Disciplines and Layers of Christian Tantra

Tantra is the doctrine of the Cross. Christ is Rabbouni, the one who, in the process of fully accepting crucifixion, in his suffering, dying and rising, was the ultimate tantric guru.

Christian Tantra is not a set of doctrines. Nor is it a method. Doctrines rely overmuch on the mind, and tantra is a a way of moving through the layers of reality. If nothing else, it’s certain of this: that failure to observe, and learn to work with those layers—this is a classic source of unhealthy negative emotion. Our minds are made to be here, now, and at rest. If a person’s interior situation becomes dependent on worry as a means of control, it makes the past a thing of remorse and the future a source of anxiety.  [bxA]

In that way, pain, spiritual consolations, and the differences between ourselves and others, they are all medicine for the ego. These aren’t the only ones, as a later post will address. By and by, though, pain, consolations and individual differences are trying to tell us that there’s a voice in our head that chatters with “I like this, I dislike that. I want this, I don’t want that. This or that is good, better or best, and I should spend my life trying to maximize satisfaction.” Pain, consolations, and individual differences throw enough curve balls at us that by and by we realize: the voice in our heads that wears “I, me and my” isn’t us at all.

The body is a storehouse of pain and attachment as well as—and we’ll address this later—spiritual energy. Christian Tantra is a sacramental path, but it understands the physicality of both the body and the world the way Vipassana Meditation methods do. In other words, the body is the unconscious, and it remembers all the trauma you’ve suffered and it either encourages or lets go of the clinginess that’ll cause suffering till it’s encountered and transmuted. The world, to say nothing of other people, are mirrors of projection and foils of ego.

At best, the sacraments use the senses to to train attention. The sense-data of the sacraments—the candles we see, the incense we smell, the bread and wine we taste—when we give it our unforced attention, it gradually draws our focus away from our minds, and towards reality. And just as the post resurrection experiences teach us, the great realization of the early church is that grief fully accepted in the present moment reveals the Christ behind normal realities like strangers, locked upper rooms and gardeners.

Transubstantiation (the consecration of the Sacraments in general) and Interbeing are two works, one by the priest and the other by the people. Transubstantiation reaches into the realm of mystery, makes bread the body of Christ when the priest lifts bread and says “this is my body.” This is done ex opere operato, it’s a work of God, done regardless of the sins of the priest. Interbeing is the people's gentle work of mindfulness. This very much does depend on the people giving non-forceful attention to the breath, to sensation, to emotion and to each other. If we're to realize that we, ourselves, are Christ, we’ve got to empty themselves as Christ did and have the mind of Christ, which is non-self and total humility. It shows us the connectedness of all things: whatever’s going on in terms of reality manifesting Christ will be unintelligible to me if I refuse to seek interior quiet. But entering into that moment with the mind of Christ, I see the with unforced presence and total acceptance, they themselves become the body of Christ they receive.

What, though, does it mean to quiet myself? What are the disciplines of Christian Tantra, and what kinds of meditation are most helpful in finding serenity? Here are a few important disciplines:

Putting up, and taking down, the boundaries of self. Being protected and vulnerable as needed is an important prelude to gradually and gently transmuting our selfishness, avoidance, and sinful compulsive thought.

Gently reclaiming attention from distraction.

Giving attention to sensation and senses, together with deep breathing, to draw the focus away from preoccupying thought. Slowly, it will shift towards sensation, with a corresponding increase in calm. 

 
Facing the pain-body. Directly facing negative emotion, as well as trauma stored in the body.

Observing our breath, without controlling it.

Watching without craving

Waiting without expectations

Feeling without manipulating.

Observing the effects of our thoughts, and acting on calm deliberation, not on impulse.

Grief: allowing ourselves to move from thought to emotion, from emotion to sensation, from sensation to energy, and from energy to reality.

Deity Meditation is central to Christian Tantra, as it is to Buddhist or Hindu Tantra. On one level, as we grieve Christ’s death, we become other Christs, first by active thought about (and mimicking the actions of) Christ, then by totally internalizing him until our thoughts are his thoughts, our bodies are his body. On another level, we are allowing our psyche’s constitutive voices to talk to one another: our inner, healthy adult is re-parenting our wounded inner child.

Christian Tantra peels back the layers. First, practitioners of Christian Tantra give up thought for the sake of emotion and sensation. We learn that avoidance adds anxiety to pain, turning it into suffering. With pain of all sorts, fully encountering it on an energetic level makes it more bearable. Logic and words are fabulous tools, but like all egoic tools, they can take us only so far. We eventually have to deal with the body’s capacity to store trauma. It’s possible that this might be attached to specific memories, but possible, too, that it won’t be. If it’s not we can just deal with the pain as pain. Cancer patients who are resistant to pain medication are taught transformative ways to encounter their pain deeply. Students of Rabbouni do that with all things that are painful.

Next, the Student of Rabbouni gives up emotion and sensation to deal with life on the level of energy. On an energetic level, that involves making a distinction. In the first place, I can perceive my spirit...My spirit is “that in me that pays attention to spiritual energy." I was 38 years old before I was quiet enough to perceive that followers of Jesus, too, feel an energy that’s analogous to kundalini energy in Hinduism. Indeed, those who perceive their spirit know that their own spine is the Cross that’s been given them to ascend. Secondly, there are those in Christianity who have the ability to do what, in Hinduism, is called “giving shakti.” In other words, they can, by cultivating that unwillful presence that is “cooperation with grace,” temporarily raise consciousness of spiritual energy in others. Thirdly there’s the Holy Spirit—which is the things that guides the Church, which is the thing that manifests gifts of the Spirit, which is the thing that sustains all creation. But let’s underline something fairly darkly. Please understand that there’s only one Spirit. The energy that moves up and down the spine is the same as that great saints have transmitted in healings or awakenings, which is the same as what guards the Church from straying from Christ’s teaching.

When students of Rabbouni peel back the layers of the present moment, they obey that dictum that goes: "if it works, do it.” If thinking about the morality of an action just fills the head with noise, then maybe we need to abandon the moral narrative and deal with it on the level of emotion. If that only succeeds in upsetting us, then abandon the emotional narrative and deal with it on the level of energy.

Of course the final step is, if I get too caught up in being a practitioner and having experiences, I need to abandon self. At the center layer, I am crucified with Christ and I become Christ crucified (but when I’m humble I won’t know it.) And there’s no descending the cross or ascending to heaven, no up or down. The crucified don’t have that luxury, true, but at the still point between ascending and descending, between left and right, I’m hoping I’ll find I don’t need it.

Beginning to lay out the Christian Tantric Vision

The normal devotional Catholic model, which has its past and its future, its sacred and profane, is insufficient.  Please understand, I'm not calling it false, nor am I denying any of the valid theological truth it has uncovered.  What I'm certainly saying is this: every psychological phenomena, before it's a narrative and a moral system, is an energy.  The moment that energy gets labelled good or bad, we have either the attraction response or the aversion response that's typical of egos.

The ancient monks I spent my monastic life reading about, well they all would have spoken about the eight demons.  They assume that the energy they were feeling was "not them" and malevolent.  At best, they then claimed the mercy of God in Christ, which enabled them to fess up to cooperating with that malevolent, sentient energy.  Fear of God became a way to humbly admit what they were powerless over.  The system, used rightly, is beautiful and effective.

Devotional paths are dualist, though, just as any particular revelation and any particular incarnation is.  My problem is the great many disempowering difficulties I ignore for the sake of devotion to the "other."  I ask the messiah for many things, I say "our help is in the name of the Lord" but then I lift my eyes to the mountains and say "from whence shall come my help?"  Life with others, which would normally be a self-emptying sadhana, becomes, for me, a tangle of overgrown desire.  In my family of origin, interdependence became co-dependence.  In my family of choice, the airy freedom of romance becomes the enormous drag of lust.  And in my work life, healthy boundaries become egotistical defense mechanisms.

On the other hand, it's important to remember--tantra is a non-dual path. [bxA] This means some of the pitfalls of today's devotional Catholicism don't occur.  There isn't, for instance, a "hierarchy of the sacred." From the perspective of Christian Tantra, the rosary is here to be used, the Mass is now and ongoing, and dog-vomit is an event, right in the middle of your kitchen.  If one is seen as holier than the other, that difference is in the believer, not his beliefs.  But beyond proclaiming that all things are morally neutral: if I take the "interbeing" that Christ taught for the "poor man's transubstantiation" that it is, I see plainly that reality is Christ himself, attempting to remind us of who we already are.

What the humble, tenfold path calls "humble presence" (what Ram Dass called "the witness") is a halfway point between "othering or labelling energy" and letting it rule my conscious choices.  That halfway point is the playground of Christian Tantra.  I know that, in my own life, it's been possible to think myself holy while I avoided energy I thought was "evil."  This gave avoidance, as a general spiritual strategy, too much play in my interior life and relationships.

The essential oneness and wholeness of the truth is the starting point of Tantra.  For Tantra, the past and the future don't have independent reality.  The only time that actually exists is now.  (For a quick reference of things that Christian tantra takes as basic beliefs, see the page  "A non-creed: the Teachings of Under the Influence.")

