Personal – Karl Schlotterbeck

Royalty and Ironies of Ancestry

My family of origin never had much interest in our ancestry. As far as I knew, their attention went to managing the household, supporting their church, educating their children, and relationships with the immediate family. I took it for granted that, with a name like Schlotterbeck, we were obviously German. This was, of course, before DNA testing and genealogy websites. I knew my mother’s father was of the Irish but never gave it much thought.

When visiting Ireland in the early 1990s, however, it struck me that this was not just my mother’s heritage but mine as well. My grandfather’s surname was all over Ireland. (I felt like the land claimed me, but that’s another story.) My growing interest in Celtic spirituality and Druids brought an increasing focus on my ancestry. Who are we, really? This was my question – or one of many.

Fast forward to this decade and my DNA testing as of September 2021 shows I carry ancestry from Germanic Europe, Ireland, England and Northwestern Europe, Scotland, and Norway.

Over time, I’ve had accounts with genealogy websites and, last night, I went into my Family Search account to follow some lines of my mother’s ancestors through history. If the findings of the website are to be believed, they showed my ancestry going through a couple of kings of France (Henry), a line of Pictish kings, kings of Alba (Scotland) and Dal Riada, and through Julius Caesar to some of his ancestors before reaching a dead end. I was dumbstruck.

Don’t we all imagine we might have descended from royalty, or wish we had? The irony here – perhaps one of many – is that I’m not only descended from the Celtic people I revere, but also the man who did the most to destroy that culture.

None of this changes who I am, of course – or does it? I don’t know what to make of it, if anything at all. The bills still need to be paid. I need to dress in the morning, or at least before going out. And there are endless chores of living and maintenance. Our chickens, cats, and bees care about none of this.

Regardless of who my ancestors were, my destiny is mine.

Regardless of what they have done, my karma is my own.

I make my own choices.

Still, I wonder. . .

Yes, a Sabbatical from Retirement

I felt like things were getting too hectic, with too many activities, too many demands, too many efforts by others to take my attention away from things close to my heart.

So, I began at the Full Moon in mid-July and brought it to a close at the second New Moon at the end of August. Life went on, of course: yet another massacre and the usual impotent outrage, and another and another; my cat’s strange death, etc. Put in Jung’s terms, I turned from the Spirit of the Times to make space for the Spirit of the Depths. I withdrew from performances, obligations, and social interactions. I avoided public places when I could, gave greater attention to my diet and exercise, and indulged in 24 to 40 hour fasts every few days.

Fasting and relative seclusion were not deprivation to me, but a privilege of withdrawal from habitual and conditioned interactions with transitory social currents.

I arose in the morning in time to sing a song of praise to the rising Sun at dawn. To honor the Sun’s disappearance in the West, I played music – usually my Irish whistle.

I withdrew from social media, news and almost anything televised. I did not lack for things to do, however. There are always land and shelter tasks, reading, meditation and, for us, bees, cats and chickens.

Overall, I gave primacy to the activities that nourish my spirit: meditation and contemplation, Druidic practices, Rosicrucian studies and shamanic states of consciousness. And I finished editing the current edition of my manuscript Shadows in the Light of God.

In my withdrawal, my favorite cat also withdrew, slept, refused food and water and died.

Each dawn, I found, can be so different one from another – from the mists on the meadow to the clouds in the sky and trees dancing in the wind. What may look like the same Earth and Sky instead changes hour-by-hour.

By the end of the six weeks or so, the days were an hour and 34 minutes shorter than when I started.

When I took respite from news, media and phones, I realized how much of my life I lose when my attention is captured by the posturing clowns that dominate the airwaves, much of it pushed at us by propaganda outlets that have no regard for truth, but attempt to distract us into a consumer’s trance while they concoct schemes to move our wealth in their direction. Now, after a few days back into the outside world, it’s clearer than ever the difference between the Spirit of the Times and the Spirit of the Depths.

Deja Vu in the Season of Renewal

The caller ID on my phone said it was Emmett calling – my 16-year-old grandson. On behalf of the youth group at Unity North Spiritual Center, he asked if I would sing at their Earth Day celebration on Monday. I was surprised, felt honored but somewhat daunted, wondering what I might offer. When I told him I could come up with something, he suggested a song he already had in mind: Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changin’.” Not only did this relieve me of decision making, but it was a song I sang when I was much younger.

But why, I wondered, do we still need to sing it? We are still trying to fulfill the promise of a better world for our children, who now have to take up the mantle themselves and compensate for our failures. Much of my generation has been assimilated into the commercial “establishment,” having reaped the benefits of environmental degradation in an institutionalized and capitalized death cult that would exploit our resources as if there were no tomorrow. The young people (at least some of them) are awake to the realization that there may not be a decent tomorrow for them if we exhaust our one planet’s resources while filling it with toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases.

