Wouldn’t it be lovely if, in 2021, we installed a president (and legislators as well) who had intelligence, compassion, honesty, integrity, humility, dignity, maturity, unshakable ethics; an individual who had an interest in the welfare of every citizen; who valued truth and made every decision based on reality and on the impact of those decisions on coming generations; who is more substance than façade; whose first allegiance is to people and the health of the land on which we depend; someone beyond the need to lie in order to gain counterfeit status; someone genuinely motivated to protect the vulnerable; who knows the value of relationships, of diversity, and of the land that we hold in common; someone inclined toward self-reflection and who accepts responsibility for the fruits of her or his actions; an individual who inspires our own compassion, generosity, nobility, and the courage to tackle our personal and collective challenges in constructive ways; someone we could respect, and hold up as a role model for our children; who counted wealth as the ability to give away rather than to hoard, as well as the success of ordinary people; someone equally comfortable and welcome in any religious building, as well as in a forest.

(Imagine a rating scale that evaluated each candidate on these attributes.)

One can certainly also anticipate the various interests and factions that would be threatened by such a person, and the smear campaign that would arise – but that would tell us something about them as well.

I suspect such people are out there and, perhaps, some of our current candidates might have this potential – or, at least, some of it. In the end, I wonder how we might need to change in order to call forth such a person.

Things happen in life that give one a different sense of identity and of reality. There may be social reasons we keep such things to ourselves like a fear of rejection, change in self-image; or simply an introverted temperament. (Introverts feel the need to internally process experience before involving others.) I’ve had such an experience and my first impulse was to quietly withdraw from my community activities and avoid announcing something that would create unnecessary attention. Of course, my family knew but, for the first week or so, I kept it even from my local spiritual community where I’ve been involved for nearly 30 years.

Even though this spiritual community is founded on healing and prayer, along with meditation and spiritual exploration, my first inclination was to not bother anyone about it. The few that knew respected my wish for privacy, but the distance I saw that this secrecy put between us soon felt as wrong as if I’d kept it from my family. My spiritual community is a larger family and I am a part of theirs. So I decided to come out of this particular closet that would have become evident anyway. After all, the people who care would welcome being on this journey with me. So, today, the minister of the spiritual center is attending on her well-deserved day off to make the announcement and lead the community in prayers for my support and healing for this life-changing event.

So, today, it becomes public: 12 days ago I had a stroke. The medical people say it was “mild”, but it hasn’t felt mild, having no perspective beyond my own. I must be careful walking so my leg doesn’t drag, and use of my left hand is greatly diminished, so to dress, eat or open a jar are challenges and take longer than I’m used to. I’ve always been self-sufficient, helping others where I can, serving my communities. In addition to just being introverted, I think some of my hesitance is that I wouldn’t be able to adequately respond to the attention that could come my way.

I’ve had to rely on my wife more than ever. My daughters and son have been digging up information for me and looking at medical reports. On the one hand (so to speak), trying to do familiar things has made me even more aware of my level of disability. On the other hand (actually, the same hand), I’ve seen some surprising improvement over the last week or so. On Wednesday and yesterday, I was able to fire up the snowblower and clear out the driveway. It may sound impressive but the snowblower is essentially a motorized walker and, when my leg dragged, there was just snow and ice underfoot, so it went along smoothly – but I was absolutely exhausted by the task.

Spoiler alert: political comments coming. I’ve spent a lot of time resting, and I’ve had time to think about a lot of things: the state of our world, the irresponsibly-ignored climate crisis, my mortality, the apparent randomness of “acts of God,” fate, individuality, and innumerable political issues. I wonder what people do when they don’t have health insurance for a three-day hospital stay and all the tests I had, medication changes, and the OT and PT that begin tomorrow; and don’t have caring and functional families or communities to support them. The national healthcare controversy has become very personal. And I’m very aware that I am lucky to have been blessed (read “privileged”) by generations of courageous people who fought for workers’ rights and benefits. It’s not a theoretical or partisan struggle: these things affect people’s lives.

I’ve also thought of my gender and religious nonconforming friends and family, which is why I used the provocative title “Coming Out.” The parallels in my situation are so minuscule compared to someone who has been given an identity by their society, based on externals. After all, internal truths are so often a threat to established ideologies and institutions that are, themselves, broken and dishonest. I’ve heard their struggles imposed by dysfunctional families, hostile social organizations, and hypocritical and dis-compassionate religious institutions. My “difference” is now excused from conformity and is much more likely to be met with compassion, support and sympathy than those who are judged and then are abused, blamed or exiled from their families. More than ever, my sympathy is with the rejected, the different and the vulnerable.

