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PRACTICAL LESSONS IN CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM (The introductory lessons) INTRODUCTION TO THE LESSONS As
a young man, I had spontaneously become aware of the inner light, sound
and flowing of the Holy Spirit. We are all born with natural
inclinations of one sort or another and a natural inclination to
experience the Holy Spirit has always been mine. My godfather is a
catholic priest and was aware that my inner experiences and perspective
on life was, shall I say, a little different than most. When he asked me
to be his spiritual director, I wrote him a letter describing a few of
my experiences with the prayer of the heart, higher states of
consciousness and comfort and guidance of the Holy Spirit. I wanted him
to know in advance what he could expect from the Holy Spirit should he
choose the path that Christian mystics like St. Teresa of Avilla and St.
John of the Cross had walked. Another
parish priest visiting from out of state was given the letter and asked
if I would expand on it so that he could use what I wrote as a study
guide for a course in Christian mysticism and the prayer of the heart
that he was about to teach. Well, how does one write a series of lessons
on their inner visions of the Holy Spirit, of the higher states of
consciousness beyond the thinking mind and of the deep things of God
that the Holy Spirit reveals? I am not a writer and don’t even enjoy
listening to myself carry on, so I found that I could only express my
understanding of the nature of existence in a very natural way: Only by
telling the story of what I had experienced and what I believed to be
true. Just by telling it all: The absolute good, (oh so many wonderful
experiences) the bad, (The spiritual cleansing process is not always
wonderful) and only once, (It’s not too smart to do battle with the Holy
Spirit) the ugly truth of my inner experiences. These lessons contain
all of this and are the result of those two parish priest’s requests but
they are not written with the formality of a text book or treatise.
It’s just me speaking from my heart about some very personal
experiences; actually my whole adult life worth of very personal
experiences. Anyway, I wish to thank both priests for giving me the opportunity to serve. Lmr THE SPIRITUAL PROCESS Jesus said this about what the nature of the spiritual process would be after he had left this world: But
the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said
to you. John 14:26 (New International Version) The
apostle Paul said this: But as it is written, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which
God hath prepared for them that love him.’ But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1 Cor. 2:6-10) The
Holy Spirit does not require that we believe in just the right way for
it to reveal its truths or that any of us understand the end before it
takes us to the end. As Christians, all that is necessary is that we
open our hearts each day so that the Holy Spirit can take us to the deep
things of God culminating in the direct experience of the soul’s true nature in God, what the bible calls born again and the earliest Christians called to state of perfection. FINDING THE HOLY SPIRIT WITHIN, a personal experience When
I was five, my aunt and uncle had asked their friend, a locally famous
psychic in Las Vegas about their sister and her family. They were told
that two of her sister’s children were going to grow up to be normal
people but the middle one, me, was different and would have a different
view and experience of life. That’s fine; that pretty well nails who I
am but what’s odd to me is that when they told my parents about the
prediction they also said they could not tell them the whole of the
prediction and they couldn’t tell them why they couldn’t tell them the
whole of the prediction. Since
it was about me, I have wondered, what could be, in the future for a
five year old child, so dramatic that you can’t tell the parents the
whole of the prediction. Different is the only word my mother had. Over
the years of my childhood, my mother said that she had asked my aunt and
uncle about the prediction several times but was always given the same
answer: We can’t tell you the whole of it and we can’t tell you why we
can’t tell you the whole of it. I
don’t really think it was that I was going to be a terrible person
because it was quite evident that I was well liked by my aunt and uncle,
even spending a couple of my whole summer vacations from school with
them. And I do take bugs out of the house instead of killing them.
Except roaches. I hate roaches. But anything grand, I can’t even relate.
I don’t guess I will ever know the truth of it. Both my aunt and uncle
had passed away before my mother even told me about the prediction. My
father had recently passed and I was trying to give my mother some bit
of comfort by telling her of an experience with my consciousness outside
of my body: That I felt as a matter of fact that consciousness extends
beyond the physical and that by personal experience I believed we were
not just lumps of clay: That the soul had a body and lived after the
body was gone. This led into a brief discussion of my experiences with
the Holy Spirit, intuitive consciousness and visions of the nature of
existence. Not that my mother (an atheist like my father) understood or
believed anything that I had to say but only then did she tell me about
the prediction. Parents
are wonderful like that. Here’s a prediction about me so dramatic that
the whole of it can’t be told to my parents and I’m not told about it
until it is impossible for me to find out what it was for myself. Talk
about adding a little mystery into one’s life. I know that I was born
with a natural inclination to experience the Holy Spirit but as for the
rest of the prediction, I will probably never know. When
a young man, one afternoon, I felt drawn to look within; I don’t know
why. Without really knowing what I was doing, I simply closed my eyes
and was drawn to look behind the darkness of my mind. It just felt like
something was in there waiting for me. Go figure. With each exhalation I
imagined that I was falling deeper and deeper into the ocean of
darkness before me. Suddenly I seemed to fall inside myself and as this
happened, a stillness, a quietness of mind began to creep over me. My
face began to feel wooden; my body lost all physical sensation and
became numb; My consciousness became lifted, with my mind becoming still
and crisp and light and so much more aware than normal and as this
happened the beautiful golden light of the Holy Spirit wrapped itself
around me, filled my awareness and brought a comfort and peace I had
never known in life. It seemed to fill just absolutely everything,
permeating the very essence of my being, lifting me above my normal
intelligence and awareness. It
is difficult to explain. But if you can imagine the difference between
normal thinking awareness and the fog that a person might wake up in
when they have not had enough sleep, it would seem the same distance
between this still, crisp, light expanded awareness I was experiencing
and what now seemed the heavy normal thinking awareness I had always
known. The cognitive ability of this new expanded awareness coupled with
the peace and joy brought by the light of the Holy Spirit was simply
incredible to me. I
rested for a short while, absorbed in the golden light of the Holy
Spirit but as soon as I started to mentally analyze the Holy Spirit, you
know, trying to be absolutely rational about the whole thing, I dropped
out of the intuitive awareness and the Holy Spirit mysteriously faded
away. As I left the intuitive awareness and dropped back into my normal
thinking awareness, it felt just like the description I had read of the
process a few years later: “As if putting on soiled clothes.” I
had just had the most wonderful experience of my life: AND I WANTED IT
BACK! The next day, trying to experience the same golden light of the
Holy Spirit and intuitive awareness that I rested in the day before, I
again looked behind the darkness of my mind for the Holy Spirit. With
each exhalation I again imagined that I was falling through the darkness
of my mind into it. For the second time my body went numb, my mind
became still, I became lifted into the light, crisp mental state that I
later learned was the intuitive awareness that the prophets and early
Christians experienced when having prophecies and visions. And the
golden light of the Holy Spirit wrapped itself around me again and
filled my mind with the same peace and joy I had felt the day before.
Before this, I had never read a single book on meditation, knew nothing
of Christian mysticism, mysticism in general or that states of
consciousness existed beyond the mind’s thinking processes. So
this is how my journey to find the deep things of God began;
spontaneously being lifted into the intuitive mind, wrapped in the Holy
Spirit’s arms, not understanding anything but the wonder of it all. There
is a wonderful thing about the Holy Spirit and its bringing of the
intuitive awareness that takes us to the deep things of God. This part
of the mind is further away from the subconscious than normal thinking
awareness is from it. This is why, when experiencing intuitive
awareness, everything feels so light and crisp and clear. When you
considered that intuitive awareness is the platform upon which the Holy
Spirit takes us to the deep things of God, this light, crisp, more fully
aware state is really a blessing. As I said earlier, fully developed,
intuitive awareness is the platform for the Holy Spirit revealing the
visions and prophecies and such of the prophets and early Christians.
When praying from our hearts, the Holy Spirit lifts our consciousness
further away from outside and subconscious influences. It’s the only way
to directly and consciously experience God’s presence. We cannot
experience God’s presence through the thinking processes of the mind. We
have to become like and empty vessel to become filled with the Holy
Spirit and allow it to fill us with experiences of the deep things of
God. In
those early days with the Holy Spirit, I soon learned that when my mind
was actively thinking about God, actively thinking about experiences,
actively thinking about scripture, actively thinking about thinking or
anything else, the intuitive awareness that opens one to the Holy Spirit
would and could not happen. I soon learned that it was only when I
would became like an empty vessel and I would stop thinking and just sit
silently looking behind the darkness of my mind and longing for and
imagining that I was falling into the Holy Spirit’s arms that an
intuitive calmness would envelop me which would allow me to experience
the Holy Spirit. It is the only way that I know of to get far enough
away from the subconscious and outside influences (that will not allow
and do not want us the experience the Holy Spirit) for us to experience
the Holy Spirit’s presence. The thinking mind just hates being calm,
loves going from one obsession to the next and subconscious and outside
influences; well, I am not even going to go there. What
I found that worked best for me in quieting my mind and focusing my
attention on God is the prayer form used within Christianity from the
beginning. For me, when my mind would not still, using the simple
devotional word, “Father” was as if all of my longing for God was summed
up in that very simple word. I noticed how much more quickly I dropped
into the intuitive calm when using this method than others. At the
beginning of each devotional I would slowly and heartfeltly repeat
“Father” while I looked behind the darkness of my mind, with each
exhalation imagining that I was falling into the Holy Spirit’s arms. In
short time I would drop into an intuitive calmness. When my mind started
to become active I would return to repeating “Father” with each
exhalation, again imagining that I was falling deeper into the Holy
Spirit’s arms. It’s not the word; it’s the devotional feeling behind the
word. Often there is no word but just that feeling of devotion that I
would bring up again and again into my awareness. The reason the process
is called the prayer of the heart is because we are literally praying
through our hearts and not from the thinking processes of our minds. For
me this method has been the most natural thing to do and so I have
stayed with it to this day, now 40 yrs later. THE WINGS OF ANGELS A
short while after becoming open to the Holy Spirit, I began to hear the
creative power of it within. There is a vibration within the light of
the Holy Spirit. I did not know it was going to be there. I just began
to hear inner sounds and they eventually led to the pure vibration of
the Holy Spirit. In Revelations the sound of the Holy Spirit is
described as the sound of many trumpets, in Ezekiel the vibration of the
Spirit is described as the sound of the wings of angels. Both accounts
are descriptions of what the Spirit sounds like when we are totally
absorbed in it. After
a few yrs of steady practice, I began to feel the Holy Spirit flowing
throughout my nervous system, first with sensations of electrical type
feelings and eventually the heat, the fire of the Holy Spirit that is
created from the flowing of the Holy Spirit up from the bottom of the
spine. I
guess the main and first thing I want to stress in the lessons is that
Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit to us is not an abstract concept. The
Holy Spirit can be seen, heard and the flowing and heat of it can be
felt within all of good heart, no matter their religious affiliation or
none. THE PRAYER OF THE HEART ( a History) Jesus said: “Whenever you pray, go to your room, close the door and pray to your Father in private.” (Matt. 6:6) One of the Desert Fathers, the 3rd century monk Abba Isaac, wrote this commentary on the tradition spoken of at Matt. 6:6: “We
need to be especially careful to follow the Gospel precept which
instructs us to go into our inner room, and shut the door so that we may
pray to our Father. And this is how we can do it.” “We pray in our room
whenever we withdraw our hearts completely from the tumult and noise of
our thoughts and our worries and when secretly and intimately, we offer
our prayers to the Lord.” “We pray with the door shut when, without
opening our mouths, and in perfect silence, we offer our petitions to
the one who pays not attention to words but looks hard at our hearts.”
“We pray in secret when in our hearts alone and in our recollected
spirits, we address God and reveal our wishes only to him in such a way
that the hostile powers themselves have no inkling of their nature.
Hence, we must pray in utter silence to insure that the thrust of our
pleading be hidden from our enemies who are especially lying in wait to
attack us during prayer. In this way, we shall fulfill the command of
the prophet Micah, ‘keep your mouth shut from the one who sleeps on your
breast.’” A text used in many monasteries in the 5th century, written by Dionysisus the Areopagite and called THE HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, counsels: “in
the earnest exercise of mystical contemplation, you leave the senses
and the operations of reason and all things that the senses or reason
can perceive, to the end that you raise yourself by this unknowing to
union with Him who is above all being and all knowledge,” We
can call the methodology what we will but the truth is that
experiencing the deep things of God is as simple as being quiet (for
enough time each day and enough years) and following the natural impulse
of the soul to know it’s true Self as what it truly is. “We are not forced to take wings to find Him, but only to seek solitude and to look within ourselves.” (St. Teresa of Avilla, 1515-1582) The catholic monk Thomas Keating (born 1923) writes: “Let
thoughts come, let them go. No annoyance, no expectation. This is a
very delicate kind of self-denial, but it is more valuable than bodily
austerities, which tend to fix one’s attention on oneself. Waiting for
God without going away, giving the usual time to prayer, and putting up
with what goes on in the imagination are the most effective practices
for acquiring true devotion. The observance of them will lead to a
complete change of heart.” Evagrios the Solitary (born 345), in On Prayer writes: "When
your intellect in its great longing for God gradually withdraws from
the flesh and turns away from all thoughts that have their source in
your sense-perception, memory or soul-body temperament, and when it
becomes full of reverence and joy, then you may conclude that you are
close to the frontiers of prayer." "Stand on guard and protect your
intellect from thoughts while you pray. Then your intellect will
complete its prayer and continue in the tranquility that is natural to
it. In this way He who has compassion on the ignorant will come to you,
and you will receive the blessed gift of prayer." "You cannot attain
pure prayer while entangled in material things and agitated by constant
cares. For prayer means the shedding of thoughts." St. Hesychios the 5th century monk, in On Watchfulness and Holiness writes: "...
When there are no fantasies or mental images in the heart, the
intellect is established in its true nature, ready to contemplate
whatever is full of delight, spiritual and close to God." "We
should strive to preserve the precious gifts which preserve us from all
evil... These gifts are the guarding of the intellect with the
invocation of Jesus Christ, continuous insight into the heart's depths,
stillness of mind unbroken even by thoughts which appear to be good, and
the capacity to be empty of all thought." "Because
every thought enters the heart in the form of a mental image of some
sensible object, the blessed light of the Divinity will illumine the
heart only when the heart is completely empty of everything and so free
from all form. Indeed, this light reveals itself to the pure intellect
in the measure to which the intellect is purged of all concepts." "To
human beings it seems hard and difficult to still the mind so that it
rests from all thoughts. Indeed, to enclose what is bodiless within the
limits of the body does demand toil and struggle, not only from the
uninitiated but also from those experienced in inner immaterial warfare.
But he who through unceasing prayer holds the Lord Jesus within his
breast will not tire in following Him, as the Prophet says (cf. Jer.
