Crossing the Great Divide

RS, Spooky how great (or wierd!) minds think alike. Below is an excerpt from the book I am still working on. I only share it here now, as the best way I know how to show a percieved match in your and my line of thought. Hopefully, it is more than a shameless plug for my book. Who knows when, or if ever, it will be written anyway. And I expect all of 2 or 3 people to read it! Notice how I greedily mix real life (my own poem, my own attempted project, and even Scott Quisby is an intellectual psychology friend of mine named Scott Quimby!) I don't even try to seperate reality from fiction. Why not use it all?!

Another agenda item was a guest who would describe a program he wanted Allsberg to sponsor. Scott Quizbie was a psychologist who had interests in spiritual approaches to mental health, and in researching altered states of consciousness, such as near death experiences. Scott, like Todd, was convinced that we possess intuitive mind abilities which traditionally have been largely ignored and neglected. 

   Even most religions, while acknowledging the validity of revelations and the value of mystical experiences, tend to ascribe these ways of gaining knowledge or guidance to only a few gifted prophets or leaders. Each religion seems to have its amateur versions of prayer, meditation, and other spiritual practices. These toned-down practices are promoted for the average Joe, as if to say of prophetic and mystical knowledge, "Don't try this at home". 

    The cultural press for organization and replication tends to de-emphasize individual focus on the esoteric, for fear of too much variation and/or too much fanaticism. Just as direct democracy is messy, time consuming, and often inefficient, so is the pursuit of altered states of consciousness and spiritual exploration. 

    Both inside organized religion, and outside of it in the larger culture, the participants are taught to use the squelch button on the part of the mind that senses and uses the more intuitive frequencies.  Adous Huxly referred to the thoroughly internalized version of this squelching as being a "reducing valve" of the mind. While that reducing valve serves a purpose, it also has significant negative side effects. 

    Scott valued opening up the valve a bit. He also believed that the value of "reducing the reducing valve" was not limited to gaining creative insights or special knowledge. He believed that these unique functions of the mind were part of a larger group of functions that one might call "natural intelligence". 

   Furthermore, he saw a connection between the emerging ecological consciousness of the green revolution and this general mode of natural intelligence. He believed that emotional intelligence is part of this general mode, as is a whole slate of  right brain hemisphere skills. The "receptive mode" (Arthur Deikman) discussed in Todd's essay was either part, or all, of this domain. As regards the socio/cultural significance of such a mental mode shift, Diekman, in the '70s, predicted that we would need to shift to the receptive mode in order to fix (heal from) the many problems which modern culture would create, including that outgrowth of competition called "war". 

    Since that time, we have accumulated even more of an over-use of what Deikman called "the action mode", and we have accumulated considerably more problems as a result of that bias. Perhaps the most significant of those problems is global warming, which threatens everyone's life quality, if not our very survival. It has already exterminated various species of our fellow beings.  

   In addition to neglecting mother earth, modern man has neglected this "inner-earth" mode of intelligence so long that it has created a kind of collective mind deficit, which, in turn, depletes the wholeness and potential of the individual's mind. It is as though we have been using artificial, inorganic, forms of fertilizer on the "soil" of our minds, as well as other soil management agents such as pesticides and herbicides, until no beneficial bacteria remains.

   Modern man senses the deficit, but only when it leads to failed "crops", in the form of debilitating depression, an inability to concentrate, or feeling too emotionally numb to have a meaningful relationship. Scott believed that all this has led to a need (and emerging market) for self-improvement services which develop this general mode of natural intellegence. In terms of marketing the service, he thought the term "green" would not only be trendy; it would be provocative, in the sense that no one has looked at the nature within as being related to nature outside of us.

   In his field of psychology, it was long held that some clients, and some families of clients, lacked "psychological awareness", and that this lack could cause all sorts of psychological problems related to lack of "insight".  Scott felt that psychological awareness would grow as the client began to see the "green" -the natural aspects of one's own self and mind. 

    When his time came to present these ideas to the council, Scott began by reading a poem. The name of the poem was "Oil".  The poem left most of the  CJs scratching their heads, but as soon as Scott explained the significance of the poem, they quickly got on board with his cultural intervention project. Oil was selected because it interfaced all four domains of left brain, right brain, technical/industrial society, and ecology. 

    Poetry would be main media that Scott would use in order to help develop the green mind. The natural mind uses images as symbols for values and action-paths. Just as Christ saw the merit of using parables to teach spiritual concepts, Scott saw great merit in using poetry - a right-brain activating media - as a centerpiece to the more left-brain intellectual discussions aimed at moving us toward green solutions to modern ecological and psychological  problems. 

