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Critical Reviews
from The Healing Breath (reviewed by Vivienne Silver-Leigh)
Distilled Wisdom Offered to Young People
The author was twenty four in 1975 when he wrote this book, which consists of thirteen interviews with American psychologists, philosophers and writers who he deeply respected. . .He had lived for a year at the Esalen Institute, that powerhouse of transpersonal and personal development, where he met or heard of those he has now interviewed. Their distilled wisdom is offered here to other young people. I turned first to those names which I recognise as writers who have influenced me also. Jack Kornfield, Ram Dass, Arnold Mindell.
“On Spiritual Practice,” the first section, tells Jack Kornfieldís early life story, and how this brought him to the study of Meditation in Asia, training with monks and spending a year alone in a room in silence. The Question and answer format makes for lively reading. It brings out the practical information that young people might want to know with regard to what meditation can and cannot do for you.
Brother David Steindl-Rast on Finding your boat and Keeping it afloat, Starhawk on The Goddess and Ritual, and Richard Strozzi Heckler on Aikido and the Warrior Spirit, describe their involvement in Zen, womenís spirituality, and Aikido practice. Their names are new to me, but they are clearly people who have developed rich and intense lives.
The Second section, “On the Earth,” consists of different views on ecology. Sam Keen “staying in one place is whatís required to develop community and an ecologically valid style of life”Ö raises more questions than answers for the young adult seeking a way to live his life. Malidoma Some, born in West Africa and carried off from his tribe to be educated by harsh French Jesuits, talks about Ritual and Initiation. He eventually escaped the Jesuits and fled back to his tribe seven years later, literate but having missed out on the tribal initiation ceremony which takes six weeks. Now a Californian resident, and having belatedly endured the ritual of his tribe, he has become a writer and traveller, with a message for young people about the importance of staying close to the Earth. Joan Halifax, Buddhist, anthropologist and ecologist who has written about Shamanism and explored indigenous cultures throughout the world, has similar views on the need to keep in touch with nature: “Going into the wilderness is an extraordinary way to enter a world where our sense of self- the identity box we put ourselves in ñ starts to expand so we understand that we are one small creation which is also a part of nature”
In the third section, “On Social Action,” Arnold Mindell gives a telephone interview, due to his busy work schedule. It gives a flavour of the man and his varied activities: his writings on dreams and process-oriented psychology.
To interview Teru Imai, the author had to catch up with her on a walking pilgrimage, Global Walk for a Liveable World, in Pakistan at that moment. A Japanese-American woman, she walked across the USA., through Eastern Europe, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Japan. Her commitment and dedication to the life of the spirit, turning away from material comforts and experiencing the adventure of travelling light and creating a community wherever she walks is both extraordinary and inspiring.
John Robbins son of a well known American icecream company Director, walked away from his inheritance, took up farming, became a writer on food and healthy living, then founded the Earthsave Foundation, concerned with the environment, and animal rights. In this interview, he deeply impressed me with his integrity and clear thinking about the way to live spiritually, socially and practically in the world today. A worthy mentor.
“On Service and Spirit,” the fourth part, introduced me to Ondrea Levine, the wife of the well known writer Stephen Levine, the author of Who dies? They both have been involved deeply with work with the dying, counselling and healing. Ondrea, once a young sixties hippy trying out psychedelic drugs and a wild lifestyle, learned early that her vocation was to work with the elderly and the dying. She herself has experienced serious illnesses, and has learned “For every wound there is a healing period. If you are willing to look deeply into your wounds, you can see the grace in themÖ” Her conclusion from her lifeís lessons is that loving is the ultimate wisdom we need." Another inspiring mentor.
The final interview is with Ram Dass whose spiritual quest led him a long way from being a formal Freudian professor at Harvard. His early background focused on achievement in education, as in many Jewish families, but in the sixties he too found psychedelic drugs and also mystical literature. Confused, he went to India and studied with Maharajji, a Guru who inspired him and thousands of others. Ram Dass passes on the new perspectives he learned there, which led him to work with the dying and to appreciate the wisdom of the universe. The interview shows him as human, fallible and deeply spiritual, and well aware of the need for balance.
In the “Epilogue” the author reflects on how he has been affected by making these interviews and concludes: “Whatever we create must be created together, no one person has the answers.” Each contributor has learned from others to attain their own truth, to find a direction in life, including a spiritual path, as so many of us want to do. You can surely find a Mentor here to speed the process.
