Mechanics and Consciousness

Sometimes there seems to be a war among healers, between the masters of mechanics and those who seek to function from the realm of pure possibility. Many are the modalities of subtle energies, of chakras and meridians. and few are the scientists of the potency of consciousness and its possibilities.

The healing systems run the gamut from those who work with nutrition and homeopathic remedies, to those that work with Psionic devices including crystals, radionics, tuning forks, etc., and those who work with personified energies as spirit guides and those like myself who (though not exclusively) explore the less tangible realms of pure consciousness and are content to get what we get in the spirit of investigation.

This last realm of consciousness exploration is as yet barely investigated and historically the province of the mystics. And as one interested in healing, I search it not because it has yielded the the most surgically precise results but because my path is to know the source condition of creation and the potential of Spirit, to use some rather nebulous terms.

Consider the view that bodies are cocoons and meant to be discarded when their job is done. A radical idea to many. In Eastern traditions this is related to the description of the world as becoming mirage like - a subjective reflection of the rarification of the gross energy components and eventual objective dismantling into the more subtle "rainbow body."

In this view we are neither a light body nor chakras or a meridian system any more than we are a brain. All these things are perhaps only machinery built to do what we have forgotten how. Not that this game is without merit - children love to play with toys and creators love to invent. Yet none of this machinery nor its mechanics nor the yogas or systems of healing supersede the "I" of the "One we are" in it's omnipotence.

Using an ancient model; the Bliss body, the bodies mental and emotional, or of subtle energies or of flesh are temporal and thus but an optional expression of the play of "I" - which some assure bears no energy signature nor is it in need of a form to assert its creative potency.

Being attentive to the bodies - their sensations, emotions, and attitudes -  will reveal exactly what needs to be released - into THE RELEASE OF THE BODIES THEMSELVES. Bodies, celestial or biological are a delicate balance of opposing forces - of stressors. Perhaps this is why Jesu said the body(s) are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. The temple however is in the end a housing, a landmark and the Spirit is not diminished in its passing away. Even the ego is but the machinery of mind whereas the Self is existent a priori as Peace.

And pragmatically, from the point of view of mechanics there is no end to the things we find we need to heal. We may even make them up if we run out of things to fix, to keep the game going - to maintain the tension sufficient for life.  The way out is discovered in the resolution of the issue of identity - Self knowledge. Some get this faster than others. Self knowledge reveals a freedom from mechanics, yet also a freedom to create or re-create  conditioned experience. Neither view is incorrect if awareness assumes response-ability - assumes cause.

 It does take a tolerance for insecurity to venture into this area of the unknown. Our identity is affixed to the realms of mechanics (even if it is called quantum mechanics) Yet in the end this intuition of absolute freedom is what I follow as a contemplative or healer.

A Letter to Online UU's.

... I recently spent some time seeking the appellation of UU Lay Community Minister through the UUSCM with a designation of Spiritual Director.

This however is not the first time I have served as a commissioned minister or practiced the art of Spiritual Direction and as a committed UU, I would like to share... Why I continue to choose to focus on the path of Spiritual Direction in Community Ministry.

There is a cartoon I have recently been informed of that lovingly skewers the UU habit of avoiding depth in worship. The cartoon shows two doors — one is labeled “heaven” and the other is labeled “lectures about heaven.” The UUs in the cartoon are going to the lecture.

The Spiritual Director has chosen the door less traveled through. In my case this meant keeping a pledge for over 40 years to dedicate 10% of my 24 hour daily endowment of time to the practice of contemplation and related disciplines. There comes too a time when the desire is natural to "pay back" or "pay forward" the grace with which one has been blessed as a student beneficiary of several mentors and open oneself to the responsibility of the guidance of others as one has likewise been guided.

Having experienced deep healings along the way I have noticed many parallels between the physician and the guide as healer. Like a physician, a guide of experience and training stands ready to help guide others in choosing spiritual health. In connection with this the archaic term of "cure of souls" is most tellingly accurate and in keeping with my communities articulated vision of helping to heal the world. Alas the word is not always followed by the walk as the realities of institutions come into play.

And it is to be cautiously noted that Spiritual Direction like medicine, is a practice and not a science and a practice of relationship as well as anything else. The guide and the student need to form a fit of a high order for the relationship to succeed. This is not something that any one pastor nor one director can be expected to provide a diverse community. And yet the first item to attend to is the filling of the transformational space vacated with the near exclusion of the contemplative path of prayer.

