Here's to You, Harry!
Last night I learned that my dear friend and mentor Harry Eisel — author, retired forensic psychologist, the guy who turned me on to the Tao Te Ching, and one the greatest human beings I've known — passed away on June 25th after a more than ten-year battle with multiple cancers. Here's to you, Harry!
Harry, a generous soul, granted permission some time ago for me to add many of his works to the Crisis Chronicles Online Library. I regret that it's taken me this long to get around to it - but I will start adding them in the coming week. Meanwhile, since I don't feel I have adequate words to talk about him right now, I will share with you a blog I posted on MySpace almost exactly two years ago.
Birthday Grass (thank you, Harry Eisel)
by Jesus Crisis, 16 September 2007
"Notice that the stiffest tree is easily cracked,
while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."
— Bruce Lee
I'm writing this on the evening of September 16th. Tomorrow's my birthday. And I'd like to celebrate it with you by sharing one of the best birthday gifts I've ever received. I'm not saying I've never neglected, forgotten or taken this gift for granted - because I have, more often than not. The guy who gave it to me didn't intend it to be a birthday present. I doubt he even knew when my birthday was.
Harry Eisel is a retired psychologist. In 2003, though battling multiple cancers, he wasn't yet totally retired and I attended this really cool, intriguing group he was facilitating where we touched on Reiki, the Tao, living in the moment... ah, any words I use only seem to limit the experience and not do it justice.
In September 2003, he gave me three simple little watercolors he had done the previous night. They featured poems contrasting an oak tree and a blade of grass and were small enough to fit inside the back cover of my one dollar Dover thrift edition of the Tao Te Ching, which collected dust after I acquired several other "cooler" editions of Lao Tzu's classic text over the years. I forgot about Harry's watercolors until they fell out of that old book today, exactly four years later. (I know because I had written on the back of them in pencil "Harry Eisel 9/16/2003.") Accident?
Now I have shared the gift Harry gave me with you. I forgot these objets d'art for a season. But I've not forgotten the lesson I learned from Harry about the blade of grass. I've never been particularly good at putting it into practice, especially these past several months. Still, I've always been happier and had more peace when I've done so. Coincidence? Fritjof Capra wrote in The Tao of Physics, "An enlightened being is one who does not resist the flow of life, but keeps moving with it." Something to think about....
Categories: Miscellaneous, Prison, Religion and Philosophy
Tags: Bruce Lee Grass Oak Birthday Tao Te Ching Harry Eisel
What precious things to find. I like those a lot.
I don't know about bending and going with the flow all the time--sometimes I want to make flow. I want to create and rage. Ain't flow status quo? I guess I am ever the advocate of the extraterrestrial flip. Zen & its antigen.
But peace can be found in flow or lee.
Reply to this
Pretty much perfect lines, yours.
Very well said... I tend to feel similarly - and I've gone back and forth between totally buying into it and totally not - which is a good reason I often don't practice what he did. Part of me fights strongly against his philosophy (should we have been mere blades of grass in the face of Hitler and Holocaust?), while another part of me wants to believe that (and this is the title of one of Harry's books) Life Really Is that Simple (because do I really know a damned thing about a damned thing? - and maybe I don't fully get what he got). But he made a strong case - and his life made a stronger case than his words. In a way his death, at least on one level on my end (he seemed invincible to me), seems to weaken and simultaneously strengthen his position(s).
Interesting side note: I might never have met you and Smith (and subsequently gotten into the poetry scene) if not for Harry. I created the Weekend Tao Te Ching blog series at the same time I created a MySpace page devoted to sharing Harry's work (the projects influenced each other) and it was around that time that I searched for "Cleveland Tao Te Ching" on MySpace, looking for folk with similar interests, and discovered Steven B. Smith at the top of those search results.
Reply to this
I'm very sorry to hear of your friend's death, JC. I've read this blog before, and it touched me then, as it does now. Thank you for sharing the beauty that was Harry Eisel.
Reply to this
Apparently, Harry died on the very same day as Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, though I didn't find out till yesterday. The last I was in touch with him, I left a birthday greeting on his Facebook page in May. That's also around the last time I logged into his MySpace book page. Coincidentally, on the day Jackson and Fawcett died, my Facebook status attempted to remind folks that other folks who aren't celebrities die every day and are their deaths are barely a blip on our radar.
This past week, around my birthday, I had Harry on my mind a lot. I made up my mind that as soon as I had the opportunity, I'd check and see how he was, say hi, et cetera. So last night I finally went to his Facebook page -- saw no sign of recent activity besides a comment a friend had left saying, "A true friend. You will be forever missed!!! Rest in Peace." OM! So I Googled his name and discovered his obituary.
