Quest Magazine

By Jay Kinney

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Kinney, Jay. "Losing My Religion." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 86-89.

Before 9/11, I liked to consider myself a defender of Islam. I never formally converted to Islam and my adherence to sharia (the Muslim code of behavior) was lax at best, but I spent twenty years as a publisher and writer on spiritual affairs visiting Turkey and attending interfaith events, trying to encourage a deeper understanding of Islam in the West. I grew to view the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as one in essence, and ultimately reconcilable and complementary. While I was certainly aware of the fundamentalist camps within these three religions, I enjoyed the luxury of keeping their proponents at a safe distance from my little oasis of tolerance.

And then the World Trade Center buildings came tumbling down, obliterating my oasis.

While I disagree with those who immediately declared that "nothing will ever be the same again," the hijackings and attacks did thrust Islamist terrorism into the limelight and seemed to bolster claims that a "clash of civilizations"—of Islam versus the West—was under way.

However, such notions differed so profoundly from what I had experienced at street level in Turkey and Morocco that I had to call my own perceptions into question. Had I been living in a protected fantasy world where ordinary Muslims' enthusiasm for soccer and pop music had masked their covert "hatred of our freedoms"? Was their eagerness to point out their respect for all "people of the book" mere camouflage for dreams of conquest? I certainly didn't think so, but what I thought was increasingly beside the point. My arena of acquaintance had failed to encompass the more severe terrain of the Gaza strip or the sectarian enclaves in Baghdad, where a mix of Islamic fervor, nationalist resistance, and personal humiliation seemed to result in a steady stream of willing "martyrs."

As the scholar Edward Said was at pains to point out, the notion of a single Islam or Islamic civilization is a misconception. There are many Islams and Islamic cultures, and assuming they share one opinion is misguided.

Still, the Islamists—however few there actually were—and their ready opponents, the anti-Islamists, had hijacked the public discourse about Islam and the West and turned it into a deadly Punch and Judy show. Now, two wars later and counting, it appears that both camps have done their utmost to sell the "clash" to their respective audiences.

As often happens when one is forced to choose sides, the multitude of things in common and the shared humanity of all concerned are replaced by hostile caricatures that feed each other's fears. The battle against the "evildoers" of the other side serves to justify the evildoing of one's own.

Unfortunately, in my own case, despite my conscious refusal to accept the Islamists' version of Islam, which I took to be a set of largely political and sociological grievances overlaid with a few Qur'anic quotes and fatwas, I discovered that my unconscious psyche had its own say in the matter.

I found it increasingly hard to call God "Allah" when suicide bombers were running at their victims while yelling "Allahu akbar [Allah is great!]!" Worse still, I found my appreciation for Islam's greatest mystics and poets—surely a peaceable bunch if there ever was one—eroded by their shared religious affiliation with hysterical bands of fanatics willing to demolish each other's mosques in the name of some sectarian point that eluded me.

The damage was gradual, like dry rot, but damage it was. Like a bystander to the Spanish Inquisition with my own sins to hide, I felt an enormous compulsion to run in the opposite direction, horrified by the bloody spectacle of a religion gone awry.

Were these the ironic fruits of the Islamists' cause? To drive away anyone sympathetic to Islam, and to bully into mute acquiescence those of their own faith, the everyday believers with no axes to grind?

I don't normally pay much attention to the unseen, but I found myself wondering whether a whole swath of radical Islamists hadn't been possessed by a particularly mischievous and virulent herd of jinns intent on wreaking as much havoc as possible. It seemed as good an explanation as any for the moral devastation of sending car bombs into funerals and wedding parties or encouraging fervent "human bombs" to explode themselves in markets.

Yet a still small voice inside me—presumably not that of a jinn—continued to remind me that as tempting as it is to blame a whole religion for the misdeeds of its most extreme exponents, to do so is an injustice—as is blaming all Americans for the misdeeds of those few who act in their name.

Indeed, the question of justice and injustice may lie at the heart of this conundrum. For it is the perception of injustice visited upon the Islamic world by the West that fuels the rage of Islamism. In presuming to fight injustice, the holy warriors and martyrs place themselves in the cause of justice. They assume, as do most religious fighters, that they are on the side of God, who will reward them in the hereafter. As one young volunteer for martyrdom was quoted as saying, "By pressing the detonator, you can immediately open the door to Paradise—it is the shortest path to Heaven."

However, it is a fool's justice that presumes to right one wrong by committing further wrongs. Solomon may have threatened to cut the disputed baby in two as a just resolution for competing claims, but it was only a tactic to discover the baby's true mother. Had the threat not succeeded, the wise ruler would have lowered his scimitar, left the baby unharmed, and sought another way to see justice done.

According to Islam, justice ultimately resides with Allah, and any human attempt at justice is but a poor facsimile and one that should err on the side of mercy. Unfortunately, we see time and again that fundamentalist versions of religions—and not just Islam—serve as magnets for people whose personalities seem to demand the security of a black-and-white worldview.

The satisfaction of moral certainty that comes from unwavering definitions of right and wrong too often translates into a preoccupation with punishing those who fail to measure up. By contrast, the practice of mercy and compassion requires one to not only see things through the eyes of others, but to entertain the possibility that one's own judgment might be flawed. This needn't entail moral abdication or turning a blind eye to outrages, but simply the recognition that absolute certainty is best left to the Absolute.

