You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

On the whole, I must say that I rather enjoyed this lit­tle stint in the brig. Hav­ing sur­vived the rig­ors of an ini­ti­a­tion into the Navy’s own ver­sion of a frat house, the Inter­na­tional Broth­er­hood of Brig Brats, I was pretty much left alone. Sent out dur­ing the day to per­form menial tasks about either the brig or the base, I rather enjoyed the com­pan­ion­ship of my soul who, if she couldn’t be with me in body, due to her present con­di­tion, would at least strive to be with me in spirit.

She had such a knack for turn­ing the hum­blest of tasks into the holi­est, that my time in the brig flew by, ever so quickly. A staunch believer in hard work, she made it all seem like play. And in her abil­ity to find the most extra­or­di­nary things in the hum­drum real­i­ties of every­day life, she never ceased to amaze me.

Once, when I balked at hav­ing to clean a par­tic­u­larly dirty toi­let bowl, she con­vinced me in her own mag­i­cal way, through the use of imagery, that is, to look at it as a fish bowl in need of a lit­tle clean­ing. Hav­ing conned me into jump­ing into the task at hand, she took me on an under­wa­ter tour of one of the most beau­ti­ful lagoons I had ever seen. There, in the womb of my being, did she give me my first glimpse of the new aware­ness that’d been tak­ing shape, over the past seven months. As I scrubbed away at the sides of the bowl, in the ser­vice of my fel­low man, she con­sci­en­tiously scoured the quar­ters of this lit­tle objec­tion of mine for any fecal mat­ter which might get in the way of a healthy birth, down the road, of an aware­ness of the greater objec­tion I had to mil­i­tary service.

“I see your con­science has not yet devel­oped,“ she com­plained, “to the extent that you can dis­tin­guish ser­vice to your fel­low man from mil­i­tary ser­vice, as the lat­ter still so over­shad­ows the for­mer with its self-​​serving brand of self­less­ness. And I see your objec­tions to meet­ing the real needs of your fel­low man as very small, indeed, when com­pared to the objec­tions I have raised to your ser­vice in the mil­i­tary of the rich and pow­er­ful élite that runs your coun­try, with­out any regard, what­so­ever, for the vast num­ber of lives it has squan­dered away on the most ambi­tious effort, ever under­taken by man, to sat­isfy the insa­tiable appetite of the god, he has made out of his self.“

Then God spoke these words (from deep within my being): “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for your­self an idol, whether in the form of any­thing that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth below, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or wor­ship them; for I the Lord am a jeal­ous God, pun­ish­ing chil­dren for the iniq­uity of their par­ents, to the third and fourth gen­er­a­tion of those who reject me, but show­ing stead­fast love to the thou­sandth gen­er­a­tion of those who love me and keep my com­mand­ments.“ Ex. 20:1–6.

“In other words,“ explained my soul, “must you become Who You Really Are, and no other per­son. You must never make any­thing more out of your self, whether in thought, word, or deed, than what you really are. And at all costs, you must never inflate another person’s view of him­self nor emu­late such false images of one’s true Self, for it takes many gen­er­a­tions to work out the damage—the con­fu­sion ’n’ hurt—one inflicts upon him­self and his off­spring when he chooses not to live out Who He Really Is. Instead, you must stand out as a bea­con to him who has yet to find his way back home to Who He Really Is.“

Through her did I find greater joy in doing the lit­tle things in life that needed to be done. How quickly I learned, that it made lit­tle dif­fer­ence, whether I did these things for my Self or for another, because deep down inside our­selves, she informed me, we are all one and the same per­son, in spite of our differences.

“These dif­fer­ences have been cre­ated,“ she went on to say, “to give you some idea of the breadth and depth of the one who inhab­its you. Only it’s the lit­tle things you do for each other, which help to mend the ter­ri­ble rifts these dif­fer­ences seem to fos­ter, for in your short­sight­ed­ness of the whole pic­ture, you-​​all tend to dwell on the qual­i­ties of the lesser or more adver­sar­ial image of man than on those of the greater or more Christ­like. Real dif­fer­ences, like real indi­vid­u­als, tend to pro­mote a unity of pur­pose that is impos­si­ble to beat, only because the visions of those who bear these dif­fer­ences meld with the one vision for all.

