than my wrist and my shoulder. It also broke the trance, the charm, the spell that had enabled me to write the Scapegoat’s Cross manuscript (and numerous additional poems) during the previous twelve months after not writing even one line of poetry in over fifteen years. Truth be told, it broke my heart a little bit, too. Well … a lot. And I’m still working on that.

So yeah, I’m very happy to see one of the few little gems that have emerged from me during this time get some visibility. It means a lot, and it helps me heal a little, too.

Expectations of forgiveness are unreasonable when harm is ongoing
I think one of the worst double binds that abuse and trauma survivors face is the expectation that they should forgive someone, often a family member, who continues to treat them badly. Often the nature of the maltreatment has changed from childhood to adulthood. For example, someone who was physically abused as a child by a parent may instead be subjected to what often seem to be regarded as more civilized and acceptable forms of psychologically abusive behavior as an adult. But the original underlying pattern of disrespectful, abusive behavior has never stopped. It is still ongoing. How can anyone be expected to forgive hurtful behavior that is still ongoing? This is a common and very difficult problem for many adult survivors of childhood abuse. They feel forced to choose between looking after their own well-being and maintaining a relationship with one or more family members (oftentimes an entire family system) continuing to perpetuate the same sort of abusive, wounding treatment that hurt them as children.

Forgiveness requires an end to the cycle of wounding
Sometimes the only viable path to forgiveness is to remove ourselves from those who continue to cause us harm despite our best efforts to communicate our needs clearly and maintain healthy boundaries. By taking care of ourselves and ending the cycle of wounding, we can establish a safe distance from those who have injured us, allowing ourselves to move through the old hurts and toward greater understanding and forgiveness without constantly being re-injured by new hurts that feel just like the old ones.

Forgiveness is an iterative process
In my experience, forgiveness, as it relates to healing the effects of abuse and trauma, is not a one-time event. It’s an iterative, multi-layered process that, with committed awareness of oneself and one’s history, unfolds over time. For many survivors, abuse and trauma were not experienced as a one-time event either, but iteratively, in layers, over time. In that context, it seems very unreasonable to me to expect that forgiveness will come as the result of simply deciding to “move on,” “turn the page,” “get over it,” or whatever other subtly coercive euphemism might be used to put pressure on someone who’s not healing fast enough to meet someone else’s requirements.

Forgiveness is an active process
Forgiveness of the sort of deep, longstanding wounds that result from abuse, neglect, and trauma is anything but a passive “love and light,” “warm and fuzzy,” “time heals all wounds” kind of process. Every wound has its own story and its own life, and many wounds are not healed simply by waiting and thinking happy thoughts. They have to be faced, entered, lived in, listened to, understood. They have to be cleansed with tears and shouting and shaking and all the other ways that the human body expresses and discharges the stored energies of fear and pain and grief. They have to be allowed to speak, to tell their stories in their own way and their own time. They have to be met and seen, acknowledged and accepted in all their painful glory as the wild, primal things they are.

Forgiveness is a sacred process
The place within us where we meet our wounds and do the work they call us to do is holy ground. It is ancient and eternal, beyond time, expectations, and schedules. It is the place where we keep our secrets, and where our secrets keep us. It is dark, messy, vital, and beautiful. It knows what we need to know, and it will tell us, if we’re brave enough to listen and to feel our way through to the light that knowledge carries for us. Battleground and sanctuary, it is that sacred space within each of us where we encounter grief, wisdom, and hope, and where, I believe, the path to true forgiveness begins.

it does not fear the lowest places
but rather
seeks them out
knowing that in the lowest places
water and sky are one again.

(PDF version)

The audio version of the interview is available from a number of sources, including the “More” page on my website, as well as:

The Secret Lives of Men at BlogTalkRadio

The Secret Lives of Men on iTunes

In the Media: The Secret Lives of Men on the APA Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity Division 51 website

There’s a lot of good material in the transcript, but there’s one section I’d like to reproduce here because I think I did a pretty good job of articulating my approach, my motivations, and my intentions with regard to my book, Iron Man Famly Outing, and more generally, to my work and writing as a whole. Here’s what I said during my conversation with Dr. Blazina:

“I think it’s important to talk just a little bit about the reasons why I felt that it was important to put this material out.

