In my previous blog posting, I offered an example, from my own life, of what the philosopher Martin Buber calls a sign. We must remember that a sign is not an objective occurrence that holds the same meaning for everyone. When the Thou of the universe speaks, according to Buber, it is for your ears only. I mention all of this in the hope that you will become more attuned to the signs that are desperately seeking to speak to you.

I shall now offer another example. I’ll preface my remarks by saying that a few years ago I had been very concerned with the question of how to be more effective with my philosophical counseling. I found that my clients would often reach a certain point in their self-development and then become stuck. I pondered why this was so, and what could I do to help them to become unstuck. The answer, if it was a sign from above, took the form of a rather odd incident. Once again, it involved an encounter with the feminine, only this time not in the form of an old newspaper photograph, but of an actual woman on a bicycle. I suspect that Sophia, the goddess of wisdom, can transfigure herself into just the right incarnation, as a teaching device. I wouldn’t put it past her. And so here is what happened…

A few summers ago, on a Saturday afternoon. I was taking a leisurely walk to a neighborhood cafe that was hosting a music festival. I was almost there, when I heard a woman bicyclist, in her young thirties, with bleach-blond hair, calling to me for help, from the across the street. I crossed the street, whereupon she showed me that she could not ride her bicycle home because a plastic bottle of Pepsi had gotten wedged between the front wheel and the frame of the bicycle. I asked her how it had gotten there. She explained that she had been riding with a small plastic bag of groceries, which included the plastic bottle, hanging over handle bar of the bicycle and when the bag hit the wheel, the bottle miraculously got lodged there, bringing the wheel and the bicycle to a standstill. I then tried to dislodge the soda bottle. I pulled and tugged for a few minutes, but it was absolutely stuck. The problem was that I couldn’t get a good grip on it, for only the tapered side with the cap protruded, and only a few of inches.

Then eureka! The solution dawned on me. I asked her permission to turn the knob of the bottle, emptying the contents. She agreed. I opened it and the soda quickly sprayed out like a fire hydrant. It was then very easy to dislodge the deflated bottle. She was relieved and thanked me. At that moment she took out from her shopping bag another bottle of Pepsi. For a moment it seemed like she was going to offer me some, but instead she took a swig before placing the bottle back into her shopping bag. She then lit herself a cigarette.

She expressed to me a combination of perplexity and astonishment that she had not arrived at the solution to the bottle problem herself, for she certainly seemed intelligent enough. As we talked, I too became perplexed over why the solution hadn’t occurred to her. At that moment, I knew that I was entering into a mystery. Here, again, was what Buber called a “sign,” this time taking the form of a rather odd incident. What, though, was the Thou saying to me?

I previously stated that I had been concerned with the problem of counseling. How could I help people who were stuck? Here, then, was the answer to my question. I can only express what I saw as an extended metaphor: What retards us on our journey through life is our attachment to the mother. I do not mean “mother” in the literal sense. I mean it in the way that the psychologist C.G. Jung meant it, as a symbol, or an archetype, for a certain reality that we we seek. The mother symbolizes life as sweet, easy, no work, a free ride. The sweet soft drink, that the bicyclist was carrying home with her, symbolized her attachment to the mother archetype.

The cosmic irony of the situation was that the very thing that she hoped would make her journey through life an easy one (symbolized by the bottle of soda), was what prevented her from getting anywhere in life, quite literally. The reason why the solution did not occur to her was that giving up mother (symbolized by letting the soda pour on to the concrete) was the very thing she was unwilling to do.

And so that brings us to the question of why people are stuck. Not everyone is stuck for the reason I suggested, but a great many are. Quite often, the mother wears the aspect of comfort and security. A man or a woman cannot leave a job they hate because the corporation for which they work promises to take care of them. A company like IBM then becomes “Big Mama.” On a more universal level, the mother symbolizes those habits, routines, and ways of seeing life that we know are long outmoded and which feel very confining, but which we cannot abandon. We cannot abandon them because they feel comfortable and secure, as is the realm of the mother.

I realized that to help my clients get anywhere in life, I would need to encourage them to throw away away their bottles, whether they be baby bottles, soda bottles, or liquor bottles. It would mean for them, symbolically speaking, to kiss mom goodbye and leave home. Again, I am speaking symbolically, not about one’s real mother, but about the mother archetype. As to how I have finally been able to help my clients to leave home is another story.

