Bill Ellis, a 5R devotee of long-standing known to many in his Victoria hometown, Vancouver, Olympia and elsewhere, is now alone in Kentucky minding his daughter's home & enjoying some productive R&R. With his permission, here's a recent communique from him that may be of interest and philosophical import to those curious about the dance of destiny. He’ll be back in this time zone at month’s end and attending the tribal gathering in Olympia.
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>> And if I thought I had come here, as planned, to spend a lot of time editing some texts by the Eastern mystic OSHO then I was completely mistaken: At the last minute, I was guided to put two books by the internationally renowned academic and Jungian analyst, James Hollis, in my bag. One is entitled "Creating A Life, Finding Your Individual Path" the other, "On This Journey We Call Life, Living The Questions." And I needed a man of his intellectual stature, rather than some New Age dreamer, to confirm for me what I have known for so long but have had difficulty in accepting.
So here is the essence of what I wanted to know from Hollis and Jung which I have put together into a short precis:
"We now know something is living us even more than we are living it .... that deep down something knows our destiny .... whether we wish to know it or not .... that something in us, no matter how much we flee it, summons us. And that summons is the call to become our own selves for no matter how small our role, each of us is a carrier of cosmic energy and a crucial part of a great unfolding pattern ..." [my vision is of a huge mosaic with each of us being individual tiles and the ever-changing mosaic is not complete without all the tiles in place].
Consequently, suggests Hollis, "What each of us owes the world is the contribution ~ by moving towards wholeness ~ of our best unique selves, along with ethical behaviour and respect for every other person's summons to be unique too."
No rescuing others here. Hollis, approvingly, cites Henry David Thoreau, who wrote, in Walden, "Let everyone mind his own business and endeavour to be what he was made" [to be]. Reminds me of Jung's comment that "The universe heals one soul at a time." (continues)
And the over-riding question that Hollis suggests the gods ask of us in what he metaphorically calls the second half of our lives i.e. it is not age-related is "What now does the soul ask of me?" And, to assist in answering that question he has devoted ten Chapters of the second book to posing a series of questions about which Rainer Maria Rilke had this to say in "Letters to a Young Poet":
Be patient to all that is unsolved in your heart ... and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.
billthesailor@hotmail.com
