A DESCENT TO THE UNDERWORLD
The fierce Sicilian sun beats down on the white marbles of the ancient necropolis, enveloped in a vast silence occasionally pierced by the mating songs of cicadas. Dotted by a lonely sail, the Mediterranean shimmers in the distance, unruffled by the cypress scented breeze. Now I hear a distant murmur of human voices. It originates from a vine enclosed bower, at the tip of a narrow tongue of land that affords the unobstructed view of the bay. A few persons can be seen, seated at a long table covered by a white cloth; bread,fruit,and calices of red wine enliven its immaculate expanse. A subdued conversation is in progress, which peters out as they become aware of my presence. Which does not appear to startle them: the astonishment is all mine, as I find myself among long lost friends of my youth. I am moved beyond words by this unexpected encounter. My friends eagerly enquire about my life, but gently deflect my own queries. They have changed but little over the years: their physical appearance barely altered, they seem to have become more thoughtful and considerate, but that is all. And then it dawns on me that all these friends but one (whom I shall call James) died years ago. This is a banquet of the dead, and I am invited to partake of their victuals. I am not alarmed, because the scene, and my presence in it, have nothing sinister about it; calm, serenity, and detachment prevail.Slowly the air darkens, the sun a steadily diminishing crimson sliver beyond the watery horizon. One by one my friends leave the bower, bidding me a silent farewell. James seems uncertain as to whether he should join me or the departing friends. This worries me. I Patiently wait for him to accompany me, but am eventually overcome by an urge to leave the deserted enclosure, and hurriedly retrace my steps through the labyrinthine necropolis, now turned alien and forbidding.
This dream was recounted to me by an older man, intrigued by this unexpected descent to Hades. He added that the next day he got in touch with James, whom he had not heard of in a long while. He found him cheerful, and in good health. Evidently, James’s presence among his other departed friends was not to be taken as ominous.
Less than two weeks later, he learned that James had died: in the night, of a heart attack, as he was about to begin a long awaited trip to Italy.
Work is love made visible
I’ve read quite a few passages on discovering your authentic work, or what some would refer to as a “calling”. Most recently, I completed a book by Jonathan Haidt named The Happiness Hypothesis in which he quotes Kahlil Gibran in a chapter about Love & Work and how it is linked to a calling or what Jung referred to as vocation.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born.
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life. … And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. … And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. … It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.
Work is love made visible.
–Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
I’ve actually added a few more lines than what Haidt did to give a little more flavor of Gibran’s thrust.
Haidt also compares work to lost craftsmanship, which I think is the primary point he is working with. However, what stood out for me was the additional move Gibran makes in linking work with the beloved. It occurred to me that perhaps many people are not able to find or fulfill themselves in a true vocation, not because they are unable to find work that connects with their talents and passion, but because they have no experience with connecting with a beloved. In other words, without knowledge of the underlying experience of the divine love to measure the worth and purpose of our work, how do we know we are pursuing our life’s calling?
I worry that we focus our energies on finding the perfect fit (i.e., finding our beloved) in our work when the reality in my experience is that the love or the work or the calling often finds us without our conscious intention. This I believe is the truth that Gibran is trying to convey when he calls our work the fulfillment of “earth’s furthest dream.” In other words, it is not OUR calling that we seek when we look for our true vocation–that view is a reflection of our egomeniacal need to have the universe revolve around our own desires. Instead, what Gibran I think is saying is that it is the earth’s dream calling to us to play our part in its fulfillment and in so doing bind ourselves to our Self and thus to our beloved. What this means is that we do not need to make the effort to search for the perfect connection to work, we only need respond when we are finally called by the work that will ultimately find us. There is, I believe, a huge difference in the world view based on seeking and one that is based on responding. By leaving out the line, “But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born” the meaning of what follows shifts from transpersonal to personal and the term beloved takes on a corporeal meaning (i.e., lover) instead of something that is divine (i.e., god, nature, Gaia, etc.). We must pursue the lover and his/her love whereas we are always already one with the divine. Read in the context of a calling, we could say that vocation (just the same as love) is inherently imminent in work of any kind, not just in work of our own choosing.