The Qur'an itself contains a remarkable passage (18:60-82) that teaches caution in judging others. Tellingly, it involves Moses, the great lawgiver.

Moses sets out on a journey with a mysterious figure commonly identified as Khidr, a kind of trickster and emissary of God. Khidr tells him he can accompany him only if Moses maintains silence as he observes what Khidr does. Three times Khidr undertakes baffling actions that seem to violate either common sense or morality. Each time Moses can't keep quiet and protests at Khidr's outrageousness.

Finally, after the third time, Khidr draws the journey to a halt and explains the reasons for his actions. These reveal a higher morality at work—one that only makes sense from a more omniscient perspective than is available to Moses.

One can interpret this in many ways—the most obvious being that Allah best knows why certain things happen. I take from it the additional lesson that if even the great prophet Moses was a fallible and occluded judge of others, who are the rest of us to presume we know better?

From the perspective of the Abrahamic faiths, God may call us to strive for justice, but the devil's in the details, as they say, and one man's justice is too often another's injustice. Justice sought at the expense of innocents is the justice of fools. When this occurs in the name of God, the ultimate effect is to discredit God and religion itself—an ironic side-effect of an overactive piety.

As for my disturbed relations with Islam, I mourn the loss of my idealized image of that great faith. But even without 9/11, it was probably bound to happen sooner or later. Religions, complex phenomena that they are, serve as channels for humanity's best and worst impulses, and Islam hardly has a monopoly on that.

Do we still need a better understanding of Islam? Undoubtedly. But I suspect that those most in the need of a better understanding are precisely those who kill in its name. May they come to their senses, insha'Allah.

Jay Kinney was the publisher and editor-in-chief of Gnosis magazine (published from 1985 to 1999) and is coauthor of Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (Quest, 2006). His forthcoming book, The Masonic Enigma, will be published by Harper One.

By Martha Libster

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Libster, Martha. "Enlightenment: Elements of Self-Care." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 96-101.

In September 2007 I went to London to present a paper called the Elements of Care, a historical work linking Hermeticism with health, the environment, and the history of nursing. Before delivering the paper, I spent two days doing research in the British Library and had a strong prompting to look at the Mahatma Letters. Amazingly, I came upon these words of Koot Hoomi in an 1883 letter to the London Lodge: "The Western public should understand the Theosophical Society to be 'a Philosophical School constituted on the ancient Hermetic basis'. . . Hermetic philosophy is universal and unsectarian. . . . Hermetic philosophy suits every creed and philosophy and clashes with none. It is the boundless ocean of Truth, the cultural point whither flows and wherein will meet every river, as every stream—whether its source be in the East, West, North or South."* Thus I decided to write this article for Quest.

*This passage can be found in letter 120 of the chronological edition of The Mahatma Letters, page 420; emphasis in the original. K. H's remark regarding the "Philosophical School" is citing a statement by Anna Kingsford, then president of the London Lodge—Ed.

In the Hermetic tradition, enlightenment results from the conjunction of seemingly opposing forces. It may often seem that nature and technology are one pair of these opposing forces, especially as they relate to caring and healing. But there are some peoples, such as the Mayans, who believe that the twenty-first century portends a new era of unification between traditional and contemporary knowledge in the relationship between nature and technology.

While technology can help to save lives, it does not heal in an ultimate sense. Healing requires more than the eradication of disease, because it involves the quest for a holistic understanding of the life lessons that come with every illness. Cancer patients who complete the final course of chemotherapy still need comfort, care, and education that support the restoration of their bodies and energy fields as they explore the meaning that the disease has held for them. Premature infants who "graduate" from the neonatal intensive care unit begin a new phase of healing: adaptation to life without machine noise and nurses. They and their families heal as they work through the process of becoming whole. From infant to elder, this process, conducted by a person's soul and enhanced by the spirit, the higher Self, is anchored in the matter of the physical self.

Hermes Trismegistus, the mythical figure whom the Greeks considered a messenger of the gods and the Egyptians equated with Thoth, the god of knowledge, stated that matter was the "vehicle of becoming," according to H. P. Blavatsky (Secret Doctrine I, 271). It is the embodiment of Self as matter that is the focus of healing. The four essential elements of matter are traditionally described as fire, air, water, and earth, along with a fifth energy, or quintessence, that some of the Greeks called pneuma (literally "breath" or "spirit") and which is sometimes equated with akasha or "ether." (This is not to be confused with the substance that is used as an anesthetic by mainstream medicine.) A healthy person was one who experienced the proper balance of the elements and the activity of pneuma.

The Hermetic texts have inspired paganism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Gnosticism. Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism share similar concepts and terminology. In these healing traditions, each of the five elements is related to one of the five directions. Fire is usually correlated to the south, air to the west, water to the north, ether to the east, earth to the center.

These traditions also hold that these five elements exist within the Self of every human being. Knowledge of these elements has been revered throughout the ages. In the Celtic tradition, the elements are considered "doorways into an infinite universe" (Matthews, 267). The Prasna Upanishad equates understanding of the elements with the understanding of Self: "All things find their final peace in their inmost Self, the Spirit: earth, water, fire, air, space [i.e., ether] and their invisible elements. . . . He who knows, O my beloved, that Eternal Spirit wherein consciousness and the senses, the powers of life and the elements find final peace, knows the All and has gone into the All." These teachings form the foundation for the traditional medicine of India called ayurveda, the "science of life."