In Christian Tantra, all phenomena are the body of Christ.  Chief among these are what we've previously called "The 5 Sense Organs of the Body of Christ:" Time, Desire, Reality, Thought and Paradox.  But in a larger sense, because all phenomena are composite, they, too are the body of Christ.  The reality of being multi-layered people is that non-constructive thought, and any pockets of my emotional garbage hide in between the layers.  My job is to look at and accept any energy that may be hiding there: Christian tantra knows that acceptance is one of the 4 Gospel seals with which all Christian teaching must agree, and it further knows that serenity hinges on acceptance, as well.

Transmutation of energies is central to Tantra.  The people of Israel felt the force of the deuteronomic cycle: They were faithful, then their hearts strayed from God, then they called out to him, and God sent a messiah to lead them back to the law.  Christ was born, lived, suffered died and rose.  The apostles were first fascinated, then scandalized: in their confusion they fled, and Christ relocated them.  As much as anything in buddhism, this cyclicality testifies to the need to transmute energies.  Christ, as the person who encountered the "curses" of his world and deprived them of their power, as the one who fully accepted the dying in all life and the new life in dying, is the ultimate transmuting vehicle.

Central to tantra as well is "Deity Meditation."  When I first found out about this, I was hesitant about it.  I have a tendency to use thought to end-run around emotion and sensation.  But the deity meditation of Buddhist tantra, and the deity meditation of Christian Tantra, is a "naming of something we already are" rather than the "verbalizing a future aspiration" characteristic of Christian devotion.  It occurred to me that the priority, in Christian tantra's deity meditation, was to anchor it in the real.

Enter the psyche.  This is the door we're knocking at when we hear Koan tradition say "What was your face before your mother and father were born?"  We all have psyches composed of many different "voices:" they're either the product of many years with the loved ones who formed us, or the gift of loved ones who failed to form us as we needed them to.  Starting with our own psyches, we gradually transmute their voices.  I may be using the "rational adult" voice in my head, to "re-parent" my inner child, but Christian Tantra says something else.  When I am engaged in an effort to know, accept and nurture the different parts of my psyche--as opposed to fleeing from them--Christian Tantra says it's Christ speaking in me, reminding me of the Christ I already am.

The point, though, is to know every single part of ourselves--every physical reality, every emotion, every energy--first as it is, and then begin to work with it.  Narrative and labels can often hamper this work, saddling different energies with labels like good and evil, positive or negative.  It's to be remembered that the selfish and clingy parts of ourselves will use this narrative and these labels to rationalize selfishness, so temporarily letting go of the narrative, simply dealing with it on the level of sensation.

Only upon abandoning this narrative was I able to begin to know my shadow.  Only on abandoning this narrative was I able to wrest things like desire from the grip of ego.  Slowly, the healthiest voices in my psyche are reclaiming a sense of empowerment from a dualistic vision in which the help I needed was perpetually distant.

It turns out that one of life's primary liabilities is mindless desire and fulfillment.  Augustine called it "concupiscence:" the deeper truth that attraction, aversion, craving and ego --though morally neutral-- are problems as big as sin itself.  Letting go of the narrative building self deprives the grave its power and death of its sting.   This is the message of Tantra: minus attraction, sensation and perception become a tool of mindfulness.  Minus aversion, the hurtful defensiveness I wielded in my family of origin becomes healthy, adult boundary setting.  Minus craving and ego, the flowers I once bought out of fear of abandonment are now messengers of the Gospel.  Their message is clear, before a word is on our tongues:  Spouse, Savior and Self are one.  Nothing is broken but brokenness, and before I was conscious of needing or wanting to give love, I AM.

Life, Death and Resurrection: The Place of a Tantric Path in Christ's Recapitulation

Wisdom comes from the Logos: in suffering, unwillingness, finitude.  In Christ’s life, the agony in Gethsemani, the temptation in the wilderness, and death on a Cross have a message.  If they are saying anything, it is this: “When given a choice between A and B, choose C.”  When given a choice between hunger and power, choose God’s Word.  When given a choice between fighting the Egyptians and despairing of life, remember to “Stand firm and you will see the Lord’s salvation…the Lord will fight for you, you have only to keep still.”  When given a choice between life and death, choose consciousness.  

Studying Christianity and Zen side by side has highlighted two problems with Christianity: Firstly, many of the characters that Jesus used in his own teaching would fall short of the “demands of righteousness” currently set forth by the Catholic Church.  Jesus himself, usually hidden in the unwashed masses, is periodically offered as a foil for the ecclesial ideal of righteousness. The Church seems at odds with itself: on the one hand, it insists on righteousness from its congregants and grants its clerics the ability to condemn.  On the other hand, albeit faultlessly, Jesus eschewed the righteousness of his day.  The popular Catholic mindset eventually relegated "following Christ’s example" to monks, nuns and mystics, instead of evolving an ecclesial model that makes the recapitulation of Jesus available to all.

Additionally, the Church never seemed to resolve the problem of eschatology that St. Paul felt so viscerally.  The Gospels are a study in the how Jesus fulfilled pastscriptures, but they lead directly to St. Paul assuming too much visibility and physicality in the “coming of Christ.” The Church still groans and waits, hoping for a vision of God that, perhaps, the shortcomings of our own paradigm keep us from realizing.

The point is to offer a model of Church whose route to righteousness accords with Christ’s example, and whose ideals of time render not only the past, but the future immanent as well.  In short, what I’m proposing is Christian Tantra.  [bxA] Followers of Jesus have given too little attention to the way Jesus, (who was a revealed God enfleshed, whose incarnation was inherently dualist, who was born under the laws of existence,) identified with all that was cursed and outcast.  He encountered everything to which the holiness of his day would have sanctioned an aversion.  He destroyed death by encountering it. Taken more seriously, his example would fit more cleanly in a Tantric model than the current devotional one.

Let me briefly describe Tantra’s place in religious architecture:  Both hinayana and mayahana buddhism are “sutrayana” paths.  In both paths, there’s an ethic, and whatever the goal is, it's found in the adherence to the ethic.  Intoxicants, sex and sometimes meat are taboo—I suppose they go against the buddhist idea of “diminishing suffering for all sentient beings.”  Vajrayanis, practitioners of Tantra, call sutrayana’s bluff.  Noticing that dualistic ideas of “right and wrong” still caused them to avoid what their own tradition calls taboo, they came up with the idea of “transmutation of energies.”  Working with taboos intentionally, calling no energy negative or positive, they created a truly non-dual account of how egolessness puts access to all things in the hands of all people.  After sufficient work with “negative energy,” Vajrayanis perceive that the label of “negativity” seems self applied.  When they let the ego go, out the door as well goes labels like negative or positive.  Bereft of labels for reality, they’re nonetheless left with mastery of it.

To sum up the basic differences between Tantric Paths and Devotional ones:  Tantra begins with a totally realized, totally immanent ideal.  Now is the only time that isn’t a mental construct.  The Buddha, (or in hinduism, the Deity) we’re meant to become—this is something we already are.  It then posits self-consciousness as the preoccupation keeping us from realizing it.  It may take us several lifetimes to get there, but eventually there will be no self-consciousness getting in the way between us and consciousness—we’ll be exempt from the cycle of rebirths in brahman’s nirvana. In devotional paths, the ideal can logically be delayed—sometimes till after death, sometimes till the end of time.  Past and future are thought to be real times, and preoccupation with either is seen as a normal part of human life.  The Christian vision tells us we have one shot at gaining heaven and avoiding hell, suggesting purgatory (at most) as the way we clean up any incomplete work from our physical existences. 

And allow me to clear up a popular misconception: Tantra has been associated, in the American mindset, almost exclusively with its sexual practices.  Even if they could be found, authentic Tantric consorts are well beyond the pale for Christian marriages, and the likelihood is slim as well of two married people being equally willing to practice tantra in all aspects of life. As a discipline, Tantra deals with a wider array of energies than simply sexual ones.  In fact, all things—emotions, physical matter, the personal history we bring to our practice, the expectations of practice taking root in our ego—they may be easier to deal with on the level of energy than on the level of narrative.  If my narrative says “I” have a problem, in the end I might imagine that “I” have to solve it.  Or that “God” will solve it.  Meanwhile, narratives can conceal resentments and facilitate denial of negativity.  Deprive an energy of its narrative, and it may well be easier to deal with.  This is all, of course, in the service of a proper theism: belief that can deal, here in duality and there in non-duality, as the reality of our lives demands.  

Tantra asks practitioners to bring consciousness to bear on the attraction and aversion that underlies sin and virtue. Eve saw the fruit was “pleasing to the eye, and to be desired to make one wise.”  Adam gave everything a name.  While neither desiring nor naming things is inherently bad, it easy to see how attraction and desire and naming things could become problematic in light of original sin’s fundamental abstraction of creation.  For those of us who aren’t the world’s paradigmatic first parents, it doesn’t really matter whether original sin or attraction and aversion came first.  I’d put honest money on the claim that no modern hen finds the "chicken or the egg” problem adequate answer for any riddle of its existence.  The answer is only available when the questioner unflinchingly accepts the reality of paradox, and finds the fidgeting of his own abstracted existence stilled in its light.

