FINDING A SPIRITUAL HOMELAND

Has anyone found their spiritual homeland? And perhaps I should follow-upwith: what do I mean by such a paradoxical entity? For me, a spiritual homeland is a geographic - cultural location and ambience that nurtures, stimulates and challenges your mind- body- spirit. And in the process of engaging this human trinity, you discover or uncover your unique history, individual gifts and true passions. And staying this exploratory course - no matter how torturous nor how often it seems you are diverted or delayed - invariably results in both surface and deep eruptions of self-awareness and genuine expressions of creativity.

 The City as Muse

Now coming home spiritually, in an earthbound sense, has its flows and ebbs; like life, itself, the connection is not static. Let me provide a personal illustration. In my late 20s, I moved to New Orleans to start a doctoral program. Never having lived in the Deep South, (other than four months of Army Reserve Basic Training in Columbia, South Carolina), little did I know I was embarking on my "American in Cajun Paris" years. I had gotten off the New York City Type A Track and had landed in "The Big Easy." My intellectual and psychological orientation was overwhelmed by this sensual, playful and hedonistic world -- the Cajun and Creole cuisine (I can still salivate just thinking of oyster poboys, softshell crab and crawfish etouffe), Mardi Gras Madness and the ever present music, at Jazz Fest, on French Quarter streets, in steamy clubs.
 And speaking of steamy, the heat and humidity, the sultry sweat, the crackle of lightning and torrential thunderstorms, rivers straining against levees...in New Orleans weather and water enveloped you. This includes having my ground floor apartment flooded with 12" of water twice in three years by "once in a hundred year" floods. You know things were not looking good when I had to park my car 1/4 mile from the house and to wade home waist deep in the big muddy. And, then, upon opening the front door, I see my bathroom slippers floating in the living room. (Hey, the Louisiana Tourist Commission tried to start a state slogan similar to "Virginia Is For Lovers." Their brainstorm: "Louisiana: A Dream State." You know where that was headed -- "A Wet Dream State." The promotion disappeared quickly.)
 Of course, speaking of wet dreams, there were those wonderful New Orleans women in all their shapes and sizes, personalities and colors and colorful personalities. And as one who was just starting to come out of the creative closet, I was particularly drawn to the fertile - mind as much as body - female. (My brother, a few years back, upon seeing all the art on my walls, courtesy of former loves, exclaimed, "Mark, you don't collect art...you collect artists!" Guilty as charged.)
 And finally, the "third world" and devil may care spirit of "The Crescent City" fostered my journey in two other ways. The cost of living in New Orleans is much less than where I am now - Washington, DC. I often lament: "It makes perfect sense from a real estate perspective to have left New Orleans. I have almost ten times less square foot space and I'm only paying $500/month more for rent. Though I really shouldn't complain. This includes an off street parking space behind the building.
 So in "The Big Easy" I didn't have to work a full-time private practice. Once I had burnt out and dropped out of academia, I could make new career tracks. With a good idea and a little chutzpah, you can trailblaze through the primordial swamp. I broke into radio, as well as Cable and Public Television; became known as "The Stress Doc." I built on my university teaching experience to become a workshop leader and convention speaker. Of course, now it was no longer just "The Big Easy," but also a lot of blood, sweat and tears along the swamp trail. Still, I was pushing the outer and inner envelope, breaking down the fearful, defensive crust that, for years, kept me from embracing and realizing my individual essence.

In Transition

New Orleans was my first spiritual homeland. A sixteen year run. But by the end of the 80s, with the loss of key friends to migration, the prolonged economic hard times for the city and a sense of being adrift personally, there were no more mountains to climb in the bayou. An urge for geographic synthesis, as well as a desire to reestablish more northeast roots, propelled me to "the nation's capital." As I've written, if New York City and New Orleans had a baby...it would look like Washington, DC. (Of course, I can't vouch for its legitimacy.)
 Now Washington has certainly honed my skills as a consultant and rough and tumble workshop leader, including a tour as a stress and violence prevention consultant for the US Postal Service. But DC is a fairly bureaucratic state (of mind); some might say a political wasteland, more than a spiritual homeland. Actually, the internet and AOL have become my virtual homeland. In reality, though, something was missing. And then a recent vacation to Santa Fe, Taos and, finally, to Sedona, AZ...And within 24 hours, I knew something deep within was stirring.

