Aloha!
The part of teaching from the Light that is hardest to express is that it cannot divorce the student's brain and soul. I am no longer comfortable with leaving the spiritual aspect of the world out of teaching about the world. The humanities, the sciences, mathematics -- these are information about the human soul. Literature should be taught for its lessons about ourselves. Then it is useful. Science should be taught for what it shows us about how we look at things.
At heart, when you divorce spirituality from the rest of education, you create a dried-up information base. Since it is dried up, it is easy to divide any object of attention into smaller pieces and analyze the pieces separately. We then conclude that we have "understood" the object.
But we have not, because we have missed the Spirit that imbues it. We know what the object is made of, but we still do not know what it is.
This separatism pervades human thought because the immanent Spirit is left out of our perceptions. Teaching from the Light puts the pieces back together. We write from our reading, read to our writing. We encounter math, science, physics, story-telling, art and music in their original wholeness on the beach, in the forest, wherever we go. If we understand what we see as expressions of the One Spirit, we understand these things in their wholeness, not separately.
The result is systemic thinking -- making choices and reacting for everyone involved, with the knowledge that all things are imbued with a living Spirit and so "everyone" also means "everything." In the terms used by alchemy, the leaden human soul sees only divisions and categories. The golden soul sees a single Body that includes all things. We are Its arteries, Its vessels, Its nerve ganglions. Our word for it is God.
We connect to It at the deepest place of our own soul, and this is where creative inspiration comes from. By daring to connect to the God inside ourselves, we hear the Sacred energy in words, in music, we see it in art. And we are so stricken and pierced by the beauty of it that we dare to
disturb the sounds of silence. We find our voice, because it is the voice of the Sacred, and now we allow It to speak through us.
A Light
Teacher, then, would teach music composition by first training the student to go to this God-place inside his or her own soul, and listen at that Portal for the music of the world. A Light Teacher of
literacy skills would start from the same skill, and guide the student to listen for a flow of words at the Portal. The art student will watch for visionary perceptions, visual aspects of that glory.
Then and only then, can the act of creation begin. Your independence as a creator expresses through the way you bring what you have seen and heard to fruition. That is, I hear music at the portal and I render it as best I am able with my limited skills. It comes out sounding like blues polyphony, because that's what I play.
Mozart might listen at the same Portal within himself and produce a classical symphony, because his skills were different from and greater than my own. The final result is entirely personal, but it is driven by a universal Flame that others recognize and are drawn to, like hungry moths looking for that Light.
The Flame conveys emotion to the observer, and Eric Clapton said the ability to communicate emotion is the difference between a good guitarist and a great guitarist.
Dr. Matt
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Teaching from the Light
Aloha again, mysterious readers!
Following on the heels of my last blog is the question, so how do you teach the arts once you have learned to enter the Light? This is the great experiment unfolding Thursday nights at Small Town Coffee in Kapa'a.
The Light changes teaching a lot. I'll write about the first change in this blog.
First of all, if I and my students are parts of the same thing, as the Light has taught me, then they draw from the same pool of inspiration as I. Jung called it the collective unconscious.
But we think of our minds as closed boxes that only we can access. Why did Jung think the unconscious is collective rather than personal? Random events reflected his patients' psychological breakthroughs so frequently he concluded that the archetypes were affecting physical reality, and must therefore be separate realities, not just thought patterns. They must, therefore, exist in a collective space that we all can access.
We know now that thought patterns can and do affect physical reality, so his reasoning is not inevitable.
But the idea that there is a collective space we all can access at our deepest psychological level is thousands of years old. It is called immanence. Creative inspiration comes from this all-permeating Consciousness. That means we access inspiration by going down through our own issues and finding the collective patterns that underlie them. We do this by creating an unguided fiction (writing with no initial outline or plan). Because it is unguided, our own deep patterning will organize it, thereby revealing itself. It's the same principle as a Rorschach ink-blot test.
This uncovering of the deep patterns underlying reality is what drives the reader on through a story. It may look like seeking the solution to a problem, or solving a crime, or courting and winning a beloved. But always there is something covered up in the beginning which is gradually uncovered.
How do I get my students there, teaching from the Light? By going where they are. Every human consciousness is a portal into this collective space of human wisdom. I give my writing students enormous, vague writing topics like "create an island" so they can create from their own hearts. They reach down through their own psychological issues to the collective unconscious we all tap into, producing islands that reflect their own inner depths.
In essay-writing classes also, I give students very large topics -- community, partnership, any successful exertion of personal power, any dramatic act of charity -- so they can find themselves in the topic. The results are personal statements which use the formulas and devices of the essay-writer to express the writer's own access to the collective depths of wisdom. That, to my understanding, is a successful essay.
But the trick is the same as with fiction -- give yourself room to explore your own opinions, and you will find they lead down into deep collective patterns of thought. My classes are designed to give my students room to discover themselves inside the essay, because that's what makes an essay work.
So the classes become student-driven -- I am a facilitator, a traffic cop, a library of information and a fount of enthusiasm so they can write their hearts in essay or story format.
The second change that teaching from the Light brings about in the classroom, is that we need to abandon our anxieties about excellence, and treat the act of creation as a human birth-right, not the domain of a privileged few. We are creative animals like giraffes have long necks. What other animal tells stories or draws pictures? But publication has brought the greatest creations of the human race so vividly before us that we have lost our lip, like an old trumpet player, and now we are afraid to blow our notes. This is the "sound of silence" Paul Simon sang about,
In my next post I will say more about the second change -- daring to disturb the sounds of silence -- and apply both changes to how a Light Teacher teaches music composition, as well as to the Light Teaching of literacy skills.
Following on the heels of my last blog is the question, so how do you teach the arts once you have learned to enter the Light? This is the great experiment unfolding Thursday nights at Small Town Coffee in Kapa'a.
The Light changes teaching a lot. I'll write about the first change in this blog.
First of all, if I and my students are parts of the same thing, as the Light has taught me, then they draw from the same pool of inspiration as I. Jung called it the collective unconscious.
