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SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

Everything in the universe has a shadow cost.

Nothing is for nothing.

There is a shadow cost.

from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice to verbal sacri- popes. But everybody has shadow; he has shadow too.
fice, and now to consciousness sacrifice. So it’s true, when Early in his life he was a [bouncer in a nightclub]. There
Reb Nachman was saying that God was young at one are people in the Vatican who wish they had never cho-
point. And he doesn’t mean the infinite God, but that sen him. There is nothing that doesn’t have shadow cost.
aspect of God that is focusing on human life. The only way in which we can integrate shadow is right-
hemisphere stuff.
And that’s different from Ayn Sof?
Yes, because with Ayn Sof nothing has happened. There Can you say more about the right hemisphere
is no past. There is no future. There is no now. There is and about enchantment and engagement and
no then. Ayn Sof is infinite. I like to say, don’t treat it as a who or what is leading us into that area today
noun. Treat it as an adverb. As if to say infinitely. What’s or into that realm?
infinitely? God is godding infinitely. You see there are so Have you ever come across Ervin Laszlo? He is a remark-
many things that catechisms have reified and put into able person. He lives in Italy. He is the founder of the
concrete. There is God the father, God the son, God Budapest Club [an international cultural organization].
the Holy Spirit; there are Ganesha and Shiva, Vishnu Laszlo has been pointing out that there is a field of con-
and Krishna. Right now in Islam there are some people sciousness that people call the Akasha Paradigm. In that
forbidding Christians to use the word “Allah” for God, if field of consciousness all that is happening, whether physi-
they are speaking Arabic. That’s so foolish, because even cal or spiritual, is part of the field. Once you get to have
before there was Islam, when the Christians were praying that notion that we are part of that field, then the question
in Arabic, they used the word “Allah.” There is something will always be: How could we be more collaborative with
about how we experience God as learning, yes. that field of consciousness to bring life into harmony?
People ask me what my philosophical base is. And I say
I would like to ask you about your book-length I’m a pantheist, but an organismic pantheist. That’s to say
essay, “Patterns of Good and Evil.” What is its I don’t think everything is sort of homogenized in pan-
relevance for spiritual direction? theism. Differentiation is very important, and that’s why
That’s a conversation that I cannot do briefly, but it is there. Just like in my body I need to have different
at least let me begin. Everything in the universe has a organs, I need to have different parts of veins and muscle.
shadow cost. Nothing is for nothing. There is a shadow You get the point.
cost. So now they’re saying it’s going to be important to
have nuclear energy because it’s easier on the environ- So, the right hemisphere has been neglected
ment. Nobody talks about the cost of cleanup afterwards. and pushed aside and devalued?
So, every good thing in the world has a shadow cost. It Why is it? For example a mystic, like St. John of the
is so wonderful that when I start looking at Pope Francis, Cross, comes back with his unique experience and says, “I
he is the one who has the least shadow around him, of enter into a place, I know not where, in the dark night,”

10 Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction