Remembering what we already know.

I want to learn how to let Love move through me unobstructed.

Believing that particular Resource is Eternally and Infinitely available.

The Alpha, the Omega, the Beginning, and the End.

Dwelling right inside of me.

Perhaps then I could freely give That which I knew could never be exhausted.

Love.
Love.
Love.

Love.

My soul says, "It's True already, you know?"

And I can only respond, "I'm working on Remembering".


-- Whitney Logan

Creation According to Eve? (Humor me).

Somewhat paradoxically, my movement away an over-identification with church dogma began during a course on the Old Testament at a Baptist university in Texas. Like any good overview class should, we started with the creation narratives (there are two!) in the book for Genesis. To my utter amazement, the ordained Baptist minister that was teaching my class let us in on this little secret: one of the two creation stories suggests literarily (not literally, but literar(y)-ily) that Eve is the apex of creation! Essentially, the literary movement of the story tells us that God ordered "His" creations to be increasingly more complex throughout the course of those seven days; the cherry on top being woman (Eve).

That struck me as supremely confusing at the time, as I didn't know how to reconcile this with the rest of the things I'd been taught through my religious education so far. Consequently, it took years and years of letting that gem of knowledge marinate in my mind until it eventually collided with the teachings of other spiritual wisdom traditions for me to start making some new assumptions.

But, let's get back to the juicy tale here! If Eve is really the apex of creation, why then did God say all that nonsense about giving Adam a "helper" (insert mental image of woman in an apron without the right to vote) when he created her? Well, turns out: God called Eve a "helper" using the same language "He" also used to describe "Himself" in the role as "helper". The Hebrew phrase is "ezer kenegdo", and it is only used again throughout the rest of the whole Old Testament to describe the kind of help God offers to mankind.

Eve is starting to seem like less of a disappointment right now, huh? Well, it gets better. In light of this new information let's revisit that infamous "how Eve got tricked by the snake into ruining everything for the rest of us" Garden scene and examine a few of the other symbols we find there.  We can no longer necessarily assume that Eve is somehow dumber than Adam and consequently more likely to get "tricked" by such a wily snake like she's some sort of naive damsel in distress, right?

So, what's the deal with Eve and seemingly spineless exchange with the serpent then? Well, here's a fun fact: a serpent or snake in nearly every other ancient spiritual tradition is often considered a feminine symbol, as it (like a woman) has an intimate, embodied knowledge about the cycles of life, death, and re-birth through it's molting (skin-shedding) process. Menstruating women are also connected to this intimate knowledge of the cycles of life through the shedding of their uterine (endometrial) lining, which is how the two creatures got linked to one another. So curious!

Now if we decide to take a little risk and consider that neither the serpent nor Eve are all bad, what are we to make of this whole business of eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (despite being told not to quite emphatically!)? On a symbolic level, eating from that tree in particular sorta sounds to me like a kind of initiation into a new type of moral consciousness. The kind of consciousness that can separate or distinguish "good" from "bad". I imagine that developmental psychologists might suggest an interesting parallel between the timing of typical menstruation and the various stages of moral development.

But let's leave that aside for a moment, and notice that whatever exciting symbolism may be there, we still need to deal with this business of getting kicked out of the "Garden" after being initiated into "knowing what's up" re: good and evil. Is it just because they broke the rules? And what do we make of the snake's seductive little statement to Eve about how eating the fruit would make her "like God"?

First, let's maybe ask ourselves how it is that knowledge of "Good and Evil" makes a person like God? I have a friend that suggested to me that perhaps knowing about "Good and Evil" is the only way we can really examine our choices and know ourselves. Essentially, consciousness of ourselves is possible when we are able to understand the relationship between "Good and Evil", and then recognize our own power to make informed choices.

Second, let's reflect on why we understand this resulting banishment from the Garden as such a devastating fate for our spiritual ancestors. What is so compelling about the Garden that this makes us feel so convinced that this was an excruciating experience of loss? The symbol of the Garden itself suggests fertility, new life, the womb, the lap of the Mother, the place of fusion with Caregivers, and innocence about our own Responsibility in the world. I imagine that the last time we all felt that kind of unconscious union was probably right before we became conscious of our "separateness" from "mother".

Regardless of whether or not we are projecting our own sense of loss onto their exile, we seem to be able to deeply relate to this anguish and shame that Adam and Eve experience. We think we know that this is a very terrible moment when Adam and Eve begin to feel their "separateness" from God and each other, and try to hide themselves out of shame. They are able to recognize their nakedness (vulnerability) for the first time, seem to have a negative judgment about this, and are consequently alienated from the blissful privilege of unconsciousness that the Garden had allowed them to enjoy up until then.

Yet, this same story also says that God made man and woman in "His" own image, and that "He" saw that this was very good. If we're going to consider everything else literar-ily, we might start to wonder if this story is not just the perfect set up for the most epic Redemption tale of all time.  A real prelude of sorts for what was would happen next (i.e. Jesus Christ: the personification of this Life, Death, And Re-Birth phenomena that seems to make the world go round).

And why did we need Jesus to do this for us? Drumroll, please: I'm inclined to think that it was so that we could have the courage to Remember that the Garden is within us! Jesus' big message was all, "hey guys, you don't need religious folks in fancy robes to stand between you and the Divine in order to mediate that relationship anymore". Maybe some people took him seriously, but mostly, it seems to me that the religious culture in the West has literalized their way right back in the same legalistic "Oh no, we've been kicked out of the Garden and are so ashamed, so let's come up with a bunch of rules and rituals that will help alleviate our guilt and anxiety" system that Jesus made a point to criticize thousands of years ago. I don't like speaking for Jesus, and so I won't. But I personally like to assume that he would be pretty disappointed by the current state of things too.

Speaking of Jesus, rumor has it that he was trying to bring Good News to people! I believe - passionately - that his "Good News" was a message about we can know that place of union (Garden) with God inside of ourselves!  For real.

AND SO IN CONCLUSION(ish), and because I think it's worth considering, I'm boldly saying, "hey people, these stories might be telling us that the Gospel truth sounds like this: turns out, we can choose (in any moment) to leave or return or leave and return again to this place of union with the Divine". Connection, Separation, Re-connection. Life, Death, Re-birth. The trees do it. Our cells do it. Snakes do it. The seasons too. The human heart beat reminds us of this rhythm: contraction, expansion, contraction. Perhaps the sound of the Universe is echoing in our own chests for a reason.

And we get to be conscious of it! What a gift.

This gift of consciousness given from God to the snake, and then from the snake to Eve, and Eve to Adam - might be the kind of gift that empowers us with the exquisite creativity - and very real responsibility - that makes us "like God" in some important way. We too can choose how to use this gift of consciousness: creatively or destructively (for Good or for Evil, so to speak).

As a being that could offer Adam the kind of "help" that God offers to mankind, we might even want to conclude that Eve had good motives for sharing that fruit with him after she had tasted it herself. I think I love her for her conscious courage.

**And by the way, any good parent (Divine or otherwise) knows that if you want to be sure to get your kids to eat something strange and unfamiliar you should try telling them something like "eat anything you want.... except for this one special thing... that's only for grown-ups, which I've willingly placed here unlocked and unguarded".

Nice trick, God.
 
And thank you.... for trusting us enough to let us become conscious of the Mystery.

The initiation was brutal, but the reward is so sweet.

Restor(y)ing the Religious Body

I like retelling Bible stories for a modern audience for two main reasons.  A) I feel that these are some of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted collective tales of our time, and B) most of the writings, teachings, and opinions about these stories seem to be a bit polarizing.  Often these stories have been hijacked by parties that aim to concretize the Mystery, and thus either understand these stories literally, or to discount them as such, and subsequently reject their relevance or interpret them only symbolically.

The assumption, of course, is that those two views are mutually exclusive and we need to pick a side in the debate.  It’s like our current political system:  Either, or.  Right, wrong.  Black, white.  If it’s this, it can’t be that.  Stalemate!  My argument is that perhaps both perspectives are only inadequate in their exclusion of the Other.  What wants to be whole is fragmented, and the original invitation becomes a message of profound alienation.

For example, consider the miracle of the Virgin Birth in the Christian tradition.  What if it doesn't matter if it happened exactly the way it was written down, but that it does matter that it happened to be written down exactly the way it was?  I know that I took that story literally for many decades, then rejected it completely for several years, and finally circled back around to it one day with renewed reverence.  I felt it had finally yielded it's essential teaching to me:  when the Holiness of Spirit is made manifest inside of a consciously receptive human being, Christ consciousness is born.  Or, in other words, willing Spirit + receptive body = a being that is both fully human and fully divine.

A paradox.  The Mystery.

So, what then does this Being who is fully human and fully divine do with their time on earth according to these same teachings?  Love and be loved, heal the sick, feed the hungry, be in community, and tell stories that help people remember the Mystery.  I believe that Jesus literally and symbolically did what we needed him to do in order to get our collective attention, shift the cultural-religious paradigm, and then invite us all to access our unique connection to Indwelling Divinity.  That was a radical message!  And it seems that Jesus would have to demonstrate his own divinity + humanity first.

The resurrection from death was a literal happening awesome enough that we would be able to hear its sounds reverberating for thousands of generations afterwards.  I believe that Jesus, the master storyteller, used his own life in order to create a kind of master Story that might reach us on a symbolic level no matter how many people and systems tried to translate and edit it according to their own agenda.

Perhaps "the gospel message" is both concealed and revealed by the gospel message itself.

Another paradox.  More of the same Mystery.

I imagine that this is often the hardest teaching for us to accept about ourselves: the reality of being fully human and fully divine simultaneously.  The dis-ease in the Hebrew culture at the time was a belief in separateness from God.  The dis-ease in our time might be a belief that there is no God.  I'm saying that both of those are a mistake, and that the literal-symbolic Virgin Birth, Crucifixion, Death, and Resurrection calls us into a radically different story.

The metaphorical Mary Magdalene (every woman)

"Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out" —Luke 8:2.

The first was that I was very busy.

The second — I was different from you: whatever happened to you could
not happen to me, not like that.