But we think of our minds as closed boxes that only we can access. Why did Jung think the unconscious is collective rather than personal? Random events reflected his patients' psychological breakthroughs so frequently he concluded that the archetypes were affecting physical reality, and must therefore be separate realities, not just thought patterns. They must, therefore, exist in a collective space that we all can access.
We know now that thought patterns can and do affect physical reality, so his reasoning is not inevitable.
But the idea that there is a collective space we all can access at our deepest psychological level is thousands of years old. It is called immanence. Creative inspiration comes from this all-permeating Consciousness. That means we access inspiration by going down through our own issues and finding the collective patterns that underlie them. We do this by creating an unguided fiction (writing with no initial outline or plan). Because it is unguided, our own deep patterning will organize it, thereby revealing itself. It's the same principle as a Rorschach ink-blot test.
This uncovering of the deep patterns underlying reality is what drives the reader on through a story. It may look like seeking the solution to a problem, or solving a crime, or courting and winning a beloved. But always there is something covered up in the beginning which is gradually uncovered.
How do I get my students there, teaching from the Light? By going where they are. Every human consciousness is a portal into this collective space of human wisdom. I give my writing students enormous, vague writing topics like "create an island" so they can create from their own hearts. They reach down through their own psychological issues to the collective unconscious we all tap into, producing islands that reflect their own inner depths.
In essay-writing classes also, I give students very large topics -- community, partnership, any successful exertion of personal power, any dramatic act of charity -- so they can find themselves in the topic. The results are personal statements which use the formulas and devices of the essay-writer to express the writer's own access to the collective depths of wisdom. That, to my understanding, is a successful essay.
But the trick is the same as with fiction -- give yourself room to explore your own opinions, and you will find they lead down into deep collective patterns of thought. My classes are designed to give my students room to discover themselves inside the essay, because that's what makes an essay work.
So the classes become student-driven -- I am a facilitator, a traffic cop, a library of information and a fount of enthusiasm so they can write their hearts in essay or story format.
The second change that teaching from the Light brings about in the classroom, is that we need to abandon our anxieties about excellence, and treat the act of creation as a human birth-right, not the domain of a privileged few. We are creative animals like giraffes have long necks. What other animal tells stories or draws pictures? But publication has brought the greatest creations of the human race so vividly before us that we have lost our lip, like an old trumpet player, and now we are afraid to blow our notes. This is the "sound of silence" Paul Simon sang about,
people writing songs
that voices never share
no-one dares
disturb the sound of silence
In my next post I will say more about the second change -- daring to disturb the sounds of silence -- and apply both changes to how a Light Teacher teaches music composition, as well as to the Light Teaching of literacy skills.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
The Teacher's Journey
What a life it is! For forty years I woke up in the morning, got dressed, went to work. I thought that was all there was.
Then I woke up inside.
Now by focusing I can enter a space where my whole being seems to peel back in layers, and Light that is alive and speaks to me approaches and fuses with the Light inside me. I enter into a pool of bliss in which there is only One, and it is both God and me. It is the classic mystical experience, but it has become immediately available to me.
How can we understand the changes that brings on? I used to be an English teacher. I am still a teacher - a good one. But the Light experiences change one's agenda. I am a different person now, than I was before I knew such ecstatic fusion with the Sacred was even possible. You can't move in and out of bliss experiences regularly without losing your murderous edge.
I stopped fighting with people. That made it hard to be a teacher. Teachers are under constant pressure from parents, students and administration. It is a continuous battle for all of us, which we win by staying calm. But I am no longer interested in fighting. I think it is a basic failure to comprehend the situation, and that basic failure permeates education.
What is the situation? There is only the Light. There is just One Thing. We are all pieces of it. If I hit another, I have hit my mother, my father, myself. It is better, then, not to hit. That's what the Light taught me. It is simple and direct and nobody understands it. We just keep fighting.
So after a period of shock during which I departed from one teaching job and stopped seeking a career position with the other, I am rebuilding the whole "teacher" idea, to offer the classes I am able to offer now. They are different in three important ways.
One is that they will be conducted in the world, not in a classroom. I am presently blessed by being able to use Small Town Coffee in Kapa'a as an evening venue. Thank you, Anni!
Another difference is that they are all about how to do something. Literary studies are strangely unreal -- they don't do anything but produce more literary studies. In private classes at Small Town Coffee during the last school year I have been making my literary PhD useful by using it to help people do their own creative writing. My book How to Write Heroic Tales, which has evolved from those classes, should be available at Amazon some time soon. Thank you, students!
Since I am also an active composer who has produced about twenty hours of classical-blues polyphony in the last 3 years, I am going to teach people how to write polyphonic pop music, expanding the principles of twelve-bar-blues into larger patterns. And since I have 20 years of training and experience as a woodworker, specializing in wood ornament, I am going to teach people to make carved / veneered boxes. Every course has to result in a useful product of some kind.
The third difference is something I have established through years of experiment and observation: creative inspiration comes from the Light. My creative life has spiked sharply upwards as I learned to contact and communicate with the Light. And I will teach my students how to contact the Light themselves and use it either for prayer or creative inspiration. Kauai is a very strong place for the Light experience, which is why I am here. That will be a part of every course.
I doubt if I could teach that in any school but my own. Perhaps deep post-graduate work always brings one to such distant outposts. But so it is, at any rate, for me.
Dr. Matt Miller
Then I woke up inside.
Now by focusing I can enter a space where my whole being seems to peel back in layers, and Light that is alive and speaks to me approaches and fuses with the Light inside me. I enter into a pool of bliss in which there is only One, and it is both God and me. It is the classic mystical experience, but it has become immediately available to me.
How can we understand the changes that brings on? I used to be an English teacher. I am still a teacher - a good one. But the Light experiences change one's agenda. I am a different person now, than I was before I knew such ecstatic fusion with the Sacred was even possible. You can't move in and out of bliss experiences regularly without losing your murderous edge.
I stopped fighting with people. That made it hard to be a teacher. Teachers are under constant pressure from parents, students and administration. It is a continuous battle for all of us, which we win by staying calm. But I am no longer interested in fighting. I think it is a basic failure to comprehend the situation, and that basic failure permeates education.
