I do not call myself a Christian, except perhaps in the “Catholic” sense of Universal. If Christ is eternal, so must be the Christian message. If we can not see this (in comparing the religions of the world), then perhaps we have misunderstood the original message.
If the church denies the “perennial philosophy” and insists on reinventing the meaning of the ancient symbols the majesty of G-d will not be served.
‘Ehieh asher ehieh’ is the supreme mantra of the Hebrews – I am what I will be. Many times did Jesu say I AM and … so he was/is. We to as “gods” (small g) are to cultivate this I AM, and cultivate our perfection in the image and likeness of G-d.
The beauty of affirming I am love, joy, beauty, etc., all attributes of G-d and thus of ourselves, is that we get to release all the obscuring spirit-energy blockages that prevent that from being true. Yet the effort keeps us in growing into our true nature as G-d perceives it and Jesus encourages us.
The "I" (Great Self) of G-d, can be usefully described as holographic, each of us revealing, potentially, the unity (alaha) of that whole, while appearing separate. The “I-maker” (ahamcara) is the desire for uniqueness, differentiation of identity, which too is G-d's desire in the search for Self knowledge.
In this series I lay out a spiritual path of healing (omitting the details for this blog). For me they are one and the same. Yet I am not a system builder, but a model maker a guide through some landscapes of the spirit. The systems of “techniques”are already in place and ready for ones "personal touch" of adaptation. My quest is for the perennial philosophy (the eternal Christ) and as importantly the perennial practice; the core teachings of the wise (exemplified for me especially in Jesus).
I do not overly concern myself with healing the body. The body and the outer circumstances of the soul will take care of itself ... in time, if the Spirit (life energy) is cleaned and made holy, which is foremost an inner work.
To be sure there will be important differences of opinion in what I write, but a healthy Christian agnosticism is not a betrayal of the Faith. There is so much we may never know in our lives, but this is no reason to presuppose, as many religious do, that we can find all the answers in a single book. As St paul said; all scriptures may be suitable for edification, even if all are not equally valuable.
Among the scriptures I read from is the book of nature, the living creation. It is time for science and religion to put away their petty quibbles, as with the advent of Quantum theory, the scientist must become philosopher too and give up the rigid materialism, which has been its blinder, just like the literalism of the fundamentalist has been theirs.
I hope you will find reason in these pages as well as faith.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Church as Healer VIII
At some point soon aftet my intitiation into my core ‘hesychastic’ (described earlier) practice and experiencing the profound bliss of G-d’s Presence. I asked G0d where do I go now. I had a strong impression to look across the street from the corner on which I was standing. There stood a full Gospel Church and my first impression was no, not that.
I had visions of fundamentalist narrow mindedness (which indeed was evident in some people). Still there was a strong sense of YES and I obeyed. Within two minutes of walking through the door, I just started to cry as feelings of isolation from the community of G-d were revealed and healed through encountering the high energies of praise and faith.
I think more healings can happen spontaneously in the churches today, yet I know that my healing began long before I entered the door for I had dropped my shields blocking G-d's spirit and let go some time before. In fact, I believe the healing happened when I released my BS (belief systems) earlier. The tears and conscious manifestation of that healing was just the confirmation.
So the better part of healing is the correction of all the energetic disturbances and resistances which hold our suffering in place. Then we can receive it. Once this is released the unfolding drama of the healing itself can be allowed to complete.
In practice however, a healing ministry points to a commitment by the church to healing in the first place, to assisting people in the practice of engaging and releasing the spiritual core of whatever they may be facing (and at root all things are spiritual for as St Paul says; we war not against flesh and blood.
Therfore we must be prepared to teach people the spiritual laws and processes of healing the soul in some safe and formal fashion as a part of the ministry itself; getting the word out that there are those present that can help in the restoration of the soul and its powers. There is in my own mind no difference between healing and growing in spiritual maturity.
And if as a church we are not about this, what are we about? Many I have seen are content to be social service organizations that teach their own brand of theology on Sundays. And people are leaving the church on account of this attention to the body and neglect of their souls growth in intimacy with G-d.
I know these are strong words and I'm inclined to temper them when the message is heard. Actually I'd rather not try to change the church at all, it seems a stubborn institution and there are more receptive ears on its fringes. Yet it is not my will that is to be done here.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved.