“The book is basically structured as a progression through a series of different experiences and emotional and psychological states. And so there is, in some sense, there’s a flow from beginning to end there, and I think that when people read (the book) they see it. It might be a little different than other poetry books, in that really the poems actually are very interrelated, and they work with one another to tell the story.

“And for me, it’s the story of a period in my life that was highly transformational. And I had the sense, as I began to pull this all together, that this might actually be useful to other men as a pattern or a template or a map to kind of go into their own processes a little bit more deeply, and to give them some reference points in terms of feeling, in terms of developing a relationship where they get information from their bodies and their dreams, and to really give other people, men in particular, permission to open up to this stuff and share it with other people, at least with people that they’re close to, that they feel safe with.

“I was really moved to do a lot of this because I’d been in men’s groups and I’d seen men talk about things in ways that I’d never seen men talk before. I had close friends, we never talked like that, we never shared our emotions with one another. It wasn’t safe to do it. So I was really inspired by that, and my first purpose in doing this book was to open a window into my own process and complete the process for myself, but the larger purpose is to give the opportunity, the permission, and as I said, maybe a pattern or a template or a map for other men that feel ready to go a little deeper into themselves and find out what’s there …

“Really, I guess what I would say is that, in probably the most elemental way, the book is about progressing toward, not so much a resolution … it’s not a how-to book … it’s more about progressing toward a greater understanding, a greater awareness.”

It’s a little rough, but if I had to come up with a mission statement for Iron Man Family Outing, for my writing, and for myself, that would be pretty damn close.

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

- Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion

I’ve been following the Deepwater Horizon disaster with increasing feelings of dread, sadness, and horror as the oil continues to pour into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico with no viable plan on the part of BP, the US government, or any other party for stopping it. Even if the flow of oil was stopped today, the damage that’s already been done is incalculable, and I have yet to see any comprehensive plan from any party for dealing with that either. Every attempt by BP to address the blowout at the wellhead has failed miserably, and the US government is completely paralyzed from the top down at the worst possible time as the entire ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, and all of the associated man-made systems that are directly reliant upon it, are put to their death before our very eyes. If the oil moves up the East Coast and into the North Atlantic, as some have predicted, or even more likely, if one or more severe hurricanes enter the Gulf this summer, the catastrophe could increase exponentially in scale as well as scope.

Those are some of the physical realities and consequences of the situation, but I also find myself compelled to consider the Deepwater disaster metaphorically, as a collective waking dream. In my interpretation of this group dream, the water of the Gulf represents the collective American unconscious, and the oil thousands of feet below the surface the collective American shadow. That shadow, which had previously been controlled and contained, is now gushing upward through the collective unconscious, permeating every level as it makes its way to the surface, to consciousness. This powerful mass of psychic energy, this collective shadow, can no longer be denied. It must be seen and addressed, in its purest and rawest form, and we must reevaluate our relationship with it, and deal with the consequences of our failure to do so properly in the past.

The corporate and political gods in America have been tapping and channeling our collective shadow for decades now, packaging it, marketing it, selling it, and using it to manipulate our deepest desires and our worst fears for their own gain, a process that has been greatly intensified in the nearly nine years since 9/11 allegedly “changed everything.” But playing with, and preying upon, the collective shadow of a people is a dangerous game. The line between controlling such a mass shadow for one’s own ends and turning it loose is fine indeed, and once it’s been turned loose, the illusion of controlling it is laid bare and the damage to the culture, its people, and all related systems (environmental, material, etc.) is inevitably and inexorably severe, as numerous examples throughout centuries of human history have amply demonstrated.

Every group of human beings, whether a family, a business, a political group, or an entire culture, has a shadow, just as every individual does. And just as in the case of an individual, the long-term health and viability of any group of human beings is largely dependent upon how it relates to its shadow, whether it represses it, manipulates it, or deals with it honestly and directly, and to what extent, and when. As Americans, we tend to want to look up rather than down, out rather than in, and forward rather than back. But moving in one direction to the exclusion of the other precludes balance, and always looking up, out, and forward leaves us vulnerable, as individuals and as a nation, to those parts of ourselves and energies within us that we barely know, if we are aware of them at all. Worse still, we may attempt to manipulate and control those unknown or barely known parts and energies, as if they were mere raw materials that are somehow separate from us, to be harvested and used until they burst forth into our lives and our consciousness with a force, and with consequences, we never saw coming.

