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The Heart's Religion...

4/20/2021

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                                                                              Fr. Bede Griffiths

                                        "The ultimate goal of humanity is a communion of persons in love."

Fear is indeed the mind killer (see Dune by Frank Herbert): but, fear does not simply kill the mind, for first, fear must annihilate grace in the heart... Death by fear working in the heart is most often a living death: a slow motion dying... but grace resists fear, and grace would replace fear with the icon of a smile...

It is simply not true that we are powerless: it is true, though, that death would have us shrivel up and die -- before our death! So what do we do? How do we cultivate grace? And why should we dare the dream of the saints and open our heart to loving without limits?

​As Fr. Bede taught, there is a space within us: a space located in our heart, in which the entire Universe dwells (yes, you read that correctly!). It is mystically possible to slide outside of time and space, into that still-point, into that pause between breaths, and to entertain Reality... Reality is really the cohesion of cosmic inter-being... wherein Consciousness mingles with the breath... 

The beauty we see in clouds, mountains, rivers, trees, birds... in the curve of breast... in the swell of muscles... in every part and particle of creation: but especially in the evidence of intelligence and the gathering of life-wisdom... This beauty is the revelation that we seek: the divine food for our very hungry heart...

​The Sufis teach that the core of that which is really Real is hunger: more specifically, it is the hunger, the yearning, implanted in every heart (indeed, in every part and particle of possibility) for the union of lovers: human being with Divine Consciousness: Divine Consciousness with every human being: and both embracing all sentient being and all matter into Oneness... All separation is transcended into a breathing Sacred Unity...

​Fear is the mind killer precisely because it seduces us into "thinking" that separation is Reality: to "think" there is even the possibility that there can be an "other"... Whenever one sees through the veil of fear, all that remains is radiance, is ecstacy... This Kiss is the Face of God... Don't think that I don't know what I am writing about!

Sometimes daily, occasionally weekly, and if grace was wild with blessing, it might have been a month between moments of knowing full-well that this moment, this breath could very well be my last... At first, with the first sixty-five sandwiches that Byron, Jane, and I took out the broken-glass strewn lot in skid-row Salinas, I was a do-good'er: high ideals completely untested (and un-taught) by life experience... and so it went, until...

​The day I had a migraine: a holy-hell of a migraine... and yet, I had soup and bread to serve... There was a long line of men, mostly men, with a few homeless women and kids in the mix waiting: I had the pot of soup on the serving table along with a bucket of sliced french bread... my head was reeling with agony... someone, as I dipped the ladle into the soup-pot, walked from the back of the line up to the front, demanding that he be served first... I simply muttered through my fogged-mind that he had to stand in line like everyone else: and to top it off, I added, "I'm not serving anyone until you go to the back of the line."

At that point, he puts his nose right next to mine and says, "I've killed before and I could kill you right now. Serve me first." All of the folks within earshot were backing up saying they didn't care and for me to go ahead and serve him first... I said "No." Grace obviously intervened: he walked out... Young and foolish, with migraine blazing, I kept hoping he'd come back to continue our confrontation...

​He didn't. So, after ladling about a hundred bowls of soup, I went outside to look for him: there he was! He was sitting on the sidewalk, with his back up against the faded yellow of the old building. I walked up to him. He spoke first (now here's your chance to acknowledge that there just might be a "God", a Divine Consciousness): he said, "I've been sitting here praying for our reconciliation." Well, if you've read this far, you can imagine the rest of the story... 

Pick your fear, pick your enemy: is it a Muslim, a black, a Mexican, a lesbian, a Christian, a Jew, a Democrat / a Republican, whatever / whomever... How are we supposed to treat others? There are no others... The heart's religion is the communion of love: it is for this that we have each and all come into being: nothing else! We increase our capacity for loving by loving! By serving and building justice, peace, equality, nonviolence and compassion into our lives, and into all of our social institutions, we are making ready the "way of the Lord"... The Lord is not coming with a raised sword in the clouds: rather, as a thirteen year old boy getting shot... as a man with an officer's knee crushing his neck... as an immigrant fleeing fear... as a trans girl despairing of acceptance...

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You see, the Lord is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end: as the beginning, so too, the end: it is always all about loving: becoming agents of our own transfiguration by practicing the Lord's Way: whatsoever you do to the least among you, you do the exact same to me... I was hungry and you fed me... Blessed are the poor... Blessed are the peacemakers... Go, and do likewise... 

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Paramahansa Yogananda...

4/8/2021

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                                                              (Not a Photo of Paramahansa Yoganada)


I was in High School, in my old hometown of Salinas, when in my psychology class a "hippy" handed me his copy of Herman Hesse's novel Siddhartha. Pat Mata was soon to become my best friend... I devoured that book like a hungry man would devour the finest meal: and everything suddenly and radically changed...