I also found this interesting blog posting by another friend:
Harry Eisel Died, and left me a message from the other side(?)
Reply to this
Amazing! Synchronicity..the death of Harry, your birthday, the Tao, Fritjof Capra, Jung, the unconscious, and even the fact that I am surrounded by all these books and contemplating taking a course from a Buddhist monk all combines
and brings peace of mind. Thanks.
Reply to this
Lyrics by Sting, from the Police song "Synchronicity I":
With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance, a dream dance
A shaped romance
Synchronicity
A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectable
Yet nothing is invincible
If we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi
If you act as you think
The missing link
Synchronicity
We know you, they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity
A star fall, a phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity
It's so deep, it's so wide
You're inside
Synchronicity
Effect without cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity
Reply to this
Thanks for sharing this John... I remember enjoying the site you shared on MS. And find the comments above by you and Lady interesting and thoughtful..
I've also been a student and as you know. Not of Harry but of Taoism, and the philosophy of the I-ching... and felt similarly to how you've felt... Not always buying into the philosophy. Not always sure of how to work it into my life. But being more persistent in my studies has payed off. I understand better what is meant by going with the flow of the Tao now and it is not what we generally understand at the beginning when we here about it.. It is not a surrender to things as they happen but a growing awareness of them and an understanding of the ebb and flow of events and learning how to use those to benefit yourself and others. That is what the flow is all about. And there is a trust in life that comes in seeing and understanding it.
Maybe it's time to maybe go back to it... and bring some of that back into your life.. It sounds like it was very meaningful to you at one time.
Just some thoughts in that direction..
Reply to this
"Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both. Fritjof Capra in The Tao of Physics. Its the universe as we understand it today, a "cosmic dance" of paradoxical yet unified relationships--an organic vision....
This is the flow of life and Harry Eisel
felt it. I loved his writings.
Reply to this
The Tao Te Ching was a key component of my evolution, but its not the end.
I'm not saying they're at all the same, but so were Reagan, Republicanism, religion, prison and being a toddler.
Sometimes you gotta move on, if that's where your inner voice is leading you. And to Harry that inner voice or intuition was more important than any book or philosophy. Even grass doesn't just bend to survive. It actively seeks the sun. It grows, it spreads (migrates), and it multiplies as it puts down roots. And all these are activities aimed at propagation and survival. Its passivity is largely a myth. It might bend when a more powerful force (wind, footstep) encounters it (it has no choice). But does it bend when a flea attacks it? No. It just is what it is - a blade of grass. And we ain't blades of grass. We are humans. And methinks humans are the antithesis of the inhumane. Should we bend like grass when the Fuhrer flea lights on us -- or is raging, raging "against the dying of the light" the human(e) thing to do?
Harry may have aspired to be like a blade of grass. But cancer finally snapped him like an oak. And it's hard to imagine him rising again like the grass. Sure, maybe he'll rise (or he's arisen) metaphorically. But you could also say say that metaphorically he's never been bent or broken. So the whole analogy falls apart, and I wonder how much is really real? Reality is, after all, in the I of the beholder.
Reply to this
But I've learned something from every breeze and foot and oak and blade of grass that's come my way -- so I'm not discounting it all -- just incessantly playing Devil's advocate with both sides of myself.
Reply to this
I don't think you ever go back to something the way it was. If anything you pick it up and make it new again. Always transforming and shaping it into your own philosophy. That's what I've always done.. whether I was aware of it at the time or not. I assume we may all have to do it to grow and survive.
Interesting thought that I read something earlier today in a book about Joseph Campbell and myth that is related to your Fuhrer comment. I'm paraphrasing here.. but he makes the comment that when a myth is acted out unconsciously it can be very dangerous. Using fundamentalism and Nazi Germany as examples. The reason I feel it is relevant is myth and spirituality (discovery of self) are necessarily related. And self discovery is related to humaneness..
Anyway... you sound very philosophical today... not a bad thing...
Reply to this
Beautiful art and sentiment. How wonderful to have a teacher/friend like that. I'm sorry for his death.
Reply to this
I feel very fortunate to have known him.
You can read some of his work on a MySpace page I created for him: http://www.myspace.com/harryeisel. I want to update it when I have time and inspiration.
Reply to this
Some comments this post received on Facebook... thank you all!
He gave me permission to share some of his works in the Crisis Chronicles online library. I wish I'd added them sooner - but I'll try to finally do so this week.
a gifted talent w/ great sense of humor )...its disturbing
everytime we lose someone, sorry John
Reply to this