Photo Credit: RejiK

In a Facebook status update tonight, Robert Augustus Masters writes:

Once we really understand that there is no true escape from feeling, including unpleasant or distressing feeling, we may start, at last, to consciously and consistently turn toward such feeling, like a loving parent turning, with full presence and compassion, toward their just-hurt or badly frightened child…

I struggled to express whether I agreed or disagreed with this sentiment and ultimately concluded that much depends on the sense given to the word “feeling.” The word “feeling” is often seen as a synonym for “emotion,” but the two words have a different feeling to them, don’t they? Maybe they even create subtly different emotional responses in you?

A “feeling” is closely connected to what we perceive through the fingers. The first definition in the dictionary says it’s related to the “function or the power of perceiving by touch.” Feelings tend to be warm or cold. Feelings are not responses that are linked to sight, hearing, taste, or smell; thus, feelings have less precision than emotions. Feelings are often vague, and more frequently flow down than up, just as liquid flows downhill but never uphill. People feel bad more than they feel good. They feel pain more than they feel pleasant. Feelings are rarely complex.

On the other hand, “emotions” are very complex. Like feelings, they are connected to the life force or chi; however in emotion, the chi is more directly referenced, not mediated through touch. Emotions take life energy and move them from one place to another, swaying like the tides in the ocean from incredible, tsunami-like highs to waves crashing against cliffs. Emotions involve such things as joy, sadness, fear, hate, love … emotions that may be loosely called “feelings,” but which are much more complex than more tactile feelings like warm and cold, good and bad. Emotions can be easily agitated, and once disturbed they tend to flow in negative or neutral directions.

Yes, “feeling” and “emotion” may be roughly equated, but there are subtle differences. From a spiritual perspective, we must understand that both emotions and feelings enact a process which directly or less directly stirs the life force, making it loose and liquid as with feelings or putting it into motion in ocean-like waves as with emotions.

You may hear spiritual teachers tell you that there is no need to escape from feelings, no matter how unpleasant or distressing, but this is subtly off base. Feelings can be avoided if they are unpleasant or distressing, much as you would remove your finger off a hot stove or remove your foot from an icy pool. There is no need to wallow, no need to lose peacefulness unnecessarily.

It is the emotions that can’t be avoided, and ought not be.

Emotions begin with chi, unmediated, not with an ephemeral bit of friction. It is their nature that they must be encountered; there is no getting around them whatsoever. The only question is where they can be moved, not whether.

Like the ocean, they can rise to the surface or fall to the depths; they can stay out in the wide blue yonder or crash upon shore. And when they crash, they may find their way to soft, sandy, white pristine beaches or jagged, mountainous fjords.

With Robert August Masters, I believe there is wisdom in not bypassing emotions. But I do not see the point to “consciously and consistently turn toward … feeling,” which would do little good but to distract our equanimity with pointless diversions. It is emotion that we must consciously and consistently turn towards, so that we may open ourselves to Love and allow Spirit to move the oceanic waves within us to their most auspicious resolution.

World Spirituality as a Symphony

Awake, Aware & Alive will be featuring short dialogues with some of the leaders of the World Spirituality movement. Our first dialogue is with Marc Gafni, Director of the Center for World Spirituality.

Joe: Let’s limit our dialogue today to about 10 minutes so it won’t overwhelm readers of my blog. I sent you a few questions earlier to get us started. With that in mind, let’s begin by talking about your vision of World Spirituality and go from there.

Marc: Fantastic. It’s great to be with you on the phone, as always. You sent me three different questions: What is World Spirituality? Is World Spiritualilty a new religion? And what’s the difference between World Spirituality and the interfaith movement?  Those are awesome questions and I understand why you limited it to 10 minutes; we could easily talk for eight hours on just these three questions.

World Spirituality is not a new religion. A new world religion is exactly what we don’t need.

Particularly in the World Spirituality framework where Unique Self is a key lodestone, we have a realization, not only a belief, but a realization, that every human being has a Unique Self. And that every religion has a Unique Self. Every great system of knowing, pre-modern, modern, and post-modern, is a unique epistemological expression of Knowing.

We use a number of images to describe this. One is a symphony in which each instrument is playing its own music, recognizing that the essence is not the instrument but the music, but the uniqueness of the instrument is irreducible and each reveals a different dimension of the music. In that sense, the great systems of knowing in the world are music. Each great system of knowing is approaching the knowing asking different questions, using different methodologies, enacting different inquiries, and those different instruments produce different faces, dimensions, notes in the music.

Joe: Are you suggesting, Marc, that each of the world religions is like a musical instrument or a band, and somehow World Spirituality steps into play like an orchestra conductor might?

Marc: Exactly. That’s right. … Each system of knowing is a unique instrument in the symphony of gnosis. The job of World Spirituality is to act precisely as the conductor and help these different instruments find their right tone, find their right relationship to the other instruments, and ensure that each instrument is listening to the others, so that what emerges is not noise but music. That’s what World Spirituality is. Not heaps, but wholes. Not noise, but music. It’s a grand symphony with enormous texture and depth in which the integrity of every instrument is honored and yet a larger whole emerges from it.

