Blog o’ Gnosis

Newt Gingrich’s recent comments to a right-wing religious audience that “We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism” have been getting lots of coverage, and rightly so. What worries me more, however, are his comments immediately before and after the “paganism” line: that the ACLU is a “hateful, anti-religious system” aimed at driving God out of America, and that the Christian response to the rise of Paganism is first of all a spiritual challenge.

We just had a taste of this “spiritual challenge” last Fall, during the heated last days of the presidential campaign. Does anyone still remember the rhetoric? Now we have had the gunning down of a security guard at the Holocaust Memorial, the cold-blooded murder of a pro-choice doctor, and anti-abortion radical Randall Terry calling a press conference warning that our new president’s policies make more fundamentalist violence in this country “inevitable.”

Gus DiZerega does a great job of summarizing the right-wing terrorist attacks in the U.S. that have happened in just the past year. There is a pattern here that we are not yet used to seeing, let alone acknowledging. This “spiritual challenge” that Newt Gingrich just invoked is a fundamentalist’s dream: a Christian holy war that gives license for far-right ideologues to attack not just individuals with whom they disagree, but the very institutions of our democratic, free society.

There is still considerable resistance in the mainstream media to reporting seriously on this disturbing trend, even after the release of the 2007 Homeland Security report which warned of right-wing extremist violence specifically. But make no mistake, it is here, and it needs to be called out by as many people as possible.

Newt calling the ACLU “anti-religious” may be his attempt to divert the rabid flock away from the abortion arena and onward to attacking institutions which uphold civil liberties. What really baffles me, though, is why Newt Gingrich has jumped on this bandwagon at all.

Perhaps it is just a cynical ploy to sell more books that had Newt joining forces last week with Mike Huckabee, Oliver North, and the wacko fringe of the Republican Party. It certainly can’t be a serious effort to revive the party or his political career, since by all accounts the far-right wing is a small and dwindling demographic that will never win a national election. And Newt Gingrich is nothing if not cynical and self-serving.

Here is my take away from this whole sordid affair: there will be inflamed rhetoric on both sides. The more Gingrich and others threaten various religious groups and organizations, the more people will start to pay attention to the afore-mentioned trend. Hopefully this will result in prison terms for people guilty of terror, murder, and treason. Meanwhile, it is important to remember that the culture war they are still fighting is essentially over. They lost it, and soundly. What we are seeing is a vestigial effort—though obviously prone to escalating violence. But for now, they are really just poor losers. Very poor losers.

And while we need to speak up and make sure their terror campaigns are thwarted, on the whole our energy is best spent moving forward with the long task of rebuilding the nation. Let’s get Sotomayor confirmed, enact some much-needed social change legislation, regulate the financial industry, right some of the heinous wrongs of recent years, and most of all bolster our education system so that the ignorance which breed this kind of hatred is minimized. Oh yeah, and let’s keep religion out of politics in this country, okay?

I am a big fan of working with dream material during the daytime, through meditation, art, writing, or acting in ways which are suggested by the events of the dream. What many people don’t realize is that this process is just as rewarding using other people’s dream material as it is with our own.

Case in point: my good friend Kathy Taylor, who is a wonderful dreamworker and artist. As wife of the renowned Jeremy Taylor, Kathy has developed her own unique processes for working with dream material over the decades. Recently, someone posted a dream about zombies on the email list of the Marin Institute for Projective Dreamwork, Jeremy’s professional training school. The person wondered (among other things) what to make of zombies in dreams.

Kathy responded by talking about how she sat with the dreamer’s question, and what personal associations came out of that process for her. It is not only a deeply insightful look at possible meanings for zombies in dreams, but a wonderful description of how to stay with an elusive dream figure, bring it into our waking awareness and let it challenge and change us. Here are Kathy’s words (quoted with permission):

When I read the dream, the word “zombie” leapt like Halley’s Comet straight into my unconscious/conscious interface.  My first question was “why?”  (no answer) and my second was “what would it be like to be a zombie in a dream?”

I kept this question “up” for those odd moments when my brain was not otherwise occupied, and was annoyed by my inability to imagine what the inside of a zombie head/body would feel like.