All of the things Under the Influence previously said about the need to internalize the messiah are important here.  Guru Kripa, the process of being devoted to, then becoming the teacher—this discipline is important in Tantra, and lacking in Christianity.  All of the evidence seems to indicate that the very-fine devotional practices that have driven Christian sanctity till now do not fully facilitate the assimilation of Christ’s life. 

Consciousness deconstructs self-conscious narratives: as such, it helps its practitioners slip the trap of spiritual materialism.  That’s a good way of saying “being who I am involves questioning the accuracy of who I think I am, and not giving those thoughts undue importance.”  Without careful attention to training, even Sutrayana Buddhism can become dualistic, and allow the taboos of buddhism to become the next object of attraction and aversion.  If Sutrayana buddhism, which makes claims to be non-dualistic, needs Tantra to give that non-duality legs, then the need is more important, still, for the highly dualistic Christianity.  

Christ is reality.  In Christian Tantra, the only problem is the self.  If I am a follower of Christ, then both the permanence of my self and the Christian over dependence on logic must not compete with that, no matter how sacred or real they may seem. At least since the enlightenment and the scientific revolution, Christian modes of proving that reality have been way too cozy with logic.   

By all accounts, though, Christ’s example bucks logic.  If death is a problem, and dying willingly is the solution, Christ himself must be saying that "labelling of things as a problem” is the first thing that’s got to change.  Tantric Christianity, all the more, solves problems by changing the degree of identification with the “self" that’s perceiving the difficulty.  In Christian Tantra especially, to arrive at a zero sum when one starts with two, sometimes "adding negative two” isn’t the answer.  Sometimes shutting down the mind of the one doing math is equally important: a sort of “two minus self equals zero.” 

At least in terms of its way of Knowing, Christian Tantra is a vehicle that allows Christ to be its exemplar, not its foil.  Tantra’s model of “dealing with suffering by consciously encountering it” is more in accord with Christian theology than most, more logical Christian theologies, and it allows the characters in Christ’s stories to be exemplars of his theology, rather than outcasts he brought up for convenience's sake.  A Christian Tantric path would exalt the weak and the humble this by acknowledging that opposites are egotistical and dualist distinctions, by noting that egotism isn’t the only human option.  By centralizing paradox, Christian Tantra allows for opposites like “sacred and profane” to coexist and brings "giving up self" to the fore.  Christian Tantra is a way of radical acceptance, and it comes directly from Christ’s Cross.

So consider this an experiment.  Keep in mind, it is a practice, and includes many different types of meditation.  Breaking down what some of those are will be part of the work.  Stay tuned.

Doing Group Work: Meditations on Recovery

Over the past few months, I’ve not been posting.  Part of it, as I said in “An Open letter on the Holiday season” is that holidays are hard for me.  Yes, they bring memories of many past holidays to the surface, but that’s not the most basic problem.  I’ve always been a person who has needed to grieve over the fact that things aren’t as they should be.  Others are happy at Christmas, and I’m a depressed, nervous wreck.  Life is an opportunity, and I often find it a burden.  These differences between reality and the ideal are mere intellectual curiosities when it’s sunny out and my time’s my own.  But when it’s raining, cold, and the middle of the work week, the gap between me and the ideal moves inside me and festers.

So I’ve needed to go back to basics.  [bxA] And since dysfunction can color even my relationship with my higher power, “basics” for me isn’t faith—“basics” will always be my status as an Adult Child.  I find faith’s ideals—forgiveness particularly— hard: so as I go through my life, I listen when poets say “Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.”  I listen when Rabbis talk about the importance of “Forgiving God, even as God forgives us” even though my inner theologian takes issue with a need to forgive the creator.  My difficulty with faith is nothing more than a symptom of the problem we adult children share. As many intellectual curiosities as I nurture, I can get distracted: I have to come back to step one.

For “adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families” step one says: I admitted I was powerless over the effects of my dysfunctional upbringing.  But if I’m to do a full job, I need to go deeper than that.  I’m powerless over resentment, powerless to please people, powerless to control others' behavior.  I’m powerless over whatever, in each moment, is compromising my serenity—even if “effort to name what I’m powerless over” is what’s temporarily preoccupying me.

Powerlessness is the foundation of emotional sobriety.  To grow emotional sobriety, I have to cultivate the witness—a stance of simply observing, as opposed to trying to manipulate.  I’ve known all of that for a while.  But in the last few months, something else has become clear.  I have to question the qualityof that witness.  If anyone’s parents ever communicated displeasure by silently glaring, if anyone’s parents ever gave each other the silent treatment, you get it.  How we look affects how we see the problem.  How we see the problem affects what steps we take, and how, to solve it.  

I’ve spoken about this before.  In the slightly rambling post “The Original Child, my first and Greatest Teacher,” I identified the child inside me who looks on the world with utter fascination and excitement.  My original child doesn’t talk much.  He’s pretty stoked just to lay there and be excited.  As many layers of dysfunctional psychobabble as were laid over top this presence, it took me 37 years to see that he was there in the first place.  The point here is, if the original child doesn’t do the seeing, if the healthy adult doesn’t do the thinking and the acting, everything—my home life, my recovery, and my faith—will get derailed by my own dysfunction.

The Big Book (page 451 of the 3rd edition) says “I can [do the work of shifting my focus] with an AA meeting.  The more I focus on its defects…the worse the meeting becomes.  But when I try to see what I can add to the meeting…the meeting keeps getting better and better.”  What I’ve realized is that, (in a way that, thankfully, hasn’t hardened into disassociating completely,) I have a group of recovering people inside me.  My inner, wounded child looks on situations with paralysis, hyper-vigilance and fear, my unhealthy adult with rage.  A balance between limits and compassion with those voices is important, and it’s prior to impartially witnessing.  In one sense, my healthy adult has to affirm the voices in the room so that spiritual bypassing, or ignoring uncomfortable emotion in the name of piety, doesn’t occur.  When all the voices are heard and affirmed, my focus is real, genuine openness.  If they’re not, I’m usually impaired in my ability to accept things as they are

If I don’t go to that group meeting, the ones I attend with other adult children are useless.  At those meetings, it’s the ‘healthy adult’s’ job to moderate, to validate all the voices so they can be united in seeing my situation in the first place.  So when the wounded child brings his inarticulate mix of panic, the healthy adult needs to listen first, then provide the kind of nurture that allows the wounded child to relax.  When the wounded adult wants to rage and indulge addictive behaviors, the healthy adult needs to listen first, then remind the wounded adult that it doesn’t need to rage to be heard.  This is all part of allowing the Healthy adult and the Original Child to unite the group in doing the same thing: seeing my life healthily.

This is a lot.  I need to remind myself that there are times when being the healthy adult suffices to do the Healthy Adult’s needed work.  When simply being the Original Child is possible, seeing the world with fascination and excitement happens on its own. The post “Trust God: New thoughts on Steps 1-3 of ACA”  is one of a series that attempts to troubleshoot why my higher power was throwing up roadblocks to my “working the program": why no one would pick up the 1000 pound phone when I dailed it, for instance.  Now I know that those roadblocks were happening because I wasn’t attending the group meeting that I needed to: the one inside me with the cranky fuckers who make up my psyche.  Finding the right group is an integral part of the solution.  But codependents like me need to be careful not to expect the group to compensate for work we’re neglecting.

And examining family’s contribution to the problem—whether my family of origin or my life with my Jackie— is part of the solution, but not all of it.  For one thing, the Big Book says “don’t seek to understand the reasons why you drink.”  For codependents, “drinking” is an analogue for “avoiding insecurity through manipulation”.  The point, for us, is that “understanding” is a last ditch effort at manipulation; it’s just clothed in sage’s garb.   

It’s too easy to say “I see the problem” and mean “I’m hung up on where it started.”  Blaming your family of origin, then, for their very real bullshit: this can masquerade as wisdom.  But blame remains a bad move, however enticing.  It’s too easy to say “I see the problem” and mean “I’m hung up on what grates on me when I’m not doing my own recovery work.”  Resenting my Jackie for her responses to life—she likes to get vocally angry with inanimate objects in her way, for instance, and my inner child is afraid of angry people—this can masquerade as constructive.  But the only way to troubleshoot what makes my problem worse is to address the wounded voices inside me that make me sensitive in the first place.  

The big book says  “The hardest place to work this program has been my own home…with my wife.”  It suggests working the steps specifically around home life, then says “‘the courage to change’ in the serenity prayer meant, not that I should change my marriage, but that I should change myself and accept my spouse as she was.”  That extends, I’d argue, to the group of voices I hear at the group meeting inside myself.  They are what they are.  Hearing them, and choosing to be my original child: this is important if I’m to lay hold of any serenity.  Validating them, and allowing my inner adult to focus me on seeing my life healthily: I’ve got to do it if I’m going to see things as they are.

