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.