I thought in honor of our Hallows Eve, I might talk about fear for a bit.
When we rely on the words of others, the teachings of others, we become bound by those things. Most often, we are unable to think authentically for ourselves. Our teachings can even say we do not have a way to discern truth save by the words handed down by us, and yet what has been handed down to us bear the marks of those who have interpreted, translated, and even altered some of these documents over time. We know this is the case because of cross-referencing many documents that are versions of the same old story. Like the Bible. The problem as I see it is that we expect that our old books to have somehow been handed down to us without a single inch of spin put on them by others. And yet, so many of these books were received through the spoken word. Someone sat down and wrote them down. Someone else copied the text, spoke it, and yet another wrote the words down as best as they could remember them. So we have VERSIONS of the same story often in many different books. If we are seeking literal interpretations, that gets to be pretty hard with all the versions. I don't even want to get deep into translation issues because the truth is, its tricky. Jesus, for example, spoke in Aramaic, which is itself a highly contextual language. This means that something can be taken many different ways if you don't fully understand just what it is the person is talking about. Imagine someone trying to explain a mystery to you, a deep spiritual reality for which there are not words to adequately describe. The kingdom is like a mustard seed. The kingdom is like a thief in the night. The kingdom is.....you get the idea. He was seeking to describe a reality for which there were not really good words, yet he tried. The result is, you have to seek this thing and experience it yourself. If you can't think for yourself and rely upon old texts, the problem is you are relying on someones understanding of something that is thousands of years old. The language could be very different. We all know language changes over time, and it actually changes quite fast. Sometimes in just a few generations words can morph and change. The way we use the word sin today is different from the meaning that it had two thousand years ago. Today, sin carries with it a sense of judgement, but in the world of two thousand years ago, it was quite different. Sin was anything that caused you harm. Getting angry and taking out on others could have been a sin. The point was to not do harm to yourself. Nowadays sin seems to suggest a judgement that could send you to hell. In the old days, allowing yourself to harm your spirit meant it coarsened your perception of the divine and thus kept you from the light that was within you that is divine.
Being unable to look clearly at the experience of spiritual ascension results in pitfalls for the individual which can draw in fear and can stymie you. It can be a challenge enough as it is to surrender to such a powerful experience as awakening in order that it can come into your life and work the greatest change within you. It was hard for me when I was not completely surrendered. I struggled. Ego was certainly in the way, and it felt like a giant vise was crushing me! This went on for days, weeks, and months, until I learned how to simply slip out of the grip of this vice-like effect. Once I did this, only then did I realize that it was my perception that was creating it. My own fear, my own ego, was limiting my experience of this very powerful and divine force moving in my life. What seemed like a brooding gorilla in the corner turned into a brilliant rush of color and light the next. It all had to do with belief and an unwillingness to surrender to my higher self. Until I did that, I was locked in a egoistic struggle with my lower self who wanted to remain in charge. By letting go, it was as though parts of me slipped to the back of the bus and no longer was involved in driving the bus. In order for me to know something more, I had to let go of what I thought I knew. I was standing before a potentially expansive reality while holding my eyes part way shut. Something had to give. I gave up. I gave up and began to trust. When I did that, my experience changed dramatically. But until I did, demons and spirits abounded.
Even today there is a rising tide of fear about the sheer number of awakenings happening. We are at a critical point in our history when the race itself is primed for this flow of divine energy into the planet. And yet, it is sometimes met with fear. It is met with fear because it seems strange, and yet, all of the things that are described as being a "false spirit" or what some call a "counterfeit spirit" actually match the movement of the Holy Spirit. It seems strange only because it has been so still for so long. Many people experience the Holy Spirit in just the way that it is now expressing itself in church meetings, and yet there is great fear that this might be something to be afraid of.
Part of the fear issue is the whole serpent subject. In the book of Genesis the being that deceived Adam and Eve was a serpent. What many do not realize is how important the serpent is in many cultures, including the Muslim faith, Judaism (and by definition Christianity), the middle East, India, Tibet, China and Japan. So prevalent is this serpent imagery that it is in every single culture and religion as an important and significant element having to do with vital force, life force, and divinity.