The third — I worried.

The fourth — envy, disguised as compassion.

The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,

The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn't stop thinking about it.

The mosquito too — its face. And the ant — its bifurcated body.

Ok the first was that I was so busy.

The second that I might make the wrong choice,

because I had decided to take that plane that day,

that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early

and, I shouldn't have wanted that.

The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street

the house would blow up.

The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer

of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing.

The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living

The sixth — if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I

touched the left arm a little harder than I'd first touched the right then I

had

to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.

The seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that

was alive and I couldn't stand it,

I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word — cheesecloth —

to breath through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that

entered me when I breathed in

No. That was the first one.

The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened?

How had our lives gotten like this?

The third was that I couldn't eat food if I really saw it — distinct, separate

from me in a bowl or on a plate.

Ok. The first was that I could never get to the end of the list.

The second was that the laundry was never finally done.

The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.

And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was

love?

The fourth was I didn't belong to anyone. I wouldn't allow myself to belong

to anyone.

The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn't know.

The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.

The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying—her mouth wrenched into an O so as to take in as much air…
The sound she made — the gurgling sound — so loud we had to speak louder 
to hear each other over it.

And that I couldn't stop hearing it—years later—

grocery shopping, crossing the street —

No, not the sound — it was her body's hunger

finally evident.
—what our mother had hidden all her life.

For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,

the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.

The underneath —that was the first devil.
It was always with me.

And that I didn't think you — if I told you — would understand any of this —

Copyright © 2008 by Marie Howe. 

The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene

Pages 1-6 are missing.

     "… Will m[a]tter then be utterly [destr]oyed or not?"
     The Savior replied, "Every nature, every modeled form, every creature, exists in and with each other. They will dissolve again into their own proper root. For the nature of matter is dissolved into what belongs to its nature. Anyone with two ears able to hear should listen!"
     Then Peter said to him, "You have been explaining every topic to us; tell us one other thing. What is the sin of the world?"
     The Savior replied, "There is no such thing as sin; rather you yourselves are what produces sin when you act in accordance with the nature of adultery, which is called 'sin.' For this reason, the Good came among you, pursuing (the good) which belongs to every nature. It will set it within its root."
     Then he continued. He said, "This is why you get si[c]k and die: because [you love] what de[c]ei[ve]s [you]. [Anyone who] thinks should consider (these matters)!
     "[Ma]tter gav[e bi]rth to a passion which has no Image because it derives from what is contrary to nature. A disturbing confusion then occurred in the whole body. That is why I told you, 'Become content at heart, while also remaining discontent and disobedient; indeed become contented and agreeable (only) in the presence of that other Image of nature.' Anyone with two ears capable of hearing should listen!"
     When the Blessed One had said these things, he greeted them all. "Peace be with you!" he said. "Acquire my peace within yourselves!
     "Be on your guard so that no one deceives you by saying, 'Look over here!' or 'Look over there!' For the child of true Humanity exists within you. Follow it! Those who search for it will find it.
     "Go then, preac[h] the good news about the Realm. [Do] not lay down any rule beyond what I determined for you, nor promulgate law like the lawgiver, or else you might be dominated by it."
After he had said these things, he departed from them.
     But they were distressed and wept greatly. "How are we going to go out to the rest of the world to announce the good news about the Realm of the child of true Humanity?" they said. "If they did not spare him, how will they spare us?"
     Then Mary stood up. She greeted them all, addressing her brothers and sisters, "Do not weep and be distressed nor let your hearts be irresolute. For his grace will be with you all and will shelter you. Rather we should praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us true Human beings."
      When Mary had said these things, she turned their heart [to]ward the Good, and they began to deba[t]e about the wor[d]s of [the Savior].
     Peter said to Mary, "Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than all other women. Tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don't because we haven't heard them."
     Mary responded, "I will teach you about what is hidden from you." And she began to speak these words to them.
     She said, "I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to him, 'Lord, I saw you today in a vision.'
He answered me, 'How wonderful you are for not wavering at seeing me! For where the mind is, there is the treasure.'
     I said to him, 'So now, Lord, does a person who sees a vision see it <with> the soul <or> with the spirit?'
     The Savior answered, 'A person does not see with the soul or with the spirit. 'Rather the mind, which exists between these two, sees the vision an[d] that is w[hat … ]'

(Pages 11-14 are missing.)