With a new clarity, the world about me took on a radiance I had not considered possible. Yes, the country was neck-deep in an immoral war in Southeast Asia: students were being beaten and killed: blacks, browns, and Native Americans were protesting and creating revolutionary paradigms: and gurus from India were inspiring a spiritual insurrection... Ram Dass published his immortal book Be Here Now... Neem Karoli Baba's face imprinted in countless hearts... Swami Satchidananda, the guru of Woodstock fame, had us standing on our heads and meditating at UC Santa Cruz... My Mom was hoping that I would join the Army, but instead I was studying Mahatma Gandhi -- I filed as a Conscientious Objector, and pondered Canada or prison... My hair grew down to the middle of my back and I walked everywhere barefoot... Krishna Consciousness chanting and recipes and George Harrison's My Sweet Lord was sort of the hippy summit... and I was climbing...

​I don't remember if I skipped school or just happened to go to the Library (source for unending miracles)... Loving to read biographies, I slow-scanned the shelves... picking up a book here and there and putting them back with no idea as to the goal of my search... Nearing the end of the last shelf, I was in the "Y" section... leaning down, a book caught my eye: Autobiography of a Yogi... pulling it out of the tightly packed books, for the very first time I gazed at the face of my guru... I more than devoured this book! It's so hard to believe, but for fifty years now that book (in numerous editions) has been in my hands, in my day-pack, or first on my book shelf... And so it still is...

​It was with sacred intention that I continued and lived my yoga: oneness with the Divine is the immanent / transcendental goal and fundamental reality (the only real Reality)... I could become a Franciscan and Catholic Worker because God is Loving... I could quit my job and cook soup in my home for folks on the street... I could start a CW House and California Non-profit... I could organize several versions of a Soup Kitchen: open shelters, start summer camps for farm worker kids, get volunteer doctors and nurses to staff a free health care clinic, work with California State University, Monterey Bay to organize a community garden employing homeless folks, invite college students from across the country to come to Salinas and volunteer in an Immersion Program because God is Loving...

​While I do offer you my profound encouragement to get a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi for the delight of your heart and soul: I have learned that techniques of meditation, while useful, are only and at best, a reflection of what is already yours: perfect beauty and perfect love-possibilities... it is all about unfolding the real Reality in your life: by the Works of Mercy, Peace, and Justice (best summarized by the word compassion)... it is all about understanding that this unfolding is the most ordinary thing in the world -- it is exactly in the ordinary moments of the ordinary day that the revolution and evolution of consciousness occurs... You gotta want it, you gotta serve it, and you gotta set it free!

It is now about ten years since I left my heart in Salinas... only to be resurrected in River Falls, Wisconsin... and Paramahansa Yogananda is here as well... what I most miss about my vocation days is the great gift of having lived in intentional community: I loved having a "clutter" of folks hanging around, eating together, working together, reading together, praying together and loving and, of course, hurting one another... but always beginning again... and living the dream of Dorothy Day's eternal wisdom-laugh: Beginnings are always exciting...

​I'll conclude with some words of Yogananda... but first, I know that a lot of folks live day-to-day with doubt or with troubling realizations of the many idiocies of religions: nevertheless, if it matters to you at all what I write, I affirm that we are all completely enveloped by the love-without-limits that is best described as Divine Mother... Now here are the words of my guru: Saints of all religions have attained God-realization through the simple concept of the Cosmic Beloved. Because the Absolute is "without qualities" and "inconceivable," human thought and yearning have ever personalized It as the Universal Mother... "taking refuge" in God, and "flinging oneself on the Divine Compassion" are really paths of the highest knowledge... (Autobiography of a Yogi)

And finally, as to the above photo, meditation (loving attention placed in one's heart) is the core teaching and practice of yoga and really, of all mystic paths: it is all about tuning one's entire being to the wave energy of the Universe... it is all about what Ram Dass wrote: Be Love Now... She is becoming love, I want that as well, maybe you, too?

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Sacred Timelessness...

4/7/2021

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I woke up this morning, and per my usual, just wanted to linger in holding Michelle... However, the clock inevitably continued its march into the day, and as I have learned, every minute past 5:15 am, puts a strain on my morning chores... Something similar could very well be your morning experience, am I right?

​I'm unsure as to where I came across the above comic, although it looks like something from the New Yorker... in any case it always makes me chuckle... but, I jumped from that chuckle into a distubing thought: time is the rapist of our life... I knew many women (and also some men) who had been raped: quite a few as kids, and many more as young adults, and even some among the elderly... One can never make light of this horrible invasion of personhood... As I age, there is the inevitable slide into feeling one's age and with it the cultural temptation to accost time with the accusation of having stolen from me, my life...

And yet, my heart is telling me a very different story: nothing has been stolen from me: I am not a victim of life... rather, I am knocking on the door of sacred timelessness... And no, I'm not going to play some sort of spiritual game like "just believe in Jesus and when you die you'll wake up in heaven!" Theologies that justify all the deep and flying shit of life as the required pass or fail course we all have to take in order to qualify for an eternal life of endless adoration are selling a salvation distortion... That they are deadly serious, puts me so far out of their salvation circle that I can only grab my hat and walk away as an always outsider...  

