Most of what follows is the text of a talk I gave during Sunday services at Unity North Spiritual Center on November 3, 2019 – hence some references to Halloween. To meet time constraints, some of what is written here was deleted from the talk and some added during this revision. It is a much more personal presentation than I’m used to giving.
The title of my talk was “Labels and Liberation: a Search for Truth Behind the Veil.”
I speak of two veils here. One is the veil between this world and the spirit world and the other is the veil of words we use: the labels, judgments, and the meaning we ascribe to people, events and experiences.
Labels are important, of course. You know how many of our Unity songs are revised to better reflect what’s in our hearts and our beliefs. Labels also shape our perception. They can empower us toward liberation, or they can entrap us as prisoners of our own definition.
I’m going to describe how I came to some of these ideas through nine chapters of my life – along with a conclusion. You will probably hear things my family doesn’t know about yet.
Chapter I: The Eyes of a Child
When I was very young, I saw things that no one talked about, including spirits in my bedroom and in the woods. Since no one talked about such things, I didn’t mention them. I just hid under the covers. The words or labels that would have allowed me to speak of my experiences were not available. (Similarly, years later, my younger daughter listened to a discussion about the aura between a friend and me. When we told her what an aura was, her response was, “Oh, I thought that was my imagination.” She had been seeing auras but, because no one labeled the experience, she assumed it was imaginary.) I was raised Lutheran and Lutherans didn’t talk about spirits. Nevertheless, my first career choice was to become a parapsychologist, but I didn’t see a career path in the paranormal, so I turned to the next best thing: psychology.
Chapter II: College, Religion, Mysticism and the Esoteric
I went to college in Baltimore, taking every psychology course Johns Hopkins offered, along with classes in Egyptology, and one on magic, witchcraft and the occult. Throughout those years, I attended three different religious services in rotation through the month. One was the LiberalCatholic Church because I liked the ritual. It was the old-time eucharist and had meaning since forgotten by the mainstream church. But I also liked sitting in silence, so I went once a month to the “meetings” of the Religious Society of Friends – Quakers – and sat. And the third was just outside of Washington, D.C. and is called the “Self-Revelation Church of Absolute Monism.” This was an ecumenical church founded by a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. One of their ministers later established his own church in Baltimore called the “Divine Life Church of Absolute Oneness.” These two churches had a couple basic tenets that appealed to me: one is the principle of non-dualism – that the world is not really split into material and spirit worlds. The second was that we are essentially divine; and the third, from the Upanishads, was that “truth is one – we call it by various names.” There was intelligence there.
During that time, I also took initiation into the Rosicrucian Order, which is also known as the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross, in which I was active for over 30 years, studying their writings in practical mysticism.
So, whenever I had to fill in a blank on a form labeled “Religion,” I was never sure what word to use, what would tell the truth. Was I Catholic, Quaker, Monist or Mystic? In reality, I was all four.
Chapter III: A Career of Professional Labels
Out of college and into my career of school psychology, my primary job was to apply labels to students based on psychoeducational assessments. Just by changing the label, from “problem-child” to a “student with identified needs,” my co-workers and I redefined that student’s educational trajectory and could thereby access needed services for the student.
A few years later, in my private practice, other therapists and insurance companies thought diagnoses were important – which they can be – but what I cared about most were the stories behind the veil of diagnoses. The stories had meaning that the diagnoses could not approach. I also found how frequently diagnoses could be misleading, but that’s another story.
Chapter IV: Other Worlds, Other Lives
Around 1978, a friend took me to see a gifted psychic who told me about my life in uncanny detail – including those spirits I saw as a child. She predicted that I would have a private practice when I was 33 – an idea I dismissed as I had no intention of doing the work to get a psychology license in Maryland for private practice. She also reminded me of my long-time interest in hypnosis which, through a series of events, led to training in a de-hypnotic form of past-life therapy. A Los Angeles psychologist, Morris Netherton re-labeled what we would call symptoms as trance states and developed his therapeutic method around the idea that troublesome symptoms were the conscious tip of an unconscious trance, which opened a whole world of therapeutic application about which I wrote in three of my books. As the psychic predicted, I opened my office for past-life therapy in 1981 – at the age of 33.