I’ve had benefit of prayers and good wishes from many quarters for which I am endlessly grateful: family, Prayer Chaplains, friends; from Christians, Druids, Shamans and other circles that will not be named; along with acupuncture and Rosicrucian healing techniques. I don’t think the Good God cares one iota about their religious persuasion but about what is found in their hearts.

I’m happy to hear from people but have limited energy for consistent responding.

Oh, and happy birthday to Edgar Alan Poe today.

Most of what follows is the text of a talk I gave during Sunday services at Unity North Spiritual Center on November 3, 2019 – hence some references to Halloween. To meet time constraints, some of what is written here was deleted from the talk and some added during this revision. It is a much more personal presentation than I’m used to giving.

The title of my talk was “Labels and Liberation: a Search for Truth Behind the Veil.”

I speak of two veils here. One is the veil between this world and the spirit world and the other is the veil of words we use: the labels, judgments, and the meaning we ascribe to people, events and experiences.

Labels are important, of course. You know how many of our Unity songs are revised to better reflect what’s in our hearts and our beliefs. Labels also shape our perception. They can empower us toward liberation, or they can entrap us as prisoners of our own definition.

I’m going to describe how I came to some of these ideas through nine chapters of my life – along with a conclusion. You will probably hear things my family doesn’t know about yet.

Chapter I: The Eyes of a Child

When I was very young, I saw things that no one talked about, including spirits in my bedroom and in the woods. Since no one talked about such things, I didn’t mention them. I just hid under the covers. The words or labels that would have allowed me to speak of my experiences were not available. (Similarly, years later, my younger daughter listened to a discussion about the aura between a friend and me. When we told her what an aura was, her response was, “Oh, I thought that was my imagination.” She had been seeing auras but, because no one labeled the experience, she assumed it was imaginary.) I was raised Lutheran and Lutherans didn’t talk about spirits. Nevertheless, my first career choice was to become a parapsychologist, but I didn’t see a career path in the paranormal, so I turned to the next best thing: psychology.

Chapter II: College, Religion, Mysticism and the Esoteric

I went to college in Baltimore, taking every psychology course Johns Hopkins offered, along with classes in Egyptology, and one on magic, witchcraft and the occult. Throughout those years, I attended three different religious services in rotation through the month. One was the LiberalCatholic Church because I liked the ritual. It was the old-time eucharist and had meaning since forgotten by the mainstream church. But I also liked sitting in silence, so I went once a month to the “meetings” of the Religious Society of Friends – Quakers – and sat. And the third was just outside of Washington, D.C. and is called the “Self-Revelation Church of Absolute Monism.” This was an ecumenical church founded by a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. One of their ministers later established his own church in Baltimore called the “Divine Life Church of Absolute Oneness.” These two churches had a couple basic tenets that appealed to me: one is the principle of non-dualism – that the world is not really split into material and spirit worlds. The second was that we are essentially divine; and the third, from the Upanishads, was that “truth is one – we call it by various names.” There was intelligence there.

During that time, I also took initiation into the Rosicrucian Order, which is also known as the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross, in which I was active for over 30 years, studying their writings in practical mysticism.

So, whenever I had to fill in a blank on a form labeled “Religion,” I was never sure what word to use, what would tell the truth. Was I Catholic, Quaker, Monist or Mystic? In reality, I was all four.

Chapter III: A Career of Professional Labels

Out of college and into my career of school psychology, my primary job was to apply labels to students based on psychoeducational assessments. Just by changing the label, from “problem-child” to a “student with identified needs,” my co-workers and I redefined that student’s educational trajectory and could thereby access needed services for the student.

A few years later, in my private practice, other therapists and insurance companies thought diagnoses were important – which they can be – but what I cared about most were the stories behind the veil of diagnoses. The stories had meaning that the diagnoses could not approach. I also found how frequently diagnoses could be misleading, but that’s another story.  