The acronym is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.  Keeping it simple, for AA, has always been, “Don’t drink, and go to meetings.”  For me this means “Don’t use substances, behaviors, or your home life as a solution to your problem, attend to the different voices that contribute to your ego, and allow the best of them to determine your perspective and behavior.”  Honestly, that’s still more complicated than I’d prefer.  But seeing it in the first place means doing it is easier than I think.  I begin the new year, not with resolutions—i can’t afford the force they involve—but with the Original Child’s fascination to witness what comes.

Christian Koans Part V

Helpful Precedents for reading these Koans are in the following posts.  Steps in Solving Koans, On the Logos: Christian Koans Part I, Christian Koans Part II, Christian Koans Part III, and Christian Koans Part IV.  Good luck!

Case 33: “Fr. Mark’s ‘The Logos is easy”

Br. Adam’s Introduction: Jesus accepts all. In that acceptance, past and future yield to now. Hither and thither yield to here. Vice and virtue yield to action. Denying themselves, good and evil men and women become simply “people.” Whether awake or asleep, they live together with him. In accepting all, is Jesus insane? In accepting all, you will know how the old hermit goes this way and that. [bxA]

Main Subject: A novice approached Fr. Mark in the woods. “How much does the Shekinah weigh?Fr. Mark said “Like God’s yoke, the Logos is easy. Remember Rabbouni, to whom the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery. He knelt and wrote in the dust.” Fr. Mark bent down, but in his case, he picked up a rock. “Remember his words, ‘let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’” He tossed the stone playfully in the air, and caught it again.

“I’m confused,” said the novice.

Fr. Mark held the rock in front of the novice, and dropped it.

Br. Adam’s Verse:

If we are dust, and returning to dust
where is all that’s written in the dust
when the spirit blows where it wills?

If judgments are rocks,

throwing them at others
or gashing ourselves with them,
we exhaust ourselves.

Case 40: Fr. Mark’s “What were your hearts doing now?”


Br. Adam’s introduction: When the mind hears the words “be still” you will know who God is: just say the words “Not two.” When thoughts about God’s attributes multiply in the mind, just say the words “Not one.” If you fail to say “not two,” what is written will be true of you. “For this people’s heart has grown dull,and their ears are hard of hearing,and they have shut their eyes” If you fail to say “not one” what is written will be true of you as well “So that they might not…turn, and I would heal them.”


Main Subject: One rainy day in September, Fr. Mark was with his novices, landscaping the grounds out by the date palm trees. Though it was late in the season, the trees still bore late-ripening date palms. He saw his novices picking up date palms and eating them. He said “In dualistic systems, God is not the source of the problem, selves are. And again, ears and eyes are not the problem, selves are.”

By the time work ended, since it was raining, his novices were soaked and sweating. One broke the silence to say to another “I hope brother Edward makes mashed potatoes for dinner.” Fr. Mark said “ Be watchful, now…Eyes, ears and heart provide a nourishment in this moment that deprives suffering of its power.”

“What,” they asked “is that, Father?”

Fr. Mark said “Remember the date palms: what were your eyes doing that made you pick them up? What were your hearts doing now that made you think about eating Edward’s mashed potatoes later?”

But the novices did not understand.

Br. Adam’s Verse:

Seeing, hearing, and understanding:
These are all the activities of a person.

They are man, fully alive.
Not so, the activities of selves, not so.
They are like trees planted beside a cesspool.
They are rooted in pollution, and are full of disease.
Rooted in Egoism, we must beware the disease.
A tree is not self-conscious, taking root
To the rain and soil it says ‘not two”
It grows without wanting the sun.

Christian Koans part IV

Case 41: Fr. Mark's "Different from the 'you' who rises.

Br. Adam’s Introduction: A man who has become Rabbouni’s teaching and example carries a bush, burning and unconsumed, within him. When the Logos is like a burning fire, shut up in his bones, right and wrong are intermingled. When every cell in his body is a snake, lifted on a pole in the wilderness, his hands will feel the cross as fullness for their emptiness, and he will see his teacher face to face.

Main Subject: A novice asked Fr. Mark “St. Paul said ‘I died daily.’ I know all students of Jesus will do the same. I know all activity of the mind will stop. I know, in light of that daily death, that ‘we will not all die, but we will all be changed.’ But if a student dies daily, how will resurrection be?”

Fr. Mark said “The Logos, born in us, is a vision of God. And God said ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.’ Since it was purely God’s doing, Jesus himself didn’t worry about resurrection. Neither should we. In ways we can’t currently grasp, the “you” who dies will be identical to, yet totally different from the “you” who rises. As to what that looks like, remember the scriptures: “For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.” [bxA]

Br Adam’s Verse:

Fully alive, the glory of God is a continuous death.
One who sees it looks with Christ’s eyes on the world.
To him for whom being is God, God is always present.
To him who speaks in Reality, God is always absent.
But who can differentiate the mind of Christ from their own?
When you remove the log from your own eye,
who, ever after, is the one who blinks?


















Case 42: Fr. Mark’s “Now that you say ‘We are students’”


Br Adam’s Introduction: No one need testify to the man of suffering. He offers his back on account of those who beat him, who hold him of no account. When he offers his cheek to those who pluck the beard, his majesty is non-majesty. When opens his ear to listen as one who is taught, his desire is non-desire. By his stripes, God’s servant justifies many. Many awaken by looking on him whom they have pierced. By his acceptance, he gives those who accept him the power to become children of God. Who is like God, in all the earth? See the following.


Main Subject: Fr. Mark said to his novices “Remember, Jesus said ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but the Father in Heaven.’ Again he said ‘Call no man on earth your Father, for you have one father in heaven.’ Additionally, you have heard Jesus ask that his followers not be called ‘Rabbi’: ‘for you have one teacher,’ he said ‘and you are all students.’

But I’d go further than that: An eye cannot see itself, and a student learns best who doesn’t realize he’s doing it. Remember Jesus said ‘I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ If you were learning, you would not have sin. But now that you say “we are students” your sin remains.”

One of the novices asked “What’s to be done, then?” Fr. Mark replied, “when is the last time you saw a snake?”


Br. Adam’s Verse:

Though the logos speaks in parables and riddles,
It’s not mind that understands the words
And it’s not ears that hear them.
Woe to the mouth through whom they come
He sends out his word and it heals them,
But they say he has Beelzebul.

Christian Koans Part III

Helpful Precedents for reading these Koans are in the following posts.  Steps in Solving Koans, On the Logos: Christian Koans Part I, Christian Koans Part II.  Good luck!


Case 38: Fr. Mark Extends his finger

Br. Adam’s Introduction: This is not a question of whether, like the virgins (whose lamps either contained oil or lacked it), we ourselves are wise or foolish. Christ comes, (and indeed, he is already here,) whether we are ready to accept him or not. What does readiness look like? See the following.

Main Subject:

Fr. Mark said “Without preparation and context, accepting Rabbouni—who is, himself, the experience of contemplation—this can be too shocking to be constructive. Remember Bartimaeus: He saw Jesus and was glad, but the way he shouted for Jesus tells us why: he’d already accepted he was the “Son of David.” On the other hand, in Bethsaida, when Jesus leads a blind man out of the city, puts saliva on his eyes and lays hands on him, the man only says “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” True vision requires Jesus to touch him a second time. [bxA]

Fr. Mark said “Preparation and context can’t force God’s hand, but they can make us ready to accept him when he arrives. This is mainly a process of ego reduction. When the scripture speaks of “uncircumcised ears”, it means that a person hearing with his ego can receive no gospel. Silence deconstructs the ego directly: it is the pierced side of Christ. But sometimes students need a stranger on the road to open the scripture to them, need to feel their hearts burning within them. They need to contend with that part of themselves that won’t believe unless they put their fingers in the wound in his side.”

The Novice said “Why, then, does the scripture not mention Thomas actually putting his fingers in Christ’s side? Christ allowed it, showed his open wound, so why didn’t Thomas touch it?”

Fr. Mark walked over to the novice, looking at him intently. He extended his finger, and touched the novice’s chest. The novice had a sudden realization.


Br. Adam’s Verse:

Acceptance, a radiant seal of the Gospel!
Time is past or present until we accept that it is now.
Even the motionless go hither and yon until
Accepting that “Here” is the only place
Desire, weaned from its objects, is true desire,
And thought, emptied of Self, leads to reality.
If, before retiring for the night,
you want to find the ladder to the heavens,
Clear the ground you sleep on:
The ladder is within you!










Case 39: Fr. Mark’s “What is the field?”


Br. Adam’s introduction: During the Passover, the Lord did not entrust himself to the crowds, because he knew what is in all people. The demon proclaimed him King, and the Lord silenced him. After witnessing his deeds of power, the Lord ordered his disciples to tell no one. When Pilate asked if Jesus was a king, Rabbouni said “You say I am a king.” How will it be for those who live in the Realm of Mystery, and have found total acceptance?


Main Subject:

Sitting among a group of young monks, Fr. Mark said, “Recall the story of the treasure in a field. A man finds a treasure in a field, re-buries it, then sells all he has to buy the field. My question is, what is the field?

A postulant in the back immediately raised his hand, his fingers wiggling. “Is it the monastic life?” he said.

Fr. Mark said “It is as you say it.”