Reviewed in The Healing Breath
July 23, 2003
Bo Lozoff, author of We Are All Doing Time
Book Inspires Hope
The great problem of our age is that human life, the human journey, is very deep, while the dominant modern culture is not. Meetings with Mentors is a wonderful step in the right direction. We need young people asking questions about meaning and purpose, and we need elders responding from a variety of perspectives. We need to take time with each other, for each other, and that is exactly what Soren Gordhamer has taken upon himself to do. He and his book inspire my hope for his generation.
Mary Ruppenthal, from review in New Age Retailer
For Readers of all Ages
Readers of all ages will respond to the stories of the lives of these monks, shamans, witches, environmentalists, and meditation teachers. Many of them gave up the easy, predictable life to live their values, and some gave up status and wealth to travel their own, often-uncelebrated paths. The leaders Gordhamer interviewed invite us to question, dream, and risk being ourselves….Valuable for its premise of trusting one’s “inner-knowing” as guidance, there is a strong sense of grounding in Meetings with Mentors that is reassuring in times of uncertainty.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
On Spiritual Practice
Finding Your Boat and Keeping It Afloat with Brother David Steindl-Rast
Mentors, Meditation, and Initiation with Jack Kornfield
The Goddess and Ritual with Starhawk
Aikido, the Body, and the Warrior Spirit with Richard Strozzi Heckler
On the Earth
Mentorship, Vocation, and the Earth with Sam Keen
Indigenous Perspectives, Technology, and Simplicity with Chellis Glendinning
Ritual and Initiation with Malidoma SomÈ
Rites of Passage, Meditation, and the Wilderness with Joan Halifax
On Social Action
Conflict Resolution, the Leader, and Deep
Democracy with Arnold Mindell
Trusting the Vision with Teru Imai
Integrity, the Environment, and Social Action with John Robbins
On Service and Spirit
The Gift in the Wound with Ondrea Levine
Delighting in the Mystery of the Universe with Ram Dass
Epilogue
Endnotes
Selected Bibliography
Excerpts from “Meetings With Mentors”
From Interview with Jack Kornfield:
Jack Kornfield:
I think most young people face a very deep spiritual longing since the time of being a teenager. They look out at the world and ask, “What am I supposed to do with this? I see that the modern society around me has screwed up royally!” Any young person whose eyes are even a little open can see that. And then this person asks, "What can I do? What is my place in this? How can I show myself? What is my gift or my art in the world?
And elsewhere in Soren’s interview with him, Jack Kornfield says:
…this great heart of wisdom and compassion that we could call our Buddha-nature. We each have it, but we have grown up in a society that does not recognize it, or honor it, or empower it. To find a teacher, or a monastery, or a retreat center, or a mentor in a spiritual way is one of the most important tasks for young people. Look around the world and ask, “Who do I most respect on this Earth?” Then go and put your body near theirs for as long as you can. Shine their shoes, fill their cup with water . . . do whatever it takes to be near the people who embody that which you most value. Take them as teachers or mentors. Then go and get the spiritual training that is offered and bring it back into the world.
Soren: And for a young adult, you see that as one of the primary tasks?
Jack Kornfield: Yes, one of the most important tasks. Otherwise your life will feel like it does at the end of too many good parties.
From Interview with Ram Dass:
Soren: When do you feel like your life became interesting?
Ram Dass: When I took psychedelic mushrooms in 1961, that’s when my life turned around. That one experience changed my reality, because it showed me that I wasn’t who I thought I was. It showed me all these other dimensions of my being. So it shifted from 1961 to 1965 or ’66. By then I realized the limits of psychedelics. Not that they were necessarily limited, but the way we were using them was limited. We learned that set and setting were very critical in the nature of the experience. My feeling was that the set we had was not one that would allow us to optimize their sacramental use, since we were westerners and were not coming at it from the right place. By 1966 I had run out of my zeal for psychedelics as my major practice.
Soren: Did you feel that they weren’t a stabilizer, that they could take you somewhere but couldn’t allow you to stay there?
Ram Dass: Yes, basically. I could get high but I couldn’t get free. I couldn’t integrate the experiences into my full life. I looked at the people who were using psychedelics and they didn’t seem to be that much more evolved than anyone else when it came right down to it.
From Interview with Br. David Steindl-Rast:
Soren: For someone who is looking for a spiritual tradition to explore and follow, what advice would you give them? Would it be to focus on their peak experiences?