Chapter IV: Other Worlds, Other Lives

Around 1978, a friend took me to see a gifted psychic who told me about my life in uncanny detail – including those spirits I saw as a child. She predicted that I would have a private practice when I was 33 – an idea I dismissed as I had no intention of doing the work to get a psychology license in Maryland for private practice. She also reminded me of my long-time interest in hypnosis which, through a series of events, led to training in a de-hypnotic form of past-life therapy. A Los Angeles psychologist, Morris Netherton re-labeled what we would call symptoms as trance states and developed his therapeutic method around the idea that troublesome symptoms were the conscious tip of an unconscious trance, which opened a whole world of therapeutic application about which I wrote in three of my books. As the psychic predicted, I opened my office for past-life therapy in 1981 – at the age of 33.

A few years later, through a series of “coincidences” with bears, I slid into the world of shamanism. You can call those meaningful events “coincidences”, or you could label them a “shamanic calling.” Which word we use shapes how we see it.

So, now, instead of three religions, I had three professions: School Psychology, Past-Life Therapy, and Shamanism. I learned to bridge them with language – the veil of words. I learned to talk of shamanism and past-life therapy to child-custody attorneys and conventional therapists by using the language of guided imagery and psychoanalysis. By using labels of a language they understood, they could hear what I had to say.

Chapter V: Writing and the Paranormal

By the 1980s, my practice was in full swing. What I was seeing in my clients, in contrast to what I was reading about reincarnation, prompted me to write my first book, Living Your Past Lives, the first edition of which was published in 1987. So what now: I’m a writer? It may seem strange, but it took years for me to get used to accepting that label.

Also in the 1980s, I was enlisted to investigate a family haunted by numerous paranormal events and help them write their story. (Carol helped me with this investigation in Pennsylvania.) This family viewed the wide variety of paranormal events as one thing: the work of Satan. Things moved, lights went off and on, writing appeared on their walls, and they had moved many times to try to get away from their haunting. What they saw as the attacks of Satan, I saw as an unrecognized shamanic calling – something to be celebrated and learned from rather than feared. Their label created their experience.

Despite our differing viewpoints, we established a mutually respectful relationship and collaborated on writing their book called Lion of Satan, Lion of God. The name of the book comes from two different experiences of a tape recording made while my co-author was dictating her story. On playback, there was a few minutes of her voice, a pause, and several minutes of a growling sound. Since the Bible refers to Satan coming like a roaring lion, that’s how she viewed this phenomenon. One evening, however, I took a copy of her tape and sped it up until it was eight times its normal speed. At this increased speed, the roaring of the lion became her voice as she dictated part of her story. Incidentally, they lived then in a place called Lake Ariel – Ariel meaning “Lion of God.” I may have taken Satan out of the tape but had no explanation for the fact that something caused the tape, while recording, to run eight times its normal speed, which resulted in the “growling” on normal playback.

Chapter VI: Celts and Druids

In the 1990s, after three trips to Ireland, I began to explore my Irish ancestry and Druidism, and was initiated into the Henge of Keltria, which was a modern initiatory Druid order. I received a Druid name, was later ordained as a Druid Priest, and eventually served several years as ArchDruid. I was still a member of this congregation as well.

In that mostly pagan world, I found a frequent distrust between Christians and Pagans, but I had trouble seeing such sharp distinctions. In 2010, I wrote an article for the Druid’s newsletter called “The Pagan Jesus” in which I traced a number of what we think of as Christian traditions back to their pagan origins in Egypt and other cultures – traditions such as the virgin birth, the ever-virgin mother of god, baptism, miracles, the son of god on earth, sacrifice of the first born, the scapegoat that relieves the people of their sins, and resurrection.

In addition to my Druid name, I was also eventually given a name by a Mandan Turtle Priest. So, now I had three names and, from a native pipe carrier, a prayer pipe.

So, am I a Christian or Pagan? Maybe both; maybe neither. Who can say for sure and what does it matter?

Chapter VII: New Age Labels and Old-Time Religion

With the rise of New Thought and New Age teachings, I heard of this insidious thing that trips us up, interferes with our intentions, separates us from God, makes us fear death or loss of control; and they labeled it “ego.” The ego in the world of psychology is a valuable instrument of our consciousness. It’s the center of our conscious awareness and carries valuable functions such as information processing, containment of experience, looking toward the future, awareness of our boundaries, discernment of what is serving us and what is not, the ability to apply things that we learn in one situation to other situations. And they wanted to get rid of it.