     " '… it.'
     "And Desire said, 'I did not see you go down, yet now I see you go up. So why do you lie since you belong to me?'
     "The soul answered, 'I saw you. You did not see me nor did you know me. You (mis)took the garment (I wore) for my (true) self. And you did not recognize me.'
     "After it had said these things, it left rejoicing greatly.
     "Again, it came to the third Power, which is called 'Ignorance.' [It] examined the soul closely, saying, 'Where are you going? You are bound by wickedness. Indeed you are bound! Do not judge!'
     "And the soul said, 'Why do you judge me, since I have not passed judgement? I have been bound, but I have not bound (anything). They did not recognize me, but I have recognized that the universe is to be dissolved, both the things of earth and those of heaven.'
     "When the soul had brought the third Power to naught, it went upward and saw the fourth Power. It had seven forms. The first form is darkness; the second is desire; the third is ignorance; the fourth is zeal for death; the fifth is the realm of the flesh; the sixth is the foolish wisdom of the flesh; the seventh is the wisdom of the wrathful person. These are the seven Powers of Wrath.
     "They interrogated the soul, 'Where are you coming from, human-killer, and where are you going, space-conqueror?'
     "The soul replied, saying, 'What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been destroyed, and my desire has been brought to an end, and ignorance has died. In a [wor]ld, I was set loose from a world [an]d in a type, from a type which is above, and (from) the chain of forgetfulness which exists in time. From this hour on, for the time of the due season of the aeon, I will receive rest i[n] silence.' "
     After Mary had said these things, she was silent, since it was up to this point that the Savior had spoken to her.
     Andrew responded, addressing the brothers and sisters, "Say what you will about the things she has said, but I do not believe that the S[a]vior said these things, f[or] indeed these teachings are strange ideas."
     Peter responded, bringing up similar concerns. He questioned them about the Savior: "Did he, then, speak with a woman in private without our knowing about it? Are we to turn around and listen to her? Did he choose her over us?"
     Then [M]ary wept and said to Peter, "My brother Peter, what are you imagining? Do you think that I have thought up these things by myself in my heart or that I am telling lies about the Savior?"
Levi answered, speaking to Peter, "Peter, you have always been a wrathful person. Now I see you contending against the woman like the Adversaries. For if the Savior made her worthy, who are you then for your part to reject her? Assuredly the Savior's knowledge of her is completely reliable. That is why he loved her more than us.
     "Rather we should be ashamed. We should clothe ourselves with the perfect Human, acquire it for ourselves as he commanded us, and announce the good news, not laying down any other rule or law that differs from what the Savior said."
     After [he had said these] things, they started going out [to] teach and to preach.

Lord's Prayer

O Cosmic Birther of all radiance and vibration.
Soften the ground of our being and carve out
a space within us where your presence can abide.
Fill us with your creativity so that we may be
empowered to bear the fruit of (y)our mission.
Let each of our actions bear fruit in accordance with your desire.
Endow us with your wisdom to produce and
share what each being needs to grow and flourish.
Untie the tangled threads of destiny that bind us
as we release others from the entanglement of past mistakes.
Do not let us be seduced by that which would
divert us from our true purpose, but illuminate
the opportunities of the present moment.
For you are the ground and the fruitful vision,
the birth power and fulfillment,
As all is gathered and made whole again.
Amen.

-- Directly translated from the original Aramaic

Confession

I used to belong to a very charismatic evangelical Christian community when I was very young.

Ever since formally leaving that community I've wondered how to make sense of the power I witnessed then.

At first I tried to live without respect for religion altogether,
But my longing for the Great Spirit was still within me.

No high in the world was like the Ecstasy I remembered
When encountering the Lord God Almighty.

So, finally, I surrendered
Letting grief and fear visit me.
And a part of my heart returned with them.

Caring about my own suffering returned me to myself.

Yesterday, it dawned on me how to reconcile ephemeral worldviews along the journey.

The way the Lover longs to see their Beloved's face from all angles, I want to discover God in every Place.
To know God in precisely the biblical sense of the word: "visceral, erotic, initiatory, epiphanic".

Changing who I AM
With every Encounter.

I approach the Throne Room shyly now; peering up from behind lowered eyes so carefully.

This way of Loving God is what has truly Saved me.

How To Get What You Want

A very wise woman once told me that you have to create specific receptivity for the things you want to experience in your life.  If you are afraid to tell you the Universe that you want something, it will not necessarily fall into your lap.  Instead, bravery, perseverance and honesty about our deepest longings are rewarded much more often than self-protective indifference.  To illustrate this truth, this same wise woman asked me to think of a moment in my lifetime that felt particularly joyful.  I thought about it and settled on a moment of spiritual significance I had once experienced on a trip to Mexico.

Her follow up questioning sounded something like this:  "Now tell me, did you make yourself available for that joy?  Did you ask for it?  Did you put yourself in its path, and bravely stand there with your naked longing?  Or did you pretend not to need what you received in that moment?"

I think we're often afraid to ask for what we want - let alone acknowledge it to ourselves - because some superstitious part of us believes that we might be setting ourselves up for unbearable disappointment.  Yet, my own short experience on earth tells me that the Universe is not easily moved to collaborate with us when we're defended against her in this sort of passive-aggressive way. Of course, figuring out how to open our hearts towards our own deepest longings takes courage precisely because it means we have to be willing to relate to the most vulnerable parts of ourselves first.

The habitually unexamined self might think we want a certain job, partner, vacation, car, prestige, or positive recognition when really we're after something much deeper like "love, belonging, meaning, safety, healing, significance, or transcendence".  While considering this, I was reminded of the Christian scripture that says, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you".  Perhaps we have misunderstood this teaching so often because we've misunderstood ourselves more often.

Namaste, you guys.

