One of the many wonderful human beings that I’ve known who has affected other human beings in a markedly inspiring degree was e.e. cummings, the poet.
He wrote a piece called “A Poet’s Advice,” which I feel elucidates why “little I,” fifty-three years ago at age thirty-two, jettisoned all that I had ever been taught to believe and proceeded thereafter to reason and act only on the basis of direct personal experience. Cummings’ poem also explains why, acting entirely on my own initiative, I sought to discover what, if anything, can be effectively accomplished by a penniless, unknown individual–operating only on behalf of all humanity–in attempting to produce sustainingly favorable physical and metaphysical advancement of the integrity of all human life on our planet, which omnihuman advantaging task, attemptable by the individual, is inherently impossible of accomplishment by any nation, private enterprise, religion, or other multi-peopled, bias-fostering combination thereof.
A POET’S ADVICE
A poet is someone who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.This may sound easy. It isn’t.
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling.
And poetry is feeling –not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people : but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself–in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else–means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all the time–and whenever we do it, we are not poets.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world–
unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn’t
It’s the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel………………………………………………………………….e.e. cummings
Did you like the poem?
I was released from the Hospital on Thanksgiving Day 1976.
I will never forget it.
I had been there for a week while they tried to stabilize my blood sugar and teach me how to give myself an injection of insulin.
I had gone from 125 lbs to 99 lbs in a 5 days.
Without insulin the body effectively, begins to starve to death.
The fuel for the body (glucose) can’t get into the cells.
In a normal body the insulin is “smart.”
The body and all of its cells has an intelligence weaved throughout it. It secretes just enough insulin so the blood glucose range stays in a narrow and “the normal range” of……80 mg/dl – 120 mg/dl.
Injectable insulin is not smart. It just goes to work until it is gone. In 1976 I took a 24 hour lasting insulin that acted on a kind of bell curve. It peaked somewhere between 8-12 hours. It was affected by how well I injected it, my other hormone activity, whether I was anxious, nervous, depressed or excited, how much physical activity I would engage in, the quality of the insulin….
There were no blood sugar monitors. I could not prick my finger and find out where it was at.
Instead, I peed on a strip to see how much sugar I was “spilling.”
In the beginning I would see my doctor once a month and he would “teach” me about what they currently knew and how to try and handle it.
I was really going by how I felt.
I knew when I was “low” because I felt shaky, confused, hungry (maybe). I knew when I was really “high” because I was tired, thirsty, irritable, hungry (maybe).
I was flying blind. It would be like this for the next 25 years. Eventually they came out with shorter acting insulin and monitors and pumps but I still had to “fly the plane.”
Diabetes, especially Type 1, is a very misunderstood disease.
One of Bucky’s famous quotes is….”It is better to be not understood than to be misunderstood.”
A lot of people told me to forget about the diabetes and live my life.
In the hospital they told me to take my insulin everyday and eat a low carb diet and I could live a normal life.
Right.
There is nothing normal about the life of someone living with T1D or those who care for them.
I think I know what cummings meant about feeling.
However, I think Bucky stops short, at least in his Foreword, of going to the deeper root cause.
I don’t think it ends with feeling.
I think most “feeling” exists in the physical world.
No matter how I felt I had to keep moving.
WHY?
Thanksgiving dinner that year was at my Aunt Karen’s house.
I was released in the late afternoon/evening.
I remember the traffic lights being so blurry. My eyes had been affected by the high blood sugar levels.
I was tired and weak and had all my pamphlets on my newly acquired dis-ease which included what I could eat and could not eat.
Dinner was about to be served when I arrived.
It was beautiful – Mashed potatoes, sweet yams, gravy, turkey, stuffing, apple pie, pumpkin pie, mince meat pie, cherry pie.Let’s see…..I can have 4 oz of turkey with some green beens, no butter,
Really?
The Adversary was clearly messing with me here.
I had no interest in living this life.
This was no where near normal. I was far from “home.”
I felt different, uncertain, anxious, lonely, abandoned and very frightened.
I started my healing quest.
I was riding a rollercoaster of physical, mental and emotional feelings everyday.
Sure, being on a rollercoaster can be fun but it gets old after you have been on it for 24 hours straight.
In the next 25 years I would have close calls.
I would experience hopelessness and learned helplessness.
I was flying blind.
