» spiritual practices The Spiral Path

05 Jun 2012

TBM41: Preparedness in the Spiritual Kitchen

The final spiritual practice I want to talk about is Preparedness. Preparedness is one of the most important tools available to you in your quest to balance the 4D needs of your soul with the 3D needs of your body.

When I was growing up, I spent several years in Brownies and then Girl Guides. Part of the Guiding motto was to “always be prepared.” This, as it turns out, was excellent spiritual advice.

Before I say more, I want to emphasize that when I say “Preparedness,” I’m not in any way talking about “preparing your soul to meet God.” The idea of preparing your soul is a religious claim, a claim based on the idea that your soul is corrupt and needs to be saved. Me, I think your soul is good and doesn’t need to be rescued because it was never lost in the first place. (Silly me.)

I’m talking here about something quite radical in spiritual circles: the idea that building your intuition and being in full relationship with God requires you to pay attention to and honour many of the small, practical, everyday concerns you may be taking for granted at the moment.

Preparedness, as I’m describing it here, is strongly linked to your capacity for common sense. Common sense can be defined as the practical result of listening to your own intuition.

In the analogy of the Spiritual Kitchen, Preparedness is exactly what it sounds like. It means being organized in the kitchen, keeping track of supplies you need to buy, cleaning up dishes you’ve used so they’re ready for the next recipe, remembering where you’ve stored your less-commonly used pots and pans, and taking overall responsibility for the smooth functioning of the kitchen.

My dream kitchen

Preparedness in this sense is not a thought experiment. It’s not a mystical practice of trying to reach out with your superior meditative skills to suss out the ideal Platonic Form of God’s own divine recipes. What we’re talking about here is remembering to put toilet paper on your grocery list.

Preparedness is all about having the sense to keep toilet paper in the bathroom, milk and bread in the fridge, gas in the car, and some basic tools in the cupboard so you can fix things instead of throwing them out and buying new ones because you’ve never taken the time to learn the difference between a Robertson #2 and a Phillips #3.

Preparedness means you’re willing and able to look after the practical everyday needs of yourself and your family. It means you’re prepared for the occasional small emergency. It means you have actual physical, practical stuff on hand (like a first aid kit, a sewing and mending kit, a basic toolkit, a few emergency canned goods, an extra set of house keys, a list of important contact numbers, and accurate financial records properly filed in one convenient place) so you can deal swiftly and effectively with normal household accidents instead of standing there wringing your hands in panic and despair and waiting for God to step in and “fix it” for you.

In other words, it’s your willingness to take personal responsibility for your everyday needs.

Note that you’re not being asked to prepare for every conceivable emergency. And you’re not being asked to keep enough medical supplies on hand to run a field hospital. And you’re not being asked to keep a year’s worth of canned goods on hand. These choices would amount to obsessive-compulsive behaviour, hoarding, and a complete lack of common sense. Preparedness is the “sweet spot” where you have the basics on hand without crossing the line into hoarding.

I keep a sewing kit in my apartment. I have the basic things I’m likely to need in order to sew on a button or mend a hem. I have several spools of thread in colours that match my wardrobe. Do I have a spool of thread in every colour? No. I don’t need every colour. I only need the colours I’m likely to use on a regular basis — black, brown, green, blue, and assorted beiges. The colours in your sewing kit would be different from mine because you have different colours in your wardrobe.

I make no claim to being an expert sewer. For expert repairs, I know a good tailor. But I can — and should — look after my own clothes to the best of my ability. When I take the time to properly care for my clothes, I’m showing my respect for the gift of the nice clothes I have, clothes that help me feel like “me,” clothes that keep me warm, clothes that help me look presentable at work, clothes that contribute in a small but relevant way to my daily happiness. I’m saying to God that I don’t take my clothes for granted. I’m saying to God that anything worth having as a 4D-soul-in-human-form is worth caring for. I’m saying I’m not “too good” or “too important” to learn how to use a sewing needle or a Robertson screwdriver to the best of my ability. I’m saying that my work as a mystic and channeller can wait a few minutes while I hang up my freshly laundered sweaters and clean the toilet, inside and out, so I feel better about the space I’m living in. I’m saying that all these small things matter to my soul.

A few weeks ago, I did something kinda dumb. I left my headlights on all day while I was at work. When I came out, my car wouldn’t start. And I don’t belong to a car owner’s club like C.A.A. or A.A.A. because I can’t afford it. But I do try to be somewhat prepared when it comes to car ownership. So I keep a few tools in the trunk. And a couple of old blankets (because I live in Canada). And an old waterproof jacket in case I have to stop at the side of the road in bad weather. And a set of jumper cables.

As soon as I realized I’d drained my car battery by mistake, I jumped out of the car and flagged down my co-worker.

“Can you give me a boost?” I asked plaintively.

“Sure,” she said. “But I don’t have jumper cables. Do you?”

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll just pop the trunk and get them out.”

This is when I discovered that in newer car models equipped with computerized systems you can’t do DIDDLY SQUAT when the battery is dead. You can’t get your computerized ignition key out of the ignition. You can’t use the trunk release to pop the trunk. And you can’t crawl into the trunk from the back seat because the pass-through release is inside the trunk.

What were these Pontiac engineers thinking? That nobody was ever going to drain the battery and need the tools in the trunk?

Fortunately, in the inside pocket of my purse, I carry an extra house key and an extra key for the manual locks of my car because every once in a while I’m distracted and I do something dumb, like lock myself out by mistake. And I figure I should carry the basic tools to fix my own minor mistakes. The spare key saved my butt on this occasion and got me into the trunk. Within a few minutes, my friend and I and a kind Good Samaritan (who happened to be a licensed mechanic) had my car fully charged and ready to go.

Everybody makes mistakes. It’s just part of life. And everybody has unexpected emergencies to deal with. Even when you’re on the Spiral Path.

So make life easier for yourself, your family, and your guardian angels. Be aware that Preparedness is a sound and loving spiritual choice, not something to be dismissed as a sign of spiritual weakness or a lack of faith in God. When you choose Preparedness as a spiritual practice, you demonstrate your willingness to be part of LIFE while you’re here on Planet Earth, part of the process of living and making mistakes and learning and growing and helping each other to the best of our ability.

And man, am I ever grateful to the guy at the Canadian Tire service centre who cut me that new car key! You saved me an expensive service call I couldn’t afford. You made a real difference in my everyday life.

Sometimes the smallest practical gifts add up to the biggest blessings we can imagine. And sometimes the lack thereof leads to greater suffering than we could ever suppose in a our busy, take-it-for-granted, non-prepared modern lives — as some of those wise, old fables about nails-being-lost-from-horseshoes remind us.

You just never know where the turning points on the Spiral Path will be . . .

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, life and death, relationship with God, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged building your intuition, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

23 May 2012

TBM39: The Perverting of Gratitude

Of all the spiritual practices that have been endorsed over the centuries by spiritual and religious leaders, the one that’s been twisted almost beyond recognition is the practice of gratitude.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m NOT saying that gratitude is a bad thing. In fact, gratitude as it’s practised by the soul is as important as breathing.

I’m saying that gratitude is so important to the hearts of regular people that bully after bully, tyrant after tyrant, has taken advantage of this deep need and twisted it — perverted it — to satisfy the status cravings of the tyrants.

Hence, we have a long history of psychopaths telling us things like this:

“You should be grateful I’ve given you the chance to die as a slave. These Pyramids are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be worthy before you die.”

“You should be grateful you’re one of the Chosen People. These bloodlines are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to rule over the world.”

“You should be grateful you’ve been saved by Jesus Christ. These sacraments are a tribute to God, and God will reward us for our obedience to his wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be saved in the End Times.”

And on a more personal level . . .

“You should be grateful for my superiority, woman. Without men, without me, you’d be nothing.”

“You should be grateful to have a job with my company. Without me, you’d be nothing.”

“You should be grateful for the gift of God’s grace. Without it, you’d be nothing.”

Needless to say, this is not what the soul means by gratitude.

There are countless examples of the perverting of gratitude in all cultures and time periods. No culture and no religious tradition is exempt from the tendency among status-addicted psychopaths to seize upon a person’s heart and suck up the gratitude like a vampire drinking from a straw. This is why so many religions start out as an expression of faith and end up as a form of worship. Worship is the perverted form of gratitude.

Despite the plethora of examples to choose from, the one that stands out for me as a sort of “symbol” or “archetype” of how NOT to do gratitude is the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 21:1 – 22:19). It’s pretty tricky to come out and tell the truth about a biblical tale that billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold dear, but I gotta say — this one biblical lesson has been used over the centuries to justify more crimes against humanity than we’ll ever know.

The writers (more accurately, the redactors) of the book of Genesis want us to accept a number of claims about the proper way to be in relationship with God. Despite the fact that Genesis was probably collated and redacted in the last part of the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt,* the writers were very modern, very astute, in their understanding of human nature. They were not naive. They were not poorly educated. They were not simply misguided. They knew exactly what they were doing.

What they were doing was taking the ancient texts of early Judaism — such as the codes of ethical conduct that now appear in Exodus — and creating a mythical “back-story” to make Jewish teachings more appealing to a “modern,” post-Alexandrian, Greek speaking Ptolemaic empire. It’s no accident that, in the Book of Genesis, God gives Abraham and his descendants the rightful claim to all the lands “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). That’s a big hunk of choice real estate, real estate that by no coincidence Alexander the Great had already successfully conquered in the 4th century BCE (not that anyone in the Jewish canon ever breathes a word about Alexander’s conquest . . . )

I can live with megalomaniacal claims to land and territory. They’re nothing new in the history of tyrants and emperors. What I can’t live with is the claim that God would actually tell a man of faith to sacrifice both his sons for the sake of obedience to God. God would never do that, and God’s angels would never do that. To Mother Father God, the loving care of children is paramount

So first we have God telling Abraham it’s okay for him to disown and cast out his young son Ishmael, along with Ishmael’s mother, the slave Hagar. They get turfed into the desert, afraid and alone. But, hey, not to worry — they should be grateful for this abusive treatment, because God “will make a great nation of him [Ishmael].” Then we have God “testing” Abraham, telling him directly (that’s a claim for channelling, folks!) to “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

So Abraham takes his son — the son he supposedly loves — to the mountain, and forces Isaac to carry the firewood up the slope, and then ties his son to the altar and raises his knife with every intention of killing him as a sacrifice to God.

Firewood (c) JAT 2014: Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God?

Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God? Photo credit JAT 2014.

Okaaaaaaaaaay. Let’s stop right there Let’s not go on to the next part of the story, the part where an angel of the Lord intervenes and tells Abraham not to harm the boy. Let’s just think for a minute about the first part, the part where Abraham actually believes God has told him it’s okay to scare the living shit out of a vulnerable, trusting child. The part where Isaac is lying on the altar and it finally dawns on him that his father is going to murder him. The part where Isaac experiences all the precipitating factors for lifetime post-traumatic stress order, not to mention a lifetime inability to ever trust his father’s love or integrity again. What, you think Isaac’s gonna forget something like that?

Ah, but we’re not supposed to be asking questions like that, are we? We’re not supposed to be asking questions about Ishmael’s or Isaac’s feelings or their brain health. Instead, we’re supposed to be saying to ourselves, “Who am I to withhold anything from God’s messengers if Abraham, our chosen forefather, did not withhold his only son from God?” (Never mind the fact that Abraham clearly had two sons, not one.)

The editors of Genesis and several chunks of the New Testament want us to be saying to ourselves that obedience to God’s messengers (the prophets, priests, and eventually the Apostles) trumps everything, even charity and compassion towards our own children. Proper sacrifice to God demands, well, sacrifice. After all, sacrifice and gratitude go hand in hand. Don’t they? You’re grateful to God for the blessings in your life, so obviously you want to give God a sacrifice — something tangible, something that takes money or goods or food away from you and your family, or maybe something that takes away your health and your children’s health — but the main thing is you must willingly put a sacrifice on the altar so you can prove your humility.

‘Cause, yeah, it’s . . . like . . . a totally crazy idea that you could just say thank you to God with all your heart and all your mind and all soul and all your strength, and that God would find your genuine gratitude a good enough response.

I’m certainly not the first person to point fingers at the horribleness of the Abraham-and-Isaac “wisdom teaching,” and I hope I won’t be the last. It’s just the stupidest idea imaginable to believe that God (who created billions and billions of galaxies) would actually want you to say thank you by abusing, enslaving, or humiliating your children. If you really want to show God how grateful you are, you can start by treating children well.

Jesus knew all this. Good luck finding any reverence for Abraham in the original teachings of Jesus (as witnessed in the Gospel of Mark and parts of the Letter of James).

The Sacred Spring at the Roman Baths, Bath, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

Jesus once said (in writing!) you can’t expect a spring to pour both fresh and brackish water from the same opening (James 3:11). He said it this way because in a dry and arid terrain (such as Judea) fresh water is synonymous with genuine gratitude. It’s the source of life and healing, a blessing not to be taken for granted. Brackish water is synonymous with ill health and disease, and, by extension, diseases of human nature such as hypocrisy and deceit.

Just as you can’t expect a spring to give both fresh and mouldy water at the same time, you can’t expect to find the truth about relationship with God in the midst of a story about abuse, self-aggrandizement, and forcing somebody to submit to sacrifice.

Pick one — fresh or brackish. Then be honest about your choice. Pick either gratitude or worship — but not both, because they’re mutually exclusive.

This means you have to decide whether you can live without entertainment news (worship of status addicted stars) and professional sports scores (also worship of status addicted stars).

Just don’t pretend you’re so grateful for these people (e.g. famous pop stars) that you can’t imagine living without them. This isn’t gratitude. It’s plain ol’ status addiction wrapped up in a pretty package of fakey-fakey gratitude.

Tough words. But necessary to understand if you want to find and stay on the Spiral Path.

Good news, though — you don’t have to give up the songs or the films or the sports activities that inspire and encourage you. You just have to give up the worship!

* For more on the history of the writing of Genesis, please see the post entitled “The Book of Genesis.”

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Posted in Bible, Book of Genesis, gratitude, humility, Letter of James, psychopathy, psychopathy (niceness), relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, worship and tagged science & faith, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

17 May 2012

TBM38: Heroes, Derring-do, and Mothers

Yesterday* my son treated four of the women in his life — his girlfriend, his aunt (my sister), his cousin (my sister’s daughter), and me — to an afternoon showing of The Avengers, the new action-adventure blockbuster of the year. I had a blast.

Her Shoes

The movie theatre was mostly filled with men, young men, and boys. Up near the front, though, two respectable middle-aged women — my sister and I — were having more fun than all the young lads combined. For us, the super hero characters were old friends, characters we knew from our childhood summers, characters who had taught us a lot about courage, devotion, gratitude, and trust even though we thought we were just reading comic books during those tranquil summer days of our youth.

My sister and I were very fortunate that our parents decided to buy a small piece of rocky terrain in Ontario’s cottage country and build a simple summer cottage where we could all spend our summers together. Our family cottage is the focus of some of my happiest childhood memories.

When I say the cottage is simple, I mean it’s simple. The first part was built in the early 1960’s, and a small addition was added a few years later. As with many cottages of the period, there’s no foundation. The cottage is set on a series of concrete supports that lift it off the uneven granite terrain, but the cottage was built to suit the natural setting, not the other way around. My mother designed it. My father built it. The family still spends restful days there every summer. There’s just something about it . . . .