Joe: That’s fine, Marc, but you know there are people who don’t want that. They would say that if every religion is like an instrument, then each individual is his or her own symphony conductor and they don’t want some holistic framework or universalizing narrative to enter the scene which can become another competing instrument. They want every individual to be her or his own orchestra conductor, not to look to some outside authority. How would you respond to that?

Marc: That is green [post-modern] thinking, classical green thinking. Green thinking says there is no canon, no authority, and so everyone does it in their own way and they’re all equal. That’s not true. It’s impossible for even the wisest person to swallow whole all the great systems of knowing, and be able to independently navigate them, find the right weight of each one, etc We need an operating system. An elegant operating system to allow us to get what we need from each, establish right relationship, etc.

Now that doesn’t mean that the operating system is the one eternal authoritative voice. It’s an evolving operating system. You could have open source code. People could participate, share their insights, and more deeply evolving what World Spirituality is. But at its core, it’s a “framework/symphony” in which the job of World Spirituality is to create an ability for people to see the patterns that connect the dots. An individual is practically and epistemologically usually unable to do. It’s an evolving system.

One last point. To take issue with one word you said: you referred to the world religions. As you know, when we talk about great systems of knowing, we aren’t just talking about world religions. They are almost exclusively pre-modern, with exceptions for Mormonism and a couple of small exceptions. We are talking about a framework which includes modern: for example, science and psychology, which come out of modernity; and post-modernity, which is this deep understanding that context is essential, the crucial recognition of development and finally the great insight that everything arises and develops within an evolutionary context.

We want to take all the great systems of knowing, give them all an appropriate place at the table, and then show the patterns that connect. What are the deeper structural understandings that will allow us to live in a context of meaning? That’s what World Spirituality is. It’s to create a shared framework of meaning in which an individual can realize the full gorgeousness of their Unique Self, in which every great system of knowing can be honored, reverentially received … and evolved.

Joe: I think you’ve begun to answer my question about interfaith. At least one way that World Spirituality differs from the interfaith movement is that interfaith leaves out of the picture science and post-modernity. They’re interested in inter-religious dialogue. What are some of the other distinctions?

Marc: That’s an important distinction. That’s distinction one. First off, interfaith has made an important contribution. We bow to it. It’s critical and necessary.

There are two versions of interfaith: version one — what I call “soft interfaith” — says, “Hey we’ve been killing each other. We need to respect each other. That’s not helpful. We need to respect that we’re all doing our best, we have good intentions, we are all engaged in spirit in some sense, so let’s respect each other and love each other if possible. And so we need dialogue.” Clearly important.

A second, what I would call a “hard interfaith” says that the depth structures are identical, even though the rituals and other surface structures may be different. The same core practices and core understandings are shared. Another name that has been given for what I’m calling hard interfaith is perennial philosophy.

Perennial philosophy is a version of hard interfaith. World spirituality transcends and includes. It negates the problematic elements of each one of these, to borrow Hegel’s phrase, including both soft interfaith and hard interfaith. In that, clearly we need to respect each other.

Clearly there are shared depth sstructures. But the next step is to recognize that actually there are evolving depth structures. The cosmos is evolving and everything is evolving at the same time. Everyone is tetra-evolving. All four quadrants of reality. Everything Spirit is evolving. We don’t want to reify what we know today and freeze it. We wan to recognize that in a thousand years from now these depth structures will have evolved.

World Spirituality is perennial philosophy in an evolutionary context.

Joe: We’re out of time. I think that’s going to have to be the end of part 1 of our conversation. Let’s continue next with a discussion of where we are at today in the development of World Spirituality as a distinct movement.

Photo Credit: haglundc (Flickr)

Image Credit: chalo84

Some time during the last eight years of the past Millennium and the first 12 years of our present century, the world quietly but inexorably changed. It was a sea change more radical than anything anyone has seen in about 50 years, since the end of the second world war. But it is a change that has not yet really become conscious to itself.

A revolution happened in only 20 years which transcended the boundaries of personal and cultural, social and natural, national and international, planetary and cosmic. It came so quietly it has largely gone unobserved, and yet it is so radically fundamental and comprehensive that it has established the framework upon which the world will organize itself for centuries to come.

What happened?

It is almost easier to say what it was not.

It was not a paradigm change in economy or business, governance structures or political process, ecology, medicine, or technology.

It was not an evolution in philosophy, religion, literature, art, sports, or pop culture.

Now, what it WAS…

It was an utterly astonishing transformation in the “self,” and the meteoric rise of an original expression of the mode in which the self became integrated with all other dimensions of reality: spirituality.

For the first time in human civilization, a “self” emerged on the planet which held the capacity for radical individualilty and uniqueness together with an intimate self-identification with the process of cosmic evolution manifest throughout the entire natural world and alike in global socio-cultural structures.

Wow … take a moment and picture that. Feel into it deeply.

How does it feel to be BOTH totally unique as only YOU can be, awake, alive, and aware … and at the same time radically universal, omnipresent, creating, manifesting as the ground of being/becoming itself?