What is the situation? There is only the Light. There is just One Thing. We are all pieces of it. If I hit another, I have hit my mother, my father, myself. It is better, then, not to hit. That's what the Light taught me. It is simple and direct and nobody understands it. We just keep fighting.
So after a period of shock during which I departed from one teaching job and stopped seeking a career position with the other, I am rebuilding the whole "teacher" idea, to offer the classes I am able to offer now. They are different in three important ways.
One is that they will be conducted in the world, not in a classroom. I am presently blessed by being able to use Small Town Coffee in Kapa'a as an evening venue. Thank you, Anni!
Another difference is that they are all about how to do something. Literary studies are strangely unreal -- they don't do anything but produce more literary studies. In private classes at Small Town Coffee during the last school year I have been making my literary PhD useful by using it to help people do their own creative writing. My book How to Write Heroic Tales, which has evolved from those classes, should be available at Amazon some time soon. Thank you, students!
Since I am also an active composer who has produced about twenty hours of classical-blues polyphony in the last 3 years, I am going to teach people how to write polyphonic pop music, expanding the principles of twelve-bar-blues into larger patterns. And since I have 20 years of training and experience as a woodworker, specializing in wood ornament, I am going to teach people to make carved / veneered boxes. Every course has to result in a useful product of some kind.
The third difference is something I have established through years of experiment and observation: creative inspiration comes from the Light. My creative life has spiked sharply upwards as I learned to contact and communicate with the Light. And I will teach my students how to contact the Light themselves and use it either for prayer or creative inspiration. Kauai is a very strong place for the Light experience, which is why I am here. That will be a part of every course.
I doubt if I could teach that in any school but my own. Perhaps deep post-graduate work always brings one to such distant outposts. But so it is, at any rate, for me.
Dr. Matt Miller
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Creative Writing Class Starts June 6
My next Creative Writing class will start June 6, Small Town Coffee in Kapa'a at the Kapa'a Products Fair!
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Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Morning Prayer
Morning Prayer
I wake, and fragments of yesterday
plunge through the tunnels of my soul –
But I let the light wash them away
and I let its sweetness make me whole.
I float in a pool of ecstatic light
Sweetened to stay soft in the fight –
Warriors whose wars will never cease
Will lie amazed in my place of peace.
Ladler in soup kitchens, tired but true,
I’ll pass out bowls of light to you.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
See you at Small Town Coffee, 7 PM tonight!
Well, it's not too late to get yourself down to Small Town Coffee to enjoy my first class on Heroic Tales -- the free one! It starts 7 PM Small Town Coffee @ the Kapa'a Products Fair. I have a great little overview planned of the ground we will cover in the next two months and how it all hangs together. I hope to see you there!
Dr. Matt
Dr. Matt
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Class in the Woman's Journey
Hard to keep writing when life wants so many things from me but I stagger on. I am deep in the Woman's Journey class for the course I have proposed. So many ideas and research of the past have come together in this!
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Hi guys!
I've had so much fun writing the Explorer Fiction class! The whole business of going into the Unknown and discovering wonders which illuminate your inner self has always fascinated me. We get to play with Marco Polo, Prester John (again!), Christopher Columbus, and a few more conquistadores for good measure.
Then there's the 19th century burst of explorer fiction -- H. G. Wells! Jules Verne! Conan Doyle! Doyle's The Lost World is an awesome tale of finding dinosaurs still alive in the South American jungle that is nothing at all like the movie Jurassic Park. His White Company is an amazing 14th century drama about the French-English wars, starring the invincible Sir Nigel Loring. Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth has been made into over a dozen movies (I personally have six of them). Can we count H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, where the Martians go into the Unknown to find us? I guess not. Shucks. What about The Matrix? Sure, why not? In that case, the world the hero leaves is the world of illusion -- the Unknown he discovers is the world the way it really is! That can be set against George Russell's weird descriptions of seeing beautiful cities and beings of light while he was walking on the moors of England. Now let's see, was he leaving the world of illusion and journeying to reality -- or was he leaving reality and journeying to illusion?
You can see the Explorer Fiction pattern can lead to a million variations, and it sure has! People never get tired of it. This is going to be one of the fun classes, for sure.
I've had so much fun writing the Explorer Fiction class! The whole business of going into the Unknown and discovering wonders which illuminate your inner self has always fascinated me. We get to play with Marco Polo, Prester John (again!), Christopher Columbus, and a few more conquistadores for good measure.
Then there's the 19th century burst of explorer fiction -- H. G. Wells! Jules Verne! Conan Doyle! Doyle's The Lost World is an awesome tale of finding dinosaurs still alive in the South American jungle that is nothing at all like the movie Jurassic Park. His White Company is an amazing 14th century drama about the French-English wars, starring the invincible Sir Nigel Loring. Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth has been made into over a dozen movies (I personally have six of them). Can we count H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, where the Martians go into the Unknown to find us? I guess not. Shucks. What about The Matrix? Sure, why not? In that case, the world the hero leaves is the world of illusion -- the Unknown he discovers is the world the way it really is! That can be set against George Russell's weird descriptions of seeing beautiful cities and beings of light while he was walking on the moors of England. Now let's see, was he leaving the world of illusion and journeying to reality -- or was he leaving reality and journeying to illusion?
You can see the Explorer Fiction pattern can lead to a million variations, and it sure has! People never get tired of it. This is going to be one of the fun classes, for sure.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Creating the Heroic Tales Classes
Aloha again!
I am working away at the classes for my Heroic tales course, starting Thursday Feb. 21 @ 7 PM at Small Town Coffee, Kapa'a Fairgrounds. I have completed the first class, which is an introduction to seven different genres of Heroic Tale. The third class on Utopias is already prepared.
I also have most of the Magic Sword tales class ready to present. Now that's an interesting one! When you cross Excalibur, the sunny, positive sword of kingship, with the dark Viking sword of doom called Tyrfing, with its three vile deeds, you get the Sword of David in the Queste del Sainte Graal, which is a sword of kingship that also commits three vile deeds. Countless magic-sword stories have been told that use aspects of these three seminal magic-sword tales. Tolkien makes gentle fun of the whole idea in his Farmer Giles of Ham, where the sword Caudimordax, or Tailbiter, is the terror of the local dragons.
