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. [bxA]

Existence is a position of tension, to be sure: but even between the armies of Egypt and the Red Sea, Israel heard "God himself will fight for you, you have only to keep still." The same is said to you and I: existence is a hustle, but one in which it is entirely possible to rest. It is absolutely possible to sit with the isolating feelings of fear until it morphs into awe, to sit with scarcity until it becomes a celebration connecting us to others. No, not only is it possible, it is a lesson that our entire body cries out to learn--the moment is teaching us to bear our aversions, to let go of our attractions, and to give up the self that's so morbidly invested in it all. Meanwhile, the nervous system learns that labelling sensations doesn't help us accept them.

Only here and now can manageable choices be made. Neither past nor future exist. And yet you and I obsess over resentment and remorse and blame, living for a yesterday that's beyond our power to change. We grasp at possibilities, elevating our expectations until all that's inevitable is their crushing disappointment. No ideal whose fulfillment is elsewhere will net anything other than weariness and a chasing after the wind. And from St. Paul's "now is the acceptable time," to the "be here now" of bigger, more modern hippies, wisdom seems to remind us that the ego will eventually come to itself, and relax into impermanence with those who practice unthinking stillness.

When the adrenaline rush of idealism wears off, we manipulate to preserve our separateness. If you or I manipulate to get needs met, we will forever be watching for reprisal. God has created only one human race-- it's in our flaws and errors that we're like other people, and prizing ego-consciousness or group consciousness over that unity will leave us exhausted. In truth, whether the story we tell about an energy labels it "good" or "bad," whether we find other people "likable or unlikable"--those other people are here only to show us our attachments. Involving others in our drive for "desire and craving fulfillment " is a real hype--not just a bummer, but a clingy mess that makes the basic solitude of existence unbearable. If you happen to go even further and coopt others into your game of mistaken identifications--all it takes is one person with healthy boundaries, and the dreadful and real limitations of that particular game surface, quick as anything. Nothing that's a hype is ultimately effective. The game of incarnation is lawful, full of rules that usually suck. Whether we like it or not, "all hypes are temporary" seems to be one of them.

We suffer if we choose this or that. But we also suffer because life is a thing of poverty. We should never seek suffering--in fact we need to troubleshoot our tendency to worsen suffering by poking at it--but learning to peaceably lift our corner of undeserved communal darkness involves important emotional muscles that need regular exercise. Suffering does not exist so that you'll "do something about it." It is not grist for the wisdom-mill. Suffering has no logical solution. It can be a springboard into acceptance, if you're willing to operate on the level of feeling instead of thought. But the shift isn't in the anguish, it's in you.

If we can manage basic consciousness, basic respect for our limitations, and basic efforts to healthily use the Spirit's energy, the change will be this: you and I will see the body carrying us through the day long after ego is exhausted. Trusting providence will happen more automatically. We will see ourselves admitting our needs, then watching with real wonder at how, or whether they're fulfilled. Neither other people's sinfulness nor our own will surprise us--because we will have seen the part of us that overidentifies with unhealthy patterns. But we'll know there's a great deal more to us, and to others as well.

I am not, and you are not separate from God. If God is leaving our needs and desires unfulfilled (so that we'll look at our attachments, ) that may feel like he's absent. Take the time to learn to savor the unpleasantness of it. Health, though, entails asking whether we, ourselves ,are actually the ones who, by being our egos, are not fully present. Like everyone on earth, you and I "other" our own darkness. I suppose that's ok, but it's also a manipulation, bound (by design) to stop working so that we can learn to exist on the Spirit's subtler energies. We are both our darkness and the light that is in us. If we're caught up in how remarkable we are: reality will still be there when you and I are done. You are everything and nothing. So am I. Who is it that told you we're separate, that we can be anything other than everything? In the light of the Trinity within, humility is possible. When our attention shifts, so that resting in everything is more appealing than grasping, then you and I will forever be "not two."

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. [bxA]

Out of the gates, nothing is truer than that the Word of God is a two edged sword. Bearing the Word in our bodies teaches us to feel the differences in our experience. Action feels different than thought, thought feels different than emotion, emotion feels different than sensation, sensation feels different than energy. Desire is one thing, but when one has felt the difference between needing and wanting--when one has experienced the absence of control--those become bells you can't unring, lessons unable to be unlearnt. Having experienced willing presence, willful action feels fairly hollow. Having experienced "just being," the constant projection of ego is downright exhausting. We grieve misspent energy. As certainly as we grieve or face our liabilities, we have --just as surely--begun to see our flaws turn into gifts. Just like Christ's power, our power, too, is made perfect in weakness.