    The fact that poetry is unpopular in this culture only underscores its potential as a mode-shifting, paradigm-shifting, tool. It would be a new service, without much competition, and in short supply at this time. The demand would depend on whether the service itself tapped into a kind of spiritual and existential hunger in the participants.  If the demand was there, Scott would be on the "ground floor" of addressing it. 

    The product would be called "Transform-etry", an amalgam of transformation and poetry. Poetry which opens the door to the green mind, and then helps the individual be transformed by learning to use this aspect of mind, would be the mainstay of Scott's service.  Group discussions about impressions and implications of the poems would amount to a form of audience participation - an effective means of promoting the marketability of any performance art. 

    The brand would be called "Jar", an allusion to Wallace Steven's poem Anecdote of the Jar, in which the jar on a hill in Tennessee appears to be a metaphor of an open and receptive mind - most likely a projection of Steven's own mental state (contemplative) at the time of his writing the poem. As Scott described it, "Jar" also had a second meaning. It would jar, shake up, the minds of the participants, by means of the provocative properties of effective poetry.          

    Scott hoped to create a "thinking man's" (person's) version of the now-popular slam poetry, for which rap music seemed to pave the way.  He was convinced that there was a market niche somewhere in the mix of rap, slam poetry, the new age movement, and the green revolution.

     If you think of marketing as being the politics of helping people vote on their feet, then such speculation is not necessarily merely manipulative and superficial. It is a means to help people make decisions. Scott wants to help them decide - to vote on - learning to "green the mind, so you (they) can green the earth".

    If the marketing is successful, then the average person would end up being a bit more like a poet-philosopher - a new self image trend that replaces the "I'm as dumb (and opinionated)  as I wanna be" tough-guy persona that, unfortunately, seems currently in vogue. Scott felt that this populist persona had served consumerism well, but did a great disservice to humanity. 

    He hoped Jar would dove-tail Barack Obama's, JFK-like, somewhat intellectual, persona, which had recently gained enough favor to win the presidential election.  Ironically, the populace's renewed trust in intellect and reasoning, could open up the overall willingness to explore and develop the right brain, or "green mind", which had been previously misrepresented as being anti-intellectual (In reality, the green mind is a-intellectual, and can assist intellect in coming up with creative solutions to modern problems). One of Scott's sales slogans was "Jars - welcoming the right brain to thought".  

    Another job for Jar would be to help people re-approach faith traditions in a more truly spiritual fashion, rather than clinging to dogma and rote rituals. One of the talking points of Jar would be to re-assess the term "supernatural" as being super-natural, rather than above nature in some dominance hierarchy sort of way. 

    Quantum physicists' investigation of deep, sub-atomic, nature may open a door to understanding energy (in the form of the wave characteristics of sub-atomic realities) as being at the base of material existence. And energy (or at least its purer forms) seems to match the characteristics of "things" spiritual. Most of the metaphors of spirit are dynamic, energy-like things, such as breath, fire, wind, and water. 

    Before there was modern physics, there was an intuitive understanding of energy and it's contribution to nature. The green mind was at work long ago. Many hundreds of years after those spiritual texts and teachings, modern science's look into the very, very (most essentially) natural - the super-natural - sees something that looks an awful (awe-full) lot like "spirit". 

    It was in this philosophical context that Scott read the poem Oil. In so doing, he demonstrated the product itself. The council members actually experienced something natural, something green, in each of their own minds. Below is the transformative poem which Scott read. It was written by a friend of his, and never heard in public before. 

Oil

They say the pen is mightier than the sword.

Then why is the sword so ceremoniously

flashed in the state of the union speech

aired on all the major broadcasting companies at once? 

Armies need fuel to advance.

The United States is now establishing military bases

in the oil-rich lands of the Middle East.

Securing oil became a matter of national security.

I heard on the radio

that there is a factory that makes oil

from organic matter, from dead animals and such.

But it is yet to be determined if

the enterprise can eliminate

an awful stench put out

that the townspeople couldn’t stomach.

The old way of making oil

requires millions of years

and countless life cycles

pressed into layers underground

like pages of an ancient book

that stores the stories of agile Val raptors

and lumbering Brontosauruses,

sagas of another world,

compressed into liquid form.

