Duck Soup for the Soul
by Steve Bhaerman
 Several years ago, my wife Trudy and I were in Sedona to do a show. I don't
know how many of you reading this have been to the mythical Sedona, but aside
from boasting clear blue sky and rugged red mountains, Sedona has become the
holy city for UFO aficionados, channelers, healers, psychics, and every other
stripe of ascensioneer. Not that Sedona doesn't have problems that other cities
have -- like crime, for example. But even crime in Sedona is different. White
collar crime in Sedona generally involves people falsifying their astrological
charts for job applications. And although Sedona has no red light district per
se, young women are sometimes picked up and charged with committing "random
acts of kindness" for money. In the past few years, what with the booming
tourist trade, there have even been some muggings. But Sedona muggers are new
age muggers. When they take your money, they ask you, "Why did you create
this?" And as they flee, they always remember to say, "Thank you for
sharing."
Anyway, Trudy and I were in a crystal shop (crystals are to Sedona what
chicken fried steak is to Texas) and we were introduced to a guy who claimed to
be a French psychic. Now I say introduced, but actually when I am traveling, I
like to keep a low profile. So I never really said who I was or what I did. We
had already left the store and were in our car when the French psychic came
running out gesticulating for us to roll down the window. He pointed at me and
said, "Groo-cho, groo-cho!"
Not knowing French, I was puzzled. He told me that he had seen my spirit
guide sitting on my shoulder (apparently a commonplace perch for such beings,
especially in Sedona) and the spirit guide's name was Groocho.
"Groocho?" I asked.
"Groocho," he said. "You know, Groo-cho." He made a
wagging motion with his eyebrows and flicked an imaginary cigar.
"Ah, Groucho!" I said. He nodded emphatically. And with the message
delivered, he waved and went back into the store.
Traveling in the circles I've traveled, I've encountered this kind of
hit-and-run psychic reading before. But something about this one rang true. I've
always had an affinity for Groucho. As a wisecracking schoolkid, I would often
interrupt a lesson by declaring, "That's the most ridiculous thing I ever
hoid." And as an adult, I've sometimes lapsed into Groucho, and even
dressed up like him on Halloween. I loved the permission being Groucho gave me
to be intrusive, pointed, insulting, even -- but all in a playful way.
And, of course, having spent my deformative years in New York where insult is
considered an art and "tongue fu" is an honored form of self-defense,
the Grouchoid persona served me well. But as I allowed myself to soften and
become more vulnerable, I began to sense the limitations of this relentlessly
iconoclastic humor. Being a deconstructionist in the 1930s -- as Groucho was --
is different from being a deconstructionist today when just about everything has
already been deconstructed.
I have come to see that humor -- like any other cultural phenomenon -- can be
either "trance-forming" or "transforming." In other words,
the humor we choose to immerse ourselves in can either perpetuate suffering and
limited thinking, or it can bring us to greater wisdom and love. The dominant
cultural "trance" today seems to be cynicism, and the antidote is
humor that is playful, innocent and defenseless. But to truly awaken, we also
need humor that is as sharp as the "whack" of a Zen master's stick.
Transformational humor, then, must be open-hearted and at the same time,
pointed.
Without consciously intending to, I built this duality into the Swami
Beyondananda character -- who has, in fact, been described as a cross between
Gandhi and Groucho. The Gandhi part of the Swami represents the spiritual nature
of humor, reminding us that laughter is a gift we can use to "make light
of" -- and hence make peace with -- life's heavy situations. But lest we
get too addicted to our higher selves (what Swami would call "hitting the
Source a little too much"), there's Groucho ready to snap us out of high-falutin'
spiritual trances. For example, whenever I hear someone say "Everything is
perfect" -- while their facial expression indicates otherwise -- my inner
Groucho usually replies, "Well, I'm glad to hear that, because I just
stepped in some dog perfection and I'm tracking it all over your rug!"
I guess it's my Libran nature to want to integrate the duality of skepticism
vs. open-hearted faith, and likewise the duality of tragedy vs. comedy. It has
been said that comedy is tragedy in retrospect, and indeed we can all remember
embarrassing moments that were horrifying and humiliating when they happened,
but now are just funny stories. Perhaps it's time alone that
"flattens" our suffering and brings a balanced perspective to painful
events -- or as Groucho once said, "Time wounds all heels." But
conscious laughter also puts experience in perspective -- and works a lot more
quickly than time alone.
The film Prince
of Tides offers an excellent example of how consciousness and humor
evolve together. As the movie begins, the Nick Nolte character is shut down and
in denial about his abusive childhood. His sense of humor is bitter and mean,
and his jokes are like grenades lobbed from behind a wall of cynicism. As he
begins to remember, accept and integrate the circumstances of his childhood,
however, his sense of humor changes. It becomes playful, vulnerable, kinder,
self-effacing without being self-abusive. An alchemical process has taken place,
where the coarse material of suffering has been spun into the gold of insight
and whole-hearted laughter.
It occurs to me that any process of transformation must involve integrating
the hidden or "shadow side." That's why I feel uncomfortable when
individuals refer to themselves as "lightworkers." In focusing on only
one side of the duality, they may not be prepared to do the "heavy
work" of dealing with their own dark nature, aspects of themselves that
will no doubt pop up sooner or later. As Carl Jung used to say, "That which
we deny in ourselves we will meet on the path." Last spring, I had the
opportunity to present at a weekend event called Embracing the Human Shadow. The
event was held at a spiritual center which had recently been traumatized by a
"betrayal" on the part of their guru. Where once the ashramites had
thought of their center as a spiritually pure place free of evil, they now had
to face their anger, sadness, and disillusionment.
After a moving ceremony on Saturday night which released grief and offered
each individual the chance to walk through a spotlight and briefly act out their
own "shadow," Swami Beyondananda was called upon to do his comedy. The
next morning, numerous community members came up to me and described the
"healing" that had taken place. Unbeknownst to me, I had done my
comedy act on the same stage that the guru -- and in fact, numerous other
spiritual masters -- had offered the highest and holiest wisdom. Seeing the
Swami in his funny tie and rainbow turban enabled the audience to finally laugh
at their own tragedy, and helped usher in a new level of healing and release.
When I first saw the popular inspirational book, Chicken
Soup for the Soul, I realized that in these times of great upheaval
(not to mention downheaveal) we also need "Duck
Soup for the Soul." Duck
Soup, you may remember, was a hilarious and insightful Marx Brothers
movie from the 1930s, a satire on the follies of war and the egotism of
so-called "statesmen." Combining the sharpness of Groucho with the
playfulness of Harpo, the movie helped inspire my lifelong mission as a
FUNdamentalist (accent on "fun") who attempts to apply the leavening
of humor to the gravity of human affairs. I have a dream -- that in our
lifetime, gavels will be replaced by honking Harpo horns, and all politicians,
judges and UN negotiators will have to wear one of those Groucho
glasses-nose-and-mustache things. Personally, I think it will change the face of
world politics.
Along with the Lightworkers and Earth Stewards and Healers and every other
noble profession dedicated to transformation, I think we also need "Fu
Ling" masters to keep us from being seduced by cynicism and visions of doom
on one hand, and self-righteous pretentiousness on the other. Or, to put this in
a "Marxist" perspective, we need Harpo's gentle playfulness to heal
the heart, and Groucho's sharp wit to free the mind. For humor in its highest
form reflects both universal love and universal wisdom. Or, as Swami
Beyondananda would say: "Life is indeed a joke, but God is laughing with
us, not at us."
Steve Bhaerman is the artist formerly known as Swami Beyondananda.
Copyright 1996 by Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved.
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