I had visions of fundamentalist narrow mindedness (which indeed was evident in some people). Still there was a strong sense of YES and I obeyed. Within two minutes of walking through the door, I just started to cry as feelings of isolation from the community of G-d were revealed and healed through encountering the high energies of praise and faith.
I think more healings can happen spontaneously in the churches today, yet I know that my healing began long before I entered the door for I had dropped my shields blocking G-d's spirit and let go some time before. In fact, I believe the healing happened when I released my BS (belief systems) earlier. The tears and conscious manifestation of that healing was just the confirmation.
So the better part of healing is the correction of all the energetic disturbances and resistances which hold our suffering in place. Then we can receive it. Once this is released the unfolding drama of the healing itself can be allowed to complete.
In practice however, a healing ministry points to a commitment by the church to healing in the first place, to assisting people in the practice of engaging and releasing the spiritual core of whatever they may be facing (and at root all things are spiritual for as St Paul says; we war not against flesh and blood.
Therfore we must be prepared to teach people the spiritual laws and processes of healing the soul in some safe and formal fashion as a part of the ministry itself; getting the word out that there are those present that can help in the restoration of the soul and its powers. There is in my own mind no difference between healing and growing in spiritual maturity.
And if as a church we are not about this, what are we about? Many I have seen are content to be social service organizations that teach their own brand of theology on Sundays. And people are leaving the church on account of this attention to the body and neglect of their souls growth in intimacy with G-d.
I know these are strong words and I'm inclined to temper them when the message is heard. Actually I'd rather not try to change the church at all, it seems a stubborn institution and there are more receptive ears on its fringes. Yet it is not my will that is to be done here.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Church as Healer VII
Our healer is the Holy Spirit; literally the breath set apart. Figuratively, by this breath life was breathed into Adam. Counselors are taught to watch the breat as an aid for understanding the clients process, some forms of therapy teach specific breathing patterns. The religions of the world have long taught the importance of the breath. We ar told to slow the breath, to stop the breath or speed it up. We are told to simply watch the breath, or count the breaths. Christian contemplatives synchronize the breath with meditative phrases as some yogis do with mantras. The scientific research increasingly shows abundant benefits for such practices, yet the advanced adepts know a couple of secrets the beginners do not.
There is an energetic parallel to the breath. It is the breath set apart. It is the life force and the carrier of vast amounts of information related to our interconnectedness with all life, as well as our personal history. It is intelligent beyond comprehension as that which “runs” or subconscious process and gives insight in our creative and spiritual lives. When one comes to see all our moods, emotions, attitudes and thoughts as simple forms of this energetic breath and can enter the stream, the flow of it without resistance, one truly begins the spiritual path of return to our reflected image of G-d.
All suffering is a disturbance of this spirit-breath, and the joy of the Lord is found in its uninhibited, spontaneous expression as it restores the soul to a state of peace and unity. This life force is the true breath that needs to be monitored and it is available to those who would not otherwise consider themselves mediators or contemplatives, but simply lovers of life.
There is another secret of the wise who have gone before us. This is to proactively engage the witness consciousness – you – the observer of the breath in cultivating a joyous attitude. This secret is found in the Buddhist anipanasati sutra, that continual exhorts to “gladden” the mind while engaging the outer breath in contemplations. The Tantric master Pundit Acharya - who helped bring a scientific view of yoga to the west - says to fully enjoy breathing, or you are doing the exercise wrong. The Taoists say cultivating the inner smile is the first and final practice of a sage. And thye contemporary Christian mystic Bernadet Roberts says that when all her ideas of G-d had vanished she found a smile and knew that the smile, the one smiling and the one smiled at were one.
These are two key insights of my own practice, which has earned me a reputation as mystic and healing coach. They could hardly be simpler, yet yield results most profound. Assisting people in integrating these into their ordinary life is the basis of my free coaching practice patterned after the ideal of the “cure of souls”. It is a ministry of love.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved
There is an energetic parallel to the breath. It is the breath set apart. It is the life force and the carrier of vast amounts of information related to our interconnectedness with all life, as well as our personal history. It is intelligent beyond comprehension as that which “runs” or subconscious process and gives insight in our creative and spiritual lives. When one comes to see all our moods, emotions, attitudes and thoughts as simple forms of this energetic breath and can enter the stream, the flow of it without resistance, one truly begins the spiritual path of return to our reflected image of G-d.
All suffering is a disturbance of this spirit-breath, and the joy of the Lord is found in its uninhibited, spontaneous expression as it restores the soul to a state of peace and unity. This life force is the true breath that needs to be monitored and it is available to those who would not otherwise consider themselves mediators or contemplatives, but simply lovers of life.