Balance or harmony among the elements is also central to traditional Chinese medicine, Japanese Kampo, Persian Unani medicine, and the medicine wheel of the Native Americans as well as to Western nursing practice and biomedicine. Early Greek medical theory, known as "humoral" theory, the foundation of Western medicine, associated health with balance in the four humors. These humors—yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and black bile—correspond to the elements fire, air, water, and earth respectively. The elements are characterized by their unique qualities: fire is hot and dry; water, cold and moist; earth, cold and dry; and air, moist and hot. By altering these qualities, one could effect change in the elements; for example, one could turn water into steam by applying heat.

Energetic principles are used to describe people as well as remedies. For example, both a person with a fever and the herbal remedy cayenne pepper are regarded as hot. Balancing the elements fosters harmony in the internal and external environments of the person. Thus, if someone is feverish or hot, she might be cooled with a cold water compress or given cool peppermint tea to drink. The environment also includes these elements in the form of temperature (fire), air, fluid (water), and substance (earth) within and around the patient. Diet, rest, and lifestyle, as well as thought, thus affect the internal balance of the patient in relation to the external, physical environment.

Creating a healing environment within and without by engaging the elements and their qualities has been foundational in American health care for centuries. The first half of the nineteenth century provides some notable examples. Prior to the Civil War, American health care was highly pluralistic, since mainstream physicians had not yet established the dominance that they hold today. The title "doctor" might refer to a conventional physician, an herb doctor, an indigenous healer, a homeopath, or a "water-curist," to name a few (Beecher, 279). Americans were encouraged to be their own doctors.

Self-Care and Nature Cure

Connection with nature was a central focus in nineteenth-century American health care. In 1835, American physician Jacob Bigelow read his essay on "self-limited diseases" before the Massachusetts Medical Society, in which he encouraged physicians to rethink their practice of prescribing medicine for all diseases. He stated that "some diseases are controlled by nature alone" and that the physician was "but the minister and servant of nature," who was to "aid nature in her salutary intentions, or to remove obstacles out of her path."

Many other physicians of the period believed that the body had a natural tendency to heal itself and that nature did the curing. Wooster Beach, an American physician who had turned to the use of botanical remedies, wrote in 1843, "In reality we can cure nothing. We can only remove the offending cause, while nature performs a cure; and, therefore, lay it down as a fundamental maxim in medicine, that all the physician can do is, to act as a servant or handmaid to nature" (Beach, 188). The English nurse Florence Nightingale echoed these words on the other side of the Atlantic when she wrote in 1859: "Nature alone cures...and what nursing has to do in either case, is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him" (Nightingale, 110).

Nurses among the nineteenth-century Shakers, Latter-Day Saints, and Sisters of Charity used herbal remedies extensively in their care for the sick. They routinely prescribed teas and syrups as well as topical remedies such as poultices, liniments, and compresses. It was common for nurses to make their own remedies from the plants growing in their gardens or in local fields and forests and to teach their patients how to make and apply the same remedies. During the time nature took to heal, the patient was nursed with the intent of "alleviating pain, procuring sleep, and guarding the diet," according to Bigelow. The community maintained a number of healing networks in which recipes and remedies were shared freely and lovingly in a spirit of helpfulness and caring.

In the nineteenth century, the expertise of a doctor of any type was determined by his ability to diagnose disease and prescribe medicines. Nurses focused on "sickroom management," applying remedies and creating a healing environment in which nature could effect a cure. Sickroom management included preparing the diet as well as regulating the elements of the patients' surroundings that influenced their health, such as room temperature (fire), air flow, providing pure water for drinking and bathing, and preparing the sickbed and cleaning the area (earth). Ether was represented more subtly in the intention that motivated the care, particularly kindness to those who were ill.

It is not clear that caregivers were generally aware that the roots of their practice lay in the Hermetic tradition. Nevertheless, interaction with the elements was in essence an invitation to enter into the process of becoming Self. The simplest acts of shifting, moving, changing, and arranging one or more of the elements of care was known to affect healing.

Simple Soul-utions

Incorporating the five elements in self-care is vital to the well-being of the student of Truth. As with so many of the ancient ways that have endured the test of time, this kind of care involves some of the least expensive, most accessible, and, in my experience as a nurse, most profound healing solutions. One poignant example can be found in the writings of an American nurse from the mid-nineteenth century, Sister of Charity Matilda Coskery, who pioneered the humane care of the insane. Along with her nurse companions and a physician by the name of William Stokes, Sister Matilda opened an asylum in 1840 in which she implemented moral therapy in the institutionalized care of the mentally ill. The focus of moral therapy was to create a healing environment and to treat each patient with kindness. Sister Matilda wrote that kindness would "forever be the remedy of remedies." She managed fire when she dealt with "warmth" in the regulation of room temperature, body heat, and preparation of the coverings on the sickbed. The nurse was advised to manage fever by arranging bedcovers, administering brandy to increase internal warmth, and applying mustard plasters to bring heat to a desired part of the body. The air element was represented in Sister Matilda's advice on proper ventilation of the sickroom by the simple act of opening and closing windows. Footbaths, shower baths, sweats, and sponging were some of the water interventions used. The earth element was incorporated by way of numerous herbal applications. She recommended poultices of hops for pain and herbal teas for many conditions, just as had the women of her religious tradition dating back to 1633. Sister Matilda specifically addressed applications such as preparing and administering herbal teas and cautioned the nurses that tea preparation was not a "simple matter." Like other "seemingly small things" in the hands of the nurse, it could make the difference between the life and death of the patient.

