Soul’s Code

The cosmic side of Courtney Cox; B.F. Skinner and Arthur Koestler redux; Does ABC’s Amazing Race have any grace?

Superstar clans that have lived with trauma and scandal look to bury the past in very different ways.

BY PAUL KAIHLA — Grief is a very private affair. But this week, it’s going very public for the loved ones of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy. May they rest in peace —  and for the rest of us, may we share the Dalai Lama’s brand of guidance and comfort.

The loss of a loved one is a shock to your system. It’s useful to remind yourself that you’re in trauma. A being who took up a Grand Canyon worth of space in your psyche is gone. The vacuum their loss has left leaves you confused – and reeling. So do drugs, alcohol, addictions, affairs and other escapes. You don’t need any more momentum in that direction.

You’ll keep asking yourself, “What do I do now?” Don’t even try to answer that question. You can’t.

I wasn’t yet 10 years old and — in a flash — my childhood was over

BY SUEANN JACKSON-LAND — March 26, 1975 started out like any other day. It was a school day and I was in the 4th grade in Ms. Royer’s class. Ms. Royer looked like a great grandma. She was thin and gray, and secretly, I thought she was a professor instead of a 4th grade teacher.

The school bus pulled up to Oxford Drive and my neighbor Joel and I got off the bus. We were walking together, the same way we did every day. I stopped. Just stopped right in my tracks and I remember saying to Joel that something was wrong. I had a strange sensation like dizziness, but not dizziness; something else, instead. We continued up the road to my house and I unlocked the door and let myself inside.

As The Vatican, the American Public and Republican Christians remain divided on Ted Kennedy’s “State of Grace” and “very Catholic Funeral”, US scholars debate new ways to communicate with, or ex-communicate, God. Soul’s Code highlights the great divide!

Where Americans disagree: “Kennedy funeral rings with hope, Twitter with vitriol”

Edward Moore Kennedy wrote to the Pope: “I’ve never failed to believe”

7 Reasons why Michael Jackson’s shocking June 25, 2009 death will become a larger event than Princess Diana’s

BY PAUL KAIHLA — Diana, Princess of Wales, had one of the most famous funerals in living memory — and the memory of the ‘Peoples’ Princess’ was celebrated in saturation TV coverage of her public vigils.

But the public outpouring for Michael Jackson has grown much larger and widespread than that for his friend, Diana, even though he was far more controversial than she. Within minutes of the Reagan UCLA Medical Center’s DOA announcement, networks called Jackson’s death “the story of the year.”

Here are 7 reasons why Jackson’s June 25, 2009 death will become a larger event in the global village’s collective consciousness than Diana’s 1997 tragic demise in Paris:

1. Michael Jackson became known when he was 11 years old; Diana, age 20. Jackson touched a much wider swath of humanity for a far longer period of time.

“Headscarf martyr” mourned in Egypt

An Egyptian woman stabbed to death in a German courtroom was mourned by a throng of people in Alexandria, Egypt, July 7, 2009. Marwa al-Sherbini, 32 years old and pregnant, was allegedly attacked in court during a case in which a neighbor accused her of being a “terrorist” for wearing traditional Muslim garb. This is what’s in the air over there: President Nicolas Sarkozy has made waves over the past few weeks by advocating a ban of wearing burkas in public.

Poets who commit suicide use “I,” “me” and “mine” in their writing more than poets who don’t take their lives, according to a study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine. Discover Magazine picked up the study in 2006, which compared 156 poems by nine poets who committed suicide to 135 poems written by poets who didn’t take their own lives. The “stable” poets used words such as “talk,” “share” and “listen” more as well. Discover compares “An Appearance,” by Sylvia Plath to “The Ache of Marriage” by Denise Levertov and the difference between the two is telling.

The Virginia Tech massacre and the Travis Bickle Taxi Driver archetype

“Pain bodies don’t like to be looked at . . . they thrive in non-attention,” observed post-modern mystic, Eckhart Tolle.

It speaks directly to the psychology of Seung-hui Cho, a child immigrant from South Korea who grew up in the Washington suburbs — and this week, transformed himself from a Virginia Tech English student into a mass-murderer.

The historical roots of the comedian is the court jester, the fool who is able to stealthily sway the ears of the wealthy and the powerful. Richard Jeni never had access to the powerful but he delighted his Baby Boomer fans by modeling his humor on gestalt psychology and parodying mystical practices. He paced his skits with eastern meditation poses and mantras.

Yesterday, Jeni committed suicide. And today, his surviving family revealed a diagnosis from a doctor that said, “psychotic paranoid and clinical depression.” Jeni joins a litany of counter-culture celebs like Hunter S. Thompson, Abbie Hoffman, Spalding Gray, Kurt Cobain, Ernest Hemingway who took the same way of escape. May their souls be sanctified.

For those of us who remain in corporeal being, do you realize how many in your midst have contemplated the same exit strategy? The National Mental Health Association estimates that more than half a million Americans attempt suicide each year — and 30,000 are successful. “Completed suicides are more likely to be men over 45 who are depressed or alcoholic.”

Jeni was 49, and had a self-publicized history of heavy drinking and random violence. Ironically, he doubled as a motivational speaker about his liberation from those afflictions.