Br. Adam’s Verse:

At an unexpected hour,
When the son of Man comes,
he will find monks praying the hours.
When all meet the Lord in the air,
He will find monks working diligently at their tasks.
At the end of all things,
where is the earth on which
he will he find faith?

Realm of Mystery, Hill of Calvary:

Ego, the “garment of flesh” in which we return to God, is not to be disparaged too loudly: but its pitfalls are glaring and unavoidable.  Regardless of liabilities, though: both in Catholicism, and in such hindu paths as jnana yoga—thought yoga—it’s possible to elevate the ego until it leads to God, the source of all things.

The post “On Removing Self from Knowing” basically said this: If you know truth with the ego, it will lead you astray. Unless they are grounded in fierce individual ownership of communal deficiencies, even our efforts to proclaim the communally gleaned “truths of the faith” will be treated as credentials or reasons to judge others.

From a certain perspective, both society at large and the Church as a whole have closed their eyes to this. "I think therefore I am,” a highly prized societal maxim, and “It’s right if you think it’s right” the battle cry our relativism—these grow from the same tree: the ego. They both sprout the same fruit: the false self. Even for those claiming to consciously live a spiritual path, interacting with the ego haphazardly commonly leads to mistaking the self for God. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s “Spiritual Materialism” talks about the harm of turning spiritual goals into playthings for the ego, Under the Influence has spoken of the pitfalls of building an identity based on spiritual consolations and wisdom. Figures as prominent as St. Paul have said that the devil masquerades as an angel of light: in such malevolent hands, sources as pure as God’s law serve to take life as opposed to giving it.

We’ve paid lip service to absolute truth, then built towers to the heavens on the shifting foundation of Ego. The story of the “tower of babel” serves as a warning of the result: such self-sabotage will leave us with wreckage and misunderstanding every time.

And yet there are aspects of the Christian experience, often, at most, merely alluded to, that we’d be well served to take more seriously. Images such as Christ’s descent into hell, Benedict’s ladder of Humility, and Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Steps of Humility and Pride” suggest, as last week’s “Parkway to Paradise, Highway to Hell” post did, that ascending and descending use the same stuff, and happen simultaneously. Those we call great saints often have a degree of awareness of their own sinfulness that would be terrifying if not for God’s mercy, entirely eschewing the popular equation of perfection with faultlessness. Relativism officially feels icky. And yet it’s absolutely true that many of our categories are “relativized.” Behold, a mystery, the depths of which it’s in our best interests to plumb! (Huzzah!)

The question Under the Influence is concerned with today is whether there’s a more reliable way to interact with reality. Not while we’re caught up in ourselves as the “interactor” there’s not, but I get ahead of myself. Taking some catechetical cues from other wisdom traditions, I’ve come to the following conclusion: that something called the “realm of mystery” is an aspect of the present moment. Not only is it a non-egotistical starting point, it’s an ongoing foil to the false certainties of the ego, which ultimately connects us more reliably to Reality, helps us slip the trap of Abstraction, thereby creating silence full of God, Christ, and the Gospel, out of which we can speak if God wills. [bxA]

Before we begin talking about the “Realm of Mystery,” it’s important to make some distinctions. Ongoingly, the God we can describe isn’t God himself: so beliefs, or Articles of Faith like the Trinity, can’t take the place of belief, or trustful self-surrender to the indescribable Godhead. If, for the Word made Flesh, a historical incarnation was neither the beginning nor the end, then we’re bound to speak of the definitive nature, not only of Christ’s historical incarnation, but more fully of his presence in his ultimately-undescribeable mystical body. The highest words about Jesus are not the Eternal Word. The Self we wear around is not the person we are. And the highest of heavens is not a dualistic place: it’s the seat of divinization, a beatitude in which we lose the perception of ourselves as self-conscious or separate from God.

A good architecture for this comes from Meister Ekhart. He spoke of a “threefold birth of the word.” The Word was with God in the beginning. As such the Logos is a silent fourth member of the Trinity, (more a conveyor of divine intelligence than a person outright, mind you) but the tune being played nonetheless while the Godhead dances in a circle. The Word took flesh in the Virgin Mary, and lived a life of self-emptying and service. But the Word, then, takes flesh in us. Under the Influence has said it in the past: Jesus’ entire agenda in appearing as a stranger was to part the Apostles with their historically-rooted paradigm, opening them to the possibility that the strangers they share the road with are the messiah himself. This teaching came to full flower when St. Paul said his true self was “hidden with Christ in God.” Vamping on Catherine of Sienna’s words, (she said “all the way to heaven is heaven”) we might say “all the way to becoming Christ is becoming Christ.”

A wise reader can start to see a skeleton of the “realm of mystery” emerging. The “realm of mystery" is rooted in our present-moment personhood, and that’s important to keep in the forefront. Playing off the German terms for “Ground” (Grund) and “Abyss” (Abgrund), Meister Ekhart spoke of our being as the “Groundless ground” on which God and I behold each other. In a startling degree of agreement with Under the Influence’s “Five Sense Organs of the Body of Christ,” Ekhart says I share an “eye” with God, through which I see him, and he sees me. In the light of that “eye,” and bringing our dualistic God concept as close as it gets to the monistic, there is ultimately no discernible difference between us.

Under the Influence has talked in the past about suspension, the state that cancels opposites: high and low, crucified (in us) with christ, are one in the same. Being better and being worse, when nailed to the cross, yield to simply "being. True and false give up the ghost. Who I am, who I am supposed to be, all I believe about God and Christ and Heaven—all these die together, to be raised however God wills. If suspension’s the Cross, the Realm of Mystery is the place of the skull.

The realm of Mystery can be summed up like this: If suspension unifies opposites, the realm of mystery reveals Christ in paradox. In other words, since Jesus lived, died and rose in paradox, it’s in the lows themselves that we find highs. Our inner selves connect with the outside world because they, like everything, everywhere, obey Christ’s teaching of “interbeing.”

In the Realm of Mystery, we also “will by not willing” and “do by not doing.” Here’s what’s important about that: when our relativist and hedonist voices pipe up with “I say what’s right for me” and “if it feels good, do it” we students of the Way hear, in the words, the ongoingly problematic voices of egotism. A relativist might say “I had to sin to know goodness.” A student of the way would say “I’ve been there. I’m trying, lately, to remember I didn’t have to sin, though I did, in fact, sin a ton, and along the way I learned to avoid sin and embrace goodness without freaking out.” In the realm of mystery, we hope, at most, to transmute our egotistical energy, to use passive volition and be present to reality rather than controlling it. We hope to be so closely united to God that no distinction is found between him and us, his will and ours.

It’s the Realm of Mystery to which the “Aha moment” of finally solving a Koan points. It’s the Realm of mystery that teaches us how realizations, along with conscious use of entheogens and fulfilling desires—all of these things give us breaks from our ego, that’s part of their pull. The work that turns realizations into humility, Samadhi into enlightenment, is to voluntarily lay down the false self of which this life’s various desires, being satisfied, temporarily deprived us.

In short, the solution to false selves isn’t “true selves,” it’s non-self. Our confidence is not in the rectitude of our beliefs about God, but in the “belief" that undergirds it, a much more silent thing. God and Self and Belief are reliable only when they have done what Rabbouni did: died in the place of mystery. Work gets done, words are said, things are desired, but the “I” who’s doing it has changed. Even, if I can state this without any avoidance of responsibility, sins are committed—but in light of God’s mercy they acquire impersonal notes similar to Karma— we part with them as we part with our egos, and not before.

We may die with our boots on, I don’t know. Lord knows which hill I’ll make my last stand on, but if I’ve done it right, my physical death will merely be the final take of the egoic death I’ve run through many times. I could do worse than a realm in which living paradox crucifies every distinction between better and best. I could do worse than forgetting the I who’s expiring till St. Paul’s words “we will not all die, but we will be changed” ring out true and clear. I could do worse than letting the words I speak yield to the Word that can’t be spoken, worse than letting the last trumpet die, till I’m totally comfortable with the nothing that comes, quiet, and after the period.

Parkway to Paradise, Highway to Hell: in Search of the Gateless Gate

Lately I’ve been hearing quite personally all those reminders that Nirvana and Samsara ("liberation into the goal” and “obsession with the obstacle” respectively)—well, they both exist in the same moment, use the same stuff, occupy the same space. Intellectually, it makes me think Christians need to expand their cosmologies of heaven and hell in similar directions, but I didn’t want to write an intellectually driven post today. Lately, see, I’ve been hearing Ram Dass’ warning with particular force, the one from his book Love Service Devotion about the way we “recreate our own heaven or hell wherever we go—whichever one we’re attached to, anyway.” I’ve been noticing I am so obsessed with the ego, that I can’t connect with egolessness. And lately it’s been getting to me.

