I live with these myths, and they tell me this all the time. This is the problem that can be metaphorically understood as identifying with the Christ in you. The Christ in you doesn’t die. The Christ in you survives death and resurrects. Or you can identify that with Shiva. I am Shiva-this is the great meditation of the yogis in the Himalayas…Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India in the ninth century B.C. All the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other. That is what myth is. Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other.—Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth, an Interview with Bill Moyers Illustration by Ilonka Karasz for The Heavenly Tenants by William Maxwell (Harper).
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I live with these myths, and they tell me this all the time. This is the problem that can be metaphorically understood as identifying with the Christ in you. The Christ in you doesn’t die. The Christ in you survives death and resurrects. Or you can identify that with Shiva. I am Shiva-this is the great meditation of the yogis in the Himalayas…Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India in the ninth century B.C. All the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other. That is what myth is. Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other.

—Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth, an Interview with Bill Moyers

Illustration by Ilonka Karasz for The Heavenly Tenants by William Maxwell (Harper).

Each of us, as we journey through life, has the opportunity to find andto give his or her unique gift.  Whether this gift is quiet or small in theeyes of the world does not matter at all—not at all; it is through thefinding and the giving that we may come to know the joy that liesat the center of both the dark times and the light.—Helen M. Luke was a Jungian counselor, author, and frequent contributor and advisor to PARABOLA. She passed away at her home at the Apple Farm Community in Three Rivers, Michigan on January 6th, 1995, at the age of 90. Photograph: Hiroshi Yamazaki, The Sun is Longing for the Sea (1978)
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Each of us, as we journey through life, has the opportunity to find and
to give his or her unique gift.  Whether this gift is quiet or small in the
eyes of the world does not matter at all—not at all; it is through the
finding and the giving that we may come to know the joy that lies
at the center of both the dark times and the light.

—Helen M. Luke was a Jungian counselor, author, and frequent contributor and advisor to PARABOLA. She passed away at her home at the Apple Farm Community in Three Rivers, Michigan on January 6th, 1995, at the age of 90.

Photograph: Hiroshi Yamazaki, The Sun is Longing for the Sea (1978)

The Poet with His Face in His HandsYou want to cry aloud for yourmistakes. But to tell the truth the worlddoesn’t need anymore of that sound.So if you’re going to do it and can’tstop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’thold it in, at least go by yourself acrossthe forty fields and the forty dark inclinesof rocks and water to the place wherethe falls are flinging out their white sheetslike crazy, and there is a cave behind all thatjubilation and water fun and you canstand there, under it, and roar all youwant and nothing will be disturbed; you candrip with despair all afternoon and still,on a green branch, its wings just lightly touchedby the passing foil of the water, the thrush,puffing out its spotted breast, will singof the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.–Mary Oliver Painting: Prince Eugen, Swedish, 1865-1947, The Cloud, 1896. Oil on canvas, 119 x 109 cm.
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The Poet with His Face in His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

–Mary Oliver

Painting: Prince Eugen, Swedish, 1865-1947, The Cloud, 1896. Oil on canvas, 119 x 109 cm.

Keep death always before your eyes.—St. Benedict: The Rules: Chapter 4.47 One reason why Christian tradition has always steered me away from preoccupation with reincarnation has not so much to do with doctrine as with spiritual practice. The finality of death is meant to challenge us to decision, the decision to be fully present here now, and so begin eternal life. For eternity rightly understood is not the perpetuation of time, on and on, but rather the overcoming of time by the now that does not pass away. But we are always looking for opportunities to postpone the decision. So if you say: “Oh, after this I will have another life and another life,” you might never live, but keep dragging along half dead because you never face death. Don Juan says to Carlos Castaneda, “That is why you are so moody and not fully alive, because you forget you are to die; you live as if you were going to live forever.” What remembrance of death is meant to do, as I understand it, is to help us make the decision. Don Juan stresses death as the adviser. Death makes us warriors.—Brother David Steindl-Rast from LEARNING TO DIE, PARABOLA, Volume 2, Number 1: Death. Photograph: Stephen Weiss, MD, portrait of Brother David Steindl-Rast, Mt. Saviour Monastery, Elmira, NY
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Keep death always before your eyes.
—St. Benedict: The Rules: Chapter 4.47

