Detail from In The Many Windows of the Dream Time of Mother Earth, J. Rael, 2005
I just came across Kosmos: Journal of Global Transformation in the past few months and we are so excited and honored to have this essay published in this journal with such a needed and important focus. You need to set up an account to view our article, but it is free of charge and Kosmos does not have any advertising in it – just pure ideas of goodness & transformation! I loved the first article I read, “What if the Virus is the Medicine: Humanity’s Next Initiation,” by Julia Hartsell & Jonathan Hadas Edwards – it seemed so resonant with the work that Joseph & I have been doing in our book, Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into A Living Spirituality. Then I read Martin Winiecki’s “Searching for the Anti-Virus: Covid-19 as Quantum Phenomenon,” which was also very good and features images from Jung’s Red Book along the margin of the page.
This current issue of Kosmos: Journal of Global Transformation has a beautiful essay by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, “The Labyrinth and the Black Madonna: Love and Earth Magic.” Vaughan-Lee, a Sufi mystic, is a wonderful writer, whose work I discovered late in the game of writing our last book, we cite his work a few times. He has written a number of great books, including The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul and Spiritual Ecology: the Cry of the Earth. Take a look at this and some of the other great articles as well in this issue of Kosmos, In the Labyrinth: Pathways to Healing.
“We are living in disruptive times, yet there have been other times as equally disruptive. People lived through pandemics, plagues, pestilence, famines, natural disasters, slavery, genocide, oppression, and wars upon wars. How did they do it? I believe there is a secret well of resilience and wisdom within the human being—located in the heart—where we find our medicine.” (Kopacz & Rael)
Binding Sites of Coronavirus COVID-19, D. Kopacz, 2020Dream of a Bat, D. Kopacz 2020
Mental Contagion is publishing online some of its archive. Coniunctionis: Trauma, Transformation & Punk Rock was a column that I wrote from 2000 – 2002. My sister, Karen Kopacz started editing and publishing Mental Contagion and brought together a great group of writers, including Gene Dillon, Wendy Lewis, Dean Pajevic, and Eric Hoffman, as well as many others over the years.
.4 : How Can Ugliness and Disharmony, Which Are the Content of Tragic Myth [and punk rock], Inspire Esthetic Delight?” (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part I) (February, 2001)
.5 : Why is Revolt Necessary? (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part II) (March, 2001)
.6 : Is Alienation Necessary for Creativity? (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part III) (April, 2001)
.7 :Is There an Inside/Outside? (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part IV) (May, 2001)
.8 : What is the Meaning of Ian Curtis’ Death? Where is the line between the Art Object and the Artist? (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part V) (June, 2001)
.9 : What is Punk Rock? What is Not Punk Rock? (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part VI) (July, 2001)
.10: What Does the Shadow Know? (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part VII) (August, 2001)
.11: What is the Relationship Between Music and Religion? (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part VIII) (September, 2001)
.12: What Are We to Do? Quotations (October, 2001)
I: Interview: Ouroboros (Houston) by David Kopacz – for Mental Contagion (MC) (November, 2001)
.13: What Does Religion have to do with Rock? A review of Dan Graham’s Rock My Religion(December, 2001)
.14: What Did You See There? Ian Curtis and the Visionary Quest of the Shaman (Joy Division, Punk Rock, Violence, Despair & Transformation Part IX) (January, 2002)
I: Interview: Poster Children by David Kopacz (With Special Guests Doug McCarver and Mike Barry) (February 2002)
.15: Afterwords
CONIUNCTIONIS.0
On stranger waves, the lows and highsOur vision touched the sky. “A Means to an End,” Joy Division, Closer, 1980.
There is a movement within me, a current and flow that lives through me. I have felt the pull to be inside, where everything is happening. I have felt the pull to be outside of it all, where nothing is happening. These essays, written between 2000-2002 for the online journal Mental Contagion, are attempts to understand the inside and the outside and the power that flows from outside to inside and from inside to outside. These essays are investigations into the nature of reality through Joy Division, trauma, transformation, and punk rock.
There is a pull that some people feel, to go deeply inward, sometimes that pull is a push, from alienation or trauma in the outer world. Going into this inner wilderness is a kind of darkness and it can overlap with despair. Maybe despair is the cause of the inwardness or maybe despair is a station along the path of inwardness, like a phase of grief that one goes through, leaving the communal and collective world and entering into the sacred inner cave of consciousness and being. Jung wrote,
“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. The loneliness began with the experiences of my early dreams, and reached its climax at the time I was working on the unconscious. . . .