"The hallmark of insanity is to know that you are God.  It is absolutely taboo, especially in the Christian religion.  Jesus got crucified for knowing it and the Christians said, "Okay, okay, Jesus was God, but let it stop right there.  Nobody else."  But the Gospel is a revelation to us all of something that the Hindus have known all along, tat tvam asi, you are it!  If Jesus had lived in India, they would have congratulated him for finding out rather than crucified him.  There have been many people in India who knew they were God in disguise.  Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramana, Krishna, and the Buddha - they all discovered it, because it is not an exclusive claim that I alone am that, but that you all are, and as I look into your eyes I see the universe looking back at me".  -- Alan Watts

Fruit of the Spirit

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a shamanic retreat at a beautiful retreat center near St. Louis.  For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of shamanism, here's a few rough talking points: a shaman is an indigenous (i.e. in some way native to the "place" they practice) healer.  They often facilitate "journeys" to transpersonal realms so that people might have experiences of healing and transformation they may not otherwise have access to in their ordinary waking state of consciousness.  In shamanism, there is also a deep belief in reciprocal exchange between all potential and manifest energies.  In other words, it's possible for us to have a mutually influential relationship (and an ongoing conversation!) with all things - visible and invisible.

During this recent retreat, for example, I was able to receive some information about the psychological origins of a current experience of dis-ease in my physical body.  From this previously mentioned belief in the possibility of reciprocal relationship with all energies, I was encouraged to ask the dis-ease itself about it's origins.  I asked this specific energy why it had manifested at this time in my life.  It answered back immediately: "because of your belief in scarcity".  I also asked the dis-ease where the physical origins of this energy block - or holding pattern - were located in my body, and it responded by showing me the back of my heart.  I was working with a woman who is both a shaman and a neurologist during this particular exercise, and she reminded me that the back side of the body often holds the unconscious beliefs associated with each organ or energy center in the body.  Subsequently, I then decided to then ask that energy center if it would allow whatever was unconscious to become conscious (i.e. unblocked).  After a moment or two, I received this answer:  "THE LOVE IS REAL".

I didn't understand that message in it's entirety immediately, but my body responded by softening in such a way that convinced me that this answer must be exactly right.  Later that evening - in the middle of a Despacho Ceremony - I kept noticing feelings of the deepest kind of tenderness in my body.  This feeling of tenderness was connected to my own experience of love towards the many energies and persons that were being honored by this ceremony.  Spontaneously, I understood that what Spirt meant by "THE LOVE IS REAL" was that my own experience of love in my physical body is a real experience of Love.  At that moment, I could literally feel my heart pouring itself into every other cell in body, and I wept many tears for many hours out of this experience of profoundly loving overflow.

That night, I had a dream.  In the dream, I became aware of a feeling of deeply satisfying joy in my body.  As I went searching for the source of this joy, some kind of disembodied dream voice explained to me that "joy is also experienced on the inside".  Fortuitously, I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote down all that I could remember from the dream before falling back to sleep. During our lunch break the next day, I went outside to find a place to make "Sand Art" (another shamanic ritual involving reciprocal exchange with nature).  While gathering up some sticks I intended to use to enclose my sand art with, I happened to stumble upon this literal sign in nature that read "JOY":

As you may be able to see, I placed my sticks in a circle at the foot of this altar to JOY, and then began to clear away the leaves with the boundaries of the sticks.  Underneath the leaves, I found a small stump.  Upon uncovering this stump, I noticed that it was literally shaped like an anatomically accurate human heart!  See image:

When I turned the stump over, I discovered that the entire back side of this heart-shaped stump was covered in ICE!  The "back of the heart" was literally frozen over.  Immediately, I allowed myself to feel into that real experience of love I now believed to be available in my own body, placed my hand over the icy stump, and proceeded to send love and warmth to that frozen heart until I felt nothing but warm wetness underneath my palm.  At the exact moment I realized the thawing process was complete, the noon-ish sun shifted in the sky just slightly, spilling all of it's radiance onto my face, and casting a perfect shadow from the "JOY" sign right through the center of that heart-shaped stump.  I understood the tender message that the natural world seemed to be speaking to me in that moment, and allowed myself to become conscious of the real experience of joy in my physical body too.

Some moments later, I got up in order to walk away from this sacred space and ran into another literal sign in nature that read "PEACE":

I stood there gazing for at it for a moment, trying to honor the message that might be trying to reveal itself to me.  I felt peaceful, certainly, and could appreciate that this feeling of peace could also become an internal refuge.  But when I tried to walk away from this spot, I felt something pull me back toward it.  I looked all around the little meadow of trees, and only found one other sign:

In a single moment, I remembered (thank you Christian youth camp!) that there's a passage in the Bible lists the "Fruit of the Holy Spirit" in precisely this order:  LOVE, JOY, PEACE... Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.  I laughed out loud, feeling myself filled with gratitude for this newly enlivened teaching, as I suddenly understood in a new, deep way that they are ordered in this way for a reason.  I wondered how much of my life I had spent trying to master self-control in order to gain an experience of love (something that probably got reinforced by this same youth camp, unfortunately).  At this particular moment, however, I could see very clearly the grievous error in this way of thinking, and felt the grace that comes with an embodied understanding of how things could be different.  It seemed that Spirit had given me a living, breathing experience that would continue to help me understand that we must start with a belief in the immediate, experiential, available reality of Love, and everything else we value would flow forth from there.  

