Introducing The Chaco Canyon Tapes: A Journey through the 20th Century
A Spiritual Story for Our Times
by Dr. Bill (Anab) Whitehouse
This book is difficult to categorize. While it has the appearance of a novel, the work is really a series of essays focusing on an array of contemporary issues. In fact, the novel-aspect, itself, constitutes a distributed essay which weaves its way through the different dimensions of the book. Simultaneously, the story-line provides an emotional/creative center of gravity which is intended to help stabilize, as well as lend both a source of coherency and accessibility to, the various topics developed throughout Chaco Canyon.
In its capacity as a novel, the book traces the journey of a psychology professor, David Phelps, who traverses a path from an initial agnosticism, at the story’s inception to a budding acceptance of spiritual possibilities at the story’s
conclusion.
In its capacity as a series of essays, the chapters constitute the experientially-based, contemplative exercises that are shaping and coloring the central figure’s spiritual transformation.
The story ranges across an assortment of kidnapings, murders, mysteries, intrigues, rescues, and relationships. The plot development, characterization, dialog, as well as the dramatic tension and resolution of this story, are employed to induce readers to undertake a quest somewhat similar to that of the main character. However, the reader’s journey need not be so much a matter of following the travels of David Phelps, which extend from agnosticism to belief, as much as it is a journey of opportunity to engage, from a spiritual perspective, a set of important, interrelated issues of our times.
This is not a book of metaphysics, theology, or religious polemic. Rather, it is an invitation to experience, within determinate limits, a certain kind of spiritual orientation and ambience while pushing against problems which frame human existence.
Purpose, identity, meaning, valuation, understanding, justice, freedom, responsibility, potential, commitment, and choice are very much at the heart of Chaco Canyon. This story of spiritual awakening, together with its concomitant
thematic explorations, provide a context for reflecting on matters of fundamental concern to all of us.
- If you are not interested in the problem of terrorism, then reading this book would be a mistake of fundamentalist proportions.
- If you are indifferent to Native Peoples, then turn your back on Chaco Canyon.
- If discussions of feminism make your blood boil, then get set for a melt-down if you venture too closely to Chaco Canyon.
- If ecology, economics, or legal philosophy do not hold your attention, then your mind will be wandering throughout this book.
- If you feel you are getting all the ‘facts’ you want concerning the abduction phenomenon from television’s ‘The X-files’, then you only will get alienated by Chaco Canyon.
- If you are put off by twentieth century international relations, then you’ll be positively annoyed with this book.
- If you think that Joseph Campbell’s mythology and Jungian psychology are gifts from the Unconscious, then you would have to be out of your mind to read Chaco Canyon.
- If you are not eager to engage critical reflections on the second Gulf war or Vietnam, then retreat from this book.
- If you fear that mysticism and spirituality are so much pie in the sky, then Chaco Canyon is definitely not the place through which to acquire any food for thought if you are on a mysticism-free diet.
However, if none, or almost none, of the foregoing applies to you, then, perhaps, you should consider reading Chaco Canyon and enjoy nearly 600 pages of conceptual exploration.
To purchase The Chaco Canyon Tapes, please go to the following web page:
http://spiritual-health.org/ChacoCanyon.htm
