Blessed Samhain

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." --Shakespeare, "Hamlet," Act 1, Sc. 5

Fig. 1 Something Willy this way comes

First order of business: Blessed Samhain to all, and I bestow wishes for a truly Happy Halloween free of too many tricks (I know we all enjoy a few here and there) and tooth decay. Be careful around midnight, for the veil between this world and the next is thin and ethereal, and there are many spirits roaming about who may be looking for you (or looking out for you; they're not all bad) and will surely find you if you are not properly dressed up. Unless of course, you miss dear old grandma or deceased pet parrot and want them to visit with you for a little while.

That's exactly what I did last year, in fact. I stayed up late into the silent night and set up a basic circle, lit some candles, grounded myself, cast a protection spell, invoked the cardinal directions, and meditated for a bit. It was just like my normal everyday Buddhist meditations except with really cool accessories. It got me in the spirit, anyhow. Plus, I dedicated some heart time toward all those importnant soulds in my life who have left this earthly sphere of existence. Nothing dramatic, no pointy hats or boiling, toiling cauldrons. Just me and the veil, and nothing in between. I felt connected to my family, my ancestors, and yes, my beloved pet parrot, Birdo.

This year, I woke up at 5:45 in the morning, very much by chance, and was elated to see that the sky had cleared up for the first time in days. I hauled my new telescope (dubbed Nye-Tyson of course) outside into the 80-degree humidity of this terrifically hot Floridian October. For an hour and a half before dawn, I scanned the bright stars of Orion, Canis Major, Taurus, and Perseus, finding star clusters, nebulae, and planets not found at 10:00 at night this time of year. I sipped my tea and found the Orion Nebula with my new higher magnification eyepiece (nerdgasm!) and stood in absolute awe at the wispy, ghost-like clouds of gaseous dust wrapped around the Trapezium set of stars within it. At that moment, the view presented an image very similar to the one I have in my mind of souls crossing that ethereal veil of Samhain night.

Fig. 2 Communion

What better sight to find on the morning of Halloween than the constellation costumes of the stars dressed up as dogs and fish and scorpions and swans? What better way to commune with the inner pagan--one who respects and wonders in the natural cycles and celestial shows of the cosmos?

As has happened on almost every occasion of stargazing, I spotted several meteors streaking across the dark colbalt of the sky, like diamonds cutting into glass. The more time you spend outdoors on clear nights, the more you appreciate how common a phonemonon meteors are, and the more you thank the Universe for an atmosphere that burns them up before they cause cataclysm on the Earth's surface. As a result, meteor sightings never lose their cosmic allure... even if the metallic rocks themselves most definitely do since they disintegrate entirely in half a second.

Tonight, I will be watching a Bollywood movie about a boy who befriends a ghost--a ghost who just happens to be Amitabh Bachchan!--and frequently pausing it to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Hindi-speaking spirits and little kids dressed like Hannah Montana: one is definitely more scary than the other. As soon as that's over, I think I'll pause before bedtime and perform that little ritual again. This time, out under the stars.

Fig. 3 Celestial trick-or-treaters

The iPod as the Third Eye

“I was in yoga the other day. I was in full lotus position. My chakras were all aligned. My mind is cleared of all clatter and I'm looking out of my third eye and everything that I'm supposed to be doing. It's amazing what comes up, when you sit in that silence. 'Mama keeps whites bright like the sunlight, Mama's got the magic of Clorox 2.’” --Ellen DeGeneres

Fig. 1 I think, therefore, iPod

Hardcore meditators spend a majority of their time attempting to open the sleepy lid of the “third eye,” what the Hindus call the ajna chakra or insight energy center. It’s the most popular metaphysical organ that allows one to gain insight on experience that goes beyond what is physical reality. Traditionally, this most intuitive place on the human body is located right between and above your regular eyes, contrary to the common belief that it is in the gut. It’s a long-standing idiom that guts have shit for brains, which qualifies it for instinct, not insight. The head eats, the gut digests. Just like with food, the ingestion of thought really shouldn’t be reversed.

The third eye, when not possessed of retinal problems or chronic dryness, can provide anyone with great wisdom about how the universe works as well as quell irrational thoughts and fears. It educates and enlightens and gives you the most legitimate reason to sit on your ass for hours doing absolutely “nothing.”

If you are not quite jived about gluteus numbness, there’s some good news. There’s a compact, portable electronic device which can provide you with hours of insight and knowledge with the spin of scroll wheel(showing my age with that one, aren't I?). It also contributes to millions of peoples’ raging gadget envy everyday.