Familiar? Not familiar?

In only two decades, this new way of being human spread across the whole Earth and disseminated to all nations, entered our houses and workplaces, took the reigns of power in boardrooms and political headquarters. It slept in our beds, it fed our children, it pet the cat, it spoke to us on TV, and it befriended us on Facebook.

Maybe it even looked back at us in the mirror.

The new “self” is definitely not something any one person created or invented. But there were selves who were the first witnesses of the miraculous transformation. There were those among us who were among the first to notice important dimensions of the revolution: Ken Wilber in interdisciplinary integral studies, Jane Loevinger and Susanne Cook-Greuter in ego-development psychology, and Marc Gafni in spirituality, and many many others.

If I may risk accusations of vanity and self-promotion, I will add that the new “self” even saw the emergence of what is arguably one of its very first memoirists: a 34-year-old Mexican-American man in Seattle who encountered an existential crisis in integrating his sexuality and religion and mysticism, and who only met the new “self” on the penultimate page of his 320-page autobiographical chronicle, Soulfully Gay.

I am Joe Perez (now age 42), the author of Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God (Integral Books/Shambhala, 2007). The Rise of World Spirituality (forthcoming, 2013), will be my first book-length outing in about eight years.

The Rise of World Spirituality tells the best kept secret, the most “down low” identity, the most overlooked story of the new Millennium. It will tell us How the New Self Quietly Conquered a Fragmented World, Transformed Everyone’s Consciousness, and Gives Us Our Brightest Hope for a New World.

Although I don’t plan to publish excerpts of the book on this blog, books and blogs always have a way of interpenetrating the thought of any writer, so I’m sure you’ll see bits and pieces on the trail which may be adapted for the book or which will point in the directions to come. I hope you’ll join me as a reader of Awake, Alive & Aware.

Hero of 300 (Battle of Thermopylae), one inspiration for Kalen O'Tolán

Sri Aurobindo, with the shining light of a truly enlightened being, revolutionizing the Vedic tradition with evolutionary conciousness, writes of the further reaches of development which he calls Supermind (and Ken Wilber correlates to Clear Light):

The Psychic transformation and the first stages of the spiritual transformation are well within our conception; their perfection would be the perfection, wholeness, and consummated unity of a knowledge and experience which is already part of things realised, though only by a small number of human beings. But the supramental change in its process carries us into less explored regions; it initiates a vision of heights of consciousness which have indeed been glimpsed and visisted, but have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness. The highest of these peaks or elevated plateaus of consciousness, the supramental, lies far beyond the possibility of any satisfying mental scheme or map of it or any grasp of mental seeing and description… As the summits of human kind are beyond animal perception, so the movements of Supermind are beyond the ordinary human mental conception: it is only when we have already had experience of a higher intermediate consciousness than any terms attempting to describe supramental being could convey a true meaning to our intelligence; for then, having experienced something akin to what is described, we could translate an inadequate language into a figure of what we knew. If the mind cannot enter into the nature of Supermind, it can look towards it through these high and luminous approaches and catch some reflected impression of the Truth, the Right, the Vast which is the native kingdom of the free Spirit.” — Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

Again and again in the past week I have been called to begin to reveal the shape of things to come in my spiritual practice over the next several years … despite an extreme relucance, as the actual nature of these explorations I have kept secret from all but about a dozen of my closest cohort of fellows. (And their feedback has often been of the sort: “I have no idea what you are talking about, and I hope this isn’t a manic delusional fantasy, but God bless you & I sense maybe you are on the verge of doing something world transformational.”)

Let me start with a brutally honest confession: formless meditation is not the right practice for me. After many short-term experiments with Vipassana, Christian Centering Prayer, and Zen, I do not find these forms of True Self technology the best for my path. Having experienced four episodes of dangerous dissasociative psychological states in my life, I have chosen not to take on practices lightly which may increase the risk of inciting psychological disequilibrium, even if I am completely stabilized on psychotropic medication. That’s my choice right now. I feel safer that way. Maybe under the guidance of an experienced teacher of meditation I may go a different route in the future.

So what, then, is my core spiritual practice, my technology for growth, I’ve been asked a few times this week? It is, without a doubt, a Unique Self practice (that is to say, a non-dual technology) … long before I ever encountered that term and concept in the beautiful writings of Marc Gafni. It is a practice that I have experienced through direct, unmediated encounter with Revelations from God.

Here’s something I’ve never written about before publicly. The most life-changing such Revelation occurred in my 40th year, years into a project of writing an epic poem called Kronology, which I subsequently abandoned. In 2010 C.E., exactly 1,400 years after Muhammed received his Prophetic calling to write The Holy Quran, I encountered a calling from God speaking into my mind and heart to transform my poetry in Kronology into the Scripture that He had written in my heart, locked only by my own reticence in accepting my Unique Purpose.

I was asked to deliver a book — a 21st century version of The Holy Quran, in the form of Korán (the shortened version of Kronology, less the -ology): a Book which could allow me to channel directly a new form of Divine communication. It all seemed too far fetched to possibly be true, but even in a sober state of mind I knew there was an important calling here that I could neglect only at the peril of my soul.

