In the Realm of the Prophets: How to Slay a Dragon

By introducing a romantic element in the form of a dragon, representing the human passion for greed in both wealth and power, we can address the problem while avoiding casting blame on any particular person or group. As we're promoting a vision that validates both the maladapted and well adapted alike, we hope that those who've attained whatever degree of wealth and power, or wealth and status, will use their position to promote love for the greater good in its myriad of forms.

Furthermore, by using symbols to represent certain aspects of our human nature, we avoid the 'us' and 'them' mindset that so enables the dragon in its rationale, such as the stoking of nationalism. By casting light on the issue, it can enable us to see with greater clarity of greed as a destructive force; the dragon hides in false narratives as stated in the previous blog of September 22.

So how do we slay a dragon? There's only one way that occurs to me, taken from a poetic verse in the Biblical Book of Revelation (12:13):

They defeated him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death

Put another way, you have to pick up the cross and slay the dragon, as Jesus states according to Biblical Book of Mark (8:34):

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

The narrative of Christ accepting the cross is a narrative symbolizing a deep sense of love and faith, among other virtues. Thus to overcome the dragon, representing greed in both power and wealth, we draw on the power of the cross, representing a deep faith in the human capacity to love, though it may not be of benefit to our lives individually. This is both an internal and external human struggle for the best of our nature to overcome the destructive forces of our nature.

Does this mean we're fulfilling prophecy? That's what we're trying to do as we seek divine guidance in human salvation. But the old adage applies here: Man proposes, God disposes.

In the Realm of the Prophets: Rooting Out the Dragon of our Human Nature

Given the lamentable state of the world, it's a characteristically human endeavor to beseech the heavens for divine guidance. To appeal to God, or whatever cosmic forces there may be in existence, to give us the means in which to address the woes that continually plague us through the centuries and presently threaten all of life on earth through either environmental degradation or nuclear obliteration -- so we will and we do.

The predominant cosmic force that I cite in this blog is the poetic genius and how it relates to the course of human evolution. By citing the poetic genius in relation to both human nature and human history, my argument goes, one can then make a projection as to where we need to go as a society. The modern era has exalted science, education, and reason but has failed to contend adequately with human passions; thus we find ourselves in the realm of the prophets.

In the previous blog entries, I addressed the fatal human passion of greed, in both wealth and power. But ask yourself, who among us -- especially as Americans -- has not strived to increase their wealth and power, or wealth and status? It is our nature, to be sure, and inextricably tied to our self-esteem, our ability to attract a mate, our level of security, etc. The problem we must recognize, however, if we're to truly learn from history, as Thucydides invites, is disarming this passion from becoming a destructive force. Unlike Thucydides, however, to acheive this we'll have to introduce a romantic element.

As the poet makes use of narrative, we can insert a romantic element from western myth in the form of a dragon. The hoarding dragon of myth, whose nature is to consolidate wealth and perch on his position to instill fear across the land should anything or anybody threaten that wealth, is representative of the human passion of greed for both wealth and power. Here I'm suggesting we have a dragon to slay.

In the Realm of the Prophets: Discerning the Cause of War

The often heard refrain that history repeats itself isn't true; yet certain patterns can be discerned, particularly as it relates to human nature. Because the French forces under Napoleon were largely defeated because of its disastrous invasion of Russia, it's tempting to say that history repeated itself when the German forces under Hitler were also largely defeated because of its siliarly disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union (as the state of Russia was referred to at that time in World War II). While it's tempting to say Hitler failed his history lesson, the circumstances, in fact, were unique; the German Army, for example, was far more mechanized and capable of a decisive blow before the onset of winter.

But as we turn again to Thucydides, let us ultimately not fail our history lesson as we attempt to discern the truth about our human nature. This, I believe, can be summarized eloquently by Edith Hamiliton, excerpted from her book, The Greek Way:

It was something far beneath the surface, deep down in human nature, and the cause of all the wars ever fought. The motive power was greed, that strange passion for power and possession which no power and no possession satisfy. Power, Thucydides wrote, or its equivalent wealth, created the desire for more power, more wealth.

