Any philosophical system that cannot imagine the complexities and mysteries of the human experience and couple this with its release, any system that cannot incorporate its own placement of the known within the larger context of the far more vast unknown, is an incomplete system. Jungian frameworks, in my view, is a rare understanding that scaffolds the seeker by bridging the vast knowledge of the Western and Eastern esoteric traditions by accessing the knowing that exists within each individual. I can say that my life has been chasing after a cavern so deep I can settle with for a long period of exploration.
One of my early memories is of my mother proclaiming her realization that Sathya Sai Baba is God, he was a guru our family were followers. Although she has since shared some of her process on attaining that realization over the years, the declaration was itself a major pivot point in my own life and set up a sense that the numinous need not be relegated to academic and theoretical discussion amongst monastics or the devout but was embodied in the flesh and blood of a human being who walked before us and was to be carried in us. At the age of 9 I received darshan from Sathya Sai Baba and, again, the lasting impression I have carried with me informs my belief that I am not meant to live my life informed by stats and norms but by archetypes and legends; I do not see myself as another member of the overpopulated herd, but rather as the Hero of my own living legend. This guiding principle has led me to this process of applying for a deep dive into the collective unconscious in Jungian analytic training.
As a child the mythology around the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha were transmitted to me in the form of the Amar Chitra Katha comic books. Simultaneously I was reading western comics by way of Marvel and DC; Spiderman, X-Men, Batman, Superman and the Justice League were all consuming my attention alongside the figures of Indian mythology which included Hanuman, Lord Indra, Krishna, Kali, Shiva, and the many others. I attended a Catholic grammar school in Staten Island while singing devotional songs on weekends amongst the Hindu Sai Baba organization. My mother encouraged my reading and would reward me upon completing a book in the classic section of the library with a comic book of my choosing. Which is not to say I wasn’t enthralled by video games as well. I spent countless hours pondering the puzzles of The Legend of Zelda and to this day love guiding Link in his quest to save his beloved.
When I began the practice of poetry writing at 17, at the end of high school, I began to forge connections between the broader mythopoetic landscape and my own emerging narrative, needs, and ongoing struggles. I would characterize the struggle of my childhood as it evolved into my own emergence as an individual as defined by the tension between inward and outward gazing. When isolated my sense of my own sufferings becomes unbearable, when connected the feelings are emboldened in an empowering way; suffering is all pervasive and unbearable for all living beings. At the pivotal moment in my own development, I was told confidentially that processes that caused shame and isolation were shared by this person who indicated it was broadly experienced in the community as well, saying she had known a few people who had been experiencing mood disorders and asked to take psychopharmaceuticals.
After my encounters with the mental health industry in my freshman year in college, I began to seek both individual therapy and a deeper engagement with transpersonal psychology. I wanted so much at that time for all the perceived chaotic thoughts and feelings to just make sense. As my age continued to grow, I also wanted my transpersonal work to make me money (sense/cents), and be sustainable as a career and vocation, but this desire was placed on hold after college for almost 20 years. I graduated from Rutgers University, after a painful few years at Vassar College, and passed through five years as a substitute teacher that includes a 10 month incomplete term as a Teaching Fellow. I then pursued a Masters in Library Science and worked at the Queens Public Library for 15 years in progressively advancing roles from Children’s Librarian to Supervising Librarian in various communities around Queens, the most diverse borough in New York City.
These years were the establishment of my professional competency and the foundation for my personal confidence in my discipline that I now see as my yoga practice and ascension into my own hero path. I began to see that while many of my peers were engaged in practices that can be seen as analogously related to the sitcom, episodic and seeking short term gains with a narrow scope, I was building an array of insights and holding them within my own consciousness for a more long term goal (an epic saga) as I waited for a signal of what the Divine Source wanted from me in regard to my next professional and personal steps were to be in my life.
In 2017 I was inspired to create a weekly program for Radio Free Brooklyn I called “The Truth to Power Show'' wherein I acted as producer finding a guest amongst the community each week and holding a conversation with over either a pre recording and then LIVE on air show that streamed audio only over the internet. This experience was vital to my own progress and preceded by a wish for me to amplify my emergence as a poet and thinker in the community. As I began to listen to deep philosophical and mythopoetic inspiration from those around me I began to pull in more individuals who aligned well with my own emerging theoretical orientation.
Some of my initial guests were individuals like Rick Jarow, who had taught me “Psychology of Religion” during my time at Vassar and with whom I had connected as an adult for his manifestation circles, and Allan Avidano, my high school friend who had written the book The Other Son which explored his thoughts around Christ within a existential humanistic lens in a fictional narrative. As I became more resolved in my search for specific guidance on my work in the world, I was able to manifest guests like Audrey DiMola and Ken Ferlic who posed challenges to the norms of the mental health industry I had been grudgingly accepting to offer me a new vision for processing trauma.
