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.