One reason why Christian tradition has always steered me away from preoccupation with reincarnation has not so much to do with doctrine as with spiritual practice. The finality of death is meant to challenge us to decision, the decision to be fully present here now, and so begin eternal life. For eternity rightly understood is not the perpetuation of time, on and on, but rather the overcoming of time by the now that does not pass away. But we are always looking for opportunities to postpone the decision. So if you say: “Oh, after this I will have another life and another life,” you might never live, but keep dragging along half dead because you never face death. Don Juan says to Carlos Castaneda, “That is why you are so moody and not fully alive, because you forget you are to die; you live as if you were going to live forever.” What remembrance of death is meant to do, as I understand it, is to help us make the decision. Don Juan stresses death as the adviser. Death makes us warriors.

—Brother David Steindl-Rast from LEARNING TO DIE, PARABOLA, Volume 2, Number 1: Death.

Photograph: Stephen Weiss, MD, portrait of Brother David Steindl-Rast, Mt. Saviour Monastery, Elmira, NY

We cannot, of course, do away with our all-too-human tendency to discriminate between “us and them.” But so long as we remember that “they,” the others, are essentially like us—especially in our human aspirations and limitations—we can see through the differences and recognize that we are all part of a much larger cosmic process of evolution. From this perspective, our ordinary sense of identity is simply an obstacle to seeing a reality in ourselves that is beyond form. ―Stephen A. Grant: ENDING THE BEELZEBUB WARS: BEYOND “US AND THEM”: A plea for harmony within the Fourth Way from the new summer issue of Parabola: “Heaven and Hell.” Image: A Hubble Space Telescope photo of the planetary nebula NGC 2818, one of few planetary nebulae in the Milky Way residing inside a star cluster.
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We cannot, of course, do away with our all-too-human tendency to discriminate between “us and them.” But so long as we remember that “they,” the others, are essentially like us—especially in our human aspirations and limitations—we can see through the differences and recognize that we are all part of a much larger cosmic process of evolution. From this perspective, our ordinary sense of identity is simply an obstacle to seeing a reality in ourselves that is beyond form. 

―Stephen A. Grant: ENDING THE BEELZEBUB WARS: BEYOND “US AND THEM”: A plea for harmony within the Fourth Way from the new summer issue of Parabola: “Heaven and Hell.”

Image: A Hubble Space Telescope photo of the planetary nebula NGC 2818, one of few planetary nebulae in the Milky Way residing inside a star cluster.

I’ve come to the house of the Immortals:In every corner, wildflowers bloom.In the front garden, treesOffer their branches for drying clothes;Where I eat, a wine glass can floatIn the springwater’s chill.From the portico, a hidden pathLeads to the bamboo’s darkened groves.Cool in a summer dress, I chooseFrom among the heaped piles of books.Reciting poems in the moonlight, riding a painted boat…Every place the wind carries me is home.—Yu Xuanji. Taken from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (New York: Harper Collins, 1994); all poems are in English versions by Jane Hirschfield.This poem appearared in Gazing on the Truth by Jane Hirschfield in PARABOLA, Volume 19, Number 4: Hidden Treasure. Photograph by Weiferd Watts.
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I’ve come to the house of the Immortals:
In every corner, wildflowers bloom.
In the front garden, trees
Offer their branches for drying clothes;
Where I eat, a wine glass can float
In the springwater’s chill.
From the portico, a hidden path
Leads to the bamboo’s darkened groves.
Cool in a summer dress, I choose
From among the heaped piles of books.
Reciting poems in the moonlight, riding a painted boat…
Every place the wind carries me is home.

—Yu Xuanji. Taken from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (New York: Harper Collins, 1994); all poems are in English versions by Jane Hirschfield.

This poem appearared in Gazing on the Truth by Jane Hirschfield in PARABOLA, Volume 19, Number 4: Hidden Treasure.

Photograph by Weiferd Watts.