When I was quite young, there was no indoor bathroom. My father hadn’t yet got round to installing bathroom plumbing. So we had an outhouse. I can still remember the distinctive smell of lye and bathroom wastes. Spiders — very large spiders, or so it seemed to me when I was five — loved to spin their webs in all the corners of the outdoor john. My sister and I were afraid to go in there after dark, so our dad would escort us out with a flashlight and wait outside the door while we tried to pee in record time.

Summers were for simple fun. There was no telephone. The tiny TV could only pick up one channel on its bunny ears — the CBC affiliate in Peterborough. And no computer, of course. But there was the lake at the foot of the hill, the lake that gave us endless hours of swimming, diving, canoeing, rowboating, waterskiing, exploring. On rainy days, we had a cupboard filled with games and art supplies to occupy our minds and talents. Monopoly and Sorry. Card games galore. Drawing. Inventing. Giggling. Complaining we had nothing to do, though obviously this wasn’t true.

Early morning was for reading. Books. Comic books. Old favourites. New favourites. Dad would get up and light a fire in the cast iron stove — the sounds and the smells of the stove meant safety and comfort to us — and my sister and I would snuggle under the blankets of our bunk beds and read until Mom called us for breakfast. I was in the top bunk. Sometimes I’d stare up at the knots in the cedar planks of the ceiling, and I’d make up stories about the “pictures” I saw in the patterns there.

The stories I made up were always modelled on the action-adventure-mystery-fantasy stories I loved to read while I was growing up. I wasn’t like most girls I knew. I wasn’t interested in stories about animals who talked, or horses, or quiet household dramas. From the earliest time I can remember, I wanted to read stories about heroes. So when other girls were reading National Velvet, I was reading Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes. It’s just who I am as a soul.

My parents allowed me to read subversive stories — stories about characters who bucked convention and did the right thing. So DC and Marvel and Archie comics were okay with Mom and Dad. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s, comics didn’t contain sexual content that was inappropriate for younger readers. (I wouldn’t have understood such content even if it had been present.) But there was plenty of mystery and suspense and action and derring-do. More importantly, there were men and women who had to struggle against pain and loss and rejection in order to stay the course, in order to do the right thing.

These stories, as it turns out, were much better for my brain than anything I could have read in the Bible.

The Avengers is a film with terrific story-telling, story-telling that says something true about all of us. It’s not going to win any Oscars, because it’s not meant to appeal to viewers’ status addiction, but it’s going to make buckets of money because it appeals to our hearts.

Are there lots of fight scenes? Yes. So I don’t recommend the film for children under the age of about 10. Are the fight scenes the raison d’etre for the film? No. The film’s heart lies in its exploration of character — a bunch of quarrelling, “crazy” super heroes who can’t work together as a team until each finds his/her own courage within.

Yeah, it’s not a new idea. Some of the oldest myths we have tell this story about the dogged pursuit of one’s own courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion even while one is tracking down the evil psychopathic tyrant named _______ (insert desired name of your choice) who is trying to steal other people’s lives and free will and courage.

Yeah, it’s an old-fashioned kind of story. But these are the stories we need.

Of course, this is the very theme of the film, as expressed by the character Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson). It’s a theme which needs to be repeated loudly and often: old-fashioned heroism never goes out of style. Neither do old-fashioned stories.

Some things just can’t be improved upon. Some stories are so good they deserve to be told again and again and again. Like the story of God the Mother and God the Father, who long, long ago and far, far away began their own quest to know what Divine Love is and all that it can be.

Happy Mother’s Day to you, Mom! Love those action scenes with the high heels! ;)))

*Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2012 on The Blonde Mystic

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Posted in Divine Love, Mother and Father God, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

17 May 2012

TBM37: Dreams – The Courage to Trust the Science of Sleep

One thing people on a spiritual path are very curious about is dreams. What are dreams? Where do they come from? Why do we have them? What do they mean? Does God send us messages in our dreams?

Sint Maarten 2014

This is a huge topic, and I can’t answer these questions in a single post, but I’d like to point out a few things you need to know about sleeping and dreaming if you want to stay healthy while you follow the Spiral Path.*

The number one thing you need to know — based not on religious teachings but on a huge body of scientific research — is that you need to get a good night’s sleep (or a good day’s sleep if you’re a shift worker). If you want to have a healthy brain, you need to set aside a single block of sleep time each day, a single block of uninterrupted time that’s 8 hours long or so. Your brain requires this time because it does a lot of work for you while you’re sleeping.**

I’ll come back shortly to the question of people who need to get up several times in the night for compassionate reasons — for example, young parents or caregivers who are looking after someone who’s ill. For the moment, I’m talking only about adolescents and adults who have a choice about their daily schedule and a choice about their nighttime activities.

Chronic sleep deprivation is currently wreaking havoc on the brains of people in our society. Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating, but this is one of those instances where I have lots and lots of scientific research on my side. So I don’t have to apologize for my strong statement about sleep deprivation. It’s the honest truth.

I have no tolerance — absolutely none — for any spiritual or religious teaching that barrels over the realities of sleep health like a tank on a military mission. I have no tolerance for any religious tradition that requires you to wake up part way through your sleep cycle so you can pray. I fully understand people’s desire to be in sincere communication with God, but if you really want to be in sincere communication with God, then please respect the way God designed your brain, and please make sure you get the sleep time God wants you to get.

You’ll be able to hear God and God’s angels much more clearly if you honour the teachings that come to you through current brain research (even though such research seems to contradict the wisdom of ancient religious teachings). There’s a reasonthat so many studies have linked sleep disorders to a whole slew of physical and psychological health disorders. Chronic sleep deprivation and chronic sleep interruption (eg. sleep apnea) are as toxic to your brain’s health as chewing lead paint off an old wooden spoon. You may not notice the effects at first, but you sure as heck shouldn’t be surprised when you start having health problems. Health problems are a biological consequence of your failure to get long blocks of natural sleep. If you already have a sleep disorder, then you know what I mean. When this major system of your body is “broke,” it ain’t pretty.

I’ve tried to emphasize on this site that everyone on Planet Earth is equal on the Spiral Path. Everyone has equal access to the wonder of it. Everyone has — or should have — equal access to the basic tools. The basic tools — free will, education, self-discipline, courage, empathy, brain health, teamwork — don’t require lots of money. They don’t require special rituals. They don’t require obedience to religious laws. But they do require trust — trust in the scientific realities of God’s good creation.

The need for natural sleep is one of the scientific realities of God’s good creation here on Planet Earth. It’s a scientific reality that can’t be circumvented by religious or cultural laws, no matter how much we’d like to believe in our own ability to “rise above” such petty biological concerns as sleep.

I know, of course, that many ambitious individuals in this world think sleep is a nuisance, and, even more significantly, that sleep is a sign of weakness, a sign shown only by needy and pathetic underlings unworthy of the right to lead others.

These ambitious Type A individuals (as they used to be called) are the same human beings who have lost all (or most) of the connections between the Darwinian Circuitry and the Soul Circuitry inside their own brains. Their brains are operating on a steady diet of status addiction, anger, contempt for others, narcissism, and denial. They no longer need as much sleep as other people because, to be honest, their own brains have less work to do at night.

This isn’t a good thing, by the way. It’s never a good thing when your own brain stops working the way it’s supposed to. It’s not a sign of strength or superiority when you only need 4 hours of sleep each night. It’s a sign that you’ve seriously fucked up your own brain.

Those who don’t sleep well also don’t dream well. Did you know that many people don’t actually have dreams? Not ones they can remember, anyway. Yeah, no dreams. It’s more common than you think. But most people who suffer from this kind of “dream disorder” don’t want to admit it out loud because they suspect, somewhere deep inside, that it isn’t biologically normal for a person to be “dreamless,” so to speak.

I’ve noticed a pattern over the years in the type of person who’s likely to confess he or she never remembers dreams. The people I’ve personally known who are “dreamless” are all high-functioning people in their waking lives, people who are meticulous, perfectionistic, highly rational, and bulldog-like in their relationships with others. These people mistrust sentiment, have little sympathy for the suffering of people they don’t know, hold politically conservative views, and cherish the values of duty, honour, obedience, and denial of pain. In psychological terms, they would score high on the “Negative Emotionality” or “Neuroticism” dimension of the Big Five Personality scale. They would also score high on the “Agreeableness” dimension of the Big Five.

These two dimensions — the Neuroticism dimension and the Agreeableness dimension — generate traits that are linked to the brain’s Darwinian Circuitry. The other three dimensions in the Big Five model — Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness — are linked to the brain’s Soul Circuitry.

A human being whose brain is balanced and healthy will exhibit behaviours that seem, well, balanced across all five dimensions. Such a person is open to new experiences, but not so open that your brain falls out; conscientious without being obsessive or controlling or perfectionistic; agreeable and willing to compromise with others, but not willing to be an enabler of addictive behaviours; comfortable in relationships with other people, but also comfortable spending some time alone (as when sleeping!); alert to surrounding situations and stressors, but not preoccupied or obsessed by them.

This is a lot to balance, and it’s very hard for your brain to maintain this balance if you refuse to give your brain the time and energy and nutrients it needs so it can sort and label and store and heal the data it receives every day through your many experiences. Dreams are a significant part of the nightly sorting process.

Human beings are born with the capacity to have three different kinds of dreams. Each does a different job. But they all share one thing in common: they activate the primary visual cortex of the occipital lobes. This is why dreams are accompanied by visual images.

The first kind of dream you can have is purely biological. It’s the kind of dream nobody remembers clearly. It’s a sort of visual record that your brain transmits as it’s doing its nightly housecleaning. It’s a bit like an Excel spreadsheet accompanied by pictures on little Post-It notes. There’s no coherent story line — it’s really just a bunch of important snapshots taken at different times during the previous day. These dreams aren’t especially memorable, and they don’t have much emotional content. (Like an Excel spreadsheet with little pictures.) Important and necessary, but not what you’d call juicy.

Second is the kind of dream that’s more personal, more emotional, and more memorable. If you can remember your dreams, you’re most often remembering dreams from this category. When you have dreams of this kind, what you’re really doing is talking to yourself. Your soul is talking “out loud,” so to speak, with pictures and words and actions. Even more important, your soul is talking about emotions — honest feelings about choices you’ve made. The soul is nothing if not truthful and honest. So if your brain has made some choices your soul doesn’t like, your soul will pipe up while you’re asleep and will express feelings such as fear, anxiety, or a desire to do better (i.e. guilt). (Yes, your own soul can be afraid of choices made by the Darwinian Circuit of your own brain. This is called conscience. If you stop listening to the voice of your own soul — and many, many people do — your brain will stop accepting input from the parts of the brain wired to help you express your Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion. Your brain will also stop sending you output in the form of personal dreams. You won’t have personal dreams anymore until you heal your brain.)

The third kind of dream is the kind of dream that’s experienced least often and is written about most. The third kind of dream is the message dream — the direct communication that takes place between you and God, or between you and God’s angels. Message dreams are only possible if you’re in an “open” state.

If you’re never in an open state (because you’ve chosen to reject input from the Soul Circuitry of your brain) you won’t get this kind of dream. Message dreams can only be received by a brain that’s relatively healthy and balanced. (Sorry — no exceptions.) So-called “oracular dreams” that come to you after you’ve used drugs or alcohol or intentionally induced trance states DO NOT COUNT. If you use outside means to try to receive a dream message from God, you’re likely to hear and see many fantastical things, but none of them will be messages from God.

Just because you can’t receive dream messages from God, it doesn’t mean God has abandoned you. Far from it. God never abandons anyone. But you have to accept the scientific reality that a closed brain can’t receive clear messages — either awake or asleep — and you have to work around this particular form of disability. There are plenty of other ways that God can — and does — communicate with you. If you can’t dream at present because your brain is in need of some serious healing, please be patient. Help is all around you.

Last, I’d like to return to the question of sleep deprivation in situations that can’t be helped, such as feeding and caring for an infant at night.

A young infant has strong biological and emotional needs that must be met by the parents or caregivers, and in a case like this — where you’re getting up in the night because someone else needs you and because you care — God and your angels will lend you extra support. You don’t have to ask for this support (though a prayer of thanks and gratitude is always appreciated!!). All you have to do is get up in the night because your heart tells you it’s the right thing to do. As long as you stay “in the zone” of caring and worrying about another person, God will look after the relevant wiring in your brain.

If, on the other hand, you’re getting up at night solely because you “have to” — solely from a sense of duty or obligation or feeling sorry for yourself — you won’t get the angelic support your body needs. Why not? Because you’re not being your true self — the loving, emotionally supportive person you’re capable of being. God has free will, and God does not enable choices or behaviours that snuff out the messages of the soul and replace those message with ideologies of perfectionism, superiority, victimhood, or obedience to religious law. So if you’re getting up in the middle of the night to recite traditional prayers so God will be properly “assisted and nourished,” you’re shooting yourself not in the foot but in the head. You’re ruining your own sleep cycles — intentionally and on purpose — because you believe you’re “helping” God, but all you’re doing is making it harder and harder for you to ever hear God’s quiet voice in your life.

God doesn’t need this kind of “help.” And neither do you.

One great thing about being asleep is the quiet. Once you’re finally asleep, it’s quiet in the kingdom of your own biological head. It’s in this place of quiet that God’s voice is most easily heard.

God the Mother and God the Father are very quiet and shy, you see. They love to laugh and they love to sing, but they’re both very quiet. They laugh and sing in some places, but in other places they’re the quiet of dew-laden rose petal, the quiet of the morning mist, the quiet of deep waters, the quiet of the sun’s rays silently bearing life to this wondrous planet we live upon.

If you’re very quiet and very open to the Heart of God the Mother and God the Father, you’ll feel the joy and tenderness of their embrace as a deep inner sense of comfort and safety that’s hard to describe.

I invite you to slip into quiet sleep tonight and feel the kindness and shyness of their love.

* Since I first wrote this post, there’s been a tidal wave of articles on the importance of sleep. Here’s a sample of recent articles that have appeared on the BBC news site:

** For more information on what your brain is doing while you’re asleep, please see “Perchance to Prune” by Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli in the August 2013 issue of Scientific American.

Posted Wednesday, May 9, 2012 on The Blonde Mystic

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Posted in brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain's Soul Circuitry, brain-soul connection, building your intuition, conscience & morality, healing, Mother and Father God, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged brain-soul connection, science & faith | Leave a Comment

24 Mar 2012

TBM31: Miracles: Big Love in Small Places

A while back I talked about intuition and how it works during a crisis.* Today I’d like to try to describe what it feels like when you use intuition as a normal part of your everyday life.

I suspect that if you gathered a group of, say, 100 people and asked each one to speak in private about an experience of Divine presence during an emergency, you’d get about 20 who’ve had a deeply personal experience of a comforting presence, and another 25 who know they got out of a scrape but aren’t sure how, and slightly more than half who attribute their escape to their own personal brilliance.

Still, there are a lot of people out there who’ve gone through something very scary and have felt, without even asking, the presence of a wise and loving angel, if only for a few life-changing moments.

We’ve been conditioned in our culture to accept that maybe — just maybe — God and God’s angels will “be there” for us during an acute emergency. So we pay attention to news stories about people who’ve defied incredible odds and somehow managed to survive. These are the events we call “miracles.” If you’re a person with an open heart, you can feel the reality of the miracle even if you can’t understand it with your logical mind. You can feel the reality of the miracle even if the Church dismisses it because no saints were invoked. You can feel the miracle even if the atheists insist you’re a gullible, superstitious fool.

It’s not easy in this culture to believe in miracles or in God’s loving intervention when you’re being attacked from all sides (including attacks from conservative Christianity). So it’s understandable that a person of faith might be pretty nervous about widening the net of miracles to include everyday activities rather than just emergency situations.