Fig. 2 No one can resist

I bought my first iPod the moment they came into existence. Freshman year, Thanksgiving present to myself. It was worth every penny of the $400 price tag just to see the faces of joyous jealousy around me. Five gigabytes of hard drive gave me the power to carry around my entire music collection in something the size of a deck of cards. At the time, my collection was much more modest than it is now.

After getting acclimated to the concept of listening to anything my heart desired at any moment anywhere, I noticed I could only listen to my favorite music for so long without getting bored or getting infected with one too many musical earworms. Luckily, I stumbled upon the precious Dead Sea scrolls of electronic audio: podcasts.

Fig. 3 The Qur'an tops the charts

Learning about religion is learning a language. When studying any language, it’s always best for a student to hear the voices of people speaking in their native tongues. Podcasts provide the best listening.

I encountered a whole new lexicon of delicious ten-dollar terminology (chametz, dukkha, and transubstantiation are some of my favorites) and you not only have to know definitions, but how to work with religious grammar. Muslims always follow any mention of the Prophet Muhammad with an alayhis salaam (a wish for “peace and blessings”), “Nirvana” cannot not be used interchangeably with “Heaven,” “Zen” should be capitalized, and out of deference, the Jews tend to type “G-d” when referring to the one who says “I am what I am.”

English degree. Forgive me my anal retention.

While we're at it, let me introduce you to what my film prof might have called the Barthes Paradigm. This method--which I just based on the philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes’ archetype of textual analysis--assumes a long list of subject associations for any cultural reference in works of art or expression that enriches the work, especially if the beholder already has background contextual knowledge or has the initiative to explore it.

It’s not a mind-numbing as it sounds.

Say you’re watching Caddyshack and you skip to the sequence where all the caddies are allowed into the club pool from 1:00-1:15. At one point, a swimmer tosses a Baby Ruth into the water, and mistaking it for human excrement, all the other swimmers start to freak out. Throughout this sequence of shots, an ominous two-note tune escalates until the last person in the pool realizes that he’s come face-to-face with the offending candybar.

Fig. 4 It's not so bad

On the surface, this scene is funny because of the irrational fear of a very inoffensive foodstuff, but for summer moviegoers and any viewer who is in the loop of American culture, the scene has an extra level of humor wrapped up in the usage of that simple music choice. The implicit joke of that tune assumes that the viewer has a certain familiarity with the first American summer blockbuster Jaws, which was released in 1975, only five years before Caddyshack. Playing that tune imbues the candybar with the even more irrational and hyperbolic abstract concept that turd-shaped chocolate-dipped nuts and nougat is as dangerous as a ginormous great white shark. Also, it humorously illustrates the current Michael Pollan doctrine that all processed foods are crap.

Sucked all the calcium out of the comedic teeth of that scene didn’t I? For our final thesis, my prof made us write 26 such explanations—one for each letter of the alphabet—for a classic Hollywood film from the 40s. I couldn’t watch The Philadelphia Story for years afterwards.

Fig. 5 Movie gods

Luckily, on the internet, the Barthes Paradigm is in a most obvious state of full swing. You go to a page, you read a block of text, you see a word or phrase colored in a way that indicates that it’s a link, you click on it, and it instantly pops up with a whole new page associated with that word or phrase. The cultural referents are imbedded for you. The medium is the message, right? I may not have Marshall McLuhan standing next to me to confirm this idea, but I’m not as lucky as Woody Allen.

The podcasts work in the same way. You listen to one, and they will often refer you to another cast, blog, website, book, movie, TV show, documentary, or a magazine, creating arteries that branch into veins and capillaries that deliver you to the most detailed and specific areas of the religious body. That body just happens to be in a shape of a Möbius strip.

Fig. 6 Forgive me, Father, for iSinned

After stumbling upon a Los Angeles-based Buddhist monk videocasting from his zendo in Koreatown and listening to a Catholic priest from Holland discuss doing an overseas interview using Skype, it’s extremely difficult to continue convincing yourself that religion is stuck in medieval times.

Even after teaching devotional prayer in public schools was banned in the 60s and people quit going to Sunday school for fear of waking up before eight o’clock on a weekend, traditional thousand-year-old religions had not, in fact, been cast down. They had sublimated into binary code, and they are easily accessible no matter how culturally homogeneous your surroundings.

God is in the machine, and It works in ones and zeros.