I couldn’t let it go. I’ve learned that if I persist at something even though frustrated and annoyed, then it’s definitely something my whole being has decided is important.  I was rewarded at 5:30 this morning by a few seconds of “zombie mind.”  Imagine my surprise when what I sensed/saw/felt was what I have come to call my “weeping child.”

This is my shorthand for an archetypal figure I’ve been in touch with (always briefly) for the last 35 years.  She is the “ugly,” stubborn, ferocious, tenacious kid who was, in my childhood, keeper of my soul flame; she is the child self who hung on by her fingernails in the hurricanes, determined to keep my core self intact. She was holding it together in the powerless world of a child.

Now that I’m 65, she still comes out now and then, even though I am no longer powerless. That’s when she might appear symbolically to be lurching around, aggressively defending her right to be, barging in inappropriately, engaging in endless “walking” (for which read repetitive behavior) because to do otherwise feels to her like death and not life.

In that moment this morning my response to seeing my zombie—weeping—child was a huge outpouring of love. I set a place at the table and invited her in.  I counted on love being as powerful as fire to transform.  By this point I had moved into waking dream and in that waking dream she came in and I embraced her in her rotting, stinking, tattered, bloody embodiment of strength, will, and courage, and she turned into a cat in my arms, smooshing against my face, then leaping down, running up the long dinner table at which sat 100s of clear and unclear images of different “me-s” and she jumped into a basket by the fire, becoming a very different kind of guardian of the soul flame.

It was a fascinating exercise in active imagination….I hope [we] can find a way to love those shadowy beings and have compassion for all those parts [of ourselves] who feel lost, “homeless,” and (like Pinocchio) longing to be “real.”

When people bring this kind of thoughtful process to working with a dream, it enriches everyone’s dreamwork experience. I can’t remember having any zombie dreams myself, but if I ever do I will keep in mind their transformative potential, and stay with the dream until I too sense that magical shift back into life.

Oh, it has been a long time since I last posted—my apologies to regular readers who were hoping for a little more blogging between the end of April and the beginning of June. I had to take time out to host another wonderful May Day party, my 20th year of doing so in Sonoma County, and then had to take a sabbatical from writing to welcome a new love into my life. Such a great set of problems!

Photo by Tom Lux

In the meantime, I have been making numerous appearances around California, doing book signings, teaching classes and leading dream groups. I have been on the air every Thursday morning, hosting Dream Talk Radio on our local Occidental radio station. And I have been interviewed and profiled in a couple places that I would like to call your attention to.

David Van Nuys, aka Dr. Dave, is professor emeritus of psychology at Sonoma State University, and now has a top-rated psychology podcast called Shrink Rap Radio. He interviewed me last month about my new book on nightmares, What To Do When Dreams Go Bad. It was a really fun interview—well, if you’re like me and love having conversations about the creative potential of nightmares it was great fun. The hour-long podcast is available for listening on iTunes and also here.

Paul Rest is a writer, teacher and fellow aikidoist I have known for ten years. He writes about martial arts in a variety of places, including the examiner.com, where he pens a series of profiles called Martial Artists Making a Difference. His profile of me is here, freshly posted just a week ago.

Finally, my friend Baruch interviewed me yesterday for his new radio show, and while the podcast is not available yet I want to let people know about the show. Paradigms is a radio show highlighting visions of a viable future, through interviews with all sorts of inspiring people interspersed with great live music. If you are an inspiring person with something to say, you might consider contacting Baruch through his website. If you do, tell him I sent you.

I will post a link to that radio show when it materializes. Meanwhile, there is the end of another school year to contend with, the first anniversary of my father’s death this Summer Solstice, workshops coming up and a dream conference to attend in Chicago in late June. My plate is full and my cup runneth over, and I couldn’t be happier about all of it.

That’s “the virtuous life,” for those of you like me who are not proficient in Spanish. The subject has been on my mind lately as I finish reading Brendan Myers’s recent book The Other Side of Virtue. It has taken me a long time, partly because it is a new subject for me. Paganism as we know is long on spontaneity and very light on anything which requires concentrated, sustained thought. This book demands it however, and rightly so. It suggests a way to live that is radically different from the way most of us view our lives, and which bring us into accord with some of the great minds of Western civilization—those famous Pagan philosophers and heroes most of us know very little about.

