Iron John

Wounds need to be expanded into air, lifted up on ideas our ancestors knew, so that the wound ascends through the roof of our parents’ house and we suddenly see how our wound (seemingly so private) fits into a great and impersonal story.

The person who gazes in the mirror receives an awareness of his other half, his shadow, or hidden man;

child will not become an adult until it breaks the addiction to harmony, chooses the one precious thing, and enters into a joyful participation in the tensions of the world.

When we hear the phrase, “the Wild Man,” our fantasies move toward a monster, or savage, but it is clear now that the Wild Man is closer to a meditation instructor than to a savage. In part he resembles a rabbi teaching the Kabala; in part, he resembles a holder of a mystery tradition; in part, he resembles a hunting god.

Robert Moore said, “If you’re a young man and you’re not being admired by an older man, you’re being hurt.” How many men have said to me, “I waited for two days with my father when he was dying, and wanted him to tell me that he loved me.” What happened? “He never did.”

“Why are there more and more naïve men in the world?” Whether the fathers are actually darker than they were in the past, they are perceived so, and a son assigns himself the task of redeeming the dark father.

The father gives a son a vivid and unforgettable blow with an axe, which has the hint of murder in it; many a mother makes sure the son receives a baptism of shame. She keeps pouring the water of shame over his head to make sure.

Shame, it is said, is the sense that you are an utterly inadequate person on this planet, and probably nothing can be done about it. Guilt is the sense that you have done one thing wrong, and you can atone for it.

As long as nothing is clear, as long as we have not chosen whether to be conductor or human, the King—and the Queen—sleeps on.