BY SOUL’S CODE — Have you heard a question that goes like this from competitive friends, motivational speakers or, say — the foremost practitioners of American reality TV, Oprah and Donald Trump?

“Where do you want to be five years from now?

Which reminds us of a joke . . . How do you make the Gods laugh?

Answer: tell them your plans.
At the age of 20, what were your fantasies?

Supplementary question: How many fathoms of experience away is that from the present-day?

We created Soul’s Code because we wanted to ask ourselves more telling questions, like: What’s the most loving thing that someone has ever said to you?

Anyone and everyone out there has shared their answers on our Love Scroll, which is literally a rolling scroll of messages in the right sidebar of this site.

The responses resonate because they often have an archetypal quality.

It’s partly because the question is very old. Based on an ancient sacred rite, people would form two centric circles, facing inward. After some meditation, those in the outer ring whispered their personal inspirations into the ears of those in the inner circle, rotating around one by one.

Some submissions on the Soul’s Code Love Scroll:

GP Reply27. Jun, 2011 at 10:54 am

My 4-yr old said to me…”Mommy, you make my heart happy.”

nancy Reply 10. Nov, 2009 at 1:01 am

. . . after i was sexually assaulted, my friend came to bring clothes for me. she stayed with me thru the hospital exam, thru the police statement…it took hours and was 3 or 4 in the morning when we finished…she took me home with her, dressed me in her pajamas put me in her bed and held me. i cried until i fell asleep with her still holding me. it was the deepest act of kindness i’ve ever experienced and i am forever grateful to her. thank you deb.

There is no account sign-up. No Facebook clutter.

Click on the “Say It” button, and all that Soul’s Code asks is for an email address.

Thank you all who have shared your inspirations; We send our love back to you.

BY DAVID RICHO, author of Daring to Trust and 14 other books about spirituality and psychology — Annual planting among ancient peoples began with prayer that recalled how the gods performed this same task at the beginning of time. The human lifecycle, thus, became a repetition of a primal religious event.

Whatever happens every year becomes a promise in perpetuity, and thereby the phases of life and the seasons fit into a spiritual framework.

Among ancient peoples this fostered a sense of belonging here on earth.

Repetition and participation give humans roots: “I am real because I am part of something. I have a grander meaning than is outlined by my fragile body.”

Primitive religious peoples lived in a world that had an alternative meaning to the given one.

Pre-Columbian meso-Americans, 400 B.C.

Belief in a mirror universe to this one gives oppressed people a special hope which is missing from the society in which they live. In that other world rank, status, and hierarchy are all reversed.

This is the apocalyptic vision of a future equality in which goodness and justice triumphs. Here the persecuted will inherit the kingdom and will finally be honored. Such an anticipation and hearkens back to a primordial state, e.g., Eden.

The early Christians believed fervently in a parallel kingdom that defied and abrogated the Roman empire and all its power. In the apocalyptic kingdom God will fully approve the unapproved and the last shall be first.

In our contemporary world we do not have beliefs quite like this. But the collective unconscious can weave a web of myth and symbol that reconnects us with our origins. In the Jungian perspective the psyche is a source, not simply a depository of knowledge. This reflects the ancient views, especially those of Gnostics and alchemists.

Psychologically, we all have a need to trust that we are supported by powers that resemble us, nurture us in our life pursuits, and understand us compassionately.

Our modern egos may balk at this. They often drive us to want autonomy and independence at the cost of connection.

Actually, the ego does not have the ability to sustain itself independently. In addition, the ego fears independence and true freedom.

With independence it would lose its entitlement to be taken care of. With freedom it would lose its escape hatch of blaming others for what goes wrong. So we are searching for and demanding the impossible.

Left to ourselves, we homo-sapiens will spiral down into a cycle of destruction. Relying only on what is innate gives humanity no hope for survival. This is why spiritual teachers come along, so that we can survive and open to other wonderful possibilities in our nature. We were born with a proclivity toward spiritual practice just as we were born with an inclination to dance.