“As Cain over­shad­owed Able, so does the lesser man, the greater. Stalked by his ani­mal­is­tic past, man really has no other choice but to take the high road,“ con­cluded my soul, “if ever he wishes to escape the ter­ri­ble fate of his ances­tors or the unpar­al­leled mass extinc­tion of his own species, a self-​​inflicted pun­ish­ment wor­thy of the crime of hav­ing despoiled this par­adise, you call earth.

“Come now,“ she added. “Let us not tarry here too long with mat­ters which do not con­cern us, for the day is draw­ing near when you will be asked again, to choose between me ’n’ the Great Gray Whore.“

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Heaven On Earth

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

Hav­ing fully expected to be locked up behind bars in some loath­some cell, all by myself for thirty days, I was quite sur­prised when my charge, a fel­low trustee, led me off to a barracks-​​like room out in front and just to the right of the main gate to the inte­rior of the brig, where resided those who’d been con­fined at hard labor. As I began to stow away, in the locker at the foot of my bunk, what lit­tle I’d been allowed to bring with me, I was informed that I’d bet­ter think twice about ever try­ing to leave the brig with­out per­mis­sion unless, of course, I pre­ferred to serve out the rest of my sen­tence locked up behind bars, where any time served was con­sid­ered lost time or time to be made up at the end of one’s enlist­ment. With the sud­den appear­ance of my soul, I began to feel a lit­tle awk­ward, till my charge excused him­self and dis­ap­peared out the door of our hon­ey­moon suite.

“What’re you doin’?“ I asked her, as she bent down over my foot­locker and began rum­mag­ing around through its con­tents as if she were look­ing for some long lost trea­sure of mine.

“I’ve come to help you sort through your feel­ings,“ she replied.

Sud­denly, I felt as if I’d returned to Trea­sure Island, only this time, to seek out some hid­den truth about myself.

“That’s it!“ she exclaimed. “You’ve been exiled here, on the isle of your Self, to begin liv­ing out your true voca­tion in life.“

“What’re you talkin’ about?“ I asked her.

“Don’t ya see,“ she exclaimed, “that you’re bein’ called by the Most High to serve out the rest of your enlist­ment, here, in the brig.“

“Why I can’t do that,“ I insisted, even though deep down I felt more at home, here, than I had any­where else since com­ing on active duty.

“Look!“ she exclaimed as she held up the lit­tle trea­sure chest she’d pulled from my locker. “Here’s where your heart doeth lie. It is my gift to you, my beloved. From this moment on, you shall always know what you feel, for you now pos­sess your own heart which belongs not to you, but rather to all those with whom you share its con­tents or infi­nite wis­dom. It shall be the cause of all your pain and, at the same time, the source of all your joy. It’ll allow you to search the depths of your being with­out the fear of being over­come by its con­tents as was your father who, in his weak­ness, suc­cumbed to the mad­ness of try­ing to live out the vision of oth­ers rather than the one with which he had been entrusted at birth. Use it wisely, my beloved, and it will serve you well—unwisely, and it’ll become a Pandora’s box.“

And so did my ask­ing her, what she was doing, help me to see that I’d been liv­ing out the vision of another, instead of my own, when she had asked me, in the past, what I was doing.

Before she could hand me the box, it slipped from her hands and fell to the floor, caus­ing the lid to fly open and release its con­tents. In a bril­liant flash of light, did the Spirit of Love, boxed up within my chest, all these years, burst forth and shower down upon the bad­lands of my being, where still reigned the Prince of Beasts. And as this waste­land began to bear fruit again, I strug­gled to accept that part of my nature whose appetite for sex I still held in contempt.

That night I dreamed I had finally found the door to heaven, when the lid to Jinny’s box flew open to reveal all the love Instinct had impris­oned there within my chest. As I worked my way back ’n’ forth through the maze of feel­ings which’d over­taken me as I pen­e­trated this nar­row gate, I came to the con­clu­sion that sex­ual inter­course is a well-​​orchestrated ruse, Nature uses to pro­pel a fac­sim­ile of one’s self deep into the womb of one’s imag­i­na­tion, to cre­ate a whole new aware­ness or amal­gam of self and soul in the flesh. Sim­ply put, I had no idea, before now, that I could ever have found heaven on earth, much less within the very thing I feared most.