​Never mind that Jesus said the kingdom of God is within you... and, of course, there are the parables like the one in Matthew 25 that comes with an entry fee for the kingdom, which turns out to have little to do with salvation theology and instead everything to do with revolutionary action: whatsoever you do to the least person among you, you do the very same to me... I other words, there will be a lot less deep and flying shit if we really just love one another and practice justice... Look around you! the kingdom of God is right here, right now! so one could easily imagine the Master proclaiming as he walked around, as he took on odd jobs to pay his rent, and as he shared food, stories, poems, and songs with his friends...

Jesus was an outsider. Buddha was an outsider. The Song of Songs is all about mutual adoration and great sex in the woods. Mohammed was an outsider. Krishna herded cows and goats, outside of course. Lalla the Ecstatic Poet danced naked outside. St. Francis stripped in town and walked outside the city walls naked. Rumi spun and spun until he was drunk on ecstasy and poetry flowed from his mouth like wine from the lips of the Beloved. Peter Maurin slipped across the Canadian border to enter the United States: and Dorothy Day and Peter began the Catholic Worker, cooked soup, agitated for peace and social justice, and lived for years in tenement buildings as outsiders... 

​More than a thousand years ago a Chinese Zen master wrote a poem: Magical power, marvelous action! Chopping wood, carrying water... (from Zen Forest, translated by Soiku Sigematsu). 

​This very little poem takes us into the very heart of the matter! As an outsider, nature becomes the first Holy Book that we must read: we study the wind, the clouds, and the trees. We listen to the river speak. We value the birds and animals as spirit beings. Indeed, when we turn around and look again, everything that we had at first thought of as inanimate, they are each and all alive as repositories of great spiritual energy: do you doubt that crystals can sing? Instructed by nature, intuition and imagination ignite the stirring flame of reverence for beauty, for the benevolence of the Universe, and for the holiness of life: right here and right now...

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Leonard Cohen wrote some great poetry and songs: a wonderful line of his is this one: God is Alive, Magic is Afoot... Magic is Alive, God is Afoot... Outsiders know this experientially. Outsiders begin to awaken into the mystery of flow, of energy systems, and of the sacred soul that dwells within everyone and is, at the same time, united with the Oversoul (as Emerson put it) that is the pansacramental reality of everyone, everything, all of space, matter, and yes, even of time! Sacred timelessness is the now of Yeshua, the Poet of Nazareth. Sacred timelessness is the experience of the sacred in the very midst of -- not separate from -- our every day lives... This dwelling place is the fountain of youth -- not agelessness or slick marketing -- but the absolute certainty of existence, bliss, and consciousness: unlimited and without prescribed definitions... sort of the child-life of always born... chopping wood, carrying water... magical! marvelous!
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Sacred Pleasure...

3/16/2021

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                                                               Kuan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion


Sacred Pleasure... cannot even begin so long as one is caught in the crushing wheels of suffering... nor can it begin while anyone is still victimized by the crushing violence of obsolete theologies and the spiritual judgments theyconsistently give rise to : we need a Jubilee break from violence, oppressive theology, and judgment (say, how about fifty years worth)...

​Every religion has its fundamentalist "wing"... which would forever and always keep pleasure "grounded" in reproduction lingo... (how many of us humans must there be before there just might be enough!?) Likewise, every religion (is this true?) begins with a bias against women... and the men who presumed superiority over the spirituality, insights, and wisdom of women (and who also, very conveniently, wrote all of the Holy Books of religions) both resented and were afraid of the natural earthiness and the sacred capacity of women for nearly unlimited orgasm... 

​This insult to ump-teen generations of women has carried over into a judgment against other men: men who have a natural physical-spiritual hunger for pleasure with other men... Indeed, pleasure itself is invalidated in nearly every "traditional" theology: to delight in the pleasure of sexual orgasm, of intimacy, with the person (s) of their heart's choice, is sin to the justifiers of hate, manipulation, and domination... To be a woman: to be gay: to be lesbian: to be bisexual: to be queer in any way from the dominated norm is sin...

​It would be needlessly silly to list the examples of thousands of years of male religious violence and oppression... World history, and most especially, the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is little more than a history of the worship of the Unholy Trinity: Profit, Privilege, and Power... The Unholy Trinity is the "god" of religion: pain is made perfect in abject submission to male power, male privilege, and male profit... It is always violent: whether by means of usury, slavery, or burning at the stake: the Unholy Trinity is the obsessive fetish of male-created religion...

​
On the other hand, there is Jesus: the Mystic-Master of the Transformation of Consciousness! An honest reading of the Gospels reveals Jesus to be a radical feminist, an earthy-aware being, and one deeply commited to a preferential option for the poor: a person not in submission to power, not in service to profit, and completely uninterested in privilege... That Jesus was male, was incidental to his being: and precisely because incidental, he was a free man: a human being liberated into his Divine Possibilities!