In the past, I’ve had several opportunities to encounter what I consider to be “the door to egolessness.” What I mean by this is, I’ll be full of a bunch of mind-moments that seem Very Important, or Very Spiritual. I’ll be, on some level, conscious of the fact that I’m “praying." And in the midst of these mind-moments, “egolessness” will be represented. People say that, if you’re in prayer and you see a door, go through it. If you see a snake, jump into its mouth. Give it a hug. Turn and face it. I come to that wise advice with a history of having misinterpreted the mental phenomena of my spiritual life, though, and it makes it hard to hear. [bxA]

Thus far, every time I’ve been "given a door” in prayer—and this can be as literal as the time I mentally “saw a door” and knew it was “non-self”—I’ve backed away from it. On a dualistic level, where part of the game is evaluating the relative spiritual worth of those phenomena, those doors were either false spiritual phenomena, or the real thing. Failing to go through them is either a genuine missed opportunity, a mistake that will require many more lifetimes of ego-shedding to correct, or it’s spiritually prudent. I don’t know which, though, and I’m slowly learning not to care.

When I was in the monastery, using the different phenomena I experienced in prayer as credentials, I built a narrative that talked about my own spiritual proficiency. I looked down on other people. I paid lip service to needing a redeemer, but balked when he presented himself as a stranger in need. Upon realizing this, I tried to resolve it with a path other than the monastery, failing to see that the problem was the “me” doing the journeying, the degree to which I identified with that “me,” and the system of desires to which that "me" was over-attached.

I’ve been getting pre-occupied lately, and yet I am suspicious of the spiritually obvious. The devil can present himself, and has presented himself, as an angel of light. As the rule of St. Benedict references proverbs 16:25 saying “there are ways that men call right which in the end plunge him into the depths of hell.” I bought both of those T-shirts with great gusto. Were Christ’s second coming to happen, if I were faced with the final, rapturous messiah, I’d probably flee. I’d courteously give my apologies: “Look, man, it’s for your own good. I crucified you the first time around.” The question arises, and it’s valid: is all the work of Under the Influence re-creating
the hell I was in during my time in the monastery, just a hell wearing the saffron robes of a buddhist monk rather than the black and white ones of the Trappists?

If the door to non-self and humility and enlightenment is going to be obvious, I’ll most likely be playing a high stakes game of "Ding Dong Ditch” for the rest of this incarnation. I’ll ring the doorbell atop the stairway to heaven, then hide in the bushes, fearing being found, and costumed in my ego. If the door to humility were obvious, I’d make a great game of spiritual tomfoolery, make it a halloween night full of bag snatching and egging celestial mansions. I’d think myself above dressing up like a princess and begging sweets door to door. I’d be a spiritual curmudgeon, unwilling to wait for the great pumpkin to come like the rest of the losers.

Marshaling as much honest self-appraisal I can muster, I feel I can bank on three things.

For one thing, I need to look critically at chasing insight.  Often, I’ll hear a little voice in my head, one that loops statements like “I've answered a great many koans, with what, if I do say so myself, seems like success.” Even when my seeming “enlightened responses” garner something more than self congratulation, as they sometimes have, they’re perilous. You see, those “Aha” moments (where distance and potential and time all collapse into "here and now" and “doing what I’m doing”) well, those moments are nothing special. And if I treat it as remarkable, I’m going to get caught up in ego and desire again, albeit ego and desire dressed in Guru’s Garments.

For another thing, I need to look critically at interpreting my spiritual practices. To set this up: I “om” on my way back from work. I have an “om” audio track, and I join in, and I work with feelings and sounds. I like spending my commute this way, because the physical isolation of a moving car forces a confrontation with interior motion, helps me to “just drive." Not being able to go anywhere eventually leads me to be right where I am. Also, in a car, I can’t chase after altered states of consciousness. If my Sahasrara Chakra (the “Big" and "Important one," on the top of the head) opens on 355 North, if I go into nirvakalp samadhi, taking leave of my senses and allowing myself to be mentally elsewhere, I’ll cause a 7 car pileup. Death in a twisted ball of flaming metal is reason aplenty to keep my feet nailed to the floor.

Anyway, I om, and if I get caught up in “why I om” or “what om-ing means” I start abstracting, thinking about life instead of living it, building up the “false self” that om-ing was meant to shoot through with the vibration of healing. But letting the sound do the work while I rest in its vibrations implies a fierce relaxation of “myself as the doer." Allowing “om” to be the vehicle of a change wrought by God implies resting at what Under the Influence calls the “First theonoia” of pure perception: it means feeling the sensation and letting it go.

On the Level of Dualism, I still very much need a redeemer. I still need someone to be devoted to. I look at the consistency with which my own spiritual practices have led me to eating Ego and attachment for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and my need for a redeemer who comes to the banquet at midnight and takes things in another direction is obvious. In the meanwhile, the scriptures are fulfilled. I project my egoic woundedness onto other people and God, I blame other people for my problems, and the words of Zechariah 12:10 ring in the ears of my ears "You will look on the one whom you have pierced.” This is profoundly true. I’d like to say I’m hoping that a day will come when the scripture from Isaiah 10:20 is fulfilled that says "You will no longer lean on the one who struck you.” I’d like a day to come when I’m done with ego. But in any given moment, I’m apt to have my eyes closed to the ways I’m confusing hope (which is delight in what God provides) with expectation (egotistically setting up a paradigm in my head which will net disappointment if it doesn’t happen.) If I’m doing that, then "not giving me what I hope for" is just of God, and somewhat begrudgingly much-appreciated.

On a level of monism, I know I have work to do internalizing the messiah. The Apostles had to do it with Jesus after his death, and he trained them in that way. First he died, then he rose, appearing to them first in a form they recognized, then in the form of strangers-revealed-as-Christ. Eventually the apostles were doing less internal gymnastics to reach the conclusion that the person in front of them was Christ. By the time Christianity gets to the apostle Paul, our True Selves are “hidden with Christ in God” and by the time it gets to Therese of Lisieux, we’re told “Christ has no body now but yours.” These are text-book patterns, common in Bhakti, or Devotional Yoga, and precisely identical to, say, the movements of “Guru Kripa” or the internalization of the guru in Hinduism. With my own rabbi, I have that work to do. I may eventually realize that everyone, including myself, is the messiah.
But all that is analysis. And if the spiritual game is like monopoly, analysis is a chance card that either gives you a sudden windfall or sends you to jail, directly to jail, without passing go, without collecting two hundred dollars.

It seems, finally, that there is another way, and it seems to be the way that, for me, gets the job done. If I find myself anxious about anything—God and spirituality included, because neurosis will use anything it can to snag a fella-- I concentrate on listening actively. Eventually I calm down. If I’m caught up in “Trying to listen,” I om.  Concentrating on the feelings associated with producing the sound backs my attention off from what Under the Influence called "active volition," puts me in a space of "Passive volition," or presence to reality. Eventually, I calm down. And if I find myself obsessing about om-ing, I have a beer, do the dishes and watch junk television with my Jackie: the kind my fiancee can admit she likes, the kind I can only admit I like to make fun of.  The point is, only clear-minded acceptance of reality, not thinking about God, is the ultimate expression of union with God.

This “Other Way” is to simply practice without getting freaked about it. It’s to balance the importance of the present moment with the infinite mercy of God, and the real possibility that I’ve been doing this for thousands of lifetimes, and will do it for thousands of lifetimes, until the Christ who is simultaneously my true self and "time itself" decides he can take off every last bit of “Me” costume, give away all his candy, turn on spooky music and dance around his lit jack-o-lantern in the dark.

Because the answer to the question above, “am i recreating my own hell” is “Yes." Verily: one hundred percent indubitably, and stuff. Am I getting closer to enlightenment? Well, not while there’s a “me” writing a blog about it, I’m not—and at other times, it’s a solid maybe.

But also, who cares? I do, I suppose, and I will, until the rock-hard “I” who thinks it’s doing the caring gets ground into the sands of time, only to find compassion and God and and enlightenment singing “all we are is dust in the wind." And the words will ring out, the trumpet will sound: certainly the dead will be raised imperishable. Even if the debate about resurrection versus reincarnation endures for many lifetimes, if a trumpet blows, but I have ceased to identify with the ear that hears it, does it make a sound? In the face of the question, we might give up, call both sides right. And in that "then" (which is also "now") I will see no door, just a there that's here, and wide as openness.

The Gospel as Tao: Acceptance as Pu, and Apostles of Now

Under the Influence has long taught that “logos” is the equivalent of the chinese character “mu.” In other words, Logos is paradox, purposefully maintained so as to break our addiction to logic and awaken intuition.

This asks an important question, though. If Logos is paradox—the unresolved tension between speaking and silence—then what is the gospel, and how do we proclaim it?

The post “New Thoughts on Evangelization” has reminded us of the Church’s ground rules: The gospel is lived first, then preached verbally only when someone asks. Some religious communities go even further than that: the little brothers and little sisters of St. Charles de Foucault purposefully take menial jobs, and may not even tell you about Jesus when you ask.

The point, as the post said, is that "life itself preaches.” This has been a belief in the background of Under the Influence for as long as it’s existed. So I’m sort of surprised that the following statements have taken this long to formulate. The day they occurred to me, I wrote them in BIG LETTERS across my mind: THE GOSPEL IS PU. WHEN IT’S PROCLAIMED, IT’S THE TAO. [bxA]

The Tao Te Ching was written by Lao Tzu, who might have been a composite of three people, the most notable of whom might have been a 4th Century record keeper in the Chinese province of Chou. As is supported by the Tao’s focus on good governance, Chou might have been disintegrating politically. The story goes that Lao Tzu wrote the Tao in lieu of paying a tax to cross a bridge at the province’s border.

