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. [bxA]
As we practice turning our attention away from external stimuli--as we stop "listening to" the world, instead we "listen for" the more subtle sounds of "being itself." This is more like a hum or a vibration than anything else. But if we've learned to tune our attention, we can, in fact, feel sound. Underneath the egoic stories we tell ourselves and the tensions of existence, each incarnation is "energy attempting to flow freely." This mixture of factors is sometimes felt as a palpable energy, sometimes known only intuitively. The Spirit works with the Logos, through a careful dance of creative tension and impulsion, teaching us to remove obstacles and abide in the resulting serenity. "Recollection" is not just withdrawing the attention from exterior distractions, it is turning attention inward and learning to flex the different interior muscles that expand our range of choices with what seems like a fairly static incarnational predicament.
It's in this climate of deep listening that the promptings of the Spirit become intelligible. In the midst of unearthing the connection between sound and sensation, we are being gently impelled--impelled to let go of this or that distraction, impelled to act this or that way in our relationships, impelled to be quieter here, or to move quickly and efficiently there. This is happening inside and outside of us, and the question of both is this: are we quiet and watchful enough to abide at the still-point between tension and impulsion, waiting to cooperate with the Spirit's movement.
The Spirit's energy can either be palpably felt or intuited. Physically, it feels like a very low vibration, which causes pressure as it moves up the spine. When known intuitively, it usually manifests underneath psychological concerns. Psychologist talk portray our basic human needs as indepenent voices that only want one thing--and we know well the tendency for spiritual people, after experiencing altered states of consciousness or spiritual visions, to represent that in the logical mind's often inverted system of symbol and metaphor. So we get a great deal in scripture about descending to ascend, ladders and snakes on poles and crucified saviors. This makes sense: the lizard brain controls our fight, flight and freeze response...when St. Paul talked about how "all creation groans," this may well have been the part of himself that he was talking about. Similarly, when the psalmist originally wrote psalm 22, frozen as it is in the pain of divine abandonment, what part of himself must the psalmist have been tapping into when he said "I am a worm and not a man?" The Limbic System is more emotional: the Desert Fathers used to go into solitude and "struggle with their demons." That struggle might be more articulate, but we are still dealing with the same thing--the independent personification of a basic human need.
Students of tantra know that the groanings of the Lizard brain and the struggle with demons--these are only half the story. Enter the book of Isaiah, and the Seven Spirits of God. The prophet says " The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord." To us, this is an inverted list of the psychological voices that manifest as the Spirit's energy moves up the spine.
The root chakra, at the base of the spine, is the place in the body where our basic human need for survival is "stored." The spirit of God manifests, there, as "fear of the Lord." So it's rightly said that "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Breath is a basic human need expressed at the root chakra, and it's no mistake that, in Jewish mysticism, it's theorized that the name of God is the transcribed sound of a breath cycle.
The Sacral Chakra, at the groin area, is the place where security is negotiated. The energy at this chakra is what we use to procreate--we have to remember that, especially in the ancient world, to have a family was to have a labor force and an army all at once. It's no mistake that biblical sexual relations were spoken of as "knowing"--Adam "knew his wife Eve" and she conceived. When the spirit of God rests and remains at this chakra it's referred to as "the spirit of Knowledge."
The Solar Plexus Chakra, just above the belly button, is the place where we first experience strong desire. Used without skill, this energy reveals all of the resentment, blame, shame, remorse, rationalization and entitlement of which ego is capable. Of course, we're quick to direct that towards others. But used in responsible cooperation with the Logos, the spirit within is called, here, the spirit of might. Echoing the way God made all things and called them good, we've been given an entire incarnation--a garden in need of tending. That will inevitably happen by the sweat of our brows--but it will either lead to peace, if done willingly, or to inner and outer conflict, if we're willfully egotistical.
In the lower Chakras, the Spirit Makes us witness the futility of abstraction and othering. Abstraction might lead us to draw conclusions about situations that, while logical, aren't necessarily accurate. Othering is the process of seeing our own problems as having real causes in others--thus opening the door for blame, resentment, and entitlement. Granted, just like watching Christ on his Cross, we look at these things with full knowledge of our powerlessness to stop them. We who made our bed must lie in it. But if we can wait and watch, after a while the energy shifts. Our range of choices, our ability to see our darkness without reacting to it--this will all expand, but not if we're unable to take responsibility for the suffering we've created or the suffering of being the same as all other miserable sinners who ever walked an unremarkable turn on the earth. For now, we focus on watching and taking responsibility.