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It isn't so much that we need a female image of the Divine, but perhaps that we should be free from all images! What is, after all, an image but a work of imagination? Now, imagination, like sex, is holy... but it is also limiting, isn't it? And the problem with men and male-driven theology is the need to manufacture a god, and supporting theology, that sustains the myths of the Unholy Trinity... Jesus would have both you and I free: free to live the exploration of our possibilities as human beings...

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Jesus' interest in sex is that it should cause no harm: responsible adults intimate with other responsible adults: this that, here or there: it doesn't matter so long as there is no harm... It is the height of arrogance that people who marginalize women, justify greed, and in recent ump-teen decades raped thousands of kids, should possess the theological gall to condemn other people who are simply motivated by desires of intimacy in creative ways that are not the "norm"... So what?!

​Finally,
there is the mystic-image of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion... Shouldn't the Christian, the Jew, and the Muslim hunger to be known as the religions of compassion: by the practice of compassion towards neighbors, strangers, and enemies, all alike? Kuan Yin is Jesus in disguise... just like the homeless man in the gutter...

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Diving Into Prayer...

3/12/2021

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                                                                           Beginning The Dive...

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Hail Mary full of grace, bless us we pray... bless the Divine Unity in all People, and bless too, the Oneness of all Creation...

Om Mani Padme Hum... (Hail, Jewel of the Lotus)...

​Diving into prayer is as easy as eating a luscious piece of pie... or kissing your lover... or jumping from a high flying airplane (without a parachute, of course!)... There is no high or low, no better or worse, no deeper or shallow... If ... 

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Prayer simply is... it is like a bubbly bath and dry-bone desert, both, at the same time... it is as normal as being born and making babies... And there is no better comparison than that of dying... "Huh?" you ask. And add, "but nobody ever really wants to die!"

​Ah, but there is the rub! We, likely as not, would never admit it, but we all do, in fact, very much want to die! Certainly later rather than sooner, but life without the lurking adventure of death would be something other than life! And that we could not bear... Exactly so, there is the living adventure of prayer...

​Cowards pray for shit, for answers and victories... On the other hand, there are the boldly intrepid who yearn to experience and delight in the love they already know dwells without limit in their heart... This is the beginning of prayer...

​To be sure, there are any number of wants, needs, and preferences: the Universal Consciousness that is the Root of All Manifested Existence "knows" all of this: already immutable "laws" will continue, without evident concern, in motion... "pray" all you want, but the dice has already been rolled... some will win, some will lose... and in the end we will all die... so, prayer is not about getting or in losing... it is an entirely different beast...

​Prayer is the path of identification... if you are really wanting to stay in the ego, in your identification with your "little self" of personal history and confirming story, you can! The Universe will not stand in opposition! Be yourself! But on the other hand, you just might be among the boldly intrepid, and you already realize that you were made for something other than simply ego identification...  This is the promise of prayer...

​With whom and with what do you wish to identify? Mary, the Mother of Jesus, chose exactly that, but more: she chose to be Mother to all of the poor little ones throughout time... Her identification with Jesus liberated her from ego identification: she became who she was meant to be by surrendering her ego-self to the intention of the Sacred Cosmos that she be Mother of All Sentient Beings... Don't you wonder what the intention of the Sacred Cosmos is for you? This is the path of prayer...

​Very much as with Mary, Buddhism teaches a path of ego-liberation, a blossoming of the "little self" with the intention of the Sacred Cosmos by means of the Bodhisattva Vow: to willingly re-incarnate, perhaps an infinite number of times, to serve the liberation of all sentient beings, before entering heaven oneself (indeed, one "becomes" all selves, if you can wrap your head around that!) Such a being is Kuan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion... This is the fruit of prayer...

​Identification is key: regardless of the name that we were given, we were never supposed to "stay" Bob, Jane, or even Kamala forever: while yet alive, we are supposed to disappear... "Disappear into what?" you ask... By now, I think you already know the answer: disappear into who you really are, as in a mirror of the Sacred Cosmos... disappear into an activated compassion, disappear into a practiced justice, disappear into serving equality, disappear into nonviolent peacemaking: disappear into whatever way in which you are needed... Disappear into "Hail Mary"... Disappear into Kuan Yin "Om Mani Padme Hum (Hail, Jewel of the Lotus)... 

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This is prayer as a disappearing act... 


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The Deepest Dive...

3/8/2021

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                                                                    His Holiness, the Dalai Lama


It is perhaps true that the most intense spiritual challenge any person will likely face, is that of gifting another with forgiveness... I am not writing or thinking about "forgiving" the little annoying hurts that are in the "everyday" category... Rather, I am laser-focused on the hurts of a brutal nature and intent: those times in which one's very being has been transformed by an all-consuming grief and anger: such as, when someone pledged and lied about an "eternal love": only to indulge in a steady psychological and spiritual annihilation of the now abandoned heart...

