SPIRIT IN ACTION

     When we used to trip together, back in the sixties and early seventies, we found it easy to be completely honest with one another. We called it being acid honest. Because we were all so whole and unafraid when we were tripping, we came to feel really good about ourselves and each other. There was no reason for any of us to fear the truth. We had already faced it when we were tripping. We had all left our egos behind, and, because of this we became telepathic with one another - and spiritually connected in other ways too.
     This led to a great openness among those of us who were tripping together. This openness extended past the times we were together. One night in Berkeley, I was thinking about Chris. He and I had recently tripped together a few times. I picked up the phone to call him. Before I had even dialed his number, I heard him on the line saying, "hi Eugene," knowing it was me on the other end. He had been calling me just as I was calling him. We seemed to have by-passed the phone company.
     Another time, passing through Boulder, Colorado, I traded some of my stash with these two brothers who were traveling east. They were hitchhiking. I was with Karen then, and she and I were heading east ourselves. We were in our old hippie van. When the four of us parted, we all wished each happy trails and said "see you around maybe." Then we all took off.
     On our way east, just as I was parking the van in Lawrence, Kansas to get some food, they walked by. Several days later, in Columbia, Missouri, the good folks who ran the natural foods restaurant in town there invited us out to their farm for a visit. When we got there, they told us about these two brothers who were camping out in back. Yeah, it was our friends again. We ran into them one last time at The Farm down in Southern Tennessee. We were all deeply connected without even trying.
     Years later, Aspen and I flew into St. Louis, took a train south, then a bus. We didn't know how we'd travel the rest of the way, but we were going to the Rainbow Gathering - Aspen's first. But then, just as soon as we got off the bus, we were offered a ride straight to the gathering. The good brother who gave us the ride was someone I had met on The Farm when I'd been there years before, when I last saw the two brothers. In the gathering parking lot, when my old Farm friend stopped to let us out, the same two brothers just happened to be standing there, waiting, they said, to take us in to their camp. We sure enjoyed our time with them.

     After I had done acid awhile, I realized that I no longer needed to be in Jungian Analysis as I had been for over ten years. I no longer needed a therapist's help to work on my head. I still wanted to become more conscious and whole. But I saw that I could do it on my own. I have been doing it ever since then too, and I continue to grow in consciousness. I knew that there are very few of us who do this. Most of us are either still in therapy or have some sort of guru or else just watch TV and try to stay numb. We have given our world over to the professionals. We are no longer being responsible for our own lives, let alone the flow of events in the larger world. This cannot go on.
     In these times of spiritual death and rebirth, we all need to turn off our therapists and our gurus and our TVs and sit around our kitchen tables instead, doing kitchen table holy work with our families and friends. We need to tell our stories and help each other to tell theirs too. We need to share our dreams - and not just around our kitchen tables or in our more structured dream circles either. We need to share them everywhere, whenever they are relevant, with whomever we are connecting with at the moment. We need to encourage other folks to share their dreams too.
     We need to become a cadre of folks kitchen tabling together. We need to become a loosely knit spiritual confederation of folks who are becoming more conscious and responsible and who are thus able to connect to themselves and others openly and honestly. Then we can all spread out from our kitchen tables into the world.

     Our world, our Mother Earth, is in crisis. She is alive. She is conscious, and she is trying to give birth. She needs all the help we can give her. Our collective consciousness is coming apart at the seams too. We need to move quickly past this time of blind fear and hate and violence. We need to revitalize and raise the level of our collective spirituality that has become dim and confused from the intense fear and anger that is gripping us all.
     We need to find a way for all of us to live together in peace and harmony. It is possible. We can do it. We just have to stop thinking about ourselves and our individual desires. Instead, we have to let go of our egos and their attachments and look about us. We have to see what is really going on in the world. Once we have done this, it will be obvious what needs to be done.
     Imagine that we are all on a spaceship together, one maybe like Star Trek's Enterprise. Call it Spaceship Earth. Now imagine that all the officers and much of the crew are spiritually lost, depressed and are acting out an unconscious but potent death wish - called Armageddon, the End of Days. Imagine also that they are actually planning on taking the rest of us with them when they finally do act it out.
     Now, if we were on this spaceship and in this situation - and we are really - our personal goals and attachments would no longer be relevant. What we would want for ourselves would no longer be of any importance. Not today, not when we are faced with another major world war, this one over ancient and no longer relevant differences between the three major monotheistic religions. Not today, not when we are faced with innumerable ecological disasters of our own making, with no idea at all on how to deal with them. Instead we need to let go of all of our personal goals and attachments and see what Spirit wants of us. We are already in way over our heads. We need to listen to Spirit. We have to stop focusing upon our own little lives and look around us. We have to.
     We definitely have to stop thinking of ourselves. We have to let go of our petty little egos with all their unimportant needs. We have to focus instead upon the spiritual rebirth that will happen if and only if enough of us find our true selves and are able to stay conscious and responsible through the changes ahead. Mother Nature needs our help. Our collective consciousness needs our help. We can do it.

     Long ago I decided to live the life of my soul. I still am. Most of us live the life of the ego - with all its structure and purpose. We don't need to. In fact, if we continue to do so, we will never be able to open up to Spirit. We will never become spiritually united. But we can let go of our attachment to the ego and its ways. We can live instead the life of the soul. And, of course, once we have done this, we will continue to use our egos, as I do still. But now, instead of using them in a vain attempt to control our reality, we will use them to help us to actualize and to live the life of our souls.
     Various folks call the ego by different names. Castaneda's Don Juan called it fear, the first enemy of mankind. Doris Lessing, in her awesome book, The Four-Gated City, called it the self-hater. She saw it as a psychological space one had to pass through on their way to soul. Jung saw it as the Shadow. Bhawan Shree Rajneesh called it the mind.
     When I was trying to free myself from my parental and societal conditioning, I called it Granny. Granny was born of my fear. Granny felt that she was protecting me from the scary world. However, I finally came to see that she was keeping me from really living in it. She called herself my guardian, but I came to see that she was my guard, keeping me locked in the prison of my mind. One day, I leaped over her walls, dove into the stormy seas below and swam to shore. I've been here ever since.

     There are many ways to find our souls. There are many ways to manifest Spirit in our actions and in our everyday lives. However, it all comes down to letting go of our attachments to our egos and their uses. In the end, we each have to become empty and surrender space to Spirit. But then, once we have done this, once we have become empty enough of ego to pass through the eye of the needle, we will come to a place of wisdom and power, a place where we may know God-Consciousness, a place we may call Home.

Eugene Marks