The Church of The X-Files

“A dream is an answer to a question we haven’t learned how to ask.”
--Fox Mulder

Fig. 1 My lifelong mantra

Aliens and monsters and science fiction don’t strike most people as religious subjects, which is unfortunate, since science fiction has provided human culture (especially American culture) with a modernized means of exploring the intangible, the improbable, and especially the spiritual. The essential foundation of all science fiction is a profound sense of the unknown, paired with an insatiable craving to explore it. Whether it’s Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, or Doctor Who… the world of Sci-Fi has copious denominations to follow, and while I dabble in many, The X-Files was my first and foremost.

When I started considering my new path, it had been years since The X-Files had ended. David Duchovny left the show and I denounced seasons eight and nine as extra-canonical and ultimately apostate. Seeing people on the internet hail the Mulderless episodes as “way better than the old ones” was a sign of the "a-pop-calypse" (copyright Stephen Colbert). The few times I tuned in those last two years I was met with disappointment or depression. When they killed off the Lone Gunmen—those lovable conspiracy theorists—I felt the way I did when I accidentally killed Mulder in the X-Files computer game: absolute horror. I held a funeral service for them in my heart. When I heard the last episode ever was going to air, I watched out of pure morbid curiosity, and my heart sank like never before. It was a death in the family.

In the darkness of all this, I missed the comfort I had from being an "X-Phile:" the knowledge that a bajillion other people were happy to be just as enthralled as I was. I wanted back that absolute knowledge of “we are not alone,” and that the Lone Gunmen weren’t truly dead and somehow lived on in spirit. I needed that same coziness again.

The Mega-Cons in Orlando gave me an annual rejuvenation. Thousands of people answering the call to share their love for all things sci-fi, mingling with followers of various fandoms, and getting a bit of trade done while they’re at it—it’s a classic Meccan Hajj-like experience. I’ve attended with my friends and my cousin over the years, and I cannot deny the warm fuzzy sense of brotherhood and sisterhood I feel each time. It is as thick as the stagnant aroma of the unbathed shoving and dodging through narrow aisles as they search and haggle for discontinued Dungeons & Dragons gear. Spiritual connection through the exchange of trading cards, movie props and action figures. After going there, the Jedis’ wish to be recognized as an official religion doesn’t strike you as all that crazy.


Fig. 2 Nerd Hajj

Turns out, because of The X-Files, I had a lot more to go on than I thought.

In retrospect, The X-Files informed my spiritual framework more than anything else. I was always most enamored with the heady intuitive philosophies Mulder would spout every week. Partnered with Scully’s wonderfully rational scientific perspective, the FBI agents schooled me on open-minded, multi-faceted exploration. Mulder’s belief in the paranormal and Scully’s Christian faith informed their investigations, along with Mulder’s search for proof and Scully’s scientific analysis. Superimposed, Mulder and Scully are not opposing forces, but the archetype of Seeker—one who searches for Wisdom and Truth wherever it is to be found.

I had that going for me, but no tried-and-true method of applying it to my life. I desired a salve that preferably lasted beyond the restrictions of studio contracts, Nielsen ratings, and myopic idiots who call themselves “fans.”

Luckily, I still had Comedy Central-style fake news. Through this trying period of my spiritual life, I could still depend on Jon and Stephen for insight.

Fig. 3 The God Machine

On February 22, 2006, the acclaimed American author and spiritual teacher Lama Surya Das visited The Colbert Report. Stephen always conducts interviews while in his overzealous and stentorian right-wing character, and these encounters are infamously awkward, no matter whom he wrestles into the chair across from him. But not that day.

Lama Das so politely shilled his new book—Awakening The Buddha Within—that I made up my mind right then that I had to read it. He also managed to match every one of Stephen’s verbal thrusts, as silly and reactionary as they were. Not once did the Lama drop his good-humored smile. I later learned that this was the smile of the Buddha.

Buying used books off of Amazon was my Olympic sport, so it wasn’t long before I was devouring these new pages. I loved Lama Das’ simple, genteel tone and how he didn’t proselytize anything but being happy. His little tips on meditations and everyday language had me entertained while I learned some basic Buddhist teachings.

Fig. 4 Life's alarm clock

The improbable happened: I was jazzed about a universally acknowledged religious subject, and it was no coincidence that it was Buddhism. The Buddha, before he was The Buddha, embarked on a historic and legendary path that challenged his perceptions, introduced him to the unfamiliar, which ultimately enlightened him. He took the classic path of Seeker.

Mulder and Scully were the first Buddhists in my life.

When I found out that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama believed it possible for there to be extraterrestrials in the universe, I was on board.

