Taking Chances

As I’ve noted here before, in 1969, when I was 17 years old, I went to Europe on a backpacking trip. My main destination was the island of Crete in Greece. I went back a few years ago to do research for my book Street Song and while there, came upon a book called Winds of Crete by David MacNeil Doren. Doren was an American who, with his Swedish wife, spent several years living in small villages around the island. His time in Crete began in late 1960, and Crete then was very much the same as I found it nine years later.  Globalization has brought drastic changes to the place, so I was happy to find something that would help me remember the way it was when I was there.

I was looking through the book again last night and found an interesting passage. Doren was talking about how he and his wife, while in their 30s, became thoroughly fed up with the modern world. They wanted to get away to a place like Crete, which was inexpensive and not as crazed as the societies in which they grew up. They longed for peace and quiet in order to think over the direction they wanted their lives to take. The problem was that, as cheap as Crete was then, they didn’t have enough money between them to last much more than a month. But they went anyway and hoped for the best. Doren writes:

Common sense was all against our making such a move, but I remembered the words of Thoreau: “…if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

This sums up for me what is lacking in our lives nowadays: We no longer take chances. Taking a chance is limited to the stock market. But the universe wants us to take chances and it supports us whenever we do—so long as the chance taken leads us toward an understanding of the heart. I don’t see this as a metaphor. It really happens.

Back from New York

I got back from New York Saturday afternoon. Judy’s in Florida visiting her mother, so I’m alone here in the house. I spent the early part of Sunday washing clothes, putting my stuff away, shopping for groceries. Judy had received an invitation to what was being called a “sneak preview” of a restaurant and bar that’s opening in the neighborhood in a few days. I decided to go in her place. The bar area was packed with people all worked up over the New York Giants-San Francisco 49ers playoff game, which was on the TV. I left the restaurant before there was any score and spent the evening relaxing—mostly in bed—reading a book. Outside it was raining, and the streets were quiet—a pleasant respite from the hustle of New York. A little before going to bed it occurred to me: Oh, they must have lost.

To repeat myself…

I saw a headline in the New York Times today that said:

Religious leaders, Seeking Unity, Back Santorum.

Below the headline was this:

More than 100 conservative Christian leaders voted to support Rick Santorum’s presidential bid.

I believe it’s important for it to be said—over and over again—that the people referred to in the article are not religious leaders. And Rick Santorum is not a religious man. None of them have any understanding whatsoever of what real religion is. Whenever they do encounter it, they denounce it.

In other news, I’m leaving for New York City in the morning. I’ll be spending a week there, working on my book much of the time (there is a short New York section) and exploring during the rest. I’m also giving a talk about the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill—the flock, book, and film—on Long Island, in Babylon, mon. When I get back I start preparing for another trip to Santa Barbara Island. From island to island and back again. An interesting and lucky time.

Another Look at Santa Barbara Island

Landing Cove on Santa Barbara Island

This is a photograph of the only point of entry to the island—Landing Cove. Near the lower right hand corner is the dock, which has a crane to lift supplies off the boat. In the upper left are the bunkhouse, the solar panel battery storage house and work space, and the island plant nursery. You have to carry all your food, clothing and supplies up a steep path that goes to the right of the dock back into a canyon and then works its way back left to the bunkhouse. It’s a hard haul. The 100-foot boat that took us out to the island was able to back into the dock area without problem. Our supplies were then craned up to the dock. But the sea was rough on the day we had to leave. They couldn’t bring a big boat that close to shore. So they lowered a zodiac (a small motor-powered skiff) into the ocean, which came to pick us up. We had to hand our stuff down an eight foot ladder while the driver ran the nose of the skiff against the ladder to keep it (somewhat) stationary. It was hairy, a little scary. But the guy knew what he was doing, and we made it without incident. (Thank you, Dwight.)