At he Heart Chakra, just behind the breastbone, the Spirit's Energy begins to help us work with the dark corners of human experience--our own, and others. When we take the newly minted spirit of might and bend it in a unitive direction, it travels one chakra further and becomes a spirit of counsel. This comes from a deep-rooted compassion. With our eyes turned inward, toward ourselves, we find that everything we blamed others for is our problem too. Deeper than that, it's the malice within that makes us see malice without. And we're confronted with the heartbreaking reality of how powerless we are to change both ourselves and the world. Further spiritual work rests on remaining in a place of vulnerability and broken-heartedness. We are able to empathize with the wounds people carry around--acknowledged or ignored--because we are engaged in the same struggle to acknowledge our wounds before the stress of bearing them comes out sideways.
At the throat Chakra, the Spirit gives us great creativity. When he was in the region of the Decapolis, Rabbouni said "ephphatha," touching the tongue and ears of a deaf man. However much Jesus asked the man to be silent--he, instead proclaimed Jesus' healing all the more loudly. The Spirit within, when it hovers in the throat, is called the spirit of understanding. This is the stage at which students, knowing themselves, begin to become teachers. As the prophet Isaiah says: "The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens--wakens my ear to listen as one who is taught." So it is true of us, who allow the energy of the Spirit to rise into the throat. Indeed, we're able to honestly self apply a great many of the scriptures--but if we're doing our work with any integrity, it's not just the flattering ones. We see ourselves as much in Scriptures utterly delusional characters as its awakened ones. We see ourselves in Scriptures self-induced suffering as well as its glimmers of liberation. In times of conflict, passages we've committed to memory suddenly arise in our hearts, giving all of these a name.
At the third eye chakra, between and slightly above the eyes, the spirit within manifests as a spirit of wisdom. When the Spirit's energy is working out blockages in this area, we might be given altered states of consciousness--which are problematic for the young, who will suffer for any resulting spiritual elitism. We might have profound insights about the nature of existence or the inter-connectivity of religious truths. When Peter James and John had their third eyes opened, they saw Jesus' divinity plainly--as they saw him "conversing with the law and the prophets" embodied in Moses and Elijah. In the end, what's written in the scriptures proves true of us. "In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh...your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams." For us practitioners of Tantra and students of Rabbouni, the last days and the first are both alike: they are all here and now. Our question--and the question that has a bearing on our perception of the Spirit's action-- is this: can we be here and now as well?
At the Crown Chakra, at the top of the head, our Spirit manifests as the Spirit of the Lord. In truth, the entire journey of the spirit within has made a Via Dolorosa of our spines, and the entire journey has been one of what the Christian East calls "divinization." We have witnessed and fessed up to our part in the damage done by venting our energy in the lower chakras. At the heart chakra we learned to be Christ to ourselves--to seek out the marginalized parts of our psyche we've relegated to shadow and bring them to light. We've learned to treat ourselves with compassion--to face our capacities for creating suffering and perhaps, by grace and practiced gentleness, avoid reactively externalizing it. Our track record is less than stellar, but by this kind of exploration of our capacity for darkness, we are, like Christ, learning how to become sin without knowing sin. It's appropriate that the last Chakra is located at the top of the head: we end up "crucified at the place of the skull" just as he was. We are suspended with Christ. We're able to enter fully into experiences we're averse to--because we've developed the equanimity and serenity to do so. But we're unable to take solace in the wisdom we sometimes hear ourselves conveying to others, unable to escape either the temptations to ignore our shadow or the desire to wield our divine image for narcissism instead of service. But past lives, spent as denial ridden hedonists or selfish minor deities, are a real possibility--so we ask for the grace to handle our divinity and humanity humbly, as the Teacher did.
All that remains to say is this: the only spiritual processes that are complete are the ones that fly completely under the radar of our awareness. When we become not-two with the spirit within, the dualism of thoughts and words collapses entirely, pulling the edifice of ego down on itself. The Spirit within is a festival to which we've been sent while the teacher stays behind. If he goes up to the festival later, that's his choice. Meanwhile, the journey's still ours to get lost in. What we're doing here may, perhaps, be helpful. Clear concepts have a great deal of importance. But in the end, every moment we spend writing books about Tantra is a moment we don't spend practicing it. No one who says "I am a student of Tantra" is actually practicing as one. Practice is always and only quiet, and silent serenity is the mark of a practitioner. All others, alas, are just kidding.
At the higher chakras, we've seen the truth: that there are no others, just beings who mirror our own purgatorial predicament back to us. Some of the wisest we've known have asked "what's your route in"--meaning "what are trails you've cut from your outside to your inside, from head to heart?" For students of Rabbouni and practitioners of Christian Tantra, breathing, listening at the expense of thought and grounding in sensation are the vessel into which the wine of our practice is poured. We're cleaning the inside of the cup, we're doing shadow work and inner family work--but we do it with such focused attention and intention that it evolves into deity meditation. In the end, like Christ, we give over all things to the Father, commending our spirits into his mystery and resting in "things as they are." We become the ones whose silence is an invitation for the stones to preach. Then, clothed and in our right minds--and as if to start over--we sit and listen.
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