We have to contend with the limitations of spiritual experience. We can end-run around embodying humility by seeing spiritual experience as a credential, or by using the highs of altered states of consciousness to avoid pain. A shadow work guided by the body will aid in surrender. So we listen, breathe, feel sensations. We continue to do it after the noise of self subsides. Though it's often billed as a task full of ease and bliss, our attention is in crisis and on some level, we always knew it. It may be through a mirror, dimly, but though the messiah stares back at us, we still fail to recognize him. Long work of focusing attention and intention on the sensations of the body will slowly heal our abilty to be where we are. We learn that the messiah is literally present in all that's seen and unseen, in our aversions and our attractions particularly. It doesn't matter that intellect can't access him. Flexing intuitive muscles is our way of asking, "Rabbi, where are you staying?" And when Jesus manifests in the way things are, we hear "come and see." When the energy shifts on its own, when the figure-ground reversal of a conversion experience happens, we see it altogether: the whole time, it was our egotism blinding us. The whole time, Christ was present. We found ourselves perpetually mentally elsewhere, and longed to take sincere responsibility for it.

Because selfishness, too, works on its own, because either we're absentee entirely, or adrenaline and force routinely foul up the game, it takes practice to be gently present. We become conscious of our metathinking--the quality with which we speak to ourselves matters a great deal. For people called to oneness, not only the ego's craving but also beliefs artificially enforcing dualism can cause suffering. Additionally, the body stores trauma, and we're only now safe enough to feel it. The identities we weave with our pain, though temporarily helpful, are ultimately self-limiting. So as to limit suffering, we seek a wide, prudent view of self, others and God. Non-attachment and recapitulation are proportional--trauma may be a sensation about which we tell a particularly poignant story, but remembering is forever paired with letting go. Both tasks are incumbent on each of us, and we worsen our suffering who neglect any of it.

These are all wonderful little sentiments, but what's to be done when darkness reasserts itself? What's to be done when we've had too much of pain, grabbing at the control of being our worse selves again? We must remember that the Triune Godhead, in its fullness, is bigger than we are. God is working, and so are we. Christ has labored, and we have entered into his labor. We imitate him, we ask him to come into every aspect of our ordinary existence: in the end he's closer to us than we are to ourselves. The gospel proclaims suffering's recapitulation, not its absence: so waiting on the Spirit requires all our hustle. We called sentient energies demons and angels when they were beyond us, but now that they have begun to rise within us there is nothing but Christ--everything is his body and nothing is outside of it.

In the end, remembrance is the way. Remembrance of conscious living, remembrance of liabilities, remembrance of Christ. What God does not remember does not exist, and what Christ does not remember is not redeemed...so the mere fact that we are here, musing on methoods to diminish suffering--well, it proves God is in the mix. Chant God's words when God's words diminish suffering, and share God's silence when they don't. Whether you speak or keep quiet, or whatsoever you do, live and move in the Glory of God. Thoughts will come wearing personal pronouns. Many will come saying "I, me, and my"--do not identify with them, do not call them your 'self.' The day of the Lord will be like lightening from one end of the sky to the other. It is the mind that asks "how long, O Lord?" You and I are not our minds. What is, is Christ. And as for the Lord's day, it can only be today.

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. [bxA]

But Christ's teaching is wisdom--it's revealed in experience and doing, not in thought. The centerpiece of Christian Wisdom is the Teacher's call to "give up self, take up your cross, and follow." And the path is mystical, not theological--it asks us to encounter God, not think about him, and it dials up the urgency of practicing the grace of contemplation. If we haven't practiced "just being," how will we ever "be holy?"

The fast track to contemplation is this: when thoughts occur that say "I want to pray" or "I want a pastrami sandwich" or "I want the messiah to come"--in those moments, say "just because a train of thought uses the personal pronouns 'I, me, and my'--well, it's limitedly healthy to assume that's ME." After that, breathe, listen and feel sensations--continue to do so after thoughts of self have gone quiet. Remember "Many will come saying 'I am he.' Do not follow them...as lightning lights up the sky...so will the Son of Man be in his day." That day is today, and when we finally catch up to the present moment we will be back at the Red Sea, learning what Moses meant when he said "the Lord himself will fight for you, you have only to keep still." 