When I first saw the title I was confused, because I had never considered that virtue might have more than one side. Wouldn’t the other side of virtue be simply a lack of virtue, or a life spent actively refuting its importance? Now I know better, as the title is meant to identify mainstream values like Faith, Hope, Obedience, Charity, Humility, and Chastity as largely Christian virtues. In contrast to these “passive virtues” Myers then takes us through the “other side” of virtue: those values and character traits which arose earlier in Heroic and Classical societies, had a resurgence during the Renaissance and Romantic periods, and are surfacing yet again in various forms—in short, he introduces the reader to Pagan virtues.

Myers digs deep into the Greek, Germanic, Irish and Norse sagas to build his depiction of Heroic virtues such as fortune, friendship, honor, courage, trust, hope, magic, and atonement. He then moves into Classical society, where he finds reason, courage, prudence, temperance, and justice. Moving ever onward, he visits the virtues espoused in Renaissance art and humanism, and in the writings of Machiavelli, Shakespeare, the Romantics, Nietzsche, and for good measure ends with the more modern take on virtue expressed by Tolkein and J.K. Rowling. (Spoiler alert: they may be such popular authors because they revive the old virtues which still resonate deeply in the population.)

If someone had asked me previously what qualities I considered virtuous, I would have named honesty, humility, integrity, courage, compassion, and maybe humor. But virtues have often felt like extra credit assignments to me. We aim for leading a good life, and if we manage to hit a few of the virtues along the way, more’s the better. Perhaps this laissez faire attitude is a generational trait, but it might be a larger cultural issue.

Growing up my favorite jigsaw puzzle was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, with gleefully cartoonish faces in 1920’s attire depicting sloth, avarice, lust, gluttony, pride, envy, and wrath. They all looked like they were having a fine time, though one might gather that too much of a good thing could harm one’s looks. How telling that I can still remember almost the entire list off the top of my head, yet had no idea what the corresponding biblical Seven Virtues were until I read about them in Myers’s book.

The other thing we as a culture know about virtues is that those who espouse them are usually guilty of the worst sorts of hypocrisy: witness former Education Secretary William Bennett, whose best-selling Book of Virtues belied the fact that he himself is a compulsive gambler who has lost millions. Or poor Ted Haggard, that paragon of God-fearing, anti-gay religiosity who fell from his pulpit when it was revealed that he had a thing for gay sex with hookers and speed. In a crazy world with no real moral compass, it is usually the one shouting the loudest for people to follow his compass that we should trust the least.

Myers acknowledges that he is not broaching a popular subject. Yet he lays out his case for following the ancient virtues—and some new ones stemming from contemporary Pagan experience—with patience and clarity. Though the subject may be dense with literary and philosophical references, the book is written in an accessible, almost conversational style. Myers knows (and laments, to some extent) that when he speaks to his fellow Pagans, it is to an audience largely ignorant of and unaccustomed to the thinking of our learned forebears.

Today’s Paganism is replete with varied customs, devotions, and ritual recipes. We put on a pretty good festival, but are we ready to tackle philosophy? Or, to put it another way: given the tremendous influence Pagan ideas are currently having on the larger culture, what can we put forward that best exemplifies our core values? How do we believe a good life is lived, no matter one’s religion?

Myers writes:

The origin of virtue itself…is in the dynamic meeting between our ideas of who we are, and the various events and experiences that call these ideas into question. (pg. 155)

Times being what they are, we will have plenty of opportunities to ponder those big questions in the months to come. Read Brendan Myers’s book, especially the last section where he proposes some newer virtues. Then think about it, and if your ideas don’t match his figure out why that is. Make philosophy a topic of normal conversation. I don’t know whether the world needs another Socrates or Aristotle, but it would be a shame to cede the position to another religion, just because we were too busy blogging to wade back into the deep end after all these centuries.

The first ecstatic/musical/lucid dream I remember happened when I was about 15 or 16. At that time, I was the principal bassoonist for the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, and my life was strung with a pattern of lessons, rehearsals, concerts, after-parties, and more rehearsals. It was a good life, a great orchestra, and our conductor Denis DeCoteau knew exactly how to coax the best music from our hearts and souls. We had a dynamism and group energy that many older orchestras lacked, and I remember many ecstatic moments in our playing together. I sometimes felt, as my breath coursed through my instrument with every note, that not just my part but the whole piece was playing through me. The resonance of every part seemed to vibrate within each of us, and just by breathing together we made the music flow.