The combination of Taoist and Buddhist philosophies is what gave the world Zen Buddhism. Zen has a focus on “trying not to try,” which comes directly from the Taoist concept “wei wu wei” or “doing not doing.” The emphasis in wei wu wei is egolessness, not sedentary living. In describing wei wu wei, Taoist scholars often use the analogy of the athelete who’s so proficient that his ego drops away in mid-high jump. Under the Influence, in “Biff, Kapow, Thwap: A Study in Contemplative Attention” spoke of “passive volition.” This “being present to reality without ego" is an absolute correlation to wei wu wei.

Proclamation of the gospel is the Tao. My old mentor Chrysogonus fascinated me by telling me that, when the Gospel was translated into Chinese, “the Way”—the name for early Christianity—was translated as “Tao” and Christians were called “followers of the Tao.” It blew my little twelve year old mind.

What the Gospel proclaims is Pu, is reality, is the body of Christ. When a Christian says “Here I am” he is in harmony with how things are. His perfect acceptance would be acceptance of that thing Taoism calls “Pu.” Pu is the uncarved block. It is “things as they are.” Loss of life, loss of all feelings of communion with the Father, the feeling of his nails in his hands—all these things were ok, ultimately, because they were reality. Incarnations are dualist, so for a minute let’s be dualist and remember that reality is one of the Five Sense Organs of the Body of Christ mentioned in the Under the Influence post a couple weeks ago. It’s one of the ways God perceives us, and we, him. All that a Christian is saying is Pu, it's “how things are,” and how things are” is all a Christian is saying.

A few weeks ago, Under the Influence claimed that the first of four humble truths of Christianity is “All life is abstraction.” Even further back, Under the Influence improvised around Zen categories and outlined what happens in cognition during Contemplation and Obedience: in short, a still mind was said to be remaining at the “first theonoia” or "God thought.” A mind imposing separate labels like “Self” and “God" was at the second, and a mind weaving theories and philosophies was at the third. Under the Influence’s claim was that “Remaining in Jesus” was a matter of stilling the mind till it rests in the first theonoia. Under the Influence further said that the abstraction of the second theonoia was what made God give us “garments of flesh”—first egos, then physical incarnations. The posts took pains to remember that, with all their potential for harm, egos and bodies were a mercy: tools to return to resting in God.

The Gospel, proclaimed, is the Tao. Taking catechetical cues from Buddhism, Under the Influence suggested that “Acceptance” was the 3rd Gospel Seal—the third thing that all Christian teaching must agree with to be Christian. In the background of that post were the voices of realized beings like Maharaja-ji who turned to Ram Dass one day, remarking on the evil in the world, and said “can’t you see it’s all perfect?” Jesus was the ultimate tantric teacher. He could take the energy even of suffering and transmute it into energy of life.

Of course, we should get nitty gritty here for a minute and tackle some ways that seems not to be true. Jesus healed the sick. Wasn’t that changing “the way things are?” Jesus accepted death at the hands of his oppressors. Shouldn’t oppressed people accept their oppression and death as “the way things are?”

Hang on, because blindness is part of a larger game, and (to counter Chicago’s Chance the Rapper) Jesus’ Black Life did, in fact, matter. Jesus healed the “Man Born Blind” because it was part of that man’s purgatorial predicament to be one of those healed by Jesus, to show forth God’s power. (To digress, Ram Dass and others theorize this is one of the places in the new testament that the early Judeo Christian belief in reincarnation is in the background. When Jesus’ disciples ask “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should have been born blind?” they’re presupposing a previous life in which the man’s purgatorial predicament could have set up “blindness as part of the next round’s purgative dance.”)

When oppressors tell the oppressed they should accept their mistreatment, it’s the second theonoia wielding its warped ego action. Jesus’ death and resurrection was completely and totally possible because he remained egoless. To be nailed on the cross was to remain at the first theonioia: he experienced his suffering willingly as suffering and it became part of his transformation. He experienced thirst as thirst and it became part of his transformation. For oppressed communities, the gospel move is to do what Shaolin Monks do in Kung Fu, what Gandhi-ji did in India: to sidestep the oppressor’s energy, continuing it on its way, and to accept and televise the oppressors denied violence until sheer dint of truth forces him to face it.

For a long time now, regardless of anything linguists would tell you, when Under the Influence said “Logos” it meant “paradox, mu.” Now, when Under the Influence says “Gospel” it means “Pu.” When Under the Influence says “Evangelization” it means “Tao.” I don’t mean to theologically equivocate here, merely to recognize in the words “Logos,” “Gospel,” and “Evangelization” the same functions as Mu (with its paradox), Pu (with its immanent perfection) and Tao (with its "speaking to what is”).

When a Christian says “Here I am” he’s proclaiming that “Here everything else is” he’s recognizing things as they are. It’s the prayer of the man who goes before God, simply as himself, whose only words are those of total acceptance. Most of us think we have to get our ducks in a row before going to God. The student of the Way has the simplest words on his lips. They’re the inner meaning of any prayer spoken from an egoless space: to wit, "This is what I’ve got.” Whatever comes out of our mouths, may it forever be saying just that.

Family, Faith and Foundations: Part 2 of 2

IV.

Gramps was buried in Westford, and Granny died in Atlanta. So transporting her ashes would be challenging. Human remains were hell to send through the mail.

Since I’d driven down from North Carolina, I was the only person in Atlanta who absolutely had to drive to the funeral. Everyone else had the option to fly. So it was ultimately decided that I would road trip the ashes back home to Vermont. The family even paid for new tires for my car, taking the money out of Granny’s estate.

My family called it the “Highway to Heaven” tour. They were playing on the 1980 TV show by the same name, in which Micheal Landon played an angel. Privately there were jokes about me befriending overweight truckers along the way, and snapping photos with both them and my Grandmother’s urn of cremains. Publicly, as always, we Warners were less cheeky.

I left the next day. I don’t remember a single moment of the trip, until I crossed the Vermont state border. Then I remember almost every second of it. I remember the feel of the wind as I drove. I remember the look of the trees, which seemed poised, despite the warmth, to begin changing color and dropping their leaves. [bxA]

In the town next to Westford, there’s a funeral home run by the Minors, an old Westford family. Stephen Minor, the owner, met me when I arrived. The Minors and the Warners were never terribly close, but I remember a story about the older siblings of the two families: they used to play tetherball together. Steve Minor had a dog named Penny, and she, too, did her part in the tetherball games. She would jump up and bite the tetherball as it passed, then hang on and sail around in a circle. This provided no end of enjoyment for those involved.

Steve Minor had a kind face, and a warm smile. Just knowing this small story made me feel as if I was arranging a reunion of Westford’s old guard. “Is this Irene?” he asked, as I handed him the box containing her urn. I nodded, and he took it gently, saying “We’ll take good care of her.” And I believed him.

I got back in the car. I had other stops to make.

I remember what it felt like to drive past the covered bridge. This town was home, although I’d never lived here. I drove to the corner on which the General Store stood.

The General Store was run by Kevin and Suzie Kerns. Back when Suzie Kerns was Suzie Poulliot, she used to babysit my father and his siblings, literally going along on family vacations to help with the care of all 10 Warner kids.

I didn’t know this at the time, and Kevin and Suzie have the reserve typical of New Englanders. So we didn’t exchange many words. I bought a swisher sweet cigar and a Diet Coke. After my Aunt Kim arrived, she made sure to stop in and see the Kerns. From her I’d eventually learn that, as I was walking up to the store, Kevin turned to Suzie and said, “Well, I know he’s a Warner. I just don’t know who he belongs to.”

That was the first time in my adult life that I’d been recognized, by a stranger, as a member of my father’s family. To come back to the seat of the entire family narrative, and be recognized, on sight, as a part of it, affected me profoundly.

That was, of course, after reflection. For the moment I was standing there in the Westford General Store with relative strangers. I paid for the swisher and the soda, and set my sights to where my grandfather was buried 13 years before. I didn’t go to the funeral, and had never seen his gravestone. As his wife was about to be buried by his side, I thought, it was high time to do so.

Graveside, I did three things. For Granny, I prayed a rosary. The family had given me the beads she died holding, and those were the beads I used that day. For Gramps, I lit up the swisher, blowing the smoke on his grave because I figured he missed the smell. For me, as I’d been driving most of the day, I downed the diet coke in record time, grateful to feel a bit more awake. One of the old women of Westford stopped by to express condolences as I was standing there, making clear the town’s awareness of the passing of one of their own.

The days leading up to the funeral were full of reunions. My Pop and his siblings began to trickle in, and stories long relegated to memory came out of their mouths, easy as exhalation. The townswomen put on a covered dish supper and everyone came. I met the Larsons of my generation who were still in town, and noticed that one of my grandfather’s paintings still hung on the walls of the Red Brick Church, long ago converted to a meeting hall.