There is another secret of the wise who have gone before us. This is to proactively engage the witness consciousness – you – the observer of the breath in cultivating a joyous attitude. This secret is found in the Buddhist anipanasati sutra, that continual exhorts to “gladden” the mind while engaging the outer breath in contemplations. The Tantric master Pundit Acharya - who helped bring a scientific view of yoga to the west - says to fully enjoy breathing, or you are doing the exercise wrong. The Taoists say cultivating the inner smile is the first and final practice of a sage. And thye contemporary Christian mystic Bernadet Roberts says that when all her ideas of G-d had vanished she found a smile and knew that the smile, the one smiling and the one smiled at were one.
These are two key insights of my own practice, which has earned me a reputation as mystic and healing coach. They could hardly be simpler, yet yield results most profound. Assisting people in integrating these into their ordinary life is the basis of my free coaching practice patterned after the ideal of the “cure of souls”. It is a ministry of love.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved
Church as Healer VI
When we think of healing, we think of something being broken. Yet before the brokenness there is health. We are designed to be healthy, naturally so, unless something interferes with that. It is like in Genesis where G-d creates and in the end calls it ALL good. Our soul health is our goodness in a sense. Our goodness is the first creation. Something must separate us from that natural goodness before we require a correction or restoration of any sort.
Healing is that correction, a restoration of the goodness of the soul experienced as love and happiness. That is our nature, to experience this is our right and there is a part of us that knows this as our spiritual heritage. We have lost our way back to the goodness, which is G-d within us. If religion only existed to do this one thing, return us to our original health and wholeness, religion would serve G-d, and Peace would be within our global reach.
Instead we have used religion to divide us, to splinter us socially, and psychologically. In so, to justify our madness, we have made of G-d a power apart from us and our world, and denied the image of G-d within us.
We see before us a material world only and have disconnected from the spiritual energy which governs it – the living waters that connect us one to another and are the carriers of information as spiritual and psychological knowledge which reveals the true causes behind our sufferings, healing our memories, emotions and disorderly thoughts.
We do not need to be told to love when the waters of life flow freely and cleanse us, for we no longer feel separated. We do not need to have G-d preached to us for we now abide in a presence of Life’s immanence, and for what would we trade that.
This spiritual water for which we thirst is as experiential as our heartbeat and not merely a metaphor, nor is it a gift we receive at the altar. It is as near to us as our breath and needs only to be pointed out, as we would point to the stars and show a child the belt of Orion in the night sky. The tihas come to see the realty behind the symbols we hear in church. The time has come to make church an instrument for teaching the healing G-d so wants to give to us.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved
Healing is that correction, a restoration of the goodness of the soul experienced as love and happiness. That is our nature, to experience this is our right and there is a part of us that knows this as our spiritual heritage. We have lost our way back to the goodness, which is G-d within us. If religion only existed to do this one thing, return us to our original health and wholeness, religion would serve G-d, and Peace would be within our global reach.
Instead we have used religion to divide us, to splinter us socially, and psychologically. In so, to justify our madness, we have made of G-d a power apart from us and our world, and denied the image of G-d within us.
We see before us a material world only and have disconnected from the spiritual energy which governs it – the living waters that connect us one to another and are the carriers of information as spiritual and psychological knowledge which reveals the true causes behind our sufferings, healing our memories, emotions and disorderly thoughts.
We do not need to be told to love when the waters of life flow freely and cleanse us, for we no longer feel separated. We do not need to have G-d preached to us for we now abide in a presence of Life’s immanence, and for what would we trade that.
This spiritual water for which we thirst is as experiential as our heartbeat and not merely a metaphor, nor is it a gift we receive at the altar. It is as near to us as our breath and needs only to be pointed out, as we would point to the stars and show a child the belt of Orion in the night sky. The tihas come to see the realty behind the symbols we hear in church. The time has come to make church an instrument for teaching the healing G-d so wants to give to us.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved
Church as Healer V
My meditation practice and my understanding of Spirit is derived directly from a visionary presence. As I cried out what now Lord, I sensed the words “spell my name in your heart, always.” And I saw the Hebrew letters YHShVH, written in my heart in Hebrew script – right to left. At that moment I became an heir to the hesychastic tradition of the prayer of the heart. As the days passed I repeated this name of Jesus, in Hebrew, every waking moment and soon, the letter Shin began to flare up in a glow and a sense of joy bubled up from my inmost being. There was a daily increase in the intensity of this joy to the point that Joy was nearly my sole and continuous awareness. So powerful was this experience I spent the rest of my life trying to understand it, and now share it as an achievable end.