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The Profane And The Holy

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

Hav­ing been knocked off my high horse by my fear of going to jail, I found my self lying on the ground of my being, look­ing up the shaft of a lance at the dark­est knight with whom I had ever jousted. Led off, a pris­oner of my own fear, I heard Michael shout out, ere he ’n’ the oth­ers dis­ap­peared into the wild blue yon­der on the back of my gal­lant white steed, “to stand tall against the black­est knight of all, Fear itself“. As I approached the very citadel of Fear itself, I was con­fronted, just out­side the main gate to the brig, by a red-​​haired, red­necked marine sergeant who, upon sens­ing my fear, lit into me with the unre­deemed side of his ani­mal nature, like a drill instruc­tor, a new boot.

“What’s your name, puke,“ hissed the bad­gerer, as he rounded the cor­ner of his desk to invade my space.

“Drury,“ I replied with the meek­ness of one who sin­cerely hoped that phys­i­cal abuse was not a part of his reper­toire of intimidation.

“Drury, sir,“ he screamed as he got right up in my face.

“I can’t hear you,“ he snarled with a glare meant to max­i­mize the effect he was obvi­ously hav­ing on me.

“Drury, sir,“ I finally mut­tered, unwillingly.

“Are you a pussy, Dury?“ he screamed into my face, after I’d failed to respond to him with any balls.

Act­ing as if he’d just seen my soul, did he sud­denly turn and walk his puffed-​​up, young self back around to the front of his desk, to take a look at my con­fine­ment papers. “Well, what have we here,“ sneered the bad­ger within him, “some pussy-​​ass f–kup?“

“What kind of pussy-​​ass name is Eodor,“ growled the beast within him, in an effort to live up to its namesake.

“Sir Eodor is my father’s name,“ I replied with the pride of the eldest son and sub­se­quent heir to the fam­ily coat of arms.

“I thought it was your mother’s name,“ snarled some smart-​​ass cor­po­ral who had yet to earn his badge as a full-​​fledged badgerer.

“You think you’re really some­thin’, don’t ya Dury, bet­ter than the rest of us,“ yelled out the sergeant from across his desk, after hav­ing obvi­ously been deeply dis­turbed by my tone of voice. “Well in my eyes, mis­ter, you ain’t nothin’ but a god­damn puke. Ya got that, Dury.“

Hav­ing failed to elicit any response from me, to get my goad in other words, he ordered me to empty out the con­tents of my pock­ets, which, of course, I did in all haste. Scarf­ing up what lit­tle money I had, he then placed it in a manila enve­lope and asked me to sign the damn thing, to ver­ify that he’d writ­ten down the cor­rect amount on the out­side of the envelope.

“Get this f–kin’ puke outta my sight, before I get any sicker than I already am,“ he commanded.

Look­ing into the red beady eyes of this poor dumb brute, before I was taken to my new quar­ters, I caught a glimpse of his own sup­pressed human­ity, hid­den deep within his being in some dark, dank ’n’ dirty cell. Imme­di­ately, I rec­og­nized this human­ity of his as my own and raced off to embrace it. In the com­pas­sion I felt, that day, for this poor wretched crea­ture, was I lib­er­ated from my fear and taken aback by my humanity—or miss­ing link—to a place in Par­adise where lay the pro­fane and the holy, side by side, like the lion and the lamb in Isa­iah.

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I Pronounce You Both Man and Wife

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

No sooner had we all sat down around the fire of my heart’s desires, to con­tem­plate my next move, than Michael shot up with the sug­ges­tion that he ’n’ I go fly­ing, of all things.

“I believe you ’n’ I are the ones who should take a hike,“ con­cluded my men­tor, “so these two can spend some much needed time together, get­ting to know each other a lit­tle better.“

“You’re right,“ agreed Michael, as the two of them dis­ap­peared, leav­ing me alone with my soul, really, for the first time since I met her.

As I sat there pok­ing around in the fire of my heart’s desires, with a stick, I grew uncom­fort­able with the feel­ings I had stirred up. Fear­ful of let­ting the beast in me take over, I jabbed the stick, quickly, in ’n’ out of the coals, before plung­ing it all the way into the fire and let­ting go of it. Imme­di­ately I cli­maxed, with­out hav­ing ejaculated.

O how won­der­ful it was! Gone was the fire that burned between us. Gone, too, were the two of us, for in our place stood, for an instant, an invin­ci­ble being of nei­ther sex, before it returned to its for­mer glory.