Painting the Way to Sedona

Sedona had a style and substance I desire in a partner: an aesthetic and sensual presence along with "a heart that sings and a mind that dances." After seven years of wandering in the Washington, DC political badlands, my intuitive sense told me I would soon be "coming home" again. Let me illuminate the process. Two long-time friends and I had spent a day in the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest before arriving in Sedona. The desert surrounds you - low sloping, soft, voluptuously curved mesas; layers of pastel- colored sediment painted and sculpted by the ultimate artist. It's an endlessly expansive, panoramic palette. And the designs, and the heat, are both above and below. The mostly-parched arroyos, with their cracked, diamondback patterns, appear to silently glide under your feet. The patches of slightly moist, smooth clay from the last brief rainfall...Did I want war paint or a mud bath? A tough choice.
 Our senses were definitely primed for Sedona. After nonstop driving, closing in on our destination, bouncing along a fairly abandoned dirt road, in the fading sunset, we were suddenly stopped short. In our sightline, the massive, green shrubbed, multicolored and layered rock formations that stand sentinel over deep, lush, hauntingly quiet Oak Creek Canyon.

The First Supper

If this was a "Yin," our next experience was a "Yang." In a late dinner, we encountered two Southern California women who spoke of their psychic readings and filled our heads with the lore of a number of locals and tourists - the indigenous "Nessie," the transformational Vortex. New Age metaphysicists believe Sedona and the surrounding canyons possess some of the dozen or so "power points" of the earth. There are vortices (singular, vortex: a whirling mass of energy that draws into its current everything that surrounds it) below the earth which, allegedly, give off energy, heighten creativity and instill inner peace. Well, seeing one of the women in action, I'm not sure about creativity or serenity, but energy...this woman talked incessantly. I had to use some of my best couple counseling skills just to allow her friend to get in a word.
 Now I must confess, I'm a skeptic when it comes to some of the metaphysical mumbo- jumbo. Still, I did go for a reading from a spiritual healer. However, when she told me, based on the vibrations she received when I said my name that, in my past life, I was a seal fisherman in Alaska...let's just say we didn't quite connect. Past lives theory and therapy, when based on substantive exploration, for me, is an attempt to construct a meaningful belief system -- not unlike the purpose of Greek mythology or, even, Freudian psychoanalytic theory. That is, it can provide lessons, often symbolic or
 metaphorical, for understanding universal conflicts and human temptations, as well as providing guidelines for grappling with justice, sexual passion and ethics in a world that often seems beyond our comprehension and control. (Though, for me, Greek mythology, has a much higher literary value. As for Freudian theory, I plead the fifth... Hey, it helps pay my bills. As past life regression theory does for its practitioners.)

Vortex Vision

While skeptical, at the same time, I have a pretty good pedigree when it comes to mystical-like experiences. (See my past column on "Creative Burnout," on my website -- http://www.stressdoc.com -- or on AOL, Keyword: Stress Doc.) I know there are much deeper levels of awareness than which our ego or everyday consciousness allows. I get perturbed, though, when I see people searching for that vortex moment...like trying to hit on the psychic lottery. Too many want to project their, as yet, unrealized creative needs and drives onto some outside incarnation that will just visit them. While most want to be visionary, many forget there's often a fine line between vision and hallucination.
 Discovering or recharging one's creativity is a profoundly human process. Of course, it involves being open to the obscure and "the obvious." It's also a process of exercising aptitudes and natural gifts along with encountering - often grieving - one's history. Perhaps most important, is the capacity to risk failure and to withstand disapproval and separation anxiety. That is, to pursue an individual path, however lonely or frustrating, that seems to defy the traditional, expected or familiar. And, surely, perspiration, not
 just inspiration is crucial - what I call persisting in one's headwork, heartwork and homework. And finally, there is that inspiration, from a muse, a place, a source of life greater than one's individual self.