It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. If fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum,” (Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 356).
For Jung, this loneliness was difficult to bear, but it was a source of learning and experience that he would not have traded for fitting in. Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, also found a creativity in the darkness and the loneliness and he sent back missives from the depths, as a lone astronaut exploring space might send back scratchy transmissions from another galaxy:
“You’ve been seeking things in darkness, not in learning” (No Love Lost)
“I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand. Could these sensation make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?These sensations barely interest me for another day I’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling, take the shock away” (Disorder)
Depending on how this pull is engaged in, one goes on an inner journey. If one goes deep enough, there is an inner well of transformation, drinking that water of the deep self is like a form of rebirth, but rebirth infers that there has been a death. Without guidance, many are lost on this path and there is untold loss of human potential. Yet, these brave souls, these inner warriors, can serve as heroes as well as cautionary tales. To give one’s self over to this inner secret is like taking the steps of what Joseph Campbell called the “Hero’s Journey,” with steps of 1) separating from the everyday world; 2) entering into a magical world or the underworld and going through an initiation and transformation into a new way of being; and 3) a return and reintegration into society. Jung’s process of individuation would say that the hero brings back energy and ideas from the collective unconscious, and yet the hero bringing this back is alone, because no one else made that journey and no one else yet understands the beauty and value of what the hero or heroine has brought back from the unconscious into the light of day. Joseph Campbell felt that the hero is rejected by society, because he or she has gone places that most people do not know or understand. Herman Hesse, in Steppenwolf, wrote of a similar concept, that creativity is infused into society by the lone wolf, the liminal being, the misfit.
“We are psychiatrists; we are German; we have read Nietzsche; we know that to gaze too long at monsters is to risk becoming one – that is what we get paid for,” (Huelsenbeck, quoted in Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces, 226).
I was a young psychiatrist when I was writing these columns and I was trying to find my path as an artist, a writer, a professional and a person. I was not German, but I had read Nietzsche, Jung, and a number of other writers you’ll find in these pages. I had listened to Joy Division and punk rock and post-punk. I was gazing at monsters, both inner and outer, as Richard Huelsenbeck, the Dadaist Psychiatrist.
These essays were about me trying to figure some things out, but they are really more explorations than answers. Over the years, the topics in these essays have resurfaced and recurred in my life in various ways. After a period of some years, I found that I had more to write on these topics and began writing additional columns.
For the purpose of this archival collection, I have just collected those essays published in Mental Contagion 2000 – 2002. Post 9/11/2001, I mostly shifted to doing interviews for the column, for this collection I have kept just a few interviews as many of them seem more specific to that time and that place (Champain-Urbana, Illinois). You can read more recent Coniunctionis essays on my blogBeing Fully Human. My website www.davidkopacz.com also has the original Coniunctionis essays, along with artwork, photography, poetry, publications, and other work. The work of Coniunctionis prefigures my current work with Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) and has continued to influence my writing and published work:
“If American democracy fails, the ultimate cause will not be a foreign invasion or the power of big money or the greed and dishonesty of some elected officials or a military coup or the internal communist/ socialist/fascist takeover that keeps some Americans awake at night. It will happen because we—you and I—became fearful of each other, of our differences and of the future, that we unraveled the civic community on which democracy depends, losing our power to resist all that threatens it and call it back to its highest form.”
Parker Palmer, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Couraged to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, p. 9.
“I am you and you are me. There’s only one being here, and even though you have a different body, I have a different body, and a different moment, but we are in this together, you know, and people don’t understand that.”
Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow)
(from Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into a Living Spirituality, pg. 379)
“My elders are convinced that the West is as endangered as the indigenous cultures it decimated in the name of colonialism. There is no doubt that, at this time in history, Western civilization is suffering from a great sickness of the soul. The West’s progressive turning away from functioning spiritual values; its total disregard for the environment and the protection of natural resources; the violence of inner cities with their problems of poverty, drugs, and crime; spiraling unemployment and economic disarray; and growing intolerance toward people of color and the values of other cultures— all of these trends, if unchecked, will eventually bring about a terrible self-destruction . . . the only possible hope is self-transformation.”
Malidoma Patrice Somé, Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman, 1.