At that time, the city of Oakland was renovating the beautiful Paramount Theater, an Art Deco wonder in the center of downtown. By some fluke of scheduling, OSYO was the first group to hold a concert in the newly re-opened theater. As the curtain call approached, we lucky teenagers whispered nervously and peeked through the heavy velvet hanging at the back of the stage, watching our audience enter the hall.

Then it was time to play and we filed silently onto the stage with our instruments, professional and serious in concert black, as a gentle patter of applause rose from the plush seats below. From the stage the theater looked like a giant gilded music box, all gold leaf and tapestry, with titans and goddesses sculpted on every surface. Denis lifted his baton, and the surging of strings and jewel-toned brass slowly brushed over every surface, collecting in corners and rising to the rafters until the whole hall was filled with sound and the aging theater woke from its slumber to witness our musical offering.

Shortly after this I dreamed that:

I am backstage at the Paramount, and there is another orchestra on stage. The curtain is drawn so I can’t see them, but I am enraptured by the music they are playing. It is nothing I recognize, part Debussy and part Beethoven, with strains of Mahler, Shostakovich, and here and there a hint of Mozart or Dvořák. It is such a fluid sound that just as I try to pin it down, it changes into something completely different and I am newly enraptured. Then I realize that I am not reacting emotionally to the music, it is reacting to me, shaping itself according to my shifting moods. I am somehow composing this mysterious, complex and beautiful piece in every moment! It is a huge revelation, and wakes me up.

Like a music box itself I marveled at this dream, and have kept it on a high shelf since then, taking it down now and then to wind up and listen to once again. I have kept in mind its advice, too, and slowly through my adulthood have learned to act as though I were composing my own life, not just reacting to what was around me.

Two nights ago, I found myself by a tricksterish fluke in the orchestra seats of the Paramount at the first of three nights of Leonard Cohen concerts. I had ordered balcony tickets but that’s not what we got, so after freaking out about money for a few minutes, my friend and I went ahead and took our seats way down in “industry row.” It was a very good move, because that was the most remarkable concert I have ever experienced. Ever.

Leonard Cohen has spent a lifetime writing with scathing honesty, clarity, and wit about the range of human experience. His finely crafted songs stand on their own, each word placed just so to reflect light over to the next verse, where the same thought comes back again but this time with a snap and a shock of something unexpected. Most artists with his catalog of songs would wear them like medals, letting their gleam be the first thing one sees upon entering the room. Yet somehow, maybe through years of Zen Buddhist practice, Cohen has separated himself from his songs. He looks on their lives with wry amusement and a deep tenderness, knowing they are not him but being able to completely surrender himself to them the moment the song begins.

I have never seen someone sing with such passion and emptiness. He is like a reed through which the song blows, and yet he is present in every slow syllable of its passing. When it has fully passed, he takes a deep bow and returns to stillness, just himself, surrounded by the exquisite musicians that share the stage with him. Though he was obviously the master, they all stayed with him on the journey through each song, and every part was played with such precision and care that it took my breath away.

And there I was again, in the music box dream. This man was actually doing consciously, for an entire three-hour show, what I had dreamt about once, and only for a split second. The theater walls gently held his testament to the beauty and transience of life, and my heart rattled in its rib cage as I was pulled gently along into the flow of music by the power and artistry of his performance.

I don’t expect to see another show like that in my lifetime. There is simply no artist I can think of who matches Cohen on all fronts: poetry, voice, grace, wisdom, humility, passion, humor. Two days later, I still feel transformed by the experience. Yet it is not just the concert that has me energized. Out of the blue, the lid to my music box dream was lifted and music came pouring out. Only this time it wasn’t a memory, it was in real time. And I am still reeling from that unexpected convergence.

Who knows? Maybe a song will come from it someday.

I pay particular attention to the dreams I have when I am away from home. Particularly on overseas or extended journeys, it seems to me that our dreams take on a different character. As our lives are unmoored from habit and routine, our dreams are likewise free to roam, and often show us startling pictures of life back home. I call this the “View of the Earth from Space” phenomenon. Sometimes we can only identify patterns and see larger truths from a distance.