This is why I think this post may be more difficult for many readers to process than anything I’ve written so far — because this post is about everyday miracles, the miracles nobody wants to talk about and nobody wants to acknowledge because the implications are so darned real.

Human beings have a knack for shifting their own thoughts and feelings to every place except the place where they’re standing right now. Psychotherapists have accurate labels for these destructive psychological habits. Among these habits are projection, denial, reaction formation, fantasy, displacement, suppression, intellectualization, and rationalization. These strategies are used by individuals to help them avoid being honest with themselves about their own thoughts, feelings, needs, and inner wisdom. In one way or another, each of these strategies is a form of lying — a form of lying to oneself.

On the surface, it seems a person who’s using projection or denial is lying to other people — and, of course, such a person is lying to other people. But before she can lie with malicious intent to other people, she has to be lying to herself with malicious intent. She has to be trying with all her might to ignore the inner wisdom of her own soul (which has no malicious intent).

Meanwhile, a person who’s trying to balance the complex needs of the 4D soul and the 3D body, who uses all parts of his or her brain instead of only some parts, who has a well-developed sense of intuition and timing, has no need to lie to him/herself. Why would he/she? The whole point of being a Whole Brain Thinker is that you can consistently weave the needs of heart, mind, body, and talent into a tapestry of courage, devotion, trust, and gratitude. Therefore there’s no need to engage in energy-wasting psychological defences such as projection, denial, etc. There’s no need to waste precious biological brain resources on building and maintaining a collection of lies. The brain therefore has more time and energy to spend on more important matters — matters such as improving your health by learning to pay attention to cues from your guardian angels.

I’ve had many years of practice in working with these cues. These cues don’t come into the brain and central nervous system the way you might imagine. The authors of many, many TV shows and films and books and religious myths have attempted to describe how these cues are experienced by “the chosen ones.” I’ve seen few authors who get it right, and those who do are usually writing about some other aspect of the human condition and stumble accidentally on the experience of intuition as it actually exists in us poor ol’ non-chosen slobs.

One of the few dramatic series to get it right is the recent 5-year story arc of Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the old one). One of the few written pieces to get it right is the 1989 novella The Last of the Winnebagos by science fiction author Connie Willis. These stories pursue the very ordinariness of intuition, and the great transformative power of it, wrapped together within the borderlands of love that exist where two or more people open their hearts to each other.

It’s the ordinariness of intuition and the ordinariness of Divine intervention that most people just don’t want to hear about. They don’t want to hear about the “quantum Post-It notes” your guardian angels can attach to a bag of oranges at the grocery store so you pick up the bag that’s best suited to your own health needs. They don’t want to hear about angels helping you find a pair of shoes that fit. Or a shampoo that’s on sale. Or a newspaper that has an article you really need to read that day. But, in fact, this is the way intuition is supposed to work.

When I say, “quantum Post-It notes,” I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean that literally. I mean that when I pass my hand slowly over the pile of bagged oranges at the grocery store, I can feel the one my angels want me to pick up. I feel it as a faint “aha” feeling. More like a creative impulse than anything else — a sense of knowing something is right. That’s it.

It’s NOT (as you might suppose) an experience of hearing voices or “seeing things” or feeling detached or “floaty” or “blissed-out” or “connected to all Creation” (as so many authors have speculated). I mean, I’m at the grocery store, for heaven’s sake! It’s not like I’m ascending on clouds of ecstasy or anything. I’m just buying groceries!

At a neurophysiological level, I suspect the brief “aha” feeling would show up (if it could be studied in me or others) as spikes of gamma brainwave synchronization. But neurophysiology aside, these intuitive cues from my angels are also accompanied by feelings of calmness, compassion, and trust (so oxytocin is probably also involved in the “aha” experience).

Weird, eh?

Weird it may be, but I can’t imagine my life without these daily intuitive experiences. Those who are close to me are used to me and my weird way of doing things. They just kind of roll their eyes when I say my angels pointed out a gorgeous $495 Anne Klein size 6 summer weight wool blazer marked down to $5 that fits me perfectly. (Don’t worry — I kept the sale tags in case anybody wants me to prove it.) I feel fantastic when I wear this blazer, as my angels knew I would.

I wear a size 6, and sometimes a size 4, not because I starve myself (I’ve never dieted — never once in my life) but because I listen carefully to what my guardian angels suggest for me and my own body’s needs. My food regimen probably wouldn’t be the same as yours, because each person’s body is unique. But my food regimen works for me. So I put cream in my coffee. And I eat cheese and butter every day. And I bake (and eat) chocolate chip cookies. And I drink lots of fruit juice that contains Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and calcium. And I never count calories. The only thing I pay attention to is the quantum Post-It notes that appear on specific food items at each meal.

My approach to healthy eating isn’t something you’d want to rush out and try without first being sure your own intuitive circuitry is working properly. It’s a lot smarter to practice your intuitive skills on something with fewer possible health consequences — something like shampoo brands (because not every shampoo is right for every person).

Believe it or not, your guardian angel would be thrilled to help you find the right shampoo for you. No, I’m not kidding. Guardian angels don’t EVER want you to practise using your intuitive circuitry on “the big stuff.” It’s too risky for you and your loved ones. It’s too easy to “mix up your signals” and assume you’re getting an intuitive cue when you’re not. (God gets blamed all the time when religious folk try to overextend their intuitive circuitry and end up causing great harm because they don’t understand their own limits).

So start small. And be grateful for these ordinary, everyday miracles. These are the stuff of everyday relationship with God and God’s angels, unless you happen to be an astronaut on the International Space Station or a regular feature on the slopes of Mount Everest. Maybe you think it would be boring for your angels to help you find shampoos and oranges, but trust me — they never find it boring to help you be as healthy and as happy as it’s possible for you to be on Planet Earth.

Divine love is so big it fits in the smallest of places. That’s why it’s Divine love!

* Please see Guys, Intuition, and the Gut from April 2, 2011.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, cataphatic mysticism, Divine Love, miracles, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged building your intuition, cataphatic mysticism | Leave a Comment

14 Mar 2012

TBM28: When You Are Forgiven, You Are Forgiven

Over a year ago, in a post called “More Thoughts on the Soul,” I wrote that it’s better to be confused for a while on the Spiral Path than be caught in a nightmare of perfectionism and Divine Law.

So today I’d like to tell you a bit about the early part of my journey, a period when I felt confused most of the time.

The year 2000 was a challenging time for me. This was the year when I learned to develop my natural channelling skills. This was also the year when I left my husband after 20 years of marriage. Sandwiched between these two major events, I got quite ill. In June 2000, I had an acute episode of gastrointestinal inflammation. At the time, I assumed it was an exacerbation of the chronic ulcerative colitis I’d been suffering from for 20 years. But there were some extra symptoms, too, including intense nausea and vomitting that weren’t part of my normal pattern of G.I. upset. I treated my symptoms at home (apart from one brief visit to the emerg for rehydration), which meant, in the context of my spiritual studies at the time, that I spent a lot of time praying and calling upon Reiki energies and asking my guardian angel, Zak, to help me “clear” the negative energies that I assumed were the cause of my acute illness.

In retrospect, this was a dumb thing to do. But, you know, I was so sure I was right.

Eventually my body managed to heal itself — no thinks to my arrogant spiritual assumptions. There were, of course, no attacks taking place upon me from negative energies (e.g. past life karma) or negative entities (e.g. fallen angels). On the other hand, it seems there were plenty of attacks initiated by me upon me by my very own self.

In other words, I was doing it to myself. I was stressing myself out and didn’t even realize it. I was freaking out my own soul with all my untrusting, unloving, cruel talk about negative energies and negative entities, and my own soul was speaking up — speaking up through the biological medium of stress hormones. It was my own stress hormones that were making me sick in the early summer of 2000.

Many of us these days have accepted the reality that stress hormones are something of a mixed blessing. During times of great external stress, we’d be toast if we didn’t have stress hormones to kick us almost instantly into overdrive. But during times of great internal stress, we can pump out so many stress hormones for such a long period of time that we start to damage our own biology from the inside out. This is why stress has been linked to so many autoimmune disorders (including the one I used to suffer from, ulcerative colitis).

You can read more about the long term effects of chronic stress on learning, memory, immune function, rate of healing, and brain repair (neuroplasticity) by googling the topic. It’s not my intent to go into the medical research here. It is my intent, however, to highlight for you the biological reality — the actual biological effect on your brain — when you insist on accepting as “truth” certain theories that your own soul abhors.

Your own soul doesn’t like it at all when certain parts of your brain and central nervous system (what Jesus has described as your “Darwinian Circuitry”) try to gather “proof” for theories about God and the soul that feed the ongoing cravings of status addiction.

There’s coding in your DNA that’s designed to trigger the release of stress hormones within your own body when the Darwinian Circuitry of your brain tries to “take over” and muscle out the messages of your inner Soul Circuitry.* Naturally, this is an excellent design strategy, because it means you always have access to the natural wisdom of your own soul. Live according to your soul’s needs and you stay relatively healthy; reject your soul’s needs and be prepared to wage war with your own body’s DNA.

In short, you’re always getting feedback about your footing on the Spiral Path from your own biological body. If your immune system is constantly fighting infections and internal inflammatory processes, it means you’re out of balance. It may also mean there are too many stress hormones circulating in your body.

So finding different strategies to help your body reduce its levels of stress hormones will be highly beneficial for your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Many well-established stress-reducing practices make excellent spiritual practices, too — practices such as getting together with friends to play old-fashioned board games or shinny hockey, watching uplifting films that make you laugh and cry, sitting outside in the fresh air and sun with a good book, having an afternoon nap, and giving and receiving hugs each day.

You can try meditation if you like, as long as you keep this practice in balance and don’t exceed the “total of 2 hours per day” rule. I should tell you, though, that I myself don’t meditate. At the stage in my journey when many spiritual masters would have urged me to meditate in earnest, I tried something entirely unexpected at the insistence of my guardian angel, Zak. I tried the practice of forgiveness.

Learning to give and receive forgiveness was the very first spiritual practice I embarked on that Zak actually endorsed, encouraged, and insisted on with unrelenting and exasperating diligence. He just wouldn’t let up on this one. And because I was a channeller by this time, and could hear every word he said on the topic, I had to listen to him go on and on about the importance of forgiveness to, well, to everything I hoped to achieve on my spiritual journey.

Very early on in this series of lessons, Zak had me write out and stick to the fridge this note:

When you are forgiven, you are forgiven.

This simple truth left me in agony for months. But each time I went to the fridge, I had to look at it. And be reminded of it. And struggle with it emotionally and intellectually.

It was a very sneaky tactic on Zak’s part. But it was also extremely effective. I couldn’t get away from the issue. I couldn’t sweep it under the carpet and pretend I hadn’t heard Zak. Several times each day I had to think about forgiveness and what forgiveness might actually mean.

Learning to forgive was not an overnight epiphany, let me tell you. I really had to work at it. I had to question old assumptions. I had to be honest with myself about my own past mistakes. I had to find my own courage. Most of all, I had to be willing to receive forgiveness from Zak and from God and from other human beings, which was the hardest part.

It’s not easy to believe you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness, especially once you start to be deeply honest with yourself about harm you’ve created for yourself and others. In fact, it’s so painful to stare your own mistakes in the eye that you absolutely MUST learn forgiveness FIRST so you have the inner means to cope with your own past, your own history, your own mistakes.

You also need somebody to help you with this part of the journey. You need a mentor, somebody you can talk to in trust and faith, because during this part of the journey a lot of painful questions will rise to the surface. It’s best not to try this alone. A professional counsellor might be appropriate. Or a small group of trusted friends who operate according to the principles of the Twelve Step program. I wish with all my heart that I could recommend your local minister or priest, but I simply can’t, because I have yet to meet an ordained cleric who understands what forgiveness is.

God’s forgiveness is one thing you never have to ask for. God the Mother and God the Father forgive you for the mistakes you make even before you’ve finished making them. There are no words to describe the immensity of this gift. But their forgiveness is a source of great inspiration and a never-ending source of awe and wonder for us all.

Once I understood with every shred of my being that God really did forgive me and wasn’t going to take it back — once I could trust that for God forgiveness is a permanent act instead of a conditional choice dependent on my “perfection” and “obedience” — I found the courage to move forward on the Spiral Path in the absolute certainty that I would continue to make mistakes as I struggled to learn what Divine Love means.

As I also said early on in these posts, God doesn’t expect you to be perfect. God only expects you to try hard each day to be the kind and loving person you really are as a soul.

Knowing God is in the trying.

Finally! After several years of study, I earned my M.T.S. in June 2014. For me, ongoing academic study is an important spiritual practice -- one made easier and more productive because I can forgive myself.

Finally! After several years of study, I finally earned my M.T.S. in June 2014. For me, ongoing academic study is an important spiritual practice — one made easier and more productive because I forgive myself for not being perfect.

* For more on the Darwinian Circuitry and Soul Circuitry of your brain, see The Christ Zone Model: Introduction.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain's Darwinian Circuitry, brain's Soul Circuitry, brain-soul connection, forgiveness, healing, meditation, My Spiral Path, mystic, spiritual practices, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, the right to be right, trust and tagged brain-soul connection, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

13 Mar 2012

TBM27: Prayers Your Angels Will Refuse to Answer

Last time I said I’d talk about some of the ways in which your angels can help you. Many readers are not going to like this post.

Before you can understand the ways in which your angels can help you, you need to spend some time thinking about the ways in which your angels cannot help you.

This statement in itself will shock some people, because we’ve all been told again and again that God can do anything for us if we ask in the right way. Hence, the many books and workshops and rituals around prayer. We’ve been conditioned to believe that prayer is a powerful form of mystical energy, as it were, a powerful form of mystical energy that can change the world if properly invoked.

Indeed, so central is prayer to the experience of conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christianity that if you were to remove all the prayers from the worship services (e.g. the Anglican Book of Common Prayer), there’d be precious little left.

Which is exactly my point.

In a world where human beings are called upon to juggle the 4D needs of the soul and the 3D needs of the body in a balanced, holistic, seamless way, there’s something wrong with a religious experience that lets you off easy if you say a bunch of prayers. In most cases, you don’t even have to write the prayers yourself. You just have to copy what the prayer leader is saying!

Thutmose III offering two containers of incense to the god Amun. Reproduction from the 18th Dynasty (15th century BCE) original at Deir el-Bahri, Egypt, on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. The idea that you can open the door to God’s blessings by saying the right prayer or offering the right gift is very, very old. As Jesus tried to point out, the fact that a religious idea is old is no guarantee that it’s right.

I’ve taken university theology courses that teach prospective ministry students how to design worship services and write prayers, and believe me, there’s no great mystery involved. Ya just gotta follow the traditional prayer formulas and string together a lot of popular cliches about faith and peace and love, and, presto!, ya got yerself a pretty new prayer to recite on Sunday. Piece of cake.

The real question is, will God or your guardian angels pay any attention to you as you dutifully recite these prayers?

Well, this depends on two things. The first factor is your own personal intent or “meta-choice.”* The second factor is the relationship you already have with God. These two factors are intertwined with each other.

Maybe I should start by explaining that although I’m a practising mystic, I stopped praying to God years ago. In place of traditional prayer, I’ve learned to communicate with God.

But aren’t prayer and communication with God the same thing, you’re saying?

They’re only the same thing if (1) part of your personal meta-choice is to learn each day from your own mistakes and if (2) you have faith that God and God’s angels are going to intervene in your life whether or not you ask for help.