​There are many kinds of pain. We all trip and fall in a playground as toddlers. We fall ill. We have teeth pulled. We fear failure in school. We never get picked for a ball team. Parents die. Children die. We lose a job. And on and on, round and round, there is a steady shattering of hopes and dreams: our spiritual urge fades in the face of an uncaring, seemingly disinterested, Universe: we live (if it can be called such), as it were, waiting for the next shoe to drop... And, of course, not one shoe, but many drop! Disrespect and outright lies that deceive, disrupt, and destroy are a dime a dozen...

Exhausted by deception and violence, Lao Tzu fled his home for the unknown lands of the far west of China... Similarly exhausted by deception and violence, the man who came to be known as the Christ, fell under the weight of a cosmic cross... While evident exhaustion, deception, and violence link these two sagely masters, even more so does their mystic viewpoint and teachings... Both point to the necessity of transformation: of consciousness, lifestyle, and relationships... always, from the personal to the social...

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We only begin our transformation, when we can acknowledge our condition: where does our pain originate: where do we hold our pain: how do we cope with our pain: how do we try to bury our pain: why do we unleash our pain-burden in the ways that we do? These are a few of the questions that dog everyone -- anywhere on the path... We are never finished with this work... even a spiritual master, such as the Dalai Lama, has to return to his work everyday... and don't kid yourself into thinking "enlightenment" makes any aspect of this work "easy"! The deepest dive that any of us can attempt -- and perhaps complete -- is that of forgiveness... 

​Forgiveness is not some sort of "sanction" or "authorization" for the harm that one being caused another: rather, it is a nonviolent confrontation with the harm received: and a nonviolent confrontation with those who caused said harm... Reconciliation is a laudable goal, but more importantly, self-compassion and self-liberation are the immediate need: only when self-compassion and self-liberation are effected can there be the possibility of personal transformation: and not into forgetfulness, but rather into an identification with the Christ, with the very deep and clear waters of the Tao...

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Deeper yet, is following forgiveness with compassion...

Celtic spirituality mirrors
that of the Tao: the Celtic heart may access thin places in which the Tao (Being-Consciousness-Bliss) is experienced pansacramentally... In other words, the theological theory of the Oneness of the Transcendent and the Immanent is experienced in a sacramental communion... Forgiveness is the process of un-packing the pain, and practicing non-attachment in the real Reality of a cosmic inter-being... Admittedly, this is heavy stuff... and if there is one word that encapsulates this idea, it is compassion...

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Another deep Celtic insight mirrors that of Lao Tzu and the Taoist: return to the Mother... the Mother Principle roots all mystic insight into the opening of the heart... open heart, open hands... there is only One practice and that One practice is Compassion... Lao Tzu outlined the characteristics of both the Way-Path and the Sagely-Practitioner... Later, Yeshua, the Poet of Nazareth, incarnated the Being-Consciousness-Bliss of the Truth beyond Idea, and the Love before Need... Lao Tzu wrote, know the male, keep to the female... and Yeshua said, love one another as I have loved you... both, indicate the royal path of becoming as the Mother... (St. Francis said that we are supposed to become the Mother of God! How do you like that?!) 

​Who is the Mother? Or perhaps, one could even ask what is the Mother? Lao Tzu writes of the mother of all beneath heaven, nurturing mother, valley spirit, and dark female-enigma... Our Lady of Guadalupe, unknown to both Lao Tzu and the Celts, emphatically insisted, I am your Mother to a humble Indian and by spiritual implication, to all of humanity... In Buddhism, there is an absolutely and weirdly wonderful idea of the Bodhisattva: one who renounces the bliss of heaven to re-incarnate, life-after-life, in order to serve the ultimate liberation of every sentient being: and only then, will she entertain her own entrance into heaven... She is Mary... or Tara... or Kuan Yin...  and ultimately, She is all and none: She is Form and Void both: this one or that one is the Same: the embodiment of Divine Love... 

​Beyond the world of ideas and thought, there is the Nameless, the Oneness, the Mother... Do you see? Forgiveness empties the Cup of Self-Isolation... just as Compassion re-imagines Cup as Cosmos and Self as Holy Water for all who become aware of their thirst... Now, we're into the Actual Territory of the deepest dive...
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The Way of Divine Pleasure...

