September
11, 2002
I
heard the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?
Who will go for us?’ I said,
‘Here am I! Send me.’ He replied, ‘Go, tell this people:
However hard you listen, you will never
understand.
However hard you look, you will never
perceive.
This people’s wits are dulled;
They have stopped their ears and shut
their eyes,
So that they may not see with their
eyes,
Nor listen with their ears,
Nor understand with their wits,
And then turn and be healed.’
I
asked, ‘Lord, how long?’ And he answered,
‘Until cities fall in ruins and are
deserted,
Until houses are left without
occupants,
And the land lies ruined and waste.’
The Lord will
drive the people far away,
And the
country will be one vast desolation.
Even though a
tenth of the people were to remain,
They too would
be destroyed
Like an oak or
terebinth when it is felled,
And only a
stump remains.
Its stump is a
holy seed.
[Isaiah
6: 8-13, Revised English Bible]
I watched only a small amount of this
week’s commemorations of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. What I saw left me feeling despair. The underlying tragedy—the horrific loss of
life, is despair-inducing in itself.
But, compared to that horror, I see little discernable growth in
consciousness. A common recurring theme
in the commemorative speeches was: “we cannot allow th4ese people to have died
in vain.” What does that mean
exactly? A justification for
revenge? A commitment to blind patriotism,
no matter what? I would argue that, if
consciousness does not expand due to the September 11 tragedy, then they died
in vain.
Like
many victims of violent crime, we appear to be stalled in the constant reliving
of the trauma. How many times do we
need to see those infamous photos and videotapes to convince ourselves that it
really happened? How many gut-wrenching
stories of loss and grief need we hear?
A survivor of trauma who remains fixated or the constant retelling of
the event is still in the early stages of healing, and there is a danger that
this stage will be morbidly prolonged without the underlying meaning ever
emerging. I hesitated even to give this
talk today, for fear of contributing to our national obsession, and out of
disgust with the round-the-clock media hype of the past days. But, I think it’s time to move it to the
next level.
When
the attacks first occurred, there were few people who were emotionally,
politically, or psychologically ready to face the shadowy implications. It seemed, somehow, dishonoring of thousands
of newly departed souls to imply out loud that they, or America collectively,
had done anything even remotely deserving of such savagery. If people had such thoughts, they kept them
to themselves. In a few months, I saw
and heard a few voices, but they were quickly ignored or shouted down. Will we allow this silence to prevail,
allowing so many deaths to have been in vain?
Several months ago, I was reading the
poetry of Marge Piercy. Back in 1973,
she published a series of poems based on the imagery of the Tarot. Among these poems, I came upon one entitled
“The tower struck by lightening reversed; the overturning of
the tower.”
All my life I have been a prisoner
under the Tower.
Some say that grey lid is the sky. Our streets are hammers.
Grey is the water we drink; grey the
face I cannot love in
the mirror,
grey is the money we lack, the itch and
scratch of skins rubbing. Grey is the
color of work without purpose or end,
and the cancer of hopelessness creeping through the gut.
In my bones are calcium rings of the
body’s hunger
from grey bread that turns to ash in
the belly.
In my brain schooled lies rot into
self-hatred: and who
can I hate in the cattle car subway
like the neighbor whose elbow cracks my
ribs?
The Tower of Baffle speaks bureaucratic
and psychologese,
multiple choice, one in vain, one
insane, one trite as rain.
Military bumblewords, pre-emptive
stroke, mind and body count
and strategic omelet.
Above in the sun live those who own,
making our weather with
their refuse.
The neon signs instruct us through the
permanent smog.
Rockefellers, Mellons and Du Ponts, you
Fords and Houghtons,
who are you to own my eyes? Who gave me to be your serf?
I have never seen your faces but your
walls surround me.
With the loot of the world you built
these stinking cities
as
monuments.
The Tower is ugly as General Motors, as
public housing,
as the twin piles of the World Trade
Center,
tallest, biggest, and menacing as fins
on an automobile,
horns on a Minotaur programmed to kill.
The weight of the Tower is in me. Can I ever straighten?
You trained me in passivity to lay for
you like a doped hen.
You bounce your gabble off the sky to
pierce our brains.
Your loudspeakers from every television
and classroom
And your transistors grafted onto my
nerves at birth
Shout you are impregnable and righteous
forever.
But any structure can be overthrown.
London Bridge with the woman built into
the base
as sacrifice is coming down.