Mary Oliver says it this way: "You do not have to be good.  You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.  You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves". The rest will follow.

Choosing Love

I read this excerpt from Lawrence Edwards the other day:

If you take what the Buddha and Christ said,
and all the great yogis, saints, sages,
mystics, and lovers of God,
it can be reduced to two words:
Choose Love.
There is nothing higher than Love,
nothing purer,
nothing more selfless,
nothing more powerful,
and it is present in every moment.
Choose Love.
In all times, in all places -
Choose Love,
for Love has already chosen you.

I believe that Love is the engine of the Universe, and that it's sole function is to produce more Love.  I also believe that "surrendering into Love" a choice... up to a point.  And yet, sometimes I think I resist really yielding (see blog post about Movement Theory) fully into Love in so many different situations because I'm afraid of what that experience of love will do to me.  I wonder if this might be true for most of us.  If so, maybe that's because we know that real love always requires personal transformation.  The timid, lazy parts of me then resist this surrender - in either big or small ways - precisely because I know that personal transformation comes at a price.

The people listed above in Edwards' example of those who "chose Love" lived radical lives.  Many of them gave up a comfortable, easy lifestyle because continuing to choose Love meant that they must. Love requires Love in exchange for Itself, and I suppose that none of us really know what our own Love for the world might look like for us personally if we were to fully choose It.  Choosing Love may actually be down-right world-destroying.... or, "the world as we know it"-destroying for each of us. Because Love begs this question of us:  What is your full potential?!  And if we're honest with ourselves, I think we'd all agree that that's a somewhat terrifying concept.  We risk becoming like seeds - each one of us having to allow our safe little shells to crack and tear themselves wide open so that the fertile of ground of Love might receive us, and change us into the fullest expression of our being.

The Buddha abandoned both extraordinary privilege and his own young family, Jesus knew he was going to die an excruciating and humiliating death, Mother Teresa gave up luxury for poverty, and others have sold Fortune-500 companies to sweep the floors of an Ashram.  Yet these same people have done remarkable things for humanity, and all of them have reported experiences of sublime ecstasy, unity, and peace.

I suppose there's only one thing we can expect:  To choose Love is both to risk and to gain everything.

I'm often reminded of something C.S. Lewis said about his character Aslan (the symbol of Divine Love in his fictional world of Narnia):  "Safe?  Who said anything about safe?  'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.  He's the King, I tell you".  I'd say the same is true of choosing Love.  It's GOOD. Just not safe.  And maybe I'm scared of that.

Divine Formlessness

In this culture, most of us remember learning about the Judeo-Christian concept of God when we were very young.  Perhaps the background for this learning was deep, rich and mysterious.  Or maybe our exposure to religion often felt stuffy and bland.  The ideas we formed about this God may have been wonderful or menacing or terrifying or healing or comforting or even confusing.  I know that one of my early associations to "learning about God" involved a felt-board with felt cut-outs of animals that I could arrange on Noah's felt-ark according to my own whims.  With all this power to pick and choose who might survive the flood, I really questioned the necessity of alligators in my version of this brave new world.  A little later on in my religious education, I read about this same flood from a leather-bound bible that included a little sketch of a woman on a rock, gripping a small infant in her arms while these turbulent flood waters rose up around her.  If I had been familiar with swear words like this at the time, I'm pretty sure I would have shouted or cried out to the tune of "What the FUCK?"!!

Instead, I ran crying into my parents bedroom and demanded an explanation!  What was I supposed to make of this?!  Had I not been told that God was a powerfully safe, wise, moral, benevolent, grandfather type of God?  One that LOVED THE WORLD SO MUCH that he gave his only begotten son?  (I don't think I knew what the word 'begotten' meant, but I sure knew that phrase by heart). None of this made any sense and my whole spiritual-worldview was consequently hanging by a thread!  I imagine that was one of my mother's more unwelcome parenting moments in some ways.  She didn't have a satisfying answer for me, and likely didn't have a satisfying answer for herself either.  I've thought about that moment many times as I've moved along my particular spiritual path.  Because, as it turns out, this capacity to question and wrestle with the image (i.e. form) of God that's being presented to me has remained a consistent, and almost involuntary function for me.  And despite many moments of uncomfortable disillusionment, I consider this to be one of the great gifts of human consciousness.

The gift, as I understand it, is this: my questioning mind has not limited my receptivity to the many expressions of God in my life.  In fact, so far, the inverse has been true for me.  I have not had to exclude possible mediums through which Divine Mystery or Presence or Purpose might reveal Itself to me.  Nor have I needed to limit the ways I might be able to approach This Mystery.  God has been God in everything from Vacation Bible School and charismatic church gatherings, to gong baths, Sufi mysticism, poetry from Mary Oliver, the novels of Barbara Kingsolver, yoga practice, the Muslim call to prayer, quantum physics, microbiology, Hindu shrines, Jungian psychology, mountain ranges, weeping willow trees, my husband's heart beat, shamanic journeys, remembered dreams, top 40 music hits, conversations with friends, conversations with enemies, and even those dreadful alligators.  It's a thrilling way to orient to the world when you believe that around any corner or behind any set of eyes (human or animal), one might encounter Divine Mystery!  