Huston Smith says that religions are to spirituality as universities are to education. You can get there without it but you will be traveling uphill. A spiritually-aware religion provides a platform, a framework in which to understand the world and ourselves. Then it can show us a path to love of the world and ourselves. In addition, when crisis hits, religion may not have an answer but when we come to believe that our suffering is shared by God, it becomes tolerable. Faith also promises that our power to love will not be lost no matter what occurs. In the Void, all of this may be hard to believe, but that, like everything, is temporary.

Religious beliefs are meant to help us accept reality as it is—including death and chance. Indeed we can learn from life itself which shows us so much when we use religious teachings as pointers. Our sacrifice is to give up the craving for absolutes and certitudes as our forms of safety and to use religion as a source and treasury of perennial wisdom and as a coping mechanism in a stressed and stressing world.

David Richo is the author of 15 books, including How to Be an Adult. A formerly active Catholic priest who has made Buddhism his personal practice, he is also a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in individual and couples counseling. Dave divides his practice between San Francisco and Santa Barbara, CA.

SPIRITUAL IQ QUIZ — He’s big. He’s hairy. He’s said to tear through the night sky accompanied by magical reindeer. Santa Claus makes a truly weird symbol of conspicuous consumption. Maybe that’s because he’s a figure whose spiritual roots sit deeper than today’s commercial culture.

Santa as we know him today symbolizes holiday cheer, Christian charity, and, yes, maybe more than just a little bit of pagan wildness. Little wonder this mischievous elf has been shunned by Christians, banned by secularists, and viewed with suspicion by purists of all sorts.

As he keeps sliding down the chimney into our culture, click on the radio buttons below to see how much you know about the global poster-boy for Christmas.

BY SOUL’S CODE — Brooke Mueller is the ex-wife of Charlie Sheen who called 911 a couple of Christmas holidays ago in Aspen claiming that the Two and a Half Men star he was threatening her with a knife (listen to the tape here). Since then, they have both done revolving doors through rehab — and Mueller’s latest attempts and failures at sobriety are a highlight reel on Paris Hilton’s new reality TV show on the Oxygen network.

Mueller’s latest stab at AA-style 12 Steps has apparently failed again, and the gossip site TMZ reports that she made plans to fly to Cancun to undergo Ibogaine therapy.

Ibogaine is intense. It strips one bare of psychological defenses. It is also illegal in the U.S., which is why American addicts fly to places like Mexico, Colombia and Brazil for treatment.

Does Brooke have the psychic resilience and self-awareness to take a deep-dive into an Ibogaine trance, or will she shut down and have a bad trip? Will putting Ibogaine in this woman be the equivalent of filling a VW Beetle with jet fuel?

UPDATE: TMZ reported that Charlie Sheen retrieved his ex Brooke from Mexico in a private jet because he thought Ibogaine treatment was so dangerous she might die. Note, the issue isn’t Ibogaine itself but Brooke Mueller’s emotional depth and resilience.

Perhaps the first time that Ibogaine (or “Iboga”) was put out there in American popular culture was in Rolling Stone magazine writer Hunter S. Thompson’s book, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.

Thompson satirically suggested that a Brazilian doctor had gotten the Democratic front-runner for president that year hooked on the drug. “It is entirely conceivable — given the known effects of Ibogaine — that (Edmund) Muskie’s brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations at the time; that he looked out at that crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snapped completely when he felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs.”

While Ibogaine is indeed a hallucinogen, Thompson got one thing wrong: it is not addictive. In fact, recovery circles across North America are now using it on the sly as a cure for addiction to drugs or alcohol.

The cutting-edge prescription for addiction currently promoted by the medical establishment is Topiramate, an anti-convulsion medication with questionable efficacy.

But Iboga is not approved by the U.S government.  It’s a free-growing plant that has been used in West Africa as a sacramental substance, and cannot be patented like a synthetic drug. No wonder it’s illegal.  “Ibogaine has really become notorious because it didn’t originate in a lab, but in the counterculture,” Stanley Glick, the director of the Center for Neuropharmacology and Neuroscience at Albany Medical College, told the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration classifies Ibogaine alongside drugs like ecstasy and LSD with “high potential for abuse” and “no known medical value.” There are also reports that patients in Europe, where Ibogaine therapy is legal, died because it aggravated their heart conditions.