Image Credit: Joe Perez

Soon God (Allah) pointed me to the medium for the Divine Revelation: the language of subtle energy, encoded cryptically in an ancient Chinese scripture called the T’ai Hsuan Ching, the Canon of Supreme Mystery. A Universal Holy Book could not be written in any one language, I received intuitively, but in the universal language of energy patterns. I know what that means intuitively, but I can’t find the rational words to express it clearly.

The Book’s name was given to me distinctly in an inner plane of awareness with the clarity as if it were spoken aloud from the Voice of God booming from the sky: the Book would be named after a Person, a Person who is also Space and Time and Thought. The name of that Person too was given to me directly, and the title of the forthcoming literary work is, accordingly, Kalen O’Tolán.

I penned an E-mail that night to my friend Ken Wilber, one excited morning in June 2010, explaining that the shape of the epic was all falling together in my mind, and I was so filled with enthusiasm as if I were Harry Potter discovering the Philosopher’s Stone. I think he thought me a bit manic, but he had only words of encouragement.

If all this sounds a little crazy, indeed there were narcissistic and even slightly delusional aspects to my Korán undertaking, which I kept secret from all but about a dozen friends who read my near daily private journal entries for weeks at a time. Leaving aside the inflated grandiosity and overwhelming sense of messianic purpose, writing the Korán consumed me, starting with the major question: How, for Allah’s sake, could I receive revelation of God and distinguish its authentic nature from my misunderstandings and projections and flawed interpretations?

The answer to this question has emerged gradually in the past two years, as I have re-read ancient scriptures from China, the Bible, and the Quran, and created a long-term plan for completing the writing of Kalen O’Tolán within the next two to four years. Meanwhile, it is the nature of the writing process that has concerned me greatly: how do I divine the Word of God, and separate it from the word of flawed human beings with shadow motivations?

Yes, eight years after abandoning my study of mythopoetic astrology, I once again took up the task of investigating the possibility of a truly Integral Divination. Hence, my spiritual practice today (I strive for twice-a-day discipline, though I don’t always succeed) is quite simple: practice the fundamental integrative techniques that in the long-term can lay the foundation for a completely trans-mental map of consciousness and new ways of being human which go a leap beyond what we ordinarily take our limits to be.

Forgive me if I’m a bit vague about describing these practices, because they are in an experimental mode. Here’s the basic notion. Body, Thought, Space, and Time are a unity, and a way of being human in which their apparent separation is unmasked as delusion is possible IF we re-learn the fundamental basis of the distorting illusions. If we practice a mode of being in which a single act simultaneously interconnects Body, Thought, Space, and Time … and we do so religiously, twice per day at minimum, gradually we can cut new grooves in consciousness in which the esoteric unity becomes exoterically manifest. That’s the idea.

A Ternary Hexagram (010222)

Thus, the essence of my practice is one which I have called loosely “doing kalens,” one in which I have drawn from the T’ai Hsuan Ching. Through my reconstruction of the structure and method of interpreting of the Ternary Hexagrams (taking over a year of explorations), I have built a new Map of Body, Thought, Space, and Time — the Kalen O’Tolán — in which there is a Kosmic Kalendar combined with a World Atlas and a Map of Phonemes (Sound Symbols), a Martial Arts practice, and more. Unlike the I Ching’s 64 binary Hexagrams, the T’ai Hsuan Ching has 729 ternary hexagrams (twice the number of days in the solar year). The actual lived meditation / mantra / martial arts poses are unified and holistic. Every 12 hours of the day, the program of meditations changes, enfolding a different combination of subtle energy, attuned to the changing cycles in the hours of the day and the seasons of the year, and then repeats itself after 365.

This new practice, this Kalen O’Tolán, I believe to be a technology with the long-term potential to generate increased levels of what Sri Aurobindo is describing as Supermind consciousness: an elevated supramental way of being, beyond the ability of any conventional map to describe it in a mental meaning for our intelligence. I just don’t know what it’s good for, practically, in terms of helping people to make money or get happier or a more shapely body. I don’t know how doing kalens would change me — or any other practitioner — if consistently performed for years and years. I don’t know for certain that writing the book would be a channel to listening to God’s Voice (though I believe it will bring me closer to God, more fully inhabiting my Unique Self divine expression).

In my mind, writing Kalen O’Tolán is more important than meditating or Tantric sex or constructing delightful new Philosophical Theories. It’s never something I would have selected on my own, but Allah — praise be to Muhammed, Allah’s Prophet, and all who hear God’s Voice speaking directly into their Heart, obligating them to give their Unique Gift  – asks for unconditional surrender to one’s Unique Purpose. And it seems I will be writing a book featuring an epic hero named Kalen O’Tolán.

Thousands of modern-day spiritual leaders hear God’s Voice guiding them into greater things, and I do not know that I have been given any gifts categorically more special and important than anything they are birthing into the world. True humility demands that I view my work as no more important than that of a gardner or bus driver, just a little different in its own beautiful ways. A distinctive Gift I do have to bring in the fullness of time: the Kalen O’Tolán. If successful, perhaps it is a New I Ching for the world, a New Divine Comedy, a New Chapter (God willing) of Divine Revelation.

