Chapter 25 – Home and Heart

Getting His Bearings

He and Karen are living in Berkeley now. As soon as he arrived last week, he came down sick, probably from all the stress of moving. He can’t do very much, even with Jonathan here, visiting them for the week. He’s glad Jonathan is here though. He loves him very much. It was very difficult to move away from him.

He and Karen have rented a room in this old house on Grant Street. A group of people into Zen Buddhism lived here before them, and two of them still do. He and Karen have the large front room. It’s not really a bedroom. It’s more like a second living room. But it’s quite nice and sunny. They’ll use it for seeing their patients and for hanging out or reading when they’re in the house. They’re fixing up the unused garage in back to be their sleeping room. He’s been out here since early this morning, cleaning it out.

The house itself is in the flatlands of Berkeley, west of Telegraph Avenue. It’s where the poorer people live, mostly students and hippies. From the outside, it looks just like all the other houses, yet it has already become their home.

It’s a little two-bedroom house with four of them living in it, sharing the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room, and the backyard. He especially likes the privacy of the large backyard, with its high fences all around. Gypsy likes it too, likes to lay in the shade of the tall grass.

It’s several days later now and he’s finally well. He woke up this morning feeling very loving and open. He’s feeling the same sharing love in his heart that he felt during his last days in Venice, especially with Steve and Simone and their friends. He gets out a couple of his oranges and goes looking for someone to share them with. He wants to really get to know the folks here.

There is one thing that he is quite sad about. Jonathan is already gone. They had a good visit, but then he had to return to his life in LA. He really wishes Jonathan could live with him, but Pamela won’t allow it.

He’s writing some of his old friends in LA, trying to keep the connections going. He’s also getting everyone in the house into cleaning and organizing things, especially the kitchen. Mark and Gail and their other friends were so much into meditating that they failed to notice just how dirty and disorganized their outer world had become. He is glad he can help. He’s looking forward to his new life here. It’s getting better every day.
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At Home with Himself

He dreams that he’s going to live in Whidden’s barn. He’s readying the large upstairs room now, straightening it up and getting rid of all the old junk that has been stored away here for years. He’s putting all the smaller stuff that’s still useful upon these two wooden shelves at the north end of the room. There’s already a good bed in the room, with a really nice rug and lamp next to it.

When he has finished with the room, it’s clean and comfortable, and quite beautiful too. He wonders briefly about bringing anything else up from the storeroom; but really, it’s already as it should be.

He’s downstairs now in the smaller storeroom. It doesn’t need as much work as he had thought it would. He does have to take out all the stuff that’s been stored here, but that’s it, except for a little dusting and sweeping it out. There’s a bed and a lamp already in the room, and he has a very nice old Chinese rug. He’s going to make this room his very own.

His dream is commenting on their new house on Grant Street and what it means for him to be finally living here in Berkeley. For one thing, the storeroom in his dream reminds him of their bedroom in the garage – simple yet beautiful. For another, living here feels a lot like living in Whidden’s barn, especially with him and Karen sleeping out in the garage. Whidden’s farm was a great place for a boy to grow up, and his dream is using images from that old barn to let him know that the boy that’s growing up within him has found himself a good home again.

His dream is also talking about his place in the inner world, using Whidden’s barn again to make the point that he’s finally beginning to feel at home with himself. Furthermore, using the metaphor of the two rooms, his dream is commenting upon the two levels of consciousness that he’s operating out of these days, with the smaller, downstairs room reflecting himself as ego and the larger, upstairs room reflecting himself as Self, as when he’s doing healing work or is on acid. In both rooms, he’s simple and beautiful – and it’s turning out to be easier than he thought.

Simplicity, natural cleanliness, and intrinsic beauty seem to be the cardinal virtues of his new way of being, both within himself and in relationship to the world. He has left behind a great deal of old stuff, both inner and outer, moving from LA, and it is so much easier for him to be together and beautiful now.
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Simone

He has definitely fallen in love with Simone. He and Karen just spent a magical week with her and Steve down in Venice. He’s thinking of Stephen and Ina May Gaskin and their four people marriage with another couple. He’s thinking of Carl Jung and his relationship with two women – with his wife Emma and with his lover and inspiration Toni Wolf.

He has just written both Steve and Simone, each in separate letters. He has poured out his heart and soul to them in these letters, especially in the one to Simone.

