For My Epitaph

Last Words

“Love one another.”

--George Harrison

I have been in a state of mourning for a dear friend who recently passed on suddenly and unexpectedly. Vicki McDermott, who was a subscriber to this newsletter, was a teacher for many years at the Karin Kabalah Center in Atlanta where I received my in-depth Kabalah training several years ago. She was like a “gentle love” cloned version of the founder and director of the Center, Shirley Chambers, who had passed away this past January. I hadn’t been in touch with Vicki for several years, but we reconnected on a very deep level when I came to Atlanta for Shirley’s Celebration of Life services. I think the sudden unexpected nature of her passing, along with the fact of our recent connection, created more of a wound in me than news of the passing of anyone else, including Shirley, my other spiritual master, Swami Rama, and even my parents. I know now more than ever before what people in deep grief have described as a wound that eventually heals to some extent, but will always leave an impression, a scar. And just as with the passing of those others, what has followed in its wake is an energy boost whereby I have become refocused and reinvigorated.

I sorted through various profound teachings I keep in a file regarding transition, and I decided to share this poem that I wrote many years ago.

For My Epitaph

On to the full realization of all Paradox:

The simultaneous existence

Of Silence and Sound

Of Darkness and Light

Of Stillness and Perpetual Motion

Of Birth, Life and Death

Where have I gone?

There is nowhere to go.

There is only

The circle, the spiral

Of energy

Rising,

Transforming,

Dissolving.

There is only Love.

--Steven J. Gold

Logotherapy; A Yoga Learned In Hell

Victor Frankl

A few weeks ago, I made a post about Bill Heilbronn, a British Jewish Yogi whom I had the honor to meet and get to know through internet connections. He passed on last year at the age of ninety-nine. I shared an article he had written as good introductory material to many teachings of Kabalah. I am now following up to share with you a chapter to a book that I edited and published as a collaboration with other authors. The title of that book is IVRI: THE ESSENCE OF HEBREW SPRITUALITY; 21^st Century Perspectives on an Ancient Tradition. It is not a book that I have marketed very much, although it is available on Amazon and Lulu. I incorporated some of the content from IVRI into my later books, but it is more of a digression from the major themes of spirituality contained in my other books. In addition to being an exercise in interspiritual collaboration with other authors, some of my pieces delve deeper into humanism, social injustice, spiritual activism, and identity.

Bill Heilbronn was one of the contributors, and below as a Potent Quote is the introduction to his chapter. I have also posted the full chapter for download in the “More Articles” section of this website.  

Logotherapy; A Yoga Learned In Hell

There are men who learn their Yoga by peaceful contemplation in the majestic tranquility of the Himalayas, and there are men who learn their Yoga through being picked up by the scruff of their neck and being dropped into Hell.

--Bill Heilbronn

You Are a Fractal

You are a Fractal

Self recognizes that you and the other are part of a larger body of humanity.

The nested model of consciousness reveals reality as a fractal - structures of parts within parts, endlessly repeating, like Russian dolls with no final doll. Every self contains subselves, and each subself contains more. What we call “I” is just one layer in a recursive, living tapestry.

It’s parts all the way down.

And parts all the way up.

You are a fractal part of something greater - family, culture, the cosmos - and within you live fractal parts of something smaller - inner voices, memories, patterns. This isn’t just true for humans. Everything - stars, mosquitoes, tables, dreams - is a node in this recursive dance of consciousness. Each is both whole and part, form and process.

IFS [Internal Family Systems] reflects this beautifully. In IFS, we are not one thing - we are many parts, each with their own feelings, histories, and roles. And these parts have parts, and so on. There's no endpoint, just deeper intimacy.

This mirrors nonduality, where the distinction between self and other dissolves. The One is the Many. The Many are the One. You are both everything and nothing - simultaneously expanding and dissolving, a paradox held in awareness.

The world is made of selves, nested and interwoven.

A mosquito, a galaxy, a table - they're all part of the same fractal hum.

And you are both a note and the entire song.

In this view, there is no ultimate unit of being, no separate self to find - only an infinite unfolding.

An invitation to see that you are not just in the fractal.

You are the fractal.

--Dr. Rev. Laura Patryas

Steve Gold notes:

I was introduced to Internal Family Systems (IFS) some time ago by my spiritual brother, Mitch Cohen, who has a strong orientation towards counseling and therapy, and that was the original focus of IFS, as a psychotherapeutic model. The main problem I see with Internal Family Systems is its name. Using the word “family” suggests it is related to common notions of family therapy. But it is not focused on traditional family therapy, but rather as a model for individual therapy. The “family” it is referring to relates to the adjective “internal”; it is the notion that anything, including a human being, is composed of a multitude of inter-related parts, our inner “family”. Internally, there are many “parts” to what we are, even though externally, we may appear as one thing, one individual person. The psychotherapeutic system of IFS focuses on the therapist aiding the client in examining some of the significant parts by which a person functions to therapeutically come to a better understanding of their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses.

However, as the above quote indicates, the therapeutic model of IFS has been expanding into other arenas that apply its model. For example, I am a professional mediator, and I recently came across a mediation training applying IFS concepts and models to the practice of mediation.

And as the above quote indicates, which Mitch Cohen reposted on his Facebook page, the IFS model is also expanding into the realm of a model for a spiritual world view, which happens to be consistent with Nondualism. It is an interesting reframing of Nondualism and perspectives it engenders. Although Rev. Patryas focuses more on fractality as a perspective engendered by Nonduality, she makes an important reference to “Self”, the first word she uses in her post. Self is expanded upon in IFS materials as the key internal component separate from the parts, that guides the other parts to be in sync instead of in conflict, and is one and the same as Self, Heart, Spirit, Soul found in various spiritual traditions. Look up definitions of “Fractality” and “Fractalism”. What Rev. Laura is describing, and what Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS is now offering as a spiritual extension of IFS, is being called “The Spirituality of Internal Family Systems” (look it up). It could also be called “Spiritual Fractalism” (look that up, too!). Other faces of Nondualism.

From a description of the upcoming course by Richard Schwartz:

• The Self is more than a psychological state—it is the core essence of who you are and distinct from your parts, and it connects all of us to what spiritual traditions call the Divine, True Nature, God, or a Greater Consciousness.