Prayer, as it’s traditionally understood, starts with the assumption that God hears and acts upon the words you say in prayer, but that until you actually “open your heart” by speaking the prayers, God is standing helplessly but hopefully on the other side of the divine door as he waits for you to ask.

In my rather large collection of books that contain what I feel are “toxic teachings,” I have a gem called Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To by Anthony DeStefano (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 2007). On the cover there’s a stamp that says, “Endorsed by the National Day of Prayer,” so right off the bat you can tell I’m going to have a problem with the content.

DeStefano outlines what he sees as the top ten questions people ask in their lives. He then offers a prayer you can use to answer each of these questions in turn.

So for the No. 1 Question — “I Wish I Could Believe” — DeStefano says you should use this prayer — “God, please show me that you exist” — again and again until “God starts to reveal himself to you (page 22).”

Says the author (pages 23-24):

“And it all starts with one simple prayer: God, please show me that you exist.

There is a beautiful nineteenth-century painting that illustrates this point well. It’s called The Light of the World. In it, Christ is shown holding a lantern, standing outside a little cottage on a dark, stormy night. He is knocking on the door of the home, waiting to be let in, but the occupant, unseen behind the door, does nothing. The figure of Christ, bathed in a golden green light, is supremely serene and looks as if he is prepared to stay outside the cottage door knocking forever. It is a striking image because of what it says about the light of truth in a dark world. But the really interesting thing about the painting is that there is a curious detail missing. If you look closely at the door of the home, you will see that there is not a knob or a latch anywhere to be found. Why? It can’t be that the artist forgot to put it in. Rather, he was making a sublime theological point: the door to the human heart can be opened only from the inside. God will never force his way in.”

Oh, let me swoon for the wonder of having a divine father who’ll stand outside knocking on a dark and stormy night because he cares whether or not I’m going to make it into heaven (page 4)! He cares what will happen to me on Judgment Day and doesn’t want me to have to go to Hell! Because he loves me sooooo much that he created all sorts of stupid things he can’t do anything about — things like Judgment Day and Atonement and angels that fall (like Satan) and Original Sin and Hell! I’m just so lucky that he cares enough to stand outside the door knocking, knocking, ever so patiently knocking!

Yeah, this sounds like Divine Love to me . . .

DeStefano thinks that after you open your heart to God, God will step through the door and into your heart. Once this happens, of course, you’ll become an instrument of God — which is Prayer No. 2 in this book. When you say repeatedly that you want God to make you an instrument (i.e. an empty vessel of service and “mercy”), what you’re actually asking for is religious humility. (Just so we’re clear on the intent of the “God, make me an instrument” prayer).

And then, because you’re now an empty vessel through whom God works, you have to use four of your “Top Ten” Prayers just to fill you up with various graces from God: “God, forgive me (No. 5). God, give me peace (No. 6). God, give me courage (no. 7). God, give me wisdom (No. 8).”

If you start your journey on the Spiral Path with the same assumptions that DeStefano advocates, you’re going to have some serious trouble understanding the messages of your own guardian angels. Why? Because angels don’t believe any of this shit. They’re operating from an entirely different set of truths, and they ain’t gonna budge on their truths, no matter how much you think they should.

Your angels know that God never enters your own core being, your own soul (i.e. “entering your heart,” as DeStefano describes it), because to do so would be a terrible violation of your own personal boundaries as a core consciousness and child of God. God is God, and you are you, and ne’er the twain shall meet. God will tap you on the shoulder. God will frequently hold your hand. God will sit beside you and talk to you for hours. God will sometimes pick you up and carry you for a while. But don’t EVER ask God to “come inside and fill you up,” because from God’s point of view this request feels like a creepy and incestuous form of contact. (Sorry to be so blunt, but you need to know what it feels like from God’s perspective, not from your status-addicted preacher’s perspective.) This is one of the few permanent rules you should keep in mind as you move forward on the Spiral Path: always treat God the Mother and God the Father in the respectful manner you’d treat your human parents. They’re your parents, not your lovers.

Your angels also know that it isn’t up to God or God’s angels to give you peace or courage or wisdom. You already have those strengths inside your core self, your own soul. Your job is not to ask to be given those things, but to ask how to remember those things which are already part of you.

(If this sounds like the plot of The Wizard of Oz, it’s because The Wizard of Oz has some timeless things to say about the spiritual journey.)

Third, your angels don’t wait for you to ask before they intervene in your life. They step in whenever and wherever they please. Why? Because they care about you, and they know it’s difficult and confusing to live as a 4D-soul-in-temporary-human-form.

If angels see a problem brewing, they don’t stand there knocking endlessly on the other side of the door (like Sheldon knocking on Penny’s door in The Big Bang Theory). I mean, what would be the good of that? Do you really want a guardian angel who stands there wringing his hands helplessly until you use the “right prayer,” the one with the “right mystical energy” that suddenly opens the door so God can walk in?

In my experience, angels don’t beat around the bush. They come right out and say what they’re thinking — even if (as is usually the case) you don’t want to hear it.

God and God’s angels are always talking. They’re a very chatty bunch, in fact. And they like to talk to each other — you know, pass along information about what you’re actually thinking and feeling instead of what you say you’re thinking and feeling.

You can fool some of the people some of the time, and a few of the people all of the time. But you can never, ever fool a guardian angel.

They always know your true intent. And they always have an opinion on your true intent. Which is a good thing, because this way they can guide you to the people and ideas and books (etc.) that can help you learn more about healing, forgiveness, and redemption.

As I said in an earlier post, angels aren’t wusses.

* For more on intent and meta-choices, see “Knowledge” Versus “Truth” and Pelagius and Personal Responsibility.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), brain-soul connection, ethical mysticism, free will, humility, intent, meta-choice, prayer, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged Divine Heart, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

10 Mar 2012

TBM26: A Practical Tip For Getting Along With Your Angels

Here’s a super-practical tip for people walking the Spiral Path: don’t ask your guardian angels to help you get more status.

Probably the single biggest mistake made by spiritual seekers anywhere (and I mean anywhere) is to assume that God and God’s angels are remotely interested in anything resembling status.

I know that countless religious tomes have told you otherwise. I know you’ve been told that God needs your worship and sacraments (i.e. status points for God). I know you’ve been told that God needs your prayers (i.e. status points for you). I know you’ve been told that angels (if they exist at all) are bound within a strict Celestial Hierarchy — escalating angelic tiers of seniority and importance and proximity to God. (Thanks for nothing, Pseudo-Dionysius). I know this is what you’ve been told again and again. But if you look at the evidence for success among pious devotees of these beliefs, you’ll find precious little in the way of consistent, positive, demonstrable outcomes such as improved health, improved standards of living, or improved family and community safety.

Which is how God measures these things.

God the Mother and God the Father know that your task here is to see what it feels like to juggle the needs of the 4D soul with the needs of the 3D body, with lots of chances to practise forgiveness thrown in (’cause it’s never too late to remember how). So God is very interested in helping you and your family achieve a state of relative good health (both physical health and mental health) until it’s your time to Go Home (colloquially known as dying).

Naturally, a God who’s interested in helping you stay healthy is going to be very worried about the painful effects of addiction in your life, since addiction is one of the major causes of suffering among human beings. Addiction issues create physical suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering, family suffering, and community suffering. Addiction also creates financial suffering and educational suffering and job-related suffering. It gets in the way of everything that’s positive and selfless and healing.

So . . . it should take you all of about five seconds to realize that God and God’s angels are not going to be supportive of choices based on status addiction.

Even if the myth surrounding the status addiction is a religious myth.

The general assumption seems to be that God is tolerant of all religious beliefs and all religious myths because, when push comes to shove, these religious traditions have one thing in common: they confer status points on God.

Only an emotionally immature person would conclude that God actually wants status points.

Unfortunately, all too many emotionally immature individuals have gradually fallen into the trap of status addiction, where, mired in the swamps of narcissism and bullying, and looking at others through the characteristic tunnel-vision thereof, it seems perfectly logical to conclude that the correct way to approach God is to offer status points. After all, the giving and taking of status points is a normal way of existing (though not a normal way of living) for many human beings on Planet Earth.

As humans, we don’t like to hear that angels have free will, but they do. Your own guardian angels use their free will to decide when, how, and if they’ll respond to your requests for aid – even if it means you have to go through some rough patches to get where you need to go.

So don’t do it. There aren’t a lot of strict rules to follow on the Spiral Path, and even this one isn’t really a rule, since you can ignore me and do whatever you like because you have free will. But before you make that choice, you need to know there are consequences for the choice to seek status on the spiritual journey. Here is the consequence: your guardian angels will stop helping you. They’ll still love you. They’ll still forgive you. But they won’t enable you as you rejoice in the high of an addiction disorder — any addiction disorder, including status addiction.

Just as family members of a person with addiction issues know it’s wrong to enable dysfunctional behaviours, angels know it’s wrong to enable dysfunctional and harmful behaviours. It’s courageous and loving and forgiving of them to refuse to enable the choices of status addiction. And why would we want it any other way?

Angels will help you find healing once you make the choice to be honest about your addiction. They’ll guide you to people and books and learning experiences and medical treatments that will help you heal. But they’ll let you fall flat on your face over and over until you accept the truth that your status addiction isn’t pretty and isn’t divine and isn’t acceptable to anyone, including your core self.

During my theology classes, I was required to read the teachings of Christian theologians from the time of Paul the Apostle to the modern day. I read many different explanations for why human beings suffer, but never once, except in the teachings of Jesus himself, did I come across the one explanation that fits all the facts: God refuses to be an enabler of status addiction.

The communities in the world today that have the highest standards of health, the highest standards of living for the middle and lower classes, the lowest levels of crime and corruption, and the highest standards of ethical, legal, and interpersonal conduct are the communities with the least cultural emphasis on status acquisition.

Too often it’s assumed the recipe for success in these communities is the abolition of faith, a rejection of belief in God — that is, atheistic societies built on humanistic values without religious superstitions to hold people back.

Faith in God never holds a person back. But religious institutions which are deeply committed to the preservation of status addiction can and do hold people back. This is a biological reality.

Keep the idea of God. Ditch the idea of status acquisition and status addiction in all its nasty and insidious forms.

As a spiritual practice, it’s simple. It’s sane. And it works.

Because your guardian angels are thrilled to help you when you aren’t being such an ass.

Next time I’ll talk about some of the ways in which your angels can help you. I think you’ll be very surprised to learn what matters to them.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), faith, free will, HDM Myths, healing miracles, prayer, relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

20 Feb 2012

TBM23: Beauty in the Home As a Spiritual Practice

Yesterday, in response to Lesson #1 in the Workbook for Students in A Course in Miracles, I got talking about chairs.

Today I’d like to talk more about “chairs,” and, in a broader sense, the importance of living in an environment that matches who you are as a soul.

The importance of living in an environment that matches who you are as a soul has been seriously underestimated by religious authorities as a source of both spiritual practice and spiritual healing.

In other words, the place where you eat and sleep and pray and live matters.

It matters a lot.

I’ve mentioned in my profile that my mother is a well-known Canadian watercolourist. But she wasn’t a watercolourist when I was growing up. When I was growing up, she was a professional interior designer, a graduate of the Ontario College of Art’s Architecture and Interior Design program. Everything in our house and everything in our small summer cottage was expected to work from a design point of view. Even the colour of the Kleenex box had to be right.

So I was raised to appreciate art and art history and fine furniture and also the museums that showcase said topics. Of course, the really expensive stuff could only be admired from afar, as my family was far from wealthy. But window-shopping at fine furniture galleries cost nothing. And if there was a piece my mother really wanted, she was prepared to save her money until she could afford to buy it. Or she would buy a piece of “junk” at an antique store and make my father refinish it, which he did often and well. (Both my parents carried the weight of Depression Era attitudes towards money and buying things.)

Still, for all my mother’s keen interest in art and design, she wasn’t really a spiritual person in a conscious sort of way, and it never occurred to her that her passion for creating balanced, harmonious environments could be considered a spiritual practice.

It was my own guardian angel who introduced me to this concept in 2002. At the time I was struggling mightily with questions about spirituality and money, asceticism and humility. I really believed I was supposed to be letting go of all my attachments to beauty, sentimentality, comfort, and safety in my own environment. Needless to say, as the daughter of an artist, and as an artist, art historian, and art conservator in my own right, I felt I was being asked to give up the very essence of my soul (which, in fact, I was being asked to do by various New Age idiot teachers).

In 2002, my ever-so-wise guardian angel conspired with other guardian angels to keep me in touch with my soul’s need for beauty and art by doing an end-run around my semi-ascetic beliefs. He told me that I would be opening a spiritual healing centre in partnership with my “spiritual mentor” Grace (of whom I’ve spoken before.) In the context of this spiritual healing centre, said he, beautiful and harmonious decor would not only be allowed by God but would be required by God as a necessary way to help put other spiritual seekers at ease.

This is how he talked me into buying the ornate piece of furniture pictured here:

Early 20th century oak cabinet (c) JAT

Now, if ever there were a piece of furniture that would not qualify as ascetic, it’s this piece. It’s made of solid oak (so it weighs a friggin’ ton), and it’s covered in beautiful carving. The foliate carvings are done in a different wood (possibly walnut, which has a much finer grain than oak and is therefore easier to carve). There are also some burled panels (which I find utterly fascinating in pattern and texture). A previous owner of the piece had removed the original dark stain and covered most of the exterior surfaces in a white-wash finish that I just love. Even better, the cabinet has lots of good storage space, making it both practical and, to my eye, strikingly beautiful.

When I first saw this piece in the dark basement of a junk shop in 2002, I’ll admit that in the first few moments my heart literally leapt with joy and excitement. Why? Because this particular piece is a perfect match for me as a soul. (Among my favourite artists are Botticelli, Gustav Klimt, and Vermeer, which explains why I’m attracted to a piece of early 20th century Art Nouveau influenced furniture.)

About five seconds after my heart first leapt with joy, my mind took over. “You need this cabinet like a hole in the head,” said my logical mind. “It’s too big,” said my mind. “It’s too fancy,” said my mind. “What will other people say?” “It’s not modest. It’s . . . it’s too . . . ” My mind stopped to grope for the right word. “Too gorgeous?” supplied my heart before I could stop it from piping up.

“Okay,” said my logical mind. “The ticket price says $600. If we can talk the owner into selling it for $500, with free delivery, we can perhaps consider it. Possibly. Maybe. But only because we need it for the foyer of the spiritual centre we’re buying. Only because it makes sense from a business point of view.”

Yeah, right. From a business point of view.

Anyway, as you can see, the cabinet came home with me, and I love it every bit as much today as I did in the first moment I saw it. It’s an important part of the spiritual space I live in — a spiritual space that helps me live a balanced, holistic life where beauty and practicality and gratitude all blend seamlessly together in a way that’s right for me.

Since 2002, I’ve rarely had this strong a reaction to a piece of furniture, but when I do, I pay attention to the sense of connection that pops into my heart. Most often, this sense of connection is all I’m going to take home with me, because I live in a small apartment and I’m on a tight budget, so there’s no room and no money for more furniture. But the sense of connection tells me more about who I am as a soul. It tells me more about my unique “likes” and “dislikes” as a child of God. It tells me more about how I can live as a human being in full relationship with God and, well, with furniture designers and wood carvers!

Furniture designers and wood carvers are no less worthy of God’s love and devotion than all the saints who’ve ever been named. I thank these artists for the lasting gift they’ve given me. Their talents are much appreciated.

Amen.