Spiritual Homestretch

The key question: why is my intuitive side drawn to Sedona, AZ? I've dubbed Sedona the "rebirthplace of the 60s." But I believe the heartfelt connection goes beyond nostalgia and the days of having a full head of hair. And certainly deeper than some of the more lightweight metaphysical principles I met up with. Despite my skepticism, I must admit, during our first hike, after briefly cruising some of the town, there was an immediate energy surge. My friend, Burt, observed that I hadn't been so manic since our 1970 hitchhiking and backpacking trip through Europe. "Aha," you say. The higher power point, "The Vortex," was at work despite my pedestrian cynicism (Actually, one spiritual seeker warned us against climbing to the top of Bell Rock as the power of the vortex would just overwhelm us. You know which rock we climbed.)

Articulating the Ineffable

Let me try an abstract yet down-to-earth interpretation. Encountering Sedona reminded me of discovering, a dozen years ago, the work of the controversial early 20th century Austrian artist, Egon Schiele. I had never before seen a painter integrate themes of sensuality, sexuality, aggression, poignant and angst-ridden expressive realism along with such strikingly angular lines and moody colors. A tremendous and energetic sensation of enlightenment hit me: "Oh, so that's what all those elements (within myself) look and feel like."
 In analogous fashion, Sedona was a physical and psychological bridge between my inner dreams and real world desires. My resonant "aha" was discovering a small community that was integrated with its natural, and naturally beautiful, surroundings. (Or, even better, a community that was dominated by the dramatic landscape.) In five to ten minutes you can go (to quote from Sedona: A Pictorial Guidebook) from desert-like terrain to starkly beautiful Red Rock Country, with its "massive buttes, precipitous cliffs, towering spires and rugged canyons...Much of its semi-arid terrain is bare, reddish rock."

Seeing Red, Moving Up

Being an Aries, a fire sign, and a "red" in coloring and temperament, perhaps I was vibrating with the simpatico terrain. We know that colors affect our perceptions and mood. Red is associated in humans with power, vitality and the competitive urge. Could this influence my heightened arousal level?
 Now ten minutes northward from Sedona brings you another landscape and mindscape -- Oak Creek Canyon. The top of the canyon is 7,000 feet above sea level compared to Sedona's 4,000 foot altitude. Here there is lush vegetation, a year round flowing stream, even dark green Ponderosa Pine forests. The rapidly changing altitude, cooler climate and kaleidoscopic rock formations definitely did a number on my senses. Also, one reason I so resonate with mountains now is because of my first spiritual homeland. New Orleans was a great place to "come out of the creative closet," but it left me seasonally and altitudinally deprived. Anyway, Sedona and environs definitely illumined a Stress Doc maxim: "Fireproof your life with variety!"

Communal Attraction and Repulsion

And, finally, there were the people -- so open and friendly. A good number of writers, artists, sculptors, in addition to middle age and New Age psychics and healers. (Hey, in the "The Big Easy" I definitely hung with some oddballs and outcasts. I can do this scene.) And as an online friend observed, upon hearing some of my "metaphysical community" skepticism: "At least these folks are still searching." I agree. Better to be on a journey that explores and extends the inner and outer envelopes than to believe you
 have all the right answers.
 Or, even more sad, to be trapped in a burnout box - no matter how elaborate or prestigious - that's psychologically numbing or that's providing "security" in exchange for rapidly receding options, energy and hope. I call this when you're one-time niche of success has you stuck in the ditch of excess. Hey...you're at a crossroads!
 While attracted to a creative colony, perhaps, as I do more and more writing, there's simultaneously a need for increasing solitude and open spaces; a wish to let my inner heart and soul romp free; to seek momentary escape from the shadowy writer's cave in absolute, other worldly beauty. Hey, Stress Doc, enough with the analysis, already.
 So, is it real or is it Vortex? You know what...who cares. It's Sedona! And I will have more.