As it happens, last month I did a fair amount of traveling, leading dream workshops and selling copies of my new book. Maybe because of my busy schedule, or maybe due to jet lag, I tended to wake an hour or two earlier than I needed to in the morning. As I lay in bed hoping to get back to sleep, often I would drift into a dream and bring a little lucid awareness with me. The following dream was like that:

I’ve got a pole for pole vaulting, and can do all these tricks with it. It’s great, I can twirl and leap all across the landscape, and I’ve figured out how to make it almost a part of my body. The feeling is exhilarating. Then I notice that I assume the dream will end poorly, so I start imagining not quite reaching my goal, or reaching it but messing up toward the end. And it hits me: why do I need to assume that? Isn’t it just as likely that with my strength I will cross the finish line in great shape? So I decide to change the story in mid-flight, and it works. Crossing a huge expanse, I get from one side to the other without falling or getting weak.

This dream was a huge aha for me, first because I had been worried that I might get sick on my trip. But I felt good, was eating well, getting plenty of sleep, and the workshops were going great. Why would I keep worrying about getting sick? 

More than anything, the dream made me aware of that voice in my head which does assume the worst, is always bracing for at least mild failure, and actually serves to weaken me when things are going just fine. By way of antidote, the dream seemed to suggest that simply focusing on what I knew how to do and keeping my mind on my task was enough to ensure that I could be successful.

The second aha for me was in the dream’s unequivocal opinion that I was strong and skilled enough to do this pole vaulting. There was never a moment when I felt physically in jeopardy or fatigued. It was simply a trick of my mind that created the opening for missteps and falls.

I woke up feeling great, and resolved to stop worrying about what might go wrong on my trip. I also began paying attention to see whether that sabotaging voice came up in other situations. No surprise, it was a near-constant chatter in the background no matter what I was doing.

It took flying far away from home to get enough distance to be able to distinguish that message and to see clearly that I could change it. When I got home I continued to think about the dream and how I could keep practicing this new awareness. I realized that another realm where I am constantly afraid of injury is in fact physical exercise. 

I have been practicing aikido now for over 10 years, and view earning a black belt 5 years ago as a huge accomplishment, more important in a way than any degree or initiation I have received. But the art is very strenuous, and I kept re-injuring my knee and shoulder. Last summer I realized that I would not be able to continue training at the level I wanted  unless I did more physical conditioning in addition to the aikido.

I started doing hot yoga one or two times a week, something I’d done infrequently in the past. This is another strenuous activity, but one that felt better for my knee than the physical therapy exercises I’d been doing. Intuitively, I felt that I could strengthen those weak points while actually healing the original injuries if I kept at this practice for long enough.

Fast-forward to a couple weeks ago, back from the last of two overseas trips. I had eaten too well, it turns out, and nothing fit quite right anymore. The obvious solution was to work out more and shed those Cadbury pounds. That’s when I realized that I also needed to completely shift my perspective on physical training. 

Always in the back of my mind I had thought of yoga as something I did to get strong enough to go back to aikido. But there was nobody forcing me back to the dojo. I could in fact follow whatever path felt best for my body—I could just pursue yoga and let the aikido go for now.

Finally, I realized that the dream was showing me my needless fear of getting into great shape. I was in good enough shape, but why not let my body get as strong and flexible as it wanted to be? The dream felt almost like a hunger for that kind of physical mastery. What is more, unlike in aikido, I was toned enough and familiar enough with this style of yoga so that I could embark on more intensive training without fear of injury. All I needed to do was pay attention and keep focused on ground, breath, extension. 

So here I am, never having thought of myself as particularly athletic. And yet I go in there and sweat with the best of them, 4 or 5 times a week. All the Cadbury is staying put for now, but that is not really my goal. I want to feel more like that pole vaulter, energized and confident, crossing the landscape with grace and skill, and landing just so.

Talking with my good friend Dawn on the phone last week, I asked how everything was going. She hesitated, then said, “Well, it’s the new normal.” I understood exactly what she meant.

Everyone with a job was still employed. No one previously healthy had been diagnosed with anything. Our friends were carrying on, the children were doing well, and the delicately balanced scales of fortune still weighed slightly in our favor. Gone was the former assumption that our situation might improve any day. Instead, we were thankful that nothing was collapsing, and tenuously hoped for the same to be true next week, as well.