Why we find ourselves in the realm of the prophets at the end of this so called, "Age of Reason", to draw on science, is because neuroscientists have demonstrated that the ability to reason is inseparable from emotion. Thus we must contend with the passions that underlie our reason, including our rationales for war. Napoleon saw himself as spreading the enlightenment. Hitler saw himself as fulfilling a German destiny of becoming the master race. Here in America, we must guard against rationales for war that invoke the spreading of freedom and democracy when in truth, partial or otherwise, the motives go deeper.

With the onset of the enlightenment, it was thought that through education and reason, humans would progress. Since the onset of the First World War, that view has dimmed. We're in the realm of the prophets to discover that which can contain our destructive passions.

In the Realm of the Prophets: the Historian Thucydides and the Past Phenomena of Prophecy

The Ancient Greek Thucydides was not a prophet but a historian renowned for his chronicle of the Peloponnesian War. This conflict, between the ancient Greek city states of Athens and Sparta, would encompass most of all of Greece (or Hellas) and bring an end to that special time in human history known as the Golden Age of Greece. When addressing the subject of prophecy, Thucydides is one such "voice of reason" worth citing because early in his narrative, Thucydides strives to set himself apart from any entertainment factor in order to confront the truth of human nature, as he describes in the following passage:

And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element. It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.

While the circumstances of historical events may change, human nature remains constant; consequently, if one knows human nature, one can make projections based on models of human nature, and thus to some degree predictions. Drawing on the mythos, the poet can then symbolize either extreme by referring to it as either heaven or hell on earth. This would be introducing a romantic element that Thucydides clearly distances himself from. Yet in the subsequent paragraph from the passage quoted above, Thucydides nevertheless felt compelled to cite what appeared to him to be the phenomena of prophecy at that time, as excerpted below.

Old stories of past prodigies, which had not found much confirmation in recent experience, now became credible. Wide areas, for instance, were affected by violent earthquakes; there were more frequent eclipses of the sun than had ever been recorded before; in various parts of the country there were extensive droughts followed by famine; and there was the plague which did more harm and destroyed more life than almost any other single factor. All these calamities fell together upon the Hellenes [ancient Greeks] after the outbreak of war.

As Thucydides wrote his history not for the immediate public but to last in time, so we have a timeless affirmation of what appeared to be the phenomena of prophecy reminiscent of the new testament Biblical Book of Revelation and the unleashing of the four horsemen of the apocalypse -- but over four hundred years before Christ. But again, as I noted in the previous entry, it's not that I argue that one shouldn't be skeptical, I only argue that one should not be dismissive.

In the Realm of the Prophets: Moving into the Shaky Ground of Prophecy

When addressing the subject of prophecy, my position is that one would be right to be skeptical but wrong to be dismissive. Before getting too far onto the subject, it would be prudent to review what is perhaps the most notable folly among humankind. As I cited in the earlier blog of June 19 in how it relates to our ability to reason, the following quote from the writer Montaigne is partiuclarly relevant to the phenomena of prophecy:

But reason has taught me that to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the advantage of knowing the bounds and limits of God’s will and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to reduce these things to the measure of our capacity and competence.

As the year 2012 nears, because the Mayan calendar inexplicably ends at that year, interest in the prophecy and speculation about the end of the world as we know it has increased. Though one may not believe in a particular prophecy, the fact that others believe in it matters, affecting their actions and consequently your own: no man is an island, as John Donne put it. The prophecy of the second coming of Christ has particularly taken root in the collective imagination. But as 2012 nears, we should also note in American history what's referred to as "the Great Disappointment". At that time many nineteenth-century Americans expected the return of Jesus Christ in 1844 but, disappointingly, failed to show up, at least in physical form; and human history as we know it continues.

