Energy, Ego and the Spirit

Please, for the love of God, nail your attention and intention to the body in the present moment. Don't worry. When you're grounded in sensation, ego will eventually go quiet. Don't waste energy on behaviors and beliefs that offer short term benefit at long-term cost. Anything that divides the human family (so that individuals can get an elitism fix) is a tremendous drain on the part of you that's quiet and bouyed up by life alone. Everything driven by ego-energy leaves anxiety in its wake. The stimulus/ response loops of fulfilled desire are certain to create attachments if you leave no room between them. The rough part is this: if you can hear this, you can't un-hear it. Egotism is nothing but an originally-helpful cocktail of brain chemicals that's long since costed more than we can afford. To those who can accept that the Lord God has opened the ear of all flesh, serenity depends on skillful use of what energy we have available, and you and I are on the hook for ideals and behaviors that forge our present moment into tiny little unmanageable hells. ...

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The Whole Way There: on Finding Accurate Maps

Nature abhors a vaccuum, and today is a vaccuum. Even if we were to give up self, (as a dog returns to its vomit) the ego would reassert itself. We who are on the Way only speak of method--of a programatic way of taking up the Cross and following--because our track record with humility leaves something to be desired. The whole method of Christian Tantra can be summed up in 50 words: "In the logos’ paradox, learn discernment. Then, give up self: Reparent, reframe, recapitulate. Listen Breathe, Feel sensation at thought's expense. Focus attention and intention on sensation. Imitate, be intimate with, and internalize the Guru. So that the body and the spirit--not the mind-- can lead the process, offer mantra." This is the tallest of orders, and we are suspended between "not knowing where to start" and "not knowing when to quit." Uncomfortable with the tension, averse to most of what we see in ourselves, we imagine something better for ourselves precisely by internalizing the Triune God. ...

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When Prayer isn't Thought: Steps to Practiced Selflessness

Both Christ's pierced heart and the Holy of holies in the temple were utterly empty, and the same is true of the mind of Christ. Reacting to our fundamental vulnerability, though, our own panicky minds churn out thought all day long, and we anesthetize ourselves with fulfilled desires to compensate, to make thought sit down and shut up. Buddha was right when he said "life is suffering." Jesus, too, has more to teach about suffering consciously than we've previously been willing to admit. ...

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Burning Bush and Whirlwind: A Teaching in "Being"

Quiet is difficult because, energetically and in terms of physical sensation, existence is intense. The skill of quiet is learning to sit with energy and sensation, no matter how intense, no matter whether the story we attach to it is negative or positive. I'm about to issue what I know is a big ask. (It'll make bible scholars with either classical training or baked-in prejudices wiggle in their chairs a bit.) Here it is: let's suppose that Moses' burning bush, and Job's whirlwind were both "inner phenomena." ...

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Following the Guru: Finding Presence in Suffering.

Despite the flowery, romanticized musings of debatably-realized pundits: the present moment, for the part of us that has yet to give up self, is a real crucifixion. The truth is, the entirety of our incarnation is a cross to be borne--many who've longed to accept this have failed to. And it throws us back on the the shockingly conditional nature of our own acceptance. Jesus didn't say "life is suffering"--that was Buddha. There's a beautiful depiction, though, of Gautama weeping, and it scatters all the words. Whether pain and pleasure are the same, I don't know, God knows. This is the point: Buddha's anguish, Christ's agony in the garden, and the whole well of human sorrow--they are all one. And they are, at the same time, a death and a birth. ...

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Words for the Truth

Whether it's in the midst of pain or bliss, whether or not my own egotism has confused my part in it, "remembrance" is the tense and creative word we hold between us, you and I. It's the one word that speaks all the others. Jesus--and may I say it so completely that your name begins to sound like my own--I have wanted, for years, to write something that is only for you, only an offering of love and devotion. The amount of self I bring to the table has gotten in the way, and continues to muddle the words. Guruji, to me you are teacher and messiah whose eyes gaze out at me from all things seen and unseen. But that is not, at all, why I love you. ...

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XVI: Deity Meditation and the Life of the Spirit

Until we become the light, we are standing somewhere relative to it, and shadows are part of the deal. Moses had to hide in the crag of a rock while God's brilliance passed by. That gave the light direction, and it implied that much of what viewing God's glory does is "make shadow visible." We students of Rabbouni have borne the heat of the day. We've watched shadows move with the sun as our selves die. We've shaken hands with the noonday demon and, next to Christ, have breathed our last. It is enough for students to become like the teacher. ...

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XV: Recapitulating the Ego in Christian Tantra

We Christian Tantrikas, as students of Rabbouni and disciples of the logos, are not asked to learn from miracles, but from normalcy. We don't have the fortitude to be Red Martyrs, whose blood is the seed of the Church. We don't have the temperance to be White Martyrs, as the ancient renunciants were who gave all they had and took the monastic habit. At our best, I suppose we could call ourselves "grey martyrs," but perhaps it's best to just be quiet. ...

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