And O how she did radi­ate with the beauty of that lit­tle amal­gam of her and me.

“What hap­pened?“ I asked with a grin.

“You have just expe­ri­enced at-​​one-​​ment with me,“ she replied with that rogu­ish lit­tle smile of hers.

Just then, the bub­ble burst. And I knew, imme­di­ately, that I was in trou­ble again with the Navy.

“You’re on report, Dury,“ shouted some PO, as he dis­ap­peared up the lad­der before I could even iden­tify him.

“For what?“ I shouted back, to no avail, for I had absolutely no idea of why I’d been writ­ten up again.

Expect­ing my soul to have already dis­ap­peared from the mir­ror, I was sur­prised, when I turned around, to find her stand­ing there, glow­ing with the radi­ance of the new life tak­ing shape within her womb. Instead of chid­ing her for hav­ing got­ten me into trou­ble with the Navy again, I sim­ply smiled at her, for it’d just dawned on me how she was try­ing to help me get out of the Navy. When­ever she enticed me to cross the line between this world and the next, I lit­er­ally left the Navy behind, as if it really didn’t exist, to embrace the real­ity of Who I Am.

“I am Who Am,“ mut­tered I to my self, in my con­fu­sion over the true nature of this unnamed god.

“Yes,“ reaf­firmed my soul, “and that’s exactly what your ship­mates and their kin saw walk­ing among them on the pier, the day you returned to the isle of your Self.“

“I wish I could’ve seen what they saw,“ I groaned.

“O but you have,“ she exclaimed, “when you beheld the exquis­ite beauty of that unnamed aspect of your greater Self, that is, of you ’n’ me, I’ve been strug­gling so hard, over the past six months, to carry to full term for you in my womb.“

“I’m sorry I haven’t been more help­ful,“ I confessed.

“When I real­ized how afraid you were, of assum­ing respon­si­bil­ity for the con­se­quences of your own actions,“ inter­jected my soul, “I took the advice of my father and backed off for awhile, or at least until those times when your desire for unity with me over­came your fear.“

Hav­ing been charged again, for fail­ing to appear at my appointed place of duty, and for hav­ing been derelict in the per­for­mance of my duties, was I dragged before the Cap­tain, sev­eral days later, with the added charge of hav­ing failed to shave that morn­ing, for a real shot­gun wed­ding of sorts. Find­ing my self sur­rounded, for the first time ever at a Captain’s mast, by my soul, Michael, and her father, I stood there, before the High Priest and his entourage, dressed as the White Knight.

“Do you, Mr. Drury, take this woman to be your law­fully wed­ded wife?“ asked the High Priest.

“I do,“ I replied out of guilt.

“And do you, woman, take this man to be your law­fully wed­ded hus­band?“ he asked my soul.

“I do,“ replied she out of her love for me.

“Then I pro­nounce you both man and wife,“ pro­claimed the High Priest, rather method­i­cally, as he sent us on our way, with his bless­ings, to the Naval Sta­tion Brig at Pearl Har­bor for thirty days of cor­rec­tional cus­tody, and all for the pal­try sum of half a month’s pay.

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Two Seemingly Irreconcilable Realities

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

Despite all the enlight­en­ing fan­tasies I encoun­tered in church that Sun­day, I still could not see the invis­i­ble image of God within myself, the indi­vid­ual I was meant to become. Nor could I deci­pher the hand­writ­ing on the altar—the sin­gle most impor­tant clue, to my iden­tity, yet revealed—only because the pre­scrip­tion for what ailed me had been writ­ten in the lan­guage of my own con­fus­ing circumstances.

With that, did my soul grab hold of my hand, to lead me out of the pit of despair.

“Where’ve you been?“ I chided her, as I caught sight of her in the light at the end of the tunnel.

“I’ve been down in the dumps with you,“ she insisted, “scroung­ing around for clues to the nature of our being.“

“Why haven’t I seen you before now?“ I persisted.