In the Realm of the Prophets: The Voice of One Calling in the Blogosphere

The importance of a projection in the outcome of human history is that it can lend the individual validity to their lives as they strive to shape this outcome -- if it is believed to be the truth. My problem from when I first achieved this vision, in 2002, to my present predicament here in 2010, is my limited credibility and means to express this vision. Hence, I am but a voice among many calling in the blogosphere.

Since 2002, my creative inspiration has striven to provide a rational argument, citing other recognized visionaries and creating a synthesis. But throughout I've been ever conscious of the limitation of both reason and the written word; consequently I've also strived to create something that can be conveyed through the arts beyond the written word. Sometimes I use the analogy of a new kind of instrument to enable other poets and artists, making it their own in some way or other, to create a new kind of music.

My revelations about Whitman and the soul came in what seemed a rapid succession that coincided with a spiritual awakening specifically to Christianity but also generally to an appreciation toward all religions. Having been an agnostic up to that point, exalting science and reason, I retain my respect for both science and reason, only recognize their limitations.

I also remain conscious of how a Christian often appears to a nonbeliever, that of one who's abandoned reason for the psychologically comforting notion of a life after death and a God looking out for us. While there may be that dynamic at play, to some degree or other, I see how Christianity can be a force to shape the course of human evolution and attain human salvation.

Following my initial vision and spiritual awakening in 2002, I began reading through the Bible. To date, having read through all of the new testament and some of the old, it seems to me the divine message as conveyed through Jesus is clear enough: love God and love each other. Our challenge is to realize it. As our path begins to take us deeper into the realm of the prophets, we'll have to move into that shaky ground of prophecy.

Poem: Tower One

The following poem I wrote in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11th, 2001.

Tower One

What heights
we had known,
story upon story,
borne of concrete
and steel, only
to collapse into
a crumbled heap
of smoldering
rubble, burning
jet fuel.
What meaning,
sifting through
ash and smoke
trailing off into
September blue
the reflections in
the broken glass.
What last message
from the doomed,
by email or phone,
story after story,
the three words
of the death bloom.
What heights
inspiring we'd
come to know,
story after story
borne of flesh
and bone; that is
the human story,
a message lasting,
and hope renewed
that lives in me
and lives in you.
At the cornerstone
of foundation new
place one message
that says, I love you.

In the Realm of the Prophets: Seeing through the Lens of the Soul

For the poet, it's less about attaining knowledge of the soul so much as being impressed by it in a deep and profound revelation of sympathy, a recognition of the human desire to love and be loved at the core of our being. Whitman, through his poetry, subsequently strives to provide vision and validation to his democratic brethren (in contrast to validation, the deeply wounded Rimbaud lashed out in derision). As the circumstances of my own situation enabled me to see, on some level, what I believe Whitman saw, so I became acutely conscious of the limitations of poetry as art to achieve those ends. Subsequently I've created a poetic framework through which the arts can be injected.

The soul is the key to vision because through its lens one can make sense of the present and project a greater future. Putting a more secular spin on it, one can make sense of the present and project a greater future through the lens of the primal past. Use of the word primal soul draws from a little bit of both the mystic and the scientific. At any rate, both heaven and hell on earth are projections of either extreme social-emotional climate based on models of human nature.

Our attempts to progress through education and reason often fail to take into account this dynamic of our collective nature. Our ability negotiate through reason becomes impaired by the myriad of collective possibilities of group identity; in addition, there is also the threat -- real or perceived -- of invalidation and the human tendency to acquire knowledge not to question but reinforce one's viewpoint.

Through the lens of the primal soul, human history appears in a flux between the individual and the collective. The arc of human history appears as follows: on one end, the collective spirit of a hunting and gathering society with the individual acting in harmony with others and nature; then following the course of human history, through its tragedies and triumph, to arrive at the other end, toward the eventual triumph of the human spirit in a global society of individual freedom acting in harmony with others and nature.