My last act as transporter of Granny’s ashes was to bear the urn down the main aisle at the start of her funeral. To this day I am proud to have seen that task through to its end.

Funerals are heavy anyway, but I felt again the need to lighten up as the funeral progressed. Earlier on I’d returned to Kevin and Suzie’s, and bought a new pack of Swishers. I had them in my pocket at the funeral. As Granny’s ashes were being interred, I passed the pack around on the sly to uncles and aunts, all of whom recognized Gramp’s brand and drew out a stogie with a smile.

I fished through my pocket for my lighter, and had it in my hand as I made the final Sign of the Cross. Before long, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins were all incensing the graves with a scent that forever held Gramp’s memory.

What I didn’t know is, as I was road-tripping with Granny’s ashes, my Aunt Kim was getting in touch with the family who lived in the old Warner homestead. They were generous enough to invite every one of us, with apologies for the mess, to come by after the internment.

So, with the stubs of Swisher Sweets in many of our mouths still, we travelled to the house. They’d cut down the Crab Apple tree that whomever was sleeping in the second floor bedroom could use to sneak out of the house. And they’d filled in the swimming pool into which my uncles and aunts used to jump from the first floor roof that extended over the deck. So the house had lost some of its capacity to incite mischief. But even as I walked through the kitchen, I knew that all of the pipes had been laid by my grandfather. In the corner of the living room, at one point, the family had kept a television. Its life was cut short the day my Pop came into the room screaming “CAPTAIN KANGAROO” as the program was starting. He felt, for some reason, compelled to deliver a high karate kick to the air, after which gesture his shoe came off, flying into the television and breaking it. Suffice to say, the family’s past was everywhere.

After the funeral, the family dispersed. I drove back to South Bend long enough to do laundry, en route back to Mepkin for a longer stay. After my encounter with Westford, South Bend, and indeed every town I drove into, was different. After that trip I knew where I’d come from. I’d helped my Granny come to rest. And, more than I had before the journey, I knew who I was. I was a Warner. I’d been the courier. And I would become, in my own way, a custodian of the fragment of family story that I’d learned over those days.



V.

I returned to the Monastery with grieving to do. At this point I was what they called an observer: someone who has declared an interest in joining the community. As such, I’d been assigned a director, a priest named Fr. Feliciano. Monasteries are tremendous at helping people to mourn, for those willing to see that there’s grieving to. The routine, and its monotony, simultaneously supports the one living it and leaves no distraction between a man and his emotions. The monks used to say “In a monastery, if you’re struggling, you can get through it by simply living the routine.” I found this to be true, but I also found living it richer and harder to bear than I’d anticipated.

It’s said that two of Jesus’ disciples, after his death, initially fled Jerusalem in despair. They came upon, and began travelling with, a stranger, to whom they revealed their disappointment that Jesus had not risen as he said he would. As they walked toward the town of Emmaus, their conversation wandered onto interpretation of the Torah, and the stranger’s comments were insightful enough to impress the disciples. Later, as the three dined, the stranger blessed the bread and broke it. The gesture so poignantly brought back the memory of their deceased Rabbi that the disciples literally felt the stranger to be Jesus himself. So they began to proclaim him risen all over Galilee.

I’ve said before that Granny and Gramps were the key to my faith being more than pie-in-the-sky stories. In fact, I think the story of Emmaus is literally true, and I think that because something similar happened to me.

In the monastery, grief took up temporary but real residence in the center of my chest. I was constantly tense, for reasons it took years to attribute to grieving, but reasons which were a mystery at the time.

I talked about this with a few monks. For one, I spoke about it with Br, Vincent, one of Mepkin’s blessed eccentrics who would become, by and by, one of my closest friends there. I told him the story of Granny’s Westford funeral, of incensing the graves with the smoke of Swisher Sweet Cigars.

“Oh hey,” Vince said “I should have guessed that a man as classy as your grandfather would smoke cigars. Come with me.”

I followed Vince. He guided me to his room, a cluttered thing with every inch of wall space covered in posters, some of which were homemade. He fished around in his desk drawer and produced a swisher sweet cigar. He said “Next Sunday, I want you to take a stroll around the farm. Smoke this cigar, and remember your Grandparents.”

I was stymied. “Vin,” I said, “How is it that you even have this?” Shouldn’t these be impossible to get in here?”

Vincent grinned “I suppose they should be hard to get, but they’re not. Often the monks have friends who bring them gifts when they come to visit. If you went through the rooms of some of us old guys you’d find many of them have whole drawers full of cookies. Some of the monks keep back a little bit of ‘unaccounted-for’ money, so as to go out for cheeseburgers when they’re out at the dentist without turning in a receipt for it and tipping off the powers that be. It can have its pitfalls…Mepkin’s black market could be a way for, say, an alcoholic monk to get his hands on a bottle. That’s happened in a couple of cases at some of the other Trappist houses. But usually its more innocent than that. So everyone knows it goes on, and everyone looks the other way.”

Mepkin Abbey, then, that vanguard of holiness, had a black market. This knowledge was delicious to me, but it aggravated my bad case of the scruples as well. Being in possession of contraband was something that my neophyte conscience couldn’t bear to keep from my director, so when I next met with Fr. Feliciano, I told him I had it. I was lucky on two counts. For one thing, he didn’t ask me to reveal my source. Additionally, he didn’t ask me to surrender it. The whole thing seemed entirely unsurprising to him.

“You should smoke it slowly.” Fr. Feliciano said. “Be deliberate, and make it a prayer.”

So it happened that I partook of a contraband swisher. On this walk I admitted to myself that throughout the funeral, I’d held myself together, at least in part, by force. I’d gotten through Granny’s death on a mix of caffeine and adrenaline. Given the energy denial takes, merely admitting this relaxed me. This presaged my realizing that the cycle of overwork and burnout could eclipsed generosity for me, but it would be years before that concretized.

Out of the blue, on that walk, I found myself talking: to no one, at first. And the words were all about exhaustion. Then I heard myself address him:


“Gramps,” I said, “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know how to balance all the things I need to balance. I don’t know how to be generous. And I don’t know who I am, or how to live my life well. Please help me. Please help.”

The words rolled out calmly, when they came. And it may be that Gramps really wasn’t there. He didn’t appear to me. But neither had the words been there, the ones I really needed to say, until I said them to him. That prayer, I decided, was proof of his intercession.

I need to diverge a bit and describe something about Granny, because it’s important to understanding the conclusion of this story. Granny had a particular smile, and something she’d say when she was trying to express astonishment. The smile had notes of feigned haughtiness in it: she’d move her head back over her shoulders and stick out her chest a bit. And she always said the same words: “How ‘bout that?”

I say this because later, I narrated the whole stogie walk for Fr. Feliciano. I ended saying “So, in the end, I feel a lot better, thanks a lot.”

“Ah,” he said, “God works in mysterious ways. How ‘bout that?”

Something happened at this point, something difficult to explain. When Feliciano said “how ‘bout that?” he squared his head over his shoulders and stuck out his chest a bit. And when he spoke the words, I was suddenly aware that I was not looking at Feliciano anymore. I was looking at Granny. I suppose I didn’t see her the way my Uncle David saw Gramps. But I was as certain of her presence as I was of my own. If it is possible to see with something other than my eyes, in that moment I most certainly saw Granny. At that point, the immediate grief of Granny’s death was easier to bear.

At one point in the Gospels, Jesus reveals to an adulterous woman that he knows about her 5 husbands, that nothing she’s done shocks him and that he won’t reject her for her choices.

The woman goes to a neighboring town and relates the incident to the people. They invite Jesus to remain with them for a few days, and by the end of their time with him, they say, “We no longer believe because we were told. We have seen and believe that you are the Messiah.”

I no longer believe because I was told. I believe because I have seen. I believe because an old, stogie chomping construction worker started making house calls when his kids needed it. I believe because, even as I am writing this, he is helping me find the words. I believe because his wife was a gentle, story-rich presence and still is.

Gramps created a family symbol, one he made into medals. When he married Granny he gave her a medal, and when she died the medals were given to the grandkids. I never took mine off. The medal’s hole was only large enough for a thin chain, though, and those broke, so I lost my family medal. This was towards the end of my monastic life, during the period when my relationship with the monastery was shifting. I briefly discussed it with the abbot. Perhaps he saw my departure from the monastery as the writing on the wall, because I made a suggestion, and for whatever reason, he gave his blessing.

In any case, some months later I went into town for a doctor’s appointment, and stopped by a tattoo parlor to have the family symbol tattooed on my right forearm.

In the Jewish confession of faith, it says “take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. Bind them as a frontlet on your forehead, as a symbol on your arm.”

And again, saint John Chrysostom said something like “Those whom we have loved and lost are no longer where they were. They are now where we need them to be.” When Granny sent that poem she found in my grandfather’s wallet, the one written by my father, her accompanying note asked me to “Remember those who went before [me], and what they gave of themselves.” All of the words, all of the stories, and the evolving sense of who I am, they’re now a part of my embrace. Like those in the stories, by now the words are where I need them to be. Here, now. And by and by, God willing, fully told.