Emotions and memories, opinions and choices will arise. However you need to treat them to minimize suffering, do so. Reverence them, use the higher self to nurture the lower self, then let thought and emotion go. Ongoing practice will train our eyes to see desire and attachment with compassion and skill. It'll temporarily be a terrible source of suffering to see the way desire and attachment conceal an addiction to willfulness and control. But sitting with the sensations of suffering are an aid to awareness. As awareness shifts, it's possible to give desire and attachment up as well. 

So: noticing thoughts of self and letting them go, noticing desire and willfulness but ceding control, and finally getting so grounded in the body that thinking ceases altogether--these are important steps which, as a prayer practice grows, become easily and quickly doable. Those who have decided to become practitioners know that stillness is more possible than their own noisy heads prefer to admit. It may inspire a bit of fear when you find yourself going through your day, being and acting without thoughts of self. But that fear is just a signal that, having nurtured and let go of ego, you are finally as present to reality as God has always been.

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." [bxA]

We can wrap a bit of "theological theory" around it, for people that dig working that way. Ekhart Tolle supposed that we each had an"energy body"--this could also be the "body of light" monks attributed to God during the anthropomorphite controversy, but I don't want to overtax the limits of your willingness for "premise granting"--regardless, plausible scenarios exist in which Moses went into deep prayer, had a non-dual experience of his own nervous system, and came out talking about a burning bush and a God whose name was "I AM." Job heaved his entire, rather intellectual process of "suffering management" into a whirlwind and came out convinced of the effort's inadequacy. He said "therefore, I despise my life, and repent in dust and ashes." He said it while still very much alive--perhaps he was actually referring to ego.

All that both men were doing was learning to deal with intense energy and sensation. Moses found a way to be not-two with intense energy, and Job learned to sit with sensation without "forming an identity" whose illusions included permanence and control.

Peddlers of wisdom have a vested interest in their audience's buy in to rightness and entitlement, but let's understand that's just "egos in dialogue." I see a bit of that in the clinging of modern debaters, in all manner of movements that turn identity into politics, in people of unconscious privilege. But let me give an example that's closer to home. When I say "Moses' theophany was an inner experience," part of me is listening for those who say "that's right on." When I say "Job, chastened, gained a bit of space and freedom from his false self," I'm watching for the heads that nod. Let's remember that, when the temple veil of ego is torn in two, we'll know that to be the emptiest of games we could possibly play. Ultimately, I'm not trying to sell you on a perspective.

Here it is: sitting still with intense energy and sensation with no efforts at "diminishment by manipulation" is a skill. Absent its acquisition, our ability to rest in existence is compromised. Experiencing "mind cancelling union with energy" is intense. We all spend more time being "selves who arrange things by preference"--and there can be a great deal of fear and disorientation in the moments before we finally or temporarily give that a rest.

People grieve all the time. They grieve when expensive appliances break, they grieve the loss of loved ones, they grieve life's big transitions. Sitting with intense energy and sensation ranks among the final bequests of our dying selves. The question is: if allowing "identity to be subsumed by the intensity of incarnation" were part of the curriculum, would you learn it? If failure to get cuddly with intensity renders your egoic autopilot bitter, would you adjust for the preservation of your serenity?

Today, that is our assignment. The Teacher awaits our answer.

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. [bxA]

Even in the best-case scenario, when our lives are full of ease, focusing attention and intention is hard. And when the day is bigger than we are, when our attachment to pleasure (and aversion to pain) dictates way too many of our responses, when making healthy moves in the direction of change leads too often to overdoing it--at times like these, urging attention and intention to receptivity is well-nigh impossible. We heap suffering on ourselves. It's simply a function of learning by trial and error. Among the overtly selfish, those who prize self-awareness have an uphill climb: to give up willfulness, to be willingly present and use the Spirit's energy skillfully. In the entire history of human awe, this has always been a cosmically unreasonable ask, but no matter how overwhelming the whirlwind, the indwelling Trinity is not receptive to feedback.

