On My Way Home With Ohiyesa

I found myself standing at the counter returning a book to the Spooner Memorial Library yesterday. The book I was returning, like usual, was a few days overdue. And, like usual, the friendly young lady working the counter waved the fine. As I was standing there I noticed to my right, sitting on the counter ready to be checked in, a small red book titled, "The Soul of an Indian." Since the title contained "soul" and "indian" I was automatically interested. Writing this I think it's interesting that at one time there was question and great debate amongst intellectuals in various institutions of The West if indians even had souls. Here, it's 2017, and I'm looking at a soul book by Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman). So after outwardly expressing my turmoil to the young lady of whether or not I need another book to read I decided to check it out. She smiled, laughed, and did what she had to do on the computer and in the system to make this happen. Moments later I was on my way out the door with Ohiyesa and the book I attempted to return in the first place. Admittedly, the accumulation of books "to be read" is becoming a greater weakness of mine. There could be worse habits, I guess.

Well, less then 24 hours later I am 15 pages into it. I couldn't resist the temptation to put down another book and pick this one up (another worsening habit). I had to know if Ohiyesa's orientation was in line with the worldview layed out by Daniel Quinn in Ishmael and his other teaching tool novels. I know, I know, I was warned by Jim Britell's words on the cover of Ishmael when I first picked the book up around the turn of the century: 

"From now on I will divide the books I have read into two categories--the ones I read before Ishmael and those read after."

Another book, this time Ohiyesa putting his soul to paper, that reaffirms Britell's observation. And to take it perhaps a bit deeper is its affirmation that there really is a different way to be ("B") in the world, and things really don't have to be this way despite the stories most of the modern mythmakers make up. Take these words of wisdom by Ohiyesa, the indian with one foot in the white man's world and the other in the way of the ancestors and ancients of our tribal past:

"In our view, the Sun and the Earth are the parents of all organic life. And, it must be admitted, in this our thinking is scientific truth as well a poetic metaphor.

"For the Sun, as the universal father, sparks the principle of growth in nature, and in the patient womb of our mother, the Earth, are hidden embryos of plants and men. Therefore our reverance and love for the Sun and the Earth are really an imaginative extension of our love for our immediate parents, and with this feeling of filial devotion is joined a willingness to appeal to them for such good gifts as we may desire. This is the material or physical prayer." (Pg. 8-9)

In a world collapsing into fundamentalism, literalism, extremism Ohiyesa's words, to me, are a balancing act, and perhaps a lifeline if taken seriously.   

Ishmael Forgotten?

The other day, while delivering a package to a customer, I told him I admired his statue of the Buddha that sat in a grove of pines just outside his house. He's a retired professor that spends a lot of time writing in simple but beautiful house just off the gravel road. We talked briefly about some of his missionary work, religious leaders like Thomas Merton, children, and writing. And, like usual, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn entered the conversation. I've pretty much resigned myself to this phenomenon that occurs in my occasional exchanges. It's a pattern that’s been occurring for close to two decades now. I presume it'll continue until I no longer walk the earth.

Once I brought up the book his face lit up and he said, "Oh, yes! Ishmael. That was written way back..."

"In 1992, the year I graduated high school." I said.

"That’s right. I loved that book. It's probably one of the most important books of the 20th century. Now it's sadly been largely forgotten" He added.

"Did you know," I added "that Quinn studied under Thomas Merton briefly when he was a young man."

"No, I had no idea"

"Yeah, it was brief. Merton thought Quinn needed more real world experience so he had him leave the monastery. He wrote about it in "Providence," his autobiography." I informed him.

"Well, I had no idea he had an autobiography out. I am going in the house and ordering it from the bookstore right now!"

And off he went. I got back in my mail jeep and headed on down the dusty mail trail. Just as I pulled up to the next mailbox a half-a-mile or so away it occurred to me the professor's assessment on the longevity of Quinn's masterpiece was a bit off. We wouldn't have been talking about the book and its' author and he wouldn't be in the house on the phone with the bookstore ordering the autobiography of the man behind the book.