Clearly my label of “ego” had a different meaning from that of these writers. In New Age lingo, however, it seems that “ego” has become a catch-all term for states of anxiety, irrational thoughts, false beliefs, unrealistic hopes, loss of control and unresolved wounds. I would rather call them what they are because accurate labels take us closer to the heart of the issue than the vague term “ego.”

This would not much matter but for the fact that, in thinking we must resist our ego, we are fighting a non-existent enemy while the real problem sits right next to us or within us.

Then, I wondered, how did this happen? What prompted people to pick up this belief about the enemy within called “ego”? What is this need to blame an imaginary enemy for our troubles? I concluded that blaming the ego is a substitute for the Satan of old-time religion. We are too “enlightened” to believe in that Satan, aren’t we? So, we cast the blame on the ego. Now it’s the ego out to get us. We have given a new name to an adversary from other times.

Ego is a Latin word that means “I am.” It is a statement of being, moreover, of consciousness of being. It has a job to do and is an ally of the soul unless, of course, we decide to make it The Enemy Within to replace the Satan we lost in our enlightenment.

The world of our emotions is another function often beat up by New Age judgments, but that can be a topic for another day. Suffice it to say that, despite judgmental labels put on them, each genuine emotion has its purpose but can be twisted by the labels we use.

Chapter VIII: Jung and Integration

Here in Minnesota I began studying Carl Jung in earnest – the one major psychologist who included the entire range of human experience in his theories, from soul to neurosis to psychosis to physical matter. He made the term “synchronicity” famous.

Jung had a series of visionary experiences in 1913-1914 that shaped much of his subsequent thought. The account of his visionary experiences, written in German calligraphy and accompanied by his paintings and interpretations, was locked in a vault until it was finally published in 2009. In those visions, he had conversations with all kinds of beings. He called it a “confrontation with the unconscious.” Some called it a brush with psychosis. A Jungian analyst told me she wished it was never published. Some claimed he was trying to establish a religion. All these labels were put on this man’s experience. Each label, I believe, reflects more about the observer than about Jung’s experience. In an article I wrote last year for the Society for Shamanic Practice, I called his experiences a classic shamanic calling. “They” took him into the other world; they talked with him; educated him; built relationships with him; and he brought it all back to his people for their healing and enlightenment.

Again, the labels we put on things and people reflect more of who we are than the thing itself.

Chapter IX: A New Label for a New Life

I retired from school psychology and retired my psychology license last Halloween (which seemed somehow appropriate). I’m still the same person with the interests I’ve always had, and still exploring what’s behind the veil of words and the veil between the worlds. But when tax time comes around in a few months, I will have to decide what to put in the blank that asks for occupation. What would be most true: writer, teacher, clergy – maybe something else?

The Persian poet Rumi also seems to have struggled with the issue of labels. He put it this way:

What is to be done, Oh, Moslems? For I do not recognize myself.
I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Moslem.
I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea . . .

I came to a different resolution and render it this way:

What is to be done, dear friends, when I do not recognize myself?
I am Christian, Pagan, Jew and Moslem.
I am of the East, of the West, of the land, of the sea;
I am of earth, of water, of air, and fire;
I am all these things, and no one of them.

Chapter X: Conclusions, Meanings and Becoming

So, where does all this leave us? We find that labels can be a bridge or a barrier, an invitation or a veil. If I put a label on you, I begin to relate to you through that label. It becomes a filter through which I see all that you do. Of course, labels can help us understand things and sort out our various encounters with life and people, but we don’t want them to rule us. They are tools, and you can’t use the same tool for every job. Liberation can occur when we acknowledge whatever the label means, and then set it aside to engage directly with the other human beings before us, beings with their own story, triumphs and failures, and a light they have brought to this world – no matter how clouded that light may now be.

The same is true for us: how often do we make judgments about what we believe we can and cannot do, what we deserve or what we believe it takes to get what we want? Consider some of the labels you’ve given yourself in the way of religion, status, experience or skills. Halloween is a good time to see if some of those labels – like masks –  might be embraced, burned, or transformed.

In closing, let me ask that we all be mindful of the labels we use, the meaning we give to our experience, and what we attribute to other people’s actions and intentions. No matter how accurate our judgment may be, it can only ever be part of the picture.