During the old normal, it was hard not to be affected by the constant selling of opportunities. Even if you were basically content with what you had, you couldn’t help feeling like a fool sometimes for not taking advantage of cheap money, cheap goods, and all the rest. Like trying to sleep with a 24-hour drum circle going on next door, even earplugs only work for so long. And while a few may have packed up and moved farther away, many of us eventually got a djembe and joined in to some extent. 

It is a relief for it all to be over, a relief to be free of that particular drone in the background. Granted, this is a very small bright spot in the unfolding bleakness of the new normal, but part of the new normal is appreciating any little bright spots we can find. 

My parents were both children of the Depression, and they raised their family with a frugality that would not budge, even for beneficial financial moves that entailed very little risk. They didn’t fully trust any investment that was not an obvious commodity: a house, a retirement account, stocks.

I am glad to have their practicality and their instinct for making do with less, yet I am also very glad to understand the financial ins and outs of our current economic crisis. One of the most valuable assets in the new normal is information: the more we understand what is happening, the better we will be at reading the signs of what is to come.

That is why I was so grateful for Dawn’s comment. I knew things were changing, but hadn’t put it all together as a fundamental shift in expectations. Some of the changes I am grateful for, some are quite difficult. Still, having a name for what we are experiencing puts us that much closer to managing it, bearing with it, and eventually watching it fade away as yet another normal comes to take its place.

My dad said he was a diamond
in the rough. Forty years and
no diamond. Your children
inherit a chisel.

I’ve been home from PantheaCon since Monday evening, and I can still hear Thalassa’s voice over the vendor’s room microphone, cracking jokes and telling people to leave because the room is closing. Is this some weird sign of stress or lingering sleep deprivation? The answer is probably yes on both counts, considering that I only finished the post-con bookkeeping for Serpentine Music earlier this afternoon.

I only went to two scheduled events this year: a talk on evil by Sam Webster, and a talk on “divine embodiment” by Ivo Dominguez. Both were interesting and thought-provoking, and together were about as much as I could handle of the con festivities. Yet in spite of my severely curtailed conference schedule, I had more fun at the con this year than ever before.

It turns out that if you have a great idea for a badge ribbon, you really do need to create it. In my case, it was the “Ask Me About My Feminist Rage” ribbon, in red ink on a bright pink piece of satin. I had several hundred made, and we gave away almost all of them. In the last hour of the con there were still people coming up to the booth begging us for a “feminist rage” ribbon.

Imagine if you will calling out to random people milling about the convention hallways and vending room, and asking them if they’d like a ribbon for their badge. These people ran the gamut of age, ethnicity, gender, and every other orientation. Then imagine the looks on their faces as they read the ribbon message! Now I wish I’d taken a poll of all the intriguing, entertaining responses we got.

My favorites were the women and men who laughed hysterically and took two—one for themselves and another for a friend who just had to have one. Some men looked confused or sheepish, saying that they didn’t want one but thought their wives or girlfriends would. Some women gently said that they were over their rage and were pretty comfortable with how things were going, and at least two said they wouldn’t take them because “it all looks like trash to me, and I won’t send another thing to the landfill.” Killjoys.

My response to nearly everybody was that you don’t have to identify as a feminist or be in touch with some sort of rage to wear a ribbon. The ribbon only invites people to ask you about your feminist rage, and whatever answer you have is a perfectly valid one to give. I even counseled one older single gentleman (among the confused and/or not enraged) that if some attractive woman were to ask him about his ribbon, and if he were to answer that he had no feminist rage but really liked strong women, that might be a decent pickup line. That was the first time I’ve ever seen him blush in the many years I’ve known him.

My daughters took special delight in handing them to all the young boys and girls looking for ribbons to add to their collection, and I made sure that every prominent Pagan I knew had one as well. The most notable encounter I had was with an instructor at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), who took a ribbon but said she wasn’t going to wear it, she was going to bring it to her class as a conversation starter. Apparently her Women’s Spirituality students feel no need for feminism or anger of any sort, a stance we both agreed was troubling.

In the end, it was deeply satisfying to bring the word “feminist” into the con in such a lighthearted way. We should be able to laugh at ourselves, and also admit our strengths, outrages and longings.