In many industrialized countries, the image of medicine is often that of a pill or capsule, but prior to the mid-twentieth century, this was not the case. Medicine included toddies, poultices, soups, liniments, salves, hot water bottles, and visits to the ocean. There are numerous examples of these kinds of remedies in the advice books, journals, recipe books, and community records of the period.

Beliefs associated with the use of medicines are passed from generation to generation. Such beliefs include knowledge of the four humors and the importance of the balance of the elements as described in Hermeticism. Another is that the real "medicine" exists within both the healer and the one who pursues healing. Healing modalities from surgery to chicken soup, from lemon compresses to floral waters, are among the forms created and received by people as medicine. Pharmaceuticals, herbal teas, hot baths, and healthy diets are all instruments or vessels of the true medicine that is within the Self.

Many great teachers East and West have taught a path of Self-awareness that leads to a greater understanding of inner medicine. Indigenous peoples' healing rituals honor the healing spirit within that manifests as ether, fire, air, water, and earth in all matter. Eastern rishis have taught the path of Self-knowledge for centuries. Sri Yukteswar, guru of Paramahansa Yogananda, who brought the teachings and traditions of India to America in the early 1900s, taught the following in his book The Holy Science:

Some consider the deities to exist in water (i.e. natural elements) while the learned consider them to exist in heaven (astral world); the unwise seek them in wood and stones (i.e., in images or symbols), but the Yogi realizes God in the sanctuary of his own Self....All creation is governed by law. The principles that operate in the outer universe, discoverable by scientists, are called natural laws. But there are subtler laws that rule the hidden spiritual planes and the inner realm of consciousness; these principles are knowable through the science of yoga. It is not the physicist but the Self-realized master who comprehends the true nature of matter. By such knowledge Christ was able to restore the servant's ear after it had been severed by one of the disciples (Yukteswar, 59, 104).

While the instruments of healing may be worthy objects of exploration, the healer has historically and traditionally been first and foremost the student of Self. It is the Self of both healer and patient that animates, enlivens, energizes, and empowers all medicine. Therefore any and all matter has the potential to serve as an agent of healing to any person at any given time. As herbal teachers have taught for ages, the simplest cures may be right outside our own back doors.

Years ago, I began a search of health care literature for studies of the inner medicine of Self. I think I was seeking what Sri Yukteswar calls the "science of the soul" as it relates to medicine. My goal was to understand a phenomenon I had witnessed for years as a clinical nurse specialist: people seem to heal in a different way when they take an active role in their healing, such as when they make their own medicine. To date I have found only one published study that deals with this science of inner medicine of Self. The study, by Dr. Ruth Davis, explored the experiences of Appalachian women with pharmacopeia. She found that in the experiences of the women she studied, the specific herbs, foods, and over-the-counter remedies were not as important to the healing of a person who was ill as the "meaning in the cultural memories inherent in the acts of caring" (Davis, 425). This finding resonates with the historical research I conducted in 1997, in which I found that a nurse's process of caring and healing (the "how" of healing) is as important to the process as is the product or instrument (the "what" of healing). When people with colds make their own soup, they heal.

Therefore the simple act of medicine making as an expression of Self may be just as if not more important than the product of that act, be it soup or pharmaceutical. Much more exploration is needed; however, history seems to demonstrate that it is possible for Self and the elements of Self known in the Hermetic tradition to be our medicine. Self-care, as earlier Americans knew, is not only vital to individual and family well-being; it is foundational to the health of the American health care system.

Even during the last decades of the industrialization and commodification of American health care, self-care has not waned. Research has shown it to be the hidden health care system, which in its simplicity and connection with tradition has the potential for reforming a system that will better support the millions of uninsured Americans and perhaps help all Americans in their quest for healing, wholeness, and Self-realization.

References

Beach, Wooster. The Family Physician, or, The Reformed System of Medicine on Vegetable or Botanic Principles, Being a Compendium of the "American Practice" Designed for All Classes. 4th ed. New York: Self-published, 1843.
Beecher, Catharine E. Miss Beecher"s Domestic Receipt-Book. New York: Dover, 2001 [1858].
Bigelow, Jacob. Nature in Disease; Illustrated in Various Discourses and Essays; Discourse on Self-Limited Diseases. Cincinnati: Lloyd Library, 1835.
Blavatsky, H. P. The Secret Doctrine. 2 vols. London: Theosophical Publishing Co., 1888.
———. The Voice of the Silence. Pasadena, Calif.: Theosophical University Press, 1992 [1889].
Coskery, Sister Matilda. Advices Concerning the Sick. Emmitsburg, Md.: Archives of Daughters of Charity, St. Joseph"s Provincial House, n.d. (c. 1840).
Davis, Ruth. "Understanding Ethnic Women"s Experiences with Pharmacopeia." Health Care for Women International 18 (1997): 425-37.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Blooming of a Lotus: Guided Meditation Exercises for Healing and Transformation. Boston: Beacon, 1999.
Libster, Martha. Demonstrating Care: The Art of Integrative Nursing. Albany: Delmar Thomson, 2001.
———. "Elements of Care: Nursing Environmental Theory in Historical Context." Holistic Nursing Practice 22:3 (2008), 160-70.
———. Herbal Diplomats: The Contribution of Early American Nurses (1830-1860) to Nineteenth-Century Health care Reform and the Botanical Medical Movement. Farmville, N. C.: Golden Apple, 2004.
———. "Integrative Care, Product and Process: Considering the Three T"s of Timing, Type, and Tuning." Complementary Therapies in Nursing and Midwifery, 9:1 (2003), 1-4.
Libster, Martha, and Sister Betty Ann McNeil. Enlightened Charity: The Holistic Nursing, Education, and "Advices Concerning the Sick" of Sister Matilda Coskery, 1799-1870. Farmville, N. C.: Golden Apple, 2009.
Mascaro, Juan, trans. The Upanishads. New York: Penguin, 1965.
Matthews, John. Drinking from the Sacred Well. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.
Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1980 [1859].
Singh, Koot Hoomi Lal. Letter to the London Theosophical Society, Dec. 7, 1883, in correspondence to A. P. Sinnett, 1880-1884. London: British Library #45286.
Yukteswar, Swami Sri. The Holy Science. Los Angeles: Self Realization Fellowship, 1990 [1949].

