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Dear Reader-Friends:

As I write this blog post, live-fire artillery is blasting Mount Fuji to bits.

Rocket bursts explode the calm of this early March morning.

Even at more than 30 kilometers distance, the earth here shudders.

Windows in my mountain minka rattle.

Blasts reverberate through its ancient beams.

The eyes of my dogs and cats reflect alarm, but they no longer express terror as they once did.

Like me, they have grown accustomed to this frequent disruption of country life rhythms.

For the fifteen years we have lived here, every year, several months a year, the cultural symbol of Japan, revered as Fuji-san, has been blasting to bits in our ears.

Each live-fire artillery exercise lasts several hours and is so sustained we shelter indoors until the assault is over.

I decided to write this blog post in response to readers who noted how much easier it must be for me to connect spiritually because I have fewer distractions, living as I do amidst such natural beauty.

Can live-fire artillery be considered sufficient spiritual distraction?

Or is experiencing a situation akin to a war-zone a peculiar sort of modern mystic training that will somehow deepen my spiritual awareness?

As a metaphor for the splintered reality in which so many of us live, blasting Mount Fuji to bits is particularly fitting.

Both inside and outside Japan, the solitary peak of Fuji-san is showcased in travel poster perfection.

Venture closer, however, and your reaction to the withered lower slopes can be visceral.

Acres upon acres of denuded landscape, fenced off with ominous warnings to sightseers and other careless intruders.

A desolation of decimated flora and fauna.

This ravaged wasteland is never mentioned in the drive to designate Mount Fuji as a World Cultural Heritage Site.

A World Cultural Heritage of what, exactly?

As an example of World Cultural Heritage that perfectly mirrors the reality of the world we have imagined for ourselves?

Is there some spiritual lesson to be gleaned from knowing that approval of World Cultural Heritage status is hampered by the fact that Mount Fuji is a gigantic toilet and garbage dump heaped from the vast amounts of human waste and trash left by climbers?

Year after year, Mount Fuji is portrayed as a singular cultural symbol associated with spiritual pursuits and the purity of Japanese feelings towards nature.

There are some 13,000 shrines on Mount Fuji, and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visit annually.

Fuji-san is now a magnet for a new generation of spiritual seeker, including many Westerners, in quest of higher self enlightenment.

Official Japanese promotion efforts include brochures filled with stunning images of shrines, temples, lakes, and other natural wonders of the area around Mount Fuji.

Although some photos show the current “Operation Clean” at Fuji-san’s summit, there is not one picture of the scorched, demolished landscape in the artillery area.

And what of this description from a military support website?

“Camp Fuji was turned over to the Marine Corps from the US Army in 1953… Camp Fuji’s mission is to support military training by US Forces in the adjacent 34,000 acre Fuji Maneuver Area. The Fuji Maneuver Area has been the premier training ground in Japan ever since.”

For close to six decades, the foot of Mount Fuji has shuddered as a shelling range.

As if in recoil, our psyche, too, is denatured, devastated, and divided.

Splintered, we mentally inhabit the landscape of a blighted facade.

The inner contours of our genuine nature remain obscured by a lifetime’s store of our own and other people’s waste and garbage.

How can we live with this splintered self?

My answer is, we are not truly living at all.

We are simply moving through the days of our lives in a shell-shocked numbness that alienates us from our own authentic feelings and senses.

Whether unconsciously or deliberately, we prefer the masks of our cultural, social, religious, and educational conditioning.

Because we do not recognize they are only masks, we allow their destructive hold over us.

All the while, our inner mind desires revival, like the wasted firing grounds of Fuji-san.

So that is why, on an early morning in March, 2010, I am jolted by the blasting to bits of a Japanese national treasure called Fuji-san.

Meantime, the images of a pristine Mount Fuji continue to be shown.

And the illusion of spirituality and nature connection continues to be treasured.

But do we cling to such illusions because in our innermost soul we cry out for a better and more genuine way of connecting with our world?

What kind of a world do you and I live in now?

If blasting Mount Fuji to bits through live-fire artillery does indeed count as spiritual distraction, how can you and I recover the expanded awareness that makes sense of it all to yield authentic meaning in our everyday lives?

Given the choice, and the power to realize our deepest longing, what kind of a world would you and I envision?

What if we recognize our blighted landscape as a distorted mask we need only remove to reveal the fertile growth budding beneath?

What if we clean up our store of inner waste and garbage to uncover the treasures of our own genuine, loving hearts?

What kind of a world would you and I live in, then?

And what prevents us from realizing that world into being right now?

Under a volley of live-fire artillery at the foot of Mount Fuji, I welcome your thoughts.

Catrien Ross

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© 2009-2010 by Catrien Ross, founder and president of Energy Doorways, a Japanese registered publisher and godo kaisha at the foot of Mount Fuji. Catrien Ross teaches and writes about spirituality, personal growth, Japanese society, and lifestyle healing through energy medicine and reconnecting with natural energy wisdom. www.energydoorways.com

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