Fig. 5 Take me to your Buddha

Following the Buddha’s “come and see for yourself” attitude toward education, I soon wanted to know the holidays, the rituals, the cultural details and the thousands of years of human stories behind all religions. I had stepped in the path of the automatic sliding door at the Sam’s Club of World Theology and I suddenly had unlimited credit and countless aisles to peruse. I took the Buddha’s open-armed welcome into the stream of consciousness as an invitation to research everything and to understand—not just tolerate—all the religions on Earth. Or at least as many as people could post on the internet and put into TV and movies.

This mechanism for seeking put my feet upon a ginormous Möbius strip, a path that twists and exists in a constant state of interdependence. The further you go, the more it folds back on itself, revealing new connections along the way, without ever meeting an edge of separation. This is and always has been my path, but I finally recognized its origin as a legitimate one.

The light in my life had been shining on me always… from a screen.

Multimedia is the Brahma, the Vishnu, and the Shiva of my education. It birthed it, nurtures it, and will ultimately end it whenever my spirit merges into the Universe. The Universe, or "The Vibe" as a friend of mine likes to call it, is synonymous with "God" in my vocabulary now, as something so all-encompassing I could never imagine being outside of it. I want to spread my fingers towards the very perimeter of ignorance, and then reach past it.


Fig. 6 Hubble "saw" 10,000 galaxies in a portion of the sky 1/50th the size of the full moon

In that spirit, I invoke Ganesh's blessings, for he removes all obstacles. And I recall the words of Rumi, the Sufi poet, so I can begin this little forum with an open mind and heart:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing or rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

My Faith In Pop Culture

Lisa: Mom, Dad, my spiritual quest is over... I'm a Buddhist! Homer: What? That's it -- no more chat rooms for you! The Simpsons

Fig. 1 Batholomew's angel

In the beginning, there were movies and TV: the sacred texts of the great American secular religion. Hollywood is the Holy Land. The stars are our charismatic gods and goddesses. The movie theatres, our temples. Popcorn and Coke the body and blood of our Savior: sweet, sweet Entertainment.

There is much wisdom to be found in the discourses of Lama Chaplin, His Holiness Hitchcock, or Saint Spielberg:

When things get desperate, eat your shoe.

A boy’s best friend is not always his mother.

No matter how prepared you think you are, you’re probably going to need a bigger boat.

When I was a kid, the most religious thing I did was watch Mr. Wizard every morning before school while my grandmother struggled to brush my knotty, curl-infested hair. I conducted experiments on basil seeds and ivy vine clippings on my bedroom windowsill, corralled grasshoppers and tadpoles just to catch a glimpse of their life cycles, collected rocks, and had a serious crush on Bill Nye The Science Guy (and I still do, but he now shares nerd-swoonability with Neil deGrasse Tyson).


Fig. 2 & 3 Science Guys


In 1996, I turned thirteen and my Christian confirmation was on the horizon. I also discovered my two favorite TV shows of all time: The X-Files and The Daily Show. This year is as prominent in my personal pop cultural fossil record as the iridium-laced KT-boundary in Cretaceous rock strata. I believe that multitudinous moments and experiences contribute to and lead up to what we call peak moments in our lives, but those two shows have definitely had a significant and enduring effect on my current adult mindset. To say they inspired me is like saying Jesus made a fairly good point to a dozen of his buddies around a dinner table. My Confirmation, appropriately enough, also marked an essential attitude adjustment toward religion in general.


Fig. 4 Crackpot

I went to confirmation classes, and you better believe it was reluctantly. More than anything else, it was a ginormous waste of my precious after school Bill Nye time. I knew there was more to life than Sunday School. I mean, come on. How could you not watch The X-Files? Because it’s got satanic subject matter? Aliens aren’t in the Bible? Neither are chocolate Easter bunnies, but you believe in them, don’t you?

At one of the classes, we watched a video featuring a young man describing his atheism. He went on about his beliefs and sounded pretty convinced that there’s no God. Unexpectedly enough, he still went to church with his family and subsequently expressed his contempt for the people he saw there who only showed up once or twice a year for the big holidays. He sounded mildly disgusted by such behavior and continued voicing his opinions about being atheist.

At the end of the video, my confirmation crew asked, “Does he really sound like an atheist?” Internally, I replied (in more 13-year-old language), “Sounds like a bored, apathetic teenager tagging along with his folks because he enjoys making dry ironic observations about hypocritical society.” But of course, the faithful interpreted his comments as a closet Jesus lover trying to express himself. I’m still not entirely sure what they were trying to accomplish in that session, but when you introduce a video like that, it makes confirmation feel like some self-pitying agnostics anonymous program.