17:16.LXX). Because of Jesus' beauty and sweetness he will not desire
what is merely mortal..." "...
the delighted intellect delights in the light of the Lord when, free
from concepts, it enters into the dawn of spiritual knowledge. By
continually denying itself, it advances from the wisdom necessary for
the practice of the virtues to an ineffable vision in which it
contemplates holy and ineffable things. Then the heart is filled with
perceptions of infinite and divine realities and sees the God of gods in
its own depths, so far as this is possible. Astounded, the intellect
lovingly glorifies God, the Seer and the Seen, and the Saviour of those
who contemplate Him in this way." The Desert Father, Abba Cronius writes: "If
the soul is vigilant and withdraws from all distraction and abandons
its own will, then the spirit of God invades it and it can conceive
because it is free to do so" All
of these quotes are from different monks, from different monasteries,
in different centuries, describing the same two thousand year old
tradition of the prayer of the heart. The
prayer of the heart is not something from outside the Christian faith
but the very prayer form by which the first Christians ready for the
deeper teachings and those later mystic Christians who have followed
could open themselves to the Holy Spirit and have it take them to an
understanding and experience of the deep things of God, culminating in
directly experiencing the presence of God in and as the true nature of
the soul. It has never been practiced by the mainstream Christian and
probably never will be but for those who wish to experience the Holy
Spirit in their lives, to directly experience the true nature of the
soul in God, it is and has been the traditional Way of our faith. AN EXPLANATION OF MY PRACTICES I
am not as eloquent as the monks that I have just quoted or even close
to the understanding and realizations of some of the mystic greats but
from my own forty year experience with it, I will try to describe the
mechanics of the prayer of the heart and why I practice it as I do. First,
there isn’t one magical thing about this type of prayer. For me it has
always been one of the most natural things I have ever done. I have to
admit that my experience with the prayer of the heart is not the norm
and I don’t even do it exactly like those teaching it say to do it and I
certainly do not describe the mechanics of it like anyone I have ever
read but you know, each of us is unique and whatever you do needs to be
done your way or for me, my way, as the case may be. Most
learn the prayer of the heart and practice 15 to 20 minutes twice a day
and enjoy the peace and comfort of the process. But from the beginning
of learning about the prayer of the heart, everyone I read of who had
ever made substantial spiritual
progress put in at least 3 hours a day devotional time for 20 years or
more. Since substantial spiritual progress is the only thing I have ever
been willing to settle for, I have always strived for 3 hours a day but
have only been successful at this on and mostly off throughout my
working life. My guess is that most working people with families and
bills and such have the same problem with the amount of time available
to them and few people would even feel the need for this amount of
devotional time in the first place. But
now that I am just 65, semi retired and just work part time, I am
beginning to have the time that I need. I hope to be steady with 3 hours
daily devotional time for the rest of my life. With a normal life span,
there is still plenty of time to finish the spiritual process that we
usually begin much earlier in life, so I don’t think we should unduly
worry about what we can’t do yet. (that took me forever to realize) Be
content with doing what you can under your existing circumstances and
try to patiently wait until you have the time. For me, it was when I
semi retired. With our spiritual foundation laid earlier in life, with a
normal lifespan, when we retire, we should still have enough time to
fully experience the deep things of God and even rest in His house. Ok,
I might have had a more dramatic beginning than most but even so I need
to do my practices as faithfully as anyone else. I do my practices
first thing each morning. First I do an hour to an hour and a half of a
breathing exercise similar but not identical to the exercise practiced
by the Eastern Orthodox monks, written about for over a thousand years,
practiced, I don’t know how much further back in years than that. I
have talked with a couple of priests in the Greek Orthodox Church who
are practicing the breathing exercises as originally taught and I have
been told by them that they are quite effective. Although I was never
able to learn their exact method, not being in their denomination, the
statement below does give us an idea of the technique used. “You
know, brother, how we breathe: We breathe the air in and out. On this
based the life of the body and on this depends its warmth. So, sitting
down in your cell, collect your mind, lead it into the path of the
breath along which the air enters in, constrain it to enter the heart
together with the inhaled air, and keep it there. Keep it there, but do
not leave it silent and idle; instead give it the following prayer:
‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.’” Taken from the Works of ST. NIKODIMUS AND ST. MAKARIOS I
have used a somewhat related practice for about 30 years now. Like what
the Eastern Orthodox monks do, it is designed to encourage the full
flowing of the Holy Spirit throughout the nervous system, cleansing it
in preparation for the higher states of consciousness and the gifts of
the Spirit to come. Then I end with an hour to an hour and a half of the
prayer of the prayer of the heart exercise that has been practiced by
both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox monks for almost two
thousand years. For someone living out in the world, I guess that makes
me a really old school monk oriented type Christian but the main thing
is that the exercises work for me. With a minimum of 2 and better 3
hours a day practice each morning and when possible, short periods of
the breathing exercises during the day, I feel the activity of the Holy
Spirit throughout my nervous system day long. Then I live a normal life:
That is if you can call feeling the activity of the Holy Spirit
throughout the day normal. But it is what’s normal for me. A PHYSICAL EXPLANATION FOR A SPIRITUAL PROCESS Understand
that the Holy Spirit resides in each of us, good and evil alike. It is
God’s finger of creation and the enlivening power of all living things.
Its activity within is what makes living things different from rocks. It
is also its activity within our nervous system that makes humans
different from the animals around us. The Holy Spirit is always here in
our hearts, waiting to take those of open heart to the deep things of
God. If
a person wants to be a professional musician they will generally put in
hours and hours of practice each day for years. They are literally
forming the brain cell connections necessary for them to be aware of the
tones and rhythms that most of us are not aware. The brain scans that
have been done on professional musicians demonstrate that their brains
in that area related to music are more fully developed and actually
larger than with the average person. They
did the same type of scans on taxi drivers in London, where the drivers
have to be able to remember every street in the city as well as
everything related to those streets and found that in those drivers, the
part of the brain related to memory was more developed and larger than
with the average person. It
is no different with the Holy Spirit and God. The awareness of both the
Holy Spirit and God are innately within every human on this planet. In
order to become aware of both, just like a professional musician, we
need to put in enough practice time to create the necessary brain cell
connections to make the awareness of the Holy Spirit and God a
continuous part of our lives. There is nothing supernatural, nothing
magical about any of this. Bringing the spiritual into the physical body
is a brain cell and nervous system thing. That’s it. That’s all there
is to it. (mostly) If
we were born perfect (in ancient Greek, telios), say with the genetic
profile of Jesus or the spiritual impulse of his soul, we would never
have to practice anything but being quiet. The strong underlying impulse
that develops the brain cell connections to experience God and the Holy
Spirit would already be there. All that we would have to do is grow up
enough for our nervous system to mature and to automatically make the
nervous system connections and we would be continuously aware the Holy
Spirit and God in our hearts for the rest of our lives. To me this is
what the story of Adam and Eve was really about: The soul’s loss of the
continuous awareness of God (the Garden of Eden) and through using the
power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus coming to give us a way to bring it
back. (Revelations) Be ye therefore perfect, the early Christian view Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit and also a path to follow to the spiritual. St.
Clement, the bishop of Alexandria (150-215) speaks of this path as it
was originally taught and of the condition of the existing Christian
teachings in his lifetime. (A mere 150 years after Jesus) He
wrote: “Another consideration shows us clearly how much of this early
teaching has been lost. The church now devotes herself solely to
producing good men, and points to the saint as her crowning glory and
achievement. But in the older days she claimed to be able to do much
more than that. When she had made a man a saint, her work with him was
only just beginning, for only then was he fit for the training and
teaching which she could give him then, but not now, because she has
forgotten her ancient knowledge. Then she had three definite stages in
her course of training-Purification, (The opening of the heart and the diminishing of the ego.) Illumination, (The Holy Spirit revealing the deep things of God.) and PERFECTION (The soul feeling the innate presence of the infinite consciousness we call God as its true nature.).” THE STROMATA OF ST. CLEMENT. St.
Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna (69-155) wrote in his epistle, chapter 7
that he hopes those he was writing to were: “well versed in the sacred
scriptures and that nothing is hidden from you; but to me this privilege
is not yet granted.” And continuing after relating what had been
revealed to him, he wrote: “…though I am acquainted with these things,
yet I am not therefore by any means PERFECT,…” This
use of the word perfect by St. Polycarp, perfection by St. Clement when
describing the last stage of church training and how the word perfect
is used in the gospels and the writings of Paul seemed odd to me when
speaking of anything to do with the human condition. So I looked up the
Greek word that is translated as perfect in the King James translation
of the scriptures and this is what I found. When
the Greek word teleios is translated from the Greek scriptures of the
first Christians into the English word, perfect, as we see it in the
King James Bible, we have a meaning in English that comes to our minds:
Usually flawless or if applied to a person, sinless. But Strongs’
concordance, the 1982 edition that I used, lists the literal meaning of
teleios as used in the ancient Greek language as “completeness”. The
concordance gives an example of a person who grows up, gets married and
raises their children being considered “teleios” in the ancient Greek
language. They would not be considered sinless as the English word
perfect might infer but to have attained “completeness” in life. When
referring to the soul, the first Christians used the word (teleios) with
the esoteric meaning of the soul attaining completeness in God;
literally feeling the presence of God in the soul, the awareness making
the soul complete. I looked up every single use of the Greek word telios
in the Christian Greek scriptures, you know, what’s called the New
Testament and what follows is a little of what I found. With
“teleios”, completeness of the soul in God in mind, listen to what
Jesus said: “If thou wilt be (teleios, complete in God) PERFECT, go and
sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure
in heaven: and come and follow me.” Matt. 19:21 “Be,
ye therefore (teleios, complete in God) PERFECT, even as your Father
which is in heaven is (teleios, spiritually complete) PERFECT.” Matt.
5:48 (That is, directly experience that the Father, completeness, is the
fundamental nature of the soul.) “The
disciple is not above his master: but everyone that is (teleios,
complete in God) PERFECT shall be as his master.” Luke 6:40 (That is,
those who feel the presence of God in their souls will have attained the
same awareness as Jesus.) “I
in them and Thou in me, that they may be made (teleios, complete in
God) PERFECT in one;” John 17:23 (That is, the awareness of God in the
soul can be awakened in the disciple through the master and they will
literally be one in the awareness of the Father.) And
of course my favorite scripture quoted by the Apostle Paul: “Howbeit we
speak wisdom among them that are PERFECT ( telios, complete in God),
yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that
come to naught: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the
hidden wisdom,.... But as it is written, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God
hath prepared for them that love him.’ But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1 Cor. 2:6-10) THE QUESTION About
now, given all of the quotes from the early Christians I have just gone
through, I think a question that you should be asking is: With all of
this history so easily available. why don’t we modern day Christians
realize that there is a far deeper relationship possible with God and
the Holy Spirit than just believing that they exist and occasionally
making a show of giving them praise that they could care less about
anyway? What happened to mainstream Christianity that it forgot all this
stuff? Well,
for the most part, two things. First, from the very beginning,
mainstream Christianity was never told about this stuff and second,
Constantine, who was the very best thing for spreading the Christian
Church around the world and in my opinion, the very worst thing that has
ever happened to Christian spirituality. I will try to explain with
even more quotes. Sorry. THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS In
every society throughout the history of mysticism the deepest truths
and the power of the Holy Spirit have only been revealed from mentor to
disciple when the disciple was capable of understanding the truth being
given and open enough to receive the power of the Holy Spirit. Remember
the relationship between Elijah and Elisha? It
is obvious from reading the scriptures and writings of the early
Christians that the prophets, and also Jesus and the early Christian
mystics closely followed this tradition. Considering the society of his
time, Jesus gave good reason for this. Blood sacrifice and an eye for an
eye societal mentality are not very high on my spiritual scale of
things. Jesus
said: “Do not give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before
swine. They will trample them under foot at best, and perhaps even tear
you to shreds.” (Matt. 7:6) Jesus
had to be careful with giving too much spiritual information too soon
to his own disciples. He said: “I have much more to tell you, but you
cannot bear it now.” (John 16:10) The
apostle Paul followed the same tradition. He wrote: “Brothers, the
trouble was that I could not talk to you as spiritual men but only as
men of flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you milk, and did not give you
solid food because you were not ready for it.” (1 Cor. 3: 1,2) Origen
writes: “But for those who are wise he has always the higher teachings,
which are given only to those who have proved themselves worthy of it.” And:
“I have not yet spoke of the observance of all that is written in the
Gospels, each one of which contains much doctrine difficult to be
understood, not merely by the multitude, but even by certain of the more
intelligent, including a very profound explanation of the parables,
which Jesus delivered to “those without” while reserving the exhibition
of their full meaning for those who had passed beyond the stage of
exoteric teaching, and who came to him privately ‘in the house.’” Origen
wrote in ON FIRST PRINCIPLE: “The scriptures have a meaning not only
such as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the
notice of most men. For such is written in the forms of certain
Mysteries, and the image of divine things. Respecting which there is one
opinion throughout the whole Church, that the whole law is indeed
spiritual, but that the spiritual meaning which the law conveys is not
known to all, but to those only on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is
bestowed...” Origen
wrote in ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS, this response to the Roman emperor
Celsus’ charge that Christianity was a secret organization teaching half
truths to the masses. He wrote: “But that there should be certain
doctrines, not known to the multitude, which are divulged after the
exoteric ones have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity
alone, but also of philosophic systems in which certain truths are
exoteric and others esoteric.” St.
Clement of Alexandria writes: “those who are still blind and dumb, not
having understanding, or the undazzled and keen vision of the
contemplative soul, must stand outside of the divine choir. Wherefore,
in accordance with the method of concealment, the truly sacred Word,
truly divine and most necessary for us, deposited in the shrine of
truth, was by the Egyptians called “adyta”, and the Hebrew ‘the veil.’
Only the consecrated were allowed access to them.” And
again: “He who has been purified in baptism and initiated into the
little mysteries becomes rife for the greater mysteries for the gnosis,
the scientific knowledge of God.” Jesus:
“said unto them, ‘Unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom of God:
but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables: that
seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they hear, and not
understand.’” Mark 9: 33,34 The
brief summary of quotes that you have just read took me ten years of
reading (pre-internet) the early Christian writings to be able to come
to a conclusion about. There were two levels of understanding in the
early Church: An exoteric understanding for the masses and those new in
the faith and another esoteric understanding for those who had
progressed far enough in the faith to be ready for it. It is the most
natural way to teach. A physician needs to go to kindergarten, grade
school, high school, college, med school and then serve an internship to
be proficient. The Jewish prophets and early Christians didn’t want to
teach med school materials to kindergarteners. (I guess) Even
considering the primitive nature of the societies of the time, I just
don’t think the basic truths of existence should ever be hidden from
society. True,
God and the Holy Spirit are kind of like this person our friend (who
doesn’t really know this person that well themselves but pretends or
imagines he does) keeps telling us that we need to meet. Our friend
keeps talking and talking, telling us this and that and everything they
can think of including that they are almost best buddies. Then we meet
this person, get to know them and wonder who it was our friend was
describing because that’s a different person. Not that our friend lied:
It’s just that everyone innately has their own limited view, coupled
with their own subconscious and often conscious agenda. It’s no
different with writing about God and the Holy Spirit. Saint as well as
sinner, gossip as well as scripture: It’s a part of the human condition. But
if we want to truly know a place, then reading a travel book on it and
or being told about it is just the beginning. We have got to go there to
even get a taste of it. And then we will not begin to know it until we
have been there again and again and again. That’s how it is with the
kingdom of God. We
have to have a relationship with a person to know them. You can’t just
go by what you have been told about them by others and believe what you
have been told, to honestly say you that have a relationship. You have
to spend time with them, talk to them and more importantly listen to
them to get to know them. That’s how it is with the Holy Spirit. We need
to inwardly see its light, be absorbed in its vibration and feel it
flowing through our nervous system to know the wonder and power of it.
We need to rest in its arms to know its comfort. We need to listen to
its guidance to know its wisdom. We need to turn our backs on it and
have our hearts torn shreds to know its resolve. And we need to repent
and again feel the joy of its presence after losing it to know its
forgiveness. To
have a relationship with our Father, that infinite consciousness we
call God the almighty, we have to go to His house and knock on His door
again and again, until it opens. And then we just can’t visit a couple
of times and say that we know Him: We have to rent a room in His house
and spend time in His presence every single day for a lifetime to just
begin to truthfully say that. You
have just heard me describe the mystical journey of directly
experiencing the Holy Spirit, God and His kingdom as I believe it to be.