And let’s give the ego a break. It’s not some enemy within, but an ally that helps us navigate between the demands of our outer world and the revelations of our inner world. It is the threshold where we live in consciousness.

Imagine what kind of life we might live if we embraced all that we are – and named ourselves “Magic.”

It seems a funny thing to me, this phrase “Happy Memorial Day.” I mean, when people say it, they seem to mean it as a blessing or somehow wishing us well by it. But I have trouble with the phrase: I don’t see it as a happy thing to remember casualties of war. I feel sadness first. They certainly deserve remembrance, honor and respect. What troubles me is the word “happy.” What is happy about the war dead? What is happy about war? What is happy about government officials, safe in their offices, sending young women and men to protect the interests of multinational corporations, half-hearted service to other countries, or to save face in the name of national security? My main point here is not to try to discern justified from unjustifiable military action, but to question the notion that there’s anything “happy” about it – except maybe those who profit in some way from them. But there’s nothing “happy” about that either.

And then to make it a marketing tool as well: to “celebrate” Memorial Day as if we would want more of them, and at a reduced price. Not that I don’t take advantage of sales at any of our national retail holidays, but it still feels crass, like their sacrifices are being debased to a sales gimmick.

If we really want to honor those who served and those who died in that service, I would think we would do everything possible to establish the peace that we claim wars are to ensure, and to make those ideals of “liberty and justice for all” more than a cliché.

So, perhaps it could be a happy thing if the ends we thought were being served by their service came to fruition. In any case, I honor their embodiment of not only an ideal, but also the day-to-day, front-line presence to which they gave their lives. May you have a Memorial Day of deep reflection and honest gratitude.

In the late 60s I attended the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Psychology was my area of study, but I was interested in all things of the mind during this time of ferment with conflicts over racism, war, the draft, weapons of mass destruction, and riots. Among the turmoil, there was a thriving community exploring new and old approaches to spirituality through bodywork, yoga, meditation, ancient wisdom, astrology, the paranormal and entheogens. There were Rosicrucian, Liberal Catholic and Theosophical activities and a commune in a beautiful old mansion (that later included complimentary healthcare offices where I shared an office with another practitioner). The Aquarian Age Bookstore on Charles Street offered a wide spectrum of books and items spanning ancient wisdom to the New Age. The AUM Esoteric Studies Center offered various kinds of classes, including studies in symbology presented by notable artist Bob Hieronimus.

Bob painted symbol-rich murals on walls (like in the Johns Hopkins Levering Hall that was restored a couple of years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=46&v=MLkjzg3Q6PA). His murals were also found on the outside of buildings, giving a striking ancient presence to old Baltimore. And then there was the VW beetle and a VW bus – the Light Bus, named for a rock band called “Light.” (The bus was in front of the stage at Woodstock in 1969.) Bob’s work was sometimes incorrectly seen as psychedelic, but had a depth reflected in its expressions of archetypal motifs. It had meaning and, for some of us, it was part of a prophetic thread that ran from the depths of time through our then-current social struggles and into our hopes for a better future.

Over the following decades of my life, some of that youthful hope and enthusiasm for what might be possible in an enlightened society faded under family responsibilities and development of a career. And it has been discouraging to see so many of the same issues still unresolved 50 years later – progress, yes, resolution, no.

Similarly, over the decades, the bus was lost. Now, half a century later, however, came the call to resurrect it. A search for the original bus was not successful, but a suitable substitute was found and has been repainted like the original. (You can find pictures on Facebook at “Woodstock Bus.”) I found out about the renewal project through a Kickstarter drive to which I contributed with great excitement. It sparked something long dormant inside of me. But why did I care about an old painted bus?

I realized that something in me had been lost over those years since the 1960s: hope, optimism, connection to the wisdom that transcended transient cultures, along with expectations of a better world beyond war and governmental corruption. Yes, the 60s was a time of unrest with war, confrontation, racism, assassinations, hippies, revolution in cultural mores, but the future still looked promising. We had hopes that things could be better, would be better.

Fifty years have gone by now and I may have a more nuanced view of light and dark, but something very ancient remains alive in many of us and the Light Bus has become a worthy expression of it. At this stage of my life, I find the archetypal struggle between light and darkness to be about revelation and evolution, rather than revolutionary conquest.

The Second Coming of the Light Bus has been just in time for me. Something lost in me has been restored by its re-appearance. Many thanks to Bob and company.