Christian Tantra is not a set of doctrines. Nor is it a method. Doctrines rely overmuch on the mind, and tantra is a a way of moving through the layers of reality. If nothing else, it’s certain of this: that failure to observe, and learn to work with those layers—this is a classic source of unhealthy negative emotion. Our minds are made to be here, now, and at rest. If a person’s interior situation becomes dependent on worry as a means of control, it makes the past a thing of remorse and the future a source of anxiety. [bxA]
In that way, pain, spiritual consolations, and the differences between ourselves and others, they are all medicine for the ego. These aren’t the only ones, as a later post will address. By and by, though, pain, consolations and individual differences are trying to tell us that there’s a voice in our head that chatters with “I like this, I dislike that. I want this, I don’t want that. This or that is good, better or best, and I should spend my life trying to maximize satisfaction.” Pain, consolations, and individual differences throw enough curve balls at us that by and by we realize: the voice in our heads that wears “I, me and my” isn’t us at all.
The body is a storehouse of pain and attachment as well as—and we’ll address this later—spiritual energy. Christian Tantra is a sacramental path, but it understands the physicality of both the body and the world the way Vipassana Meditation methods do. In other words, the body is the unconscious, and it remembers all the trauma you’ve suffered and it either encourages or lets go of the clinginess that’ll cause suffering till it’s encountered and transmuted. The world, to say nothing of other people, are mirrors of projection and foils of ego.
At best, the sacraments use the senses to to train attention. The sense-data of the sacraments—the candles we see, the incense we smell, the bread and wine we taste—when we give it our unforced attention, it gradually draws our focus away from our minds, and towards reality. And just as the post resurrection experiences teach us, the great realization of the early church is that grief fully accepted in the present moment reveals the Christ behind normal realities like strangers, locked upper rooms and gardeners.
Transubstantiation (the consecration of the Sacraments in general) and Interbeing are two works, one by the priest and the other by the people. Transubstantiation reaches into the realm of mystery, makes bread the body of Christ when the priest lifts bread and says “this is my body.” This is done ex opere operato, it’s a work of God, done regardless of the sins of the priest. Interbeing is the people's gentle work of mindfulness. This very much does depend on the people giving non-forceful attention to the breath, to sensation, to emotion and to each other. If we're to realize that we, ourselves, are Christ, we’ve got to empty themselves as Christ did and have the mind of Christ, which is non-self and total humility. It shows us the connectedness of all things: whatever’s going on in terms of reality manifesting Christ will be unintelligible to me if I refuse to seek interior quiet. But entering into that moment with the mind of Christ, I see the with unforced presence and total acceptance, they themselves become the body of Christ they receive.
What, though, does it mean to quiet myself? What are the disciplines of Christian Tantra, and what kinds of meditation are most helpful in finding serenity? Here are a few important disciplines:
Putting up, and taking down, the boundaries of self. Being protected and vulnerable as needed is an important prelude to gradually and gently transmuting our selfishness, avoidance, and sinful compulsive thought.
Gently reclaiming attention from distraction.
Giving attention to sensation and senses, together with deep breathing, to draw the focus away from preoccupying thought. Slowly, it will shift towards sensation, with a corresponding increase in calm.
Facing the pain-body. Directly facing negative emotion, as well as trauma stored in the body.
Observing our breath, without controlling it.
Watching without craving
Waiting without expectations
Feeling without manipulating.
Observing the effects of our thoughts, and acting on calm deliberation, not on impulse.
Grief: allowing ourselves to move from thought to emotion, from emotion to sensation, from sensation to energy, and from energy to reality.
Deity Meditation is central to Christian Tantra, as it is to Buddhist or Hindu Tantra. On one level, as we grieve Christ’s death, we become other Christs, first by active thought about (and mimicking the actions of) Christ, then by totally internalizing him until our thoughts are his thoughts, our bodies are his body. On another level, we are allowing our psyche’s constitutive voices to talk to one another: our inner, healthy adult is re-parenting our wounded inner child.
Christian Tantra peels back the layers. First, practitioners of Christian Tantra give up thought for the sake of emotion and sensation. We learn that avoidance adds anxiety to pain, turning it into suffering. With pain of all sorts, fully encountering it on an energetic level makes it more bearable. Logic and words are fabulous tools, but like all egoic tools, they can take us only so far. We eventually have to deal with the body’s capacity to store trauma. It’s possible that this might be attached to specific memories, but possible, too, that it won’t be. If it’s not we can just deal with the pain as pain. Cancer patients who are resistant to pain medication are taught transformative ways to encounter their pain deeply. Students of Rabbouni do that with all things that are painful.
Next, the Student of Rabbouni gives up emotion and sensation to deal with life on the level of energy. On an energetic level, that involves making a distinction. In the first place, I can perceive my spirit...My spirit is “that in me that pays attention to spiritual energy." I was 38 years old before I was quiet enough to perceive that followers of Jesus, too, feel an energy that’s analogous to kundalini energy in Hinduism. Indeed, those who perceive their spirit know that their own spine is the Cross that’s been given them to ascend. Secondly, there are those in Christianity who have the ability to do what, in Hinduism, is called “giving shakti.” In other words, they can, by cultivating that unwillful presence that is “cooperation with grace,” temporarily raise consciousness of spiritual energy in others. Thirdly there’s the Holy Spirit—which is the things that guides the Church, which is the thing that manifests gifts of the Spirit, which is the thing that sustains all creation. But let’s underline something fairly darkly. Please understand that there’s only one Spirit. The energy that moves up and down the spine is the same as that great saints have transmitted in healings or awakenings, which is the same as what guards the Church from straying from Christ’s teaching.
When students of Rabbouni peel back the layers of the present moment, they obey that dictum that goes: "if it works, do it.” If thinking about the morality of an action just fills the head with noise, then maybe we need to abandon the moral narrative and deal with it on the level of emotion. If that only succeeds in upsetting us, then abandon the emotional narrative and deal with it on the level of energy.
Of course the final step is, if I get too caught up in being a practitioner and having experiences, I need to abandon self. At the center layer, I am crucified with Christ and I become Christ crucified (but when I’m humble I won’t know it.) And there’s no descending the cross or ascending to heaven, no up or down. The crucified don’t have that luxury, true, but at the still point between ascending and descending, between left and right, I’m hoping I’ll find I don’t need it.