It’s a funny thing to me that next weekend Judy and are going to Manhattan. We’ll be going from one island with a population of 2 to another with a population in the millions. And then in early February, we’re going back to Santa Barbara Island for a week. I’ve been doing some good work on the book there.

The Path to Landing Cove

There is No Escape

I first had the opportunity to go to Santa Barbara Island three years ago. The island is 38 miles off the coast of Los Angeles (a four hour boat ride) and part of Channel Islands National Park. It’s about 1.8 miles long with 640 acres. There are no beaches, just steep cliffs, some of which are over 600 feet high. There are no trees, no water, no stores. Just a single bunkhouse, which uses propane and solar energy. The bunkhouse serves as shelter for the island’s caretakers and for those working to restore the island’s native habitat. When Judy and I went there three years ago as volunteer caretakers, we were completely cut off from civilization. Our sole interaction with other human beings was over the radio each morning when we had to send in the morning weather report. I loved it! Every sight and sound was natural: wind, sun, the barking of sea lions, the island grasses, flowers, pelicans, hawks, meadowlarks.

We had the opportunity to go again this year and I was looking forward to the peace and quiet. But the very first night, at 2:00 am, we were awakened by a helicopter hovering very low and shining a large spotlight. It flew over the bunkhouse three times before finally disappearing. What the hell was that? we both wondered. The helicopter returned the next morning, and it was huge. We wondered if they were searching for drug smugglers or something. It turned out that a 26-foot boat had driven into the island in the middle of the night, and the helicopter had been sent out to rescue the three fishermen on board. The next day, as the only people on the scene, the park service radioed us, asking us to look for the wreckage and to take photographs from the cliffs above. We hiked along the cliffs, picking our way through the prickly pear cactus and the cholla (another nasty cactus plant) until we found it. Taking photographs of the wreckage and radioing in reports took up three of our days there. I’m not complaining. I had a fantastic time. But it’s strange how difficult it is to escape the doings of human beings. Our machines take us everywhere now and the people running the machines are often foolish and oblivious. Foolish and oblivious enough to drive a large boat into an island in the middle of the night.

Walking back from shooting the wreckage

The Wreckage

From Santa Barbara Island

Sleeping Baby Sea Lion

I’m still out on Santa Barbara Island. It turns out that there is Internet access—it’s rather  slow, though—so I’m sending out this photo I took of a baby sea lion sleeping against some fencing at the Landing Cove area.

I’ll be back home in five days.

Happy New Year!

Progress Report #70

I’d hoped at this point to be finished with the outline for the final draft. But my two recent bouts with illness have ruined my plans. The book is divided into two sections (called “The Wrong Way” and “The High Way”), and I’ve just finished what I call the pre-final outline for the first half. I still need to go through the second half and bring it up to the same level, before boiling both halves down to their essence. Then I’ll have the outline that I’ll actually be working from for the final draft. Throughout this process, I’ve been learning my material well.

Two years ago, Judy and I were enlisted to serve for a week as caretakers for Santa Barbara Island, a one mile square desert island 40 miles off the coast of Southern California. We’ve been enlisted for another week, starting in just a few days. It’s a magical place, one that is completely isolated. It takes a three and a half hour boat ride just to get there. On a clear night, civilization still lights up the horizon, but otherwise there is no evidence for the existence of any other worlds save those of the island and the ocean. I’m taking my work with me. (There’s not a lot to do on the island!) I’ll be out of reach—truly out of reach—until the sixth.

Happy Holidays to everyone.

The Three Views of Existence Part 3

Our present-day understanding of religion is poor. When people discuss religion they are usually arguing about some doctrine they read in a book somewhere. Most of today’s religious institutions and organizations are led by people who have had no direct experience  of the spiritual, but who have ideas about what  it is. But you can’t get religion from a book or from speculative thought.