How ironic: I originally sang the same song with older generations in mind for their corruption, wars and racism; I sing it now to my own generation for most of the same issues, with an additional focus on climate change and climate justice.

I am proud to stand with the youth who stand up for the earth, who care about life’s survival and are concerned for the future of us all. Once again, our youth give me hope. I want it to be true that The Times They Are A Changin’ – this time for the better.

Let’s celebrate the earth as if our lives depend on it.

How Beautiful It Could Be

How beautiful, celebrations of the birth of the Divine Child,
Opening our hearts to tenderness and care.

How beautiful it would be if we could see it in our hearts
To awaken this tenderness to all people’s child:
To protect every one from abuse, fear and bombs.

They come from the Divine, that magic unknown land,
With gifts to be known under the warmth of love’s care.
Which one, I wonder, might be the next One.

How beautiful it would be if we could see it in our hearts
To awaken compassion for all caring for their babes,
For their love is not different from mine.

Perhaps this the sad emptiness we sometimes feel
In these times of bright celebration and song:
Withheld blessings leave emptiness inside.

How beautiful it would be if blessings were not just this day,
But all children were treasured at all times, at all times.
Perhaps we can do more than just sing and pray.

How beautiful, these celebrations of the birth of the Child,
Opening our hearts to tenderness and care.

A New Chapter without a Title

We all go through stages of life in which our identities evolve and the face we present to the world changes – sometimes gradually and sometimes dramatically. Looking back, we might see the first hobby, the first serious relationship, the first marriage, the first professional job, the first child, the first divorce, the first trip abroad, a conversion to a new way of thinking, or retirement, to name a few. Things often run their course and what we found inviting may no longer be so. We grow into them, and out of them. So it is with me.

As of October 31^st, I will have terminated my psychology license, which I’ve had since 1991. I’ve already let my school psychology license expire after my retirement from Intermediate School District 916. That license I first obtained in MD around 1973.

Now, I want more sovereignty about where I put my attention. In giving up this license, I will no longer need to think about continuing education units as defined by someone else or biennial filings and fees. Instead, I can explore deeper yearnings without regard to a board’s expectations – an introvert’s dream.

It’s not that I find the profession of psychology unworthy. It’s simply no longer adequate for me. Originally meaning “study of soul,” psychology in general doesn’t seem much interested the psyche, (let alone soul) with its modern emphases on behaviorism, neurology and managed care. Not that they lack value but, again, they are not adequate, being but a small slice of human experience.

My interest in psychology came out of a fascination with people and their interactions, and an awareness of suffering and irrationality. What’s more, from a young age, I was aware of paranormal experiences that many people have that do not fit our religious beliefs, our modern scientific biases or our psychological formulations of mundane “reality.” Religions talk about it, fight against it, try to control it. Scientists tend to deny it. Social expectations put a taboo on it. But many people, if they feel safe, can tell you of any number of paranormal, uncanny, or Otherworldly experiences – the kinds of things that indigenous peoples and shamans take for granted.

In my ruminations of late, it became evident that my deeper interest has always been in soul and its relationship to the psyche, to community and to the larger world; and my best psychological work served to help people establish a better relationship between the conscious self and the deeper self or soul.

I will continue to teach about 1) past-life influences and karma, 2) shamanic practices, 3) Druidism and 4) stress-management. I’ll consult on the modern application of these topics and may work with past-life memories as a matter of exploration rather than psychotherapy and, for sure, I’ll continue to write and play music.

No longer an official psychologist, what can I call myself after the 31^st? After all, we label everything and everyone, if only on IRS forms or bank applications. I hesitate to say “shaman” because we don’t live in a shamanic culture. I hesitate to say “Druid priest” because we don’t live in a Celtic culture where it had a meaning it no longer carries. I probably shouldn’t say “past-life therapist” because it could be construed as continuing to practice psychology. “Shamanist” might do.

In a way, it doesn’t matter so much what I call myself now, except I want the rest of my life to be an expression of what’s deepest in my heart. “Teacher,” “author” and “consultant” are simple enough but lack the content that means the most to me. Perhaps that’s the best we can do. Perhaps some other label will suggest itself over time.

Then, you might ask, why October 31? What we know as “Halloween” is the traditional Celtic New Year – the eve of the month of Samhain. It was the time when animals were brought in from pasture with some selected for overwintering and some for slaughter. Survival, mortality and our relationship with the Otherworld come to the fore then. What will feed a hungry people in a time of scarcity is what will be carried into the winter. And people hunger now for soul food in a world of distraction, distress and vacuous media. Thus, it seems appropriate to let die that whose season is spent.

On a lighter note, masks and disguises are a part of this season, too, and my evolution out of the world of mainstream psychology may be seen as allowing a new mask to face the world – or, perhaps, the removal of a mask that no longer quite fits.

Happy Halloween and a Blessed Samhain.