There is a force in the universe — whether we call it God, the light of truth, or by some other name — that is continually trying to communicate with each of us. Whatever it may be, it does not speak English. Rather, it communicates through signs. At least, that is the term that the philosopher Martin Buber used. Buber did not offer examples, but I would say that a sign could be, for example, a haunting dream, a message on the side of a bus that communicates far more than it was intended to, the look of a child, or a wrong turn down an unfamiliar street. I shall offer here an example of a sign, from my own life.

It was about twenty years ago, around 1988, on a windy day either in late February or early March, that I took my car into a service station to be repaired. It was located on one of Binghamton’s oddest looking dead-end streets, inhabited by a newspaper recycling business, a motorcycle shop, a plate glass repair, a Howard Johnson’s restaurant, and other such commercial ventures that looked like they hadn’t changed the slightest in the last fifty years. Rather than calling a friend or a taxi, I decided to get some exercise and walk home. Perhaps, it was the setting sun over the odd looking landscape, but I was beginning to get a feeling of being alone, unknown and unrecognized. Whatever fame that I had sought, over the years, had eluded me, and I felt “in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes.”

To return home, I had to cross Route 17. There is a long and narrow pedestrian bridge that crosses over that highway. I got about halfway across the bridge when I saw a sheet from an old newspaper. I can’t remember whether it was from the Daily News, the Post, or the Herald Tribune, but I do remember that it was from the early 1960s. How could a paper from that long ago could have gotten there, and why hadn’t the elements destroyed it by now? I conjectured that, somehow, it must have blown there from the newspaper recycling plant. Why, though, would it take them about 25 years to recycle a newspaper? Maybe it had accidentally fallen behind one of the recycling machines, and hid there. I still have no idea.

I picked up the folded sheet of newspaper and started reading it. On the inside was a Broadway gossip column, perhaps by Earl Wilson or some other journalist popular back then. It had a photo of a beautiful Latin singer and dancer. The article said that this rising star would be performing at the Copacabana or some similar venue.

As I read through the article about the singer, I was knocked over by a wave of emotion, which I can best describe as a sublime sense of life’s transiency. Whoever the beautiful Latin singer was, she was now in her fifties, and her nightclub appearances had probably long been forgotten. It put the painful sense of my own obscurity into perspective, for everything is eventually blown hither and yon by the winds of time. The feeling, though, was not heavy or depressing, but sublime and liberating. And so, Buber is right — there are signs that are heaven-sent and the wind had blown one to me, in the form of an old newspaper. And, in an act of grace, the wind then blown away my sadness and regret.

Part Two, of the Case of the Blown Newspaper

I shall preface my remarks by stating that a revery, or daydream, can sometimes be even more powerful and insight-laden than a dream. Reveries are very brief, and so we are most apt to forget them, which is unfortunate. In any case, I had completely forgotten about discovering the old newspaper, on the bridge, for over twenty years had elapsed. But only last year, which was 2007, something occurred that evoked that memory.

I was slated to offer a few non-credit seminars, at a local community college. Along with courses on yoga, PowerPoint, and Chinese cooking, were my popular philosophy seminars. The dean of the college was sure that they would be a big hit and so, on the page where my seminars were listed, she included a large photo of me. A lot of people in town received the course catalogue and saw the philosophy seminars, and my photo. I received a goodly number of compliments about the photo, along with promises that they would surely be attending the fascinating seminars. Yes, I had achieved minor celebrity status, very minor as it turned out.

Two days before the seminars were to run, I received a telephone call from the dean’s secretary. All three courses were being canceled, due to inadequate enrollment. Ah, another disappointment! Tired, I lied down on my couch. As I was drifting off, I had a reverie, which lasted perhaps a second, but was intense enough to make me jump up from the couch. I saw myself on the very bridge that I had crossed some twenty years back, on my way home from the auto-repair shop. In the reverie, I was halfway across the bridge, when I picked up a very old community college course catalogue, with yellowed, crumbling pages. On it, I saw my photo, along with the blurbs of the seminars that I had been slated to teach! The sublime feeling returned, only it was more powerful this time, for I was not viewing the photo of the Latin singer, but a photo of myself. I remembered, then, that no matter how successful I become in my teaching and counseling, everything that I accomplish is still subject to mutability and decay, and may end up like papers scattered to oblivion by the wind.

That insight has not diminished my efforts, for no one can foresee from whence and to where the wind may scatter the seeds of spiritual renewal. Thus did the wind blow through my soul, rekindling my inner fire.

“Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophesy! O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” — Bob Dylan