Br. David Steindl-Rast: To focus on their peak experiences could easily be misunderstood. The person could become preoccupied with getting a certain high. I would make reference to the peak experience by saying, “When you have experienced the bliss of being one with all, that is what it’s all about.” Those are the moments in life which have meaning. Those are the moments in which everything is experienced as being real. That’s what it is all about. Then the question is, “How can we make this a more permanent awareness? How can we live a life that embodies this experience, that carries this experience on? If this is our encounter with meaning, how do we make our life more meaningful?”
From Interview with Sam Keen:
Soren: You’ve talked before about the importance of exploring what myths we are living by, and finding out whether they are our own myths or ones we’ve taken on from the world around us.
Sam Keen: Yes, to be raised in a culture is to spend a lot of time living someone else’s story, until you discover that it’s not your own. This is true of any family or nation. For an entire lifetime we are always trying to separate our own story, our own aspirations and sense of importance from all those who surround us. It is a lifelong task.
From Interview with Starhawk:
Soren: It must have been hard for you to go against the norms of the mainstream culture.
Starhawk: Well, I never really wanted to be a part of the mainstream culture, so it didn’t affect me very much. I also came of age in the late sixties when everyone was going against the mainstream culture-so I guess the mainstream was to go against the mainstream. (Laughter) But my intention was not just to oppose what was, but to create what I wanted. I’ve always believed that if you want the world to be a certain way, you should act as if it were that way, and make it that way.
From interview with Joan Halifax:
Joan Halifax: For the last year I’ve lived in this house in Santa Fe, but before this, I lived in a teepee and a Mongolian yurt for about eleven years. Going into the wilderness is an extraordinary way to enter a world where our sense of self-the identity box we put ourselves in-starts to expand so we understand that we are one small creation which is also a part of nature.
Soren: And that sense of belonging is often most strongly felt while in the wilderness?
Joan Halifax: Yes. And I feel it is very important for my generation to do everything we can to protect and restore nature. Not only for ourselves but for all other species. We need a complex group of species around for us to survive.
From interview with Richard Strozzi Heckler:
Soren: It is often difficult to move towards those unpleasant areas, but that may be a part of the warrior’s spirit?
Richard Strozzi Heckler: Yes, we have a practice in aikido called “Irimi”. “Irimi” means entering, moving towards. If someone is attacking you, you move towards the attack. That’s very difficult to do. People usually want to move right, left, or back away. In this practice, as someone is coming at you, you move towards them. You may turn at the last minute, but the analog is that the solution to the problem may be in the problem itself. So as we open the body, we move towards or move into that which frightens us, into our contractions.
From interview with Chellis Glendinning:
Chellis Glendinning: To come back to the issue of young people and vision, for some of us the job is to enter a corporation and learn about hierarchy and power and computers and all that. How else are we going to get from here to there? Every single level has to be addressed. One person’s participation in the unfolding may be to learn computers and work in a corporation; what that person is challenged with is to keep the vision.
Soren: Then the question of how to keep the vision. How do we keep the vision when it is not being supported in the world around us?
Chellis Glendinning:, That’s where we come back to affinity groups or communities.
From interview with Malidoma Some:
Malidoma Some: So in working with young people, watch what they do, watch the kind of things they get interested in. They may start putting something together into a pyramid, they may climb trees, or they may do something with rocks in the stream. All these can be clues for initiatory rituals. These are the icons to gather and then take home and look at as a type of code you need to decipher. Keep checking to see what works. We need to give them a great deal of attention, which is something few young people get in this culture. Be at their school; don’t let them believe they are at your school. They can be at your school after you have learned from them.
From interview with Arnold Mindell:
Soren: What have you found by exploring conflict? In The Leader as Martial Artist you wrote, “The tolerance of chaos is the best preparation for the future.” For many of us, we don’t see the usefulness of chaos and conflict.
Arnold Mindell: ….When I say that chaos is the best preparation for learning how to do this work, I mean that it’s important to tolerate situations that in the beginning you don’t understand, instead of trying to stop them. Soren, that is a real crucial thing.
Soren: And seeing that the situation may call us to go through internal changes, as well as external changes?
Arnold Mindell: That’s right. Knowing that the difficulty we are in the middle of is calling for internal changes, and the relationship between the internal and external. In other words, you change inside and through that change you behave differently. This is a very big thing, and actually the internal changes will be the crucial ones in stopping the external things.