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. ...

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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: ...

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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. ...

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VII. The Two realms

Because our egos are wounded--as every ego is--our track record with giving up self was spotty.  The Teacher called us to forsake ego, and yet our woundedness made us go back to it like dogs to vomit.  There were benefits, on the one hand: this led us to the internalization of the Trinity, and a whole new way of working through the layers of the interior life.  On the other hand, dabbling with self was still clinging to something impermanent: it was still, ultimately, a source of suffering.

We were like Job, sitting with our own empty-handedness amidst a torrent of our own objections and a cacophony of well-meaning, but unhelpful advice. The undeserved nature of our suffering was as unchanging as the climate of loss it took place in.  And the press of its weight was unremitting.

Suffering requires self care.  If we were going to follow the teacher's advice and give up self, we needed a way to account for this dual responsibility of "self care and self renunciation."  Some catalyst was necessary, to re-infuse our hyperlogical existence with paradox.  As in a Koan, or on a Cross, something needed to suspend us between two opposites--so that the Spirit could well up within and do its work.  When we looked, we saw it had been there the whole time. ...

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VI. The Theonoias

We're made in the image and likeness of God: seen healthily, our portrayals of God are a map of our own mind. God formed us from the dust of the earth, breathed the breath of life into our nostrils. We were asked to live on every word that came from the mouth of God, but instead we indulged desire. Our mind rehearses the steps constantly: the steps which, in light of sin, have hardened into ego. We were given every fruit bearing tree, now we hide behind its leaves. We remember naming the animals. Now--however inaccurately, in the end--we can't stop naming and labeling everything. We remember reaching for one who fit the hole in our side. One minute we said "this alone is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone;" and now we can't stop theorizing connections between things, accurate or not. God created us and called us good. We created desire and craving and sin, interacted with thought instead of reality, and whether we called our surroundings good or bad, we related to them by the sweat of our brow. ...

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