Another curious consequence of this openness towards the Divine Personality has been that I tend to shame and neglect less and less parts of my own personality as well.  Maybe this is because I learned that mankind was made in God's own image around the same time I left those alligators to fend for themselves during the Great Felt-Board Flood!  If God is truly limitless, then perhaps being made in God's own image allows us to become wildly undefinable too.  I'm reminded of the way God described God's Self to Moses, saying only this:  "I AM WHO I AM, I AM BECOMING WHO I AM BECOMING, I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE" (Amplified Version).  I also take great comfort and inspiration from the first three sets of commandments that God gave to Moses during that same Mt. Sinai conversation.  First) there's no other God than Me.  Second) you better not try to form any image of Me.  Third) don't even name Me.  

Whew!  Now, see if you can orient yourself to that Divine paradox of nameless, formless specificity!? For me, it's become such a perfect set of instructions to keep me company on my own spiritual quest. From this vantage point, I can never assume I know this God completely, but I can always assume this God knows God's Self entirely.  Does that not sound like the most wild invitation into a simultaneously thrilling and humbling relationship with Mystery?  Both God and mankind can then be always on the move together!  And thank God -- because without movement we would all be disconnected and dead.  Final note:  I still don't have a satisfying answer for why this Great Flood is part of The Mystery, but with Great Doubt in fixed ideas and Great Faith in the limitless of possibilities, I'm really quite content to keep questioning.  After all, it seems that all the great heroes of this particular faith tradition (Job, Jacob, Abraham, Jesus, and maybe Eve?!) modeled a similar kind of attitude of open-hearted wrestling with These Mysteries.  

Deep Calls Out to Deep.

I had something like an enlightenment experience the other day.  I'm choosing the words "enlightenment experience" simply because the light of my own consciousness touched something that was previously unknown to me.  The words I've written below are an attempt to describe the revelation within the experience:

A human heart beats to a contracting rhythm of in and out, honoring the pattern of union and separation and union again.  Cells do this same dance when they divide from one another, in order to only return to each other again.  We remember to let our lungs fill up again with our breath only because we first notice how it has gone out.  I marvel at these movements and wonder if this is the whole creative pattern of the Universe.

Love once told me that it disconnects from Itself in order to get an experience of Itself.  And of course it would!  Love wouldn't be Love if it didn't want to Love itself too.  Similarly, John O'Donohue once reminded me that one of the real excitements of being a human is that we are the place where the Universe can become conscious of Itself.  The alchemists seemed to understand this when they tried to channel this precise dynamic in order to turn base metals into gold.  Plato, too, suggested that a similar psychological movement pattern would increase our own awareness of ourselves.  And God told us it was Good when He parted Day from Night.  Perhaps Adam and Eve had to experience their own shame in order to encounter their True longings.  What then, really, is shame?  Perhaps shame is simply BELIEVING that our separateness is fixed instead of mutable.  

Maybe we have also been given the same set of initiation rites as our ancestors in Eden.  If so, it might be helpful to recall how their redemption arrived through a being that could remember his full Divinity and full humanity too.  Perhaps we too must be initiated into our own sense of separateness, experience our deep longing to return, in order to find our own authentic way back to this remembering.  

But, why all this trouble?  I have no idea.  Nonetheless, this experience of disconnection and reconnection appears to be the life-generating movement pattern of the cosmos.  Perhaps it's like this:  by the time we start remembering our connection, we've already been deeply initiated into the experience of our separateness, which enables us to become powerful messengers of the Truth of both realities.  I think John O'Donohue was right about one of the real excitements of being a human. We really can learn how to be the place where the Universe can become conscious of Itself.

Human Hearts

I learned something miraculous recently while listening to an interview with Richard Bartlett about a healing technology he developed called Matrix Energetics.  There's a whole lot of remarkable content within this concept and you can listen to the whole interview by clicking the link I provided.  However, the single most impressive thing I learned from this conversation was about the nature of the human heart.

By describing this healing technology and how it works, Dr. Bartlett also explained a concept from quantum physics called a "torsion field".  To borrow his words exactly, a "torsion is just a spin or a twist. If you think of a tornado or a hurricane, that’s a torsion field. You’ve got this intense spinning energy, and then at its center, you’ve got a null point where there’s actually a change in the way the laws of physics behave".  Here's the exciting part -- Dr. Bartlett goes on to explain that the human heart is actually a torsion field.  Apparently, the first thing to form in an embryo is a 72-beats per minute pulse.  That pulse is driven by a whirling vortex - or spinning field with a null point - that eventually develops into the physical human heart.