In Christianity, the Seraphim were described as being fiery serpents. These beings were the ones who were closest to God and were described as having three sets of wings that enabled the angels to surround the brilliant glory of God. It was Moses who was commanded to raise a fiery serpent in the desert, to make it of a metal that would resemble the sun. It was the Egyptians who honored the serpent as being involved in the spiritual force of the soul that would often be seen emerging from the third eye of the Pharaohs.
Currently there seems to be a movement afoot to help bring spiritual awakening within certain parts of the Christian church. This awakening is conferred by touch from those who have themselves been awakened. The result of this transfer are the very things observed within the Church as evidence of the Holy Spirit. This is shaking and jerking, laughter and speaking in tongues. When you look at the earlier versions of this expression of the Holy Ghost moving, you can see what I am talking about. The Shakers and the Quakers were so called because they found that they were able to get closer to Creator through an ecstatic form of movement that facilitated the flow of the Holy Spirit or Ghost. If you read about the church meetings of the Shakers you will see how the entire congregation could feel the movement of the Holy Ghost as a very real force moving through them. Some of the movements of the Shakers were described as being like dance, and this is not surprising because in many other cultures ecstatic movement has always been connected to reaching these exalted states of being where one feels connection with the divine realm. Some might call it the spirit world, while another might call it heaven. We are different, but we are each describing the same thing. And yet, even when the evidence is so clear, people shrink back in fear.
I read a quip someone made about having gotten this spirit moving in them, and at first she described it as heavenly, but it soon turned sexual, and it was at that point that she decided it HAD to be something of the devil. This is interesting because in early Christian texts the force of awakening, of the Holgy Ghost was described as being the Bridal Chamber. This was so-called because of the incredible bliss that it conferred on the initiate. I say "initiate" because one certainly seems to enter into this holy awareness of the divine that carries with it such incredible power that it floods the person with unending bliss and ecstasy. So yes, it does flow through ALL of you, which means that it has a sexual component. But this does not mean that it is bad or evil, it merely means that you are now like a string vibrating in sympathy with a still higher vibration. It spares none of you, and it requires a good deal of surrender and trust to alow its divinity to flow through you in this way. It is we who have the problem, not the deity, you see. Somewhere along the line we turned this bliss into something dirty or bad when in fact it is the lightening like shaft from the divine. It is little wonder that so few have experienced it in the past. It was simply a forbidden thing to feel such closeness with God.
Early Christian mystic St Teresa of Avilla wrote about her experience with awakening in books, one of which was titled The Interior Castle. In it, she described the route through her being that the divine current moved in order to reach its pinnacle in her awareness. She described this process as being like moving through seven crystaline rooms, each with different characteristics. Each room was like a ring and each ring or room got closer and closer to the core of one's being until you reached the place of perfect union with the divine. This, coincidentally, is a near-perfect description of the very means by which awakening happens in the Hindu tradition where the divine force moves from the root chakra into the crown. Certainly on a technical level they appear different because one flows upwards and one flows from the outside inward, but the effect and number of centers, or room, is the same. I will point out that before I even knew that this was kundalini that was moving through me, I experienced the same effect that Teresa described of these centers as being like rooms. I had a heart clearing once that left me feeling like I had a vast room opened up inside of me. It literally felt as though I had this very big empty room in my heart. It was a very unusual feeling! "Wow," I thought, "how is it that my heart enter feels so expansive, so big?" It felt like a giant meeting hall. Not very different at all from how Teresa described it five centuries earlier. But in our uncertainty and lack of faith in the divine, we ascribe all kinds of problems with this way of understanding the divine. Understand, this is all completely without any real physicality. It simply isn't about physical space, and yet, we seek to make sense of a spiritual reality by ascribing or attaching very physical descriptions to it. This is the best we can do in order to explain or convey this great mystery moving within us. If we seek to be didactic and rigid, we can entirely miss the point, or subtle drift.
Clearly, the kingdom is NOT a mustard seed, and yet Jesus had to use something from the physical world to describe a nonphysical reality. It is just like trying to explain something from the fourth dimension by using the tools found in the third dimension.