I am noticing that my different Heroic Tales classes kind of support each other. Explorer Fiction is a lot like Utopian fiction, but the explorer who finds a Utopia observes and records social customs as a way of reflecting on the author's own time. The explorer in Explorer Fiction just records wonders -- monsters and strange people. The Woman's Journey, which goes beyond fame and fortune to quest for wholeness, seems to lead naturally into the Spiritual Quest, which goes beyond personal wholeness to fusion with the Sacred. And Magic Sword Tales, which usually involve the irony that using the sword on others leads to you getting killed yourself eventually, bear a complicated relationship to the Dystopias.
The whole thing is becoming so interesting I am thinking of making the eight classes I am creating into a book. These are genre studies, really, so each chapter would sail across the centuries picking out examples wherever they may be found. The Utopias class starts with the Garden of Eden and ends with a 20th century Shangri-La, so that one really covers some ground. Woman's Journey stories track back into the timeless mists of folklore. Explorer Fiction can start with the 12th century voyages of Marco Polo, and continue into the 21st century space program. Spiritual Quest stories have been with us since the Descent of Inanna 4000 years ago.
Time melts away, when you look at story telling this way. Come melt away some time with us, Thursday Feb. 21 7-8 PM at Small Town Coffee, Kapa'a Fairgrounds. The first class is free!
Dr. Matt
I am working away at the classes for my Heroic tales course, starting Thursday Feb. 21 @ 7 PM at Small Town Coffee, Kapa'a Fairgrounds. I have completed the first class, which is an introduction to seven different genres of Heroic Tale. The third class on Utopias is already prepared.
I also have most of the Magic Sword tales class ready to present. Now that's an interesting one! When you cross Excalibur, the sunny, positive sword of kingship, with the dark Viking sword of doom called Tyrfing, with its three vile deeds, you get the Sword of David in the Queste del Sainte Graal, which is a sword of kingship that also commits three vile deeds. Countless magic-sword stories have been told that use aspects of these three seminal magic-sword tales. Tolkien makes gentle fun of the whole idea in his Farmer Giles of Ham, where the sword Caudimordax, or Tailbiter, is the terror of the local dragons.
I am noticing that my different Heroic Tales classes kind of support each other. Explorer Fiction is a lot like Utopian fiction, but the explorer who finds a Utopia observes and records social customs as a way of reflecting on the author's own time. The explorer in Explorer Fiction just records wonders -- monsters and strange people. The Woman's Journey, which goes beyond fame and fortune to quest for wholeness, seems to lead naturally into the Spiritual Quest, which goes beyond personal wholeness to fusion with the Sacred. And Magic Sword Tales, which usually involve the irony that using the sword on others leads to you getting killed yourself eventually, bear a complicated relationship to the Dystopias.
The whole thing is becoming so interesting I am thinking of making the eight classes I am creating into a book. These are genre studies, really, so each chapter would sail across the centuries picking out examples wherever they may be found. The Utopias class starts with the Garden of Eden and ends with a 20th century Shangri-La, so that one really covers some ground. Woman's Journey stories track back into the timeless mists of folklore. Explorer Fiction can start with the 12th century voyages of Marco Polo, and continue into the 21st century space program. Spiritual Quest stories have been with us since the Descent of Inanna 4000 years ago.
Time melts away, when you look at story telling this way. Come melt away some time with us, Thursday Feb. 21 7-8 PM at Small Town Coffee, Kapa'a Fairgrounds. The first class is free!
Dr. Matt
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Preparing the Heroic Tales Class
-->
I am having way too much fun creating my Heroic Tales
classes for delivery at Small Town Coffee Thursdays 7-8 PM (Kapa’a Fairgrounds).
The first meeting is February 21st. I get to talk about all my
favorite books!
I just finished prepping the Utopias class, our 3rd
meeting. We will take an hour looking at Utopias from the 12th to
the 20th century, starting with the astonishing legend of Prester
John.
The Magic Sword class will start with tales of Tyrfing, the
Viking sword that always killed someone once it had been unsheathed.
And the Woman’s Journey – ! Well, I don’t want to give it
all away. There will be a hatful of great ideas at every class, for students to develop into a story or an essay. I will co-edit student writing with the student, to develop it to its highest potential.
We will sail past so many great books in an hour! Blue House
bookstore will order any book that you hear mentioned in the class, at a 20%
discount to the student. Each class will also have a keynote work that is
available for sale at the class with the same discount. We will spend a week
each on
1. Structure
of the Heroic Journey
2. Magic
Sword stories
3. Utopias
4. Explorer
Tales
5. the
Woman’s Journey
6. Dystopias
7. Visits
to the Future
8. Hawaiian
Tales
Hope I'll see you there!
Dr. Matt
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Heroic Tales Class Coming Up!
Thursday February 21st, 7-8 PM at Small Town
Coffee, I will kick off my Heroic Tales class. This will be a hum-dinger of a
roller-coaster ride through some wild genres of story-telling. We will use the
seminal works of a genre as a spring-board, and look at how their structure was
imitated by a host of later works, creating the genre as we have it now. Students
will each write an essay or a story related to one of the genres we discuss. I
will co-edit it with them to bring it to a finished form.
After this basic training in literary reading, any time we
see a work in that genre we will recognize it as a genre work, and know more or
less what to expect. Then we become active
readers, observing and enjoying how this particular work follows the genre
pattern, and how it violates or alters the pattern in surprising ways.
Come join us at this feast for the heart, mind and soul!
You’ll walk away with a story or essay in hand, and a head full of knowledge
about the amazing forms taken by the Heroic Journey in literature and in life.
There will be a sign-up sheet in the Blue House bookstore at Small Town Coffee
in the Kapa’a Fairgrounds. Students will pay $80 (cash or check) at the end of
the first meeting if they want to go on with the whole set of 8 meetings.