These words on page 248, I believe, still ring true to these ears today:

What you do is teach a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That's how it's always done" - Ishmael, p. 248

In Time, I Find Time

Back at the turn of the century I was single, built a new house, hunted and fished a lot, and made my living as a logger and handyman. And in that time I also developed a habit: I used to visit The Ishmael Community multiple times a day. It's Daniel Quinn's official website. There you'd find, and still do I might add, close to a thousand questions he'd answered from readers, multiple essays and speeches, things for sale, recommendations, and a guestbook that he'd sometimes visited and commented on. I knew close to nothing about authors back then, and I hadn't been on the internet but a couple of months. In my world authors were up in towers and didn't interact with their readers, but here was Quinn doing the best he could do to make clear to his readers what he was saying in his books. In other words, he was a passionate teacher. So I took in as much as I could. I couldn't get enough of his teachings. I still at times find myself going back there. Oh, I forgot to mention another reason I was attracted to the community.

A guy by the name of Michael Time. Here was a guy that took to hitchhiking across the United States partly because of Daniel Quinn's work, and he'd post frequently on the guestbook about his adventures. I was fascinated. A guy that I presumed to be close to my age was going against how I thought a young and responsible adult like myself should be living their life. I really enjoyed his writings. Shortly after that I took to the road in my own way. I quit my job, locked up my house, pulled some money out of my bank account, and went and did whatever the hell I wanted to do. I followed my nose. Looking back I'm glad I did it. But sometimes I wish I would've been a bit more bold about it, sort of like Mr. Time.
Over the years since then I've often wondered what happened to Michael Time. Yesterday I visited Daniel Quinn's Facebook page, like I periodically do, and noticed he posted a short essay by a friend named Carl Cole. The essay (posted below) was really good. Out of everything I've read surrounding the resistance at Standing Rock this piece of writing really resonates and sticks out from all the rest. It gets to the root of the problem. After reading the essay I had to find out who this Carl Cole guy was. A google search later I learned he wrote and published a book titled: Feasting on the Breeze: A Memoir of Hitchhiking America at the Turn of the Century.

I found Michael Time.

Here is the essay by Carl Cole (aka: Michael Time):
 "If we go on as we have, with this understanding that the world was made for humans to conquer, then we will eventually conquer it. The planet will be broken, bleeding, and unrecognizable as the life-support system that made it possible for Australopithecus to evolve into Homo Hablis 2.8 million years ago. The same gently nurturing planet gave room and allowed for the evolution of the Homo genus to ancestors 400,000 years ago so similar to us we had to call them Homo Sapiens...us.

10,000 years ago, in a world that was basically a Garden of Eden, one culture in the Fertile Crescent adopted a totalitarian agricultural strategy whereby they took a piece of land, plowed under every living thing, planted only human food, denied competitors access to this food, and figuratively began eating at the gods' own tree of knowledge, deciding what deserved to live and what should die. This gave them great power as they took control of the land and resources, creating a surplus of food, a surplus of population and shrinking space for all this people and food. They began to conquer, enslave, or assimilate the cultures around them, eventually spreading into the Americas in the late 1400s.

If we continue to eat of this fruit of knowledge of good and evil then we will surely die, as a species. IF humans are living on this planet 100 years from now, it won't be because they figured out a better way to extract and ship oil, it will be because they are living in a fundamentally different way than we are now with a fundamentally different view of the world. If humans survive as a species on this planet it will be because enough of us spit out the vile fruit of knowing what's good and evil for the life of this planet. Enough of us will have changed our minds that we can no longer accept that humans are masters of this planet and more important than all the rest of the living biosphere.