At the end of the whole thing, my “secret sponsor” gave me a tack-pin with a mustard seed inside and a card explaining the Bible verse associated with it. It’s a cool verse, and appealed to my burgeoning English major heart. For a moment, I held that pin, re-reading the verse over and over, feeling a little part of me drying up and falling off: my umbilicus to freedom. Something said to me “This is it. You’re Christian now. Deal with it.” Obviously, that’s not what you should feel about your religion. But what the hell did I know?

I soon noticed that my tiny gold cross necklace I was given as a baby matched the one Dana Scully wore on The X-Files, so that never left my neck except to shower. Every night before bed, I prayed a standard obligatory form prayer with blanks that I filled in with hopes for protection over family and friends. Church was still boring, and I began to get self-righteous about all the self-righteous church-goers who judged non-church-goers as being unfaithful or lazy. I decided that I could be faithful whether I spent my Sunday mornings bored to tears or not.

To prove my righteousness, I pointed out an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer stays at home while Marge and the kids go to church. God still hangs out with Homer even though he isn’t “in God’s House” on Sundays. I thought that was awesome. If God couldn’t love me enough to appreciate that I could bask in his glory by sleeping in and watching rented movies on Sundays, then I would give up. If my church were as quirky as Reverend Lovejoy’s, I would have attended more often than not. Still, Methodism had nothing on the entertainment factor of my science or my Hollywood religion. God has Moses. Hollywood has Charlton Heston. No contest.

Fig. 5 Let there be matzos

When I started studying at UF, I felt totally freed from any iota of nagging obligation whatsoever to go to church. My umbilicus to freedom regenerated and I stuck with my televisual roots. I schlepped boxes of X-Files recorded on VHS tapes into my already cramped dorm, clinging to them like Linus’ security blanket. I found that my generation took up watching The Daily Show as standard practice, and Jon Stewart was as ubiquitous a sight in the common room as greasy pizza boxes and dirty dishes.

Ten days after 9/11/01, I consulted the one spiritual adviser every American knows will make them feel some modicum of normality no matter what: television. I sat in front of my thirteen-inch dorm room TV-VCR combo unit and I saw Jon Stewart get choked up during his unexpectedly touching return-to-air speech. It was the first moment I felt the oftentimes invisible connection between tragedy and comedy and how one deeply informs the other. I reached for the nearest tissue and told myself that this man was now worthy of my worship. Another god in my pantheon of show biz.

I was a born-again TDS viewer. Just let Jon into your heart and be saved!

Fig. 6 Moment of Zen

I never had a problem with Jesus. I never had a problem with my parents. I'm not one of these self-loathing-formerly-Christian-church-bashing twentysomethings who go Buddhist just because it's not my parents' religion or because it's hip. I live in Hernando County, Florida. There's no pressure to be hip. Spring Hill would never be prefaced with the adjective "hip."

I was simply never a very institution-oriented person. I loved empiricism, but I wasn't cynical. I had a great family life, great friends, and had fun. I wasn’t on drugs, I wasn’t unintentionally pregnant or festering with STDs. I got educated and got a respectable job. My friends and family loved me and I loved them. I was satisfied with my non-denominational moral compass. It worked for me.

Then one day, I realized I had no idea how or why my compass worked. It wasn’t broken, but my brain needed an upgrade to understand how to read it.

In the December 2005 issue of National Geographic, along came an article about Buddhism’s recent spread across the world. All I knew about it before I started reading that first paragraph was that it involved meditating and it came from a place in which Brad Pitt once spent seven cinematic years hanging out with the Dalai Lama. The article outlined a basic overview of the Dharma with its calm Vulcan-like reverence for logic, and how it’s been manifesting in Western culture. It was very appealing to my Bill Nye-loving brain. I read another shorter article on growing Muslim populations in the world and felt a small pang of regret that I didn’t really belong to a spiritual group I felt I could be intellectually honest with myself about following.

I knew that guilt about someone dying for my sins was not my slice of key lime pie, but I had no trustworthy paradigm to put my beliefs in context. My comparative religion education consisted of little more than Ancient Egypt class and Fiddler On The Roof. The only things I chose to recall from church was eating freeze-dried ice cream at an outer-space-themed Vacation Bible School and ringing spotless gold bells so shiny and expensive you had to wear white gloves to touch them.

I had to re-assess what I had in my spiritual bindle.



To be continued...