Like Orpheus, Michael Jackson was destroyed by his fans

Another beautiful boy is gone, wiped out in an instant. Michael Jackson, unable to cross the threshold into manhood, has died at 50, still a boy, coquettish, fantasy-ridden, horribly vulnerable, unable to take control of his life.

His sudden death is a strange kind of victory. He had managed to prevent his aging and even his growing up. There was no beard upon his chin; his voice was a childish treble. Instead of entering middle age and letting himself be chained to earth, he has floated away like a wisp, annihilated on the brink of a 50-date concert tour that I for one was dreading.

It’s all very well for Madonna to be cranking out tour after tour. As she could neither dance nor sing at 25 no one is going to mind that she still can’t do it at 50. But to see Michael Jackson faking it would have been heartbreaking. Among the hearts that would have broken is Jackson’s own. It has snapped before the debacle. He has been spared.

According to Madonna “the world has lost one of the greats”. We haven’t lost Michael Jackson, because he cannot disappear. His three great albums will last as long as electronic media continues to exist, while the dross is forgotten.

The era of his astonishing creativity ended 20 years ago; most of what has happened since has been embarrassment. Jackson’s kind of transcendental creativity is typical of very young men; it seldom survives into manhood, when the glory fades into the light of common day. Jackson succeeded in prolonging his brilliant boyhood into his thirties, but eventually he ran out of inspiration.

His art had been fuelled by the vernacular culture of the streets but it was many years since he had been able to run with the kids on the block. As his imagination faltered and grew dim, the fending off of maturity became desperate, demented and pointless. The struggle against ageing turned into self-harming and self-mutilation.

Ever since Dionysos danced ahead of his horde of bloody-footed maenads across the rocky highlands of prehistoric Greece, dance and song have been the province of boys. Like Orpheus, Jackson was destroyed by his fans, whose adulation and adoration prevented his living in any kind of normal society. The creativity ebbed away day by day. He became a parody of himself. It is time now to forget all that and salute the miraculous boy who will triumph over death as Dionysos did, becoming immortal through his art.

Nowhere will his contribution be more obvious and his influence more strongly felt than in the world of dance. No choreographer of the last 30 years has been unaware of Jackson’s achievement. He rewrote the vocabulary of dance for everyone, from kids competing in talent shows to the royal ballets of Europe.

If the dance establishment did not often acknowledge his influence it was because there was no need. His shapes, his moves were everywhere.

Nijinsky and Nureyev also died young. They, too, were transcendent dancing boys, but they chose to interpret the choreography supplied to them by others.

By contrast Michael Jackson’s art was astonishingly innovative. No one could dance like him, until he showed them how, and then they were never as good as he was. His concept of the dance was utterly 20th century, extravagantly multi-dimensional, and not in the least middle class.

Nijinsky may have been the greatest Spectre de la Rose, Nureyev the greatest Corsair, but these two candles pale in the light of Jackson’s blazing star. The surprise is not that we have lost him, but that we ever had him at all.

Article by Germaine Greer

El Dorado – Floating in Memory

There is only one wish realizable on the earth; only one thing that can be perfectly attained: Death. And from a variety of circumstances we have no one to tell us whether it be worth attaining. A strange picture we make on our way to our chimaeras, ceaselessly marching, grudging ourselves the time for rest; indefatigable, adventurous pioneers.

It is true that we shall never reach the goal; it is even more than probable that there is no such place; and if we lived for centuries and were endowed with the powers of a god, we should find ourselves not much nearer what we wanted at the end. O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, traveling ye know not whither!

Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.

Robert Louis Stevenson quotation, from Virginibus Puerisque, 1881

The King, The Angel, and The Human Laugh Track

Death comes to all. But great achievements build a monument. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

June, 25th 2009

June 25th 2009

June 24th, 2009

Grief Recovery and Meditation

On the 25th of May, a client who recently lost her husband to the war in Iraq, posted the following comment on one of my Blogs and she asked that I share my reply:

Lil,

“You often talk about using the skills you’ve learned in Vipassana, and other methods of meditation, in your healing process. To successfully heal, do you feel that these methods must be used, or can we heal from our grief without in-depth knowledge of these methods?”

Thanks, Brihanna, for the great question. I’ve been thinking about how to answer it for the last two days. First off, I’m not sure I would use the word “heal” anymore. What has changed in my bereavement, is my perspective. But I know what you mean.