We're not just fighting to stop this particular oil pipeline (Dakota Access), the fight is really against a worldview that allows for the destruction of everything we need as biological organisms in favor for the technology and mindset that allows for and condones the destruction of the planet as our greatest work.

Should those fighting for this most important cause abandon the technologies of the conquerors? Should only those who don't care about the destruction of the planet be allowed to use cars, cell phones, and computers?

Personally, I feel this battle to change the minds of those who choose to not see is of the greatest importance to the future of this planet and my children's ability to survive here. Any and all weapons we can muster in this conflict for how people view themselves and understand their place in the world should be used.

If everyone who cared more about the water we drink and the air we breathe than the oil we use to facilitate our civilized lifestyle abandoned their communication devices, this particular argument in North Dakota today would happen in the same vacuum that allowed for the genocide of this continent hundreds of years ago.

No one saw the frantic smoke signals of the past as entire societies were crushed under the boots of the not-see's. But it was certainly much easier to justify the destruction and genocide when we didn't have to hear about it." -- Carl Cole

Family Past and Present

This morning the kitchen table family conversation shifted to pre-colonial contact tribal life compared to our current way of life, which is a heavy dose of liberalism and focus on the individual. It didn't take long and I headed over to the bookshelf to consult a dead guy. I grabbed "In Search of the Primitive." I knew Stanley Diamond had something to contribute to the conversation. I open it up to a quote that I find interesting and potentially useful when looking into our tribal past.

"In the white way of doing things, the family is not so important. The police and soldiers take care of protecting you, the courts give you justice, the Post Office carries messages for you, the school teaches you. Everything is taken care of, even your children, if you should die, but with us the family must do all that. Without the family, we are nothing, and in the old days before white people came, the family was given first consideration by anyone who was about to do anything at all. That is why we got along. With us the family was everything. Now it is nothing. We are getting like the white people, and it is bad for the old people. We had no old people's home like you. The old people were important. They were wise. Your old people must be fools." -- Words from a Pomo Indian, pg. 145)

New Generation

The "new generation" isn't just those born at a certain time, but all of us living now. We can all cultivate a new vision.-Thomas Moore

I see Ishmael as one of the foundational building blocks of that new vision.

15 Years Or So After...

The other day I ran across this line out of "Lament of the Dead:"

"There's something very different about feeling that I'm being lived by a story."--pg.92

Yes, there is, Mr. Hillman. And that is one of the big reasons, I think, Ishmael had such an impact on me. I had no idea at the time that you could be lived by a story. Or maybe at some level I did, but it helped me to have it brought to light by a good teacher.

Next I ask myself why I'm thinking about this book 15 years after its reading. Am I being like Alan Lomax, the main character in Ishmael, and just hanging around my guru and not got out into the world to live my life with these teachings. No, I'm not. The soul, as Plotinus and others have taught us, moves in circles. It's not linear and therefore not progressive. I'll probably circle around and periodically return to these teachings for the rest of my life.

Ishmael helped me remember that the soul is immanent.

End Modern Capitalism With Good Books

Finishing up Thomas Moore's Original Self this morning. This quote has got me thinking:

"The way out of the dehumanizing effects of modern capitalism and industrialism is not to change the system but to read good books."(Page 143)

Some brief reflections: I didn't start reading good books on a regular basis until my mid-twenties. It all started about 15 years ago after I read "Ishmael." Given my lifestyle--unschooling 3 kids, taking care of a horse, a dog and a cat, plus 4 vehicles sitting in the driveway and a cordwood house to maintain--I barely have enough time to finish a good book these days. And I'd guess that I work at a job half as much as a man my age living in a similar situation. We've worked hard to stay out of debt. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't feel blessed. It's been that way since I started reading good books.

I'm also thinking of an interview that Derrick Jensen did with Lierre Keith on the Progressive Radio Network a few months ago. At the end of the interview she made a distinction between a liberal and a radical. What I heard her say is that liberals spend most of their time trying to change individual minds. They concentrate more on personal transformation. Radicals, on the other hand, organize and try to change the material conditions that keep them oppressed. They are not afraid of wanting to seize and obtain power...