Contact me if you want to reserve a seat by prepaying (mahopmi@gmail, or come by Small Town Coffee
Saturday 10-2 when I work in the bookstore).
Monday, February 11, 2013
The Archetypal Fiction Class Ends
-->
Well, my Archetypal Fiction class at Small Town Coffee has
come to an end, after 21 fun Thursdays! At the end of its term, it gave birth
to a small Writer’s Workshop, in which I and some of the Archetypal Fiction
students will just get together over a weekly potluck to read our work and
comment helpfully on what we hear. We are all teachers and all students: price
of admission is something good to eat.
We had a great time the first evening of the Workshop,
reading each other long free-verse poems we have written and looking at how
they link to music. I played a recording of myself reading a narrative poem
called The Pirate Band Laments Its Fallen
King, in sync with the music of the pirate band itself – or rather
themselves, since there are really two pirate bands, one with electric guitars
and the other with a piano and other classical instruments like flutes and
trumpets. They get into a musical competition to see who can lament their
fallen king the best, and we hear their sad conversation about the Great Man
when he still walked the decks and ruled their lives.
I had just seen Pirates
of the Caribbean for the first time when I created the words and music,
and this was a weird spin-off from that
unique movie experience. It all seemed so real to me at the time, I developed a
short story from the lyrics. Who knows where these things come from?
-->Monday, September 3, 2012
Aloha!
I will be running a workshop on How to Write Archetypal Fiction, Thursdays 7-8 PM starting Sept 6. These will be at Small Town Coffee. This will cover the ground I have been gradually describing in this blog.
I actually am a doctor, but of medieval literature not medicine. I have a BA, MA and PhD, which we used to say means "Piled Higher Deeper." Maybe it's true, but I certainly have a lot of information about how a great story is put together, which I learned while studying each century of English literature from the 9th c. to the 20th century.
But what is it good for? Over the last thirteen years I have figured out that classic story structure conceals coded instructions on how to live your life so you feel successful and happy.
The first workshop (Sept. 6) is a free overview of the three archetypal journeys -- one to fame and fortune, one to re-union with Mother Earth, and one to wholeness and the happiness it brings.
Each covers the same seven steps in different ways, and together they make a tremendous tool-box for the writer, or for anyone involved in a struggle for fame and fortune, for reunion with Mother Earth, or for wholeness and happiness.
Sept 13 the 21-Thursday Workshop starts. On each Thursday from 7-8 PM at Small Town Coffee, there will be readings from whoever will participate, a chance to comment and react to the writer, and short presentations of different steps in the journeys. I'll read from the story I am writing if no-one else volunteers, and I will undertake responsibility to prepare and perform the presentations.
Each journey covers 7 steps, and there are three journeys, so it will take 21 Thursdays to cover them all.
The first 7 Thursdays (Sept. 13 - Oct. 25) will be spent on the ever-popular Hero's Journey to fame and fortune, which is the basis of most stories written or filmed in Western civilization.
The next 7 Thursdays (Nov. 1 - Dec. 20; no workshop Thanksgiving Day) will cover the Heroine's Journey, which is the Vision Quest or return to the Earth to contact the spirit(s) that dwell therein.
The final 7 Thursdays are all in 2013 (no workshop Dec. 27; Jan 3 - February 14). They will cover the spiritual journey to wholeness and direct experience of the Sacred.
The last one, on Valentine's Day 2013, will be a Lover's Special about living with personal wholeness and how it changes who we are in the world by awakening in our hearts a burning need to help others on their way. This makes us better partners and better parents, because we want to help. The gifts we give shine because they are not grudgingly given.
Since I have spent twenty years figuring this out, and will draw continuously on my 3 degrees in English literature, I will require a small fee -- $25 / class, divided by the number of people present (not including myself). So, if 5 people show up, that's $5 each. If 25 people show up it will be a dollar apiece! I will remind everybody about this before we start each class.
See you at Small Town Coffee, Thursday Sept. 6 7-8 PM for the free overview of the three journeys. This alone can give you a hundred handy hints on how things work in literature as in life, that you can put to work in the pages of your story, and in your experiences in the world.
Dr. Matt
I will be running a workshop on How to Write Archetypal Fiction, Thursdays 7-8 PM starting Sept 6. These will be at Small Town Coffee. This will cover the ground I have been gradually describing in this blog.
I actually am a doctor, but of medieval literature not medicine. I have a BA, MA and PhD, which we used to say means "Piled Higher Deeper." Maybe it's true, but I certainly have a lot of information about how a great story is put together, which I learned while studying each century of English literature from the 9th c. to the 20th century.
But what is it good for? Over the last thirteen years I have figured out that classic story structure conceals coded instructions on how to live your life so you feel successful and happy.
The first workshop (Sept. 6) is a free overview of the three archetypal journeys -- one to fame and fortune, one to re-union with Mother Earth, and one to wholeness and the happiness it brings.
Each covers the same seven steps in different ways, and together they make a tremendous tool-box for the writer, or for anyone involved in a struggle for fame and fortune, for reunion with Mother Earth, or for wholeness and happiness.
Sept 13 the 21-Thursday Workshop starts. On each Thursday from 7-8 PM at Small Town Coffee, there will be readings from whoever will participate, a chance to comment and react to the writer, and short presentations of different steps in the journeys. I'll read from the story I am writing if no-one else volunteers, and I will undertake responsibility to prepare and perform the presentations.
Each journey covers 7 steps, and there are three journeys, so it will take 21 Thursdays to cover them all.
The first 7 Thursdays (Sept. 13 - Oct. 25) will be spent on the ever-popular Hero's Journey to fame and fortune, which is the basis of most stories written or filmed in Western civilization.
The next 7 Thursdays (Nov. 1 - Dec. 20; no workshop Thanksgiving Day) will cover the Heroine's Journey, which is the Vision Quest or return to the Earth to contact the spirit(s) that dwell therein.
The final 7 Thursdays are all in 2013 (no workshop Dec. 27; Jan 3 - February 14). They will cover the spiritual journey to wholeness and direct experience of the Sacred.