I read some advice as a boy that to understand what an author had written it was not enough to know the meaning of the words; one must enter the spirit of the author. I practiced this skill reading volumes of quotations and trying to assume the viewpoint of the writers. It was an interesting experiment in “shape shifting.”
The Hebrew mystics say that G-d used the letters to make everything that was made. I strove to enter into the sprit of these 4 letters and they have been my guiding light over the years. Therein I found a secret of the tetragramaton as a kind of formula of a Great Law and the presence of G-d as person within it.
The Law is a law of manifestation and healing, a continuous pulse of life-death in a cycle of becoming, to which everything is subject. It is the Truth of religions; variously called the Way, Dharma, Tao, hiranyagarbha, tathagata-garbha and myo-ho. It is the stuff of all things and its intelligent operation – its reason (logos). I choose to call it simply energy, meaning that which does the work. Albert Einstein originally called it “subtle energy”. Many have tried to define this energy but it is ultimately indefinable, and like an author, demands we assume their viewpoint to know the story properly. This has been the goal of the mystic, the gnostic and the enlightened or liberated ones of the ages. This is the truth of YHShVH as it has translated in my experience.
And why should it seem so strange to find this core insight buried in all th major faiths, if even St Augustine could say that what we call Christianity is the oldest religion. This is why the Apostles Creed says Christ is, was and always will be, for wherever mankind speaks with G-d there can be only one truth to tell, though ears may hear it differently. When I hear my own churches slogan “Christianity for everyone”, this is where my heart goes, to this boundless truth.
As for myself, I make no claims in this regard, other than being a reporter of what I have been shown. I am a student of this teaching as much as anyone, And this is a teaching to be lived rather than understood in a formulaic fashion.
Over a couple of decades I have been blessed to discover a core practice which makes all of this intelligible as an experience of Divine Presence and healing of the soul. It is a synthesis of ancient models of the soul/spirt and modern pioneers of “Energy Psychology,” bringing healing and the spiritual path together where they belong. It is my sole wish to make this available without commercializing it, but I can not do it alone.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved
I read some advice as a boy that to understand what an author had written it was not enough to know the meaning of the words; one must enter the spirit of the author. I practiced this skill reading volumes of quotations and trying to assume the viewpoint of the writers. It was an interesting experiment in “shape shifting.”
The Hebrew mystics say that G-d used the letters to make everything that was made. I strove to enter into the sprit of these 4 letters and they have been my guiding light over the years. Therein I found a secret of the tetragramaton as a kind of formula of a Great Law and the presence of G-d as person within it.
The Law is a law of manifestation and healing, a continuous pulse of life-death in a cycle of becoming, to which everything is subject. It is the Truth of religions; variously called the Way, Dharma, Tao, hiranyagarbha, tathagata-garbha and myo-ho. It is the stuff of all things and its intelligent operation – its reason (logos). I choose to call it simply energy, meaning that which does the work. Albert Einstein originally called it “subtle energy”. Many have tried to define this energy but it is ultimately indefinable, and like an author, demands we assume their viewpoint to know the story properly. This has been the goal of the mystic, the gnostic and the enlightened or liberated ones of the ages. This is the truth of YHShVH as it has translated in my experience.
And why should it seem so strange to find this core insight buried in all th major faiths, if even St Augustine could say that what we call Christianity is the oldest religion. This is why the Apostles Creed says Christ is, was and always will be, for wherever mankind speaks with G-d there can be only one truth to tell, though ears may hear it differently. When I hear my own churches slogan “Christianity for everyone”, this is where my heart goes, to this boundless truth.
As for myself, I make no claims in this regard, other than being a reporter of what I have been shown. I am a student of this teaching as much as anyone, And this is a teaching to be lived rather than understood in a formulaic fashion.
Over a couple of decades I have been blessed to discover a core practice which makes all of this intelligible as an experience of Divine Presence and healing of the soul. It is a synthesis of ancient models of the soul/spirt and modern pioneers of “Energy Psychology,” bringing healing and the spiritual path together where they belong. It is my sole wish to make this available without commercializing it, but I can not do it alone.
© Arjay, 2009, All rights reserved
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