Emotion

A life after Ishmael reflection: One of the effects that reading Ishmael back in the late-nineties had on me was that it moved my emotions out it into the world. In other words the inrage started to change into outrage. Reading Derrick Jensen's work then pushed it further.

"Emotions are mainly social. The word comes from the Latin ex movere, to move out. Emotions connect to the world. Therapy introverts the emotions, calls fear 'anxiety." You take it back, and you work on it inside yourself. You don't work psychologically on what that outrage is telling you about potholes, about trucks, about Florida strawberries in Vermont in March, about burning up oil, about energy policies, nuclear waste, that homeless woman over there with the sores on her feet--the whole thing."--James Hillman, pg. 12, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and The World's Getting Worse

A Dialogue Between a Couple of Guys

"How do I get out of this story* I'm in?"

"You don't understand, my friend. There is no way out. There is no program. You're a wanderer now."

"A wanderer?"

"Don't you remember the lines you read to me by Machado a few years back?"

"No, refresh me."

"Here they are: 'Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- Only wakes upon the sea.'"--Antonio Machado

"You're not going to go on and talk about the unconscious, dreams, the sea, Moby Dick and all that bullshit again are you?"

"No, I've got a building to build..."

*A story is a scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods."--Pg. 41, Ishmael

Martyrs and Victims

No post yesterday. I got called into carry mail at the last minute.

It's Sunday morning. I've found myself going through a few of the conversations in Lament of the Dead. I was hoping I would run across their conversation about Jesus banishing the demons to hell. I'm not familiar with the Bible at all. Someday I would like to find out where it's talked about in the Good Book. Anyway, I ran across a different quote that has stuck with me since I finished LoD last week.

"We're all Christians. We're all suffering the two-thousand-year curse that has been laid on us by what you all like so much, the early Church. As Jung explains to the 'Red One,' his devil, in the Red Book, 'Do you believe that Christianity left no mark on the souls of men?' Don't forget what the early Church did, a lot of murder, a lot of victimization too. But you don't have murderers unless you have martyrs. So the enjoyment of martyrdom is all part of the same sadism."--James Hillman, pg. 218, Lament of the Dead

I think this is why Derrick Jensen refers to Christianity as a victim religion in Endgame. To some degree most of us are martyrs in this death seeking culture of ours. Why else would we allow 200 nonhuman species to go extinct everyday. You'd think we'd take a stand. We're talking about the murder of life on the planet here. It's sadistic. And I think there is a level of enjoyment in it. I also think Ishmael and most of his other work is Daniel Quinn's way of working through the wounding of Christianity.

An Ancestral Question Answered?

I haven't had much time in front of the computer lately. Still busy trying to get two pole buildings built before November 1st, and generally getting ready for winter. Posting will be light for awhile.

James Hillman writes in Lament of the Dead:

"...the way I understand archetypal psychology, that you must always understand who is asking the question. The task is not to get the answer, the answer is who is dominating my mind, so that that's my basic question, who is determining my point of view. It's like a deconstructive 'I'.' You don't just want to get an answer. The real answer is 'Why is that my question?'"--James Hillman, Pg. 56, The Lament of the Dead

Another reason why I think I cried with a sense of relief after reading Ishmael back in the late nineties was that an ancestral question was answered for me. A question that my grandfathers were asking generations before me. Plus, I had just come off from living and working with my grandfather for close to seven years. To a certain degree I had an understanding of his point of view and inner struggles. And if you follow Jungian psychology those inner struggles are also mine to some degree. This is probably why I tried my damdest to get him to take a look at some of Quinn's ideas.