All of these things are possible by reaching beyond our egos’
rationalizations, by praying through our hearts and then giving
ourselves enough time to let it all come together. A VERY BRIEF CHRISTIAN HISTORY (as I see it) In
my opinion, we can lay the loss of so many original Christian
understandings and the influx of understandings and traditions that did
not come from original Christianity at the pagan Roman emperor
Constantine’s feet (AD 274-337) or if not him directly, the church
officials of his time that he controlled, for he gave them the power and
direction to do what was done to Christianity over the next couple of
hundred years. Most
everyone who has read anything of Christian history knows the story. As
a pagan Roman general, Constantine saw a vision of a cross in the sky
and he used this symbol as his standard when he won the battle with
another Roman general that made him emperor over the eastern Roman
Empire. No
one really knows what this vision was but I suspect it was the large
meteorite that landed two hundred or so miles north of Rome dated to
that exact time. The display that a large meteorite causes very well
could have been interpreted as a cross in the sky by someone of the
period. At the time, every comet, every eclipse, every natural disaster
was considered an omen from the gods. Regardless
of what it was, and although he didn’t become baptized as a Christian
until he was about to die many years later, when Constantine first
became emperor (AD 306) he took on Christianity as the states religion
and although he was not a Christian himself, he formed a council to
organize Christianity according to how he thought it should be run. Before
this time Christianity was wonderfully diverse. It seemed that every
ethnic group and nationality looked at who and what Jesus was with their
own unique view. The Nag Hammadi library found in 1945 is an example of
this diversity. There were still mentor disciple relationships like the
apostles had with their disciples and becoming open to the Holy Spirit
and having it take them to the deep things of God was still being taught
through these relationships. Well,
Constantine, with a Roman general’s mentality for organization, was
having none of this diversity (He would see it as utter chaos) and as
emperor he had the power to do something about it. He Romanized
Christianity; that is, he took a diverse faith with many factions that
at its heart stressed a one to one relationship with God and spiritual
insight though the guidance of the Holy Spirit and turned it into a
singular faith of Roman military and or political structure that said
that the Church was Gods’ representative on earth and everyone had to go
through it to be saved. Forget about personal experience; that was for
monks, hidden, out of sight and of no influence. Over the next couple of
hundred years, the now centralized Church killed, exiled or silenced
any Christian who wouldn’t toe the line. They burned all of the esoteric
writings they could get their hands on as well as any writing not
approved by the hierarchy of the Church. Except in a few monasteries out
of the centralized Church’s view, there went the master-disciple
relationships, personal knowledge of the deep things of God and personal
guidance through the Holy Spirit. Just believe as the Church tells you
and toe the line and you will be saved. This was a perfect way for a
pagan Roman emperor and later Church officials to have power over the
masses and that was all it was about. There went most any mainstream
Christian’s chance of learning about a one to one relationship with God
for the next thirteen hundred years. A
few hundred years ago, with Martin Luther (1483-1546) and the
protestant reformation, things began to change just a little. As
Protestants, Christians could now have a personal relationship with God
and along with believe in our church’s teachings and not the other guys,
the standard became “Believe in Jesus as we teach and you will be
saved.” For the most part,
the top down structure of these new church organizations stayed pretty
much the same. For the vast majority of Christians, this is how it still
is to this day. Most have no idea of early Christian spirituality or
that a far deeper and more personal relationship with God is possible.
At least the Protestant members were allowed to read the bible for the
first time in over a thousand years. It
is understandable that the new Protestant organizations would keep the
same Romanized beliefs about Jesus etc. For the most part, they had no
way of accessing the writings of the first Christians; the writings
before the Romanization of the Church. The translations weren’t done and
if they were done they were stuck in some obscure library where they
were not accessible. Today all you have to do is run a search on Google.
If you want to know when this new belief in the in the rapture started,
just run a search on the (history of the belief in the rapture) on
Google. THEN, and more
importantly run a search on one of the early Christian scholars views
who wrote something before the time of Constantine. That will give you
the early Christian view. The Christian scholars before Constantine were
second and third generation Christians. More than anyone later, they
knew the teachings of the apostles. Take St. Clement: (150-211, pre-Constantine scholar) During or upon his conversion “He
set out from Greece and travelled through southern Italy, Palestine,
and finally Egypt, seeking everywhere the society of Christian
teachers.” (Quote from a biography.) The
logic baffles me when some new religious founder, 2,000 yrs after the
fact can dismiss everything this saint and those like him have to say
because their writings are not in the bible. Who better to know what was
taught by the apostles than those taught by the apostles? The school
where St. Clement became bishop was founded by the apostle Mark. On
the nature of the soul: Are we a soul in a body, are we a body with a
soul, or are we a body that is the soul that perishes at death to be
resurrected later? OK, let’s say you want the early Christian
pre-Romanized view. I did a test for these lessons and ran a search on
(Origen of Alexandria view of the soul) He was a pre-Constantine
Christian scholar who lived from 185 to 254 AD. It took 37 seconds for
me to pull up Origen’s views. I ran the same search with St. Clement and
it took a few seconds more but less than a minute to find his views. I
know, I got off the subject but finding the origin of things has always
been important to me in my own beliefs and I thought you should at
least know how I try to do it. If you are comfortable with your beliefs
and don’t care of their origins; wonderful. The Holy Spirit doesn’t care
at all. Anyway,
for a very few, things began to change in Christian spirituality in the
1960’s. This is when the first yogis began coming over to the West
talking about the deeper and more personal relationship with God that
was possible. Yogis are said to be devotees of the Holy Spirit, that is
Shivites: Shiva in yoga being that aspect of God which in Christianity
is called the Holy Spirit. Anyway, this is how the next part of the
story goes and I have no reason to believe that what I have been told
isn’t true. All of these students were flocking to this famous yogi’s
retreat, you know, the Beatles guru and on the way they had to pass by, I
believe, was a Trappist monastery. Many stopped to ask directions to
the yogi’s retreat or to go to the rest room or something like that. A
couple of monks looked at all this crowd going right by their doors and
knowing that Christianity had its own history of a deeper and more
personal relationship with God buried in the monasteries for the last
2000 yrs, decided to teach about it openly. Forty years or so ago these
monks formed the Contemplative Outreach organization and here we are at
this time in the history of Christianity. A very few in Christianity
have begun to practice the ancient Christian prayer form called the
prayer of the heart, now called contemplative or centering prayer. It is
not quite like paradise returned: No one seems to have the power of the
Holy Spirit that the first Christians had but even so it is a new
beginning. With this new start, it’s not like we have Jesus or the
apostles around to draw from their strength, so we just have to do the
best that we can and let Christian spirituality and the power of the
Holy Spirit build with the coming generations. I am quite confident that
it will. Please
understand that this brief history that you’ve just read is my own
study of the facts. I don’t belong to an organization that has laid out
anything that I have to say or whose agenda I need to follow. I think
what I have written is accurate and that is all I can say. I don’t have
an agenda of my own to push either way and most important; none of our
relationships with the Holy Spirit depend on history. It just is what it
is. A WIDER VIEW It
is not quite as easy to find the actual truth of or underlying origin
of a belief as just running a search on a pre Constantine Christian
scholars’ views and I did not mean to sound simplistic. Just because
someone was taught by an apostle or even the fact that an apostle
himself believed something doesn’t make it so. New doctrines are always
wrapped in the context of old belief systems. A
modern example would be all of the societies that the Catholic Church
is in. If you take Haiti where voodoo has a strong influence you will
find that the old voodoo beliefs and rituals are not that different
under Catholicism. They just have new names. The same thing is true in
Peru with ancestor worship and the leftovers of the Inca civilization:
New doctrine wrapped in old beliefs. It
is that way in every society the Church has gone into and it was no
different with the Romans and Christianity. They just wrapped
Christianity around their old rituals and beliefs. Jesus
was born and taught the deep truths of the Holy Spirit in a Jewish
society and it was natural for his followers to wrap his teachings
within a context of the experiences and beliefs with which they could
relate. It always happens that way. It’s how we humans are. Each new
wrapping does not change the deep truths, only the way they are
presented, only the surface of things. Just understand that the modern
Christian belief system is a belief in the teachings and nature of Jesus
that was first wrapped by Jewish beliefs, then the Jewish context was
later wrapped in a Roman belief system and this Jewish wrapped by Roman
context is always wrapped in each society’s culture and previous beliefs
that Christianity has gone into around the world. Each
wrapping may or may not be true when viewed in and of itself but still
when viewed as a whole, the wrappings help each of us to relate to the
original teachings in our own way and all of the cultural and sectarian
diversity of Christianity around the world I see as a very good thing..
Diversity is simply the natural play of the Holy Spirit, the natural
work of the finger of God in the physical universe. The strength of any
system, whether it is biological, social, political or religious comes
from its diversity. Besides this fact, we souls are born into this
physical universe to interact. The worst thing I can think of is for
everyone to look the same, everyone to be taught the same, everyone to
be of the same sect, everyone to have the same view, everyone to worship
the same way or everyone to experience the deep things of God the same
way. We should embrace our
diversity. The us and them, we are right you are wrong attitude is a
product of our egos and our personalities ego structure is the single
mechanism that keeps us from experiencing the Holy Spirit. Underneath
all of the diversity that rests on the surface of Christianity are the
deep things of God that rest in the depths of our faith and are the
unchanging infinite consciousness of God things. This is where Jesus’
gift of the Holy Spirit to all of us comes into play. AND As
I will endlessly repeat: Jesus’ gift to us, the gift of the Holy Spirit
doesn’t care about any of the diversity on the surface, only the
openness of each individual’s heart. THE HIGHER REALITY Well,
I might as well get into the most difficult concept for everyone to
come to grips with. If you can get through this understanding, this one
reality that is the basic experience for all the mystical understanding
of all the great religions on this planet, you will begin to look at
life from a whole new perspective. The rest of the lessons are
relatively easy, for they are nothing more than practical advice on the
path to the direct experience of this most basic truth of existence. This
lesson is about the soul's physical relationship with God. It is not
about a belief in anything or anyone but the soul's innate being in God
and simply said: It also is what it is. It is said by all who have
directly experienced the soul's innate being in God, what is called
union in modern Christianity, perfection by the earliest Christians,
enlightenment in yoga, Nirvana in Buddhism, bliss by the Sufi's and born
again in the bible, that the true understanding of it only comes from
the direct experience of it. So anything said about it is not the whole
of it. More than in any other lesson I will try to quote from as many
different saints on this understanding as I can. From these quotes, the
reader should be able to easily see that the direct experience of the
soul's true nature in God, union, born again, enlightenment, nirvana,
bliss, perfection or whatever they want to call it in the various
religions around the world, it is not limited to any one time, religion
or person but is universal in nature and is spread throughout the whole
of Christianities and most other major religions existence. Try to keep
in mind that regardless of one’s orientation, it is the same experience
for everyone who has progressed far enough along the spiritual path to
have the direct experience of it. When we come to grips with the fact
that this single experience is the corner stone of all the world’s major
religions, we will come to realize what an ego trip it is to think “I
am most certainly going to heaven and they are most certainly going to
hell.” Well,
what is this Truth of God, soul and the nature of all manifest
creation, hidden by what the Egyptians called “adyta”; hidden behind
“the veil” of the prophets, hidden within the parables of Jesus, hidden
within key words and phrases of the scriptures and writings of the
saints? What is this truth of the nature of existence that has been and
still is so far out of “those outside of the divine choir’s” reality
that if heard will be trampled underfoot and in some religions even get
the teller of this truth torn to shreds? The answer is in a child’s song. ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT (live your life) GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM (with love, throughout all your years) MERRILY, MERRILY, VERILY, VERILY (with much joy but in all seriousness) LIFE (Everything we do, think and believe, everything that happens to and around everyone and everything on earth or in heaven) IS BUT A DREAM (is but Divine Consciousness individualized as each soul and all that is manifest, dreaming the dream of creation) Perhaps I need to explain. THE DREAM REALITY When
we dream we enter a partial reality; a dream reality that is only a
small part of the awareness that makes up our fully awake self. It is
like having blinders on to who we really are. Each night we play a
myriad of roles and while dreaming each role, absolutely believe that we
are the various personalities we are dreaming ourselves to be. In our
dreams we are hurt, we love and are loved, we harm others and others
harm us; we are chased by evil and are consumed with visions of
grandeur. Yet the roles we play in our dreams are illusionary, having no
independent reality from us dreaming them and each morning we awake,
with the fundamental nature of who and what we are untouched by the
previous night’s roles that we have played out in our minds. When
individualized Divine Consciousness (the soul) is born into the world
and lives its life, it enters a partial reality, a dreamlike reality
that is only a small part of the full awareness that makes up its true
Self. The soul lives its own waking dream, playing a myriad of roles,
hurting and being hurt, loving and being loved, manipulating others and
others manipulating it, absolutely believing that it is the personally
of the role it is playing. It feels isolated, separate from God and even
life, unaware that it is an individualization of the Infinite
Consciousness that is in actuality dreaming the dream it is living. The
apostle Paul describes it this way: “For now we see through a glass,
darkly; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1Cor. 13: 12) In
other words, When our consciousness expands beyond the dream reality
into the higher reality that so many of the saints have experienced we
will come to know ourselves as God knows us. Those
who have awakened, (are “inside the house”) begin to live life from a
different and expanded reality. Paul says: “But when that which is
perfect is come, then that which is in part will be done away.” (1Cor.
13: 10) The
saint’s who begin to rest in this higher reality begin to experience
their true nature as individualization's of infinite Divine
Consciousness. They begin to experience a profound peace and joy, a
sense of absolute completeness, of oneness with God and life that only
comes from having the soul’s full awareness restored. The soul begins to
see clearly and becomes untouched amidst the din and clamor of the
world. No matter the role the soul plays or the personality that it may
have assumed, the soul feels and knows itself as a wave in the infinite
ocean of consciousness that is God the almighty. The
saint’s who have experienced the higher reality speak of but one truth.
“Outside God nothing has any existence at all. “ (St. Veronica
Giuliani) “The soul, when purified, “(wrote St. Catherine of Genoa), “abides entirely in God; its being is God.” “If
I am to know God directly, I must become completely He and He I, so
that this He and this I become and are one I.” (Meister Eckhart) “and
thus we are brought forth by God, out of our selfhood, into the
immersion of love, in which we possess blessedness and are one with
God.” (Ruysbroeck) “To
understand the nature of this union, one should first know that God
sustains every soul and dwells in it substantially, even though it may
be that of the greatest sinner in the world. This union between God and
creatures always exists. By it He conserves their being so that if the
union would end they would immediately be annihilated and cease to
exist.” (St. John of the Cross, 1542 to 1591) We
are not and cannot be separated from God because our being is innately
one with the whole of Divine Consciousness. We can’t go anywhere but
within our own nature to realize the truth of our own nature in God and
find the reality that is our true Self. We can’t go out and get it when
we are already it. We can only work to remove whatever is obstructing
our realization of already being it. “A
ray of sunlight shining upon a smudgy window is unable to illumine that
window completely and transform it into its own light. It could do this
if the window were cleaned and polished. The less the film and stain
are wiped away, the less the window will be illumined, and the cleaner
the window is, the brighter will be its illumination, The extent of the
illumination is not dependent upon the ray of sunlight but upon the
window. If the window is totally clean and pure, the sunlight will so
transform and illumine it that to all appearances the window will be
identical with the ray of sunlight and shine just as the sun’s ray…The
soul upon which the divine light of God’s being is ever shining…is like
the window.” (St. John of the Cross) Cleaning
and polishing the window to the soul in God is a lifelong process.