“You were so infat­u­ated with Despair,“ she replied, “you couldn’t take your eyes off her. Until my father started feed­ing you insight into some of the old myths that’d been rel­e­gated to the trash heap, you were hope­lessly lost to her. That’s why.“

“We now know,“ inter­jected my men­tor, “that your real iden­tity lies just beyond our grasp, some­where between the inner ’n’ outer cir­cum­stances of your life, wait­ing to reveal itself to you the instant these two seem­ingly irrec­on­cil­able real­i­ties come to the same real­iza­tion. For it is writ­ten, my son, as the Word became flesh, so must the flesh become Word, and the two of them, one, before the iden­tity of the Orig­i­nal Being is revealed. In other words, must you give flesh to your thoughts, and thought to your feel­ings, to gain insight into Who You Really Are.“

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The Death of Instinct

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

As the heart now labored under the curse of pain, to give birth to the truth, Instinct grew fear­ful of her beloved’s newly acquired abil­ity to fos­ter con­scious­ness. In an attempt to turn the head against her, he poi­soned the head with every image of instinc­tive desire he could con­jure up. Hav­ing duped the head into being his stooge, did he begin his long reign of ter­ror over her ’n’ her off­spring, in a vain attempt to keep any more of the seeds of truth from being sown in the earth.

Under great duress was Con­scious­ness born again and again, always with the hope He’d, one day, over­throw the evil reign of Instinct. Despite all the attempts on His life, down through the ages, Con­scious­ness grew in strength under the nur­tur­ing care of the heart, for she knew this child alone was her only hope for sal­va­tion. Not till He came of age, with the birth of Christ, did He attempt to take on this Goliath, face to face, in a fight to death.

Dur­ing the early rounds of this god-​​awful fight, Con­scious­ness had gained the upper hand over Instinct. Then, in a sud­den blow to the head, He suf­fered a right cross that sent Him reel­ing. Stum­bling over His own words, He fell to the earth, where He died in the arms of His Mother.

Hav­ing appar­ently lost the fight with Instinct, was He laid to rest in a tomb within the earth. For unbe­knownst to us, He had returned to the womb of His Mother so that we might under­stand the mean­ing of His words to Nicodemus—that one must be born of the Spirit to enter the King­dom. While Wis­dom labored for three dark days to give birth to a new­born Son, Con­scious­ness finally real­ized His goal, the cre­ation of the first human being ever made in His own likeness.

In spite of all the scrutiny of the his­tory of Con­scious­ness, that has taken place down through the ages, we have yet to see through the dev­il­ish trick Instinct played on us. Like Adam ’n’ Eve, we find it dif­fi­cult to wake up from the Big Sleep—to walk through our dreams and visions, the very myths we live by, with the under­stand­ing and aware­ness of Con­scious­ness. In our choice to sleep­walk through life, we remain obliv­i­ous to the myths that have dri­ven us since time immemo­r­ial. Even when we are awak­ened to our dreams, we find our­selves inca­pable of pen­e­trat­ing Wisdom’s images, to free the seeds of truth, Con­scious­ness deposited there, long ago, in safe­keep­ing for us.

We see Con­scious­ness as the enemy. As we enlist in the strug­gle to pro­tect the life of our old men­tor, turned trai­tor, we give up our lives for a mere shadow of what is. We seek the death of God instead of enlight­en­ment. In our relent­less per­se­cu­tion of the truth, we fool our selves into believ­ing we have killed Con­scious­ness, for in our blind­ness, we fail to see the death of Instinct in the cru­ci­fix­ion of Consciousness.

No longer free to pluck the truth from the images of Wis­dom, like an apple from a tree, we’ve been cursed to toil by the sweat of our brows, to unearth the truth from the ground of our beings. From among thorns ’n’ this­tles, the lies and mis­con­cep­tions that sur­round the truth, must we now strug­gle to raise our level of con­scious­ness. Like Nicode­mus, must we learn to make the inces­tu­ous return to the womb of the mother of all images. So too must we learn to leave the body in spirit if, like Jesus, we want to enter the realm of the imag­i­na­tion to free the seeds of truth being held cap­tive yet, by Instinct. Only, we must leave Instinct behind, to suf­fer and die on the cross, alone.

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Guide Supreme

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

Born of Wis­dom as She gave birth to Life, Instinct had enjoyed the high­est posi­tion of any entity ever cre­ated, that of guide for all of cre­ation. Until the day he was placed under the con­trol of the heart who had been placed under the domin­ion of the head, he had car­ried out every com­mand of the Cre­ator as Wis­dom had shown him via Her images. In his inabil­ity to see the like­ness of the Cre­ator and Her, in the image of the man and the woman, Instinct rebelled against this new arrange­ment. He, who had reigned supreme over all of cre­ation since time immemo­r­ial, could not see these two puny crea­tures as his Lord ’n’ Lady.