I really appreciate Eckhart Tolle’s work for simplifying a host of psychological and spiritual concepts — cutting through the miasma of thousands of years of nebulous opinions and getting to the heart of things. I find it interesting that I only discovered his books at the end of my grief journey. His two best-sellers encompass everything I think you need to know to come out of bereavement. Here’s what I have learned:

To me, bereavement is a devastation of your mind, your ego. Your mind intensely dislikes the present moment, preferring instead to keep you caught up in thoughts about the past and anxieties about the future. Sound familiar?

In bereavement, your ego, your sense of self has been shattered. To compensate, your mind switches into high gear and roughly shoves you into alternating currents of your past married life and the dark, single, uncertain future. This is a very dangerous thing for the ego to do — most people don’t appreciate being shoved around, and they are likely to do something about it. And they might start paying attention to the present moment. If they do this in the right way, they will come to a startling discovery — that the present moment is perfect just as it is, and that there is no need for the ego.

Meditation is simply the act of being focused on the present moment. Right this second. And this second. And this second. Not focused on the past. Not focused on the future. Right now. Only now. Sound simple? Try it. Try just being aware of the present moment for 2 minutes. No thoughts about the past, no thoughts about the future. Just the immediate feedback from your 5 senses. Close your eyes to make it easier

…

Well? Bet you couldn’t go the full two minutes. Your mind sucked you in to the past, or tried getting you to focus on something you need to do in the future. This is the nature of the mind.

I wrote that near the end of my Vipassana course, I discovered the Lilly that has no problems. Thanks to Eckhart Tolle, I now understand that that Lilly was the one who was totally focused on the present moment. THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. Yes, I’m shouting Every moment spent in the present moment is a moment spent with no problems.

But the mind / ego hates this — it is a problem-solver. If you spend time in the present where there is no problems, then you have no need for the mind / ego. In The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Eckhart sums this up nicely [pp 87-8]:

“But the more you practice monitoring your internal mental-emotional state, the easier it will be to know when you have been trapped in past or future, which is to say unconscious, and to awaken out of the dream of time into the present. But beware: The false, unhappy self, based on mind identification, lives on time. It knows that the present moment is its own death and so feels very threatened by it. It will do all it can to take you out of it. It will try to keep you trapped in time.”

Knowing this, try the 2-minute test again. With your eyes closed, focus only on the sensory data you receive from your remaining four senses. No thoughts about the past, no thoughts about the future. Try it again.

…

Still couldn’t do it, could you? Now you can see how meditation training can be beneficial.

So, to answer your question, Brihanna: Peace exists only in the present moment. Nowhere else. But your mind will do everything it can to keep you focused on anything but the present moment. You couldn’t even keep your mind focused on the present moment for two minutes, and this even after I warned you that your mind would prevent you. So who’s running the show? You, or your mind? They are not the same thing. You are not your mind. Meditation helps you to dis-identify from your mind.

If by healing you mean to live at peace, you will need to find some way to live in the present moment, the only place where you will find peace. Meditation provides many methods for focusing on the present. There are also other ways. Two of the very best meditation tools that I have personally engaged in and wholeheartedly recommend are:

Healing Rhythms Guided Meditations – The Journey to Wild Divine

Learn with expert guided meditation mentors, who will walk you, step-by-step, through deep breathing exercises, guided meditations, and an inspirational journey towards aiding you in taking control of your emotions and state of happiness. The Journey to Wild Divine allows people to influence what is happening in their body, in their mind, and the world they create everyday. This unique training program uses biofeedback to teach breathing and meditation techniques for a healthier mind & body and features Deepak Chopra in The Passage and Wisdom Quest. Healing Rhythms unique biofeedback program is designed to help you uncover your body’s own natural ability to counter the wear and tear that everyday stress has on your health.

and

Centerpointe Reasearch’s Holosync® Audio Technology

Heal yourself with the power of sound. Holosync Sound Technology is a powerful and effective personal growth, meditation and mind development tool that creates deep, super-pleasurable meditative states, razor-sharp thinking, and quantum leaps in self-awareness. Listening to this scientifically proven brain technology gives you all the benefits of meditation—in a fraction of the time—easily and effortlessly.

Live in Joy, Brihanna! I hope to hear from you again soon upon your healing path

Bright Blessings,
Lilly