Rita’s legacy (1)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

This entry, and the one to follow, were two parts of an introduction that Rita and I wrote to a book about the TGU material that has yet to appear. We wrote these explanations in 2002 but nothing needs changing. I can’t think of a better way of expressing Rita Warren’s legacy as experienced by me. This first entry is by me; Rita’s follows.

by Frank DeMarco

Probably you don’t need this book if the world makes sense to you, if your life makes sense to you. But perhaps you are puzzled, depressed, disheartened, by the life you see around you. Perhaps you ask yourself why you were born, why anybody was born. Perhaps you ask what’s the sense in it. Perhaps you find yourself unable to believe in any of the traditional faiths that have sustained humanity throughout the ages, the little you know of them. (To name them roughly in chronological order: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and materialism, often called “science.”) Living without faith either in the west’s materialism or in any of the revealed religions, perhaps you suspect that life is by its nature not merely puzzling, but meaningless.

And perhaps-one final “perhaps”-perhaps you say to yourself, “If only I knew how to find the truth! I’m not in the mood for fairy tales. I want the truth, no matter how depressing the truth turns out to be. And I don’t want to be told, and then required to believe. I’m willing to listen to new ideas, but I want to be able to test them, to find out for myself.”

If that describes your situation, you’ve come to the right book.

Continue reading Rita’s legacy (1)

The Spiritual life

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

For the past week, as my friend Rita Warren has been slowly dying, I have been occupying my mind partly by going through old journals, continuing a task I set myself of finding and indexing all the quotations I have noted in 41 years of journal-keeping. Among them I find this one, to which, despite diverging terminologies and concepts, I have resonated for all the 19 years since I came across it. It seems particularly appropriate to days and nights spent in the near presence of death and life as we experience them, inextricably mixed.

Continue reading The Spiritual life

A Trip to Iona — June 7, 2003

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Saturday, June 7

Another breakfast at the hotel, then a cab to the train station at Crewe, a train to the Manchester airport, and a flight to Aberdeen. Traveling is easier alone. Although one might think that another person would help find things, and avoid mistakes, and share the load, in practice, it isn’t so. I watch myself traveling very efficiently, very smoothly, except for moments of confusion that a moment sorts out without much difficulty. I watch myself glide smoothly from the train through the maze to the right place to check in for the flight, and even my movements are smooth and sure, usually. Far more so than if I were with someone, my attention half on the companion. This of course has nothing to do with the companion and everything to do with the way I operate.

I like the British ways so much more than commercial-American. At Dulles airport, every 15 minutes came a strident warning that “for security reasons” you mustn’t leave your baggage unattended; unattended baggage would be seized for inspection and might be damaged or destroyed. Here in Manchester, a pleasant voice merely asked passengers “to reduce the number of security alerts by keeping your luggage with you at all times.” No threats, no stridency. Same message underneath, but all the difference in the world how it was delivered. Continue reading A Trip to Iona — June 7, 2003

A Trip to Iona (1)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

The first of several descriptions of a trip to Scotland and England that was in some ways a restless spiritual pilgrimage, more so than my trip to Glastonbury and other places last year.

Iona 

On Monday April 12, 2003, I realize that I want to go to Iona. I look for people to come with me, but no one can. I decide to go anyway, and within days I have the trip planned. I will fly to Glasgow, spend a day and a half with Robert Clarke in England, fly to Aberdeen to spend a couple of days with Michael Ross, then go to Iona for four days and five nights, then visit Ronald and Jill Russell for a couple of days. It seems a lot of moving around, but manageable.

On Friday, May 23rd, I write in my journal: “Dion Fortune read a passage referring to the Brotherhood, and her whole being responded. For ten days she could think of nothing else but her desire to serve. Then came a vision, and her whole life was changed. May I not strive for something like that on Iona? May I not earnestly pray to be of service? Have I anything else in life I desire? I have not.” 

The following Friday, the 30th, I pick up a few hundred English pounds from my bank, borrow a backpack, and that night I pack everything except for last-minute things. (What’s the weather going to be like? Should I bring a winter coat? Surely not, in June, even in Scotland! I settle for packing in layers. Besides my short coat, a sweater and sweatshirt, a warm woolen jacket-like thing, a flannel shirt and two dress shirts, a pair of blue jeans, a pair of good pants and – in an unwarranted burst of optimism – a pair of shorts.) I spend the weekend wondering if four days on Iona will bore me. For reading material, I choose, after some hesitation, The Lives of the Saints (Brendan, Cuthbert and Wilfred), and The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling. Both books are small, lightweight, and likely to match my mood. 

Wednesday morning, June 4, a Greyhound bus to Dulles airport. I begin snoozing as soon as the bus starts at 9 a.m., figuring it will be long hours before I get to sleep in a bed again.

And then I am at Dulles airport at 11:20 a.m., with my flight to Newark scheduled to leave at 5 p.m. (Greyhound only has one bus to Dulles from C’ville.) I have a piece of pizza and go up to the check-in desk. The woman there advises me to get onto their 1 p.m. to Newark, saying that they are experiencing weather delays all up and down the east coast, and it would be better for me to be in Newark waiting than in Dulles.  

Good thinking. As it is, the 1 p.m. doesn’t get off the runway until 2 p.m.. Then up out of the grey clouds into the bright blue sky, and 35 minutes later back down into the same grey overcast we’d left, one short hop closer to my scheduled 8:35 departure for Scotland. Continue reading A Trip to Iona (1)

A New Model Of Consciousness In Space And Time

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Last April I posted, in ten installments, some great stuff I had gotten from my friends upstairs in January, 2006 over the course of a few days. I recently pulled up the ten posts, removed headers and continuation lines, and concatenated it into one long file. (It’s easier to read one file, I think, than one after the other in the archives of several months ago.)

I will be glad to send the file in response to a request via email to muddytracks@earthlink.net.

Death and life and death of a great man

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

The Charlottesville newspaper’s obituary for George Gordon Ritchie Jr. M.D., 84, of Irvington, Virginia, who died Monday, October 29, 2007, among other things says this:

He was a physician, speaker and author and a graduate of the University of Richmond, Medical College of Virginia and served his residency in Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. During his residency, he won the William James Research Award for Research in Psychiatry and helped found the David C. Wilson Hospital in Charlottesville and was president of the Universal Youth Corporation for 20 years….

What this leaves unsaid is the greater part of his life.

In 1943, age 20, George died, was met by Jesus, and was given a guided tour of earth, heaven and hell. (I am saying this not tongue in cheek but straightforwardly, just as George very bravely did for more than 60 years.) Continue reading Death and life and death of a great man

Belief and doubt

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

A further excerpt from an altered-state session with the guys upstairs, Rita Warren asking the questions, on February 26, 2005:

R: …. Well, I ordinarily think of both Frank and myself as being very tolerant of ambiguity with others who are very dissatisfied with that state. However, one of the things that has arisen for Frank a few times is my asking a question through him and his finding no answer. That seems to bother him because the structure seems to collapse on itself – the possibility that it will collapse on itself. So in that case, it seems to me, he isn’t very tolerant of ambiguity. He really needs to have some very clear sign that you are there to answer questions.

F: Well, you’re actually perceiving the external sign of an internal civil war, because bear in mind, one of his predominant characteristics is to doubt, and this doesn’t lead him to doubt others any more than it does himself. You see? Continue reading Belief and doubt