A few years later, through a series of “coincidences” with bears, I slid into the world of shamanism. You can call those meaningful events “coincidences”, or you could label them a “shamanic calling.” Which word we use shapes how we see it.
So, now, instead of three religions, I had three professions: School Psychology, Past-Life Therapy, and Shamanism. I learned to bridge them with language – the veil of words. I learned to talk of shamanism and past-life therapy to child-custody attorneys and conventional therapists by using the language of guided imagery and psychoanalysis. By using labels of a language they understood, they could hear what I had to say.
Chapter V: Writing and the Paranormal
By the 1980s, my practice was in full swing. What I was seeing in my clients, in contrast to what I was reading about reincarnation, prompted me to write my first book, Living Your Past Lives, the first edition of which was published in 1987. So what now: I’m a writer? It may seem strange, but it took years for me to get used to accepting that label.
Also in the 1980s, I was enlisted to investigate a family haunted by numerous paranormal events and help them write their story. (Carol helped me with this investigation in Pennsylvania.) This family viewed the wide variety of paranormal events as one thing: the work of Satan. Things moved, lights went off and on, writing appeared on their walls, and they had moved many times to try to get away from their haunting. What they saw as the attacks of Satan, I saw as an unrecognized shamanic calling – something to be celebrated and learned from rather than feared. Their label created their experience.
Despite our differing viewpoints, we established a mutually respectful relationship and collaborated on writing their book called Lion of Satan, Lion of God. The name of the book comes from two different experiences of a tape recording made while my co-author was dictating her story. On playback, there was a few minutes of her voice, a pause, and several minutes of a growling sound. Since the Bible refers to Satan coming like a roaring lion, that’s how she viewed this phenomenon. One evening, however, I took a copy of her tape and sped it up until it was eight times its normal speed. At this increased speed, the roaring of the lion became her voice as she dictated part of her story. Incidentally, they lived then in a place called Lake Ariel – Ariel meaning “Lion of God.” I may have taken Satan out of the tape but had no explanation for the fact that something caused the tape, while recording, to run eight times its normal speed, which resulted in the “growling” on normal playback.
Chapter VI: Celts and Druids
In the 1990s, after three trips to Ireland, I began to explore my Irish ancestry and Druidism, and was initiated into the Henge of Keltria, which was a modern initiatory Druid order. I received a Druid name, was later ordained as a Druid Priest, and eventually served several years as ArchDruid. I was still a member of this congregation as well.
In that mostly pagan world, I found a frequent distrust between Christians and Pagans, but I had trouble seeing such sharp distinctions. In 2010, I wrote an article for the Druid’s newsletter called “The Pagan Jesus” in which I traced a number of what we think of as Christian traditions back to their pagan origins in Egypt and other cultures – traditions such as the virgin birth, the ever-virgin mother of god, baptism, miracles, the son of god on earth, sacrifice of the first born, the scapegoat that relieves the people of their sins, and resurrection.
In addition to my Druid name, I was also eventually given a name by a Mandan Turtle Priest. So, now I had three names and, from a native pipe carrier, a prayer pipe.
So, am I a Christian or Pagan? Maybe both; maybe neither. Who can say for sure and what does it matter?
Chapter VII: New Age Labels and Old-Time Religion
With the rise of New Thought and New Age teachings, I heard of this insidious thing that trips us up, interferes with our intentions, separates us from God, makes us fear death or loss of control; and they labeled it “ego.” The ego in the world of psychology is a valuable instrument of our consciousness. It’s the center of our conscious awareness and carries valuable functions such as information processing, containment of experience, looking toward the future, awareness of our boundaries, discernment of what is serving us and what is not, the ability to apply things that we learn in one situation to other situations. And they wanted to get rid of it.
Clearly my label of “ego” had a different meaning from that of these writers. In New Age lingo, however, it seems that “ego” has become a catch-all term for states of anxiety, irrational thoughts, false beliefs, unrealistic hopes, loss of control and unresolved wounds. I would rather call them what they are because accurate labels take us closer to the heart of the issue than the vague term “ego.”