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Posted in humility, mystic, Soul, soul blueprint, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

24 Jan 2012

TBM17: Learning to Understand Your Own Angels

This piece called “Dream Cloud” is carved from a single piece of boulder opal in an ironstone matrix. It measures 8 x 6 x 4 centimetres, weighs 1167.5 carats, and is believed to have been carved in about 1915 CE. My intuition tells me that the artist who created this piece had some divine inspiration along the way. “Dream Cloud” is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017

Learning to communicate with your guardian angels is a tricky, tricky business.

If you go into the New Age section of your local bookstore, you’ll find quite a few books about how to talk to angels. Most of these books are written by people who are in the early stages of their spiritual journey. They don’t yet have the knowledge or experience or scientific training to teach others how to understand the messages of angels. Therefore, a lot of information in these books is flawed.

However, some New Age books are well-meaning and contain the odd useful nugget. This is more than I can say for books about angels that are written by evangelical or fundamentalist Christians, who want to pummel you with the idea that your soul is filled with sin and your angels are part of a vast celestial hierarchy whose only purpose is to worship God. It’s pretty negative stuff when you stop and think about it.

There’s a history behind these traditional teachings I won’t go into today, but suffice it to say that conventional Christian theories about angels won’t get you very far on the Spiral Path. In fact, Christian theories will slow you down. You’re better off to start with a simple model based on observable facts.

Fact #1: Learning to communicate effectively with anyone — including your angels — takes time and practice and patience. It’s not something you learn overnight. It’s not something you learn at a weekend workshop. It’s something you have to work on bit by bit, day by day. In other words, you need to know from the very beginning of your journey that you won’t be able to understand your angels’ messages right away. You’re going to have to practise.

This doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Quite the opposite, in fact. What you’re trying to develop is a complex skill — a way of thinking and feeling and acting that’s holistic and grounded and peace-filled. Because it’s a complex skill, it takes time for you to develop it. But this is a good thing, right? All complex human endeavours take time and effort. People don’t learn how to become jumbo jet pilots by going to a weekend workshop. Cirque du Soleil artists don’t learn how to scale walls by going to a weekend workshop. And adult men and women don’t learn how to communicate effectively with their angels in a few short hours, either.

If you meet a spiritual teacher who claims to have had an experience of instant conversion to a state of full communion with God or God’s angels overnight, you should be very, very wary. The story in the Bible’s Book of Acts about Saul’s sudden conversion on the road to Damascus is exactly the sort of religious claim that should raise an alarm bell in the back of your head. The story of Saul (who becomes Paul) gives people the idea that God chooses certain special people and then swoops into their heads to instantly rewire their brains so they can serve as special receptacles for divine revelation.

Yeah, okay, so God is just going to dump a few terabytes of new data into your head from one minute to the next, and you’re not even going to get a migraine?

This is just goofy. Not to mention abusive. The story of Saul on the road to Damascus describes an abusive God who seizes hold of one man and forces him to instantly convert to a new vision of God. Saul doesn’t get a say in this conversion, according to the Bible. Instead, he’s forced by God to accept his “destiny.” His “fate.” His chosen status as a messenger of God.

And where in this story does Saul apply his own free will and make the choice to seek redemption?

Nowhere.

This leads us to Fact #2.

Fact #2: Learning to use your own free will is a real bitch. I’m not going to lie to you. A big part of your journey to understand your angels’ messages will involve the journey to understand your own free will.

See, this is another reason I’m suggesting you avoid traditional Christian teachings about angels and souls. According to these traditional teachings, you don’t really have free will. Well, you sorta do, in so far as you can choose to commit sinful acts. And, of course, you’re allowed to apply your free will to choose salvation through Christ. But, other than that, the Church says you’re basically an unworthy piece of shit who can’t choose redemption and can’t really forgive others and can’t be a good person unless God has chosen this destiny for you. But good luck trying!

Fortunately, a great many individuals have figured out the Church is wrong.

Among the people who understand the true potential of your free will are your very own guardian angels. All angels, whether in 4D form or in incarnated human form, live and breathe the concept of free will in its deepest grandeur. So you may as well know from the beginning of your journey that if you try to tell your angels that you can’t change because you don’t have free will, they’ll put on their angel earmuffs and loudly proclaim, “Sorry, we can’t hear you. La la la la la.”

Why are angels allowed to ignore your pity parties? Because angels have free will. And they don’t have to agree with everything you’re saying.

Which leads to the last point I want to highlight today.

Fact #3: All guardian angels are equally competent and equally well qualified to guide their respective charges. There’s no such thing as “defective” or “inferior” guardian angels. The angels who are watching over you are the angels who are best suited to you and your unique needs. Period.

I’ve read a number of New Age books in which authors claim you can break a contract with your guardian angels if you believe they’re not “pure” enough or “advanced” enough for you. According to these authors, you can insist on being teamed with a “better” angel or spirit guide, someone who’s higher on the ladder of spiritual ascent . . . like, say, an archangel instead of a plain ol’ guardian angel. Like maybe even Archangel Michael himself!

Hah!

You may have noticed that in my last post (Angels Aren’t Wusses) I described angels as being more like the crew of the star ship Enterprise than the winged, ethereal, transcendent beings of traditional Western art. This is because angels ARE more like the crew of the Enterprise. They come in many different sizes and shapes (think Klingon, Betazoid, Vulcan). They come with many different combinations of talents and strengths (think strong Klingon, empathic Betazoid, intellectual Vulcan). They come with absences of strengths, too (think gentle Klingon, non-telepathic Betazoid, weepy Vulcan — say what?). So angels always work AS A TEAM, with each angel offering his or her strengths, and each one deferring to others in areas where he or she lacks a strength or talent. (Not coincidentally, the same observation applies to human communities at their best — people with different “sizes and strengths” coming together to work as a team.)

No one incarnates on Planet Earth before a full and appropriate angelic team has been assembled for the particular individual who has chosen to incarnate.

Gosh, did I just say “has chosen to incarnate”? As in “wasn’t forced by cosmic forces beyond my control to be here living this lousy human life?”

Yup.

As I said above, all angels have free will. This free will extends to the choice to either incarnate for a while or to not incarnate for the time being.

Angels choose to incarnate for a variety of reasons, but all these reasons are positive and hopeful and courageous and loving. At the moment you may not remember or understand your own reasons for choosing to incarnate as a human being. But you did choose to be here. And your guardian angels support your choice and are doing far more than you realize to help you achieve your soul’s own purpose.

Next time we’ll talk about soul purpose, ’cause, as the Scotiabank’s TV ads say, “You’re richer than you think!”

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Posted in anagogic mysticism, angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, free will, life and death, Paul, Soul, spiritual ascent, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged building your intuition, ethical mysticism | Leave a Comment

02 Jan 2012

TBM16: Angels Aren’t Wusses (Spirituality for Guys)

My son up close and personal with a Snowbirds CT-114 Tutor

Want to make a guy squirm? Tell him out loud he has a guardian angel.

Lots of women I know will talk about guardian angels. But it’s pretty rare to find a man who’s willing to stop and ask for directions from a guardian angel. Most guys would rather drive in circles for their entire lives than admit they need to stop and ask for help to read the map of the Spiral Path.

I say that as the mother of a 28 year old man. My son is a wonderful fellow, and he’s as thoughtful and responsible a man as any mother could wish for. But at the end of the day he’s a guy. A real guy. His eyes kind of glaze over at the thought of anything cool that moves and has lots of power (like cars, bikes, and planes). He’s an athlete (a sabre fencer, actually). He tries really hard to remember birthdays and anniversaries but sometimes he needs a friendly reminder. He leaves his socks in little piles all over the floor, and his socks almost never match. He loves action movies. He watches chick flicks with his girlfriend because he wants to share things with her that she enjoys. (Thank you, son). He loves to be spoiled with a big home-cooked meal (though he’s happy to do the dishes afterwards). He thinks South Park is funny.

My son with his Kawasaki

He has no problem expressing his individuality or his masculinity. Nor does he have a problem expressing his own thoughts and feelings in respectful ways. He loves to talk politics, history, philosophy, science, and spirituality. He’s not afraid to tell the truth when the truth needs to be told. He believes that being a man means doing the right thing rather than the easy thing.

But, ya know, despite all that, and despite the countless conversations I’ve had with him over the years about my own experiences as a mystic/channeller, he’s still kind of squeamish when I say the word “angel” out loud.

He chokes on the word. He really does. I don’t know why, but guys-of-heart just can’t seem to get past this word.

I think this may be part of the reason there’s so little material available for men who are seeking the Spiral Path.

Most of the books about angels are written by women for women. To make matters worse, these books are almost always illustrated with “chick flick” drawings and paintings. You know, lots of soft, flowing, pastel gowns. Butterflies. Gardens full of pink flowers. Unicorns. Fawns and kittens and puppies.

Okay. So maybe . . . maybe I’ve just stumbled onto part of the problem. Maybe part of the problem is the way angels have been depicted over the years.

I mean, really, if you’re a guy who likes to rip apart engines and put them back together, are you going to want to relate to your own guardian angel as a fat little Rococo baby with a naked butt? Or as a flowery, wispy, butterfly creature who breaks into tears at the first swear word you utter?

I’m thinkin’ not . . .

So here’s something I’m going to share with you based on my own long experience talking to various guardian angels over the years.

Guardian angels are tough as nails. If I had my way, paintings of angels would show them as they really are — more like the crew of the star ship Enterprise than the ethereal star children you’ve been seeing in recent books and films. These angel dudes, they’re committed and courageous and courteous and team-oriented, but if you choose to aim your weapons of hatred and prejudice and anger at them, they’ll put up their shields and deflect your attacks. They won’t put up with any bullshit from you.

Yes, it’s true that angels are very loving. Yes, it’s true that angels are completely forgiving. But it’s a mistake to equate love and forgiveness with meekness and mildness. No angel I’ve ever met can be described as meek and mild.

Least of all God the Mother and God the Father.

Over the centuries mystics and religious leaders have made a complete hash of their teachings on angels. There’s so much bad information out there in New Age and mystical texts that I can’t think of a single reputable book to recommend to you for further reading on the topic of angels.

So here’s what I’m going to suggest to you. In this day of internet connections and Skype and wireless phones and texting and instant imaging, we’ve all got used to the idea that it’s possible for us to have ongoing relationships with people who aren’t physically present in the same room with us, but who can be “seen” and “heard” via wireless connections.

Think of your biological brain as a highly advanced Blackberry or other wireless communication device. And think of your guardian angel as the guy who’s texting you on your Blackberry from a remote station, a remote station you can’t see with your physical eyes because it’s somewhere around a bend on the Spiral Path.

Just because you can’t see him with your physical eyes doesn’t mean he isn’t there.

And just because you can’t see him with your physical eyes doesn’t mean he can’t hear you or answer your questions every day of your life.

He hears you plenty good. And he’s texting you and Skyping you all the time. While he sits on his angelic Harley and listens to the angelic hard rock station he loves and brushes down his angelic jeans and black leather while he waits for his cue to ride in.

Okay, so maybe this last paragraph is a description of Jesus (’cause I know him so well by now and I know he’s a hard rock kind of guy) but you get the picture.

Angels aren’t wusses.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, Mother and Father God, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged building your intuition | Leave a Comment

04 Sep 2011

TBM15: The Necessity of Forgiveness on the Spiral Path

So far, you may be feeling that I haven’t said anything new or different. This would be very disappointing, since it would mean there’s nothing new here for you to learn.

Aren’t you tired of that feeling — the feeling that no one is giving you straight answers to hard questions? It’s easy to find “easy answers” — 10 minutes to a perfect life! Just send 5 easy payments of $99 to the phone number on your screen! — but it’s not so easy to find straight answers.

The one straight answer you almost never hear about is Forgiveness. If you want to travel more than a few feet along the Spiral Path of healing, you’re going to have to be willing to work on Forgiveness.

Forgiveness can be described in a number of different ways. One way is to think of forgiveness is the dishcloth you use to clean up your mistakes. Another way to think of forgiveness is like learning to ride a bicycle under marathon conditions. At first, it's really hard. After a while, though, it becomes second nature to you and you can do it for the rest of your life without really thinking about it -- just like learning to ride bike.

Forgiveness can be described in a number of different ways. One way to think of forgiveness is like the dishcloth you use to clean up your mistakes. Another way to think of forgiveness is like learning to ride a bicycle for a marathon. At first, it’s really hard. After a while, though, it becomes second nature to you and you can do it for the rest of your life without really thinking too much about it. It becomes a natural part of your skill set — just like learning to ride a bike.

The mystery of Forgiveness is where the rubber meets the road. It’s where your soul straps on your walking shoes. Where the parts of your biological brain that are wired into your soul’s energy start to take charge again (as they were supposed to be doing all along). Where you begin to recognize your core identity, your core purpose, as a soul.

In the analogy of the spiritual kitchen, forgiveness is the dishcloth that allows you to clean up your mistakes as you go along.

Yup, the dishcloth.

Forgiveness isn’t the lightbulb that brings illumination to the kitchen. Forgiveness isn’t the secret family recipe for the Colonel’s special chicken or Grandma’s Christmas shortbread. And forgiveness isn’t a magical clock that turns time forward so you don’t have to look at or think about yesterday’s fallen souffle.

Forgiveness is the mundane dishcloth you pick up with your own hands and use to wipe the spilled cocoa from the counter. It’s the tool you use to clean up a mistake once you’ve admitted that you’ve made a mistake. (Or once you’ve admitted that somebody else has made a mistake.)

It’s not very mystical-sounding, is it?

No. Which is why you so rarely hear about it in religious or New Age teachings. Forgiveness is not magical and it’s not secret and it’s not reserved for just a few select, chosen, special students. So it doesn’t have much mystical razzle dazzle. It can’t be bought or sold, so it has no commercial value. It can’t be patented or put in pill form, so it has no pharmaceutical value. Instead, it’s an inner state. Both a choice and a gift. Once it’s yours, it’s yours, and it can’t be taken away from you. Ever.*

So right away you can see why it’s of no interest to Big Religion or Big Business.

One of the reasons the practice of forgiveness isn’t taught by mainstream religion is the embarrassment factor. The embarrassment of mistakes. The average person doesn’t want to admit his own mistakes, let alone the mistakes of his family and clan and revered religious tradition. In fact, there are few things in the human experience that cause more suffering than the refusal to admit one’s own mistakes.

The strange part about this stubborn refusal to be honest about mistakes is that it’s NOT intrinsic to your soul’s true nature. You weren’t born this stubborn. In fact, when you were a young child, you were constantly making mistakes, but it never slowed you down in your learning process because each time you made a mistake, you forgave yourself, learned from the mistake, and moved on.

Most people don’t remember this part of their lives. They think they’ve always been stubborn and unforgiving and quite willing to lie through their teeth in order to avoid the embarrassment of admitting a mistake.

My boss at work is quite willing to lie without blinking an eye whenever somebody close to her points out a mistake she’s made. She can’t deal with honest truth when the honest truth is directed at herself. She’s quick to point out other people’s mistakes, but she’s not good at taking responsibility for her own mistakes. She has a reflex action of trying to shift the blame to somebody else if she can. I don’t think she even realizes what she’s doing. It’s a learned biological response, a trained reflex, not a natural part of her true soul self. But she’s been doing it for so long she doesn’t question it anymore. For her, it’s normal. Nonetheless, it’s hurtful. Hurtful to herself and hurtful to those she tries to blame for her own mistakes.