3/1/2021

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                                                           Ancient Cave Art of the Divine Mother

For millenia, before the various manifestations of the "Sky God", the Mother was matrix: source, sustainer, destroyer, and resurrection... Her representations in cave art are now well known, though still under-appreciated. Cynics minimize the images as those of a "fertility" nature, and for those modern few who are more attuned to the "divine feminine", they seldom plumb the depths of the erotic mysticism implied in this ancient art... The "everyday sacred" and the Way of Divine Pleasure is the invitation extended by these images... 
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                                                                      The Goddess of Wilendorf


If one were to ask, "Who would you identify as the greatest, most Christ-like, Christian saint of all time?" (This question has been asked many times of many people.) The answer most often given, by both Christian and non-Christian alike, is St. Francis of Assisi. Francis, of course, is often a friendly face in gardens (as a simple concrete or plastic statue). He is well known for his poverty, zeal in re-building the crumbling ruins of chapels, and for his care of lepers. Lesser, he is admired for his devotional prayer and life "at the margins" of both church and society... but nearly no one, besides myself, considers him an exemplar of an erotic mysticism...

​To be unaware of his erotic mysticism, though, is to miss the essential point of his spiritual evolution (rEvolution)... as a little brother of Jesus... 

​To be a fully functioning
Christian (human!), one simply must evolve: grow, develop, and change: the Franciscan viewpoint is that of, and into, a truly radical personalism, informed by a corresponding radical sense of pansacramentalism: the Divine awaits in the everyday encounters of person-in-life... Francis, like the overwhelming majority of fellow believers, then and now, was for the greater portion of his life oriented by the traditional theological constructs rooted in the Fall of Man and Redemption by Christ... 

​"My leper brothers and sisters" became for Francis the means for complete ego-annihilation... Francis lived the Fall and the Redemption, both... but he didn't stop there...

As Jesus taught, so too, Francis began to teach, primarily through conversation and example, and eventually he tagged along with the Christian crusade of his time, to "wrest" the Holy Land from the Muslim "infidels"... He was, to put it mildly, shocked and spiritually devastated by the wanton violence of the Crusaders: replete with endless raping of women and young girls, the plundering of the possessions of sacked Muslim cities, and the horrific executions of Muslim faithful... all in the Holy Name of Christ... There are stories of Francis conversing with the dreaded Sultan and being given a free pass to visit anywhere he wished in the Muslim lands (for it was obvious to the Sultan that he had finally met a Christian)...

​Eventually, Francis returned home to the hills around Assisi, to the cave of earth and trees that he called his little portion... But, he had contracted diseases and an eye-ailment while in the Holy Land, these, combined with his dark night of the soul, brought him to the bitter point of a certain and a lingering death... in brutal agony, his soul withered... still, his pledge of poverty had him lie naked on the barren earth... and the mice that ran over his body at night broke his spirit and will to live... It is precisely in this moment of utter spiritual and physical devastation that Francis evolved into the beyond of the Fall and Redemption story: and into the divine mystery of an erotic mysticism that united the Old Religions with the religion of the Christ... Francis awakened from his dark night into the brilliance of a brand new view: a radical awakening into the wonder of what the ancients knew intuitively: Oneness is our essential nature: the Divine and Nature and the Human all meeting in the Paradise of a Loving Mutuality...

​
Everyday Holy, with every moment an open door into a new sacred encounter, is the rapturous-revelation that is the Song of St. Francis (the Canticle of the Creatures)... expanding into every aspect of his life (our lives): a lived pansacramentalism that re-members the awe and wonder inspired by the nature-fertility-Mother-faith of the ancients and, like a master-gardener, Francis grafts the spirit of pan with the Christ-gift of everything sacred (a sacramental encounter of the Divine Being-Consciousness-Bliss with Nature and the Human)... The Song of Francis is the embrace of space / time / consciousness with everyone and everything... The Divine Beloved (Being, Consciousness, Bliss) is available (vitally yearning) for sacramental encounters in all of the minutes of our days... 

Why then, do we live and struggle endlessly, living as empty shells of abandoned or negative possibilities? Why should our political, economic, cultural, and religious "debates" (lives) be so vapid and mealy-mouthed? I mean, seriously, God is Alive, and Magic is Afoot... so why can we not get Real...?

​These reflections are not coming from a mind or spirit of philosophical abstraction. Rather, they are as it were, simple hungerings informed by thirty years of work and life with the homeless, many years of interior desolation, and then the sudden grace of discovery: infolding from eighteen years, as of today, of a pansacramental marriage with "my heart", Michelle... Pansacramentalism is a worldview, certainly, but it is at the very same time, an innerview that is both a response to the evidence of the Divine Presence, and an affirmation of the dignity exposed by the simplicity of daily awakenings: home, children, friends, work, play, sex, warmth, rest, conversation, study, reading, more conversation, meditation, celebration, contemplation, more sex... and on and on in the Sacred Circle of Holy Communion... ordinary time, the Way of Divine Pleasure...  

​
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A Secret Luminosity...

2/24/2021

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                                                                       Sage of the Secret Luminosity


                                                the tao that can be defined
                                                     is not the eternal tao...
                                     the secret luminosity that can be spoken
                                         is not (and also is) the eternal light...