In the Protestant traditions the idea of the priesthood of all believers is emphasized to the detriment of loosing the empowering model of one on one guidance. Like self diagnosis in the medical model, this is not recommended. In healing as in personal transformation, a partnership between guide and seeker is the ancient pattern. And far from being the authority, the guide, like a good physician, is there to encourage and assist the seeker in making good choices based in a larger perspective of knowledge and experience.

That Aldous Huxley could find in the diversity of religion a "Perennial Philosophy," suggests there is a common path of verifiable experience from which we may draw and more accurately than devotion to our favored  ideologies. The guide is a companion on a cross cultural and human journey taken together where both are committed to the greater well being of the seeker.

This is in contrast to teaching and preaching which leaves the seeker with little of a support structure - where diagnosis and treatment are left to fate and typically a return to what is comfortable and familiar - which is no permanent change at all - is the result.

Having taught a Religious Education class on the teachings of Jesus based in his native tongue of Aramaic and continuing that as a monthly offering called Red letter Sunday, I am all to familiar with this intellect based model to deepening spiritual insight . Change is here subject to memory and memory is short lived as the motivating excitement wears thin and thus any required accompanying discipline is dropped.

Even a change in belief not grounded in experience and being left unexamined invites a repeating pattern of avoidance of core issues on which hinge real transformation. And if transformation of the individual as well as society is not our goal, then I submit we have betrayed the foundations of our faith.

This seems an oddity to me in a religious movement that gives much lip service to diverse forms of worship. True there are religion based groups in some congregations, such as those who identify as Buddhists in my home "church." Yet the contemplative path is far more expansive than any single spiritual tradition. Expansive enough to string many solitary practitioners and small groups together in a networked thread to produce a necklace of rare and enriching value reflecting light on the human condition.

The contemplative path is also a path suitable for some of the "nones" and the "un-churched, those who have become disenfranchised with religion, and as an active yet non creedal spirituality the contemplative path frequently draws the young. Of this I am a witness as I am surprisingly affiliated now with a liberal evangelical community that thirsts after contemplative wisdom from sources outside their doctrinal tradition. Ah the flexibility of contemplative prayer to sooth the critical mind.

For this reason alone - for an infusion of new blood - UU congregations would do well to open its walls to this neglected aspect of the Spiritual traditions and reaffirm a history of cutting across the limitations of religious sectarianism which in one form of another has appealed to many who now identify with Unitarian Universalism.

The Mystagog

I belong to no religion.  I am a mystagog - a teacher of religious mysteries - a guide to the "Perennial Philosophy." This rare term marks the uniqueness and flexibility of an interfaith viewpoint. There are no academic degrees offered on this path, a path that must be supplemented by a dedication to contemplation and a rigor of examination that does justice to those who have gone before.

I study the wisdom teachers - the gnostics, the mystics, the shamans and healers rather than the theologians. They offer insights and methods of approach into the Great Mystery as an experience rather than belief.

The first and obvious teaching is that something' is happening, but we do not know what it IS. That something is generally called Reality. However in practice, any description that may be put in words is of necessity incomplete or fanciful error. Thus it is said: those who speak do not know, Those who know do not speak.

There are benefits in approaching reality as an experience rather than a concept. Some of the benefits reported by mystics traveling this path of experiential knowing include greater peace, joy, love for the whole of creation, healing and the perception of beauty - often said to be highest knowledge of G-d's imanence that a mortal can behold.

Reality is that which IS and is prior to any interpretation and not adulterated by interpretation. This has been expressed as: before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water. The only difference is the clarity of the light by which we see the duty or dharma (law) of the present moment. In Tibet this light is called rigpa and is said to be "clear" to indicate this clarity of perception. Reality is a mater of what you can experience. (What we cannot experience is of course unreal to us.)

The attainment of this clarity is traditionally and logically by removing the obscurations to it. Thus the simplest way to realization is one of releasing all concepts which filter and color our direct perception. This includes primarily the persona's or masks we identify with and are organized as "ego" that occlude the core of what subjective essence or nature there may exist to be disclosed in the process.

In the Christian tradition this has been expressed by Jean-Pierre de Caussade as:

"We attain to God by the annihilation of self. There is no way more secure than that of abandonment [releasing, letting go - the "annihilation" called nirvana, or "emptying" called sunyata (Buddhist), and the "passing away" called fana (Sufi)] and none more easy, sweet, clear, and less subject to illusion and error. God requires an empty space even in the most remote recesses of our nature in order to communicate Himself to our souls. In the degree in which we banish all that is not God, we shall become filled with God...."