Why I created this site.

Our collective Soul is crying out for nourishment. Nourishment that does not come with guilt and prescriptions. Nourishment that speaks directly to Soul, bypassing Ego and the strictures of the domesticating “should, ought’s, musts, and have-to’s” That which we have to conform with to be acceptable. Which I have called collectively the Status Quo.

Good poetry and stories have always fulfilled this function in communities down through the ages.

This is a good time to remember the poem that started my quest for me way back in 1985.

The Wind, One Brilliant Day by Antonio Machado Translated by Robert Bly

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odour of jasmine.

“In return for the odour of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odour of your roses.”

“I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.”

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

The realization that I had almost lost my connection with my Soul was quite an awakening, Like the boy in the Iron John story I had taken my connection with my Soul for granted and had let the Golden ball roll away into the Wildman’s cage. (where else would it go?) The idea that our secret garden needed tending was new to me, having been living on a farm for many years I could see immediately that this was true. In a single step, I fell in love with poetry and saw the stories I had always loved as part of my secret garden and had some serious discussions with my Ego about who was patrolling the boundaries of that garden and what was allowed in. In fact, this whole website is my secret garden where I keep stories and poetry alive and keep out the ravages of overblown Egos and idealisms.

What I tried to fill these pages with is Soul food of all sorts, like a smorgasbord, all is on offer take your pick.

Here is such a piece of poetry.

There is a voice inside the body.

There is a voice and a music,

A throbbing, the four-chambered pear

Alone by the river with its mandolin

And its torn coat, and sings

For whoever will listen

A song that no one wants to hear.

 

But sometimes, lost, on his way to somewhere significant,

 

A man in a long coat, carrying a briefcase, wanders into the forest.

He hears the voice and the mandolin

He sees the thrush and the dandelion,

and feels the mist over the river.

And his life is never the same,

For this having been lost—

For having strayed from the path of his enforced routine,

For no good reason.

Life’s Journey.   There are phases in our life’s journey we all go through as humans that are not dependent on the environment or culture rather these phases and based on our bodies with some modifiers due to stress.  As humans, we all come into life through the transition of birth from an aquatic entity to an air-breathing being through the womb of a woman. After that, there are steps into human maturity that seem to follow 7-year cycles into old age and death as well as many minor phases in early childhood development. The phases of life have been called Rites of passage in older times now we just call it maturing or being socialized. Hence the website image of Frogs to Princes The Journey from the motherly pond into social maturity.

Stories. The ones found on this site describe in metaphor how we may go on this lifelong journey, A guidebook for the development of the human psyche if you will in this world. The Hero’s Journey, The journey of the Ego returning to Soul or squaring the circle. It is also the Hero’s story, the journey to find the magic elixir to save the kingdom. The Elixir (Soul) will only allow itself to be discovered when the Hero (Ego) has been transformed sufficiently by the Journey to accept Soul as its Self.

Why storytelling:   Because human behavior is understandable we can relate to it. Stories about others’ lives are fascinating to us, and can transport us out of our small, time-bound world to a timeless fantastical place where many non-ordinary things are possible.  When we return we can bring back some of those ideas and try them out here. Expand our horizon as to what’s possible.

Soul. The concept and an understanding of Soul is the most important thing written here. These stories and poetry on this site are a direct appeal to the Soul, our personal Soul that we were forced to abandon to create a viable Ego. Now our culture, my culture denies Soul’s very existence. Like Antarctica, everybody knows where it is but nobody wants to go there. Soul is the magic elixir that will save the Kingdom from the wasteland.

These stories appeal directly to Soul and bypass the normal defenses of the Ego and the certainty of the beliefs propounded by the Status-Quo. Like Cupid’s arrows fly straight through the Ego’s defenses. These stories and poetry fly directly to our Soul. Ego may deny it and free will is sacred so the Status-quo continues.

My own story, and why I created this site.