The dance of the Triune mystery, in which all things will be taken up, renders logic nonsensical. To the pure, all things are pure, and to the still, the quiet mind of Christ speaks clearly: "Remain in me." it says "If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask what you will, it will be done for you." Satan, that unholy trickster, forgot to mention that the cost of indulgence was incarnation and suffering. Though our liabilities cry out from the ground, we have spent too long saying "I am not that" and it spiritually deadens us. Christ, who recapitulated all things, forgot to mention that hearing the stones' silence in the here-and-now will cost us our entire self. We have too often looked at our cravings and attachments and said "I am that," so that the way of life is always elsewhere. Christ's yoke is a burden that becomes increasingly lighter only as we identify less with the self that is carrying it. Eventually "I am what I am" becomes a word we can speak without moving our mouths. Maharaj-ji threw hundred rupee notes into a fire, watched them burn, then pulled fresh hundred rupee notes from the flames saying "all the money in the world is mine." This is the cosmic humor of the Cross as well: those who remain in Christ have nothing to ask for, and persecutions besides. He has increased, they have decreased, and when guru and devotee are one, Christ will give all things over to the Father. And all things, all at once, are emptiness and fullness.

Even now, many of us who are on the Way have yet to see. When the Almighty sandwiched his people between Egypt and the Red sea, (and it fanned their longing for liberation into unconsuming flames), Moses said "The Lord himself will fight for you, you have only to keep still." The teacher said "you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. They will say to you, 'Look there!' or 'Look here!' Do not go, do not set off in pursuit." The moment of realization will be like lightning within us: seeing God requires absolutely nothing, because God looks out at us from absolutely everything. Learning that non-doing is the only thing worth doing is the start of transformation, not its end. Buddha's disciples are right, who say, "As it is before enlightenment, so it is after." Before, it was us chopping wood and carrying water. Now, the wood is chopped, the water is carried, but we know not by whom.

Whether we like it or not, all flesh shall see it together: silence, stillness, and patience will always be a position of tension. The Word says "Give up self, take up your cross and follow." As his passion neared, the Teacher said "not one was lost except the one destined to be lost." Even if we should yield fully to the Christ within, despite how thoroughly we descend with Jesus into our own self-made hells, regardless of how effortlessly we hand all things over to the Father, suffering will be part of it. We will struggle until the day we realize that "the one destined to be lost" blinks back at us, dimly and from the best of mirrors.

The Teacher's salvation is not an exemption from struggle. It's a use of struggle to troubleshoot how mentally absent we are. At different times, Jesus said both "the Father and I are one" and "Father, why have you forsaken me." The whole time, he was using the Father's presence or absence to gradually accept his own woundedness.  In the end, he didn't have to call out to the Father.  He could appear to his apostles,  say "these are my wounds" and allow them, at least, to be seen--if not painfully probed.  No defense was needed.  So the mind may prattle on about "the absence of God" but what the Spirit shows us is that the denial's our own. We don't require an idea of self to just be. Craving doesn't help us admit our needs. Getting caught in cycles of desire and fulfillment doesn't help us face our woundedness, admit our vulnerabilities, or keep ourselves safe.

But we can sit still. We can listen, breathe and get grounded in sensation. We can grow the skills to treat suffering with the same openness as pleasure, and choose our responses with growing deliberateness. There will be just as many who condemn us as mourn us. When the advocate comes, despite those who say "here he is," or "there he is" we will hear his voice. A mouth will speak,--after the question of "is it God's mouth or ours" has long ceased to matter--saying "Here I am." On that day, between listening and remaining with Christ, there will be not even the slightest separation.

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. [bxA]

Remember. That you would remember me--I have made this request so often. But you and I share the powerlessness of being suspended, nailed up together between heaven and earth, darkness and light, past and future. The silence--which was both heavy and divine-- echoed "remembrance" back to me in a voice that increasingly sounded like yours. In the end, I could no longer tell--as I still can't tell--who was requesting it of whom. When the whole body becomes an eye, I know where the hearing is: and so you say "be present, remember your liabilities, take my yoke and learn." So when I rise before the sun and the silence prays "morning by morning he wakens me, wakens my ear to listen as one who is taught"--I can't but allow myself to be opened by the hearing.