Our shadow, whether individual or collective, is not evil and it is not our enemy. As psychologist Carolyn Kaufman has written, “Carl Jung believed that in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness – or perhaps because of this – the shadow is the seat of creativity.” Our shadow is a primal, elemental part of who we are, that part of our selves and our history, our very life and our very life force itself, that we have disowned and forgotten, for whatever reason. It is the part of us that remains unknown and unclaimed. We each need to know our shadow, to accept it, to honor it, and to accept the benefits and the consequences of its presence in our psyches and our lives in order to be fully conscious, fully integrated, and fully who we are, both as individuals and as a collective. I see the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster as yet one more very dramatic reminder that it is incumbent upon each and every one of us, as Americans and as individuals, to do our shadow work now, because I believe that to the extent we do not, what remains unresolved and unacknowledged in our inner world (individual and collective) will continue to find its way into our outer world in forms that are increasingly dangerous, damaging, and toxic to all.

Addendum (06/19/10): I continue to be extremely irritated by the prevalent and ongoing use of the term “spill” to describe the unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. This is not a spill. If I knock over a glass of water on the table in my home, I’d call it a spill. If a pipe bursts in my home and water is gushing out of it uncontrollably and spreading into the nearby houses for 45 days, I’d call it a flood.

“I’m aware of my songs. I’m aware of them because they’re about true emotions, true feelings, things that matter. And you don’t ever forget grief or joy, do you? They’re the constant companions of a human being. If you can coin them accurately enough, they will always be there.”

- John Lydon from A.V. Club interview, April 6, 2010

Beautifully expressed, and so very true.

Is My Soul Asleep?

Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that work
in the night stopped? And the water-
wheel of thought, is it
going around now, cups
empty, carrying only shadows?

No, my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.

Antonio Machado

These periods when I am not writing, when I seem to be unable to write, are always difficult for me, and I do feel at times as if my soul is asleep, or has left me somehow. Those angels with whom I was wrestling not so long ago seem very far away from me now, and I miss them.

We think there is a soul
We don’t know
That soul is hard to find …

- Joe Strummer, “Johnny Appleseed”

In the course of my lifetime, I’ve yet to encounter any external definition of spirituality that is adequate to encompass the depth and breadth, the totality, of my own personal experience. I was raised Catholic, but even as a child, much of what I was being taught conflicted with my own inner sense of what was truly spiritual, ethical, and rational (see “god at eleven” and “standing in line for confession”) and by age fourteen I knew I was done with it.

During my 20s and early 30s, my search for a personal spiritual path led me to read and learn about Zen Buddhism. I gained a lot from exploring and considering that perspective, and in some ways it seemed to suit me, but there was also a certain coldness about it that kept me from moving farther in that direction. It does, however, continue to influence both my thinking and my writing (“arrow”).

During my mid 30s to mid 40s, I explored several aspects of what is commonly referred to as New Age thought, philosophy, and practice. As before, I gained a lot of useful knowledge and experience, but once again it was a period of transition in my thinking rather than a destination. In many ways, my experience with New Age thought and teachings was ultimately very similar to my experience with Catholicism as a child, because once again I found myself expected to accept and believe all sorts of things as a matter of faith that were not consistent with my own sense and personal experience. (An article by Cat Saunders entitled “New Age Fundamentalism” provides an excellent summary of some of the issues I found the most personally problematic.)

Probably my greatest gains from my New Age period resulted from a twice-daily meditation practice that I maintained for over five years. Learning to meditate, the essence of which was learning to be with and observe myself, really elevated my ability to deal with all kinds of difficult feelings and situations, and my meditation experience continues to provide benefits to me daily even though I haven’t meditated regularly for many years.

At this point in my life, I no longer expect to find an externally defined spiritual model that suits my needs, and I’m no longer looking for one, nor do I feel I need one. I have no belief in any deity or deities, and haven’t for a long time, but I’ve always believed and still believe that there is a transcendent aspect (some would call it divinity) in all life. If I believe in anything now, it’s that life is fundamentally mysterious, that the true nature of the human experience is ultimately and innately unknowable, and that any supposedly all-encompassing explanation for it that anyone can offer is bound to come up short.