He dreams about them constantly. In one dream, he’s at their house. There are other people here too, old friends and some other folks that he’s glad to meet. They’re all planning to do something important together.

In another dream, he and Karen enter the large bedroom in this old house. Steve and Simone are here. She’s lying in the bed, and Steve is sitting next to the bed in an easy chair. He and Karen lie down and sleep with them, lying to their right.

But then, when he wakes up, everyone is gone and he’s all alone.
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Steve and Simone have helped to bring the child within him back to life. Knowing them has brought him out into the world of people and family and having fun again. He had been away from this side of life for a long while, on his lonely dark night journey of the soul. Steve and Simone have done this, have brought him out of himself by being friendly and outgoing folks – by being role models maybe for his future self.

For him, the problem with a four people marriage is that he can’t be as close with a man as he can with a woman – and he doesn’t mean just sexually. This is why Simone is in the bed of his desire and Steve is sitting up in the chair. He wants her for a lover and him for a friend. He knows this isn’t likely, but still it’s what he wants in his heart of hearts.

The trouble with being lovers with two women at once, as Jung found out, is all the hurt that ensues, plus all the emotional demands upon the person in the middle, which, in this case, would be himself.

His dream shows him waking up and finding everyone gone too. He’s being told that when he wakes out of his unconscious fantasy, they will probably all be gone, Steve and Simone for sure, and maybe even Karen. Maybe, but he’s in love with Simone, and he still loves Karen too, in spite of all that’s gone down between them.
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Melinda and Grass

He dreams he’s with his old patient and good friend, Melinda. They haven’t seen each other in a long while. But in his dream, they’re sitting at a small, round table in an outdoor restaurant. They’re not eating, just sitting here talking and gazing fondly at one another. He has always liked her a lot, and he can see that she’s really liking him now too. He watches as they draw their chairs closer and closer together. He watches as they fall in love.

Melinda starts to talk about grass. She’s really into it now, even has some of her own, although she doesn’t have any with her. He tells her that he has some too but it’s at home. She asks why he didn’t bring it, and he says he didn’t think she would want any.

But she wants some now – and wants to smoke it with him. This moves him. They are really close to each other already, and he can see that she wants to be even closer. They get up and leave, deciding to finally get stoned together, after all these years.
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Melinda was one of his first patients in LA. Before they had finished working together, she had turned a good half dozen other folks onto him, including her brother Dave, who also became his friend and occasional backpacking and tripping partner. She believed in him and his healing work and he has always appreciated that. She moved out of his life when the folks she was studying meditation with offered her important teaching work back east.

She was really into meditation. He remembers how they used to try to understand the relationship between it and therapy. For a serious meditator, she was very open to therapy at a time when most meditators were putting it down – when most folks into therapy were putting meditation down too. They both learned a lot from working together.

Because she was into meditation back then, she wasn’t at all open to grass and probably still isn’t in the outer world of today. But in his dream world she certainly is. In his dream world, she represents a side of himself that up till now has seen meditation as more spiritual than grass. In other words, she represents a spiritual side of himself that up till now hasn’t let itself be involved when he smokes.

His dream is telling him that this has changed. His inner Melinda wants to smoke with him now. And his dream is encouraging him to fall in love with this more spiritual and meditative way of relating to grass.
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Nikki and the Free Clinic

He has all this newly released energy from finally getting out of LA, but he doesn’t seem able to use it to make a living. He’s barely surviving now. He has lost most of his old clients since he moved, and he has gained only a few new ones.

However, he may be able to use some of this energy to help the Berkeley Free Clinic. The therapists there seem unsure of themselves and their worth. They could be offering benefit workshops to the general public, sharing their work, and asking for donations to help support the clinic. Being a healing center and believing in Berkeley’s higher collective consciousness, what better way for them to show this than in various benefit workshops that would support the main work of the clinic?

He has sat in their staff meetings now for several weeks, and, for the longest time, he has said nothing. Instead, he has closely observed their various interactions. It’s been easy to see who’s really in charge.

In particular, Nikki and Laurie, two young radical social workers from back East, really run the rap center, that part of the Free Clinic that’s into counseling. There is also a core group of another eight or so people around them who are also committed to keeping the rap center going.