Saints come to know that there is nothing of lasting value for oneself
outside of the refinement of one’s own nature in God. “No one can be saved without self-knowledge.” (St. Bernard) Jesus
said in another way that is harder for a person who is attached to the
objects and pleasures of this world to achieve the unfolding of
individual consciousness as Divine Consciousness (entering the Kingdom
of God) than it is for a camel to traverse that ancient pass known as
“The Eye of the Needle.” He said: “The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20,21) Therefore
in order to realize the “Kingdom of God” within each of us, “Let us
enter the cell of self-knowledge.” (St. Catherine of Sienna) DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS AS SOUL All
of the saints who have directly experienced the true nature of God tell
us (In ways that they think the followers of their denomination can
best understand) that God is not a "big person” in the heavens. Evagrios the Solitary in On Prayer
writes: "Be on your guard against the tricks of the demons. While you
are praying purely and calmly, sometimes they suddenly bring before you
some strange and alien form, making you imagine in your conceit that the
Deity is there. They are trying to persuade you that the object
suddenly disclosed to you is the Deity, whereas the Deity does not
possess quantity and form." St Cyril of Alexandria (378 to 444) writes that God is "incorporeal, immaterial, impalpable, beyond quantity and circumscription, beyond form and figure." In
other words, God is not staring down at His creation, rewarding and
punishing mankind like some petty Roman deity. God's true nature is far
beyond the concept of a personality that can be located in time and
space, up there somewhere. The far greatest part of Divine Consciousness
is like an infinite unchanging sky, an omnipresent consciousness that
rests behind creation as an infinite unchanging, formless and unmanifest
presence. But at the same time this formless unmanifest presence
manifests on the surface of Itself that which dreams the dream of
creation that is each soul and all that is manifest as the heavens and
earth. I
will try explain the best way that I know how: With an example that
came to me many years ago while doing my practices in the desert
followed by another commonly used example. Hopefully between the two
examples, I can get my and other mystics understanding of the soul's
true nature in God across clearly enough for you to understand the
concept even if you choose to totally disagree with it. The
first example is in this way. Souls are a part of manifested Divine
Consciousness; very much like the little whirlpools of air that I have
so many times seen in the desert are a part of the sky. Called dust
devils, the little whirlpools might seem different from the sky from
which they are made but this is only because of the debris each has
picked up on its journey across the land. It is illusionary: For it is
only the movement, support and flowing of the whole sky that is carrying
the dust. The whirlpools have no separate existence from the whole of
the sky and can only maintain the appearance of an individualized
structure as long as there is a creative impulse that is supporting
them. Remove the creative impulse and the whirlpools are “immediately
annihilated.” As
St. John of the Cross explained, the same concept is true of the soul.
Expressing itself through the substance of creation, the soul is that
pure Infinite and omnipresent Consciousness, individually focused as
each soul by the creative impulse, the wind of God. By identifying
itself with the captivating and illusory structure of creation (the
bejeweled angel Satan) into which it is born, the soul is deceived about
it’s true nature and temporarily loses its awareness of its own
perfection and unity in God. The soul becomes lost in its’ own dream,
its’ mistaken sense of separateness. (the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil) and casts itself out of the garden of the awareness of its own
structure of individualized Divine Consciousness (the tree of life)
into a self involved, self created world of thorns and thistles. This is
my understanding of the meaning behind the story of Adam and Eve. Through
the action of the Holy Spirit, on earth or in the heavens, it is the
innate impulse (the grace of God) and natural evolution of the soul to
eventually burn away the dust, look to its true nature and find that it
is not the substance of creation after all, but rather “I am that”
greater reality and individualized Infinite Consciousness behind the
personality I have dreamed myself to be. As an inseparatable part of
Infinite Consciousness, as a wave in the ocean of infinite consciousness
that is God, each soul exists as one of the countless
individualizations existing within the whole. Each soul will eventually
come to realize the simple truth that Moses spoke: “I am that” and will
come to rest as “I am”. Extending
everywhere, within and as everything, Divine Consciousness (God) is all
there is, ever has been, ever will or can be, and souls as well as all
of creation as individualization's of It, are not now, never have been
and never can be separate or apart from the whole of It. The soul as
well as all manifest creation would “immediately be annihilated and
cease to exist.” if Divine Consciousness was not it. The truth is that
only Divine Consciousness exists. All things are One Thing. There is
only God. Nicholas
of Cusa, (1401 to 1464) writes: "From the infinity of your mercy, I
see, O Lord, that you are infinity embracing all things. There is
nothing that exists outside you, but all things in you are not other
than you. You teach me, Lord, how otherness, which is not in you, does
not exist in itself, nor can it exist." St
Symeon, The New Theologian, (949 to 1022) writes: "How then was the
Word everywhere before making the world and, when He had made it, how
was He shining in it without the world comprehending Him? Pay careful
attention: God "Who is everywhere present and fills all things" was not,
Scripture says, separated from it by location when He created this
sensible world, but by the nature of the glory of His divinity, it being
evident that nothing created approached or comprehended Him at all.
Indeed, being inseparable from all He is as clearly in all." Echoing the Christian mystic’s understanding of the nature of God the Hindu scriptures repeatedly say, THOU ART THAT St.
Catherine of Siena, (1347 to 1380) speaking to God writes: You, eternal
Trinity, are a deep sea: The more I enter you, the more I discover, and
the more I discover, the more I seek you. You are insatiable, you in
whose depth the soul is sated yet remains always hungry for you, thirsty
for you, eternal Trinity, longing to see you with the light in your
light. You
are a fire always burning but never consuming; you are a fire consuming
in your heat all the soul's selfish love; you are a fire lifting all
chill and giving light. In your light you have made me know your truth:
You are that light beyond all light who gives the mind's eye
supernatural light in such fullness and perfection that you bring
clarity even to the light of faith. In that faith I see that my soul has
life, and in that light receives you who are Light... Truly
this light is a sea, for it nourishes the soul in you, peaceful sea,
eternal Trinity..... This water is a mirror in which you, eternal
Trinity, grant me knowledge; for when I look into this mirror, holding
it in the hand of love, it shows me myself, as your creation, in you,
and you in me through the union you have brought about of the Godhead
with our humanity. Take
the example of the ocean. In the whole of it, you cannot isolate any of
its waves from the body from which they come, the body that supports
them and upon which they owe their existence. Their substance cannot be
removed and isolated and have them remain waves. Waves are more like
impulses created by the wind or other creative forces that as impulses
travel across the surface of the sea. You must realize that the
particles of ocean water do not travel the thousands of miles from land
to land that make up the birth (individualization) and death
(reabsorbtion into the whole) that is the lifespan of a wave; that only
the impulses travel and can be said to be waves. The waves have no
substance of their own that they can say this is me and not the ocean.
Take away the wind or other creative impulse and what happens? Is not
the whole of the ocean still there? Not one particle of it is missing
but the waves cease to exist. The
same is true of the soul. There is no point at which you can isolate
the soul's being from the whole of God. Like a wave, the soul is an
impulse created by the wind of God that rides upon the surface of the
body of Divine Consciousness. The saint's who have directly experienced
God repeatedly tell us that the soul has not substance of its own that
it can say this is me and not God. If the Wind of God should stop
blowing, what happens? The whole of Divine Consciousness is still there.
Not one particle is missing but the impulse, the manifested divine
consciousness returns to formlessness, returns to that point in time
before manifestation and souls as well as all else that is manifest as
the heavens and earth will have ceased to exist. Have
you ever wondered, why, with infinite endlessness behind and infinite
endlessness ahead that there should even be this spec of time, this wisp
of a movement of matter and energy that we look at as the last 12 to 15
billion years of the creation that is the physical universe? In all of
eternity, why now? In the eternity of the past, was God without
creation. It makes little sense to me. It
is pure speculation, but perhaps, all of creation's manifestation to
merging back into the whole is but one day in the infinite past and
infinite future life that is the forever and continuous now of God.
Perhaps if each period of manifestation is followed by an equal period
of unmanifest, formless rest it would make up the day and night of one
day to God. If this is so, as some mystical traditions put forth, this
would certainly explain why at this point in time in the vastness of
eternity, the creation of the universe and the universe's and each
soul's destiny in this vast eternity of time: For then everything is a
continuous process. The whole existence of the universe would only be
one day in eternity, in an endless series of days and nights in
eternity. But
if creation is a continuous process throughout eternity, as it seems it
must be, would not souls keep growing in number throughout eternity?
How can there be an infinite number of finite manifestations of God? It
is pure speculation on my part but perhaps there is also a natural
process to the life of the soul; a day and night so to speak. We all
have experienced that the soul is naturally born into ignorance and in
the beginning is totally absorbed into the material, knowing nothing
else of itself. But perhaps the soul lives and gains experiences on
earth and then in the heavens, and over millions or billions of years
becomes less and less associated with the material and mental realms and
more and more associated with universal Divine Consciousness. Perhaps
this is a natural process where in eternity all souls born in ignorance
eventually become so disassociated with the physical and mental realms
and so associated with Divine Consciousness that in some period of their
development each soul chooses to drop all of that which is not its’
real self and become absorbed back into the whole. As with Christ, would
not this be the perfect union? Only that which is not the soul is cast
off. Not one drop of Divine consciousness is lost. Again, this is only
my speculation on the nature of things that I have no way of knowing and
perhaps neither does anyone else, for let’s face it, the souls that
would choose to become absorbed back into the whole would not be around
in any individualized form to answer your questions. On a more personal level where I do have an understanding, one of my students wrote this question: "You
have stated that God is not a personality. Does that mean, that God is
not personal? That we do not have a relationship with God as a human son
and father would have, as the Gospels seem to portray Jesus having with
His Heavenly Father?" Answer:
We cannot have a more personal relationship than that which we have
with God. Divine Consciousness is the very core of our being and most
mystics relate to God in a very personal way. This is the soul’s nature.
But this does not mean that the ocean of Divine Consciousness, that is
the Father, Christ and Holy Spirit, are personalities or a single
personality that relate to us as we relate to them. The saints tell us
over and over again that God is not a big person in the sky that we can
point to and say that God is there and not over there. The essence of
our being is infinity, just as God is infinite but the soul is
individualized infinity; infinity with a single focused point of
individualization through which it relates. From this viewpoint it tends
to personalize most everything. The ocean of Divine Consciousness, God,
is not individualized and relates to each soul from the whole, from
infinity. God is the closest thing to us and yet is totally impersonal
with us as well as everything else that exists within the whole. Knowing
that it is His own dream playing out within Himself, it is as if God
has stepped back and is simply watching the love, hate and drama of the
play. But
at the same time, through the Holy Spirit, God seems to be intimately
available to His creation. At the many times that I have reached out to
God, through intuitive consciousness or even in moments of distress, I
have sometimes been answered with very personal responses in the nature
of visions, comfort or understanding. But over the course of many years
and many experiences I have come to a much better understanding of the
nature of these responses. I am not saying that it is not God who has
responded but only that I have come to a better understanding of how
something so completely impersonal can respond so personally. It is
probably one of those revelations that instead of being told, should be
experienced over the many years of one's life and then only after we
have stepped back far enough from it all and have taken a deep hard look
at it all before the truth of it all can settle in. My first dramatic
experience with comfort from the Holy Spirit is as follows. I think this
experience illustrates how something so infinite and impersonal can at
the same time be so personal. COMFORT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT I
was a young man, married to a woman of fundamentalist faith with a
couple of children when the light of the Holy Spirit came so suddenly
into my life. Not knowing anything about what was happening except how
wonderful it all was, what is the first thing I did? Tell everyone I
knew of the experiences and ask everyone what it all meant. Most thought
I was totally out of my mind. Intuitive
conscious above normal consciousness, never heard of such a thing.
Being enveloped in the golden light of the Holy Spirit, this guy thinks
he is Jesus Christ. No sane person has these experiences: Totally
deluded. I
told my wife everything of these wonderful earth shaking (to me)
experiences. She told her pastors and they told her I was possessed by
the devil. She was afraid to be in the same room with me for the rest of
our marriage. She didn’t believe in divorce, I didn’t believe in
leaving my kids without a father. I know, old school, I just felt that
personal happiness was far less important than duty. I still feel that
way. Am I out of touch with the times, or what? I
hadn’t learned anything of the formalities or background of the prayer
of the heart and didn’t even know that there was anyone in modern
Christianity who had any deep inner experience with the Holy Spirit. I
felt that I was totally alone in my experience and with no understanding
of anything, I just sat down each morning and tried to become open to
the Holy Spirit as best as I could. One
day, I cried out to God in my dismay. Why does no one understand? Why
am I the only one? Why, just why am I being punished like this? I should
add a really big disclaimer here but all I can do is relate how the
following experience felt at the time. The reality of it is, well my
understanding of such things has changed with 40 yrs time and so many
more wonderful and sometimes (to me) earth shaking experiences. It’s
just that this was the first time I realized how personal the Holy
Spirit can be. I
was deep inside wallowing in my dismay. There was a rip in the heavens,
I felt it. Out poured the Holy Spirit, I saw it with my physical eyes.
It descended like a golden cloud and wrapped itself around me as if I
were a baby in its arms. It rocked me back and forth for a time and when
it lifted from me all of my grief over no one else understanding and my
isolation from the world lifted with it, never to return. I cannot
describe the peace, comfort and joy. I still can’t, it will still bring
me to tears. The reality of the experience, do the heavens rip? I was
really young in the Holy Spirit and knew nothing of the inner path. Jesus
said it better than I can. Do not cast your pearls before swine because
they will tear you to shreds. Especially if like me and so many others,
you start having experiences and do not understand the process
yourself. No one around you is going to understand and when you start
telling them of your wonderful experiences you are going to lose friends
and even family because they are all going to think you are crazy or
worse. Believe me, I know better than most. I will say it again. Learn
silence as a virtue. This
experience leads me to bricks. These bricks are my personal deep things
of God observations. They should not be your absolute anything. BIG AND SMALL BRICKS From
birth we all build a mental library within our minds of our
experiences, and things we have read or have been told and hold to be
true. It is that part of the mind through which we view the world around
us and try to make sense of it all. In mysticism the only way to make
that library solid is by our own personal experiences. Any mentor of
worth is always going to tell his students to never take anything said
or written as the absolute truth but to build your library out of your
own personal experiences. These
experiences of the deep things of God may be massive life changing
revelations to a person, like the first experience with the Holy Spirit
in my life was to me. To
have my first experience to be falling into intuitive consciousness,
which I did not know existed, immediately followed by being enveloped in
the golden light of the Holy Spirit which before this I figured had run
away and hid somewhere after the death of Jesus and the Apostles, was
absolutely life changing, blew down the old library and putting in a
massive new corner stone that will carry me through the rest of my life
type of deep thing of God experience. Those may happen only one or two
times on the path to God. Being baptized in the Holy Spirit and having
it start flowing up the spine was another for me and the experience you
just read of my first major comfort from the Holy Spirit wasn’t all that
bad either. And a later experience written about in these lessons, of
having the Holy Spirit tear my heart to shreds was probably the frosting
on the cake of my first years with the Holy Spirit: All massive life
changing experiences (to me). But
our library is also built of a multitude of small almost insignificant
little experiences that probably would never mean anything to anyone.
Like this simple observation. It was summer. The Holy Spirit was active. I
went outside to do some work in my back yard without a shirt on. When
the sun hit my chest I felt a ball of energy build in my heart and very
distinct fingers of energy spread throughout my torso. My conclusion was
that there must be some form of the Holy Spirit or sub atomic particle
akin to it radiating from the sun that scientists know nothing about.
Well, unless you are a nuclear physicist this observation is probably
meaningless. Or you might come to the conclusion like I did that
spending just a few minutes bare chested to the sun every week might be a
good thing to do. One
or two massive cornerstone type deep things of God experiences, a
multitude of little seeming unimportant deep things of God experiences,
with numerous bricks of in-between size deep things of God personal
experiences, over the years build a library of mystical personal deep
things of God observations and understanding that cannot be blown down
by anything, even death. IT’S ALL ABOUT OUR HEARTS Very
early in my spiritual life I was doing some personal research into the
lives of the Desert Fathers. In order to bring the Spirit close, they
would try to get their disciples to develop a deep sense of sorrow. They
write that it is a sorrow that you do not want to get rid of. This
seemed to be a really, really, really stupid thing to cultivate. I have
always been sorry for my sins. I have always rather hurt myself than
another. But I could not understand why a person would want to go around
in a state of sorrow, mentally beating themselves up over their sins.
