My housekeeper Phillip is a renaissance man. Once a week he comes over to bring order to my disarray in ways that I no longer can. I don’t know what I would do with out him. I have an abscentminded professor’s apartment full of books and notes and papers…many who’s job is to smother the dining room table until I get them recorded into some other medium such as a blog post or a classroom etc. Given the weakness in my hands I can barely load the dishwasher myself and putting things away is often more than I can handle. All of which he deals with with out complaint. Often straightening the same pile repeatedly week after week for me to destroy in his abscence.
Yesterday, however he forgot to do the 1 thing I had requested he do: dust the window sills and bookcases, which are just full of enough “stuff” to make the task annoying for anyone. I sent him a text to ask him to remember it for next time and as he wasn’t yet home so he came back to do it right then. This is something I love about Phillip is if he forgets something he self corrects right away! I try to give him space when he cleans my place so he can blare dance music or just as often listen to lectures on philosophy from Stanford or other sources. One of his favorite works is Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, and the discussions of ontology that flow from that text. Given Phillip is an African American, gay man with a perfectly toned dancer’s body at 50+ years, I’m going to guess he either doesn’t know of Heidegger’s Nazi affinity or he chooses to look beyond that for the juice in the material.
At any rate Phillip is one of the most honest people I have ever met, and upon returning to my home he confessed he looked at the window sills and thought “Whew, this is too much!” and chose to ignore them~ which I can totally get by the way! However he thanked me for the opportunity to return and restore his integrity regarding his promise to me. Today was not a DJ dance mix cleaning day it was an intentional meditative philosophy filled cleaning day, and as such he had been wondering why it was he had so many insights when he worked in my space. What he saw for himself is that in his view I am someone who is connected to the source of things, that I am in the world but not of it. As Heidegger put it I am not “it”, I am “grounded transparently in the power that established IT”. He was moved to tears by what he saw. I needed a nap.
For the second time in 2 weeks I was uncomfortable with what people were saying about being with me. During my interview with Channel 11 WTTW CHicago Tonight’s Jay Schefsky, my client Catherine Gallogaly had said I have become a spiritual guide for her. I had the same experience when she said that~ I felt disconnected. I couldn’t be with what she was saying about me. While it’s accurate that I have created a living space and practices that facilitate my creativity and noetic scientist leanings, I am clear I am no master of the spiritual realm. I am certain that my writings come THROUGH me not FROM me, and I do experience being a channel, much like a radio tuned to a particular frequency much of the time. However that makes me more like a playwrite or a song writer in my mind than any sort of spiritual expert. I even use the TV to break the connection from time to time as the flow of information sometimes becomes over whelming when I look at the “expiration date/ time limits” one could expect in my condition and realistically look to plan what I am going to manifest or work on next. The whole business of being a spiritual guide for people is WAY too confronting.
My spiritual practices are a hogpog of Native American sage and sweetgrass burning or “smudging” to clear the space, Buddhist meditations, Christian science readings from Ernest Holmes and Wallace D Wattles and scanning the Zohar. I make up my own meditations all the time and while I pray daily and focus on keeping my faith clean and unimpeded by doubt, I am not a practicing Anything. My aim would be to “Make Every Step A Prayer” as the Lakota say.
People are always asking me…are you a christian? I say I’m more of a Kabbalist Gnostic just for fun, though I re baptised myself in Hell Roaring Stream in Montana. I thought it was appropos. I left the catholic church in 3rd grade and though I love the Mass I am disgusted by the leadership in Rome and their horrid attitude towards women and lack of integrity regarding pedophile priests~ They have lost my trust. To give you a sense of my smart ass capacity; my confirmation name was Augustine, much to the dismay of the Bishop. I figured if a whoremonger pig could become a saint then maybe I had a chance. I was an athiest as an intellectual position in my teens and early 20’s only to be turned around by a series of premontitions and my exposure to the Lakota culture during my time at University in South Dakota. I have read tarot cards for 20+ years and studied everything from Confuscious to the Tao to A Course in Miracles and other channeled texts like the Seth Material. I believe in a higher power and that God is in each and everyone of us as he/she is present in every grain of sand, animal, tree and rock. I think God gets to be self expressed through US. As the song says “It’s the God in Me”.
I say each persons path to God is their own. No one gets to be right here, they only get to be a sourceful voice. Those who are interested and ready will hear. I guess when I put it that way it emcompasses what I aim to be: a sourceful voice grounded tranparently in the power that established it. If that makes me a spiritual guide for some then I guess God is as big of a smart ass as I am. I can live with that.
Tags: Being and Time, Catherine Gallogly, Heidegger, Jay Schefsky, noetic scientist, ontology, Smart Ass, spiritual gude, WTTW