Remember. The "I who remembers"--the ego that has to work to be present--feels small next to someone like you. You, who have always been the fullness of presence made flesh. But I hear you saying to me that you have ascended, are ascending and will ascend to a heaven that is only being, only here, only now. Where else, after all, can it be? And it renders all the words true. You are the gate for the sheep, you are the bread of life. You are before all things, and in you all things hold together. I am absolutely a Satan, absolutely the thief that breaks in and steals. And the whole thing is silly: because experience is the key of knowledge that I've never not held, and the confusion is holy and righteous and good. I am in you and you are in me so that I can be completely one. I don't deserve it, but it's true. But neither is thiswhy I love you. Not at all.

Being present, remembering my faults, remaining with you--when I'm caught up in ego at the expense of all else, this is impossible for me. But the "me" for whom it's impossible is nothing more than a collection of deadened emotions, frustrated expectations and rejected psychological shadows. Just as Melchizedek, (priest of an unfamiliar deity,) spoke God's words to Abraham, the words I heard, (though coming from an unfamiliar source), were no less yours: "Thoughts aren't yours" they said--and the sound moved so deep that it dug under the roots of my fruitlessness. It is not I who live. It is you, both Lord and Christ, who lives in me. And that's still the case when I'm dying in my sin, when I'm averse to what's happening in life, when I feel, through my own most grievous fault, more like a worm than a man.

"Have mercy on me, God, have mercy: for in you my soul has taken refuge." (When the words come from my mouth, I cannot tell who is saying them.) "In the shadow of your wings I take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by." Guruji, HaShem, Jesus-- I love you because, though the mystery of remembrance between us is bigger than I am, you have consented to hide in each moment as my true self. You have made my whole body an echo chamber for the Word. I hear you pray "I was not rebelious...I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked out the beard." I hear it and everything in me begs for the shelter of your humility. I hear you pray "God himself will fight for you, you have only to keep still" and every anxiously fidgeting part of me weeps that it takes the nails of a cross to comply. I grieve all the ways I find following you unpleasant--but then I remember: I'm dying daily anyway.  Grieving, then, is as important a skill as prayer. If the life being lost is both yours and mine all at once, let me mourn till my eyes become a fountain of tears.

You and the Father are one--and the energy of the Spirit ascends and descends my spine just as it does everyone else's--with the increasingly pressing request that I point my intention and attention on the bodily sensations that you've said are the hinge of salvation. I love you--let me decrease, as I say it, so only you will increase. Whomever this hour belongs to, whether to light or to darkness, allow me to follow you alone, and become you in the doing of it. 

May I grow only more certain of you, who hears the sound of the wind through my ears. When I sit, clothed and in my right mind, allow me the silence that will proclaim the good God's mercy has done. Emptiness speaks of fullness, I know: so help me to be more patient with how often the fullness of time feels empty. I believe, help my unbelief! Whether you die or rise, I am yours. Even if my attention runs after all the voices that say 'here he is,' or 'there he is.' I will be here. Still, and for you.

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. [bxA]

Turning toward the light too soon causes blindness and distraction from shiny objects. Eve's shiny object was the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Eating it caused a whole history of distraction--it wasn't till Moses that humanity remembered that the breath of life had been God's name the whole time. Moses' shiny object was the burning bush. But to Moses, God said "come no closer...for the ground on which you stand is holy." Despite seeing the light, Moses would spend his life dealing with shadow. Indeed, shadow work might have been Moses calling all along: he so identified with Israel's thirst that he disobeyed God, striking the rock at Meribah and Massah twice. And for that he was denied the privilege of entering the promised land. Christ would allow himself to be accused for similarly unjustifiable reasons, and Saint Paul would famously muse about how "lack of fulfillment" seemed part and parcel of following Jesus in this life. Perhaps, when the divine radiance is behind us, when we've abandoned ego but can't seem to do so permanently--perhaps a time will come when our calling will come to light--as an obligation to notice the interplay between light and shadow in the first place.

Our friends in the Eastern Orthodox tradition were right--steeped in a tradition of Desert Solitaries, they spoke about our need to unearth the Divine Image within--they called the teaching "Divinization." The Christian West is familiar with perichoresis (the relation between the persons of the trinity in divine mystery) but very few of us have taught about internalizing the Trinity: it's a neglect in which we students of the Logos couldn't afford to persist. By and by, we could no longer afford the toll it took on our serenity.