Just get over it and do better the next time. Feeling
a little bit irritated, I put the book aside for my devotional time. I
rested in the intuitive calm for a few minutes and the Holy Spirit
lifted my awareness above the minds thoughts. Suddenly a sorrow poured
through me that was so deep it went all the way down into my bones. It
was beyond feeling sorry for one man’s sins. It was like feeling all of
the pain and suffering of the world at once. But as the Holy Spirit
filled my mind, I understood the grace of God extending to me and to all
of humanity. Oh, what sweet sorrow that I did not want to lose. But
I was totally mistaken in my previous thinking: Because for me, the
sorrow had nothing to do with my petty sins or the worlds but everything
to do with the Holy Spirit opening my heart so deeply that my soul
could reach out and feel beyond its ego sense and embrace its own innate
humanity. Without the Holy Spirit opening my heart and bringing the experience of it directly to me, I would have never understood in a million years. The
bible says that the seat of our emotions is in our hearts. Of course,
it is not our literal hearts but the heart center in our spiritual body
that is the seat of the soul’s ability to feel beyond itself, to feel
its humanity, to experience the deep things of God and eventually the
very presence of infinite consciousness within. The whole spiritual
process that Jesus left to us is nothing more than a war between the ego mechanism of our personalities and our hearts and
allowing the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and diminish our ego sense
and take us to the deep things of God is how this battle is fought and
won or lost. As St. Clement wrote: Diminishing the ego sense and opening
our hearts (purification) is only the first step on the spiritual path.
But to me, it is also seems the hardest step The
spiritual goal in this life that so few of us attain or even strive for
is to have diminished our egos and opened our hearts to God, all of
humanity and existence as much as possible before leaving this world.
The reason that we see the gifts of the spirit around some of those that
we call saints and not mankind as a whole, is that these particular
saints have opened their hearts and diminished their egos to a point of
selflessness. The full power of the Holy Spirit will not function
through the ego or egocentric individuals. The reason for this is that
the full power of the Holy Spirit can only be used by the mind after it
has risen through the opened heart. True, we will sometimes see miracles
around ordinary people but this usually only happens at a point of
crisis where the thinking processes of the mind have collapsed and the
only thing left is the heart in its pureness crying out to God. THE NATURE OF THE MIND Many
times the visions we have in contemplative prayer are not of the outer
world but of our own nature. During one period some mental mechanism had
unlocked or moved away from me slightly. Instead of looking through the
mind at the world, I was somewhat apart from the mind looking not
through it but at it. It was as if I had become temporarily detached
from its usual influence. For a couple of days I went around touching
everything. The shift in consciousness made everything seem so much more
crisp and clear; almost like getting a new set of glasses. Before this I
had read that we are not our minds but this time, I for the first time,
felt it. As we progress on the spiritual path we will go through a
number of shifts in consciousness. Usually they happen so gradually that
we don’t notice them until we look back at how we were a few years
before. A
student wrote of this experience: "I know it’s not the end of the month
yet when I normally write to you but I did want to relate some recent
events to you and ask your advice. The Spirit seemed to be very busy,
moving between the crown of my head, the point between the brows and the
center of my brain, I couldn’t do anything else during my devotional
after the breathing but watch this movement. I think I finally had a
small experience of what you refer to as “looking beyond the darkness of
my own mind.” I felt myself falling away from my busy mind. I was sort
of looking back or sensing my busy mind from a place just beyond it
where the stillness was. I was feeling a stillness I had never felt
before. It only lasted a few minutes but my breathing practically
stopped during that time. It felt as though I had actually stepped away
from my mind." The
mind can be our best friend. By this I am speaking of the rational or
thinking part of the mind coupled with the subconscious. Properly
trained, it is what gives us the momentum, the inertia to find God. This
is what I mean. If the mind is trained to move in a particular
direction, its natural inclination is to keep moving in that direction.
If you properly train the mind to meditate between seven and eight in
the morning, it will try to do that every day. The mind seems to like to
stay in set patterns. Most meditators of even short length have had the
experience of not being able to meditate at their regular hour only to
have the mind at that hour, try to meditate in the middle of what they
have been distracted to do. It is for this reason that it is a much
easier path when we do our devotionals at regular times. For
those seeking God, the mind left untrained, left unbridled, can be
their worst enemy. The unbridled mind is constantly trying to seek
greater activity and sensation. Eastern mystics call it the monkey mind.
Try to calm the untrained mind too quickly or too strenuously and like
an outraged monkey it starts going into all sorts of contortions. This
is perhaps the greatest problem for new meditators. Training the mind
for quiet meditation needs to be a long gentle structured process, so be
patient and gentle with yourself and give yourself the proper length of
time to let your efforts come to fruition. The
main problem with the mind is that for most of us it distorts
everything it sees. For most of us our minds are not yet clear panes of
glass but are as St. John of the Cross explained; muddied and rippled.
Looking through the clutter we cannot see reality or ourselves as we
truly are. The subconscious part of the mind holds pain, fear,
misemotion, all of the distorted opinions and tendencies that from
childhood up have been imposed on us from others and society in general,
as mind stuff whirlpools. The whirlpools spin off ripples of irrational
opinions, fears, hatreds, compulsions and unworthy habits that
sometimes dominate our lives. Because of the minds programming, clutter
and distorted vision through which it is experiencing life, the soul
cannot see God or its true nature clearly. It gets even worse: It’s not
just the mind it is also the personality that controls the mind. THE HUMAN CONDITION The
problem is that for most, our personalities and even our basic views of
life are programmed into us and even seem to be etched in stone before
we are even old enough to do anything about it. Our personalities seem
to rest in some almost inaccessible part of the subconscious and are
extraordinarily difficult to change once the programming of our youth is
set in place. Each
soul’s personality is formed and acquires its basic opinions about life
and how it sees the truth of things by the circumstances in which it is
born and raised. For most souls, if they are born of conservative
parents, in a conservative environment with conservative peer pressure,
they will be conservatives and will have a thousand perfectly good
rationalizations as to why their conservative view of life is the only
correct one. But if these very same souls were to be born of liberal,
religious, nonreligious, other religious, racist, nonracist,
nationalistic or pluralistic families in a like environment they would
be born and raised of this new view and also have a thousand perfectly
good rationalizations as to why each one of these views of life is the
only correct one. This very basic fact should tell us straight out that
our basic views of life and how we think things should be, have less to
do with the truth of anything than they do with how we born and raised. The
problem is not the particular view or even whether it is true or not
but the irrational motivation behind the rationalization (even when the
rationalization is accidently correct) It is the us and them attitude
that our personalities always seemed compelled to create that is the
real problem. In every rationalization that the personality uses to
justify each of its own views as being separate and better than others,
no matter what the us and them may be about, the ego does little more
than strengthen itself, bind the soul to the material and close its
heart so that the soul is incapable of experiencing its true spiritual
nature. The
soul is not born into this world knowing its true nature or knowing
much of the truth of anything for that matter. It is not in every way
but mostly born with a clean slate. What we are all born with is an ego
mechanism (our personality) that gives us our individualism but also a
feeling of separateness and isolation from everything else. The
technical reason for this is that our egos are closed operating and
rationalizing systems (just like Windows or Mac for the computer) and
without the opening of the heart to reach out and feel beyond this
closed system, the soul is utterly incapable of feeling beyond its own
thinking processes and fixing its condition. There has to be an impulse
from outside of its own thinking processes to do this. (reprogramming by
the Holy Spirit, so to speak) The more tightly wrapped the soul is in
its ego, the more the soul feels itself to be the ego, the less
connected it will feel with everything around it and the more right it
will feel in its own rationalizations and the less able it will be in
finding any basic truth outside of its own thinking processes. The
ego and its wrappings around the soul, that is, the us and them
attitude of life that we so commonly see is the basic mechanism that
occludes the truth of existence from us, keeps the power of the Holy
Spirit from entering our lives and is the
single factor that traps the soul in the material. If we want to know
how long we will be trapped in the material universe and barred from the
spiritual realms, we just need to look at our us and them factor. You
know, how much smugness and delight do we take in the rightness of our
own views? How much distain do we have for other views that do not fit
in with our own? How much pleasure do we feel in the embarrassment and
pain of those that do not fit in with us? How often do we dismiss
others’ views before even hearing them because the person has the label
of liberal, or conservative, or not of my religion or race or
nationality? The what is meaningless: Whether it is politics, religion,
race or nationality; it’s all unimportant. It is only about the
mechanism. It is the egos mechanism of separation that binds and
occludes the soul from realizing the truth of existence and only this. IN EVERY ASPECT OF GOD’S CREATION, THERE IS ONLY US IN HIM. Paul said: (For now we see through a glass darkly but then), When we come to the point where our consciousness reaches out beyond our egos THEM WILL NOT EVER EXIST AGAIN. Anyway, this
mistaken feeling of separateness, this mistaken feeling of isolation
from the whole of existence is the basic human condition into which
every one of us has been born. We have been thrown out of the Garden into a world of thorns and thistles! Opening
our hearts and embracing our humanity and all of existence in God is
the only way that I know of to open the gate to the East and to walk
back into God’s welcoming arms. We must learn to reach out to the Holy
Spirit and God through our hearts. They and our own true nature in them
cannot be found through the rationalizations of the mind. And even when
we understand the mechanism, even when we know what the problem is, it
will still usually take a lifetime of meditation to have the spiritual
strength to go beyond it. If it was all that easy, we would all be doing
miracles. RELIEF FROM PAIN Even
when we are not old, many of us have a terrible time with pain and
illnesses. I am not saying that deep prayer will cure the problem but it
may help us cope a little better. Perhaps my own personal experience
will help explain. For several years I had been doing a type of
production work that strained the muscles on one side of my neck. The
muscles on that side became stronger than the muscles on the other side.
The long term problem that resulted was that when I would sit down for
my devotional time, (trying to sit with spine relaxed but erect) very
painfully my neck would continually be pulled to one side. My devotional
time was two hours in the morning and two hours at night but after an
hour the pain would become so intense that I could not handle it and
would have to stop. Eventually I decided to stay with it and put in the
whole two hours no matter how bad the pain became. For an hour the pain
kept building until it was almost unbearable and I would normally stop.
This time I focused more deeply and continued. Within a few minutes of
deeper concentration, I heard a small snap inside the center of my head
and was instantly numb from head to toe, resting in a wonderful peace. I
had not been lifted into intuitive consciousness to experience this. I
seemed to come as a natural course of deeper focus during my devotional
time. Throughout
the period of the neck problem, in my devotional time I would feel the
pain build for a while, then there would be a snapping sound in my head
and after for as long as I wished, I could continue my meditation in
total comfort and peace. Think of the blessing being able to do this
could be for those who are recovering from injury or illness. The most
important point of all this might be that if we are not strong enough or
willing to work through the pain or periods of spiritual dryness, we
may never have the opportunity to open ourselves to the blessings that
can result. A
student writes about her similar experience: "I just wanted to thank
you for sharing your contemplative journey and allowing others to learn
from you. I have practiced contemplative prayer for about 5 years and am
currently at the lonely stage of “nobody like me.” I have read most of
St. John of the Cross’ writings and also St. Teresa of Avilla. I am also
drawn to Brother Lawrence for I wish to do everything for the love of
God, for Himself, not for reward, experience or any other reason. That
is my desire, and the Lord is working in me by the power of the Spirit
to grant the desire of my heart. I
discovered, quite by accident one day that contemplative prayer does
relieve pain. I have had reconstructive surgery for a birth defect that
went unnoticed until I was 35. I now have fibromyalgia, an arthritic
disease of the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. It is an invisible
illness. and that is difficult sometimes, for I appear well, but
sometimes suffer excruciating pain. God
has taught me much through that pain, and continues to use it to
strengthen me spiritually. But when it is rough going, resting in the
Spirit virtually removes all pain except for the most vicious. And the
Spirit gives me the strength to bear that, until my medicine for attacks
begins to work. You are right about this in your contemplative prayer
lessons, it would be wonderful to share this ability with people who
would benefit from it. .......... I
thank you for the help you have given me. It is much food for thought
and prayer. I also thank you for your library resources. May the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit," THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE One
day, while resting in the intuitive calm, I became lifted by the
Spirit. It pulled my awareness above where it normally rests in my head
and I seemed to be floating above. From this awareness I looked down
into my body and it was as if I were viewing the basic structure of
creation, the smallest particles of existence. I could feel the spaces
between what seemed like an ocean of hollow spheres of light in constant
swirling motion. I
realized that over the years my eyes had not told me the whole truth;
for there is nothing solid in this universe. To exist in this universe
everything must be in constant motion. By the nature of this universe
everything must always be changing. This applies to our bodies, our
experiences, our lives, our loved ones, our world, our religions, our
social and political institutions; everything. In all of the manifested
realms of existence, including the heavens, nothing can or will stay as
it is. There is a saying that “This to will change” and it always will.
Trying to keep people and circumstances as they are is as futile as
trying to stop the changing of the tides or trying to swim upstream. It
is best to live with the ebb and flow of the Holy Spirit, the ebb and
flow of life. Another
time I was resting in the intuitive calm and became lifted by the
Spirit. The whole universe seemed to appear before me. It looked like a
giant Christmas tree ornament hanging on nothing. While in this state I
clearly understood that the whole of God is not to be found at the
center of the myriad of stars within each of the billions of galaxies
that make up the immense strands and clusters of matter and energy that
exist as the physical universe. The whole of the physical universe that
mankind feels is so vast is more like a small cluster of diamonds
resting on one of God’s fingers. (as if He had fingers) THE HEAVENS The
heavenly realms, each brighter and larger than the last, would make up
the other jewels that rest on God’s other fingers. This illustration is
appropriate for all of manifest creation is only a fraction of the size
of the Consciousness within and behind it. The heavens are not a single
place. Did not Jesus say “In my Father’s house there are many mansions?”
The heavens are more like a series of separate universes divided by
vibrations of consciousness. Mohammed speaks of consciously being taken
through seven heavens. The physical universe is at the bottom of the
rest and has the coarsest vibration. As
we develop spiritually, our consciousness will become higher attuned
and will increase in vibration. When our bodies die and we leave the
physical realm, the more higher attuned our consciousness, the more it
has expanded and developed in this life, the higher we will be able to
go into the heavens and the less restricted we are when we get there.
Only those whose consciousness is fully developed (Born again unto the
Spirit) can roam the series of universes known as the heavens at will
and fully choose how they wish to serve God. Sorry, that’s just the
truth of how it works. WHAT ABOUT HELL? I
have to agree with what Origen has written about no soul being lost
forever. I also do not believe that going to heaven is going to solve
all of our problems. So many people think that they can solve their
problems by moving away to some new place. Once they get to their new
location, they find that they have carried all of their personal
problems with them. I believe it to be no different when we leave our
bodies and enter the heavens. Our desires and fears will still be with
us eventually at some time in our existence needing to be worked out. I
believe it to be true that at the end of our lives we are judged by the
Christ but I believe that it is the Christ aspect within each individual
soul that on a much deeper level than the conscious mind, judges the
soul and decides how it is best for it to learn and progress in God’s
Kingdom. This may call for a period of attitude adjustment or pay back
if you want to call it that but never forever. Eventually all souls are
destined to climb to the top of the mountain in God’s kingdom. (When
each soul has learned what it needs to learn.) If the soul refuses to
learn, it only means that it stays at the foot of the mountain for a
longer period of time but I do not believe that any soul is destined to
stay at the foot of the mountain forever. St.