She and I don’t get along very well some days because I have a bad habit of being honest with her when she makes a mistake, and then forgiving her right on the spot. I’m also honest with her about my own mistakes. I try to communicate clearly and honestly about mistakes without holding grudges (since holding grudges is the very antithesis of forgiveness). I try to learn from mistakes — my own and others’.

Surprising as this may seem, my boss doesn’t like being treated this way. She doesn’t understand me because I don’t play by the grudgefest rules. She’s used to living in a world where people hold grudges. She knows how to respond to this sort of behaviour and she enjoys playing cat-and-mouse games of revenge (where she’s the cat and her staff members are the mouse). A few of us at work are refusing to play mouse. She finds this quite stressful at times. But, you know, that’s her problem.

When I say I forgive her, I don’t mean I choose to ignore the harm she’s created. I don’t mean I make excuses for her behaviour or pretend that bygones are bygones. I remember what she’s done. I remember her behaviour as clearly and objectively as I can. But I don’t “hang onto” the past. Instead, I allow the past to guide me and teach me so I can deal more effectively with the present. I understand that she’s responsible for her own choices, and I understand that she could be making different choices if she wanted to. It doesn’t do either of us any good to pretend otherwise. Pretending otherwise is just another form of lying. Forgiveness requires honesty.

I choose to love the person and reject the behaviour, rather than rejecting the person. This takes a lot of will power, especially on difficult days when somebody is REALLY not being his/her best self. There have been a few times for me in recent years when I don’t know how I would have got through the day without the decision to forgive, forgive, forgive. Forgiveness keeps your feet planted solidly on the Spiral Path. Forgiveness combined with courage helps you take a deep breath and keep on going, even when the terrain all around you is hostile and cruel (as it sometimes is). Forgiveness is the choice that allows you to move from the glass-half-empty-with-sour-lemon-juice to the glass-half-filled-with-sweet-lemonade.

Of course, you’re the one who has to supply the sugar.

* You can read more about what forgiveness feels like at Forgiveness: The Divine String of Pearls or Forgiveness as a Present Reality or Summing Up: Finding the Kingdom of God.

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Posted in building your intuition, forgiveness, free will, honesty, Peace Sequence, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy and tagged spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

06 Aug 2011

JR63: Jesus Redux: The Forward

Jesus as the author sees him

The first will be last, and the last will be first.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist a biblical pun there. If you’re visiting this blog for the first time, this page — the final page in a lengthy conversation between Jesus and me — will be the first thing you’ll see. So it only makes sense for us to write this “afterword” as if it were a “forward.”

If you’ve been following this blog as we’ve been writing it (we have readers in Canada, the U.S., Singapore, Germany, and few other places), you’ve probably figured out that we’ve been writing a book bit by bit. And now we’ve come to the end of this particular body of thought.

There’s a great deal more that can be said about the topics we’ve introduced here, topics such as the nature of the soul, the nature of the soul-body connection, the need for healing, the need to recognize and treat major mental illness (especially as it relates to religious prophecy), and the need for the church to be honest about its doctrines if it wants to find its way back to a full relationship with God the Mother and God the Father in the third millennium. But there’s only so much the human brain can absorb at one time. There’s enough here to make anyone’s head hurt (at least in the beginning).

Our chief goal has always been to spark discussion and encourage people to think for themselves. So if you feel from time to time that we could have given more background information or more references or more detailed explanations, you’ve probably stumbled into one of many spots in the book where we’ve intentionally given you the benefit of the doubt. We assume you’re a rational, capable, tenacious person capable of doing some independent research. There has to be room in a book like this for you to find your own courage and trust. There has to room for you to build your own relationship with God.

This book can be used in a straightforward academic manner (which is why we’re now going back and adding labels so it’s easier for you to find the topics that interest you). But it can also be used in an intuitive manner. I highly recommend this approach if you’re interested in slowly developing the intuitive circuitry of your own brain.

In walking the Spiral Path, there’s always the easy way and the hard way. Several years ago, when I was beginning my own journey, I did everything the hard way. I believed (because I allowed myself to be browbeaten by various gurus) that you can only learn to tap into your natural intuition or “spiritual quotient,” as I’ve called it elsewhere, by using ancient divining tools such as tarot cards or lectio divina. If you’ve ever tried to read a tarot spread, you know there’s a lot of wiggle room in the interpretation. And you’re never quite sure . . .

On the other hand, you can take a book like this, and ask God to guide you to the page you most need to understand (a centering exercise first would help with this), and then let your hand click on the mouse while you’re sort of looking at the archive of posts, but not looking too, too closely at the archive of posts. If you look too closely at the list, you’ll get in the way of your own intuitive process and start second-guessing yourself. So just let the mouse hover somewhere over the archive list, then look away and click before you have too much time to think about it.

It’s no big deal, really. You’re just letting yourself be open to the idea that God knows what you understand least, and what will help you most today. It’s quite possible you’ll end up clicking on the same link several days in a row. If this happens, just accept God’s wisdom. I learned long ago never to argue with God when the book opens up again and again to the same section.

Most of all, don’t expect the journey to be linear. It’s not gonna be. Love isn’t linear. Love lurches along with its own extraordinary surprises and puzzling patterns, but it always gets you there in the end. God’s love is the bedrock of everything you are. That’s why, as Jesus and I love to say to our divine parents . . .

Mother and Father God, you both totally rock! We dedicate this book to you!

Love Jesus and Jen

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Posted in brain-soul connection, courage, Jesus Redux, Mother and Father God, My Spiral Path, relationship with God, spiritual practices, trust | Leave a Comment

21 Jul 2011

TBM14: Parable of the Earring – A Journey on the Spiral Path

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. It’s a mini-overview of my own spiritual journey, and I call it “the Parable of the Earring,” but it’s really not a parable. It’s more like a fable.

It’s based on something that happened to me in February 2006. At the time, I was packing up my apartment and preparing to move in with my elderly parents. (As an aside, this didn’t work out too well for any of us, and a few months later I was again packing up, but that’s another story.)

My son (aged 22 at the time) and I had agreed to meet for breakfast at Cora’s Restaurant — one of our favourites. I had decided to wear the pair of earrings he’d given me for Christmas in 2004. And it was still cool outside, so I was wearing a camisole underneath my sweater and a designer jacket on top. This is the way I dress in winter, spring, and fall, because, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a human popsicle. Always have been.

Somehow, between the time we arrived at Cora’s and the time I got home, I lost one of my earrings.

The very earring (c) JAT 2015

Now, if you know me, you’ll also know I’m very sentimental about gifts from my son, and the fact that I’d lost one of the earrings he’d picked out for me upset me greatly. They were handcrafted from two Gerbera Daisy petals that had been coated in some sort of clear resin, and they dangled delicately. (My son knows me well.)

I also happen to be particularly fond of earrings in general, and some very strange things have happened to me over the years involving earrings, so all in all I was determined to try to track down both the lost earring and any meaning that may have been attached to the loss. (I’m about to get to that part.)

See, although I have degrees in Chemistry and Art Conservation, and although I continue to follow advances in science, I’m willing to be open-minded about the nature of reality. Not open-minded as in “brain like a sieve.” Open-minded as in humble about my own ability to understand quantum theory and open to the idea that human scientists can (and do) make plenty of mistakes.

When the laws of Newtonian physics clash head-on with the laws of particle physics and quantum mechanics, I go with the quantum stuff. This means I’m not bothered or troubled or upset when weird shit happens — when things happen that seem to defy the laws of Newton and classical physics. I don’t see these events as “paranormal.” I see them as entirely normal in a universe that’s built on scientific laws too advanced and too interconnected with divine love for us to detect them with Newtonian equipment like the Large Hadron Collider.

(Every time I think of how many hospital beds could have been funded with the money that went into the LHC, I just want to cringe.)

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that I believe — and many other reasonable people also believe — in an interconnected reality where some things happen to us for a reason. Not all things, but some things. Sometimes weird things happen, and they’re meant to draw our attention to a question or a problem or an answer or an issue. You can call these weird things messages. Or signs. Or sychronicities. Or angel hugs. Or the language of God. You can call them whatever you want as long as you’re open to the idea that you’re NOT alone in a vast, uncaring universe governed solely by the cold and heartless laws of classical physics. There’s a God and there’s a whole family of loving angels (persons-of-soul) around us, and they’re always talking to us whether we like it or not.

And trust me — there’s no way in heaven or earth you can make them shut up.

This isn’t the hard part. As I mentioned above, a lot of regular, reasonable, practical people instinctively know that certain events hold a deeper meaning, a deeper significance for them and their families, than the obvious Newtonian one.

The hard part is interpreting the meaning correctly.

Herein lay my difficulty in the early years of my spiritual journey. In the first few years, I naively allowed myself to be convinced that certain well-known New Age interpretations of divine intervention were correct. I created a whole lot of pain and embarrassment for myself and my family as a result.

So allow me to present the Parable of the Earring. In this parable, I offer a series of “yearly vignettes,” each of which describes how I would have reacted to the loss of my beloved earring in each of the early years of my journey. You can see the changes in my belief system from year to year, starting 15 years ago. You can also see how long it took me to accept some of the common sense teachings of my own guardian angel, Zak.

Okay. Let’s start with 1996.
Context: No spiritual interests to speak of. Marriage is on the brink of collapse (husband is having a serious affair with his secretary). Son is 12 years old.

“Crap. I lost my good earring. It’s his fault. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with all our problems, I would have noticed my earring fell out. They should make those earrings with better hoops so they don’t fall out so easily.”

1997
Context: Marriage is shaky but still intact. I now work in mental health administration. Starting to be curious about books in the New Age section.

“Oh! I lost my good earring! I should try to let it go and not be upset. But I feel so guilty about losing it. My son’s feelings will be so hurt. Maybe I can try to find a replacement so he won’t notice.

1998 (The Big 4-0)
Context: Still married, still working, but actively pursuing alternative healing methods to try to deal with health issues. Starting to attend New Age workshops and conferences. First meeting with Reiki healer Grace.

“My good earring is gone! Does this have a meaning? I’ll consult one of the new books I bought and follow the instructions for getting help from an angelic guide. Are you there, angels? Tell me where my lost earring is. Why aren’t you answering, angels?”

1999 (A really, really bad year)
Context: Spending more and more time with the “spiritual” group that has formed around Grace. Now preoccupied with cleansing negative energies, past-life karma, and soul contracts through Reiki and energy healing techniques. Frustrated in attempts to learn to channel.

“Someone has taken my earring! I protected myself with a dome of white light this morning, and the earring has sacred energy, so it must have been taken by a negative entity! I must not be trying hard enough to cleanse myself and my home of negative energies! What am I doing wrong?”

2000
Context: In the autumn I tell my husband I’m leaving. I move into my own apartment. Still have strong ties to Grace. Old mistakes with friends come back to haunt me (metaphorically speaking). I discover I can channel and am good at it. Learn guardian angel’s name is Zak.

“Zak, my good earring is gone. I know you must be trying to tell me something. What are you telling me? What did I do wrong now?”

2001
Context: Intensive work on spiritual learning with Zak. No job. Living off separation settlement. Trying to repair relationship with son. Struggling to understand what forgiveness is and what judgment is.

“[Sigh]. The earring my son gave me is gone. It’s a message, isn’t it? A message about being attached to things, isn’t it? I’ve been too sentimentally attached to the earrings, and you’re telling me I’m not trying hard enough to let go of worldly things, right? Of course that’s right. I’m not worthy of your forgiveness.”

2002
Context: An entire year of trying to live as a semi-ascetic. I stop wearing makeup and nice clothes. I stop eating food that has “unnecessary ingredients” (like taste). I give away a lot of my savings to charities. Grace and I decide to become business partners in a rural “spiritual healing centre.”

“I suppose I should give away this set of earrings. I don’t need them anymore. But I can’t seem to find the courage to give them away. Please forgive me for not trying hard enough to obey your teachings.”

2003
Context: An entire year trapped in a house with a woman who has serious unresolved medical and psychiatric issues. Slowly beginning to realize she has no interest in changing. Springtime epiphany about asceticism (a major turning point).

“Omigod, you mean it’s okay with you, Zak, if I need to feel good about my appearance? You mean other people (like Grace) will treat me like a doormat if I treat myself like a doormat? Why didn’t you tell me this before? Where are those earrings my son gave me? It feels so good to wear them!

2004
Context: The spiritual healing centre idea collapses, and Grace and I sell the property. I move to a different town in June. Zak ramps up the scientific angle on spiritual practice. I start to research neurophysiology. The Amen Clinic in California agrees to include me in their Normal Brain Study despite my up-front claim of being able to channel.

“Shit, I guess I lost my earring. Maybe it’s a good idea not to wear that style of earring when I’m wearing a turtleneck sweater. Oh well, live and learn. As you say, not everything’s a message. Zak, have you seen my car keys?”

2005
Context: Zak explains the Christ Zone model and suddenly the behaviour of spiritual gurus makes perfect scientific sense. I break off all ties with Grace. I start to write a book with Zak’s help.

“What do you mean my angel team could actually move the damn earring if they wanted to!? I thought we were past all that. What do you mean I need to read up on non-locality? How am I going to explain this to regular people? Can’t we just stick with the neurophysiology?”

2006
Context: Agreement early in the year to move in with my parents. Great emotional stress. I move anyway because Zak asks me to trust him. I end up in hospital with a stress-induced G.I. illness. After I recover, I move back to my home. I discover during this time of intense emotion that together Zak and I can speak directly with God the Mother and God the Father. (Didn’t know this was possible.) Immeasurable gratitude.

“Huh. How ’bout that? I’ve lost another earring. Wonder where I’ll find this one? Zak, you and the rest of the team cheer me up so much with your crazy antics. Moving things here, moving things there — just when I need a smile the most. Hey, look at that! There’s my lost flower earring. It’s stuck right to the skin of my stomach. Can’t explain how it got there — how it got past the turtleneck collar of my sweater and past my camisole and past my bra to land on my stomach without my ever feeling it. But I sure am glad to have it back. Thanks, everyone!”

And fast-forwarding to today . . .

The only “mini-dialogue” I didn’t make up here is the very last one. After I realized I’d lost my cherished earring in 2006, I searched my car, I searched the ground outside my apartment, I even went back to the restaurant and asked if anyone had found it. No luck.

Later that day I changed out of my clothes, and that’s when I found my flower earring. Stuck to the skin of my stomach.

As I said above, weird things happen in a universe filled with divine love.

And I still have those earrings!

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, Christ Zone, Divine Love, healing, miracles, My Spiral Path, mystic, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged building your intuition, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

08 Jul 2011

JR56: Forgiveness As a Present Reality

A: Tell me more about forgiveness. The other day you said, “Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn’t enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt” (The Meaning of “the Son of Man”). You and I have talked a lot about forgiveness, but you’ve never linked it to the Peace Sequence before. Can you explain in more detail what you meant?

J: I’m going to introduce a comparison between forgiveness and catalysts (as catalysts are understood by a chemist). At a quantum level, forgiveness acts as an important “biochemical” catalyst for learning.

A: Okay, you’re gonna have to back up the divine truck on this one.

J: In everyday speech, people use the word “catalyst” to mean a person, thing, or event that prompts sudden change. In Western culture it’s often an unexpected tragedy that serves as a catalyst for change. For instance, if a child is killed because a newly designed toy isn’t safe, the people around the child are shocked into action. Chances are good that an inquiry will be held, and healthy and safety regulations will be amended to remove this particular threat. The catalyst for change was a tragic event that jarred people out of their complacency and forced them to be more honest about a quantifiable, measurable threat to children’s safety.