I already have a slogan picked out for next year’s special edition ribbon, a sentiment that I heard expressed by several others at the con so I know it’s not just me. It captures the state of mind you get into after attending several years of PantheaCon, when you know you’ll be back but realize that next year you may only get to one or two events in a weekend packed with presentations:

OVER IT—And Yet, Still Here.

And that about sums it up. Except for this hilarious little video of my great helpers Lyra and Jojo, rocking out in an ironic rendition of Wendy Rule’s “Deity.” You do get punchy, sitting at the music booth listening to the same music all weekend.

This book, Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World Into Being, caught my eye a year ago in a local bookstore, so I requested a review copy from the publisher. Now, before I get into reviewing the book I need to say something about Hay House Publishers.

I both admire and am horrified by Hay House. As a publicity and marketing machine, they are unparalleled. Their self-help authors can publish companion CDs, DVDs, card decks and calendars to complement book sales, and get virtually unlimited exposure on their internet radio station and Hay House-sponsored tours and events. I wish more mainstream publishers had the marketing zazz of Hay House.

On the other hand, there is everything else. Hay House has singlehandedly ruined the sky blue/lavender color scheme, for one. Almost all of their products and many of their authors’ websites are invested heavily in this look, which I guess is designed to evoke calm, timeless wisdom unsullied by earthly bodies or the misery of the unenlightened. Yet as a result of its overuse, I find myself automatically bracing for bad writing and dubious content as soon as I spot it.

Hay House is the baby of Louise Hay, famous for declaring that we create our own reality and then proceeding to defend her philosophy even in the face of the most egregious human circumstances. Mutilation and abuse? Yup, if we experienced it we created it. Poverty and starvation? Double yup.

What she lacks in ethics and discernment she makes up for in sheer chutzpah however, by declaring that Hay House is a significant contributor to planetary healing. As a result of all this, it is impossible for me to separate any book published by her from the fact that it was published by Hay House.

Alberto Villoldo was at one time a student and colleague of Stanley Krippner, a man whose research on dreams, shamanism and consciousness I greatly admire. Sadly, that association is not enough for me to give Villoldo’s book a glowing review. The author’s bio reveals that he left his clinical psych position at San Francisco State to pursue an apprenticeship with Amazonian healers. One wishes that he had not left quite so much behind when he set out on his quest.

Villoldo’s prose is ponderous, and the points he makes are riddled with flaws. (Chapter Five begins with this gem: “As a species, we humans are very intrepid.” Medic!) Basically he presents a story of how we as individuals and a culture have fallen from grace, how we are suckling at the teat of an empty materialistic dream, and how our only chance of survival is to awaken to the wisdom of what he calls the “Earthkeepers.”

He never gets specific about exactly who the Earthkeepers are, but he seems to refer mostly to the Inca shamans he has developed relationships with, and to whom he regularly goes on expeditions with students and fellow seekers. Yet at different times he also lumps Amazonian shamans, sub-Saharan African medicine men, Taoist sages, and ancient Greek philosophers into this same group of Earthkeepers. Keeping up with all his rhetorical sleight-of-hand made this reader cranky.

Fortunately for us, we need not wonder about the specifics of who the Earthkeepers are, because Villoldo is here to translate their messages for us. Hence blanket statements like Chapter Nine’s opener: “The Earthkeepers believe that to live fully and dream courageously, we must wake up each morning and live this day as if it were our last.”

For all its hype the book has some ideas that may help some people. It is ironic, though, that underneath its shamanic trappings the meat of the book is comprised of fairly standard psychological ideas and re-treads of The Four Agreements. Villoldo gives us the Earthkeepers’ four types of courage: Jaguar, Hummingbird, Serpent and Eagle. These correspond to the mind, the soul, the actions, and the spirit. He also seems to say that they each affect a different building-block of human DNA, though I will spare you a thorough review of all his specious scientific references.

Never mind that he constantly makes sweeping generalizations to bolster his case. In the end, his message is simply that we need to be courageous enough to follow our dreams and hold fast even when obstacles are thrown in our path. He advises us to be creative, reject perfectionism, reject grandiosity, study our dream symbols, be mindful and truthful, live in integrity, remember to laugh, forgive and forget, and be grateful. I’ll bet the Earthkeepers agree.