When he finally does introduce himself to these folks, they all really hit it off. They recognize a kindred spirit. Two of the men invite him to join their therapists’ collective. He and Nikki hit it off too, not in the unconscious, transference way that he has been falling into lately with other women, but rather out of a respect for each other’s work. He likes her style, and, from hanging out with her, he’s losing any residual desire that he might still have had to be the Jungian-magician. He would much rather be upfront and tough like her, completely honest and confrontive even.
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He’s finally beginning to put his work trip together. He is going to be the official coordinator for veterans, working for both the VA in San Francisco and the Free Clinic in Berkeley. He will be doing his internship at the VA while earning time for his work at the Free Clinic.

His idea about benefit workshops was well received at the Free Clinic too. There’s a committee meeting later this week that will be focused on this. He is already on the shit committee now too, a group of five folks responsible for the Rap Center.

Also he and Nikki have begun a private group together, and its first meeting went well last night. They enjoy working together. They’re already thinking about branching out and being consultants for the various collectives in Berkeley and the rest of the Bay Area.
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Edie

One beautiful day, out wandering about the Berkeley Hills with Karen and Gypsy, he notices a young woman sitting with her dog below them. Although he has never seen her before, he immediately feels a very strong and uncanny connection with her. He walks down and introduces himself, wanting to see why he should have such strong feelings for her. After they have talked awhile, he can easily see why, and he can also see that she’s intrigued with him too. He invites her to hang out with him and Karen.

Her name is Edie, and she’s into acid and consciousness too. She’s enrolled in the Buddhist Studies program at the University and has a boyfriend named Chris, who’s also into acid and Buddhism.

When he and Karen are leaving, he invites Edie and her dog Iko to come home with them, honoring the strong feelings between them. At home, they all hang out together, talking for hours.

But then, after she leaves, Karen tells him that she had felt left out whenever he and Edie were talking about Buddhism and other esoteric and intellectual things. She reminds him that she isn’t comfortable thinking like that. He knows this but realizes now just how much he has missed this sort of abstract intellectual exchange since leaving the Jungians behind.

Several days later, they meet Edie’s boyfriend Chris. He’s a good guy and fun to play with. Standing here, they all feel the energy between them. They decide to drive to the hills and drop acid. They going to take a long walk in the hills together.

It’s amazing. He has never tripped with folks so open and so interested in Spirit. Later, back at their new house, they have a wonderful evening together, becoming even closer.
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Ever since then, he has been watching himself lose his center to Edie, watching himself make her too important. He is falling in love with her. He loves Chris too, but he’s not falling in love with Chris. He is also beginning to have sexual fantasies about her. Although he’s open to being lovers with her, he is still trying to see these fantasies as reflecting inner, symbolic stuff, as in the transference relationship.

But he’s not about to pull back from her. Being with her yesterday was extraordinary. No one has ever been as open or has let him be as close as she did then. He will always love her for that. However, it is complicating his life. In particular, he is finding it more and more difficult to stay connected with Karen. He wants Edie to be his woman. He wants this more than anything else in the world.
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Chapter 26 – Mysteries

Exploring the Old City

He dreams he’s in a park. It’s a beautiful morning. There’s a sixties love-in feeling in the air, with lots of folks out and about, enjoying the day. The world itself seems fresh and still hopeful. He’s putting up these big, beautiful square posters for the Free Clinic. Right now, he’s putting one up outside a restaurant that’s across from the park, where a lot of people will be able to see it.

Now he’s talking with a young woman, one of his clients. She wants to stop working with him. He tries to talk her into staying. He needs the money.

Now he’s with several people, all strangers. They’re in an old house in Berkeley, on the south side, near where he and Karen had their first garage. He notices some writing on the floor in the garage here, an old sign that says “candy, cigarettes, sodas….” The rest is blurred. He’s excited about this. He looks in another room and uncovers a similar sign.

He realizes that originally there had been a store here, that the present house has been built over it. The neighborhood must have been really different back then. One of the women wants to work with him to explore the old city. A black guy is on the phone excitedly telling his woman about it. He doesn’t have it quite right, but he wants to work with him too.

He decides that he doesn’t want to be a therapist anymore. Instead, he wants to explore the old city. This is what turns him on now.
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It is fun and even beautiful being involved with the Free Clinic. It’s like being at a sixties love-in. There are some good folks working there too. He’s glad he has been able to help, but it’s not really where he’s at anymore.