The factual reality of the toy’s dangerous design existed before the tragic death. The threat itself wasn’t new. What was new was the realization of the threat, the objective recognition of the threat, the memory of the threat. In other words, human beings had to learn about the threat. They had to identify the problem, remember the problem, understand the problem, then fix the problem. These are the stages of learning. As it happens, these are also the stages of emotional healing and spiritual transformation. They’re all hopelessly intertwined with each other.

A: Identify, remember, understand, and fix. That’s a pretty logical sequence. What happens if a person tries to skip one of those steps? I’m thinking in particular of the “remember” stage. I’ve met quite a few people who seem to have really bad memories. Important information goes right in one ear and out the other. And these are fairly young people I’m talking about, not elderly people with dementia!

J: Those who can’t remember their own history are doomed to repeat it.

A: I remember a fellow we were corresponding with a few years ago about the spiritual journey. He was quite incensed because you and I had suggested that an understanding of science was important to spiritual growth and transformation. He wrote somewhat angrily, “Do I have to have a degree in physics?” And your reply was, “No, you have to have a degree in history.” He probably thought you were being facetious.

“Jesus said, ‘ I shall give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart’” (Gospel of Thomas 17). The mysterious gift Jesus is talking about here is Divine Forgiveness, a gift freely given by God to all people at all times without any restrictions or covenants placed upon the gift. Shown here is an example of an inuksuk, which reminds me of what forgiveness is actually like (simple, memorable, beautiful, accessible by all, able to be built by all). Inuksuit have long served to aid full remembrance in Canada’s Far North. They’re now found widely throughout Canada. This one sits among flowers and metal artwork at an Ontario public school. Photo credit JAT 2015.

J: I wasn’t. I was speaking the honest truth. Memory — history — is crucial to the core self. Memory is a huge part of learning. By that I don’t mean simple rote memory, such as your multiplication tables. I mean soul memory, which is a combination of several different forms of memory. It’s emotional memory plus factual memory plus habit memory plus talent memory.

A: That’s a lot to keep track of at one time. Sounds like too much work.

J: Soul memory evolves quite naturally when a child is raised in a mature, responsible, loving home. It becomes a natural way of remembering things. You don’t consciously think about the different aspects of your memory. You just . . . live. You live with empathy and laughter and confidence. It’s your soul memory that helps you do that.

A: So you’re linking empathy with memory.

J: Yes. It’s your memory skills that allow you to remember the names of your neighbour’s children so you can ask how the family is doing.

A: Ooooooh. I suddenly can think of a gajillion different ways that memory can help with empathy and relationships. Things like remembering your friend’s favourite music or your mother’s favourite flower. Or the anniversary of a loved one’s death. Or remembering to pick up a carton of milk on the way home, as promised. Or remembering to say “I love you.” And on and on and on.

J: What’s interesting about people with severe narcissism and psychopathy is the way they use memory. They use memory and history in bizarre, abusive ways. They often have excellent memories when it comes to the mistakes that other people have made (though they rarely admit to their own). They remember all the “crimes” that have been committed against them, and they keep detailed lists of rightful punishments that still need to be meted out.

A: They hold grudges.

J: With a capital “G.” They live for the “high” of revenge. Inside their own heads, they’ll return to the scene of another person’s “crime” and relive the unfairness and unjustness of it all. Then they’ll imagine the scene of their revenge. They’ll gloat about it. They’ll gloat about the glory of their future — and rightful — vengeance. There’s no concern at all about collateral damage — about the people and places that will be damaged when vengeance is pursued. The only thing that’s important to a psychopath is the chance to “even the scales.”

A: Sounds like a Mel Gibson movie.

J: Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not about buying back one’s status or paying a debt or “balancing the scales of time” so the past can be forgotten. Forgiveness absolutely requires a memory of the harm that’s being forgiven.

A: You said above that forgiveness is a catalyst. How does this idea relate to what we’ve been discussing about memory and learning and empathy?

J: In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that’s an essential ingredient in a chemical reaction without itself being changed and without itself being part of the final product or products.

A: Inorganic chemists use elements such as palladium and rhodium as catalysts so they can synthesize complex molecules out of simpler ones.

J: In chemistry, a catalyst works the way a crane works on a large building site. The crane is essential for transporting loads of basic materials to their proper location on the much larger building that’s being constructed. But once the building is completed, the crane is removed from the site. It’s no longer needed. It can be “recycled” — used on another building site because it isn’t part of the final product. Its role is essential but temporary. This is what forgiveness is like.

A: Still not following you. Especially because you’ve said in the past that forgiveness is a permanent choice — a permanent choice to wrap harmful choices within a layer of love.

J: Forgiveness, like the construction crane, is a permanent “substance,” if you will. But like a crane, it moves around. It isn’t glued to one site or one event or one person. It goes in, does its transformative thing, then lets go. Forgiveness allows you to identify, remember, understand, and fix the past without actually having to live in the past. It frees you from the tyranny of rumination on the past. It doesn’t ask you to forget. It asks you to transform. It asks you to take the pain and turn it into something new. Forgiveness isn’t the final product of the transformative process, despite what some theologians have claimed. Forgiveness is the tool — the catalyst — that’s needed so you can take painful experiences and painful choices and turn them into something brand new.

A: The way orthodox Western Christian theologians often describe forgiveness makes it sound like the end goal, the final result of being saved by God.

J: God the Mother and God the Father are always moving the crane of forgiveness. They’re always actively and consciously choosing to forgive their human children for the suffering people create. Forgiveness is a present act — always a present act, not a future one. Just as the Kingdom of the Heavens is supposed to be a present condition, not a future one.

A: I’ve read so many books where teachers of spirituality insist that we “live in the moment.” Is this what you’re getting at? Letting go of the past and the future and focussing only on the present moment?

J: No. Most definitely not. The phrase “living in the moment” all too often means “living in a state of dissociation.” Living in a state of psychological dissociation from one’s emotions, memories, and personal responsibilities. Obviously this doesn’t help individuals or families or communities create peace. To create peace, you have to be willing to learn from the past. You have to be willing to identify the problems of the past, and then marshal all your courage and will power and love to get to the point where you can remember the pain without being overwhelmed and numbed by the pain. In other words, you have to learn from your mistakes.

A: Learning from your own mistakes is very hard. Self forgiveness is very hard.

J: In the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, the man Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to spend all eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, only to watch it roll back down again each day. This aptly describes what it feels like to live without forgiveness. Each day feels like an eternity of repetitive struggle, an endless cycle of guilt and pain you can’t seem to escape from. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is the crane you bring in to build a series of small level shelves or steps on the side of the hill so you can gradually get the stone to the top of the hill and keep it there, where it will no longer torture you. With the boulder of the past safely stowed at the top of the hill, you can get on with the business of planting a nice garden at the base of the hill and inviting all your friends over to share in the beauty. The stone at the top is there to remind you of the mistakes you once made so you ‘re less likely to make them again. The stone isn’t gone. But it’s in a safer place.

A: So in the Kingdom of the Heavens, the past isn’t gone, but it’s in a safer place. This allows you to bring more of your daily energy to the task of living as fully as possible today.

J: You’d be amazed how much energy many people use each day by dwelling in the past, ruminating on past injuries, focussing on revenge, and not paying attention (literally) to the tasks and relationships of today. When I say “energy,” I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that people quite literally expend precious biological resources every day when they choose to focus on the past. They use up proteins and fats and carbs in their bodies. They force their brain cells to hang on to cell-to-cell connections that aren’t productive. They refuse to let their brains empty the “recycle bin,” and as a result, dangerous levels of old proteins and other biological materials can build up inside the brain. Causing medical syndromes such as various forms of dementia.

A: So forgiveness isn’t just a metaphysical aspiration: it’s also a biological reality.

J: As you’d expect it to be in the good Creation of a loving God.

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Posted in brain-soul connection, dissociation, Divine Love, empathy, forgiveness, Jesus Redux, narcissism, Peace Sequence, psychopathy, sense of time & timing, Soul, soul blueprint, soul purpose, spiritual practices, theodicy and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

15 Jun 2011

JR50: Fourth Step: Insist on Balance

A: In the past couple of weeks we’ve been talking about ways to help heal the church. What other suggestions do you have for Christians who want to live a life of faith without compromising their logic or their ethic of inclusiveness?

J: I’d definitely say the Church needs to teach holistic balance. They need to teach people on an ongoing basis how to balance the mind, body, heart, and soul.

A: This is a topic that could fill many, many books.

J: All the better. As I’ve said before, the path to peace begins with education, not with piety and not with covenant.* The Church needs to expand the source material it relies on to teach its new insights. The Bible by itself won’t cut it. Not even the parts of the Bible that teach the truth about God the Mother, God the Father, and me. You can only read from the Gospel of Mark so many times. You need some other source material to work with.

A: Can you give some examples?

Think of your life as a series of braids. You can see the individual strands of heart, mind, body, and soul, but you do your best to weave them together into braids that are much stronger together than individual strands alone.

“Jesus said: Blessed are those who have been persecuted within themselves. They have really come to know the Father” (Gospel of Thomas 69a). Think of your life as a series of braids. You can see the individual strands of heart, mind, body, and soul, but when you do your best to weave them together with self-honesty (“persecution within themselves”), you have a braid that’s many times stronger than the strands could be by themselves. Photo credit Image*After.

J: Actually, a lot of open-minded ministers are already including other source materials in their services. They’re using poetry, music, dance, art, drama, and spontaneous prayer to expand the scope of their services — to let the experience breathe. There still needs to be some structure to the service — it isn’t healthy, especially for younger children, if ministers do away entirely with a recognizable format — but these other “languages” are valid ways for people to connect with God’s voice. The important thing here is to be conscious of the content and — most importantly — the intent of the other source materials that are being chosen. The intent is what matters. There’s no point filling a service with new songs and new poems if the new material tells people the same thing they’ve been told for centuries — that they’re unworthy of God’s forgiveness and love and guidance. The new material must encourage people to think in positive ways about themselves and their relationship with God.

A: While not overdoing the whole self-esteem thing.

J: Yes. It’s not helpful for a service to slide in the direction of Prosperity Gospel teachings. Prosperity preachers are no more balanced than fire-and-brimstone preachers. Prosperity Gospel teaches various versions of the “God-As-the-Great-Gumball-Machine-in-the-Sky” doctrine — various versions of the “God has to give you whatever want if you ask in the right way” theory.** These teachings feed — and feed upon — people’s undiagnosed status addiction. It’s not a healthy way to be in relationship with God. A healthy relationship with God involves a balance between your own needs and other people’s needs, a balance between encouraging people to be their best selves and encouraging them to take responsibility for harmful choices they’ve made on purpose. The Church’s job is to help people recognize and maintain this balance.

A: So you don’t recommend that ministers get rid of the Prayer of Confession in their services?

J: The Prayer of Confession is a crucial part of helping people recognize the balance. Of course, the Prayer of Confession needs to be written with the utmost care. It needs to strike the proper balance between encouraging people to be honest about their intentional errors while at the same time leaving room for them to feel optimistic about their ability to learn from their mistakes and to feel God’s forgiveness.

A: I remember with excruciating clarity the penitential prayer (or “preface” prayer) from the 1962 Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The Communion Service prepared us for the sacrament of the Eucharist by having us all recite in unison, “We do not presume to come to this thy table, O Merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table [emphasis added]. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.” This prayer always made me feel like crap. The line about not being worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under the table stuck in my head, too, as I’m sure the authors of the prayer intended. In the Anglican Church’s newest prayer book for Canada — The Book of Alternative Services — this prayer has ostensibly been removed from the new Holy Communion service. But the intent is still there.

J: This is exactly the sort of prayer that’s harmful to people’s relationship with God rather than helpful.

A: I think many church leaders and church elders and even some Christian parents are afraid that if faithful Christians aren’t forced onto their knees in fear and obedience then mass chaos will erupt in our society, and civilization will fall apart.

J: Yes. Many church elders do believe this. They believe this because they’ve been told to believe this by authority figures in their lives — whether parents, ministers, theologians, saints, or scripture. They’re genuinely frightened. They believe they’re doing the right thing in promoting this kind of fear in people’s relationship with God.

A: What’s your suggestion for healing this problem in the Church?

J: Ministers and church elders must look to the second step of the Peace Sequence for guidance. The Peace Sequence I taught was education-then-mentorship-then-personal-responsibility-then-peace. Those called to the task of ministering to the spiritual aspect of humanity must first be educated. Then they must accept the mantle of mentorship. They must stop trying to “save souls” and instead start trying to “mentor brains.” A minister in the third millennium must be a bit of a jack-or-jill-of-all-trades — knowledgeable about the history of the church and the history of church doctrine, but also aware of trends in science, psychotherapy, the arts, and politics. An effective minister isn’t somebody who’s hiding his or her head in the sand like an ostrich. An effective minister isn’t somebody who preaches “escape from the sins and evils of the world.” Instead, an effective minister is someone who isn’t afraid to look at Creation in holistic ways, balanced ways, and wonder-filled ways. An effective minister is someone who teaches people how to live as a human being according to the needs and wishes of the soul.

A: The good soul.

J: Yes. The good soul that everyone is.

A: I suspect that most people in the world today wouldn’t even know how to begin to imagine what Church would look like if it operated in this way.

J: Well, for starters, the Church would be a place that’s integrated into the wider community. This idea isn’t really new. Many heart-based Christians have tried to take the church into the community and the community into the church. This is admirable. The great stumbling block to progress in this endeavour has always been the doctrines. It’s the doctrines themselves — and the intent behind those doctrines — that drive a wedge between the church and the community. You can’t go around preaching that you’re chosen by God to be saved and not have people notice how hypocritical your claims of love and forgiveness really are.

People these days have access to information — lots and lots of information. They find out pretty quickly when pastors and priests have been charged with crimes against their neighbours. It looks hypocritical. And, indeed, it is.

A: I spent two years in full-time studies with theology students, most of whom planned to go on for ordination. Even among United Church candidates, there’s a belief that ministers-in-training are there because they’ve been “called.” I have no problem in general with the idea of people feeling called to particular tasks in life. But this was different. These ministers-in-training seemed to believe that their call was somehow “more special” than other people’s calls. They didn’t see their job as just another job on a par with teaching or medical care or firefighting or environmental cleanup. They thought they were somehow “different.” I also noticed that a few of these ministers-in-training got a strange light in their eye when they talked about their special — and highly controlled — right to bless the bread and wine of the Eucharist. It was not a pretty sight. It was clear some of them wanted the status of being “specially chosen by God” to bless the Elements, and maybe even facilitate their Transubstantiation into something more elevated.

J: Well, as for that, there’s no transubstantiation — no transformation of the “inner reality” of the bread and wine. There’s mystery and wonder in every stick of bread that’s baked in the world, and the Church’s bread is no better. Unfortunately, there are too many priests and too many ministers who want the Church’s bread to be better so they themselves can claim to be a unique and indispensable part of bringing the bread of God to the people of God. This is not mentorship. This is exactly what it sounds like — narcissism.

A: So part of the journey of healing the church is to heal what it means to be a minister.

J: Yes. The minister himself or herself must first understand what it means to live a life of balance — a life in which the needs of mind, body, heart, and soul are recognized for what they are.

It should go without saying that a religious acolyte who intentionally chooses a life of imbalance — who intentionally chooses a life of asceticism and celibacy and seclusion and obsessive forms of daily worship — is not ever going to be “simpatico” with his own soul. And he’s never going to be equipped to guide others. He’s never going to have the personal tools necessary to become a spiritual mentor to others. He who preaches the importance of balance but doesn’t live according to the needs of balance is a hypocrite.