Often when people talk of god, or god’s plan, they may also cling to the idea that they can force fit their own free will (ego) to a web of intelligence that by definition they are unable to conceive or comprehend. This is not to say that the two concepts are mutually exclusive, it’s just that they tend to contradict in terms of our beliefs in either divine craftsmanship of reality or subjective destiny both of which can potentially have profound impact on our overall world view as well. How can we presume to understand our fit in the divine web from the pinpoint of a single vocation? Or, how can we presume that our vocation actually serves a greater whole–especially one that is beyond our comprehension? The best we can possibly do is use our thermometer of happiness to measure our relative success and hope that, in the end, our work does some good somewhere at some time. Otherwise, our vocation runs the risk of being an exercise in the ego feeding its own needs rather than a calling.
Purposeful education
NBC Nightly News recently ran a short piece on students performing assignments where they were asked to engage with a current social issue. Combined with other educational like Project Based Learning (PBL), it is possible that we are seeing a move in the way that people (at least teachers and administrators) view education and curricular effectiveness.I find it curious that we should be surprised that children engage more in their education when we treat them more like adult learners (especially junior high and high school students) where learning opportunities take on more of an immediacy, are embedded in a broader perspective, and can directly lead to practical application.
Rather than go into specific detail here about how education is starting to reflect more of a 21st century model of knowledge and learning, I’ll just pass on the the video below as a means of priming the pump. As you view the clip, keep in mind that these students are engaged in tacit learning exercises where they are focused more on the acquisition, management, and synthesis of information rather than the retention and assessment of it. More on this later.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
CARL ROGERS ON LIFE AFTER DEATH
Most readers acquainted with contemporary psychology would agree that Carl Rogers (1902-1987) was one of the most influential psychologist of the century just past. In an autobiographical note written when he was 75 years old, Rogers observed that death was not looming large in his thoughts. The meaningfulness of his life, he felt, was not threatened by the prospect of death. Though inclining towards the view that death constitutes the terminus of personal existence, he refused to construe this as a tragic or awful prospect: ‘I have been able to live my life not to the full, cer¬tainly, but with a satisfying degree of fullness and it seems natural that my life should come to an end. I already have a degree of immortality in other persons. I have sometimes said that, psychologically, I have strong sons and daughters all over the world. Also, I believe that the ideas and the ways of being that I and others have helped to develop will continue, for some time at least. So if I, as an individual, come to a complete and final end, aspects of me will still live on in a variety of growing ways, and that is a pleasant thought. (Rogers, 1989, p. 49).’*This serenely secular view was tempered somewhat by the serious consideration he felt compelled to give to Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s affirmative conclusions about life after death, and to Moody’s research on the near-death experience. In sum, Rogers concluded, “I consider death with, I believe, an openness to the expe¬rience. It will be what it will be, and I trust I can accept it as either an end to, or a continuation of, life” (Rogers, p. 50).
About two years later, however, Rogers wrote: In the eighteen months prior to my wife’s death in March 1979, there were a series of experiences in which Helen and I and a number of friends were all involved, which decidedly changed my thoughts and feelings about dying and the contin¬uation of the human spirit. (Ibid., 1989, p. 51). These experiences, barely hinted at, were of a paranormal character, and impressive enough to induce Rogers to “consider it possible that each of us is a continuing spiritual essence lasting over time, and occasionally incarnated in a human body” (Rogers, 1989, p. 53). A decidedly interesting statement from a man of considerable intellectual stature and profound personal integrity.
* Rogers, C. R. (1989). Growing old: Or older and growing. In H. Kirschenbaum and V. Henderson (Eds.), The Carl Rogers Reader. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
L. appellare “to address, appeal to, summon, name,” iterative of appellere “to prepare.” For more information about what's behind this site,