The last one, on Valentine's Day 2013, will be a Lover's Special about living with personal wholeness and how it changes who we are in the world by awakening in our hearts a burning need to help others on their way. This makes us better partners and better parents, because we want to help. The gifts we give shine because they are not grudgingly given.
Since I have spent twenty years figuring this out, and will draw continuously on my 3 degrees in English literature, I will require a small fee -- $25 / class, divided by the number of people present (not including myself). So, if 5 people show up, that's $5 each. If 25 people show up it will be a dollar apiece! I will remind everybody about this before we start each class.
See you at Small Town Coffee, Thursday Sept. 6 7-8 PM for the free overview of the three journeys. This alone can give you a hundred handy hints on how things work in literature as in life, that you can put to work in the pages of your story, and in your experiences in the world.
Dr. Matt
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Empty Mind: Step 2) on the Path
Aloha! I have been away house-sitting, but now I am back. I left you with the second verse of a poem about the great Friend and Partner, the Holy Spirit or knowable Presence of the Unknowable Oneness. Let's continue our review of the seven states of consciousness, with an account of the second state of
consciousness that awakens us to Her Presence: Empty Mind.
Centering Prayer (described in an earlier blog) leads to Empty Mind, because through Centering Prayer you stop labeling things with names and reactions. Without names and commentary the things around us seem to be
One Flow. And in that Flow anything can exchange information with anything else
because we are all parts of One Thing, like organs of a living Body. You also
are part of that flow in Empty Mind. Experiencing
unseparateness, you remember you are not separate. The barriers between you and the world are
subtly weakened, as if some veil had dropped.
Suppose
you have chosen to do your Centering Prayer in a forest glade.
A
thrush lands on a stone five feet away. It cocks its shining black eye at you,
turning its head quickly one way and another. You perceive it without reacting. Because you are Empty, you hear,
“Good
morning! Good morning!”
You
turn your attention to the thrush. You must fully believe the thrush spoke, or
you cannot do this. Faith makes the technology work. If your brain believes it picked up the thrush’s
thoughts, then you can open a dialogue. If you tell yourself, “thrushes can’t
talk,” you short-circuit the process. The inner portal dilates shut like a
startled anemone. Instead, think back to the thrush,
“Good
morning. No harm! Are you having a good day?”
“Good
Day! Good day! And you? And you? Are you having one too?” And without waiting
for an answer, it flirts its wings and is gone.
The
stone says, “She’s nesting near-by, that’s why she is so flighty. There have
been thrushes nesting here for centuries, since long before your time, young
friend.”
“Have
you seen her parents and grandparents come and go?”
“Back
to the beginning, child, when the first thrush alighted on me. I greeted her and
made her welcome, and she flew off into a thicket to nest nearby, she and all
her generations since.”
“How
do you know she is a thrush?”
“I
hear people talk, as they come and go. Rocks learn a lot just sitting and
listening.”
Part
mentally from your new friends with courteous friendship. Your inner portal has
dilated to shamanic levels, communicating with spirits in all things. Practice
your new skill with anything.
But remember always that in the end there is only One Spirit, that pervades us all and gives us life. In communicating with individual spirits, in other people or in any other object, you are communicating with Her through the mask she wears in this form.
Trees know Her tree wisdom -- root deep, twine branches with your neighbors, seek the sun. Rocks know Her rock wisdom -- hold on, wait patiently, let things change around you but remain steadfast to yourself. Spiders know Her spider wisdom -- build for the joy of it, build again if it is destroyed -- build for life and nourishment. But these are only Her masks. She is the great Partner in all things, with Whom we dance our lives away.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Partnership
I am Dr. Matt Miller, PhD in Medieval English Literature,
poet, composer, wood-carver and practicing mystic.
In the mid-1990’s I began a prayer dialogue with the Holy
Spirit that still continues. In our exchanges She has patiently taught me seven
universal truths about human life, by showing me how they are at work in each
life situation that arises. Using these seven steps to direct experience of the Sacred has
turned my life around from bitterness and anger to peace, acceptance and an
unquenchable desire to help others who suffer.
She has told me that She came "from the volcano on Kauai," over 60 million years ago when it was still active. Her first people called her Hina. But many thousands of years ago She moved across the world and came to be known in many places by many names.This extraordinary mythology is combined, in the seven verses of this poem, with the seven great Teachings that guide the human soul to inner
peace and deep pure experiences of bliss.
The second verse concerns Her second Teaching: Partnership with the Holy Spirit
in all things.
2. Partnership
And now the darling of the Unknown One, the Holy Spirit
That moves upon the waters has sent forth Her heart,
Burning, from Kauai’s flowery gala
Across the world where She has many names.
Yet She is known through them, and they reach to Her airy
Effortless perfection, to Fruit that cannot fall or fail,
The Holy Spirit, Word spoken on the waters in the dawn
That brings the blooming, buzzing world to being.
She is the Partner of our secrecy
The mother of all known Divinity.
To shape a people, let Hina come forth
From ancient memories that the wise have heard,
They who sat at Her feet in time’s beginning
They who shaped their lives around Her words.
Now understand: the core lies in one Thing,
One Thing pervading all, so all the fighting
Working sharing loving quarreling people
And the people of the sea, the air, the earth,
All join into a single shining ring
Of fellowship, for though many paths run
All lead to the same peak where all are One.
Choose the partner of your ancestors,
And by your partner we shall know your truth.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Centering Prayer: Step 1) on the Path to Direct Experience of the Sacred
This
begins our review of seven states of consciousness which lead like a Path to
healing, anesthetic bliss, with an account of the first state of consciousness,
Centering Prayer.
The
first state of consciousness is generated by a process now called Centering
Prayer (Keating Open Mind Open Heart),
although in centuries past its name was contemplatio. This is a Christian form of meditation, which entered Christianity from the 6th
c. Syrian writings of Pseudo-Dionysius.
The
process of Centering Prayer is quite simple. Find a place of stillness and
peace; a forest glade, a garden, a silent room after midnight when the world
sleeps. You can have gentle music playing if you like. There sit comfortably so
your body does not call out to you to move.