(The Quran of Islam, as you may know, is described typically as holding itself out to be the Final Revelation of Allah. On the other hand, my reading of the text gives room for expansion in the form of Muhammed’s challenge to others to create a work as magnificent if they believe themselves to be divinely inspired. I am all but certain my first version of Kalen O’Tolán will disappoint such lofty hopes in the eyes of many readers, but I am encouraged by the possibility of reading the holy scripture of Islam in a fashion that creates an opening for evolving revelations.)

By the standards of literary critics, it would not surprise me if the work is panned. It would not even surprise me if the work is banned by fundamentalist religionists. Or perhaps it will simply be ignored. I have released myself of any particular expectations, for the Book is to be written as a gift mainly to the people of the world who feel left out by the upheavals of modernity and postmodernity; and for the Earth, and our companions who we call animals; and for the generations to come.

Marc Gafni’s Unique Self teaching beautifully inspires me to return to the writing of Kalen O’Tolán in the months and years ahead when I would have otherwise become too discouraged to continue. For most people, I think, their path is likely to be one of turning to embrace the best practices of their traditional or adopted religion, and obtain mastery of its technologies for enlightenment. But for some of us oddfellows there is another calling: not merely to practice something that has worked for thousands before us, but to invent something whose value cannot be known in advance but only taken on faith.

Photo Credit: cmiper

A fascinating analysis of data on American religiosity today shows the rise of a new ethos in the United States: a stunning 48 percent of Americans now describe themselves as BOTH spiritual AND religious, with another 30 percent preferring the “spiritual, BUT NOT religious” formula.

Now here’s the stunner: only 13 years ago, a majority of 54% of Americans described themselves as religious BUT NOT spiritual. If these surveys are correct, we are witnessing a hidden sea change whereby Americans have now largely accepted a divide between the religious and the spiritual, and the spiritual is winning in spades.

Author Diana Butler Bass sees the day coming when religion in the U.S. will virtually come to an end. In the Huffington Post today, she writes:

In a 2008 survey, Pew research found that one in 10 Americans now considers themselves an ex-Catholic. The situation is so dire that the church launched a PR campaign inviting Catholics to “come home,” to woo back disgruntled members. There was a slight uptick in Catholic membership last year, mostly due to immigrant Catholics. There is no data indicating that Catholics are returning en masse and much anecdotal evidence suggesting that leaving-taking continues. Catholic leaders worry that once the new immigrants become fully part of American society they might leave, too.

She does not talk about the developing world, however, where there are few signs of secularization. After describing the American decline of Protestant denominations as well as Catholic, she continues:

The religious market collapse has happened with astonishing speed. In 1999, when survey takers asked Americans “Do you consider yourself spiritual or religious,” a solid majority of 54 percent responded that they were “religious but not spiritual.” By 2009, only 9 percent of Americans responded that way. In 10 years, those willing to identify themselves primarily as “religious” plummeted by 45 percentage points.

In the last decade, the word “religion” has become equated with institutional or organized religion. Because of crises such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Roman Catholic abuse scandal, Americans now define “religion” in almost exclusively negative terms. These larger events, especially when combined with increasing irrelevance of too much of organized religion, contributed to an overall decline in church membership, and an overall decline of the numbers of Christians, in the United States.

There may be hope, however, regarding the future of faith. Despite worry about the word, “religion,” Americans are extremely warm toward “spiritual but not religious” (30 percent) and, even more interestingly (and perhaps paradoxically), the term “spiritual and religious” (48 percent). While “religion” means institutional religion, “spirituality” means an experience of faith. Large numbers of Americans are hankering for experiential faith whereby they can connect with God, the divine, or wonder as well as with their neighbors and that lead to a more profound sense of meaning in the world. Maybe Americans once called this “religion,” but no more. Americans call it “spirituality.” (Emphasis mine.)

If all this sounds bleak for religion, she does note a silver lining:

Some Americans want to be spiritually left alone, without complications from organized religion. But nearly half of Americans appear to hope for a spiritual reformation — or even revolution — in their faith traditions and denominations. Congregations that exhibit a vibrant spiritual life embodying a living faith in practical ways succeeding, even in the religion bear market. These sorts of communities are models of what might be possible to renew wearied organizations…

Read the whole thing.

The drama in the future of American consciousness will apparently be played out not in a war between the spiritual and the religious, but between those who are BUT NOTs and the BOTH ANDs. World Spirituality must find a way to include and embrace both groups of people.  Nevertheless, it’s the BOTH ANDs whose perspective probably holds the greatest promise for the rise of a more Integral worldview, one which recognizes the falsity of the distinction between spiritual and religious, and which works towards the greater integration of today’s theologies with modern and post-modern wisdom, and the revitalization of spiritual and religious organizations.

Eucharist

Not everyone’s path to God follows a straight line through the religious tradition in which they were raised. And if you were raised with a strong traditional faith in Allah or Jesus Christ or Yahweh or Jehovah … well, God blesses your path of integrating all that you know to be true and holy with Truth wherever you can find it, be it science or postmodern criticism or something else.