L.A. Times Commentary on the Communal Aspects of the Free Market

As related to the previous blog, the above link to a commentary by Jonah Goldberg describes the communal aspects of the free market. Yet workers may not feel as part of a communal enterprise, often for legitimate reasons. The arts can help enable the worker to see and feel as a collective by way of the promotion of the human spirit. Walt Whitman's poem, "I Hear America Singing" is an example of art that strives to enable the worker to see and feel as part of something greater than the self.

In the Realm of the Prophets: Reflections on the Soul

But what exactly is the soul, one may ask? A fair question that I can only answer inexactly. For this blog I use it in the context of a couple of definitions. It is that part of us connected to everything else in the universe; this can be one definition. Another is derived from that part of us which relates to the greater collective, the fact that we evolved as social beings in a hunting and gathering society. As I ever strive to come down out of the mystical to act in the grounded, I commonly use the latter definition (and also for this purpose, I often use the term primal soul).

It is often said that we are all 'one', that we're all related. While I expect that's true, the modernist probably doesn't feel that way, which is a reality that we must contend with. Yet there's no denying our social emotions, such as shame, love, etc. Consequently, when referring to the soul, it's on surer ground when attempting to construct a persuasive argument to define it as related to the greater collective in the various forms it may take (i.e., marriage, family, community, nation, etc.).

Because of our soul, because of our collective nature, because of our capacity recognize one's own self in another through sympathetic love -- however one puts it -- the cross cultural divine law as laid down by the true prophets to love each other as you love yourself is ever the optimum of human flourishing. The harm one does to another, even though it may be unintended or the circumstances force one into it, will still register in the soul in the form of shame and dampen the spirit.

As D.H. Lawrence asserted in his time, the mind can go wrong. It is common that the mind doesn't recognize this internalized shame. Also common is to feel hatred to another because that other in some way causes the mind to confront the internalized pain of the shame. But rather than confront that painful, shameful truth, the mind often latches onto an imaginative construct of reality that validates one's actions. But it only validates on the level of the mind but not in the soul. And ironically, Lawrence's life serves as an example of this and suffered for it, as I interpret it, for running off with another man's wife.

The essential problem is our consciousness, our worldview, our imaginative construct of reality, being misaligned with the soul. One may cite competition and self-interest as a motivational force in human nature and not be wrong; but as much of the free market enables, it should be a force that ultimately promotes others as it promotes one's self. If it fails to do this in any way, no matter how much one may apply reason, human evolution won't rest until a society is attained that's aligned with the soul

In the Realm of the Prophets: By Way of Body and Soul

Despite his methods, Rimbaud was clearly on to something. What I suspect put Rimbaud off course onto the path of the rebel is that his intense moments of creative inspiration follow a suggested sexual injury of being raped, inflicted upon him from miscreant members of the Paris Commune. This traumatic event is suggested in his poem, Le Coeur vole ("The Stolen Heart") and what we may glean from his life at the time.

Unlike Rimbaud, my intense moments of vision and creative inspiration strike in the wake of me being involved in a sexual healing, that of my wife as described in the blogs of July 21 and 22. In a highly charged moment of sexual and spiritual healing, I had the distinct sense of what Jesus saw Magdelene, attaining knowledge of the soul through a deep level of intimacy. This lends itself to further speculation but for those uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus with a penis, perhaps he only got as far as laying his hands on her and the level of trust and ecstasy was enough to induce such an event. One may touch someone lovingly but not sexually but it's a fine line. As D.H. Lawrence put it, sex is deep touch, and it's a touch that can deeply heal or deeply injure.