He’s sick of worrying about his dwindling practice. He’s tired of responding with his own money worries to a patient who wants to move on, especially sick and tired of trying to keep people working with him just because he needs the money. He didn’t start out like this. At first he worked because he had a gift, because he could truly help people.

From his dreams and from his experiences with acid, he has finally found his calling, his new path with heart. He’s going to explore the old city – those ways of being that existed in the world before this present culture and its ways. He’s not going to spend a lot of time helping the Free Clinic. He’s not going to spend any more time trying to keep alive a dying practice. Instead, he is going to put all his energy into exploring the old city, those older levels of consciousness that still exist everywhere beneath the new.
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A Path is Just a Path

He just read an article by James Hillman in one of the latest Jungian journals. Hillman says that failure has to be followed through to the bitter end, to the death of what has failed, in order to allow the new life that is coming into existence the space it needs to grow.
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He has known for a long while now that the doctor within him was dying, in order to make room for something new, yet he has continued to do the best he could to maintain his private practice. He has continued to work at the Free Clinic and the VA. He has still met with other therapists, started new groups, done workshops, and even, as he has recently seen in one of his dreams, tried to hang onto patients who have wanted to leave him, just because he has needed the money.

His and Nikki’s group, which began with ten members, is now down to five. Greg finally quit the group just the other day, after talking about it for awhile. Barbara left a note today saying that she won’t be coming tonight, that she’s quitting the group too.

It is time he gives up and accepts that his practice of psychotherapy is failing. He has reached that bitter end that Hillman is talking about. It’s easier to accept this if he remembers that he’s not a failure in his life but only in his attempt to build up a viable practice and earn a living by helping people.

He is not even a failure as a healer. His work has been good. It’s just not supposed to happen now, no matter what he does. As Mary once said, he may have to go further out than he ever thought possible. He can see from here and now that even this failure has been part of his journey.

He remembers Don Juan saying somewhere, “you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions.”

For now, he has decided to stop hustling for work as a therapist. He will finish his work at the VA. He will also continue helping out at the Free Clinic, for now anyway. And, of course, he will always listen to anyone who wants to talk with him.

He expects he will be earning his living in other ways now. He could always get out his old carpenter tools and work with Bobby. It might be fun.

He could even deal acid. It always seems to come his way. He does know that the most important work he’ll be doing, now that the doctor is dead, will be using acid to explore the old city, the historical and psychic strata underlying the usual ego consciousness. Maybe he will have to deal acid. Maybe he won’t have time for anything else.
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The Sounds of the World

Listening to the sounds of the world, as Castaneda’s Don Juan has suggested, is a very potent meditation.

He has listened to the sounds of the world himself. He remembers last June when he and Karen had come up to Dinky for the first time that year. He was tripping there alone under his Juniper tree, still stuck in the many thoughts and concerns that he had brought with him from the city, when Wanderer reminded him to listen to the sounds of the world.

As soon as he did so, his worrisome inner dialogue stopped completely. Listening to the sounds of the world, his mind quieted and then stopped.

Sometime later, when he came back to himself, he realized that he had been gone for quite awhile. The shade had crept a good ways around the tree. He was at peace with himself then, and what he had thought or worried about earlier was no longer relevant. He sat there peacefully for hours that day, watching and listening to the beauty around him.
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Last night, in Berkeley, he was hanging out with Karen and some of their new friends. He was still tripping some, coming down slowly from a day of hiking up in the hills. He suggested they all be quiet together and listen to the sounds of the world. They did this together for over an hour, afterwards slowly coming back to the world of ordinary reality. Later talking, they all agreed that listening to the same sounds together had let them experience their essential oneness.
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He finds when he listens to the sounds of the world, alone or with others, that he is completely in touch with reality. He also finds that he has a larger than ego consciousness then, being aware of a much larger space-time.

The sounds of a place shape the listener, make him or her a product of the place. Most of us, however, for most of the time, aren’t at all aware of this. Don Juan did try to explain this to Carlos.

He sees when he stops thinking and instead listens to the sounds of the world that he becomes a deeper and more peaceful person, completely in the here and now and intimately in touch with the world. More importantly, in this state, he can also direct his will out onto his environment. By being in tune with the world through its sounds, he can easily affect it in return.