Joe Perez in Soulfully Gay, a journal entry written when I was 34 years old, on February 19, 2004:

I had a dream this morning where I am composing a poem. I am writing “This is my Body, This is my Blood” over and over again, and in many different languages. I am thinking as I write: “Hey, I’m writing in German. I must be dreaming. This is cool. I don’t even know German.”

I am talking to a Roman Catholic priest, a closeted homosexual. I live in his parish, but I’m a lapsed Catholic. He has received orders from Rome. They have told him it’s his job to “get the homosexuals out,” and he has called on me to help him out.

“Me, why me? Don’t you know that I’m gay?”

I’m puzzled. I don’t understand.

Now I am arguing with a conservative Catholic. He is explaining that all Catholics who disagree with the pope’s teachings should leave the Church.

I reply thus: “I think that’s a great idea. Why don’t you start? Since the Church teaches the primacy of conscience and you seem to reject that teaching, I think it would be a fine idea if you left the Church and started a new church called the Conservative Catholic Church. And by all means, why don’t you take all the conservatives with you and shut the door on your way out?”

Sometimes I pray Catholic prayers. Sometimes I long to take part in the sacraments. And these impulses arise from a deep place within, whence the dream comes. Spiritual seekers often discuss faith as if it were strictly a matter of rational choice and preference, like they are consumers shopping in the supermarket aisle of religions. And religious conservatives often discuss faith as if it were strictly a matter of reasonable belief or unbelief, admonishing those who dissent from dogma to make the rational choice of leaving.

I am finding that faith is more complex than that. Leaving the Roman Catholic Church is easy to do with my feet but harder to do with all of me. These impulses are in contradiction, and for now I’m okay with that.

My quest at that time in my life was for a spiritual path that I could step into with ALL OF ME, not one foot in the door of a religion that taught intolerance and one foot off the edge of a cliff. In the 14 months chronicled by that book, I got more than I ever dreamed.

Joe Perez's Soulfully Gay

Today, I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I walked through the doors of a Roman Catholic Church. And yet I have not lacked for spiritual fellowship of a deep nature, communion with Christ in an intimate way, or guides along the path to a fullness and vitality of life. Mine is a World Spirituality which includes the best of my Roman Catholic tradition while being open to truth wherever it can be found.

The door is always open for me to return for a visit, but it will be a different ME who walks through the doors. Christ dwells within ME now, a truth that the Catholic Church officially teaches in certain seldom-opened pages of its catechism but which in practice it does not want people to know. If more people knew Christ dwells within them, they would know they are a spark of divinity that is a God-like consciousness awakened on earth, free to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven with every act of service, free to speak with the voice of a Prophet with every utterance.

That’s a dangerous message to some religious officials. They will tell you it is because it’s heresy or (if they are being candid and speaking off the record) because the people in the pews are too stupid and incapable of handling such deep spirituality. They might confess that the notion of having a direct relationship to God sounds too Protestant, too much an invitation to bypass the authority of the Magisterium in Rome.

Catholics believe that Jesus, the Son of God, gave up his life so that all people can have eternal life, and he instituted a communion ritual by which his followers could have Him always present with them. The Roman Catholic theologians will acknowledge that God is present not only in the communion wafers and communion wine, but in the people present and even those who are absent. They will tell you, in quiet rooms, that you don’t have to take the sacrament in order to receive the Body and Blood of Christ.

But what they will not tell you, unless they are of an all-too-rare mystical variety, is that you are called not only to receive the self-sacrificial love of God, but to be a higher Self: not you, but YOU, a Human Being of infinite worth no less than Jesus Christ or any Prophet.

YOU are called to participate in the redemption of the cosmos, the institution of New Heavens and New Earth, totally present now and yet still to come in the course of evolution. YOU are called to be the Body and Blood of Christ. YOU are called to take up the cross of Jesus; YOU are called to Redeem all of creation.

None of us have to limit our spiritual growth to obedience to the proclamations of our religious officials. God doesn’t command that; and if your tradition contains scriptures like the New Testament, then you know that God very often takes the side of those on the margins and outcast from religion rather than the pious defenders of religious orthodoxy.

So eight years ago this weekend I had a dream in which I was scrawling “This is my Body, This is my Blood” on the walls of every place on earth, in every language of the earth. Today I have a World Spirituality in which I take for granted that which was not so long ago a truth concealed in my dreams, a mystical truth which is also available for you too to possess: that there is no separation between YOUR highest Self, the incarnate Christ, the Eternal Logos, and the Fullness of the World.

Photo Credit: Tyler Hewitt

At first, I saw no reason that I should link to this blog post by a pseudonymous blogger who calls himself Orac. He claims to be a surgeon/scientist, and I have little doubt that he is. He is skeptical about all complementary/alternative medicine, which he likens to The Secret and New Age woo-woo nonsense.