Isaak of Syria writes: “If something has become deeply united with your
soul, you should not only regard it as your possession in this life,
but believe that it will accompany you into the life to come. If it is
something good, rejoice and give thanks to God in your mind; if it is
something bad, grieve and sigh, and strive to free yourself from it
while you are still in the body.” THE EVOLUTION OF MAN’S SPIRITUAL NATURE The
journey to the realization of God as soul for everyone on this planet
and everything in all of manifest creation is actually the evolution of
the individualizing structures that manifest Universal Consciousness as
individual consciousness. On the physical level, the journey is the
process of the Spirit’s unfolding the spiritual capacities located
within very specific areas of the human brain and nervous system. These
areas are where the soul’s spiritual body impinges on the various nerve
plexus of the soul’s physical body. These very specific areas are the
gates to the higher levels of awareness that we must develop in order to
investigate the Kingdom of God and become aware of the soul’s true
nature. It is the Holy Spirit that opens these gates; or more
accurately, it is the Holy Spirit that stimulates the growth of the
nerve connections within the brain necessary for the soul using the
physical body to realize the higher reality. It is no different than
learning any new skill. The proper nerve connections must be in place
before the skill can be achieved as a part of oneself. The evolution of
mankind's consciousness is the gradual process of mankind's nervous
system becoming more and more attuned to the Holy Spirit. It
is quite apparent to me that the Holy Spirit is the guiding hand behind
the evolution of the human species. In another few hundred thousand or
perhaps million years the human nervous system will probably have
evolved to the complexity necessary for mankind to naturally (any
process that innately follows God’s will) and spontaneously develop an
awareness of the higher reality and gifts of the Spirit. When one
considers that the last species to rule this planet, the dinosaurs,
lasted 300 million years, a few hundred thousand to a million years for
the human species is but a drop in the bucket of planetary time. THE PROCESS OF DYING Ecclesiastes 12:1: “Remember you Creator in the days of your youth,” 12:5: “Because man goes to his lasting home and mourners go about the streets,” 12:6: “Before the silver cord is snapped...” Early
in my spiritual life as I would sit in silent contemplation I would
come to a stage where my awareness seemed to rotate inside my body: A
rather odd feeling because my body would be facing forward but my
awareness would be facing in a totally different direction. One day,
while in this state I looked down at myself. What I saw was two bodies.
My physical body and partially outside of it a silvery white spiritual
body. Connecting these two bodies is a silver umbilical cord. At death
this cord snaps and the soul’s relationship with the physical comes to
an end. 12:6: “and the golden bowl is broken...” (The halo, the same golden bowl that Zechariah writes of, the highest center of consciousness in the spiritual body) Many
years ago, again early in my spiritual life, I was sitting in a
library. I had been reading and my eyes were very tired. I was casually
looking over everyone with my eyes slightly out of their normal focus
when suddenly I began to see and electrical type field around everyone.
Close to the body it was bluish gray and it extended out in various
colors. I could see the field around each hair on a persons head.
Further out from everyone's head was a small field of gold; resting over
each persons head, just like an upside down golden bowl. On spiritually
advanced souls this center of consciousness is so bright that it is
seen as a halo. 12:6:”...and the pitcher is shattered at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well.” And the physical body can no longer utilize the Holy Spirit flowing through the channels and centers of the spiritual body. 12:7 “...and the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the breath of life returns to God who gave it.” A student wrote of an experience she had before reading my lessons:
"I must tell you that I read your contemplative prayer lessons and
found them inspirational. I had an experience a couple of years ago when
I was trying to understand how to become filled with the Holy Spirit..
....... Well upon waking one morning I experienced a light feeling and
looked down and saw myself and my husband asleep below. I rose through
the ceiling so fast I shot up through the sky and could see the stars
around in the dark night. I looked down and saw this silver cord that
you spoke of. I got frightened. And suddenly I was whisked away back
into my body. I woke up terrified and did not know who to discuss such a
situation with. I did not know of anyone that would understand what I
was going through at the time. I let fear get in my way and did not
realize that my seeking understanding was bringing me closer to the
answers that I was searching for. Well I stopped trying and now I
realize that there is nothing to fear. That someone else has gone
through similar experiences and that it brings you closer to the Holy
Spirit. I will start to pray in search of the Spiritual closeness that
is meant for me to endure and not let fear turn me away. I thank you for
your contemplative prayer lessons on the internet. I know it will reach
many who are seeking understanding of the Holy Spirit in their lives. THE VISION OF ZECHARIAH Zechariah writes of a vision that he had of the soul’s spiritual body while he was in a superconscious sleep state. 4:2: “I see a lampstand all of gold,” (The Spirit within the human spine, the tree of life) 4:2: “with a bowl at the top:” (The halo seen around the heads of the saints, the highest center of consciousness in the spiritual body.) 4:2: “on it seven lamps with their tubes,” (These
are the wheels of light spoken of by Ezekiel. They are the seven main
centers of consciousness in the spiritual body and their connections to
the lamp stand of the Spirit within the spine. They are associated with
the spiritual body where it impinges on the various nerve plexus located
along the human spinal column and into the head.) Just
as the physical body is not a lump of clay but a complex structure, so
it is with the soul’s spiritual body. In the physical body the main
distribution channel for the Spirit and grosser nerve forces is the
spine, the brain and various nerve plexus. In the spiritual body the
main channel for the distribution of the Holy Spirit and higher
spiritual forces is described in this vision as the golden lamp stand
with a bowl at the top and the seven lamps with their connecting tubes. The
seven lamps are the gates to the seven basic realms of existence (The
seven heavens that Mohammed traveled) within the Kingdom of God and the
seven basic states of consciousness that the soul travels through to God
realization. THE SPIRITUAL BODY'S CENTERS OF CONSCIOUSNESS “The
appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of
beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their
work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.” Ezekiel 1:16 On
many occasions during deep contemplation, I have been drawn to the
front at what mystic’s call the gate to the East, and have seen the
golden light of the Holy Spirit, as a wheel of light around the deep
blue light of the Christ aspect of divine consciousness and even the
white light of the Father. These many experiences with the light have
not come from super consciousness as seems to be the case with Ezekiel.
But then his visions seem a lot more dramatic then what I have
experienced. As
our consciousness in the physical body is located within the brain, our
spiritual body has it’s consciousness located within very specific
areas of its body. Each area of spiritual consciousness has its own very
specific vibration of the Holy Spirit and resulting color from this
vibration seen inwardly as a wheel of light that comes from each area.
(It is no different from splitting a full spectrum of what appears to be
clear light into its different vibrational colors.) Each area in the
spiritual body can be heard and seen inwardly as different frequencies
of vibration of the light of the Holy Spirit and can be felt outwardly
where these areas impinge on the physical body. I
was listening to some music when I began to feel the vibration of the
centers of consciousness along my spine and into my head. Each center
had its own unique frequency that would be stimulated and I would feel
physically when the music hit the note at which the center vibrated. I
felt seven areas of vibration along the spine and into the head, exactly
where the great mystic’s have written they could be felt. The area at
the base of the spine had the lowest frequency of vibration and the
areas increased in vibration with the area at the very top of the head
having the highest frequency of vibration. All areas seemed to vibrate
within the human range of hearing or perhaps its harmonic. As the
vibrations poured through me, moving up and down the spine with the
music, it felt as if I had become a musical instrument being played by
God. It
is obvious to me that it was the different colors of the wheels of
light and different vibrations of the Holy Spirit located within the
centers of consciousness in his own spiritual body that Ezekiel
experienced with his visions of light and sound. “And
I looked and behold, a whirlwind come out of the north, a great cloud,
and a fire enfolding itself, and a great brightness was about it, and
out of the midst therefore was the color of amber, out of the midst of
the fire.” Ezekiel 1:4 “as the appearance of a sapphire stone” Ezekiel 1:26 “And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it,” Ezekiel 1:27 A
student wrote this question about his experience: "Could you please
tell me of the significance of the appearance of a circle of white light
after doing contemplative prayer and the breathing process and later
the appearance of a smaller blue light in the center of the circle of
white light?" Answer:
The three main aspects of Divine Consciousness are seen as the golden
light of the Holy Spirit, the blue light of the Christ aspect and the
white light of the Father aspect. When seen as circles of light you are
probably looking into one of the centers of consciousness along the
spine or into the head as you practice your exercises. It is a good sign
of becoming more sensitive to the Spirit. Lmr THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST Revelations
2:1 “The one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks
among the seven lampstands of gold (The wheels of light of Ezekiel, the
seven lamps of Zechariah) has this to say...” 2:7: “I will see to it that the victor eats from the tree of life which grows in the garden of God.” The
description of the inner battle to return to the garden of unity in God
is written about symbolically in Revelations. We read that it is a time
of tremendous strife, turmoil, family separation and battle. But I
believe that it is a battle with our own bigotry, desires and
attachments (our family) that is being spoken of. When
the soul has fully opened the seven inner gates in its spiritual body
(the process of climbing Mt. Carmel, writings of St. John of the Cross)
and raised its consciousness to where it can no longer tell where it
ends and God begins; when it has won the battle with its own bigotry,
fears, desires and attachments (a many headed beast) and finally comes
to know itself as a part of the whole of life; for it and each of us who
fights and finally wins the inner battle, the Christ (as Self) will
have come again. CONSCIOUSNESS AS LIGHT “When
the mind is completely freed from the passions, it journeys straight
ahead to the contemplation of created things and makes its way to the
knowledge of the Holy trinity.” (Maximus the Confessor) There
is only God and God is Infinite Consciousness. In a myriad of forms,
only consciousness exists. There is a main trinity of aspects to this
Infinite consciousness that we call God that inwardly manifest
themselves to us as light. Usually
the first that we see inside of ourselves is the Holy Spirit. We are
standing on it, breathing it and our bodies and minds are made of it. It
is God’s hand extending to all individualized creation. (souls)
Becoming open to it is not the end of the path; it is only the very
beginning of a life long cleansing process culminating in the direct
experience and knowledge of God and soul. But of what value is the boat
that carries us to our Father if all we do is occasionally read the
operators manual and never get in the boat and let it take us anywhere?
The boat is the wonderful golden light and sound of the Holy Spirit. It
is here for each of us: If we will only reach out just behind the
darkness of our minds for God’s hand. The
light of the Christ aspect of God is a more subtle perception than that
of the Holy Spirit. It usually takes many years of silent prayer, when
the center of consciousness in the middle of the head, the Gate to the
East, begins to open, before it can be seen behind and within the light
of the Holy Spirit. (For me it took approximately twenty years of
meditation, three to four hours a day, before I could rest in it
regularly.) The Christ aspect is the cosmic intellect of Divine
Consciousness. It is that part of the triune nature of infinite
consciousness that using the Holy Spirit, directed the creation of the
heavens and earth, that is, all manifest existence. Souls are
individualized through this aspect of Divine Consciousness. All souls
are of the body of the Christ of God. This aspect is seen inwardly as a
luminous deep blue ocean of light. Only after we rest in the light of
the Christ and more, will we begin to understand the peace that Jesus
gives. The
Father aspect of Divine consciousness and true nature of the soul is an
even more refined perception of light than that of the Christ. It is
seen just behind and within the light of the Christ. Everything is
contained within Its nature. If you hear a description of its true
nature, that is not it. Its nature as each and all must be experienced
to be understood. It cannot be told. When this aspect is first seen
within, it will often look like a white star floating within the deep
blue ocean of light of the Christ. When we enter into the light of the
Father, it will expand as our true self into infinity and seem brighter
than a thousand suns. Over
the years, as we fall deeper and deeper into God’s arms, we are
actually experiencing deeper and deeper levels of Infinite Consciousness
manifested as light. ESOTERIC AND EXOTERIC SCRIPTURE From
the few examples of scripture provided in the lessons, it should be
obvious that there are at least two levels of consciousness being
referred to in the bible. We need to understand the reason for scripture
being written as it is. The tradition in that part of the world was
that the average person was not capable of understanding the higher
realities of God and was therefore only given surface duties to do: Be
good and follow the law. This is what the early Christians referred to
as the milk of the truth. Much of the bible was written as a parable. On
the exoteric side the scriptures were written as morality plays but
underneath they were explanations of the nature of existence in God.
This is evident from the first of it in the parable of the Garden of
Eden, where the soul looses it’s awareness of God, to the last of it in
Revelations, where we are told of the battle that the soul goes through
to regain full awareness in God. Everything ties together in between.
For good reason, the number seven is symbolically described throughout:
Seven lights, seven stars, seven candles etc. are all symbolic of the
seven centers of consciousness in the spiritual body, the seven basic
states of consciousness the soul travels through to the realization of
God and the seven heavens or basic realms of existence in God’s kingdom. There
are seven basic states of consciousness. Each state of consciousness
has its own vibrator rate. Each vibrator rate corresponds to one of the
seven realms of existence know as the earth and heavens. In the
spiritual body, there are seven main centers of consciousness that as
each is developed gives the soul access to that realm of existence. The
journey to directly experiencing God is the opening of these centers.
When seen inwardly the centers appear as circles of light within circles
of light. When seen in another they might appear as lights branching
off of the spine or as described by Zechariah as seven lamps on a golden
lamp stand; the Holy Spirit within the spine. I
remember going through the bible after having so many mystical
experiences and thinking ”experienced that, touched on that, now I
understand that etc.” Most of the spiritual revelations in the bible are
fairly standard experiences that we all will generally go through or at
least touch upon as we travel more deeply on the mystical path. When
understood more deeply, the bible is a very mystical book. NOTE The
first twelve years of my practices were really quite enjoyable: Visions
and higher states of consciousness, hearing and seeing the Holy Spirit
within, mildly feeling the movement of it, resting in intuitive
consciousness, coming to a basic understanding of the spiritual process
of soul development, coming to a basic understanding of the nature of
existence, (the deep things of God) developing a relationship with the
Holy Spirit, coming to understand how the mind works and beginning the
process of diminishing the egos’ influence: All pretty much standard
stuff that most practicing contemplative prayer at any depth will eventually experience. Well, that was what I look back on as my beginning years and things were about to change. BAPTISM BY THE HOLY SPIRIT For
many years I could not understand why the Holy Spirit was so active in
early Christianity and not in modern Christianity. In early Christianity
there were only a few thousand members of our faith but people were
being healed all over the place. There were occasions like Pentecost
where everyone was filled with the Holy Spirit. As I recall one of the
apostles placed his hands on a piece of cloth and this cloth was sent to
an ill person who was healed when it was given to them. Today we have
hundreds of millions of Christians but when it comes to the activity of
the Holy Spirit, Christianity is more like a barren desert with only a
rare oasis of the Holy Spirits activity seen in a very few special
individuals. Modern day Christianity has lost something that the early
Christians had and this is what it is. Luke 3:16: John (the Baptist) answered them all, “I baptize you with water…He (Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”. When
Constantine took over Christianity and Romanized it, our faith very
quickly lost its master-disciple relationships and with that the power
of the Holy Spirit being passed on from generation to generation. Before
getting into my own personal experience, I will try give an
understandable biblical analogy of the difference in path of the Holy
Spirit to enlightenment of the early Christians and the more
intellectual path to enlightenment of the modern Christian contemplative
prayer community. If
you will remember back in the lessons a little bit, I tried to explain
how the many visions and outright references to the lamp stand with its
seven lamps were actually references to the Holy Spirit within the spine
and head with the seven corresponding centers of consciousness in the
souls spiritual body: The circles of light of Ezekiel’s vision, the lamp
stand and the seven stars in revelations, the wheels at the well in
Ecclesiastes and on and on in the scriptures being the same analogy. As
the Holy Spirit breaks through the mental, spiritual and physical
debris in a center and begins to flow freely through it, that spiritual
center, that intertwined nerve plexus in the physical body, that lamp on
the lamp stand begins to radiate the light and heat of the Holy Spirit.