The teacher said "the wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is for those who are born of the Spirit." The Logos showed us that beholding the Spirit within would involve ceasing to identify with the "you" who is doing the knowing. A tree was known by its fruit--and the Word had attuned us to how action, thought, and emotion came with different sensations. On the off-chance it might help, we abandoned the narrative of self, blame-ridden and rationalizing as it was. Our serenity increased, even as we were confronted with a great deal of darkness. Without the false protections of ego, the dark was no longer "other," but instead it was a part of us. To the extent that we hung in there, the character of the darkness changed. It went from foreboding to familiar.

We, who were (none of us) great saints, could empathize with them nonetheless. It's said that, psychologically, they did not experience themselves as becoming more perfect. Instead, their knowledge of their sins increased. They were able to bear it, though, because the God's light shone behind them. As we descended with our minds into our hearts, we laid aside the trappings of intellect and learned to flex the atrophied muscles of intuition. We found a whole new way of learning, characterized by realization instead of reason--and learned to live with the doubt that came before the "aha moment."

We stared into the darkness, full of terrible unknowns which seemed both sentient and morbidly preoccupied with desire and fulfillment, stimulus and response. On account of this apparent "battle of wills," the Desert Solitaries had sought out sparse environments, called what they struggled with demonic. Any monk will tell you that, in the end, hermits find themselves alone on a train platform full of people. We found ourselves similarly alone. But we couldn't shake the feeling that the different voices inside us were just repressed echoes of our own consciousness. We looked at our family histories, and saw a gathering of wounded voices. We learned they could change--we could become, for ourselves, the nurturing voice we always wanted to hear.

This became the foundation of Trinitarian Deity Meditation--a discipline at the center of Tantra. We would eventually find, within us, a voice whose only task is to become Christ--we would grow in ability to state our needs, echoing the thirst of the crucified Christ, without expectation of fulfillment. More importantly, Christ's tendency to "seek out the lost" became a way to avoid narcissism. Exploiting our divinity in garnering the adoration of others seemed fruitless. Idolatry takes a toll in the subtle anxiety it creates, and already our track record with bearing even life's mundane stresses was wretched. So we stuck with what was doable. We tried to become more aware of all that was inside us. We tried to coax the ear of our own hearts into hearing the Gospel that the Christ within us had been preaching the whole time. To ourselves, we preached Christ crucified--the Cross never seemed entirely finished with us, as we often found ourselves mentally fleeing from its agony. Somewhere along the line, we heard it said "suffering is pain you have yet to accept." As we grew in acceptance, pain increasingly struck us as "just another sensation"--one that, if we listened deeply, had teaching we needed. As Isaiah says, we "gave our backs to those who beat us" so that morning by morning we could "listen as one who is taught."

The Father began to show us all of the grasping at control and micro-judgement behind our opinions. The Teacher said "do not judge, lest you be judged" and "which of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to your life"--we heard him more clearly now, and longed to respond. Like Zacchaeus, we descended the tree of ego, taken concrete steps toward restitution. But the ways we'd come to grief were often too much for us, so we took refuge in the cross of Christ, reascending to be with the Father. On the cross we discovered the ability to reparent, reframe and recapitulate our self-imposed anguish: these were God-given skills central to turning our resentment into the quiet mind of Christ. On the cross we found compassion for the back-biting business of human life--the tendency to prattle on was in us, we knew, as much as in others. On the cross, remaining in suspension Christ began to remedy our desire for control. We had only to train our desire in daily remembrance. it was constant work, but it made our lives better. We were back in Exodus, where the Israelites learned the lesson Isaiah crystalized: "Listen to me, and eat what is good." Increasingly, manna was reality, and reality was manna.

We had, in the end, but a single complaint. Trinitarian Deity meditation was hard to sustain. We were aware, now, of the myriad times we ceased to be present to the workings of our minds and hearts--and where we failed at watchfulness, judgment flourished. Over the long haul, we became discouraged.  The dark side of community was everywhere: we increasingly saw our own transactionality ruin our relationships, even as others sought to take from us more than we had to give. We knew the way brokenness worked because we saw it in ourselves. What was said of the teacher was said of us: "he would not reveal himself to them, because he knew what was in them." With time, we grew more reserved. Eventually we knew the truth of it: light without shadows is possible, but even when the light is invisible, there would be no shadows without it.  