The Tower will fall if we pull
together.
Then the Tower reversed, symbol of
tyranny and oppression,
Shall not be set upright.
We are not turning things over merely
But we will lay the Tower on its side.
We will make it a communal longhouse.
Whom
does the existing social order serve?
It seems that the chief aim of the past 500 years, perhaps longer, has
been the pushing of the limits of the human ego. Just how much can one person’s ego change the world? How much wealth and power can be consolidated
in one place and how much can be enslaved by this vast concentration of
influence? A key component of this
effort has been what Jung called “the desacralization of the world.” In past eons, humans saw themselves as
participants in a vast, sacred cosmos.
Humans felt humbled in the face of the natural powers of earth, air, fir
and water. We looked to animal totems
to teach us how to live, and we expressed gratitude at the creatures that
volunteered their lives so that we could live.
Those are distant memories now.
All the natural elements are now seen as resources to be exploited, to
be brought under individual and collective will. Harmony and sustainability are secondary virtues, at best. The idea of the sacred is superstitious
nonsense. Myths are merely the
gibberish of pre-scientific people, to be dissected as literature or
archeological relics, but with no deep current significance.
And
so, we construct edifices, taller and more impressive than anything in history,
and we convince ourselves that they are invincible and immortal. Little do our egos know about the vastness
of the unconscious, of the archetypal forces that shape history, and that a few
moments of synchronistic events can unmake civilizations.
This,
of course, is exactly the insight captured in the Tarot card called “The
Tower.” I would like to read a passage
by Micheline Stuart written in 1977:
THE TOWER
When we have sufficient self-knowledge,
when, with the help of the soul, we have increased in strength, when the world
ceases to be feared, when in endeavoring to discard our illusions and ignorance
we have worked sincerely on ourselves, diligently and profoundly, then we are
in the state that is ready to receive a great shock from above. It comes as the first intimation of the
reality of illumination. Although just
a corner of the sun shows itself, it is powerful enough to break up our ivory
tower and set fir to its contents. This
is the moment of the great downfall of our ego. All the many “I’s” and all their facets in our personality are
sent crashing to the ground. This is
when we are tested to the full. All
that we have imagined and believed ourselves to be is revealed, by the light
from on high, as worth nothing. We are
nothing. We realize that, in our
ignorance, our beliefs and reasons were false.
We had built on “sand.” The
whole structure was no more than a mass of superficial opinions, erroneous
theories motivate by self-aggrandizement and self-will.
The flames which set fire to the tower
and destroyed its contents have dual powers.
As well as being destructive, they are the powers which transform our
desires into sublime, spiritual impulses.
Their light gives love and warmth.
With our inner vision, our thoughts, and our motives directed always
upward, our young will is exercised and increased in the practice of exercising
it. Just as the phoenix is reborn from
the ashes, so must our being be uplifted din the ascending flames. Have no fear of the conflagration; use its
full potentiality in order to be carried upward. Fear would only destroy the soul and we would regress to being
the Fool once more, with all his useless exaltation in material desires,
blinded by the smoke of imagination.
Let us remember always to be like the sunflower, turned toward the sun, else will the negative forces of opposition overcome us. The further we ascent the path of regeneration the stronger becomes the opposition. This is continually to be borne in mind, and every situation is to be observed. As passive spectators of the destruction of the ego, we are thankful to have been given the strength to reach this stage.
And
so, here we are, more than a year past a horrible trauma that cost nearly 3,000
lives. Are we ready to address the rage
that seethes in Marge Piercy’s poem?
The rage of living a grey life, with the caner of hopelessness, the
babble of military and corporate greed like a siren-gong? The rage against economic and social
oppression, that use training and media to shape unlivable conditions and call
it “the American dream.”
Or,
perhaps we should just send Ms. Piercy’s poem to the Department of Homeland
Defense and have her investigated as a terrorist.
On
a deeper level, are we ready to confront the Tarot symbol of the crashing
tower?
Could
it be that we built our edifices on the unstable sand of ignorance, false
beliefs, and rationalizations? Like the
Fool in the Tarot, we can be tossed from the tall tower, see thousands of our
fellow humans consumed by the flames and simple regress out of fear back into
the mindless exaltation of material desires, blinded by the smoke of
imaginations. Or, we can progress,
acknowledge that the ego is like a small ship on a vast ocean of
unconsciousness and re-imagine a way of like that is rooted in humility and in
sacredness.