Both of those factors make it difficult for psycho-pharmacologists to win research grants. But a privately-funded research organization in Massachusetts, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research, is currently conducting a long-term study of the effect of Iboga on heroin addicts.

Hunter S. Thompson got yet another thing tangled about Iboga: It’s from Africa not Brazil. In fact, it is processed into a brown powder from the bark of a root grown in Gabon (population: 1.5 million).

It has been used for centuries as a healing plant and in religious rites by the Bwiti people.  In 1962, Howard Lotsof, a heroin addict, got some Ibogaine from a chemist friend of his for a psychedelic trip.  He woke up from the Ibogaine miraculously devoid of any desire to use heroin.  His brain was apparently reset, and he reported no withdrawal symptoms.

The most popular proselytizer of Iboga in the West today — four decades after Thompson introduced it to a mass audience — is a British documentary filmmaker named David Graham Scott, whose “Detox or Die” is  YouTube viral phenom.

Hardcore scientists speculate that Ibogaine binds with the brain’s opiate receptors to pre-empt cravings.

But users argue that the underlying magic of the substance is spiritual: “Ibogaine allows one to ‘die’ of our former selves and be reborn clean and addiction-free,” one San Francisco Bay Area woman with a psychology degree who has tried Iboga told Soul’s Code.

How much does it cost? Has it worked for you?

The motto for this site is everyone’s a guru. We mean that Soul’s Code is a community platform where people can share their personal solutions for self-growth and peak experiences. As we have virtually no in-house experience with Ibogaine, we invite you to share yours below — and unlike on Facebook, you can Comment anonymously:

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Why Bill O’Reilly’s defense of Christmas is secretly un-Christian

BY DANNY KENNY — Fox News talk-show personality Bill O’Reilly thinks the Holidays just won’t be the same without The Tree, Santa, the gifts of appreciation, the mistletoe and holly, etc. These are the things he claims are threatened with extinction by the so-called ‘War on Christmas.’

But I guess he doesn’t realize that these traditions he’s apparently missing from his Irish Catholic childhood are thoroughly pagan in origin, some dating back 4,000 years. Which begs the question: So, Bill, what in the name of Jesus are Yule celebrating?

My fellow loud-mouthed Irishman famously asks, “Do they know it’s Christmas time (at all)?” But I’m starting to wonder if O’Reilly does? Like many Irish-Americans, I think he has a misty-eyed view of the Ould Country.

So be careful what you wish for, Bill. I remember when I was an angelic little altar boy back home, me Mammy threatened me by saying, “If you don’t get up that road to Mass you’ll grow up to be a proper bloody Pagan!”

At the time I — and perhaps, she — had no real idea what that meant, but it sounded really bad and certainly put the fear of God into both of us . . . until 20 years or so later, when she proudly attended my Pagan Wedding as guest of honor (May her God Bless her)!

As a young fella I always loved Christmas, and back then my Mam always made a great Christmas for us kids . . . ‘just like the ones ‘e used to know.’ (All together now . . . I feel a traditional Christmas song coming. Okay enough already! That’s why we pay carol singers to go away!)

But if a tree, gifts, a fat bloke with a white beard and kissing under the mistletoe sounds like your idea of an idyllic Christmas — minus “Bada Bing Crosby” (who was famously Catholic) — I bear glad tidings you’re a Pagan!

The addition of Christ to the celebration of the winter solstice did not occur until 300 years after Christ died. In fact some devout Christian sects like the Puritans, forbade their members from celebrating Christmas, because it was considered a pagan holiday. So what is the history behind these traditions?

Here are 12 reasons why ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS, THE PAGANS GAVE TO ME:

1. The Date
2. The Virgin birth
3. The Tree
4. The Gifts
5. Santa
6. The primary colors: red, white and green
7. The Mistletoe
8. The lights and the witches balls (tree ornaments)
9. The Star or Fairy at the top of the tree
10. The Robin
11. Yule log
12. The twelve days of Christmas

The date and the Virgin birth:

YULE, circa Dec 22nd, was when Pagans celebrated (and still do) the rebirth of the God from the Virgin Goddess (sound familiar?). Even the term “virgin” is mis-leading, as it originally did not mean a woman who hadn’t had sex, but applied to priestesses during Rome’s pre-Christian period.