In my 20’s I first read a book by Anne Rand called “Atlas Shrugged” I could immediately see how the world around me was in part how she described it. I recognized the demands of the domesticating Status-quo in the way our society was put together.  This observation lead me to an interest in philosophies, spiritualism, Jungian Studies, astrology, and many others, Astrology led me back to the Greek myths my mother read to me as a child. Sometime around my 40th year, three things happened almost at once. Joseph Campbell brought out his book “The Power of Myth.” I also became aware of the men’s movement and Robert Bly. The third thing was I began the  Holotropic Breathwork of Stan Groff which introduced me to altered states of consciousness and began my shamanic journey into non-ordinary states of consciousness. While in an altered state of consciousness, I was shown the importance in society of real Rites-of-Passage as opposed to Rights of Passage for men and women. That the Masculine expression was being crippled and the cost to our society, women, and men themselves. These three things I studied separately are Greek Myths, Rites-of-Passage, parenting, the stages of maturing in our society, and what is the result when this maturing doesn’t happen. All of these seemingly separate things came together and showed me how they were interconnected. This interconnectedness is what I have attempted to lay out here on this website.

This was a powerful experience and redirected the rest of my life toward Rite of passage, Story, and Poetry.

The doorway to death my near-death experience.

There are many reasons why I have created this site. Like the Blue Beard story, I have used the key and opened the door into the room of shadows and death. Not to kill ego but rather to transform it, to journey with it into the next world and beyond.

In the Blue beard story, There was a doorway into a room, a room of death of all the previous wives. Death in the other world, the world beyond this physical world is not death as we understand it. It means the end of an initiatory process or at worst a failed psychological process. Like in the Blue Beard story, I would like to honor the brothers who came to the rescue, the masculine energy of differentiation who are the inspiration for what I have written here, and my continuing Muse Listed below as male mentors.

Also, the Feminine Muse who softly stirred me on, like, my mother, my wife, Pam Roux Mary Oliver, and many more who impacted my life and dared me to use the key to open the forbidden doorway of death into a greater world and understanding. And of course, those master teachers my children, and the business world of physical necessity.

There was a time in 2019 when I was in the hospital for a stomach operation. Major concerns were as to whether I would survive the surgery at 70 years, high blood pressure, asthma, stents, and blood thinners. As I was coming out of the anesthetic, I had an experience of reviewing what I came to do in this life and the agreements I had made, the gifts I had brought to share, and what I had come to do around initiation and youth.

Agreements with my loving wife my sounding board, my four now-grown children, and all the knowledge I had remembered and brought into awareness, into consciousness, in these 70 years of life.

About stories and their possible multiple meanings. The option was to leave this plane and die to physical life, indeed my wife said as I was being wheeled into the theatre (now there’s a metaphor) She said, “If it’s your time to go then I let you go.” So, decision time, go or come back and attempt to capture in words what I have learnt about stories, rites of passage, metaphor, and our relationship to the physical world. This website is an attempt to fulfill that promise to myself.

Why stories?

There are many reasons why and reasons to tell stories. As humans, our stories keep us connected, from everyday conversations about work, family, and friends, from relationships to Shakespeare we are constantly telling stories, yours, mine, ours, and theirs. The seven arts, books, myths, movies, and music, all tell stories. Our own story is the most authentic thing we have, we never tire of repeating it and listening to those authentic stories of others’ life experiences.

One of the things that makes humans a successful species is our adaptability, humans live in vastly different environments, from sand dry deserts to high mountain plateaus to arctic conditions. We live in huge cities, in vast empty places, on the ocean on islands. How do we manage that?

Unlike animals who use instinct to guide them on how to procreate, build homes, and care for their young.

Humans use stories and Myths; Myths are not something that is not true Myths are the stories that tell each group in each environment how to be in that environment. Most of this understanding is not written down but learnt by osmosis. Local knowledge.

Like the fish that went home from school and asked his mum, Hey mum what’s this a learnt about water today? Mum’s response Shut up and drink your beer. Like the fish, we are totally unaware of the Mythological waters we swim in.