Martha Libster, Ph.D., C.N.S., R.N., is an educator and health care historian known internationally for her work on the complementarity of nursing practice and healing traditions, particularly the use of botanical therapies. Her books include Demonstrating Care: The Art of Integrative Nursing, and The Integrative Herb Guide for Nurses. Her Web site is www.goldenapplehealingarts.com .

A Sample of Simples

Earth, humanity, and all life forms are in a state of transition. The following is a sampling of "simple" remedies and suggestions for your consideration. The remedies, based on the elements, facilitate transition and change, which are the foundation for all physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing.

Fire: Hot water bottle. Fill the bottle three-quarters full with warm water. Place the stopper on the bottle and screw it in most of the way. Burp the bag by gently squeezing the air out. Seal the bag. Put the bottle in a hot water bottle bag or pillowcase, lie down and place over the kidneys (on your back above the waistline). After ten minutes, change the placement of the bottle. Put it on your abdomen at the navel for another ten minutes. Visualize the warmth of the sun charging your solar plexus and kidneys, the seat of the life force, with energy and peace. The adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys, are also infused with gentle warmth and the circulation of fresh blood. Breathe fully into the lungs and exhale, hollowing out the abdomen and allowing the navel to move toward the spine as you visualize the love and protection of the sun.

Air: Eardrops. Wind, even a cool breeze, can increase susceptibility to acute diseases caused by viruses in particular. When a person "catches" a cold or influenza, the virus enters through the nasopharynx. People typically feel a cold coming on with sensations such as scratchy throat, running nose, and stuffy ears. These are all normal bodily reactions to viral infection related to what is called "exterior wind" condition in traditional Chinese medicine.
Cut a cotton square into quarters. Place a few drops of herbal ear oil on the tip of a corner of one of the squares. The preferred herbal ear oil is from the mullein flower (Verbascum thapsus). This can be a homemade oil infusion made from the beautiful yellow flowers of the mullein or king's candle plant in olive oil, or it can be purchased.
Put the cotton, oil tip first, into the ear canal. Do not stuff the cotton into the ear; place it gently so that it can be easily removed. Go to sleep and notice how your ears and throat feel in the morning. I have had children tell me that their colds went away within a few hours of putting the cotton-soaked oil in their ears. I have a hunch that stopping the ears for a short period of time lets the nervous system rest and strengthens the ability of the body to adapt to changes, including viral offensives.

Water: Footbaths. Place a small handful of Epsom or Celtic sea salt in a rectangular dishpan and fill the tub two-thirds full with very warm water. Place the tub lengthwise in front of you on a bath towel. Have two hand towels ready to use next to the tub. Put your feet in the bath for fifteen to twenty minutes, long enough to open the pores of the feet. The salt will change the energy field of your entire body, which is holographically represented in its entirety in the feet. (Your feet are your "under-standing.") As you soak in the salt water, remember your origins in the water of your mother and allow your Self to share its "under-standing" of any situation that you face during this transition.

Earth: Liquid chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the "blood" of the plant and is very similar in molecular structure to human blood. Moreover, plants are important ecological barometers of transition. Attunement with them is helpful in navigating earth changes. Chlorophyll is the product of photosynthesis, a process of transmutation that has inspired plant alchemists throughout time. It has many curative properties, including building the blood and healing wounds.
Taking chlorophyll into the body can help rebuild your connection with the plant kingdom. For your simple alchemical experiment, place a few drops of liquid chlorophyll (preferably made from nettle, Urtica doica) in a glass of cool water. Notice the green color and titrate the amount of chlorophyll used according to the instructions on the product you buy, also paying attention to your body's wisdom. Add the number of drops that make a green color that you like. Take the chlorophyll water in times of stress, illness, fatigue, and when you need to recharge your life force and connection with the earth. Plant foods, chlorophyll in particular, are cooling to the body and therefore can significantly supplant some of the reliance on anti-inflammatory drugs for decreasing heat in the body.

Ether: Smiling meditation. Much tension is held in the face, and much potential for the expression of ether is here too. Smiling relaxes all 300 facial muscles. (So does yawning.) Thich Nhat Hanh's Blooming of a Lotus offers a number of simple smiling meditations. One is "The Joy of Meditation as Nourishment":

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment.
Breathing out, I know it is a wonderful moment.

By Richard Smoley

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "Why Forgive?." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 102-106.

