XIV. Layers, Listening, and Life

When we decided we were powerless over ego, the paradox of the Word formed irreversible skills  in us.  We knew our actions were driven by thought, knew that thought was motivated by emotion, that emotion was caused by sensation, and sensation by the energies of the body.  But we routinely lost sight of many layers of healing we needed, distracted as we were by thoughts of the divine.  After great struggle, we came to this: if we could actively engage our shadow, cultivate awareness of what we would otherwise relegate to the unconscious--perhaps then the Spirit would make the Trinity arise within us of its own accord.  So it became a saying among us: "pay attention to the shadows, and the light will do as it wishes."  At first, consciously allowing taboos to cancel ego kicked the feet out from under our sense of self-righteousness.  Allowing tensions to remain unresolved was difficult at best, and keeping our failed track record in front of us caused a massive aversion response.  But as we learned to peer into our inner darkness with curiosity and non-judgment, we realized we had work to do in healing attention and intention, and that we were watching for nothing short of divine revelation. ...

More »

XI. The Seven Sense Organs of the body of Christ

Remember, when Christ ascended into heaven, he went within all things: recall that he said "the Kingdom of Heaven is within you."  Ultimately, the seven Sense Organs of the Body of Christ--the tantric name for those spots where the veil between heaven and earth wears thin--are places where the ego is crucified.  Our utter lack of equanimity comes to the surface. We flee from our aversions and are drawn to our attractions, and can't seem to treat them both the same. We come to realize that we are full of craving and desire and resentments of all types.  These are also places of becoming--where ego becomes Christ before surrendering itself and all things to the Father.  But before that, the dualism between divinity and humanity must begin to break down. ...

More »

XII. Chakras, and the Spirit of the Lord

The Ancient Catholic practice of recollection has pride of place in Christian Tantric Meditation. There is a point, see, where sound and sensation are the same.  We can listen so deeply that we develop a set of "interior senses."  And there is a point where we can hear so deeply that our senses invert--we are no longer "listening to" a sound coming from outside of us.  We become aware that all actions are motivated by thought, all thought by emotion, all emotion by sensations in the body and all bodily sensations by energy--and after a while, whatever our body is aware of becomes our manner of "going within."  We accustom ourselves to watching thoughts and emotions and energies shift and change. ...

More »

XIII. Tantric Prayer

Prayer is the silence itself, the waiting itself, the emptiness itself--and at the core of all of these is paradox: the absence within presence, the presence within absence that Jewish tradition experiences as the weight of the Divine.  We see it in the holy of holies--the inner room of Jerusalem's temple which the conquering Romans expected to find full of riches, and instead, found empty. We see it in the Teacher's pierced and sacred heart, which ran with blood and water till it was finished. But the lesson does not stop with such obvious undercurrents of sadness. ...

More »

III. What is Tantra?

On a world stage, it's a normal thing to acknowledging that devotional religious paths are incomplete. The Bhakti path in Hinduism--with devotion to the guru at its center--remains incomplete without accounting for what happens when the guru dies.  However "God" is conceived of, that conception lacks without envisioning how God acts within each believer.  However much "inner stillness" might be a gratuitous gift of God, it remains un-claimed if the devotee cannot render themselves appropriately receptive. ...

More »

X. The Humble Tenfold Way

Rabbouni said "I have come into this world for judgment. So that those who do not see may see, and [so that] those who see may become blind." For students of the Logos, this is the core of the humble tenfold way. We have been the ones who said "we see" for too many years. And it gradually warped our entire worldview. We were looking all the time, but it fell short of true watchfulness. What we learned is this: the blindness to which we're called isn't a loss of eyesight. And any who want to know what that means need only ask the Teacher. ...

More »

IX. The Four Humble Truths

Tantra asks us to live, act and choose in a way that creates serenity. Sometimes though, that work doesn't really begin until we shed misconception.  Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon could not praise God until his pride spent a whole 7 years driving him insane.  The Gerazene demoniac, being healed, expected and greatly wished to follow Jesus: but the Teacher asked him simply to return to his home with loud and vocal gratitude.  The Bethesda paralytic had to become entirely willing to have the Lord cure him. Healing costs a great deal in transformation: in the shedding of misconception, in grieving the difference between expectation and reality, and in learning to be willing instead of willful. But the prospect of finding a path to proactive tranquility was real, and we could no longer afford to fail at following it. ...

More »

IV. Ways that Christian Tantric Practitioners Nuance Christian belief

We are not naive enough to think that every Christian will look at our practice and automatically be able to accept it as Orthodox.  Here, we hope to outline some of the innovative bits of Christian Tantra--in hopes of illustrating their scriptural and traditional roots.  For what it's worth: ...

More »

VIII. The Four Gospel Seals

For Jesus, the passion wasn't metaphor or allegory.  It was reality.  Ever after, we who follow Jesus can't enter his passion without entering into reality. Therefore, look at what's in front of you.  It could be a coffee table, the clock on the wall, the crumbs on the kitchen counter, a stranger in a cafe--whatever you're currently seeing with your own eyes.  Everything you're about to read can be experienced there.

We students of the Logos, who walk the way of Christian tantra with Jesus as our exemplar, do not experience the gospel as happening in the past, to someone else.  It is happening now, to us.  We are like blind men who experience the touch of Jesus twice.  First, we can see people, but they look like trees.  Later, when we see things as they are, the teaching makes itself plain.  We call it the "Four Gospel Seals" and to us, these are the teachings with which all Christian Teaching must agree. ...

More »