The Humble Tenfold Way

I am Christ, and so are you, and so is everything the miles between us contains.  Christ is God, so are you, so am I.  All times are now, all places are here, all potential is realized, all actions and words are just "being" having a self-realization.  From the moment we're suspended with Christ on the Cross, (and the only moment that can be is now) the darkness and light are both alike to us: good and bad, attraction and aversion, pleasure and pain--all of these are one, just ego testing out its capacities and boundaries. 

The opening of the third eye chakra can lead to these kinds of epiphanies, but how we get there, and what to do with them, is an open question.

A mental framework that encourages self-emptying--and that points out the beauty and goodness of both what we lose, and the process of letting go--is important.  What follows is modeled after the Buddha's Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path.  But there are real differences between Buddhism and Christianity "[In Christianity] The goal isn't just emptiness" an old novice master said to me. "but emptiness for the sake of fullness."  The theological term for that is "recapitulation."  In other words, we sit with emptiness so everything can be remade.  The third humble truth is "The Vehicle of Recapitulation is the body of Christ." And the last of the Four Humble Truths is "The way of the body of Christ is the humble tenfold way."  These two truths deserve a deeper look: because the way they function in Christian Tantra is part of what makes it distinct, and those distinctions are important. ...

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Spirits and Chakras: Making some distinctions

While Catholics know a good deal about how the Spirit has acted in the Church, they've left the spirit of God that's in each of us largely unexamined.  And so a great many Westerners have been uncomfortable in their own skin.  If God's spirit can be treated as an anthropological reality, for a moment, and not something on which one faith corners the market, a great deal more can be said--in a manner, (if you'll permit me to sound a bit nuts,) that's biblical and traditional.  My questions, of course, are about manageable living, coming to acceptance and being humble, but they're just as rooted in becoming intimate with my own incarnation.  What follows is just a roadmap to self acceptance--which will be different for each of us, surely, but worth talking about nonetheless.

I'm convinced: there's no such thing as light or dark energy, only energy to which we're attached or non-attached.  The energy that animates all life is the Spirit of God, and that energy is sentient.  Egoically, the basic human needs manifest as "darker" desires--hyper-focused and possessing their own personalties.  These were the "demons" that the desert fathers fought.  In a similar way, psychologically, the Spirit of God manifests as lighter desires, and appears to come from outside us--as angels, for instance.  It moves through the body and gets a different name for each place it typically comes to rest.  But it's important to note: just like God called himself "I AM," sentient divine energy is just wearing the language of ego and psychology to make itself knowable.  The whole time, it's been within. ...

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Notes in Winter: Self-Emptying, Surrender and Grief as a Path to Embodiment.

Joni Mitchell wrote "Maybe it's just the time of year, maybe it's the time of man."  It's winter, and I spend less and less time with the news these days.  It's a rare movie that I can sit through from beginning to end.  Romcoms feel too syrupy, dramas too jarring, and in action movies, far too much explodes.  The mantra-like sounds of hindu kirtan or medieval polyphony are the most I can handle musically.  I feel like my senses went off, fought a war, then came back shell-shocked and screaming at each other.

I am at an impasse with myself.  ...

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