It was at that point that I opened to my work in the world and my ongoing internet searches scanning professional opportunities located a job listing for Kristine Mann Library in the CG Jung Center of Manhattan, NYC and led me to accepting the position of Head Librarian. As I deepened with my own knowing, I began to see that threads from my past were emerging as signs for the future I was called upon to enact. The plasticity of my own self-talk and life’s story was evident as I began to release narratives that no longer served me in favor of stories and myths that emboldened my light and empowered me to confront my shadows.
Over the years 2016-2021 I self published two poetry books and was able to negotiate with Poets of Queens Press to publish my third poetry collection. Each volume builds from the personal mythology towards a more collective interdependent narrative. The second book which is the first in a proposed series stands out as a part of a lineage of persona poems where I draw from my own mythology as much as I did from internet searches and news articles to populate poems focused on the lives of celebrities, imagined in meditative moments so the reader can examine their own humanity in relation to the systemic sensationalization of the Page Six material, aka celebrity gossip. That book Celebrity Sahana, Or How to Meditate with a Hammer is book 1 of The Paparazzo Poet Meditations and is sandwiched between the 2016 books Escape from Samsara and the 2021 book Breakdown Dancer published by Poets of Queens Press.
In my own seeking to liberate my creative expression: from participating in National Novel Writing Month, engaged in theater work ranging from acting from a young age in community theater, to directing Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Viriginia Woolf? my senior year in Rutgers University, from study improvisational comedy from 2012-2017 at People’s Improv Theater, to studying storytelling with Adam Wade, a Moth grand slam winner teaching at Magnet Theater, from shamanic work with Foundation for Shamanic studies, to leaderships retreats with Esalen (including work with Bioenergetics with Radical Aliveness with Ann Bradney) and Hollyhock, from manifestation circles with Rick Jarow, to taking classes in swing dancing and writing classes at Gotham writers workshop and Brooklyn Poets.
At the precipice of the pandemic, in September of 2019, I had a direct communication from some Divine Source that I was to study Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Naropa University and needed to plan out a solo show I was to perform nearing this degree’s completion that enshrined my journey into the Hero’s journey that was already emerging for the past quarter century. Sometimes I wonder if it's naive to think it’s possible to achieve the progressively advancing levels of consciousness discussed in Eastern yogas. I wonder about this yoga and how it might stand juxtaposed to the Western lottery or American Dream of investing your energy in the Casino Capitalism of the Western Occidental countries. Where does capitalism meet the mythopoetic? It’s funny this question comes up. I invested much time and energy in developing this mostly improvised (comedy) 5 act show whose focus was on my 17 and 18 ego persona that was narrated by a more critical eye of my 45 year old self. I approached the humor of this show without judgment or pathologizing, offering what was referred to by the audience as “self deprecating humor”; I like to think of the show as a loving roast of a past self that I no longer feel I need to pander to; while I love that 18 year ego, I think his naivete was problematic.
Still, I was able to draw from his innocence as a way into the sublime. Although I’m interested in creating sustainability, I’m also nauseated by the idea of commercializing my own process, monetization rings for me in harmony with weaponization. At the same time, I understand that sustainability requires financial gains. I believe in energy exchanges and I do think when someone makes an offering the gift is more meaningful and grounded. However I recently was informed that evidence based research doesn’t support this premise. Thus, I’m conflicted about commerce.
At my core, I believe the United States has incurred a deep pathology that Trump, neoconservative and even neoliberalism is spreading an ideological infestation that poses more of an existential threat than any pandemic ever could. My physical body inevitably dies, but the mental imprints of samskaras I’ve left will be perpetuated progressively outward in the community and world as well as dictate the trajectory of my own post death experience in subtle or perchance gross energy; I do not know but I hold a space for my inner unsubstantiated knowing that we do not end when we die. I will continue my own deep dive into my subconscious and exploring its connections to the collective while at the same time returning to the community something beyond just a rich man’s navel gazing for a fee.
In many of these contemplative communities people say they received a “download” to proceed with certain actions, but more important for me is the future “upload” of a school for adolescents and children that would functionally communicate the Eastern and Western esoteric in the United States that encourages the core values that are expressed in the Jungian transpersonal lineage of which Naropa University partakes and has encouraged me to engage with in the past 3 years of study. I have also studied with New Kadampa Tradition in western global Buddhism in general, intermediate and advanced coursework, retreats, and meditations. Furthermore, films and deeper creative work is in order for my journey.
Imagistically I feel I have opened a path to a cavern within me and connecting us all and, unlike others who seek to quickly move to bring others into this wonderful tourist spot, I crave a focused chance to do more adventurous exploration of this cavern as I integrate and give back to the world the insights and theoretical underpinnings that I would carefully curate as a curriculum for those who need it the most desperately in a cultural zeitgeist where leaders are using power unconsciously perpetuating systems of oppressive thought and actions. There are fewer and fewer sources of light in these dark times and I seek to amplify the spark that I’ve been holding for many years for all the world to see. Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story up to now. At this threshold I can see the process is an ending and all endings are emergent beginnings.