​There is mystery to this thing that we call life... is there not? Oh, to be sure, there are those who assert they have the answers, no doubt because they think they can control all the questions... just as there are (and have been) a seemingly infinite number of folks who have surrendered their thinking minds over to the purveyors of one creed or another... is that you? Are you in that number?

​If so, it is probably unlikely that you would be reading this!

I have long submitted lists of books that I recommend for your spiritual consideration, from the Tao Te Ching to Be Love Now by Ram Dass, from the poetry of Rumi to the Prayers of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz... It is of profound importance that you read! Monks of both our time and yesterday (and for thousands of years) have recommended the practice of a slow, deliberate, contemplative reading... but not just books! It is of equal importance to "read" one's culture, politics, economics, etc.

​Reading includes the "reading" of your own mind-heart... Of course, not believing everything that you think is one of the building blocks of wisdom -- and your sacred life! The mystic tends to give only marginal creedence to the thoughts that fleetingly inhabit our minds... let them go... let them go without judgment... let them go without the formation of an opinion... Why? Because, the heart is where the real-mind dwells in a secret luminosity...

​All of the great "I Am" declarations by Yeshua in the Gospel of John are, as it were, clarifications of the secret luminosity that in-fills all of us and all of creation... While dualism on the one hand needs to separate, divide, judge, and eventually condemn opposites and differences, non-dualism seeks to re-member, unite, free, and eventually liberate every opposite and difference into beatitude... When Yeshua declared I am the Light of the world, that declaration was so much more than the birth of a new religion!

​"I am the vine and you are the branches" is linked, directly, with the Light... no plant and no life grows without the light of the Sun: so too, the light of a secret luminosity which is the soul-core of every life and, indeed, of every thing, is the non-dualistic real reality to which we are all called to embrace as our very own life... Now, here is the key to this embracing: yearning, hunger, and surrender in contemplative prayer...

​Tao (pronounced dow) is a word, comparable to Christ (or deeper, christed)... both Tao and Christ are thought of by practitioners as way... but, also as vehicles of transportation or transformation... To engage in the building of your sacred life... is, as much as anything else, the learned practice of referencing every aspect of your life into the perspective of already sacred! When you cook, when you eat, when you work, when you play, when you rest, when you sex, when you read, etc., etc. there is not a different person "doing" this or that... you are one... so too, in the real reality, you are already a secret luminosity! You are connected to the Vine... you are shining with the Light...  

​The Beatitudes of Yeshua
and the Tao of Lao Tzu, are lessons directly from the life experiences of wisdom masters: these teachings are not religions in the popular sense of the word, rather they are revelations of that which already is, and the Way, and the Vehicle to get us all to where we want to go: into the real reality, already here and simply waiting for our "Yes! Now!... Heaven isn't a distant time or a far-off place: it is within us right now, it is all about us and everything right now: it shines as a secret luminosity... pregnant, in a delightful anticipation... or like a rising orgasm that would be impossible to stop... ultimately, the Beatitudes and the Tao are about just riding the wave... and keeping it going...
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The Burn...

2/16/2021

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The burn of Love's hand... what in the world does that mean? And so I have wondered and pondered for many years now... the brief phrase has become something of a "koan", or mystic-thought, for unraveling...

While cooking the Soup of the Day in our old Kitchen for the homeless, chopping the veggies, and stirring the big pots of slow-boiling soup, I would ponder the phrase that especially challenged me -- after hearing it in my heart, years earlier, while on a solitary retreat high in the mountains of the Sierra Nevadas... You see, I was on my yearly retreat from the Soup Kitchen, with my handful of best-friend-books: poetry and contemplation... 

One morning I woke up to a Black Bear looking at me from the "distance" of the length of my arm: I slept with a hammer and small cast iron skillet next to me: ready to clang-a-ruckus for the inevitable bear... My bear ambled off and I rolled over to sleep a bit more... As the sun finally began to shine over the peaks and through the cedar trees, I rose, determined to write some poems...

​After a week of searching and effort, I had yet to "find" a single poem... oh to be sure, both Li Po and Rumi were ready with their counsel, but nothing... I was singularly empty: a jangle of disconnected thoughts and words and then, just the silence, birds, rustle of leaves, and my crunching feet on the trails... and a quiet sadness as my retreat was quickly passing... All of the prayer and contemplation Masters write of emptiness just as poets write of those similar hours, days, weeks, months, and even years in which the poet experiences the seeming abandonment of the grace and gift...

​And so the fateful day arrived, my last day of my mountain retreat and my last favorite hike along the tumbling Kings River, up the rising mountain, to the look-out point directly across from the mountain named "Sphinx", so named by the intrepid explorer John Muir... I had walked about a half-mile when I suddenly stopped, almost in mid-stride. I had forgotten my pen and pocket tablet which I always carried, ready for the potential arrival of a poem... To return to my camp for tablet and pen would add an obvious mile to my trek: I had not written anything for a week: why should today be any different? I returned to my camp, picked up pen and paper, and returned to the trail...