I have specifically said spiritual, mental and physical because all
three aspects of our being are so intertwined you just can’t separate
the spiritual process into one and not include the others. Now
the center at the top of the head, seen in Zechariah’s visions as the
golden bowl on top of the lamp stand and usually called the gate to the
East by Christian mystics, the sahasrara center in yoga, and seen as the
halo around a saints head in religious paintings, is the center of
consciousness that when opened gives the soul the direct experience of
its true nature in God; that which is called enlightenment, bliss,
nirvana, unity, born again, etc, depending on a person’s religious
affiliation. The other lower centers of consciousness on the lamp stand
do other things and bring other gifts of the spirit. In
the modern contemplative path to enlightenment, over a lifetime’s
meditation, usually only the centers of consciousness in the head are
opened and they will radiate their light, just like lighting a lamp on
top of a lamp stand. Those with opened eyes will see the light and if
close enough sometimes feel the heat of the Holy Spirit radiating from
such a person. Those who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire will start to feel the intense
flowing of the Holy Spirit, usually starting with the Holy Spirit
building pressure at the bottom of the spine and over the same period of
time as with the more intellectual path, the Holy Spirit will rise
through the spine opening each center, lighting each lamp, ending with
the center of consciousness at the top of the head (the halo, the golden
bowl), also bringing enlightenment. Same amount of time, seven times
the intensity as with the more intellectual path. With
the whole lamp stand burning, even those who walk around with closed
eyes, when close enough, will sometimes feel its heat. Baptism by the
Holy Spirit and the process of setting the whole lamp stand ablaze is
what the fire that John the Baptist said that Jesus would bring to us is
all about. The
realization is the same on both paths. Enlightenment is enlightenment,
the soul experiencing its true nature in God is the same regardless of
the path to it. And many on the more intellectual path feel that since
the realization is exactly the same that is not worth all of the extra
discomfort and hassle that opening each center of consciousness and
lighting all the lamps on the lamp stand brings. The
difference that I see is in the soul’s ability to help others around it
through the Holy Spirit: To baptize others in the Holy Spirit and have
the Holy Spirit take them to the deep things of God. The difference is
in the size of the Fire. I don’t care how much harder it is, the path
that Jesus left to us is not just a path of self realization for those
who can get there but of helping those around us with the power of the
Holy Spirit and passing this power on from generation to generation. Do
you recall the power of the Holy Spirit that was passed from Elijah to
Elisha? This passing on of the Holy Spirit is a very old tradition that
was included in but in truth existed long before Christianity and still
exists in some traditions outside of Christianity to this day. The Holy
Spirit is in every person on this planet. None of us own it but if
allowed, the Holy Spirit will take all of us to the one truth in God. THE HOLY SPIRIT AND FIRE, a personal experience I
had been practicing the prayer of the heart for about twelve years and
the breathing exercises for a couple of years when, a new friend told me
that when he was in the presence of a yoga teacher he knew, who
happened to teach the same breathing exercises that I was using, that he
felt the movement of the Spirit within. That year I went on a week’s
retreat to see the yogi. At the end of the week, in a very simple
ceremony, he blessed all attending by placing his hands on each person’s
head, (and I would imagine) silently willing (there was no fuss or
public emotional display of his abilities) or asking the Holy Spirit to
come into their lives. I thought it was going to feel like lightning or
heat or visions of light or something great. But not nothing! I had
averaged two to four hours a day in devotional time for twelve years. I
had averaged five to six hours a day in devotional time for the last
year and a half and still I left the retreat feeling very disappointed
that I somehow had not properly prepared myself for the meeting. But
the next day when I arrived home and started my regular devotional
routine, the wind of the Holy Spirit that Ezekiel and other prophets
allude to, began blowing throughout my body. The Spirit would
concentrate upon very specific areas along my spine and into my head.
During one devotional the Spirit seemed to rise up through my body;
gently bending my spine backwards, holding me like this for a few
minutes. As it continued to flow upward into my head, the Spirit flooded
into my eyes making them spasm mildly. Every
day during each devotional and even during the rest of the day, storms
of the Spirit began flowing through me. When the Spirit flowed into my
heart, it was as if my heart had been set on fire. It would burn and
burn. I have read of the saint’s referring to the fire in the heart. The
biblical scholars had stated that the early Christians were speaking of
religious enthusiasm. So much for religious scholars with no experience
of the Holy Spirit: Now I knew what they were really talking about. The
heat felt is from the intense cleansing action of the Holy Spirit. As
it clears obstructed pathways within the physical nervous system and
spiritual body preparing us for higher states of consciousness and the
gifts of the Spirit to come, we may feel heat throughout. I
would do my regular devotional routine and the Spirit would start
flowing into my heart. My heart would start burning and I couldn't get
it to stop. There would be so much energy that the burning would go into
my lungs and couldn't even take a comfortable deep breath. My
devotional routine was mostly the breathing exercises at the time and it
would get so bad that I could no longer do them. I would stop my
devotional routine and in a week or so the flowing would subside. Only
then could I could take a deep breath again and continue with my normal
daily spiritual routine. My
lungs went out on me six times that first year: The last time for
nearly a month. I went to a doctor and he could find no physical reason
for it. How do you tell a doctor that the Holy Spirit has really been
rough on you lately? I didn’t. I
was determined to press the flowing of the Spirit to the limit and was
not about to cut back one bit on my exercises. In my naivety I figured
that if I could keep up this pace, keep the Holy Spirit this active, I
would probably be enlightened in short order. So I called the Self
Realization Fellowship (kriya) yoga monastery where I had learned the
breathing exercises and asked for someone to send me diet instructions
for handling the heat and discomfort. I had read somewhere that adding
clarified butter to the diet would help. Instead
of a letter, the monk in charge of the spiritual practices of the rest
of the monks at the monastery, a brother Adonay or something like that
called me on the phone. I do not know what his position is called but
this monk rested in continuous non-duality, continuous Christ
consciousness. It is a blessing to ever even get to talk to someone like
this. Few of the greatest mystics that we all have read and admired
ever attained continuous non-duality. He was ever so kind but was quite
blunt about my situation. He said that I was not yet spiritually
advanced enough for the hours of my routine and that if I didn't cut
back on it I would permanently damage my nervous system. So much for my
ego. (One more time.) When I cut back on my routine the problem never
happened again. Now many years later I am doing more hours than what I
had to cut back on then. It all works out in God's time, the Holy
Spirit’s time for us not in our time for us. This might be one of the
hardest things to learn. It has been for me. WHEN A LAMPSTAND BURNS BRIGHTLY In
the middle of all this “stuff”, I was attending a class on the
comparative study of the bible and the Bhagavad Gita, the most sacred of
the Hindu scriptures. At the end of the class, we would all hold hands
and the person conducting the class would offer a prayer. After a few
weeks, I began to notice that a lady attending the class would always
make sure that she would be holding my hand at this time. She would
almost push people out of the way to make sure of this. Finally, I
pulled her aside and quietly asked her what was going on. She said that
she was sensitive to the Holy Spirit and wanted to avail herself of it
flowing from my hands: That she had never felt it in anyone that strong.
All that I knew was that my hands would get very hot at this time. Well,
this was the first indication that I had ever had that there might be
an outward manifestation that others might feel of the inner flowing of
the Spirit that I had begun to feel. Now, I want to stress that as far
as I still am aware, there was no sudden change in my consciousness. I
had not suddenly become a saint or something. Before this, I had always
thought that one would have a gradual evolving consciousness that others
might begin to feel over the many years of a person’s increasing
spirituality. It just didn’t work out that way (for me). Without any
noticeable increase in spirituality, the Spirit started flowing and
others sensitive to it started feeling it: No change in attitude, no new
holiness, no major shift in consciousness for this to happen. The
spiritual master broke the dam, (baptism by the Holy Spirit) the Holy
Spirit flowed and when close enough, others begin to feel it: So much
for holiness and the Holy Spirit. It’s
not quite as easy as I just stated. It is as St. John of the Cross
stated. Illumination is not dependent on the light. The light is there.
Illumination is dependent on how well we have prepared ourselves, how
well we have cleaned the window to our soul. Most who are baptized in
the spirit by a spiritual master feel nothing at all. Some will have
flashes of light or electrical type feelings in a few days. In my 40 yrs
on this path, I have only met one other person who has had the baptism
by the Holy Spirit by a spiritual master initiate the rising of the Holy
Spirit up the spine and this was with a different yogi than the one I
had gone to see. What does that make: One in thousands certainly, maybe
one in a million. But perhaps I should get out and see more people.
Maybe there are more out there than I think. I hope so. Experimenting
with my new found ability, (A child playing with a new toy?) I found
that if I had a person take my hand and place it over their heart and I
put my other hand on their head, in a few days they would often call me
about the visions of light and electrical type sensations that were
running through their bodies since a day or so after I had done this. I
guess this is baptism by the Holy Spirit. It’s just that I didn’t feel
newly holy with this ability: Same old me with all the same old
problems, same inner demons I had always had and now a new problem from
the outside began to develop. During
these periods of the intense flowing and building of pressure of the
Holy Spirit in my nervous system, I had total strangers come up to me
asking about what they were feeling when around me. I once had a
minister come up to my car that I was meditating in and ask about the
white light he saw surrounding it. I found that I could just look at a
person sensitive to the Holy Spirit, mentally ask the Holy Spirit to
come into their lives and sometimes they would immediately feel it. One
time I did this with a sales lady who immediately broke into tears, went
into some kind of catharsis and totally lost it in the middle of trying
to sell me advertising for my small business. It turns out that I
needed to be more careful with asking the Holy Spirit to come into
someone’s life than I thought. Once I had a lady I had never met and who
nothing about me, walk behind me three or four times while I was
sitting on her floor doing some repair work related to my business. She
then came up to me and asked who I was that I made her feel like she
did. I had another lady I had never met and who nothing about me, just
stand there looking at me and finally come up to me and tell me she had
been waiting for me to come into her life (To save her from what, I
still don’t know?) And many more less dramatic experiences like this
when the Holy Spirit was building intensely in my nervous system. These
people knew nothing about me but had felt the radiating of the spirit
and had asked about what they felt. I had never told any of them that
these things might happen. How do you tell a stranger you have never met
“Oh by the way if you feel odd sensations around me, it’s just the Holy
Spirit and please don’t make a big deal about it? The
strong flowing of the Holy Spirit within is what it is and I see no
need to make a big deal about it. I have been around long enough to know
that this intense flowing that people felt was not me, just something I
have carried around with me occasionally. And I do mean occasionally
because when the Holy Spirit is not building intensely, I might as well
be a lump of clay standing next to someone. Until a person’s
consciousness is stable at the end of this cleansing process, ending in
enlightenment, the flowing of the Holy Spirit and other’s feeling its
influence will not be stable. Even with some looking at me as if I were
something special, in understanding this, it has not been that difficult
in not buying into the “oh look at how special I am thing”. It’s not me they are feeling, it’s the Holy Spirit and it’s not consistent. Understand,
I’m not going on an ego trip here in relating these experiences. You
just need to know that I actually do know from my own personal
experience what I am talking about in this next statement. I
know as one of the basic facts of my life and want to firmly stress
that the flowing of the Holy Spirit and the ability to help others
through the flowing of the Holy Spirit is not in any way an indication
that the person with this ability is more special than anyone else, more
knowledgeable than anyone else, more kind and understanding than anyone
else, more spiritual than anyone else and especially not any more moral
than anyone else. Throw out the window all of your assumptions about
how holy or righteous you think those people must be who experience the
gifts of the Holy Spirit. No one on this planet is even close to
perfection. Anyway,
if you are progressing on this path and people feel things around you,
get over yourself. It’s not you they are feeling. It’s the Holy Spirit
and it’s just passing through you and only will continue to do so if you
keep your ego under control. And
if you have this wonderful charismatic teacher with supposedly special
gifts, you know, the one that is driving a new Bentley while you’re
driving a 10 yr old Honda Civic with bald tires and he is asking you to
put all of your money or your panties on his alter of wonderfulness: You
need to take a long step back and take a good look at what’s really
going on. On
the other hand, if you are so foolish as to throw these things in his
direction, it’s on you and you will have earned your empty wallet and
the heartbreak that you are destined to receive. Do you really believe
that you are the only one so special to him? Give me a break and put
yourself on a very long list. Truly spiritual people are not those you
see strutting on pulpits or TV showing off (fake) miracles and healings.
Truly spiritual people are as ordinary acting as you can get. It’s only
our egos that need to put on airs and show the world how special we
are. Well, that’s the end of my moralizing, take it or leave it. WAVES I
do not know how it has been for others like myself. In 40 yrs, I have
never even had a conversation with anyone experiencing the intensive
buildup of the Holy Spirit that I have experienced. I am not saying they
are not out there: Only That I have never talked to anyone about it who
has any experience with it. But for me the buildup of the Holy Spirit
and the cleansing process has come in waves: Seven main nerve plexus
along the spine and into the head in the physical body, seven connected
areas of consciousness associated with them in the spiritual body which
means for the Holy Spirit to start flowing through each of these there
has been a period of intense building and then flowing of the Holy
Spirit necessary to break through of each of them. The
intense flowing of the Holy Spirit has usually built for about six
months each time at a very specific area starting at the bottom of the
spine and over the years broken through each area, eventually rising
into my head. It seems like many feel it around me during this build up
and after the break through there is a period of a few years of mild
activity in between with no one feeling it when around me. You
might think that the Spirit would choose special moments of devotion or
significance to make its most dramatic moves but that is not my
experience with it at all. The Holy Spirit seems to have little or no
concern about what we think it should do. It
was Thanksgiving Day and I had just finished my third helping of
everything I could hold. This is just one of those wonderful traditions
we all need to do at thanksgiving. Completely full and content, I went
outside to be by myself and enjoy the moment. (You know, to figuratively
go belly up to the sun like an overstuffed lion) I sat on the porch for
just a few minutes. I must
inject here that I knew the breakthrough was coming sometime soon. I
could feel the spot of heat building at my throat for about six months
and I had been running full body heat on and off all day long for a few
months. I had been spaced out like with an allergy problem for as long
and was feeling the occasional periods of nausea that had always come
with the past buildups of the Holy Spirit: All of the normal symptoms
that happen and I had come to expect as the nervous system tries to cope
with the intense build up of the Holy Spirit within it. Back
to Thanksgiving day. Everything I have ever read on the subject has
always said that heavy food just kills the Holy Spirit’s activity, so it
wasn’t like I was looking for anything at that moment. As I sat there,
my sinuses cleared with the air flow becoming perfectly even between the
two nostrils. Now, that’s a good sign that the Holy Spirit has just
started to enter the central channel in the spine and is moving upward
through it. I began to feel the movement of the spirit breaking through
the center, the nerve plexus at the throat. Flowing upward from there,
the Holy Spirit spread out into my ears and then it poured into my head,
feeling like some kind of an electrical storm. It then flowed into my
eyes causing them to spasm mildly. Well, that’s how I sat, filled with
turkey and trimmings in the stomach and filled with the Holy Spirit in
my head. At
this time I have been through most but not all of this cleansing
process. The Holy Spirit has risen through the centers of consciousness
in the spine and is currently working in my head. After this there is no
further place to work on or clear. (that I know of) I
do not know if the intenseness of the Holy Spirit will continue for me
after the cleansing process is finished (with even strangers sometimes
feeling it) or whether it will be more like the years in between the
buildups (with no one next to me feeling it). I do know that when I was
standing next to the yogi who baptized me in the Holy Spirit, I felt
nothing but when he put his hands on my heart and head, well, that was
an experience that changed the course of my life. Then again I have read
(but not met) of a very few enlightened where you could not even be in
the same room with them without feeling the Holy Spirit. And totally on
the other side, it seems the majority of enlightened: Most of those in
Buddhism, Zen and even the Christian contemplative prayer community have
taken a more intellectual path to enlightenment and seem to have no
personal relationship with the Holy Spirit or ability to help others
through it. Since I do not seem to have a single intellectual bone left
in my body, I will have to leave a full explanation of the intellectual
path to enlightenment to those others who are familiar with this path. THE END OF THE BEGINNING How
can I tell the best and not tell the worst. But then, sometimes the
worst was in truth the best or perhaps even when it doesn’t feel like
it, the worst is the best for us after all. Sounds Zen but then who but
the enlightened knows what one hand clapping sounds like. It’s just that
I have changed my mind about telling the next experience so often that
it leaves me in a fog. So
until I change my mind on it again: It has been twelve years since
first becoming open to the Holy Spirit. With my family circumstances, I
have learned to meditate in my car, before work, at lunch, after work,
add infinitum. I have meditated for months outside on my porch, in below
freezing weather with a blanket around me, out in the desert at above a
100, in noise, in every distraction, in the rain because I could and there’s a snap in my head when I meditate and my body goes totally numb. I
have studied yoga, hard core. Buddhism, Taoism, the Sufis, all hard
core studies: None of this new age soft stuff. For the last few months
the Holy Spirit has been flowing up my spine and I suppose for a
westerner I thought that I was something else and of course totally
humble. But ask me how much sympathy I have for those who need
everything to be perfect before they can meditate. Ego, ego, ego, a
beast with so many heads. Cut off one and two grow back. A
few months later the yogi that had baptized me in the Holy Spirit has
asked me to work at his retreat answering student letters from around
the world. (Answering student letters: I don’t have to put myself out
anywhere or in front of anyone. I don’t have to keep explaining that
just because you feel the Holy Spirit when you are around me doesn’t
mean that I am anything special. I can do this.) And on this day I have
decided to agree to do this. Why? In the last twelve years I have never
met a single Christian who has ever seen, felt or heard the Holy Spirit
within themselves. Not one. Yoga is where I belong. As devotees to the
Holy Spirit, yogis are more like the original esoteric Christians than
modern day Christians are like original esoteric Christians. I quit.