For all the praise lavished on it, forgiveness is not easy. We often feel it as an obligation . . . a requirement that is not easy to fulfill and which we often attempt only half-heartedly. How can you even be sure whether you have forgiven someone? The mind has an infinite number of nooks in which grievances can hide. You can think you've forgiven when some little grievance comes up to remind you that you've done nothing of the sort.

Then, too, much of what passes for forgiveness is little more than a sanctimonious form of egotism. You "forgive" out of a sense of noblesse oblige—it is an act of condescension, a favor bestowed upon an inferior. From this position of lordliness a man bestows forgiveness as he might toss a coin at a beggar.

There is another type of hypocrisy as well. It's the sort that seeks to drag everyone else into its mire, moaning, "We are all to blame." This false self-abasement likes to quote the verse from Paul, "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). So we may have—but whose agenda is it to constantly remind us of this? If it were a genuine call to humility, the one who uttered it might first apply it to himself and might then be silent. But as often expressed today—particularly in religious discourse—such declamations seek not to pardon sin but to reinforce it. Everyone is spattered indiscriminately with the spots of blame.

In one sense these difficulties are merely one more form of human frailty. But they point up the extraordinary difficulty that people often have with forgiveness. I would like to suggest that this stems from a deeper cause: we really don't know why we should forgive. We've been told that for some reason it's the right thing to do, but why it might be the right thing to do is rarely addressed. Thus our efforts at forgiving are often perfunctory and insincere.

Why, then, should we forgive? The law of karma suggests one answer. A given cause has a like effect; good begets good, and evil, evil. This is self-evident. We see it every day. If a man does evil to another, he is likely to get evil in return. If a woman does a kind deed, she will probably find that kindness paid back to her.

Taken in full, this idea is extremely sobering. "Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?" asks Hamlet. We know we are not innocent. If the law of karma holds, then sooner or later retribution will find us. The philosophies of India have intricate explanations for why this recompense is not instantaneous: they speak of samskaras, which are in effect "seeds of karma" that will sooner or later blossom in the right circumstances, in this lifetime or another. Even apart from these theories, when we are aware of our guilt, we often feel the hangman is waiting.

Where, then, is the way out? Perhaps it's in forgiveness. If karma creates exact repercussions for our actions, then by necessity it would have to wipe out our offenses to the exact degree that we wipe out those of others. As the Lord's Prayer says, "Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors" (Matt. 6:12).

This verse is recited in two different ways. Sometimes it is "Forgive us our debts," sometimes "Forgive us our trespasses." Which is right? The Greek makes it extremely clear. The word is opheilmata, from the verb opheilein, "to owe." Christ uses the word "debts" rather than "sins." In fact he speaks quite often about money and debts. In one parable, a servant (literally, "slave") owes his master 10,000 talents—a staggering, almost inconceivable amount of money, equivalent to, say, a trillion dollars today. The servant says he cannot pay, and the master forgives him. But the servant then turns around and has a "fellowservant" who owes him "an hundred pence" (or a hundred denarii, in any event a much smaller sum), cast into debtors' prison. The master then turns around and has the first servant cast into debtors' prison as well. "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother" (Matt. 18:23-35). To put it another way, the law of karma is inexorable. You will receive exactly what you mete out to others.

But does it really make any difference whether we speak of debts or trespasses? Actually it does. We live in a world of reciprocity, of transactions. We incur any number of "debts" that are not really offenses or trespasses. We may owe someone a phone call or a letter, or for that matter a greeting or a kind word. We don't always meet these obligations. The network of social exchange is so vast and intricate that it's impossible to fulfill them all. But they sit at the backs of our minds, oppressing us often without our knowledge. Christ seems to be suggesting that we need not preoccupy ourselves with these obligations in a calculating or actuarial way—so long as we're able to grant the same favor to others.

As comforting as these reflections may seem, the outcome still seems rather niggling. Forgiveness may rescue us from the inexorable law of karma, but it doesn't seem to take us past the quid pro quo of human life that turns us all into spiritual bookkeepers, keeping scrupulous records in our minds and hearts of favors and slights and injustices great and petty. Even forgiveness as a means of canceling karmic debts is nothing more than an esoteric form of transactionality.

So, then, is there no way out? Not in conventional terms, whether we look at them from the perspective of biology, social obligation, family bonds, or even the comparatively esoteric considerations of karma. In order to understand forgiveness in its deepest aspect, we need to look at reality through another dimension.

If there is one cliche that has been constantly drummed into our ears, it is the claim that "we are all one." We hear this so often that we take it no more seriously than we do a soft-drink commercial. And why should we? There is nothing to even remotely indicate that it might be true. All over we see people jockeying for position, trying to outdo each other in money, status, comfort. One person's success means another's failure. At any given time two different people cannot be elected president, or win the Academy Award for best actress, or be the richest person in the world. One man gets the girl, the other does not. The verdict of appearances is obvious: we are not all one. Our name is Legion.

In what sense, then, are we all one? To answer this question, we need to look into our own experience. If you do, you'll soon see that it comes in two basic forms. There is the world of physical experience, of the outer world of the five senses. There is also the world of inner experience: thoughts, images, feelings, associations, dreams. These two worlds have been given various names in different esoteric traditions. Esoteric Christianity refers to them as the body (or the "flesh") and the "soul" or "psyche" respectively. (The word in the Greek New Testament translated as "soul" is psyche.)