​The disappointing sense of abandonment found in my contemplative sittings mirrored the empty hunger for a poem... One foot and then the other, moving up-trail... It turned out that the empty silence had, after all, been pregnant: a sequence of some thirty poems simply gushed out: I would walk in emptiness, holding no thought in my mind: one complete line after the next would come, fully formed, from mind to pen to paper... and then walking... walking... no thought... and the next, fully formed, line would appear in my head... athlete's call this being in the zone... poets, on the other hand, only bow in humility... words are potentially as sacred as anything else in the Universe... words are the evidence of the heart's hunger and yearning for the One Word that will complete, in self-surrender, the One Life...

​I remember, when the phrase the burn of Love's hand simply went Boo! in my head... I stopped, stunned at what the heck does that mean? I pulled pen and paper from my pocket, and wrote it down... I wondered at it, but returned to the trail and re-centered into empty-mind... Now, years have come and gone and still I ponder the burn of Love's hand... sacred moments, here and there, have served as threads of revelation and the slow weaving of understanding... if you are interested in this weaving, you can keep reading...  

The burn of Love's hand is this thing that we all call life... In living, and in and through all of our struggles, we are meant to turn the pages of our story into the self-realization that the one, precious, life we have been given is not, is never, about "me"... it is always about a "you", one-by-one, and the Glorious Secret Maybe, that "you" can save someone's life...
​I was hungry and you fed me
is how Jesus put it, but the essential point is not the food, but the flowing action of simply loving... And didn't he also say, go and do likewise? 


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Wait For It... Pansacramentalism...

2/12/2021

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  "All things sacramentally exist in the sacred, and the sacred sacramentally exists in all things." -- Hans Gustafson


The worldview that lives and promotes the conviction of all things as possessing the potential and the capacity to serve as mediators of the sacred, the Cosmic Consciousness, is perhaps the most important building-block for a sacred life... All things in the Divine and the Divine in all things is the manifestation of the on-going Jesus rEvolution... If the goal is both personal and global transformation, the lens through which we identify and interpret reality is of profound importance!

Regardless of religion, the fundamentalist always promotes a very small (and usually warped) worldview. No doubt, you have already figured that out! Only the expansion of consciousness, through a practiced and vital mysticism, is one made ready for seeing the connections and changing the likely outcomes... When belief is exchanged for experience, the hidden wholeness is found... and the variety of ways of implementation become obvious... the student becomes the sage through loving-in-action...

Touchstones that are the sagely guides into the practicalities of pansacramentalism are personalism: caring, cooperation, compassion, nonviolence, and the daily reference of everything to its underlying Oneness... Evidence of these practicalities are the heart and essence of the Beatitude Way of Jesus... The best source-book for a study of the Beatitudes is Prayers of the Cosmos (Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus's Words) by Neil Douglas-Klotz. Joanna Macy had this to say about this book: "For the many of us who want to peel away centuries of dualistic, patriarchal forms and recover the life-affirming beauty of our Christian roots, nothing could be more welcome than this exquisite little volumn."

Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, in her book The Wisdom Jesus, also renders Jesus the sage and transformation master that quickly went out of style in the long-ago formation of the "princely" church and its strategy of accomodation to empire, greed, violence, and the marginalization of women and the divine feminine. Continuing the strategy of accomodation to empire might facilitate the power-building of fundamentalism, whether new or of ancient heritage, but it will never serve either our transformation or the regeneration of Planet Earth...

​Pansacramentalism, while an unusual and uncommon word, is the word for re-training our eyes, ears, hands, hearts, and minds: everything that we do can be made a conscious instrument of Beatitude... everything that surrounds, penetrates, and otherwise serves our well-being is wholly holy-ground... with this breath, I will become an instrument of peace... with this breath, I will kiss my lover with lips and soul... with this breath I will work in the garden... wash the dishes... scrub the toilet, organize for justice, demonstrate for equality, and dedicate my heart and life to building a brand new Beatitude Culture...

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    Author

    Robert Daniel Smith was privileged to serve the homeless and marginalized for 30 years in California. He is living now almost within shouting distance of the Twin Cities. He is an interfaith minister, a poet, artist, writer, and long-time Franciscan Worker / Companion of the Way currently dreaming Iona House...

    ​Recommended Reading:

    ​Be Love Now by Ram Dass

    ​Be Here Now by Ram Dass

    The Rebirthing of God by John Philip Newell

    The Hope by Andrew Harvey

    The Return of the Mother by Andrew Harvey

    ​Creation Spirituality by Matthew Fox

    Loaves and Fishes by Dorothy Day 

    Sacred Pleasure by Riane Eisler

    Occupy Spirituality by Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox

    Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

    The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami, Ph.D.

    Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

    The Wisdom Jesus by Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault

    ​Living the Eternal Way by Rev. Ellen Grace O'Brian

    Listening For The Heartbeat of God by John Philip Newell

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