His point?  Inside the field of the heart, there is this null or zero-point in which the laws of physics do not apply.  Consequently, Dr. Bartlett believes that there is this powerfully creative place in all of us where miracles can be conceived and then spun outward into this time-space reality.  He's not speaking metaphorically or philosophically here, however.  In fact, Matrix Energetics attempts to teach people how to get into the literal field of their hearts - which is apparently 5,000 times stronger electromagnetically than the field of the brain - and then tap into the infinite and lawless creative potential of their own torsion fields.

Dr. Bartlett makes two compelling claims:  One) getting into the field of your heart can be done.  Two) miracles, signs, and wonders do manifest as a result.  According to him, the source of this possibility is related to that neutral zero-point within the heart's torsion field.  Neutral, lawless, personality-less, empty, creative space:  that's where the miracles are sourced from!  He goes on to suggest that we can learn to return to a point in our hearts where there are no thoughts, no feelings, no emotions, no time, no space, and no rules.  He argues that when we get to that point, we have actually arrived at the point of our being that transcends all rule sets.  Dr. Bartlett calls this grace.  If this is true - I think it is - then we could conclude that the manifestation of Grace is the divine creative potential of the human heart.

Throughout this interview, Dr. Bartlett makes references to the person and miracles of Jesus Christ, as well as the transcendent experiences of monks, saints, and other mystics.  I can't remember if he then made this connection directly or only implied it, but I'm going to boldly suggest that these people knew how to get into that precise point of their being, and therein experience literal communion with that Grace.  There's a follow-up conversation I want to have about the body being the literal temple of the Holy Spirit, but I'll save that for another time.

Job

Once upon a time I was a Religion major at a Baptist university.  During that time I learned many, many wonderful things about the sacred texts from Jewish and Christian traditions.  I also learned how tragically watered-down and misunderstood some of those Bible stories have become in their modern Western mainstream translations.

One of my favorite examples of this comes from the book of Job.  Before learning the actual Hebrew translations of the words and the historical context of Job's interactions with God, I had assumed this was a tale about how we should all learn to take whatever God is dishing out with a stiff upper lip and a smile.  Turns out, I was POWERFULLY mistaken.

The real miracle of this story is that before Job went toe to toe with God (crying, cursing, screaming, blaming, doubting, and demanding justice), there was this really punitive theology that dominated that culture's beliefs at the time.  The technical term is called Deuteronomic Theology, and its basic premise is that you can tell who God loves most by a person's material wealth, overall health, and number of children.  Seriously.  It's different in application, but similar in philosophy to the belief systems that govern things like the caste system in India.  Belief systems like this allow us to get away with ignoring the suffering of others, and keep us in superficial relationship with the Divine.

Satan plays a role in this story too, which is curious on a lot of levels.  First of all, it reminds me to let you know that the Hebrew translation for the word that became "satan" in English literally means "the accuser".  Yep.  That's a good thing to remember b/c it alerts us that "the accuser" is an enemy of Love.  I have to work really hard to try to hold onto that truth because the energy of "the accuser" seems to rise up within us in such subtle, sneaky ways sometimes.

But, I digress.  Back to Job.  So, Satan accuses Job (behind his back, of course!) of only loving God b/c God has been so generous with him.  SO sneaky, right?  Ugh.  But God decides to take up this challenge, a deal is struck, and God hedges his bets that Job will prove that his love for God is real despite his outer circumstances.  I hate this part of the story because it's hard not to want to get in the ring and demand answers on Job's behalf too!  Which just might be the point.  Because Job reacted similarly - but on a grand scale.  Job's friends, however, basically begged him to stop crying out for justice from God and to admit that he had some secret unconfessed sin for which he was now being justly  punished.  A couple things here:  A) the word "sin" literally translated simply means "to miss the mark".  B)  THOSE ARE BAD FRIENDS.  And God agreed.

In fact, when God does answer Job with his presence, he is stunning and terrifying and all sorts of God-like, BUT he is not displeased with Job in anyway.  Guess who he's super angry with instead? Job's friends!  He's especially irritated b/c those guys were so busy talking about God, claiming to serve and know him from that place.  But Job (God's favorite) shouted at, pleaded with, talked directly to, and demanded a personal response from the Source of Life itself.  God decided that this kind of passion was the ultimate demonstration of faith and love in the Divine, and eventually rewarded Job's faith and love in many ways (note: the eventual reward did not diminish or erase his initial suffering).  Job's friends, on the other hand, were on God's shit-list in a major way.  God responded to them by deciding that they were not even fit to make penance to God on their own behalves, but would have to rely on Job's generosity and see if he would make sacrificial offerings for them.

So, why is this my favorite tale?!  Well, because it's so full of good news you can actually use.  First of all, I think it suggests (on an archetypal level) that real intimacy with the Divine requires real honesty... no matter how dark and despairing.  Another piece of brilliance in this story seems to demonstrate to us that even the darkest, most menacing accusatory energy can be responded to in a way that might transform a whole system of thought, way of being, or cultural attitude!  Lastly, I LOVE that part of Job's capacity to believe so fiercely in God's goodness was connected to Job's willingness to keep his heart open towards himself too.  He knew he was worthy Divine love and favor.

Basically this:  HE DID NOT BELIEVE THE VOICE OF THE ACCUSER, but instead pounded his fists furiously against the doors that open into Love.