Teach A Hundred

"What you do is teach a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That's how it's always done" - Daniel Quinn, Pg. 248, Ishmael

We've All Been Abused

I remember a few years back, on an Ishmael related discussion board that I participated in, someone made the remark that they didn't philosophize from the standpoint of a victim. This was in relation to Derrick Jensen's work. At the time it made sense on the surface. But given the depth and subtlety of Jensen's work I knew it didn't go far enough. That Jensen wasn't just sitting around whining about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father.

Well, I ran across this insight by the psychologist James Hillman this morning:

"So we don't want to get rid of the feeling of being abused--maybe that's very important, the feeling of being abused, the feeling of being without power. But maybe we shouldn't imagine that we are abused by the past[For example, by parents, teachers, etc, from the past] as much as we are by the actual situation of 'my job,' 'my finances,''my government'--all the things that we live with. Then the consulting room becomes the cell of revolution, because we would be talking also about, 'What is actually abusing me right now?' That would be a great venture, for therapy to talk that way." Pg.39, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and The Worlds Getting Worse

The system we live in is abusive. I think this is the first time I've ever typed that.

That Gorilla Koan Has Got Me

The koan from Daniel Quinn's Ishmael:

With Man Gone
Will There
Be Hope
For Gorilla?

With Gorilla Gone
Will There
Be Hope
For Man?--


I recently picked this up out of John Daido Loori's Eight Gates of Zen.

"Too see is to be it. To see the koan is to be the koan. The only way you can see the koan is because you are the koan."--Pg. 99

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Quinn Quote Saturday

“Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidty, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

Dear Doctor

An imaginitive exchange in a therapeautic setting.

Me: Why do you think reading Ishmael in the library that day had such an impact on me? I mean it brought tears to my eyes.

Pscychologist: Perhaps it's because: "The Psyche can no longer be held by its old containers of Christian culture."--[James Hillman Pg.218, Revisioning Psychology]

Fictions

This explains while I'll get a "handle" on what Ishmael had to say: "Fictions are not suppose to have great explanatory power, so they do not settle things for a mind searching for fixity. But they do provide a resting place for a mind searching for ambiguity and depth. In other words, fictions satisfy the aesthetic, religious, and speculative imagination more than they do the intellect."--Pg. 151, Revisioning Psychology

A Life After Ishmael Reflection

A life after Ishmael reflection. I ran across this quote while reading Re-Visioning Pschology early this morning.

"Ideas remain impractical when we have not grasped or been grasped by them. When we do not get an idea, we ask 'how' to put it in practice, thereby trying to turn insights of the soul into actions of the ego. But when an insight or idea has sunk in, practice invisibly changes. The idea has opened the eye of the soul. By seeing differently, we do differently. Then 'how' is implicitly taken care of. 'How?' disappears as the idea sinks in--as one reflects upon it rather than on how to do something with it. This movement of grasping ideas is vertical or inward rather than horizontal or outward into the realm of doing something. The only legitimate 'How?' in regard to these psychological insights is: 'How can I grasp an idea?'" Pg.122, Re-Visioning Psychology

This quote resonated with me because there are times when I get confused when trying to understand action and ideas. I often ask myself: Is my thirst for ideas an excuse not to act? Or to put it another way if I acted more would I be so interested in ideas? [Paragraph break. I have no idea why the paragraphs will not publish with a space. When I get some time I'll figure it out]Here is another idea that I got from Quinn's work: The primary function of schooling is to keep kids off from the job market. That's one of the reasons why we don't send our 13 yr. old son to school. He also tried to go to school when he was young and did not like it, and he doesn't have any interest in going back.

A Brief Reflection on the Gods

After spending some time with James Hillman's work I'm starting to understand why I got hung up on Daniel Quinn's use of the term gods in Ishmael. I'm sure the hang up is because I was trying to think of them literally when I should have been thinking of them imaginatively. I was questioning their existence or nonexistence. Thinking of them imaginatively simply expands one vision.

Quinn Quote Saturday

“We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.”― Daniel Quinn out of Ishmael