Kids are on their own, I am so tired of being treated like a second
class citizen at home, meditating in my car because my fundamentalist
wife freaks if I meditate in the house: You know, opening the house to
the devil and such. I am so out of here. Next morning, deep in meditation, this matter of fact little voice, soft like my closest friend: “No you won’t.” WHAT! I said. I
don’t hear voices. They don’t talk to me. They don’t tell me what to
do. Not once, not once in the last twelve years of meditation has a
voice spoken to me or told me what to do or in this case what not to do.
I have thought over this decision for months and now that I have made
up my mind to answer student letters at the yoga retreat and I hear
this. This; this is not a vision. This has nothing to do with intuitive
consciousness. This is a stupid little voice trying to sound like my
best friend but is really just my subconscious pushing me around. I
haven’t even left Christianity and already I’m having withdrawal
symptoms. I
said to myself: “This is coming straight out of my subconscious and I’m
not going to tolerate it.” I gathered up my strength and pushed the
voice out of my head willing it to die a horrible death. I don’t just
want you dead. I want you to suffer: The indignation of having my
subconscious pull something like this and all.. I
finished my morning meditation feeling quite proud at how powerful I
knew I really was: Me, Lawrence Michael Richardson, the thought killer. Next morning; deep in meditation, matter of fact but soft like my closest friend whispering in my ear: “No, you won’t.” In disbelief, my exact words to myself were: “Oh, my God, ………….I’ve got a real problem here.” Maybe
you have not been around enough to know how horrible this was to me but
I knew the full implications of having my subconscious pull something
like this. This voice brought to my mind the kind of mental instability
cult leaders experience when they do terrible things they think God is
telling them to do. I
remember saying to the voice: “I am not going to change my mind over a
decision I have thought about for months. This will be to the death of
one of us and I don’t die easily.” This was not a fight over what to do or not to do. This was an all out battle over who is control of my mind. Does
Jim Jones or David Koresh ring a bell? So I said to it: “Whatever you
are, you might as well kill me now because I’m not going there.” I took
every single ounce of mental strength that I had and again pushed the
voice out of my head. It didn’t work. A
black cloud descended on me. Yes a literal black cloud of the most
incredible grief I have every felt in my life, along with a vision of
stabbing Christ in the back enveloped me. I sat in tears for the
remaining two hours of my morning meditation refusing to change my mind.
Yah, almost 40 and that powerful guy I just described sat in tears over
a stupid little voice in his head. No, I wasn’t sobbing, just tears. Next morning: Same thing only worse. Again, I refused to change my mind. More tears. This
went on for seven days: Each day this black cloud wrapping itself
tighter and tighter around me. Each day, the grief getting more and more
invasive into my mind. It felt like a death shroud. After seven days of
this, it got to a point that I could not bear the grief. I remember standing in my yard not being able to get my feet to work. I
broke inside. I’m the boss of my own destiny just died. Tears streaming
down my face, (well, that was normal for the last seven days), I looked
up into the heavens and whispered to God, “I give up. I don’t know what
you want of me but whatever it is I will do it.” Immediately
the grief lifted and I was filled with the Holy Spirit in a way I had
not felt since the Spirit had come from that rip in the heavens twelve
years earlier, wrapping itself around me, bringing with it such
incredible comfort. Again words fail to describe what I felt, frozen
there, standing in that yard for I don’t know how long with eyes turned
up to the heavens. I wonder what the neighbors thought? I
did not have enough experience with the flowing of the Holy Spirit
(only a few months) to understand how powerful it can be as it brings
into fruition the deepest needs and desires of those souls who have
become open to its intense flowing: What the soul is born to do on this
earth so to speak. Perhaps what the psychic saw when I was five. The
truly spiritual powerful (and I’m not putting myself there) have to be
very careful with the play of their minds, for the Spirit will
immediately start to bring this play into reality. It is how it works
with the flowing of the Holy Spirit and those open to it. Ok,
I just told God I would do whatever He wanted from me. Evidently, you
wanted me doing something other than answering student letters at a yoga
retreat, so what now? You know, a little help here God. I’m just
treading water for a few weeks now. But the truth was I was so glad that
God wasn’t beating up on me that I was happy to take a rest. Two
months pass and I have just been lifted into intuitive consciousness
during my morning devotional time: You know the intuitive state of
visions and prophecy and such of the prophets and early Christians.
Before me is standing the saint from India who brought the breathing
exercises to the West that I practice. He had died a number of years
earlier and over the years, I had asked for his blessing often before
beginning my breathing practices. He stood looking at me but never
spoke. Thoughts just formed in my head. “I will always be with you but
you are not meant to be in yoga but to stay in Christianity and teach
what you know and here is where you need to go to find others like
yourself.” And then he disappeared. This
vision was not a go out and save Christianity from itself speech but
more like, go do your little part in the present unfolding Christian
spirituality and you will find your place. Less
than a year later I have been baptized catholic, my godfather, the
priest that baptized me, has asked me to be his spiritual advisor and I
am just finishing the first of the lessons that another priest has asked
me to write for his course in Christian mysticism. The
lessons will eventually be put on the web and I am doing for Christians
from around the world what I had been asked to do at the yoga retreat,
answer letters, now email from around the world, with questions on the
path and giving spiritual advice. A few thousand people read these
lessons every year and I have received letters of gratitude from as far
away as India, China, Japan, Australia and from all over Europe and the
Americas. People have written and asked if they could use parts of the
lessons for college treatises, if it was ok to use parts of the lessons
in their web sites and an ex-catholic monk who rests in continuous
nonduality asked if he could use quotes from what I have written in a
book he was writing. For
12yrs I could not find a single Christian who understood the deeper
relationship possible with infinite consciousness and with one little
nudge from the Holy Spirit, Ok maybe not so little, and less than a year
later, there seemed to be interested people everywhere. I am still
amazed that such a simple story has generated this kind of interest. But
the truth is that it says much more about the world wide spiritual need
than about anything I might have to say. But
in looking back upon this time in my life: Was the whole thing nothing
more than a mental or spiritual meltdown caused by the initial rising of
the Holy Spirit through the spine? I have read of that and I can live
with that. I fought so very hard to stay in control to a point where I
could no longer function. But I was so thoroughly and completely
defeated that pieces of my shattered ego must still be laying on that
lawn. I have wondered if the person before the person who was told to
stay in Christianity and teach what he knew is even the same person two
years later. Certainly what was left of my ego was never to be the same.
Call
it coincidence if you want. I can live with that. Don’t think for a
second that I am so foolish as to believe that I have been chosen by God
to do anything. And the truth is I really don’t care about the how of
it. Pick which ever version you like, or create your own. It is not how I
have gotten to where I am in life that I care one cent about: It is the
feeling of absolute rightness of place that tells me that I am where I
need to be: Doing my little part in whatever the Holy Spirit would have
me do. And this is the story, my little drama of how I came to teach in
Christianity and write these lessons. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I HAVE EVER LEARNED Unlike
the experience with the Holy Spirit that you have just read, here there
was no singular point where I broke inside. After a number of years and
being humbled by the Holy Spirit to the point where my own strength was
no longer enough, there just didn’t seem much left in me to break. My
only hope for not only continuing on this path but also in just
existing, seemed to rest in learning to live through God’s strength, His
grace. That’s an awful easy thing to say: Learning to live through
God’s grace. The first thing every single person reading these lessons
is going to say is “Of course I live through God’s grace.” Well,
mystics don’t call the period leading up to actually learning to live
through God’s grace as the greatest part of our being as “the dark night
of the soul” for nothing. To complete the journey to the direct
experience of the awareness of the presence of God in our hearts and
souls as an actual physical presence and not just some emotional or
intellectual concept but as the greatest part of our being, we will need
to have come to a point where there is only God’s grace for us. Only
then, will we actually come to feel it as a part of ourselves. Only
then, through God’s strength, can we complete the spiritual journey. As
the individual circumstances of the dark night of the soul are
different for every mystic who progresses far enough along the path to
go through it, I have no need to go into my particular circumstances. The
end of the experience is always the same anyway: That is learning to
live through God’s strength as the greater part of our being. The
spiritual path is often like being a wave in the ocean that is
travelling on a solitary journey. There must finally come a point in
this journey where the wave, through whatever circumstances, will be
forced to
look deeply enough into the depths of itself to become aware that it is
the whole ocean that is supporting it and allowing it to do what it
does: That it has no strength of its own: Not only that it cannot
complete its journey by itself but also that it never even started its
journey by itself but only through the strength of the ocean which has
always supported it. This is learning to live through God’s grace. For
me, visions, comfort from the Holy Spirit, intuitive consciousness and
other spiritual experiences have come and gone. True, they have affected
me in lasting ways and I hold them in my memory but the feeling that
came at this period in my life of being incomplete without God’s grace
has never left me. It lingers in my heart like a very subtle and
delicate sorrow that I am not ungrateful for. The reason for this
gratitude is that with this feeling in my heart it seems to allow very
little room for ego in any spiritual experience I have ever had or in
anything I am currently doing in my life and I am very thankful for
this. I
believe the holding of this feeling in my heart to be my further
understanding of the sorrow that you don’t want to get rid of that the
Desert Fathers tried to get their students to find within themselves two
thousand years ago. At least it feels like that. Before, it was all
about my experiencing God and the Holy Spirit but in truth this is an
ego thing, a solitary journey. It was me experiencing spirituality. I
had a very limited and naïve understanding of God’s grace. But through
the years I have learned that God’s grace is not something that comes
from up there to down here as in God is forgiving us of our sins: Nor is
it a result of devotion or praise that comes from down here to up
there. Nor does God give it to some and not to others. God’s grace has
always been here for everyone. It will always be here for everyone. You
can’t earn it, it is already given. It is the supporting essence of
God’s being. It is not something He gives but the very substance of what
He is. It exists everywhere and supports everything. We cannot take a
single breath or stand on our own without it and even when we feel like
we are standing on our own, it’s only because God’s grace is supporting
us and we simply aren’t aware of it. The most important thing we will
ever accomplish in life is to learn to live through it. St Teresa of Avilla said this: ” in such spiritual activity as this, the person who does most is he who thinks least and desires to do least:
What we have to do is to beg like poor and needy persons coming before a
great and rich Emperor and then cast down our eyes in humble
expectation.” This is relying on God’s strength in our spiritual activities and learning to live through God’s grace in our lives. With
how the Holy Spirit had come to me, with the comfort it has given me,
it is understandable that I would be devoted to it but devotion to the
Holy Spirit is not the recognition of God’s grace. The Holy Spirit is
God’s hand that is usually the first thing He extends to us and it is of
course an aspect of God’s grace but not the whole of it. I have been
blessed in that from the beginning I have always felt the Holy Spirit as
a physical presence but only as a separate physical presence from
myself. If we reach out for God’s hand, the Holy Spirit will take us to
God’s deep things and understandings and eventually to rest in God’s
arms as the supporting physical presence of God’s consciousness as the
greater part of ourselves: Not separate from us but as us. This is a
whole different and much higher level of awareness and the culmination
of God’s grace. Praise
is not going to earn us God’s grace. Belonging to the correct religion
or sect doesn’t mean a thing in God’s grace. We already have it. We just
need to be aware of what we already have and learn to live through it.
That’s the whole of the spiritual journey: To come to live through God’s
strength as the greater part of ourselves, felt first as a belief and
an emotional feeling but eventually as the physical presence of God in
and as greatest part of our souls. There is no more than that. There has never been more than that. There will never be more than that. CONCLUSION to the introductory lessons I
don’t know that I would want everyone to have to go through the dark
night of the soul or whatever the Desert Fathers put their students
through to be able to hold God’s grace in their hearts as a sorrow you
don’t want to get rid of but both experiences only seem to come when we
are humbled to the point of despair, stripped of our egos and there is
only God’s grace for us. I don’t know that everyone needs to be humbled
like this. Perhaps both experiences are a uniquely Christian attitude:
Although I have heard other traditions confirm our Christian belief that
to complete its journey, the soul at some point must come to rely on
God’s strength and not its own. I
have come to think that it is best and also easiest if just to whatever
degree we are capable, first we try to become aware of God’s grace in
our lives as the starting point of our journey: Then, through holding
this attitude in our hearts, to experience the deep things of God and
other gifts of the Spirit if they come but not as the focus of our
spirituality. For
many years my prayer each morning has been the recognition that it is
not me in charge, not me doing anything but trying to get the little
part of myself out of the way and rest in God’s grace as the greater
part of myself. I am content in Him. I
have found that there is a curious and wonderful thing that happens
when we look to God’s grace and the Holy Spirit begins taking us to the
deep things of God. The smugness in our own beliefs begins to disappear.
There is no place for this in God’s grace. The disdain for other
beliefs that do not fit with our own also begins to disappear: No place
in God’s grace. Eventually, as we give ourselves over to God’s strength
as the greater part of ourselves, we are not sure that we are absolutely
right about anything. The only thing left that is absolute is the
absolute majestic ever growing wonder of all of Gods’ creation, the deep
things of God and the simple things alike. And perhaps for a few others this single prayer that keeps repeating itself over and over in my mind: FATHER, DO WITH ME AS YOU WILL. LM Richardson |
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THE FULL SET OF LESSONS Along
with the introductory lessons, this book contains a detailed (how to)
explanation of the breathing exercises that I practice, a self-healing
exercise, additional advice on this path and student experiences with
Q&A. It can be found on Amazon.com.. Just type in (Practical Lessons
in Christian Mysticism) and you will pull up the book. It is in the
kindle e book format so you will need to have a Kindle or have
downloaded the free Kindle for pc app. The
introductory lessons that you have just read are also on Amazon.com for
$.99 under the title (An intimate journey with the Holy Spirit) if you
want them in that format. lmr If you have any questions or comments on the lessons, I can be reached at lmrichsn@yahoo.com |