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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Every people, nation, and culture has been
given, quite directly, the word of God.
For example, consider
the "central mountain" of Black Elk.
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In the “Spirituality, Part III” article I discussed how, a long time ago, at bible college, a ministerial-training center, we were led to believe, via subtle and overt means, that we were special. Moreover, the entire Church, we constantly heard, was very special, in that God communicated to us – that is, the elites of the church hierarchy – but had “cut off” the entire rest of the world.
My immaturity at the time bought into this arrogant and poisonous spirit of “better than thou.” Later, I would perceive that most churches engage in this kind of cultish propaganda.
Today, I understand a little more about how things really work. Dr. Joseph Campbell spent a lifetime analyzing the mythologies of world cultures. Having surveyed his work, I would say, many of these ancient stories symbolize the fears and cravings of the dysfunctional ego; this is also the case in the Bible with some of its writings.
However, within the panoply of world literature one finds, at times among the dross, certain examples of exquisite wisdom. Some of it is so wonderful that, I feel, it could not have been produced by human agency alone. And therefore, this authentic “word of God,” it seems to me, must have originated from a higher source.
Consider this from the research of Dr. Campbell:
each of us is the center of the universe's life; each of us is the center of God's undivided affection
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from the book, “The Power Of Myth,”
a discussion with Dr. Joseph Campbell
Campbell: The shaman is a person, male or female, who has an overwhelming psychological experience that turns him totally inward [that is, to a realization of inner mystical energies; which all persons possess, but few are in tune with]. The whole unconscious opens up, and the shaman falls into it. Descriptions of this shaman experience are found all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego.
Moyers: There’s a sense of ecstasy, isn’t there, in this experience?
Campbell: As reported, it’s always of ecstasy… [This breakthrough can happen, unexpectedly, to anyone. When] it comes… bang! - it’s like that.
Moyers: And the one who had this psychological experience, this traumatic experience, this ecstasy, would become the interpreter for others of things not seen.
Campbell: … yes.
Moyers: And what draws him into that?
Campbell: The best example I know which might help to answer that is the experience of Black Elk. [He] was a young Sioux boy around the age of nine [who became very ill]. Well, what happened with this young boy was that he had a prophetic vision of the terrible future of his tribe [the coming wide scale slaughter and displacement. But he also saw a future beyond that of peace and harmony among all peoples and nations.]
[Black Elk’s dramatic vision] comes to one great statement, which, for me, is a key statement to the understanding of myth and symbols. He says, “I saw myself on the central mountain of the world, the highest place… But the central mountain is everywhere.”
The “center of the world” is the axis mundi, the central point, the pole around which all revolves… where stillness and movement are together… [and] stillness is eternity… And the center, Bill, is right where you’re sitting. And [it’s] right where I’m sitting. And each one of us is a manifestation of the mystery…
Moyers: So, it’s a metaphor, an image of reality.
Campbell: Yes. What you have here [could] be translated into raw individualism, you see, if you didn’t realize that the center was also right there facing you in the other person… You are the central mountain, and the central mountain is everywhere.
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Editor's last word:
Even in the presence of such sublime beauty as Black Elk’s vision and prophecy, there will be those true-believers who will feel the need to defend the Bible as the only source of God’s mind. Some will say that Black Elk was deceived by Satan. The true-believer, grasping to maintain a world paradigm, suffering under a “joker is wild” abridgment of logic, has to believe in Satan here lest his or her entire mental edifice come tumbling down.
But a word of caution to true-believers. Such doctrinaire stubbornness, in the face of overwhelming wisdom as Black Elk received, becomes what Jesus referred to as “the unpardonable sin.” With this kind of willful blindness and hostility, the Pharisees responded to Jesus that day.
Editor's note: Another example of brazen and hard-hearted intransigence, for those who are afraid of all things psychic, would be to call the heroic experience of WWII veteran Bob Feland the work of Satan. True-believers have perverted themselves to such an extent that they would say things like this.
Despite the massive evidence that Jesus represented God’s word in action and in plain sight, the religious establishment of his day called him a tool of Satan. And that's why Jesus warned them of a very serious consequence resulting from this sort of religious bigotry.
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