I grew up in southern CA in the 40s when polio was the plague, especially for children, and when there was a spike, public events were shut down. At the movies, there would be a short fundraiser for the March of Dimes to eradicate polio, and then a vaccine was discovered. Were is polio today? But if we are not vigilant, it can come back.

This a metaphor for spiritual practice. When you have an “awakening” you discover the vaccine to the polio of the Ego—which is a paralysis of your life— but if you are not vigilant with a practice of meditation, the polio comes back.

I grew up in the modern age (we are now in the Postmodern age) where science was the priest and the doctor. Science and the tools it invented would bring about the kingdom of God on earth, it was believed. Whatever problem came upon us, science would solve it, and vaccinate us against it so it would not return.

If an airliner crashed. science would discover its cause and remove it, so we would be safe. When was the last time one of our big airliners crashed? I remember when it was common. But the point is that when it comes to machines, anyway, we can through cause and effect logic, vaccinate the machine from further disease, or crashed. Remember how computers use the crash and freeze up all the time?

Why did we stop believing in vaccines? When did and why did we start believing that if science came to help we should not open the door, not accept its remedy to our dis-ease?

One of the features of the Postmodern age is that—thanks to Quantum—we realize that the scientist is not perfectly objective. When it comes to fixing life, that’s us, the scientist is like the alchemist of the Middle Ages: the scientist is subjectively part of the experiment he chooses to determine the objective results. There is no pure objectivity when it comes to fixing life.

We no longer live in the paradigm or world Idea of the modern age where the external world is like a machine that can be fixed if you discover the cause of any effect. The Jetsons failed. We no longer believe in Scientific Utopia.

We know that the scientist participates in the effect, the cause of the effect he examines. The observer and the observed are one.

We have come to distrust the study that claims to be objective because every study comes with an opposite study claiming the opposite. What was defined as bad, often is discovered to be good. Who do you trust?

This is the double-bind of the Postmodern Age. Everything is suspect. Everyone has their spin. This creates the conditions for a dictator, the One who will tell us the truth since we cannot choose.

The Catholic Church before it was debunked by the Protestants, was the only source of Truth in both heaven and earth. Truth has been in free fall ever since.

The Modern Age that was born out of the womb the Church at the end of the Middle Ages, was a masculine age. The scientist with his probing penetrating scalpel of analysis will discover the truth by excluding not truth. You get to the One by eliminating the false, the error and the sin.

The Holy Roman Catholic Church was really the ancient worship of the Earth Goddess in the form of the Virgin Mary. It was She who accepted everyone. It was She who healed the sick…The Goddess includes all. Her instrument is not the sharp knife of analysis that dissects, but intuition and compassion, the inclusive acceptance, an expansive force that expands boundaries, that embraces differences to reach the Truth or the One.

The Protestant/science reformation was masculine, the OT God who came to conquer the Goddess and judge the wicked and exclude the sinners.

As the Reformation progressed, the success of science in controlling nature and removing discomfort replaced the priest.

But in the 50s, just as the priests in the Catholic Church sold the sacraments, the scientist sold objectivity. Camels are good for you because the doctors recommend them.

The Postmodern age we now live in is a reformation in the way we know what’s true. The holy Catholic science is breaking up, and there is a pagan revolt of the heroic individual who will not be subservient to any authority….

This creates a new Catch 22 where yes is no and no is yes….The question now is not What is the Truth? It is no longer Out There to be discovered by science.

Well, I cannot leave it here, leave you. hanging. We are in a resurgence of the Goddess, the one that the Reformation suppressed. Remember the Puritan Witch Hunts…ala Hillary?

What has failed us, what has come to the end of its string, is the masculine way of knowing through exclusion, through the chopping up of life to find the cause of suffering. It is the chopping, the butcher that is creating the wound.

The way of the Goddess is coming back. “The mother comes to restore balance,” says Avatar. Everywhere, the goddess principle, the female way of knowing is returning. Inclusion instead of exclusion; intuition instead of sharp analysis. Turn towards the Whole instead of focusing on the part.

We cannot get to the other shore by finding out what’s wrong with our boat. We have to build a bigger boat, one that has not existed before, a boat that includes both science and religion, exclusion and inclusion, faith and reason.

The truth we must seek is Who am I? When neither the scientist or the priest can tell me, where do I go? What is the Way?

And this boat building, this raft, if you will, begins with you, not with mankind. Who are you? You are greater than you think you are. Stop analyzing yourself, picking at your faults. Put down the butcher’s knife and the bull will roar.

You need a Reformation.