Finding Foreverland

What is Neverland? If it's the one in Santa Barbara, it's a place where innocent boys go to have their lives ruined by some misguided manchild in his own self-created Promised Land, whose imagination has been replaced by stunted sexuality. That bastardization of Neverland is a completely controlled environment designed to foster the illusion of freedom for children but which is, in fact, a playground for the whims of an all too powerful man whose idea of love is nothing but grossly distorted fantasy.

Going back, for a moment, to my MJ vs. the Pope post (3/12/05), there is a similar theme. They both exploit powerful truths and concepts for a less obvious, more insidious goal. MJ takes the imagery of J. M. Barrie, who was motivated by true love for children, to make a hunting ground in which to play out his messed up mind. The church uses the powerful truths expressed by Christ to keep women barefoot and pregnant all over the world for two thousand years in order to, as Jack Welch so aptly put it, "grow the business".

What is saddest about these entities, other than that they exploit the powerless, is that they distort the original truths so much that they turn off the more thoughtful, and, even worse, damaged, humans, who then lose out on the good that was contained therein. I can't begin to tell you how many Catholics I know who not only have lost all faith in the Catholic Church, but who don't even believe in God at all. It's not just Catholicism that turns off the astute and exploited, it's misguided parents, and others with power, of all religions who use the religion to control others. Once they see through the ploy, they often blame it on religion itself and never look back.

This is why Catholicism is on the decline in the developed world and can only increase its ranks in the third world where they come with, as Major Barbara would say, food in one hand and a Bible in the other. So, enough debunking the charlatans for now. Where is the real Neverland? And don't tell me that's an oxymoron.

There is a Neverland; a Promised Land, it's just that I can't take you there. Maybe I can point the way, maybe I could even give you directions, but, you have to find it on your own. How? You need to unlearn everything you've studied. You need to take apart everything you've built. You need to figure out every assumption you've ever made and then question whether it's valid. There are some pharmacological aids, but the powers that be want to make very sure you never want them or have access to them. The powers that be want you working hard and focusing on the "real world", because, that is where their power lies.

So, if by some chance you can deconstruct without them... what have you got? Nothing? Everything? I used to meditate a lot. Meditation is not contemplation, it's not about thought. It's about emptying thoughts so you can see what lies beneath, the truth, the essence of our existence. We think money makes us happy, or friends or power or stuff. It's not that those things are meaningless or valueless, it's just that they are apart from peace and happiness which lies within.

Neverland, Foreverland... they're both timeless, seemless... whole. They are a realm where you are whole in your soul... when you "come together". Beyond, beneath and in between these fake Disneylands and empty promise lands and incredibly complex societies lie simple truths and feelings in each of our hearts that we can access and draw on for joy and inspiration and creativity and imagination. In that, it's very much related to childhood, it's a state we all had once.

It's a shame that children are not respected as the guides they truly are. Both Jesus and Barrie truly loved and respected children. Barrie changed the landscape of theatre in the Victorian age by bringing children into its world and elevating them, joining them, becoming one with them (and not in the MJ way)... showing the power of childhood, and making Peter Pan a permanent symbol of a man in touch with his inner child. After him, Freud "discovered" the id and changed Western ideas about how the mind worked.

What's interesting about this highly successful film is that it does illustrate the true story, one which, itself, has been cynically twisted in our society, not only by MJ, but by a best-selling book, "The Peter Pan Syndrome" which used the name to refer to men who never matured to the point of being able to develop successful relationships with women. What should have been a compelling, inspiring story has been variously misunderstood as the story of an immature or sexually stunted man, the man who could never grow up, instead of a man like Johnny Depp or Jerry Garcia who was actualized and creative.

Just like women have been under-served by a society which puts up barriers to career & cash, men have been similarly cheated by putting up barriers between them and kids. Even the word pedophile, which should, by it's Latin root and suffix refer to a true lover of children, has come to refer to the sickest of our society who see them as a venue for sexual exploitation. That alone, should inform us, alert us, to how unbalanced we've become. For all I lost in my career, I gained tenfold through the loving relationships and respect I developed with my children. They have taught me more than anyone, loved me more than anyone. By sharing their lives with them, by loving them... I have found Neverland... and it will never, never leave me.