Here we have the totality of experience: body and soul, inner and outer worlds. Ancient Christianity, however, said that we are composed of three entities: body, soul, and spirit. Soul and spirit are two different things: "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit" (Heb. 4:12). What's the difference between the two?

While experience can be easily divided between inner and outer, between soul and body, what is left out from this duality is that which experiences. If there is an "I" that can witness even its own most private thoughts and desires from a remove, this "I" must be distinct from them. This is a subtle but profound point. This witness is always that which sees, so of course it can never be seen. Hindu philosophy identifies this witness with the Atman, usually translated as "Self." The Gospels refer to it as the spirit, "the kingdom of heaven," the "kingdom of God," and "I am."

As many spiritual teachers have said, it is necessary to detach this consciousness, the true "I," from its own contents in order for liberation to occur. This is arguably what the text from Hebrews quoted above means when it speaks of the "cleaving asunder of soul and spirit." It does not refer to death but to liberation of the consciousness ("spirit") from enslavement to its own experience ("soul" or psyche). This is why practically all esoteric traditions put such emphasis on meditation, which is the day-to-day process that makes this liberation possible.

As the fixity of ordinary identification begins to dissolve, the "I" becomes able to watch its own experience as a film unfolding before it. But then the question arises: if all of what passes for "my" experience is a sort of other—a film that I can watch from a distance—who or what is this mind that is doing the looking? And where is the dividing line between my mind and someone else's?

That is the crux of the matter. As mind begins to dissolve its attachments to its "own" experience, it begins to regard itself not as an isolated thing but as part of a larger mind. There is no real border between this "I" and the collective "I" in which we all participate. Conversely, the mind's attachment to its "own" experience causes a symbolic death in that the "I" is, or appears to be, cut off from the whole.

Countless traditions speak of this truth. Because it runs counter to what we usually regard as self-evident reality, these traditions have had to use myth or allegory to explain it. The Kabbalists sometimes speak of the Fall of Adam Kadmon, the androgynous primordial human, as a kind of dismemberment. Similarly, the Hindu Rig Veda (dated from 1200 to 900 BC or sometimes earlier)says that the universe was generated through the sacrifice and dismemberment of purusha, the cosmic human, but which, even more profoundly, means consciousness. The Vedic hymn says:

The Man [purusha] has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. He pervaded the earth on all sides and extended beyond it as far as ten fingers.
It is the Man who is all this, whatever has been and whatever is to be. He is the ruler of immortality....
Such is his greatness, and the Man is yet more than that. All creatures are a quarter of him; three quarters of him are what is immortal in heaven.

That which is most radically the Self, the "I," purusha, Atman, is nothing other than this transcendent principle known as the Christ, an idea we also find in Paul: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). For Paul, it is neither faith nor works that saves us, but union with this cosmic Christ by realizing that the "I" that lives is the Christ that "liveth in me." What it saves us from is not the banal hell of popular imagination but the true hell of isolation from the common life that pulses throughout the universe. The "love of the world," with its accounts, transactions, and agendas, is the love of Adam in his fallen state, in which each cell of his body imagines that it is isolated and supreme and finds itself fighting for position with so many other beings who deludedly believe the same thing. It is as if the cosmic Adam had been infected with an autoimmune disease.

Agape, which could be defined as conscious love, is the love of the cosmic Christ, in which the cells of this primordial human recognize that they are joined together in a larger whole. They realize, too, that what says "I" at the deepest level in ourselves is identical to that which says "I" in everything else, human and nonhuman. This, we could say in the words of Annie Besant, is the "hidden light shining in every creature." To realize this truth, experientially as well as intellectually, is to achieve gnosis, to become conscious in the fullest sense.

These ideas also take us to true forgiveness, to the forgiveness that is beyond account keeping. The twentieth-century spiritual text known as A Course in Miracles says, "All that I give is given to myself." If ultimately there is no distinction between you and me—or, perhaps better, between "you" and "I"—then forgiveness is the only appropriate response to another being. That which separates us is ultimately illusory, as are all imagined hurts and offenses, no matter what their nature or apparent severity. The Course also says, "It is sin's unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely."

This fact points to one of the most common impediments to forgiveness: the belief that guilt is real and solid and therefore must belong to someone; if you take it away from another person, you are stuck with it yourself, as in the game of "hot potato." We're often unwilling to forgive because we believe at some level of our minds that we will then deserve the blame: if it's not his fault, it must be mine. Put this way on paper, this is clearly an absurd belief, but as with many such beliefs, if it's allowed to hide in the recesses of consciousness, unseen and unexamined, it can wreak a great deal of havoc. True forgiveness does not transfer guilt but abolishes it.

How, then, do we forgive? Forgiveness is an art. Like all arts, it requires a subtle discrimination, a precise understanding of one's material, and a light touch that strikes the balance between inadequacy and excess. There will be times when forgiveness doesn't seem possible, when the pain felt exceeds the capacity to let it go, and our visceral impulses are all striving towards fury. This does not always happen in proportion to the offense. Sometimes we find that a powerful blow glances easily off our backs, while some small and all but unnoticeable grievance nags at us without cease. The emotions have their reasons, which the conscious mind does not always see, and these reasons have to be respected—at least up to a point. Forgiveness often requires steering a narrow course between nursing a grudge and pretending we have pardoned someone when we have done nothing of the kind. The chief tool needed is a rigorous inner sincerity, since the grossest forms of hypocrisy are those we practice in front of ourselves.