In this week’s episode David Kopacz speaks with Joanna about: encouraging children to plant green living things; dancing with the trees; the dormant seed inside oneself; walking the medicine wheel; becoming a true human being; we are medicine bags; being and vibration; the cycle of rejuvenation; separation is illness, healing is coming back together; the archetypal template of spiritual democracy; the Refounding Mothers of Democracy; coming home to peace.“
Joanna had taken a break for a while and this was her first podcast interview, or gaialogue in a few months, so it was extra special. Thanks to Joanna Harcourt-Smith and co-producer, José Luis Gómez Soler. Here are Joanna’s and José’s bios, take a listen to my interview and check out the many other great podcasts, such as with Steven Herrmann, Charles Eisenstein, Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, Richard Katz, Neela Bhattacharya Saxena, Roshi Joan Halifax, Francoise Bourzat, Lyla June Johnston, and many, many others…
Joanna was born high up in the Swiss mountains on a snowy January evening. She grew up in Paris and speaks 5 languages. School was boring but her curiosity about life was not extinguished by the dullness of the education system. Nature was her teacher, trees, horses, dogs and the ocean gave her a sense of belonging that she did not feel within her birth family.
Joanna turned fourteen in 1960, she was in love with Marlon Brando and Rock and Roll. During her adolescence she was torn between a desire to die and an intense love of life. Because she felt lost between despair and passion she wrote poetry and continues to do so up to this day. During the early 1960s she lived in Spain and wrote “The Little Green Book” an answer to Mao Tse Tong’s “Little Red Book”. The Book was published in 4 languages and widely sold in France, the Netherlands, England and Germany.
In 1968 moved by the music of the times and the spirit of revolution sweeping through her generation she emigrated to the United States. Her exploration of mind liberating substances led her to find Dr. Timothy Leary who was a fugitive from prison in the US. They became in love and were kidnapped by American authorities in Afghanistan and returned to California where Timothy Leary went back to prison to serve a sentence of possession of 0.01 grams of marijuana. During TL’s three and a half years in prison Joanna worked tirelessly to secure his release, she lived in San Francisco where she collaborated, published and distributed the 6 books he wrote in prison. In addition, Joanna traveled to England, Italy and across the United states lecturing about the imprisonment of Dr. Leary.
In 1977 Timothy and Joanna’s love affair came to an end after he was released from prison. She then went down to the Caribbean and bough a magnificent wooden sailboat named Kentra. For several years she lived on her boat and sailed around the islands attempting to heal her broken heart. In 1983 she returned to the United States, surrendered herself into the path of life long sobriety and became a celebrated chef in Philadelphia and Santa Fe.
She practices Buddhism and the elusive way of loving kindness and compassion mainly for herself and for others around her. Joanna’s great question in life is “What is true Kindness?”
In October 2013 Joanna published a memoir about her adventures with Timothy Leary entitled “Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary” . Her book been has been optioned by the Oscar winner director Errol Morris. Filming began in December 2019.
She his currently writing another book entitled “Change your beliefs, change your life” Surviving Timothy Leary“.
She is also featured in Gay Dillingham’s movie “Dying to Know”, a documentary about Leary and Ram Dass’ lifelong exploration and friendship.
She is the author of several articles published in the online magazine “Reality Sandwich”.
She likes to remember that “if you don’t like the media, be the media”.
Life is short, but it’s wide!
José Luis Gómez Soler is the co-producer of Future Primitive. Since 2006 he has supported the podcast with research, recording, guest coordination and audio editing of these wonderful episodes.
José Luis studied Audiovisual Media Studies at the University of Sevilla, Spain. Since a young age, he has been deeply interested in mysticism and Nature.
David and Suzanne continue their moving discussion around ‘doing better than rushing to return to normal’ after things shift once again with COVID 19.
This episode dwells in the land of opportunity: What could things look like for us as a people, a world, an environment should we thoughtfully, purposefully move with the new things ushered in despite the chaos vs desperately trying to ‘get back’ to what was once upon a time—back then?
There is such beauty in their words!
I will borrow a saying from David: “Like pinatas of wisdom…”
Suzanne Richman is an education consultant, had founding roles within Goddard College in Vermont, she has expertise and passions within the realms of trauma, grief, social activism. She is a self-confessed recovering academic. You can contact Suzanne at : Suzannehummingbird@gmail.com.
David Kopacz is a psychiatrist, a painter and an author. He lives in Seattle where he does transformation work with veterans and their stories. He is a TLA member.