These women were not bound by secular law, were free to take all the lovers they chose and were beholden to no man. “Yule,” a Nordic word, literally means wheel. In other words, it’s not a type of wood, as in Yule log; it symbolized the turning of the year from darkness into light.

The tree and The Gifts:

As I said above, the Christmas tree is derived from several solstice traditions.

The tradition of giving gifts came from Saturnalia, a New Years Festival of Pagan Rome; gifts were given in honour of loved ones who died during the previous year. They would exchange good-luck gifts called Stenae (lucky fruits). They also would have a big feast just like we do today.

Santa and the red, white and green:

The Pagan Holly King is the sacrificial Pagan God who becomes the Goddess’s consort at Yule, and dies with the fading light of Winter Solstice (to be reborn 3 days later as The Oak King). His image is informed by the symbolic pagan woodsman colors: red, white, green and black. They were adopted by Santa, a.k.a St. Nicholas, whose feast day is actually Dec 6th. But hey, if you’re a kid getting pressies who cares?

The mistletoe, the lights and the Witches balls

Mistletoe, holly and pine were all fertility symbols used by Pagans and Druids, and had been part of Yule celebrations for 1,000′s of years.

Mistletoe was used in an ancient Druid custom at the winter solstice because it was considered a divine plant and symbolized love and peace. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe is Druid in origin.

The lights represented the birth of the new God and the return of the light on the shortest day of the year; the lights on a Christmas tree is a carry-over from candles and fires lit by Pagans in symbolic rituals to lure back the waning Sun.

Witches balls are hollow glass ornaments popular in parts of Europe in the 18th century, but their origin is much older. They were designed to ward off evil spirits and ill wishes that were directed at your family. Hanging these balls in windows was thought to tantalize spirits because of their colors, and trap them inside of the bulb when they touched it, forever holding the marauding spirit hostage.

The Star or fairy on the tree and the Christmas robin

Again, this is not a Christian creation. The Star of David, the Jewish six-pointed star we put on top of the tree, symbolizes the perfect union between male and female. The inverted triangle represents the feminine (Shekinah); the upturned phallic triangle represents the male (Yahweh). In Pagan Ireland, as in many places around the world, we love Fairies because our people looked to them to grant a Christmas wish.

The Robin

In Irish Celtic folklore and mythology, The Robin (seen on many a Christmas card) symbolically kills the wren to signify the return of light. A contemporary reminder of this is the wren boys, who disguise themselves with straw, and dance and play musi. These characters still appear in Irish bars, from Shannon to San Francisco, on December 26th, St. Stephens Day.

The Yule log and The Twelve Days of Christmas

The Scandinavian solstice traditions had a lot of influences on our celebration, besides the hanging of ornaments on evergreen trees. Their ancient festival was called Yuletide, and again, celebrated the return of the sun. One of their traditions was the Yule log. Traditionally made from oak, three holes house candles of red, white and black.

Three is the symbol of the triple Goddess. She represents the three phases of womanhood: maiden, mother and crone: White for the maiden, red for the mother and black for the crone.

The log was the center of the trunk of a tree that was dragged to a large fireplace where it was supposed to burn for twelve days. From this comes the twelve days of Christmas, immortalized in song and Bill Shakespeare’s very Pagan Twelfth Night. The festival of Twelfth Night is part of the Roman Saturnalia, the Feast of Fools and there can be little doubt that the license that marked this occasion had its origin in very ancient pagan customs. As Christianity spread across Europe, some of the old traditions took centuries to die out but the feast of the Epiphany on January 6 retained a Saturnalian flavor for many centuries.

Now that we’ve got all that outta the way! How about a nice mince pie and a festive glass of eggnog before you head off to Midnight Mass?

Hope Y’all have a cool Yule now, ya hear!