A practical approach toward forgiveness may involve fostering a small willingness to forgive while anger and rage burn themselves out for weeks or months. It may require drawing a line with someone—refusing to take any more abuse while also refusing to nurture any hatred on account of it. Frequently it necessitates an inner detachment, a freedom from emotional dependence on others. Sometimes it entails looking at the situation from the other people's perspective (tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner, as the French say: to understand all is to forgive all). Forgiveness takes forms as diverse and unpredictable as human beings themselves. For some, generous and high-minded, it comes naturally and spontaneously, while others may find that it has to be cultivated with effort in the hard soil of their natures. It's wise to be honest with ourselves about such things, but it's also wise to remember that forgiveness is to be bestowed inwardly as well as outwardly and that a little mercy granted to ourselves often makes it easier to extend this kindness to others.

This article is adapted from Richard Smoley's books Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity (Jossey-Bass) and Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition (Shambhala). His next book, The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe, will be published in November 2009 by New World Library.

Originally printed in the Winter 2010 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Executive Editor - Winter 2010." Quest  98. 1 (Winter 2010): 2.

While we're on the subject of time, predictions of its end are abounding yet again. If you will permit me to leap into the quicksand of prophecy, I would like to say that I don't believe time is going to end at any point in the near future. Let me add that I don't believe that prophecies of our imminent annihilation based on the usual favorite sources are going to come true. After all, practically none of them have in the past. Remember Nostradamus's famous prediction: "The year 1999, seven months, / From heaven will come the great king of fright"? As it turned out, nothing of cosmic significance took place then.

Even the Bible's record is rather poor. Both the book of Revelation and the Apocalyptic Discourse in the synoptic Gospels (found in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21), taken at face value, predict a Roman invasion of Judea followed by the end of the world. The Romans did invade Judea and laid it waste in a war lasting from ad 66 to 73, but the end of the world did not ensue. Cats, as the saying goes, continued to have kittens.

If prophecy's track record is so bad, why do people continue to believe in it? And why do they believe in it most when it is least credible"”predicting an end that is almost certain not to come, particularly in the lurid and fantastic ways that have been imagined? God is not, after all, a producer of grade B movies.

There seem to be several reasons for this strange quirk in our thinking. In the first place, apocalyptic expectation has become a habit in Christian culture, one that goes back to the earliest days of the faith. The oldest text in the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians, was written in response to some disciples of Paul's who were worried about what would happen to their loved ones who died before Jesus' return (which was due any day now). Paul's famous reply was "The dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds" (1 Thess. 4:16-17). This passage, by the way, is the source of the rapture doctrine beloved of fundamentalists.

Jesus did not come back soon, and eventually the Christian church had to settle down into a somewhat ungracious acceptance of the world as it was. But this habit of thought persisted, cresting at times of tension and upheaval, such as our own era.

Yet habit alone does not explain the persistence of apocalyptic expectation. Another part of the picture, I would suggest, is simple boredom. For many of us, life is humdrum. People go to work, pay their bills, and pursue their entertainments, all the while waiting for some deliverance from the everyday. If there is any genuine excitement, it is of the frightening variety"”an illness, the loss of a job, the death of a loved one. Vacations offer some relief but often make the return to the routine all the more oppressive.

In this context, the idea that the end is near and the upheavals of the present were foreseen long ago adds excitement to current events. And to contemplate the mountains melting and the moon turning to blood can provide a satisfying spectacle for the imagination, no matter how appalling such events would be in actuality.

Furthermore, an end to history provides a meaning to history. The Second Coming, if it were to happen, would give a shape to human destiny that is hard to find in social and political currents as conventionally understood. Expecting such an event also gives believers the comfort of knowing they are in the right, for everyone is sure that he or she is on the side of goodness and justice. Fundamentalists who look forward to the rapture are usually certain that they will be taken up in the first batch. It is always the others who will be left behind.

But the deepest impetus behind the thirst for apocalypse may have to do with what psychologists call displacement: the transfer of an unconscious fear onto a remote object so as to make the fear more manageable. Many believers may be unconsciously clinging not to the certainty of the Last Judgment but to its very remoteness and improbability. Focusing their hopes and fears on this unlikely outcome keeps them from thinking of an event that is not only likely but certain: their own deaths. By projecting their anxieties about death onto some ever-receding apocalypse, they are able to cope with them more easily (if less consciously). By contrast, contemplating your own death, not as an apocalyptic event with which you can play all sorts of mental games, but as a reality that faces you in a few decades at the most, is not only sobering but often terrifying.

Those with a grasp of esoteric teachings may be comparatively immune to these anxieties. The doctrine of karma removes the need for an end of time to set the scales of cosmic justice right, and the concept of reincarnation puts a single human lifetime in a broader and, shall we say, more forgiving context. Even so, some may feel a need to chew over secular versions of apocalypse, whether portrayed as environmental immolation or nuclear holocaust or for that matter the end of time as predicted by some indigenous traditions.

To me, it seems obvious: wars, plagues, famines, and cataclysms will continue to occur, just as they have for all of history. But prophecy will serve as no useful guide to what will happen. We will have to face the future armed, not with some cosmic timetable that tells us when to hide, but with the knowledge that, whatever comes to pass, we will be able to draw from ourselves the wisdom and strength to face it.

Richard Smoley