Suzanne Richman is a passionate teacher within such realms as: Ethnobotany, Social and Ecological Medicine, Community Health Systems, Trauma and Transformational Leadership. She lives in Vermont, and is a TLA member. Suzannehummingbird@gmail.com.
My friend John Riggs just published ClearCut – The Wages of Dominion, a book that is both beautiful and terrible – it documents, bears witness to, clear cutting in the Northwest United States. John is facing the same problem that a lot of writers and artists are facing now – how to promote your work during a pandemic when you cannot go out and meet and speak with people. Consider buying his book to support the important work he is doing and his witnessing for the Earth.
John, a photographer by trade, starts the book with a guided meditation, guiding us through an invitation to enter into our complicity, then looking for a way forward, searching for the pathways of making things right, through forgiveness and then to the choice. John’s exhibition prior to ClearCut – The Wages of Dominion, was “Entering Old Growth – Meditations from the Ancient Rain Forest of the Pacific Northwest.” While most of the images in ClearCut are stark, black & white photos of forests that are reminiscent of World War I trenches, the aftermaths of battlefields, or tragic natural disasters, he reminds us of hope, now and again, like the growth that occurs on stumps, by including for contrast some of his color photos from his previous exhibition.
I can relate to John’s journey through the beauty of the forest only to feel one’s soul has fled one’s body upon stumbling across clearcut forest. When I graduated from college, I received a backpack as a graduation gift, bought a Greyhound Bus ticket from Chicago to Seattle, and spent 2 weeks solo backpacking through some of the land that John documents. I entered the forest at Sol Duc, hiked up over the ridge, and walked down toward highway 101, planning to go up to Forks and out to the coast. As I came out of the National Park and into the National Forest, I had to walk through miles of clearcut forest and it was inconceivable to me how anyone could use the forest in this manner. I won’t even try to put it into words – in fact, there is no need to, just look at John’s photos and you will feel it.
John is a poet and a healer as well as a photographer. He guides us through a meditation on who we are and how society is the way it is, and how we destroy ancient forests for our convenience and economic growth. To sit and bear witness with the destruction of a clearcut forest is to hear a message.
“In this vast and sudden transition moment there is a message coming our way. It is not my message; it is our loving mother, the living planet Gaia speaking. Speaking directly to us, speaking through many stern voices today, in many languages, shaking us all to wake up. They are all saying the same thing: ‘despair is the enemy, not others.'”
There is a terrible beauty in the book, but it is also a book about destruction and the selfishness that arises when we believe that the world is a thing for us to use and abuse at our whims. The mindset of separation and dualism, of us and them, naturally, or perhaps we could say unnaturally, leads to conflict, strife, destruction, and war – war between humans, but also the war of humans against nature. This mindset of separation is what allows us to treat other people as “things” and to treat the natural world without love and caring.
“ClearCut is an apt metaphor for our current human condition, and this exhibition is a guided meditation, a journey through despair to recognition and acceptance of our personal complicity in the fatal human character flaw of dominion. We pay a brief visit to the waystation of guilt and blame, and then on to the discovery of an urgent message our mother Gaia has been trying to deliver to us for generations: that the evolution of human consciousness must continue beyond dominion into communion if She – if we – are to continue receiving the gift of life and passing that gift along to our children and grandchildren.”
John Riggs, Photo by Ed Nelson
John is a hero as well as a photographer, a documenter, a witness, a poet, and a healer. In Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the hero ventures off into an unknown world – for John that was into the beauty of the ancient rain forest – but he found an abyss there, a dark night of the soul, the clearcut destruction. Campbell taught that as the hero or heroine returns from their journey, back into society, they find that the wisdom of their message is rejected by society. Will we reject John’s message he is bringing us from Gaia, our Mother Earth – or will we go through the stages he outlines, through guilt, grief, atonement and reparations so that we can make a choice to follow the path of making things right?
ClearCut – The Wages of Dominion challenges us, shows us the end result of our separation mindset and invites us to move from dominion to communion.
Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) speaks on initiation and becoming medicine, joined by David Kopacz, MD at Joseph’s home in New Mexico. This video features an initiation ceremony in which Joseph tells the story of eagle-man who is initiated into becoming a true human being by the ancient one. The idea of becoming medicine is developed in the book, Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into a Living Spirituality by David R. Kopacz, MD & Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow).
You can watch the video through my website. We have a couple of other videos we will be releasing soon…
Being Fully Human 