For the poor woman who ran in fear of her sexual feelings in the midst of awakening, she might have found that this fiery power would have moved through her and begun to cleanse her spirit of any hitches and issues she had in relation to divine union, what was called the bridal chamber by the early Christians. Its energy would have continued to move through her and brought her to the same levels of ecstasy as Teresa described. It served to draw Teresa into a singular relationship with her God. For her, she spoke lovingly of Him and used both God as father and God as son interchangeably. She could not wait to die and meet them directly, she was so fond and enamored of them while she was in the flesh. But even in her own life, she found that this union drove a hard bargain; she had to choose within the bliss a very refined position in regards to it. This is the same force as has been described by the Hindus as Sublimation which involves moving the more sexual energy into the higher vibrations of the light body or spirit in order to reach ever higher levels of pure ecstasy. This is akin to riding the tiger as the Hindes describe it; you take this powerful force that could tear you apart and by balancing upon it with perfect grace, you are able to reach a place of wondrous union within. And just like the Hindus, Teresa explained to her sisters that all of this force was not felt as coming from outside, but came through the diamond-like realm of the core self or soul. "The kingdom is within you" Jesus said some fifteen hundred years earlier, and what we are all finding is that this is true.
So seek you the kingdom within. The only way you can do this is with a one-on-one encounter with the divine. Either you trust that your soul will guide you or you don't. If you slip into fear, then the result, as we have often seen in nearly all awakenings, is that this fear will create shadows and issues for you that will trip you up. It will breed energy which attract more like it. Simply let the fear go. the way you move through the realm of spirit is by the steering wheel of your intention. If you steer into the ditch, then you will feel derailed and lost. Keep aiming for the highest and trust that you do indeed have a connection within that allows you communion with the deity, the divine, with your greater nature in context with the divine order. You are a child of the Creator, nothing can undo this. If you fall for the fear, you fall from the Creator, pure and simple. If you fall for all of the descriptions of Hell and Purgatory, then you fall for something that is not in your highest. There is no need to fear what it most natural in you, for you were made to be an instrument of the divine on earth. Harness the many horses of your nature, both physical and spiritual, and you will find, by grace, your way.
When we rely on the words of others, the teachings of others, we become bound by those things. Most often, we are unable to think authentically for ourselves. Our teachings can even say we do not have a way to discern truth save by the words handed down by us, and yet what has been handed down to us bear the marks of those who have interpreted, translated, and even altered some of these documents over time. We know this is the case because of cross-referencing many documents that are versions of the same old story. Like the Bible. The problem as I see it is that we expect that our old books to have somehow been handed down to us without a single inch of spin put on them by others. And yet, so many of these books were received through the spoken word. Someone sat down and wrote them down. Someone else copied the text, spoke it, and yet another wrote the words down as best as they could remember them. So we have VERSIONS of the same story often in many different books. If we are seeking literal interpretations, that gets to be pretty hard with all the versions. I don't even want to get deep into translation issues because the truth is, its tricky. Jesus, for example, spoke in Aramaic, which is itself a highly contextual language. This means that something can be taken many different ways if you don't fully understand just what it is the person is talking about. Imagine someone trying to explain a mystery to you, a deep spiritual reality for which there are not words to adequately describe. The kingdom is like a mustard seed. The kingdom is like a thief in the night. The kingdom is.....you get the idea. He was seeking to describe a reality for which there were not really good words, yet he tried. The result is, you have to seek this thing and experience it yourself. If you can't think for yourself and rely upon old texts, the problem is you are relying on someones understanding of something that is thousands of years old. The language could be very different. We all know language changes over time, and it actually changes quite fast. Sometimes in just a few generations words can morph and change. The way we use the word sin today is different from the meaning that it had two thousand years ago. Today, sin carries with it a sense of judgement, but in the world of two thousand years ago, it was quite different. Sin was anything that caused you harm. Getting angry and taking out on others could have been a sin. The point was to not do harm to yourself. Nowadays sin seems to suggest a judgement that could send you to hell. In the old days, allowing yourself to harm your spirit meant it coarsened your perception of the divine and thus kept you from the light that was within you that is divine.