No, when the fight begins within himself;A man’s worth something. God stoops o’er his head,Satan looks up between his feet- both tug-He’s left, himself, i’ the middle: the soul wakesAnd grows. Prolong that battle through his life!—Robert Browning, The Complete Works of Robert Browning (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981). Quoted in PARABOLA, Volume 7, Number 4: Holy War. Photograph by Rodney Smith from My Modern Met.
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No, when the fight begins within himself;
A man’s worth something. God stoops o’er his head,
Satan looks up between his feet- both tug-
He’s left, himself, i’ the middle: the soul wakes
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!

—Robert Browning, The Complete Works of Robert Browning (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981). Quoted in PARABOLA, Volume 7, Number 4: Holy War.

Photograph by Rodney Smith from My Modern Met.

Even the most desperate theology does not shed easily, and having just turned thirty, the age of my mother’s death, I still find myself often trying to unravel religion from reality. A co-worker unexpectedly asks if I believe in the Apocalypse, and after so many years, I can’t think of what to say. Religion is a language I no longer know how to speak; all of my creeds run backwards like a river trying to return to its source. I do not believe that my mother was saved by death. I do not believe there are sinners burning alive at the center of the earth. I do not believe this world is not my home. Sometimes I try to imagine what Heaven might be if not simply a place to escape to. I have so recently begun to know the earth, to feel its rhythms in my bloodstream; I can’t help but hope that Heaven is not elsewhere. I want more time to learn how to love these landscapes that have held me. My soul has been too small and the sky is still growing.―Renée Thorne: ESCAPE FROM HELL: Growing up in fire and brimstone from the new summer issue of Parabola: Heaven and Hell. Photograph:  Girls exploring rock pools - Cameron Bay by State Library of Victoria Collections, 1909
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Even the most desperate theology does not shed easily, and having just turned thirty, the age of my mother’s death, I still find myself often trying to unravel religion from reality. A co-worker unexpectedly asks if I believe in the Apocalypse, and after so many years, I can’t think of what to say. Religion is a language I no longer know how to speak; all of my creeds run backwards like a river trying to return to its source. I do not believe that my mother was saved by death. I do not believe there are sinners burning alive at the center of the earth. I do not believe this world is not my home. Sometimes I try to imagine what Heaven might be if not simply a place to escape to. I have so recently begun to know the earth, to feel its rhythms in my bloodstream; I can’t help but hope that Heaven is not elsewhere. I want more time to learn how to love these landscapes that have held me. My soul has been too small and the sky is still growing.

―Renée Thorne: ESCAPE FROM HELL: Growing up in fire and brimstone from the new summer issue of Parabola: Heaven and Hell.

Photograph:  Girls exploring rock pools - Cameron Bay by State Library of Victoria Collections, 1909

There is no way on the spiritual quest to avoid demonic forces. At the very least the seeker carries them within himself, in the form of his own passions and illusions. At various stages of the path, he must confront and deal with each of them–in one way or another. As we have seen in the journey to Shambhala, Tibetan Buddhism accepts the existence of these negative forces and transforms them into a positive means of attaining enlightenment. Such an approach to the problem of evil has many perils; if one cannot handle the forces involved, it can easily lead one to commit the most horrible acts–and to incur the most terrible suffering. But it also holds the promise of the greatest good: the possibility of redeeming what seems the worst in ourselves and the world around us.—Edwin Bernbaum from WRATHFUL DEITIES, PARABOLA, Volume 6, Number 4: Demons. Image: Kalachakra thangka from Sera Monastery, Tibet
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There is no way on the spiritual quest to avoid demonic forces. At the very least the seeker carries them within himself, in the form of his own passions and illusions. At various stages of the path, he must confront and deal with each of them–in one way or another. As we have seen in the journey to Shambhala, Tibetan Buddhism accepts the existence of these negative forces and transforms them into a positive means of attaining enlightenment. Such an approach to the problem of evil has many perils; if one cannot handle the forces involved, it can easily lead one to commit the most horrible acts–and to incur the most terrible suffering. But it also holds the promise of the greatest good: the possibility of redeeming what seems the worst in ourselves and the world around us.

—Edwin Bernbaum from WRATHFUL DEITIES, PARABOLA, Volume 6, Number 4: Demons.

Image: Kalachakra thangka from Sera Monastery, Tibet