Fear­ing that this new drive for con­scious­ness might lead to his own destruc­tion, Instinct decided to seize it for him­self, for he now longed to see the naked beauty of Wis­dom with the all-​​seeing eye of the Cre­ator. Since the man and the woman had just ripened to full sex­ual matu­rity, he filled their bod­ies with desire. As he con­jured up the usual imagery for this right of pas­sage, he learned they had received instruc­tions, from higher up, not to indulge such fan­tasies. Using their one weak­ness, the sep­a­ra­tion of the head from the heart, he cap­tured the heart and hid her from the head in a cloud of images. With the heart now emo­tion­ally bound to an image out there in Nature, Instinct pro­ceeded to cap­ture the atten­tion of the head with a plau­si­ble expla­na­tion of the events about to unfold. Thus did Instinct con­vince the head to encounter the image of this woman out there in Nature rather than within him­self as God had instructed. With the fall of the head, Instinct eas­ily took con­trol of their bod­ies, the ulti­mate source of consciousness.

In his unwill­ing­ness to set Truth free from Her bondage to the images of the mate­r­ial world, Instinct unwit­tingly par­tic­i­pated in the con­cep­tion of con­scious­ness. For­tu­nately, he never real­ized that Wis­dom can be freed from Her impris­on­ment in Nature, whether we act upon Her images in body or in spirit. He failed to rec­og­nize the inex­plic­a­ble bond between the head and the heart, that the head must not only pen­e­trate the heart to free Wis­dom, but also give him­self up com­pletely to her in order to free con­scious­ness from the clutches of Instinct.

He took advan­tage of the heart’s desire for unity with the head by fill­ing the head with his own insa­tiable desire for uncon­scious unity with Wis­dom. Hav­ing filled the head with images of the truth, he drove the head to make an unwise choice, one lack­ing feel­ing. After con­vinc­ing the head he could have Wis­dom if only he’d pen­e­trate Her image, Instinct tricked the heart into believ­ing she could have Con­scious­ness if only she’d allow His image to fill her with what she thought she lacked, the seeds of truth. Thus did he drive the heart to make an unrea­son­able choice, one lack­ing thought. Instinct’d played upon the head’s desire for wis­dom, and the heart’s, for enlight­en­ment, to keep them from con­ceiv­ing con­scious­ness. Only he failed.

With the con­cep­tion of con­scious­ness was Instinct fired from his post as guide supreme. For his trans­gres­sion was he ban­ished from Par­adise to assume the low­est form of life in all cre­ation. Thus did he cre­ate hell on earth, enmity between him­self and the heart.

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The Conception of Consciousness

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

As the sear­ing light of the Cre­ator pen­e­trates the uncon­scious­ness of our ani­mal natures, we become more aware of our des­tiny. We must obey Him Who cre­ated us, no longer instinc­tively, like an uncon­scious ani­mal, but will­ingly, as a con­scious human being. Whether we like it or not, we’ve been cre­ated to do His will, not ours.

We have been born solely for the ben­e­fit of each other, for the pur­pose of rais­ing every indi­vid­ual, or aspect of the body of mankind, from our ani­mal roots, to cre­ate a whole new branch on the evo­lu­tion­ary tree of life. To cre­ate this new species of truly human beings, we must give our­selves com­pletely, not only to each other, but to every aspect of cre­ation, like the leaves on a great tree. So do we, as we die to our selves year after year, make the great­est con­tri­bu­tion toward res­ur­rect­ing the image of God still trapped in the wood of the tree.

Only, I saw my life in the Navy as a step back into the night­mar­ish pre­his­tory of mankind, where the still invis­i­ble image of God lay hid­den within uncon­scious life forms. Since these life forms bore lit­tle resem­blance to the Cre­ator, many of them were scrapped in a supreme effort to cre­ate a being made entirely in the image ’n’ like­ness of the Orig­i­nal Being. And so did God, with the evo­lu­tion of our species, elect to turn the task over to us, to com­plete. In our inabil­ity to let go of our ani­mal her­itage, did we fall from the evo­lu­tion­ary tree, to a level of exis­tence that lay beneath our true dignity.