Local Myths can be faulty:

Because like the fish we are unconscious of the myths we swim in we are also unaware of being possessed by them.

The idea of the superiority of the Aryan race drove the second world war. The confusion between the colour black and evil drove apartheid. There were voices such as Carl Jung and Laurens van der Post who understood myths, stories, and the unconscious. These voices warned us of what was to come. 

So many people stood at the doorway of death in those times.

Likewise, there are myths that tell us how to be in a relationship with the spiritual and soul world. These soul myths are what I love, they speak to me in the most immediate way about how to be a human in a rapidly changing world. Perhaps even in a world that is dying. The world is now asking of us questions about death and our own mortality.

My interest in the stories that you find on this site is here because they describe how our psyche and our inner life may be transformed. These stories invite us in conversation to our own life to find fulfillment and purpose

There are as many ways to tell and use stories as there are people to tell them. I use a particular type of story, those that carry Initiatory or rite of passage information and processes. Those that describe in metaphor how our journey from Ego back to Soul may be fulfilled

Our Insecurity

Others who use stories for another purpose will have traveled a different road and will report a different experience. In this context, one experience is as valid as the next.   Our difficulty here is due to our own insecurity we would like there to be only one official road and only one valid experience.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) personal growth is not that easy or simple. While my own interest in stories is Soul work, Soul retrieval, and Soul connecting (from an ego point of view), using stories for entertainment, and carrying educational and instructional information is perfectly valid.   Because those aspects are not dealt with here it does not imply a lack of validity.

The validity of stories: 

Stories validate life and not the other way around because Soul attributes meaning to events and experiences, not the intellect. ( see what is soul) 

I have discovered that many of the stories carry truths that are staggeringly profound in their implications.   This realisation always leaves me in awe as to their validity, their power to transform us, and their incredible gift to us from our past. Further, the psychological level while popular today is not the level at which these stories were created.   Many of the stories flow down the river of metaphor from the mountains of individuals passing the territory of psychology to the ocean of soul which is their source.

Sign Posts.

(The Labyrinth is another word for the labyrinthine beliefs of the Status-quo and therefore the Ego, and its defenses against Soul)

Joseph Campbell says “The way out of the Ego’s Labyrinth is well known, you don’t even have to risk the journey by yourself, others that have gone before you have left the way well signposted”. This is what the stories on this site are, signposts on the journey from Ego back to Soul.  It is at the levels of Soul that stories express their most fundamental truths. I have attempted the mammoth task of laying out some of the geographies of these, like the wounded healer Chiron I can only take you part of the way, each of our journeys is unique and indeed it would be wrong to simply follow my path without making it your own.

Along the way I have had many mentors I have named just a few here to honour their impact on my life.

Male mentors                                            Female mentors

Robert Bly.                                                                         Sarah my loving wife

My three sons, Peter, Alexanda, and Sebastian.        My Daughter Ananda.

Joseph Campbell                                                              Mary Oliver

Michael Meade                                                                 Pam roux

James Hillman                                                                 Mary Standing woman otter

Terry Pratchett                                                                 Robbie Standing woman otter

Victor Frankl                                                                     My mother (who kept me safe from Giants)

Rudolf Steiner                                                                   Dr Wineburg for her courage in the face of death.

Kahlil Gibran                                                                     Emily Dickerson

Rumi                                                                                    Val & Judy of Vision Quest fame, who were there when I received the name “Calls for Listening” 

Stan Groff                                                                            Collien Ebeling    Who was a mother for me also.

Paul Solomon.

Hans Ebeling  Who steadied and guided me in my formative years.

Dr. Garder. Who has kept my body and Soul together to give me time to finish this work.

Sebastian Sleeman. Who taught me the value of connection.

And many others too numerous to mention. The surgeon and the antitheist accepted the challenge of death on the table and operated anyway. Thank you, it seems such an inadequate word.

Sam Sleman  2/5/23 (After many revisions)