In Christian Tantra, opposites are relativized; the part of us dies that's weary of bearing what is, and so "what we will be" is, in a sense, what we have always been. The beginning and the end are one: so it is for those who are born of the Spirit. Ultimately we find that, when we were discouraged, we didn't give the Spirit enough credit. It was in inverted symbol that the Triune God showed itself to our ego-veiled eyes. Once we learned the lesson, we realized Christ had been present to us the whole time--he was just present in things we were averse to. We solitaries weren't huge fans of strangers, and yet Christ made himself present there. We were wounded ourselves, still learning self-care, and Christ made himself present in the sick. The Wisdom of Solomon spoke of "a prison not made of Iron"--and we knew immediately it was our ego--but it took a minute to teach ourselves to be comfortable visiting the imprisoned.

It's a poverty, to be certain. The words of life are the work of wisdom. We were too used to denial to be in the present moment without mentally checking out. But Christ turned our willfulness to willingness in the breaking of the bread. As we brought the Lord's offering of gently focused attention and intention, our hearts grew increasingly generous. We are like other people not in our gifts or uniqueness, but in our liabilities. For Israel, the passover was a remembrance, certainly of Exodus, but of all twelve tribes at all times. The Passover was the bread of the Exodus broken in the moment while fleeing the ego. It recalled, as well, the bread of the presence--which symbolized all 12 tribes as one community. We followers of Christ have fallen afoul of all 613 mitvot--and we're on the hook for every jot and tittle. But for God's love, we are a noisy gong, and an inverted symbol. As often as we work to remember, we can see all those who struggle to listen. Whether in the body or out of the body, we don't know, God knows. We're convinced the seven spirits of God shine inside us--and by their shadows, we will know them.

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. [bxA]

The Teacher destroyed the clingy causality of sin and death by submitting to it.  For him, acceptance of things as they are was the climate in which the Spirit arose within him.  Knowing that self is a good thing so long as we get rid of it at the right time, the teacher nurtured self in order to give it up, in order to avoid being the dog that returned to his vomit.  He'd spent his life denying his attractions and encountering his aversions, but doing so without weaving a new identity out of it.  Further, he'd developed the "Father voice" that rang through his psychological makeup so deeply that, when it came time to hand all things over to his Father in death, he managed to bear the agony of it.  

This transformed anger, judgment and desire.  To deal quickly with the first two: anger lost its edge and became an insistence on getting rid of distractions, a tool for being in the moment.  This came out of Jesus' deep knowledge of his own distractibility.  Jesus knew the part of him that simply couldn't afford to grasp at shiny objects.  It's no surprise that later, he would talk about longing to run every which way after the lord, but learning to sit with it, until his day is like lightning from one end of the sky to the other. Judgment became, for Jesus, a tool for becoming attuned to the Spirit within.  He learned to discern the promptings of the truth while distinguishing between one sensation and another, one emotion and another, one thought and another.  Later, out of his own knowledge of the fruits of different kinds of thinking, he would say "if you call your brother a fool, you will be liable to the lake of fire."

We have no doubt that Jesus' own desires were purified--after all, he entirely ceased to manipulate to get his needs met, and was able, on the cross, to simply say "I thirst." But here, as a testament to how the Word has transformed us, instead of assuming we've measured the teacher's insights correctly, we wish to offer our own journey with desire. We knew that we usually only wanted things that were pleasant to us. We only wanted things that accorded with the system of expectations our minds had set up. Desire struck us as a terrific source of constant suffering because, well, we were making it that way. We could confirm this by the emotional tailspins that denial of desire and unmet expectations cause us. Then one day it struck us that we were going about it wrong. It struck us that desire was given us so that we could become devoted to things as they are.  In other words, God says he'll use absolutely everything to guide us, and some of that won't be pleasant. God will teach through our aversions as much as through our attractions, and we will need a way to pay attention to both. Desire, it seemed, was our means of absorbing all of the lessons. The more we trained desire on acceptance of all things, without exception, the more desire itself became both a tool we could willingly both pick up and put down, as well as a gutsy form of prayer. Relating to desire in this way made us understand that a vow is performative language, and that most of the time, fulfilling that vow would involve dispensing with words in preference of listening.