I speculate that Whitman had also been involved in a healing, but at any rate, his assertions of the body being inseparable from the soul rang strikingly clear to me. Lawrence, in his critique on Whitman, summarizes the position as follows, from his Studies of Classic American Literature:

Whitman was the first heroic seer to seize the soul by the scruff of her neck and plant her down among the potsherds.
'There!' he said to the soul. 'Stay there!'
Stay there. Stay in the flesh. Stay in the limbs and lips and in the belly. Stay in the breast and womb. Stay there, Oh, Soul, where you belong.

In the Realm of the Prophets: Attaining Vision

Back in 2002, while my prose stagnated at the bottom of the slush pile and my poetry writhed in work-shop writing hell – always more of a dreamer than a writer – my floundering existence would stumble into the realm of the prophets. During that period, working as a produce clerk at the local grocery store and taking occasional creative writing classes at the nearby University of Oregon, a confluence of ruminations and events would come together in a synthesis and subsequent vision. My experience I found to be not unlike Whitman's as he described it in later writings looking back at his life:

I found myself remaining possess’d, at the age of thirty-one to thirty-three, with a special desire and conviction. Or rather, to be quite exact, a desire that had been flitting through my previous life, or hovering on the flanks, mostly indefinite hitherto, had steadily advanced to the front, defined itself, and finally dominated everything else.

It is this feeling of a "possessed" state of ecstatic imagination and creative inspiration that helps lend itself to a mystical interpretation. Also worth noting is the sudden appearance of order from chaos as seemingly unconnected musings and notions suddenly merge together into clarity of vision. Upon publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, Whitman stated that he'd fulfilled "an impervious conviction, and the commands of my nature as total and irresistible as those which make the sea flow, or the globe revolve." In his 1871 seer letter, Rimbaud famously described a similar process as follows:

For I is someone else. If brass wakes up a horn, it is not its fault. This much is clear: I am present at this birth of my thought: I watch it, I listen to it: I draw a stroke of the bow: the symphony makes its rumblings in the depths, or leaps fully-formed on to the stage.

This mystical creative process that upwells from the depths of one's being, poets, from ancient times into modern times, have referred to as "the muse". But in his quest to become a seer, it seems to me, that Rimbaud went about it the wrong way, a way that he would later renounce. At the time he imagined himself as "thief of fire" whereas, as the Hopi Elders describe it below, it's more about submission:

True Vision is never wholly personal and by its nature needs to be shared. It’s made of the stuff of Infinity. Vision is Great Spirit’s way of offering us the opportunity to strengthen our faith by presenting us with a glimpse of the Divine Plan. Following Vision can lead to extraordinary results. Our confidence grows with ourselves and our relationship with Spirit and we empower our hearts to lead as we stand witness to the miraculous nature of spiritual guidance. As a useful servant of the Divine you access your visionary self by invocating, ‘Thy Will be done through me.’

Crossing into the Realm of the Prophets

Continuing our trail as we attempt to blaze a path into the promised land, our course necessarily takes us through the realm of the prophets. The modern mindset tends to have a split view towards both prophets and prophecy. One view is dismissive while the other is enamored. The problem with both views is that they’re too removed from our everyday human experience. While one side may fail to acknowledge and draw on a cross-cultural vital force throughout human history, the other side may strike a deer-in-the-headlights kind of gaze, mixed with parts of both fear and adoration, that impedes action.

To bring the two views together toward action, I propose a demystification process, bringing prophets and prophecy down to earth to some degree as an impetus to action, while suggesting that through this earthly process will we better admire and revere the mysteries behind it. Recognizing the limitations of my own credibility, I will cite “voices of reason” at varying points as we proceed.

As I came to the realm through poetry, it is by way of poetry that we enter. In the previous blog entries beginning May 17 through July 4, I attempted to convey my vision and ground the project firmly in the realm of poetry. In the blog entry of July 7, I articulated why it is we have to cross over into the realm of the prophets: the modernist exalting of science, education, and reason has failed to adequately contend with human passions, notably the passion of greed for both wealth and power, that threaten our own destruction.