I continue to have plenty of deep personal spiritual experiences that I think it would be fair to describe as mystical but I tend to approach them on their own terms rather than trying to apply an explanation of someone else’s experience to them. My spirituality may be a “spirituality without gods” but it’s also as deeply authentic and as vibrant as it’s ever been.

However, having said all of that, I do think that there’s a great deal of potential consciousness-transforming power available to us in universal spiritual archetypes; whether one believes in their literal existence or not, these patterns embody and express energies and forces that are ancient and deeply authentic in the human psyche. I would also say that, regardless of our spiritual belief systems as adults, it’s still important to explore and come to terms with whatever religious model(s) we experienced as a child, because the associated symbols and conditioning are such a foundational aspect of the vocabulary and landscape of our psyche. I still have a crucifix on the wall of my bedroom for reasons that have nothing to do with Catholicism at this point in my life and everything to do with remembering and acknowledging various aspects of my personal history as a child. That same symbolism has also expressed itself in the title of my recently-completed second book, Scapegoat’s Cross, which again is not an expression of theology but of metaphor, personal experience, and universal archetype.

Much of my own motivation for developing an approach to spirituality that is true and authentic for me has been rooted in my need to come to terms with the events and environment of my childhood, and how those factors and issues have affected and directed my life as an adult. I think that, in so many ways, healing from abuse and trauma, whatever its source, is about searching for and finding one’s own soul, that psychospiritual whole that is somehow greater than the sum of all of its parts, that mysterious, uniquely personal link to eternity and to our individual and shared humanity.

Finding one’s soul is, in my experience, not a singular, discrete event, but a long process of many iterations that takes place over time. It requires one to learn new skills and to re-examine beliefs, conditioning, and perceptions. It is a process of collecting fragments of the self that were broken off and expelled here and there along the path of years, people, and places, a process of retrieving the lost and unclaimed pieces of who one is, and used to be, that may have become hidden and nearly invisible in the terrain change that comes with time. Finding the soul is about finding and embracing the gain that comes with every loss.

I’ve been helped the most in my own process of finding the soul by therapists and counselors who encouraged and facilitated my innate (but forgotten) ability to access, express, and own my emotional energy, which I learned to control, dismiss, and repress as a child for survival purposes. I’ve attended several men’s therapy groups over the years and grown enormously as a result, not only in terms of my relationship with myself, but also in the depth of my understanding of others. I’ve consciously cultivated a relationship with my inner self by working with my dreams, journaling, giving myself outlets for creative expression, and as I said earlier, learning to meditate.

I’ve also found it extremely important to reconnect and re-establish an ongoing relationship with my own body, which is such a valuable source of information about my feelings, my history, and my present. Bodywork (various forms of therapeutic massage) has been a critical aspect of that process for many years now. I’ve written previously about the importance and the process of listening to and working with the body in a piece called “the body is the gateway”.

I’ve been on this soul finding journey for over twenty years now and I know that I’ve experienced tremendous growth, healing, and regeneration within myself. But I still sometimes feel like a hamster on a wheel because, for reasons I have yet to understand fully, the external circumstances of my life have so far not reflected these very positive inner changes. I still sit in a little gray cubicle five days a week “doing someone else’s work … living someone else’s life” just as I was doing 21 years ago when I first wrote those words. And I still spend most of my days and my hours alone.

This is not what I expected when I began. I really believed that by doing my work, by confronting my past and my issues and becoming a more complete human being, I would transform my life. And it’s true, beyond any doubt, that I’ve transformed my inner life and my relationship with myself in ways too various and profound to describe in a few words. Yet my outer life, the life in which I spend most of my waking hours, remains just as dull, cold, gray, and unfulfilling as it was when I began.

I’m still glad I made the decision to do the work and make healing a priority in my life. I can’t imagine living any other way. But it remains frustrating and incomprehensible to me that I could work through so many of the issues and wounds that seemed to be blocking my progress in life and still see the most significant outer circumstances of my life unchanged. And I wonder, especially now as I’m getting older and facing all the hard realities that come with aging, if my inner and outer realities will remain forever out of sync.