Here’s what real religion is: A person sets out on a path that takes him, or her, to the very edge of what can be understood with the thinking mind. At the point he can go no farther, he drops his ego and takes a leap into the unknown where he has a vision of the oneness of existence. To most people this sounds like some kind of Eastern religious trip. But I contend that Jesus took the same journey. If you read the Gospel of Thomas, one of the so-called Gnostic Gospels, it’s easy to recognize. One of the good things about the Gospel of Thomas is that it’s all sayings and aphorisms. There isn’t any mythology attached. It’s simply religious instruction. And religious instruction is mostly about how to manage safely the spiritual journey, which is incredibly dangerous.

Maybe it’s pointless to try to talk about this. To most ears, the journey I’m referring to sounds mythical rather than real. But that’s because of the time we live in, which is mundane and materialistic. In any case, for the moment, the door to the journey is closed. But it wasn’t so long ago that the door was open, and thousands, if not millions, were in pursuit. Even then, it was difficult to get people to understand. For many years, I was one of those who refused to hear of it. Futile or not, I want to try and make the point that in my mind I’ve been wanting to make for several months.

My contention is that real religion is simply the search for the truth about existence, about reality. There is one true religion, and it doesn’t have a name. It is simply the laws of existence—an existence that goes beyond physical reality. Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tse, and others are all examples of individuals who  made that journey, and then came back to tell the rest of us how to go there. In each case, only a handful of the original hearers had any real idea of what Buddha, Jesus, and Lao Tse were talking about. But they were impressed by the power of the speakers, who had been completely changed by their experiences. That’s where the big churches came from—from the mass of people who didn’t really understand what they were hearing, as well as from those who heard it second and third hand. In the first group I would include most of Jesus’ disciples; in the second, people like Paul, Augustine, Martin Luther, and so on. (I’m being critical of Christianity here, but I see Buddhism as having identical problems. One of the problems is to think that there is a “Buddhism” or a “Christianity.”)

It’s not easy to get people to understand what’s true. It’s easier to give them a jealous god who sits on his throne, sees all, and crushes his enemies. They can understand that much more easily than the idea that everything is god, that everything is mind. We all have, at the very least, an unconscious awareness of the spiritual roots of existence. That’s why the churches became so powerful. But as the churches have grown ever distant from the source, their doctrines have become more at odds with observable reality. A few centuries ago it got to be too much for the well-educated, and they began to question what they knew as religion, which was the creator god religion they’d inherited from Paul, Augustine, Martin Luther et al. Eventually they created science and philosophical materialism as a replacement. Today those two sides are duking it out, making headlines, trying to win converts. I can’t take either one of them seriously. There is that third way, which is quieter and more intelligent than either the creator god or philosophical materialism. It has the added advantage of being true. But, as I say, the door to understanding it directly is not open right now. That will change, however. Sometimes I feel that that’s all I live for—for that door to open again. When it does open, everything changes for everybody everywhere.

Old Age, Sickness, and Death

I’d been watching all the people around me fall ill from a cold. Judy, too. I was pleased that it hadn’t dug its nails into me—maybe even somewhat proud. “I must be doing something right.” But it’s got me now. All I can do is lie in bed and cough. I’d hoped to post the third part of “The Three Fundamental Views of Existence” by this point, but it’s been impossible to get any work done. So I’ve been lying in bed pondering the details of a third installment, which has been helpful in fleshing out the piece. Then it occurred to me that this is how it got started: two months ago, I was in bed with a stomach problem and thinking about existence. I don’t know how interesting that is, but I felt like saying something here.

More on God and Science

I started my series of posts on The Three Views of Existence (part 3 will be coming soon) by saying that the two dominant views, creator god and scientific/materialist, barely recognize the existence of the third, “pantheism.” But I could have said they don’t recognize it at all and I wouldn’t have been far off the mark. Tonight I read a review in the New York Times of a  book by an academic philosopher, Alvin Platingas, who believes in the creator god and who has made something of a career out of taking on the philosophical materialists. The third view is never mentioned. For the two dominant  views, it may as well not even exist. But I’m convinced that the third view is the true one, and I see its consistent omission as indicative of how far the modern world has strayed.