I kept flying. I had no choice.
There are three rules to flying a plane.
Rule’s two and three are exactly the same as #1; “Fly the Plane.”
This past November I “celebrated” my 40th anniversary of being diagnosed.
What I have found is that feeling is a link to connect us to our essence.
Is it our essence?
There are basically four “states” we (human beings) can exist (be) in: Gross, Subtle, Casual and Non Dual.
Scientists and researchers have identified 5 or 6 different structures of development (stages) that exist in the human population of today’s world.
These structures are, in fact, hierarchal “stages” of development.
For all who took Psych 101, you know about Piaget, Maslow, Erickson.
Piaget identified the stages of development as:
- Sensory-Motor
- Pre-Conventional
- Conventional
- Post Conventional
Piaget was describing child development.
Here is a more modern and expanded “map” of these structures/stages and states.
What if there is more than what appears?
What if there is a spiritual realm; the 99%?
What if there is no arriving in OZ…….That it really is “turtles all the way up and turtles all the way down?”
We were born in order to continually evolve, grow, transform.
Is this our essence?
The Yellow Brick Road Process is a journey into further development; an expanded perspective.
States are free……Stages are earned.
I believe….It’s ok to believe if one is aware of what one is believing and has confronted the issue, explored it, incubated on it, become enlightened on it and does not “attach” oneself to the belief.
I believe that the understanding of states and stages is critical to the survival of humans on earth.
It has been determined that about 5-10% of the population occupies an archaic worldview structure, 20-25% a traditional worldview structure, 20-25% a modern/rational/science worldview structure, 30-35% a post modern/pluralistic worldview structure and 3-7% live in an Integral or Super Integral worldview structure.
Here is another visual of the stages/structures of development. Remember….The map is not the territory.
What is the Aha?
What is important here?
A lot of you who have gotten this far live in the last stage of development before Integral. Not all of you…
If you are living in the post modern, multicultural, pluralistic stage, you believe in equality for all. You resonate with the concepts of social justice, equal rights and tolerance for all. You tend to be relativistic. You do not really think morality exists in the absolute. Rather, you believe it “depends.”
Truth and Reality are individually determined and relative to a person’s perspective. You are probably not religious. If anything, you consider yourself spiritual…Maybe.
You don’t like the concept of vertical development. You wish to “flatten” the playing field. You think this is necessary in order to deliver equal access to all.
However, if you are living in the Traditional worldview structure you see things more black and white.
You have probably adopted a structure of understanding the world based on a religion’s teaching. Morality is not relative, it is absolute. You probably go to church, synagogue, mosque or wherever to worship your “map of reality.” You are resisting the precession of evolution that is occurring. You probably interpret it as prophecy playing out; End Times, Revelation. However, you are very “grounded” in your beliefs and faith.
If you are stuck in between these two world views you believe in rationality, science, facts.
Your structure of understanding the world is based on what you can see, touch, hear, smell, taste and can make common sense of with your thinking mind. You are either atheist or agnostic. You perceive the traditionalists as children and the post modernist/pluralist as abandoning “settled” science.
The one common characteristic of all the stage structures in Tier 1 consciousness is that those who are in them believe they are right and that the other “perspectives” are at best, mistaken but really just wrong.
It is only when a person does the required work or is blessed with the merit to get to Tier 2 Consciousness that one sees that all the stages are partially right and necessary for our evolution.
It is only in Tier 2 where there is an opportunity to transcend and include all the previous structures.
Development does not end when one becomes an adult anymore.
Today, it only begins.
The Yellow Brick Road Advanced Training is a deeper inquiry into how to transcend and include.
Wilber suggests that we need 10% of the population to achieve Tier 2 consciousness and then we will hit the tipping point.
When this happens a Tsunami of transformation will occur catapulting all of us to a new level of evolution in the human experiment. This is not based on opinion, it is based on science.
If enough of us don’t explore and awaken into Tier 2 then we are all doomed.
Are you one of the 10%?
We need a reason WHY.
Kabbalah “suggest” a reason WHY?
It’s called Bread of Shame.
Trigger Alert!!
I know that shame is a favorite word, label, emotion, feeling state, stage, line of inquiry of the opponent.
I know! However, like doubt, it is also a direct doorway to enlightenment.
Do you know the word repent, at its root, means to make new?