Being unable to look clearly at the experience of spiritual ascension results in pitfalls for the individual which can draw in fear and can stymie you. It can be a challenge enough as it is to surrender to such a powerful experience as awakening in order that it can come into your life and work the greatest change within you. It was hard for me when I was not completely surrendered. I struggled. Ego was certainly in the way, and it felt like a giant vise was crushing me! This went on for days, weeks, and months, until I learned how to simply slip out of the grip of this vice-like effect. Once I did this, only then did I realize that it was my perception that was creating it. My own fear, my own ego, was limiting my experience of this very powerful and divine force moving in my life. What seemed like a brooding gorilla in the corner turned into a brilliant rush of color and light the next. It all had to do with belief and an unwillingness to surrender to my higher self. Until I did that, I was locked in a egoistic struggle with my lower self who wanted to remain in charge. By letting go, it was as though parts of me slipped to the back of the bus and no longer was involved in driving the bus. In order for me to know something more, I had to let go of what I thought I knew. I was standing before a potentially expansive reality while holding my eyes part way shut. Something had to give. I gave up. I gave up and began to trust. When I did that, my experience changed dramatically. But until I did, demons and spirits abounded.
Even today there is a rising tide of fear about the sheer number of awakenings happening. We are at a critical point in our history when the race itself is primed for this flow of divine energy into the planet. And yet, it is sometimes met with fear. It is met with fear because it seems strange, and yet, all of the things that are described as being a "false spirit" or what some call a "counterfeit spirit" actually match the movement of the Holy Spirit. It seems strange only because it has been so still for so long. Many people experience the Holy Spirit in just the way that it is now expressing itself in church meetings, and yet there is great fear that this might be something to be afraid of.
Part of the fear issue is the whole serpent subject. In the book of Genesis the being that deceived Adam and Eve was a serpent. What many do not realize is how important the serpent is in many cultures, including the Muslim faith, Judaism (and by definition Christianity), the middle East, India, Tibet, China and Japan. So prevalent is this serpent imagery that it is in every single culture and religion as an important and significant element having to do with vital force, life force, and divinity.
In Christianity, the Seraphim were described as being fiery serpents. These beings were the ones who were closest to God and were described as having three sets of wings that enabled the angels to surround the brilliant glory of God. It was Moses who was commanded to raise a fiery serpent in the desert, to make it of a metal that would resemble the sun. It was the Egyptians who honored the serpent as being involved in the spiritual force of the soul that would often be seen emerging from the third eye of the Pharaohs.
Currently there seems to be a movement afoot to help bring spiritual awakening within certain parts of the Christian church. This awakening is conferred by touch from those who have themselves been awakened. The result of this transfer are the very things observed within the Church as evidence of the Holy Spirit. This is shaking and jerking, laughter and speaking in tongues. When you look at the earlier versions of this expression of the Holy Ghost moving, you can see what I am talking about. The Shakers and the Quakers were so called because they found that they were able to get closer to Creator through an ecstatic form of movement that facilitated the flow of the Holy Spirit or Ghost. If you read about the church meetings of the Shakers you will see how the entire congregation could feel the movement of the Holy Ghost as a very real force moving through them. Some of the movements of the Shakers were described as being like dance, and this is not surprising because in many other cultures ecstatic movement has always been connected to reaching these exalted states of being where one feels connection with the divine realm. Some might call it the spirit world, while another might call it heaven. We are different, but we are each describing the same thing. And yet, even when the evidence is so clear, people shrink back in fear.
I read a quip someone made about having gotten this spirit moving in them, and at first she described it as heavenly, but it soon turned sexual, and it was at that point that she decided it HAD to be something of the devil. This is interesting because in early Christian texts the force of awakening, of the Holgy Ghost was described as being the Bridal Chamber. This was so-called because of the incredible bliss that it conferred on the initiate. I say "initiate" because one certainly seems to enter into this holy awareness of the divine that carries with it such incredible power that it floods the person with unending bliss and ecstasy. So yes, it does flow through ALL of you, which means that it has a sexual component. But this does not mean that it is bad or evil, it merely means that you are now like a string vibrating in sympathy with a still higher vibration. It spares none of you, and it requires a good deal of surrender and trust to alow its divinity to flow through you in this way. It is we who have the problem, not the deity, you see. Somewhere along the line we turned this bliss into something dirty or bad when in fact it is the lightening like shaft from the divine. It is little wonder that so few have experienced it in the past. It was simply a forbidden thing to feel such closeness with God.