At his Respectful Insolence blog, he writes:

…CAM [complementary alternative medicine] is nothing more than placebo medicine. It makes it easier for me to remind people that intentionally practicing placebo medicine is unethical (because it requires lying to the patient) and paternalistic, just like 60 years ago when conventional doctors did actually order placebos for patients. In a perfectly Orwellian turn of phrase, advocates of “health freedom” and CAM advocates are in essence advocating a return to that sort of paternalism. As I’ve pointed out before, CAM cloaks itself in rhetoric suggesting that it “empowering” patients to “take control” of their health. In actuality it denies them the most important tool to do that: A appraisal of the rationale behind a proposed treatment, along with an assessment of its potential benefits and risks based on science, not fantasy. Instead, it substitutes tooth fairy science, pre-scientific vitalism, and utter faith in the practitioner for science and reason.

So calling advocates of alternative medicine unethical peddlers of fantasy with Orwellian delusions is “respectful insolence” now?

I’m not saying that he doesn’t make a good point about the Placebo Effect, and I’m not saying that there isn’t some flakiness to some New Age thinking and some ways in which alternative/ complementary/ integrative medicine is practiced. There certainly is, but there are also professional standards and evolving wisdom. And there is also quackery among surgeons and standards by which the inadequate must be expelled from the practice.

This post is pretty much what you would expect from many mainstream surgeons, whose occupation tends to favor individuals with a certain sort of subjectivity and way of looking at the world which biases them in ways which create blind spots to more subtle, non-rational dimensions of reality. If they can’t understand it logically or see it under a microscope, to them it ain’t real. Like I said, I wasn’t going to link to the post, which didn’t say anything new, even as it said old stuff pretty darn well. World Spirituality makes room for a spectrum of divergent health modalities — traditional, modern, complementary, and integral — based on what works, not an ideological commitment which paints all but Western approaches as “unethical.”

But then I thought: what really bugs me about this post is that he writes under a psuedonym. What an odd thing to be bothered by! While pseudonymous writing is occasionally justified (as when an individual faces political oppression or social ostracism), it is very odd that a respected scientist and surgeon would take the very risk-adverse move (some would say cowardly and unprofessional) of refusing to give his name.

The story I have about the connection between the surgeon’s anonymity and his viewpoint is that he knows that if his name is connected to his writing — what he says AND the way he presents it, which comes off a bit as an arrogant know-it-all, condescending to everyone who thinks differently — that his business will suffer and people will respect him less. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my best guess. Pseudonyms shield writers from reality, giving us the illusion of safety when it only puts us into our own sort of “fantasy.”

But if only Orac would sign his real name, then his patients could see what he really believes, and (if they stayed with him) they could educate him about the experiences they have had with alternative medicine or faith-based healing. Then he could see that you don’t have to be ignorant or flaky in order to think that it’s all right to look beyond narrow Western medicine in terms of understanding dimensions of healing not yet well understood by the mind constituted by a narrow view of rationality.

If only.

Photo Credit: mnadi

Today our series of meditations on the hexagrams of the I Ching continues with an interpretation of Hexagram 22, Grace or Adornment. In these readings, I am looking at the subtle energy of Yin and Yang not in the traditional fashion as a dualistic pattern of repeating cycles, but through a lense which interprets Yin and Yang as principles themselves evolving through movements of interiority (Yang-Yin and Yin-Yin) and externalization (Yang-Yang and Yin-Yang).

I Ching Hexagram 22

Pi / Aesthetic

The subtle energy

The energy in the dominant position
Expresses itself in a masculine form
It moves in an inward direction
Its goal is to embrace itself
The energy in the submissive position
Expresses itself in a masculine form
It moves in an inward direction
Its goal is to transcend itself
Masculine and masculine energies:
Yang-Yin-Yin spiraling with Yang-Yin-Yang
The energies are like in direction and form;
They are alike in what is visible,
And harmonious in intent and action.
The masculine presides over the fire below
The masculine presides in the mountain above.
Yang seeking to receive Yin,
Yang seeking to receive Yang.
The drive to act, reinforced by a friend.

The image

It is an image of fire burning low on a mountain.
It is an image of grace, beauty of form, an adornment.
Today I see it is an image like a man fine-tuning his appearance in a mirror. The upper hexagram: the mirrored reflection, responsive to the actions of the man. The lower hexagram: growing more finely adorned through responsiveness to his reflection.
Today it is also an image of Wind passing over Earth passing over Earth … a constant adjustment of energy allowing two similar beings to become more harmonious than they otherwise would be.

The judgment

Aestheticism:
To appreciate beauty requires stillness and curiosity.
It is favorable to identify closely with the object
Until one completely receives its gift,
And then once again make it an object to you.

Kevin, a reader of Awake, Alive & Aware, writes:

Spirituality? Questions? Who am I? Yes. Yes. And yes. I would add the search for meaning and a willingness to risk change. Getting anywhere with these very personal matters requires a very personal approach. For me, real, concrete and life changing answers come by way of letting go of who I think I am and what I think I know. I’m a thinker. It’s a preference for sure. But I believe it’s in my genes. And it’s become a honed skill. So when I became conscious of my spirit and the spiritual path it was by way of thinking and rationality. To make a long story short my conscious journey on the spiritual path began as an effort to make sense of my life and find sanity. But it quickly became a quest to integrate thoughts, feelings and relationships. Twenty-seven years later I feel I’m beginning to make some progress. Today, one question I struggle with concerns individual and personal conscience and society’s structures and moral codes. It feels like religion is saying the seat of morality is personal conscience which is experienced as God’s still, small voice. But religion demonizes and lionizes people based on what religion judges to be moral and immoral not by what people say their conscience compels them to do and advocate.