With the devel­op­ment of our capac­ity to think, were we freed from a purely instinc­tive response to the images of the imag­i­na­tion. Whereas our ances­tors had been pro­grammed to uncon­sciously mimic what they saw in the images that cropped up to guide them, we took the first con­scious step in the cre­ation of the image ’n’ like­ness of God in the flesh. As the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of mil­lions of years of evo­lu­tion, did we stum­ble upon the means to become aware of ourselves.

Out of the void, that has occu­pied the head since time immemo­r­ial, did we catch wind, one day, of a whis­per on the breath of a gen­tle breeze. As the wind spoke to us, we sensed that a momen­tous change was about to take place in our bod­ies. We’d been repro­grammed. No longer were we to take the images of the imag­i­na­tion, literally.

As Adam, was I over­come by an instinc­tive desire to pen­e­trate the hole which had opened up before me. Sucked into the spir­i­tual vac­uum of the void that now stood between me ’n’ the truth, did I fall vic­tim to a rapidly unfold­ing stream of images. There was I con­fronted by the unfath­omable wis­dom of my heart, in the guise of a naked woman. When my rod extended itself out from my body, like a ser­pent, its head from a tree, I lost my head—this newly won abil­ity of mine to choose the real thing over its image. Out of igno­rance, did I mis­take the act of pro­cre­ation for that of cre­at­ing con­scious­ness. I was bam­boo­zled by Instinct into believ­ing I would become all know­ing, like the Cre­ator, if I tasted the fruit of a sex­ual encounter with this image of God. Ignor­ing the admo­ni­tion to avoid tak­ing these images lit­er­ally, did I cave into the gen­tle per­sua­sion of the woman of my dreams. Thrust­ing my self into this fan­tasy, I gave my self up to her com­pletely. As I came, I saw heaven pen­e­trate the earth and sow the seeds for the cre­ation of a whole new species of ani­mal, one made in the image and like­ness of God. On the Eve of my human­ity, in the arms of a real flesh ’n’ blood woman, did I wake up to my own naked truth—that I had just par­tic­i­pated in the con­cep­tion of consciousness.

Con­fronted by the still invis­i­ble image of God, I real­ized my mis­take. Imme­di­ately, I blamed the woman who then laid the blame on Instinct, for it was he who had filled our bod­ies with the desire to become as one again, like God. As half a man, had I lost my head over the very heart, she had just deferred to the wrong­headed views of Instinct. And so did I learn that Instinct could no longer be trusted.

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The Transformation of Our Animal Natures

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Sir EJ Drury II

That Sun­day, at mass of all places, I stum­bled upon the same lit­tle olé gar­den of olive trees, I’d encoun­tered dur­ing that other hell­ishly dry period of my life, back in the spring of the year. Only this time, I saw Abra­ham stand­ing on the mount in front of a roughly hewn stone altar, offer­ing an ani­mal sac­ri­fice to Yah­weh as the priest ele­vated the host at the con­se­cra­tion. As the priest returned the host to the paten, I saw a pen­cil of light, much like a laser beam, shoot down from the heav­ens and into the host. Instantly, I knew that the bread had been trans­formed into the body of Christ—the vis­i­ble like­ness of the invis­i­ble image of God. And in that same instant, I saw the same pen­cil of light trans­late the ani­mal sac­ri­fice into an inscrip­tion on the face of the altar, where Abra­ham had just laid it.

With that, I real­ized the mass is about the trans­for­ma­tion of our ani­mal natures into human nature—the image into the like­ness of God.

Through the priest, do we offer our bod­ies to God via the bread, so that we may lit­er­ally be trans­formed into full human beings, the body of Christ. So too, do we imi­tate the priest (Abra­ham) when­ever we sac­ri­fice, on the roughly hewn altars of our daily lives, those ani­mal­is­tic ten­den­cies which no longer befit us as human beings. Only when we see the hand­writ­ing on the altar, and embrace the holo­graphic pre­scrip­tion etched there, in place of the sin offer­ing, can we truly give up such ani­mal­is­tic behavior.

Blinded by our mate­ri­al­is­tic myopia, we’re unable to see Christ in the bread—the full human being within our bod­ies. Like some of our ani­mal brethren, have we been endowed with a sixth sense, the abil­ity to imagine—to see a men­tal image of some­thing not present to the senses or never before wholly per­ceived in real­ity. Through the power of our imag­i­na­tions, or sym­bolic per­cep­tion, can we per­ceive the true nature of reality—the ulti­mate mean­ing of our existence.