Jesus surrendered his self concept. He did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself. He found willingness by abandoning willfulness.  He ceased to cling to an identity formed by the desire for control.  His language for this was paternal: he was "handing all things over to the Father." In Gethsemani, the teacher said "if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done." We theorize that, for Jesus, "doing the Father's will" was a way Jesus had conscious psychological access to what his faith told him was always (philosophers would say "ontologically") true. There was a way in which "the Father and I are one" was the deepest truth of Christ's life, whatever might be happening psychologically--we students of Rabbouni make bold to think that this is true, not just of Christ, but of all people. The mechanics of that truth are for theologians to work out--we need only remain focused on being with Jesus by his own measure. In other words, it's only when we refuse to look up to heaven, but stand in the back of our places of prayer saying "Lord have mercy on us, sinners" that we will know what it means that "everyone, without exception, is the Trinity enfleshed."

We desire to do what Jesus did. Looking within, we see that our family relationships are full of conflict. We were fed up with that stored trauma making wreckage of our adult choices, so we began to work with it. We became, to ourselves, the kinds of parents we had always needed. When we realized that there was no loss that couldn't be reconciled, it allowed us the safety to become healthy adults, always engaged in the work of nurturing the wounded parts of ourselves.  This psychological reparenting and reframing became the foundation of two aspects of Christian Tantra. We claim that every Christian has a share in the way Christ recapitulated all creation: in doing this work, we'll see vices turn to virtues. We claim that every Christian has a desperate need to turn their ears away from ego and superego, listening instead to the higher, humble self that is Christ within, constantly handing all things over to the father. This isn't a badge of honor, it's a tool supplied by wisdom. It's accessible to all, and if it's used at all, it's to be used in the service of the weak, and never for the garnering of personal adoration. Those who have it never admit to it. Instead they keep their sight on the one Christ said was "destined to be lost"--that is, on their own egos. And they pay attention to the teacher when he says, of the self, "if it is my will that he tarry until I return, what is that to you?" If you can hear this, we have this work in common: to follow Christ, without thought of the destination and regardless of objectives.

Remember, says the Logos, the words of the Teacher: "There were many lepers in Israel at the time of Elisha the Prophet, but not one was cleansed except Namaan the Syrian." Elisha bucked Namaan's expectations of how healing would happen. The great warrior thought Elisha would come and wave his hand over him and speak words of healing for all to hear. Instead Elisha refuses to meet with him, tells him to wash in the Jordan River seven times. Elisha bucked Namaan's system of attraction and aversion. The soldier, (who'd conquered many lands,) claims to know a great many rivers more grand than the Jordan. But Elisha asks him to immerse himself in the Jordan nonetheless. 

Our logical minds represent, often by inverted symbol, the ineffable things humility beholds clearly. In silence we hear the Lord asking "Can you drink the cup of which I am to drink." Undoubtedly, our desire for a spot at Christ's side--for the pleasant bits of being with Christ-- will lead us to say "yes." This is why Christ says "It's the Father's job, not mine, to hand out spots at my left and my right." Jesus is alerting us that a hard teaching is coming: he's going to use our aversions to teach, as he once used our attractions. We're asked if we can bear a share of the worlds sinfulness that's more than we deserve to bear. As soon as we say yes, Jesus asks "what if enduring the sins of the world and being asked to take on too much at work are the same?" We're asked if we're willing to descend into hell with Christ. No sooner do we agree, than we're told that bearing with gossips at work (to purify our own opinionatedness)--this is what descending with Christ will look like. We're asked if we are willing to bear other people's purgatorial debt on their behalf. Full of our glorious self-righteousness, we agree. And we're immediately asked "what if assuming the debt of others and allowing the routine dependency of those we love are the same?" We have heard it said, "if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own." But Christ says to us "If we can't process the scandal inherent in the growth of our own humility, what inner resources will help us to perform greater works?" If God uses what is low and despised in the world--things that are not--to bring to nothing things that are, isn't it time we stop trying to pretend to be good when our ability to just be is critically impaired? We can formulate no response here, and it bows our heads.

We wash in the rivers of mundane daily tasks. We're given not seven cracks at it, either, but seventy times seven of them. If others, or if even our own egos feel the need to call us martyrs of any shade--God willing we'll, have the grace to wax nonsensical, to fry the brains both of others or ourselves. Followers of the buddha, when asked "what is budda" would spontaneously tie their sandals on their heads and exit the room. We followers of Jesus would be lucky to be so humble. At the least, our job is to listen. "When you have finished all that was asked of you" said the teacher "say "we are worthless servants, for we have done nothing more than what was asked of us." Then, when the quiet asks "who do you say that you are" may we only answer as silently as we were asked.