Early Christian mystic St Teresa of Avilla wrote about her experience with awakening in books, one of which was titled The Interior Castle. In it, she described the route through her being that the divine current moved in order to reach its pinnacle in her awareness. She described this process as being like moving through seven crystaline rooms, each with different characteristics. Each room was like a ring and each ring or room got closer and closer to the core of one's being until you reached the place of perfect union with the divine. This, coincidentally, is a near-perfect description of the very means by which awakening happens in the Hindu tradition where the divine force moves from the root chakra into the crown. Certainly on a technical level they appear different because one flows upwards and one flows from the outside inward, but the effect and number of centers, or room, is the same. I will point out that before I even knew that this was kundalini that was moving through me, I experienced the same effect that Teresa described of these centers as being like rooms. I had a heart clearing once that left me feeling like I had a vast room opened up inside of me. It literally felt as though I had this very big empty room in my heart. It was a very unusual feeling! "Wow," I thought, "how is it that my heart enter feels so expansive, so big?" It felt like a giant meeting hall. Not very different at all from how Teresa described it five centuries earlier. But in our uncertainty and lack of faith in the divine, we ascribe all kinds of problems with this way of understanding the divine. Understand, this is all completely without any real physicality. It simply isn't about physical space, and yet, we seek to make sense of a spiritual reality by ascribing or attaching very physical descriptions to it. This is the best we can do in order to explain or convey this great mystery moving within us. If we seek to be didactic and rigid, we can entirely miss the point, or subtle drift.
Clearly, the kingdom is NOT a mustard seed, and yet Jesus had to use something from the physical world to describe a nonphysical reality. It is just like trying to explain something from the fourth dimension by using the tools found in the third dimension.
For the poor woman who ran in fear of her sexual feelings in the midst of awakening, she might have found that this fiery power would have moved through her and begun to cleanse her spirit of any hitches and issues she had in relation to divine union, what was called the bridal chamber by the early Christians. Its energy would have continued to move through her and brought her to the same levels of ecstasy as Teresa described. It served to draw Teresa into a singular relationship with her God. For her, she spoke lovingly of Him and used both God as father and God as son interchangeably. She could not wait to die and meet them directly, she was so fond and enamored of them while she was in the flesh. But even in her own life, she found that this union drove a hard bargain; she had to choose within the bliss a very refined position in regards to it. This is the same force as has been described by the Hindus as Sublimation which involves moving the more sexual energy into the higher vibrations of the light body or spirit in order to reach ever higher levels of pure ecstasy. This is akin to riding the tiger as the Hindes describe it; you take this powerful force that could tear you apart and by balancing upon it with perfect grace, you are able to reach a place of wondrous union within. And just like the Hindus, Teresa explained to her sisters that all of this force was not felt as coming from outside, but came through the diamond-like realm of the core self or soul. "The kingdom is within you" Jesus said some fifteen hundred years earlier, and what we are all finding is that this is true.
So seek you the kingdom within. The only way you can do this is with a one-on-one encounter with the divine. Either you trust that your soul will guide you or you don't. If you slip into fear, then the result, as we have often seen in nearly all awakenings, is that this fear will create shadows and issues for you that will trip you up. It will breed energy which attract more like it. Simply let the fear go. the way you move through the realm of spirit is by the steering wheel of your intention. If you steer into the ditch, then you will feel derailed and lost. Keep aiming for the highest and trust that you do indeed have a connection within that allows you communion with the deity, the divine, with your greater nature in context with the divine order. You are a child of the Creator, nothing can undo this. If you fall for the fear, you fall from the Creator, pure and simple. If you fall for all of the descriptions of Hell and Purgatory, then you fall for something that is not in your highest. There is no need to fear what it most natural in you, for you were made to be an instrument of the divine on earth. Harness the many horses of your nature, both physical and spiritual, and you will find, by grace, your way.
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