Then
listen to your own inner talk. It is composed of thoughts and thoughts about the thoughts. Here is how you short-circuit it to reach inner silence. You will have a thought. Do not think about that thought. Don’t follow
it up or explore its implications. Don't reject it or start thinking about how you don't want to think about that. Just accept it and let it float away.
There
will be a moment of stillness. Then another thought will occur to you. Handle
it the same way. Don’t follow it up. Don't fight it either, because resisting requires other thoughts.
Just accept it and let it float away.
Reduce
your mental activity to that one repeated act: just accept it and let it float
away. The repetition has a lulling, hypnotic effect on the brain.
If a
thought is particularly persistent, repeat a prearranged word mentally to drown
it out. The word can be anything that has a peaceful, safe affect for you – Abba (Father) or Love are good words to use, but in fact the repetition of any word
will short circuit the thinking process so your brain lets the thought go. The
peaceful affect just helps the brain relax and stop babbling.
As
you keep doing this, gradually your brain will catch on that you aren’t
interesting in thinking right now; that it can rest. The flow of thoughts it generates will slow down, and then
stop altogether. You enter a place of silence, in which you are still
perceiving the world around you, but not reacting to your perceptions. Reality
just flows through you like an empty channel.
You
have entered a state of Empty Mind, the second of the seven states of
consciousness leading towards bliss. Hold on it for a while. Keep your eyes
open, so you still perceive the world. But do not react to it. Just be there.
Feel the tensions flow out of you when you do not maintain them by constant mental commentary. It is a peaceful garden within yourself that
you can enter any time, even for a few minutes at work. It heals stress,
renegotiates anger, makes you stronger for grief.
Without tension, stress, anger and grief, you are much less aware of the separations between objects, people and places. In the Empty Mind state of consciousness generated by Centering Prayer, a shadowy new way of seeing the world seems to drift in and out of focus -- as if it were all One Thing, not many things. You have a strange sense of belonging to a great Community which includes all things, through which whether living or dead there penetrates a living, sentient Spirit. The closer your Empty Mind takes you to this all-penetrating, angelic Presence the sweeter and more blissful your Emptiness becomes. But thinking brings up separations, and the sweetness fades away.
This is the gift of Centering Prayer -- not only the inner peace it brings, but also this joyous, oceanic sense of the cosmic Oneness of all things. Men such as Richarde Bucke, Gopi Krishna and Ravindra Kumar believe that the human species is evolving into a type of being that can connect with that healing Oneness at will. By practicing Centering Prayer you are evolving yourself into a higher being with that angelic power, right here and now, rather than waiting thirty thousand years for Nature to do it for your distant descendants.
Check
out the next blogs, which will review Empty
Mind, the second state of consciousness on the path to bliss. For
more detail, my book What Happened to Happiness?, refers the seven
states of consciousness to their descriptions in thirteen ancient traditions.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Community
1. Community
Kauai rose from the sea, volcanic, in a dawn
No human eye can know. What colors were the sky
Five million years ago? Against that nameless pyre
The great vent billowed sputtering from the cry
Of violated ocean, hiss and spit of water meeting fire.
There in that ancient dawn, unknown to other
For no other was there to be known, a great
Spirit rose from the water in gouts of fire
Smoke formed wavering into towering shape, a
Woman of Fire, Water and Earth, clad in the Sky.
She spoke the great sizzling hiss of creation’s song
And from the water rose a smoking land, to dry
In shades of black against a blackened air, veined
With red. It loomed and bulged against the sky.
Then from Her hands grew vivid ecstasy and pain
The little forms that birth and fight and die,
The spirochetes in their watery home
Amphibians that master double worlds,
The farmer seeking life within the loam
And fishermen that fish upon the foam.
Kauai bloomed in the sea, blossomed in a dawn
That looks like dawn to us. Familiar as the touch
Of lovers’ hands, the font of all creation flowered
Over like a boiling pot, so rich were her ridges and vales
With the juice of raw Creation and its life-producing power.
Her first people came from the stars to stay in this place
Where Being first found its birth, to know Her where
She lingers still here in Her place of Making.
They worshipped Her because they were human there
In that place of worship, true humans without faking.
Kauai, place of powerful prayer, in later years recalled
Was said to be the home of the high goddess, said to be
The child of Hina. But let those who later come to Her
Know there is only one God, but She may take many
Forms, the Spirit in deities and dogs, feldspar and fir.
The missionaries with their trunks of books
Knew Her stern face, because they needed sternness;
But these people knew Her in Her flowers and fruit,
Ripe rain that hangs forever in the air, earnest
Music of the rainbow’s colored lute:
Community with the Oneness of all things.
by Dr. Matt Miller
by Dr. Matt Miller
Sunday, May 20, 2012
My book is coming out soon!
Good morrow, gentle reader!
Not only do I have two fun CDs of baroque blues music waiting for you at Kapa'a Music and Sound (823-8000), I am also just about to publish a book.
Who am I? I am Dr. Matt Miller, PhD in Medieval English Literature, literacy
teacher, poet, composer, wood-carver and practicing mystic. On Kauai I am known
for helping quite a few young people improve their literacy skills, which I
believe is the most useful thing I can share, after the Teachings of the Holy
Spirit.
What Happened to Happiness? is
a short book I have written that reveals the seven steps to direct experience
of the Sacred. Using these steps has turned my life around from bitterness and
anger to peace, acceptance and an unquenchable desire to help others who
suffer.
In the mid-1990’s I began a prayer dialogue with the Holy
Spirit that still continues. In our exchanges She has patiently taught me seven
universal truths about human life, by showing me how they are at work in each
life situation that arises. She has also taught me certain details of Her own
history.
I have written down what She has said to me in prayer, and
through research I have discovered the same teachings in many cultures all over
the world – Hindu, Tibetan, Hawaiian, Cherokee, Senecan, Toltec, Christian,
Judaic, Taoist, alchemical, Buddhist and Gnostic, as well as the ancient
Mystery religions that were the foundation of paganism. The Teachings are seven
universal truths that apply to all souls of every land or creed or time.