This would not much matter but for the fact that, in thinking we must resist our ego, we are fighting a non-existent enemy while the real problem sits right next to us or within us.
Then, I wondered, how did this happen? What prompted people to pick up this belief about the enemy within called “ego”? What is this need to blame an imaginary enemy for our troubles? I concluded that blaming the ego is a substitute for the Satan of old-time religion. We are too “enlightened” to believe in that Satan, aren’t we? So, we cast the blame on the ego. Now it’s the ego out to get us. We have given a new name to an adversary from other times.
Ego is a Latin word that means “I am.” It is a statement of being, moreover, of consciousness of being. It has a job to do and is an ally of the soul unless, of course, we decide to make it The Enemy Within to replace the Satan we lost in our enlightenment.
The world of our emotions is another function often beat up by New Age judgments, but that can be a topic for another day. Suffice it to say that, despite judgmental labels put on them, each genuine emotion has its purpose but can be twisted by the labels we use.
Chapter VIII: Jung and Integration
Here in Minnesota I began studying Carl Jung in earnest – the one major psychologist who included the entire range of human experience in his theories, from soul to neurosis to psychosis to physical matter. He made the term “synchronicity” famous.
Jung had a series of visionary experiences in 1913-1914 that shaped much of his subsequent thought. The account of his visionary experiences, written in German calligraphy and accompanied by his paintings and interpretations, was locked in a vault until it was finally published in 2009. In those visions, he had conversations with all kinds of beings. He called it a “confrontation with the unconscious.” Some called it a brush with psychosis. A Jungian analyst told me she wished it was never published. Some claimed he was trying to establish a religion. All these labels were put on this man’s experience. Each label, I believe, reflects more about the observer than about Jung’s experience. In an article I wrote last year for the Society for Shamanic Practice, I called his experiences a classic shamanic calling. “They” took him into the other world; they talked with him; educated him; built relationships with him; and he brought it all back to his people for their healing and enlightenment.
Again, the labels we put on things and people reflect more of who we are than the thing itself.
Chapter IX: A New Label for a New Life
I retired from school psychology and retired my psychology license last Halloween (which seemed somehow appropriate). I’m still the same person with the interests I’ve always had, and still exploring what’s behind the veil of words and the veil between the worlds. But when tax time comes around in a few months, I will have to decide what to put in the blank that asks for occupation. What would be most true: writer, teacher, clergy – maybe something else?
The Persian poet Rumi also seems to have struggled with the issue of labels. He put it this way:
What is to be done, Oh, Moslems? For I do not recognize myself.
I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Moslem.
I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea . . .
I came to a different resolution and render it this way:
What is to be done, dear friends, when I do not recognize myself?
I am Christian, Pagan, Jew and Moslem.
I am of the East, of the West, of the land, of the sea;
I am of earth, of water, of air, and fire;
I am all these things, and no one of them.
Chapter X: Conclusions, Meanings and Becoming
So, where does all this leave us? We find that labels can be a bridge or a barrier, an invitation or a veil. If I put a label on you, I begin to relate to you through that label. It becomes a filter through which I see all that you do. Of course, labels can help us understand things and sort out our various encounters with life and people, but we don’t want them to rule us. They are tools, and you can’t use the same tool for every job. Liberation can occur when we acknowledge whatever the label means, and then set it aside to engage directly with the other human beings before us, beings with their own story, triumphs and failures, and a light they have brought to this world – no matter how clouded that light may now be.
The same is true for us: how often do we make judgments about what we believe we can and cannot do, what we deserve or what we believe it takes to get what we want? Consider some of the labels you’ve given yourself in the way of religion, status, experience or skills. Halloween is a good time to see if some of those labels – like masks – might be embraced, burned, or transformed.
In closing, let me ask that we all be mindful of the labels we use, the meaning we give to our experience, and what we attribute to other people’s actions and intentions. No matter how accurate our judgment may be, it can only ever be part of the picture.
And let’s give the ego a break. It’s not some enemy within, but an ally that helps us navigate between the demands of our outer world and the revelations of our inner world. It is the threshold where we live in consciousness.
Imagine what kind of life we might live if we embraced all that we are – and named ourselves “Magic.”