Thanks Joe. What’s been your experience?

As you say, Kevin, these are highly personal matters and no one size answer fits all. Spiritual autobiography is a key practice of World Spirituality. I’ve found the enlightenment teaching of Unique Self so valuable to me: it suggests to me not only that you and I may each be approaching our search for meaning in unique ways, but that uniqueness is essential to Who We Really Are … which is paradoxically distinct but not separate.

But to elaborate on this answer… “Who am I?” first became a pressing question in my spiritual life around the time of my 30th birthday (12 years ago). At the turn of the Millennium (it was September 1999), I experienced the most bizarre and unbelievable spiritual experience of my life. (I wrote a memoir in which I tell about what happened in the book’s twisty final chapter.) For the first time, I had no idea who or what or when or how I was. It was a total upheaval of everything that I took to be real.

My experience in 1999 was not my first mystical experience, but it was the first time that I really encountered the limits of the rational mind in terms of providing an explanation of or way of integrating the experience. As a young man in my 20s, I found that I could experience God directly or experience a powerful and abiding and non-cognitive realization of Bliss … at least on occasion. But I was torn between relating to these experiences through liberal Christian theology, the psychological study of religion (e.g., William James’s pragmatism), or atheistic scientific materialism, or any of a variety of other intellectual paradigms.

I could not integrate these mystical experiences in my 20s because I had found no way to honor the truth in such a diversity of conflicting, antagonistic perspectives about mysticism. It seemed for a long while that I was doomed to a perpetual agnosticism, and perpetually keeping the profound depths of the spiritual experiences away from my consciousness.

But it was also true that none of my wrestling, no matter how sincere, really penetrated to the depth of the question: “Who am I?” I felt alienated, not at home in the world. (The image above is of the Archangel Gabriel as portrayed by Andy Whitfield in the movie Gabriel, a depiction of a spiritual being lost in a strange, surreal purgatory.)

Eventually, my Millennium experience forced the question to the front of my consciousness. I knew from reading the writings of mystics and sages (and of the psychologists and religion scholars who studied them) that almost universally these people encountered themselves as indistinct from God or Spirit or Divinity or some Absolute Reality however they defined it. They basically answered the question, “Who am I?” with “I am GOD.”

Long story short, it wasn’t an easy ride, but eventually I began to find my own way of owning my mystical realization. The world today doesn’t exactly make it easy for people to go around saying, “I am God.” You can get locked up for that. You can lose friends and jobs. Even people in your religion will be frightened or angry by your discovery of inner divinity, if they have not also understood their own lack of separation from the Divine. Fortunately, there are more skillful and nuanced ways of talking about spirituality that don’t quite sound so crazy.

So yes, Kevin, like you, my path has been one of letting go of who I thought I was and being willing to embrace more of the mystery of life. And it has at times brought me into conflict with those parts of religion which have become fixated on condemning people who didn’t fit into the mainstream rather than embracing God’s presence directly, transforming lives, entering the Kingdom of Heaven, or realizing enlightenment.

Photo Credit: sairenso

The hexagrams of the I Ching, interpreted through an evolutionary spiritual prism. These reflections are invitations to bring our awareness on the subtle repeating patterns that connect different situations and objects. In this way, we divine some of the many faces of our own true nature.

Today we look at Hexagram 18, Ku / Remedying or Work on that which is spoiled.

I Ching Hexagram 18

Ku / Therapy

The subtle energy

The energy in the dominant position
Expresses itself in a masculine form
It moves in an inward direction
Its goal is to embrace itself
The energy in the submissive position
Expresses itself in a masculine form
It moves in an outward direction
Its goal is to embrace itself
Masculine and masculine energies:
Yang-Yin-Yin spiraling with Yang-Yang-Yin
The energies are opposed in direction;
But the opposition is central, and beneficial.
The masculine presides over the wind below
The masculine presides in the mountain above
Yang seeking to receive Yang,
Yang seeking to receive Yin.
The drive for self-knowledge, not yet expressed.

The image

It is an image of wind blowing low on a mountain.
It is an image of a bowl of crawling worms, work on what is spoiled.
Today I see it is an image like Therapy, putting Thoughts into a rightful Place. The therapist is depicted in the upper trigram: he receives his patient’s inner wound from a superior position. The patient is depicted in the lower trigram: he penetrates his therapist’s inner world from a subordinate position. Gently, their mutual receptivity opens the patient’s blockages. However, no action is taken.
Today it is also an image of the need for inner work to come to a completion outside of a place of reflection.

The judgment

Portends supreme success.
For every hour of thinking, spend equal time in doing.
This is the essence of good therapy.