In brief the Teachings are
1. Learn
to experience Community with all things as vessels of the Holy Spirit
2. Develop
a Partnership with the Holy Spirit immanent in the world around you
3. Master
the Power to communicate with all things telepathically as vessels of the Holy
Spirit
4. Experience
the Holy Spirit daily as a living, sentient Love permeating all situations
5. Strengthen
your Will in any situation by fusing it with Hers
6. Dedicate
your Mind to the task of understanding how this technology works inside you.
7. Learn
to feel and act upon Compassion for all who suffer, as parts of yourself.
These teachings are together a Path to an enlightened state
in which the accidents of fortune no longer hurt you as they did before. A
great measure of your personal unhappiness is alleviated, partly because you
learn to think about things differently, and partly because the Path is inscribed
in your body and central nervous system, and by following it out there you can learn
to return to the pool of bliss and inner peace whenever you wish to do so. It
is a change in perspective – a personal transformation – but it is also a
physical technology built into the soft machine of your own body.
Operated backwards, the technology becomes a Pain Machine, a
set of habitual stressors that create and store stress in the tissues that
eventually becomes a physical problem of
some kind. Operated as it was meant to operate, the technology generates ecstatic
union with the Sacred, triggering the flow of a healing anesthetic
bioelectricity through the body which is alive and aware of you. In India they
call Her Shakti, and She permeates every body, not just your own. In the West
She is known as the Holy Spirit.
The bliss of union with Her has a gentling effect on the
soul – you no longer seek external pleasures so relentlessly, for now you have this
unspeakable Joy that blooms within yourself when you call It up in prayer. Things
you used to fight about don’t seem to matter so much any more. You become
willing to let other people have things their way. Why not? As long as the
bliss continues!
I will discuss the technology in these blogs, but first I
want to share a poem, whose seven verses combine Her teachings of Her own
origins with the seven great Teachings that guide the human soul to inner peace
and deep pure experiences of bliss. Check out the next blog for the first verse, about the first Teaching: Community
with all things. It is mingled with the tale She told me of how She was born
from the volcano on Kauai, five million years ago.
Blogulater!
Dr. Matt
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
My Music is available at Kauai Music and Sound!
Time to wake the blog up again! It has lain fallow for some
time.
Today I placed two of my CDs with Kauai Music and Sound! They
are called The Raw and the Cooked,
and The Winds of Kauai.
Kauai Music and Sound (823-8000) is a nice little music store in Kapa’a
with instruments for sale, and a stand of local musicians’ CDs. It is the place
to go if you want to buy some local music and take it home. For a paltry $15
you can have an hour of music that took me a lot longer than that to create.
If you want to hear me play along with it, come on down to the
Kauai Women Artists’ Society get-together at Poipu National Tropical Botanical
Gardens on Father’s Day. At the moment I am scheduled to play 12-2 PM, and I
will be playing the pieces on the two CDs for sale at Kauai Music and Sound.
Most of these blogs concern the Lady Spirit by whom I have
been guided for the last thirteen years. But I will also blog about my music
because I channel it from Her. She is not quite the same as a choir of angels –
She is the life energy in all things, that which drives us on to do what we do,
and the energy with which we do it. She is the Force. That means a lot of what
She has to say is jungle music – wild, savage and free, beating against the
sky, full of trees crashing down and rivers bursting their banks.
Sometimes Her music is very beautiful, but it is what She
is, and She is no tame Spirit. She does beautiful if She feels like it, but She
works from a complete emotional palette.
It is all drawn from the Portal where I go during meditation
and prayer, fed through my own imperfect musical talent into a guitar or
computer and mixed down to its present state. In the two CDs available at Kauai Music and Sound you will find live guitar duets, trios and a quintet, as well
as an assortment of computer-generated chamber instruments.
The CD The Raw and
The Cooked has three songs by the great Chas. King, long-time teacher
at Kamehameha and author of many familiar Hawaiian melodies. I discovered his
book Hawaiian Melodies has “piano
arrangements” that are really five-part harmony squashed down onto one
keyboard. By unfolding these pieces into their original five parts on the
computer, and giving them to different instruments so they are distinct from
one another, I have wakened these arrangements from a long sleep and given them
new life. His voice duets, trios and quartets I put in other instruments,
always separating out the melodies so you can hear them all at once.
It appears to have been his practice to put the chord tones
in the highest and lowest voice, and then insert strange jazz notes into the
middle voices. I discovered that by turning his music “inside out” so the jazz
notes are on top some extremely interesting, almost Stravinsky-like music is
uncovered that has always lain hidden behind the dominant melody before.
Then I guide the whole in new directions by adding a live guitar
line on the top. The three King songs are combined into a chamber orchestra medley,
“Hawaiian Suite,” comprised of three somewhat similar songs: “Aloha Oe,” “The
Choice of My Heart,” and “My Heart’s Choice.” My guitar is entirely pulled into
King’s formal arrangement until somewhere in “Aloha Oe” it loses control and
starts to cry and sing and carry on, producing an “Aloha Oe” like I bet you
never heard.
At the other end of the spectrum is the somewhat mysterious
duet on the CD Winds of Kauai
called “Luhaikinimakalehua,” the breeze
that blows the dew off the lehua blossoms. The two guitars do not always
fall exactly together on the ear, producing an effect of floating lushness and
sensuous beauty similar to the flamenco use of arpeggiated chording in a solo
guitar piece. Tempo slows down and speeds up slightly to catch the emotions in
exactest detail. It is like poetry that pushes language apart so that which
cannot be said in words may yet shine through.
These unique pieces stand out against the two CDs’ live
guitar trios and duets, which basically combine the polyphonic sound of the
Baroque era with the idiom of the blues, so you hear two or three part harmony
in electric guitars, and flutes and violins take a blues solo as readily as
guitars. It is a new musical language, with roots in blues, baroque, rock and
Hawaiian music. Treat yourself to an hour of it today, at Kauai Sound and Music
in Kapa’a.
Blogulater!
Dr. Matt Miller
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