Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes 23

Yes, the Gate Keeper of the New Jerusalem: a huge, fat, sprawling black presence oozing darkness, fear, anxiety, bad odours, depression. Why does it have to be this way? Does it have to be this way? Why are all the good things in life surrounded by razor wire? Why is there always a dragon guarding the sacred garden where grows the tree of life? If I only knew, Gentle Reader, but so it is. The New Jerusalem, of course, has nothing at all to do with the disputed capital of Israel and Palestine, and everything to do with gaining access to our higher selves, our higher reality, that state of blessedness, light and joy that always eludes us yet ever entices us from afar or in our dreams. Yes, for sure in our dreams, but this is what we aspire to. Something better and higher than what we already are or already possess. Because this is something we appear to have lost long ago. This myth of a long vanished golden age figures in all the world legends and mythologies. It isn't just that we need to become better than what we are. We need to be restored to what we once were, and have lost. The Ancient Greeks had their gods of Olympus, and didn't seem to realize that those gods were themselves, idealized representations of their higher, if still very corrupt selves. Aphrodite, so exceedingly beautiful, but what an unfaithful spouse. Likewise her daddy, Zeus. And Hermes-handsome and graceful god and such a manipulative shyster. Ares, god of war, handsome and bloodthirsty; Poseidon, protector of the sea and sailors but vindictive and nasty to any mortal or other god that got on his bad side. I could go on, but I don't want to lose the thread of this conversation. The gods represent our higher selves and they are our higher selves. We spend our lives trying to gain access to the garden, trying to sneak past the guardian shadow at the Gate of the New Jerusalem, often at great peril and damage to ourselves. Our vulnerability to addiction speaks volumes about this: drugs, alcohol (another drug), porn, gambling, shopping, smart phones, or fill in the blank. We are a race of half-baked, half-formed, incomplete, pathetic little wankers desperate and always on the lookout for that next dopamine hit. That is our human reality. But our human truth? Divining our human truth would involve having to get past the Shadow, which would be the same as Oedipus answering the Sphinx's riddle. I will replay for you that particularly pithy little myth. Oedipus was trying to enter the mythical Greek city of Thebes, but the gate was guarded by an evil Sphinx, a lion with the head of a woman. She would ask each stranger the same riddle, and if he answered correctly, he could enter the city, otherwise, she would rip him to shreds. The riddle: What has four legs in the morning, two legs at midday and three legs in the evening? Oedipus answered correctly. Man is that creature, he said. In the morning, when he is born, he is a baby crawling on all fours. Then he learns to walk and throughout the midday of his life he walks on two legs. Near the end of his life, the evening, he is an old man and must walk with a stick or a cane, as though on three legs. The Sphinx, outraged that he answered correctly, threw herself to her death and Oedipus entered his ancestral city. So, then, what do we say to the Shadow, squatting at the entrance to the New Jerusalem? We reaffirm our humanity, we declare our love for our humanity and our love for one another, and the Shadow, defeated, can only yield and let us pass.