The past is translated into the movement

of modern metal beasts

that jockey into position,

fight for territory,

just as the dinosaurs once did,

hungering for the food that fueled them.

The oily remains of dinosaurs 

are needed to satisfy our world’s appetite,

to keep it moving.

An Order is busy maintaining its supply

and the positioning that nations need

to maintain their armies.

If the oil factory works,

it could meet that need.

We could bring our soldiers home,

by satisfying our appetites

with a home cooked meal,

a technical innovation

as American as apple pie.

Then the soldiers would be by our sides

when we get outflanked by global warming,

another ice age hidden in oil’s compound,

an element of surprise, of change.

It’s up to us to choose -

catastrophe by continuing to blow hot air

as we wallow in sludge,

or choose to use the light approach

of sun and cell.

Either way, sooner or later,

a new world will come,

an age in which the essence of experiences

long buried and pressed,

and transformed by pressure in the poet’s brain,

will replace the dead animals’ ways

of war, and profit motive, and domination.

A new oil from an even better factory

than the one I heard about on the radio

will move us to a deeper territory.

At first, it may give off a terrible stench

that no one can stomach

(like the acrid burning of corporate headquarters

in a social revolution),

but it will move us.

We will go where the hopeful song of a

single robin satisfies our craving,

where the heart and imagination

is the only combustible engine we fuel,

powering the tanks and HumVees

of an army standing vigil

against indifference to reverence

and understanding and being.

The new soldiers’ swords will be pens and laptops.

They’ll fight with words

made of ink as dark as crude oil,

formed from reserves of unspoken epiphanies,

carried in the supply lines

of poems and novels and philosophical essays,

until the dinosaur soldiers stationed in faraway places

on the brink of destruction

come home to read a good book.

 © 2006 Darrell Moneyhon

    Josh Simmons agreed that Scott’s ideas resonated with the cause of Allsberg. He recalled the dream Todd mentioned several times about the big tree overshadowing an entire city, and how this image had already become folklore among the Allsberg community. It had become a meaningful icon of the challenge to develop both godliness (virtue) and to contribute to the healing of nature. But Josh was unsure what the practical implications were. He asked Scott, “What, if anything, can Allsberg Incorporated do to help you in this worthwhile project?”  

    Scott said, “I’m glad you asked that. I hadn’t gotten to the meat and potatoes of the project yet. I need projector equipment to present power point presentations of poems as they are being read, and to show discussion points that are part of the workshop – actually, I will call the presentations ‘searchshops’ indicating that it is an opportunity to search for truths that fit who we are and how we see life. I don’t have that equipment currently, and can’t afford it. I do have a decent laptop to work with. 

    I may also need someone to help me set up a web page for Jar, and to fund it if possible. The web site would announce and promote the searchshops, plus offer an on-line blog about poems that are felt to have transformative value, whether potentially transforming culture or the individual. I hope to get a buzz going on the internet about the searchshops, and to draw a larger audience. If the project in general is consistent enough with Allsberg Incorporated’s mission  - and I think it is, based on my discussions with Drew and Jeremy at prison where we work – then the Jar web site could be an outreach tool for A.I.”.  

    "Sounds like this is an OOOMPAS sort of thing" said Josh. "Fred Franklin is coordinating a conglomerate of small businesses as a means for Allsberg to generate future revenues. We help the businesses get established, in exchange for a percentage of the profit. The small business operator will have the option of cashing in for membership credits if he or she decides to move into Allsberg. Your project sounds like it should be one of the services in 'Out Of Our Minds Products And Services'. That way, it supports OOOMPAS, one of our chosen revenue building vehicles, and it would be the best vehicle to support your project as well - a good way to help you fulfill your calling".   

    Scott hadn't heard of OOOMPAS. He agreed that it would probably be the best way to create a win-win scenario from his proposed project. "How do I plug into OOOMPAS?" asked Scott. "It won't be too hard", said Josh, "We asked Fred to give us an update OOOMPAS first venture. Fred  will be speaking tonight. I'll introduce the two of you, and you and he can take it from there. But first, I need to be sure the Counsel agrees with both supporting your project, and with incorporating it into OOOMPAS,"  

   The council discussed the issue, and voted separately on whether to fund Scott's project, and whether to include it in Fred's network of small businesses. Both initiatives passed unanimously. If Fred agreed to work with Scott, then he would be given $1,500 to earmark toward Scott's project. If the projector and other miscellaneous equipment costs exceed that amount, Fred would be required to come back to the counsel with a request for the additional funds.