For we’ve been called upon, by God, to wake up to our real fate—to drink from a cup that will not pass until we’ve sweat blood, or shed from our bod­ies, like crushed grapes, the wine of Diony­sus. Ever dri­ven by this intox­i­cat­ing potion to behave like an ani­mal instead of the human being we’re slowly becom­ing, must we empty our­selves of this poi­son, and humbly drink from this bit­ter cup the anti­dote, human blood. As the wine, which has been trans­formed into His blood, goes to our heads and fills our hearts, we’re momen­tar­ily ele­vated to human stature. So do we, in that one brief moment, taste the sweet­ness of our true des­tiny, the full­ness of our humanity.

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Stuck In Dry Dock

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Sir EJ Drury II

The more I thought about my sit­u­a­tion, though, the more depressed I grew. For I had so hoped it would all go away once I returned to Hawaii. But that was not to be, I would soon learn.

“Why?“ I shouted across the void, to no avail.

Left with no other recourse, I sat down, that evening, to write Mary a let­ter, for I felt as if God had aban­doned me. Or was it I who had aban­doned God? As I crum­bled under the weight of my new role as a sen­tinel for the house of Uncle Sam, I suc­cumbed to yet another depres­sion, a black hole of such mag­ni­tude, I was squeezed till there was noth­ing left of me. For was it not I who had to die? Yet I could tell Mary only so much, for fear of los­ing her or flar­ing up her thy­roid condition—a role I found so sti­fling, at times, I could’ve screamed, for it was all such a sham, a cover-​​up for what, I knew not.

“O where are you when I need you?“ I screamed out in anguish, over the con­di­tion of my soul, again to no avail.

I soon real­ized that I hadn’t aban­doned God. I just didn’t know myself well enough to get a han­dle on Who I Am from one moment to the next, much less from day to day or even from week to week, as it took a whole lot more energy, than I’d ever imag­ined, for my fac­ul­ties to raise these lit­tle rev­e­la­tions to the surface—energy that was not always avail­able to them, espe­cially if I were being forced to do other things with my time, things which had lit­tle or no bear­ing upon my depres­sion. And while I found lit­tle to con­sole me in these thoughts, I found even less in Mary’s response to my impas­sioned plea for help.

Dear Butch,

What’re you try­ing to do—give me a heart attack? I was so happy when I came home from work and found your let­ter wait­ing for me. When I learned you’d pulled back into Pearl Har­bor, I almost fainted. I had no idea you were due back in Hawaii so soon. I was so happy for you, I could’ve cried. It was all such a pleas­ant surprise.

Now to the next matter—please, Butch, don’t let your­self get so depressed. Find some­thing to occupy your mind so you won’t get this way. If noth­ing else, roam the beaches for me, so that you can tell me all about Hawaii. There, you’ll find so much to write about (Hint! Hint!) you won’t have time to get depressed.

I was quite upset when I learned you hadn’t received the cake or my let­ters. But I’ll make it up to you when you get home. Okay?

Thanks so much, Butch, for the great pic­tures of you, as they let me see a lit­tle more of who you really are.

Since you know how ner­vous I am, I hope you’ll at least let me know when you’re com­ing home so that my heart won’t fail me when I find you stand­ing at my door. Really, Butch, I’m dying to know when I’ll get to see you again. Please tell me. Okay?

Take care now, and get home soon.

Love,
Mary

While I wished she could have met me when the ship pulled into Pearl Har­bor, as did the wives of Greg ’n’ Harold, to share the splen­dor of this par­adise with me in per­son rather than via the mail, I see now, just how dis­as­trous that would have been. For I would only have got­ten lost in a rela­tion­ship I was no more pre­pared to enter than I had been, the Navy. In my need to return to the womb of the Great Mother, to find out Who I Really Am, I wound up in the same boat as the other guys on the ship. As much as I wanted to phys­i­cally pen­e­trate the womb, I was forced instead, to make the return to the fer­tile world of my own imag­i­na­tion where, as an inex­pe­ri­enced spe­lunker, I often got lost in the pit of despair when I couldn’t find any­thing to paint. And so there I was, stuck in dry dock with a skele­ton crew, while the ship under­went some much-​​needed repairs after her stormy affair with Typhon, the father of chimera.

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