A: As I recall, this was one of your favourite themes 2,000 years ago.

J: Hypocrisy and narcissistic intent are incestuous bedmates in the history of orthodox Western Christianity. Where you find one, you always find the other.

* See The Peace Sequence.

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Posted in Bible, Church of today, forgiveness, intent, Jesus Redux, Peace Sequence, prayer, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices and tagged spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium, The Peace Sequence | Leave a Comment

10 May 2011

JR38: The Peace Sequence

The Peace Sequence: First Education, Second Mentorship, Third Personal Responsibility, and finally Peace. Like shovelling after a heavy snowfall, it’s hard work and you can only take it one shovelful at a time. But in the end, the pathway is cleared, and you can move forward. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: Back in August 2005, before I’d set foot in graduate school, or even considered doing so, you wrote a piece about “the peace sequence.” At the time, you flagged what John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan Reed had written at the beginning of their book In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004). Crossan and Reed wrote this:

“Paul’s essential challenge is how to embody communally that radical vision of a new creation in a way far beyond even our present best hopes for freedom, democracy, and human rights. The Roman Empire was based on the common principle of peace through victory or, more fully, on a faith in the sequence of piety, war, victory, and peace. Paul was a Jewish visionary following in Jesus’ footsteps, and they both claimed that the Kingdom of God was already present and operative in this world. He opposed the mantras of Roman normalcy with a vision of peace through justice or, more fully, with a faith in the sequence of covenant, nonviolence, justice, and peace. A subtext of In Search of Paul is, therefore: To what extent can America be Christian? (page xi)”

I can still remember your reaction when I read this paragraph back in 2005. At the top of the page, I wrote down your response: “Jesus: peace through personal responsibility in the sequence of education, mentorship, personal responsibility, then peace.” It’s taken me years of research and ongoing discussion with you to more fully understand what you meant that day.

J: As I said then, I don’t disagree with Crossan and Reed’s formulation of Paul’s peace sequence. Paul did, in fact, teach his followers to reject the Roman ideal of peace through victory — the Pax Romana — and to choose peace through divine justice or justification. But this isn’t what I taught. So they’re wrong to state that Paul was following in my footsteps. Paul wasn’t following me or my teachings. If anything, he was going along with a straw broom trying to erase all evidence of my footsteps.

A: Last week on the Vision Channel, I watched an episode of The Naked Archaeologist where Simcha Jacobovcivi looked at the idea that Paul was actually an agent of the Romans. Biblical scholar Robert Eisenman has been saying this for years — and in fact Eisenman was interviewed by Simcha on last week’s episode. If Paul actually was an agent of the Romans, why would he have taught his followers to reject the Roman version of the peace sequence and accept his own Christ-based peace sequence? It doesn’t make any sense.

J: It doesn’t make sense if you view Paul as being an agent of the emperor in Rome. However, it makes a ton of sense of you view Paul as being an agent of other powerful Roman figures — members of the Roman elite who wanted to seize power for themselves. It would have been in their best interests to set up a religion to compete head-on with the Roman Emperor Cult.

A: Oh. Why haven’t I read that anywhere else?

J: Because it sounds like a low-down, dirty rotten, scandalous political ploy. A cold, calculating, ruthless attempt by one party to seize power from another party. With Paul as the chief spin doctor for the down-and-out party. Who wants to say that out loud?

A: Maybe the producers and writers of the Rome TV series? That series certainly pulled back the curtain on the behaviour of the Roman aristocracy — the things they did to try to get power.

J: The truth about Paul isn’t pretty. He was no saint. On the other hand, he believed in what he was doing. He believed he was doing the right thing. He felt totally justified in trying to convert the Diaspora Jews and the Gentile God-Fearers to “the cause.”

A: And what cause was that?

J: Deposing the evil, corrupt Julio-Claudian dynasty and restoring the One True Religion and the One True Emperor.

A: You’ve got to be kidding.

J: Nope. I’m not kidding. There was a huge group of disaffected Romans still living in Alexandria, Egypt, and they believed that their divine right to rule over all lands had been usurped from them by the upstart Julius Caesar and his family. They were convinced that Alexandria, not Rome, was meant to be the centre of the world, and that one of their own bloodline was destined to be Emperor. When Augustus manoeuvred to have Rome declared a Principate — until then it was officially a Republic — the Alexandrians went beserk. The situation was not improved by the institution of the Emperor Cult — meaning worship of the man who sat on the throne in Rome. The Alexandrians believed this was sacrilege. Furthermore, the Emperor Cult was undermining the Alexandrians’ ongoing efforts to gain popular support for a shift in power from the West to the East. They knew they needed a strong religious structure in place before they could gain that popular support.

A: So they needed a new religion — one tailored to their needs.

J: Some of the greatest religio-political thinkers that ever lived found their way to Alexandria.

A: Because the Great Library was there?

J: In part. But powerful mystery cults had their roots there, too. The importance of mystery cults in the history of ancient politics can’t be overstated. Official rulers couldn’t rule without the support of the local religious priests — a reality that still exists in many parts of the world today.

A: So Paul’s Christ-Saviour religion was invented as a way to secure a widespread religious power base for the Alexandrian group. By the way, did this group have a name?

J: Not one you’d recognize today. For the purposes of our discussion, we’ll call them Seekers of the Rock. There’s a reason for this name — a reason based on their occult beliefs.

A: Okay. Seekers of the Rock. Why did this group conscript Paul to do its work?

J: Paul was an angry man — a man looking for a way to undermine my teachings. You could say that Paul and the Seekers had many interests in common. Paul had no love of the Emperor Cult, and he had no love of me. The Seekers of the Rock offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse. Over a number of years he developed a religious formula he thought would work in the new religious climate of the Empire. Then he went on the road to preach it and gauge the response. He had to fine-tune it as he went along. This is why you see changes in his theological claims over the course of his “ministry.”

A: Well, whatever he did, it turned out to be spectacularly successful.

J: He didn’t do it by himself. The Seekers were powerful and wealthy, and they did everything they could to back him up. They footed the bill for his “Amazing Race” around the Eastern Mediterranean, kept him in hiding when the Romans were getting too close, arranged to have his scrolls copied and distributed. It was very much a team effort.

A: Sounds a lot like the federal election we just had here in Canada.

J: It’s a good analogy. Except they weren’t trying to win an election — they were trying to establish a theocracy with their own man as divinely-appointed emperor.

A: Who was “their man”? Was it Paul himself?

J: No. Paul’s job was to lay the theological groundwork for the coming “return of the king.” The original plan was to build on Jewish apocalyptic and prophetic texts so people would be expecting the imminent return of the Saviour. The Saviour was given a new and distinctive name — Jesus Christ, Jesus the Anointed One. Once enough people were “on board” with the idea of the return of the Saviour, and once the necessary political and military and economic measures were in place, the idea was to “reveal” the newly returned divine Saviour. They planned to secretly train a prince from their own bloodline and present him publicly as Jesus-Christ-returned-in-the-flesh when the time was right. They would claim he was the divine son of God and therefore the rightful claimant to the religious and political power of Rome. This is why they needed a religious power base in Rome. The Seekers believed that pious Christians would roll out the welcome mat for the man they claimed was the Messiah. All they needed was enough time, patience, and money to bring their plan to fruition.

A: Obviously it didn’t work out the way they planned. What happened?

J: God made sure that an obscure scholar in Judea got his hands on Paul’s key doctrinal statement: the letter now called First Corinthians.

A: Your great-nephew. The man we know as Mark.

J: Mark saw right away what they were doing. And he answered it word for word with his own non-covenantal, non-pious testament to the power of education, mentorship, and personal responsibility in achieving peace and relationship with God.

A: I love a good conspiracy theory!

Posted in Jesus Redux, Mark vs Paul, Messiah, occult themes, Paul vs Jesus, Paul's teachings, Peace Sequence, spiritual practices and tagged Jesus vs Paul, The Peace Sequence | Leave a Comment

27 Apr 2011

TBM12: Finding the Words of Your Own Promise

Daisies (c) JAT 2014

In my last post (Four Basic Practices to Get You Started), I introduced the idea that every day you need to repeat the promise you’ve written to yourself for yourself. Today I’d like to talk more about the promise part, since it’s the promise part that’s so central to the healing of your brain.

One thing that’s very important to understand so you can get yourself solidly planted on the Spiral Path is this: you’re only being asked to write and repeat one promise. The problem today is that almost everybody has too many ideas and too many lists and too many “shoulds” in their heads. This is a big part of the reason for the brain’s overall lack of coordination and balance — there are too many sets of instructions, and the biological brain can’t make sense of it all.

As I mentioned in the last post, you need to provide your brain (or rather I should say the semi-autonomous sectors of your brain) with some sheet music so your brain as a whole knows where it’s going. Your brain would really appreciate some consistency and simplicity! This is why it’s crucial to choose only one promise for now. After about a year (yes, a year) you can think about changing your promise. But if you’re like almost everyone else walking around on Planet Earth these days, you’ll need at least a year to get your brain committed to the new path you’re choosing. It’s a form of self-discipline to stick to only one promise. It’s also a form of integrity.

The promise you make to yourself for yourself will be the cornerstone of the new foundation you’re building for yourself, and you’ll be returning to it again and again in the way that people return again and again to a favourite prayer or mantra. In fact, your promise to yourself will be a positive, uplifting form of prayer — something for you to hang onto with all your might when the going gets tough.

Your personal promise doesn’t have to be long. In fact, shorter is better.

To give you an example, this is the promise I made to myself in the year 2000, the promise I made and stuck to no matter what: “I want to learn to love unconditionally the way you do.” The “you” I refer to in my promise is my guardian angel, whose intense and perfect love I was (and am) able to feel. I was awed and inspired by his love, by his ability to forgive, by his ability to guide me patiently and devotedly even when I was being a shithead. With his help it finally dawned on me that he actually believed I, too, was capable of remembering how to love and forgive! I had no idea exactly what it would feel like to be a loving and forgiving human being, so I decided the sensible thing to do was copy my guardian angel. I made a promise to myself (not to him, but to myself) that I would keep trying every day as hard as I could to learn how to love. I tenaciously held to this promise. There were days when this promise spoken morning and evening was the only thing I did that made any sense at all. But slowly, gradually, I started to notice some positive changes in my thinking patterns. (And, oh, thank God for that!)

What I didn’t know at the time, but what made a huge difference to my journey, was the focus of my promise. Somewhat accidentally, I made a promise to myself that my own soul could “get on board with.” Although the promise I made was very short in terms of the number of words it contained, it carried a lot of punch. It carried a lot of punch for the following reasons:

The promise was focussed on improving my relationships — no talk of status or acquisition of “health and wealth”.

The promise was positive and uplifting in tone — no talk of sin, salvation, or unworthiness before God.

The promise was honest — I was implicitly acknowledging the honest truth that I wasn’t being as loving and forgiving as I could be, but at the same time I was being honest about my ability to change.

The promise was clear and specific — no beating around the bush, no cliches, no vague spiritual talk of enlightenment or raising my vibration.

The promise showed that I myself was taking personal responsibility for my own thoughts, feelings, and choices — no victim mentality, no passing the buck to God or God’s guardian angels.

The promise was focussed on something “doable” and “learnable,” something realistic and non-magical/non-mystical.

The promise was easy to remember — there’s no point in having a 5-page promise you can’t remember in a pinch.

At first glance it’s hard to believe so much stuff could be packed into such a short promise, but when you compare it to some other well known prayers (such as the Lord’s Prayer, which I don’t use at all), you can see the basic underlying differences. The promise I made to myself was built on a rock-solid foundation of trust in God’s love, whereas traditional Christian prayers have been built on a foundation of fear and self-entitlement. (Have you ever noticed that the Lord’s Prayer contains nary a “please” nor a “thank you”?)

The promise you make to yourself for yourself could be something along these lines:

“I want to learn to be the sort of person my children can be proud of.”

Or . . .

“I want to understand the meaning of the Serenity Prayer.”

Or . . .

“I want to understand what it means to be a person of courage, devotion, gratitude, and trust.”

Or . . .

“I want to understand what changes I must make in my own life in order to hear the voice of God in my heart.”

Or . . .

“I believe in myself the way God believes in me.”

Or . . .

“I trust that I am a child of God and that I can make a real difference each day by trying as hard as I can to be kind towards others.”

Or . . .

“I want to learn to let go of my anger and perfectionism.”

These examples are only that — examples to get you started as you try to find the right words for your own promises. However, if one of these examples feels right for you, please embrace it and make it your own. Remember always, though, that your promise is your promise. It isn’t your neighbour’s promise or your child’s promise. Each person must find the words that work best for him or her. There is no single set of sacred words anywhere on the planet that has magical properties of transformation and healing for all people. What matters for you is that you find the words that make your heart light up with hope. These are the words of your heart and soul, your truest vision of yourself in relationship with yourself.

Each of these promises has the potential to gradually change your life and your relationships for the simple reason that each of these promises provides a clear, simple, uplifting, unified set of instructions for all the sectors of your brain to work on together.* It needs to be formulated in words, and it needs to be consciously repeated by yourself for yourself at least once each day (and preferably more often — ideally once when you get up for the day and once before you go to sleep — if possible). The reason it needs to be formulated in words is because a huge portion of your brain is devoted to language and communication. When you formulate your promise clearly and optimistically to yourself in words, it allows you to harness the language and communication centres of your brain to help coordinate the inner rewiring of your brain.

I want to emphasize that this brain-healing process takes a lot of time. Many spiritually-hopeful people have been gravely harmed by so-called faith healers who promise instant healing. I do not promise anyone instant healing, even though I personally believe that healing miracles sometimes take place. However, I do guarantee that your biological brain is not “carved in stone,” and that you have the ability to overcome great psychological and emotional adversity if you receive the right help and if you believe in your own truth as a child of God.

Just take it one day at a time. Stick with the Four Basic Practices for now. Remember that it takes about 42 days to grow a new neuron. If some arrogant religious-know-it-all tries to give you a hard time and tell you you’re “not going fast enough” or “not trying hard enough,” remember that you can only go as fast as your brain can build new brain cells. That’s the scientific reality, and you don’t have to apologize for it.

Take that, you Spirit-intoxicated evangelicals, you!

*(For a more detailed discussion of what’s possible and what’s not possible inside your biological self, please see “Foxes Have Holes, Canadians Have Gloves.”

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Posted in brain-soul connection, building your intuition, healing, healing miracles, intent, meta-choice, prayer, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged brain-soul connection, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

21 Apr 2011

TBM11: Four Basic Practices To Get You Started on the Spiral Path

This is going to sound like an awful thing to say, but some of the least intuitive people you’ll ever meet are the gurus — individual men and women who do nothing all day but focus on spiritual practice.

This applies to gurus from all world religions, all cultures, and all places. Regardless of what you call these gurus — monks, priests, nuns, saints, shamans, masters — you should always bear in mind that people who spend more than two hours per day (day in, day out) on intensive spiritual practice are not living a balanced life. They can’t be, because they don’t have time to be.

Intensive spiritual practices may include fasting, meditation, prayer, journalling, energy healing work, reading sacred texts such as the Bible, chanting, dancing, or (yuck) tantric rituals. There’s a lot of interest at the moment in these topics, and you can find many books about them. You can also find workshops and seminars where like-minded people get together to hone their spiritual skills together. Apart from tantric rituals and voluntary fasting, both of which are harmful to your human brain, there’s nothing wrong with trying these spiritual practices in small doses. The workshops can be especially healing, not so much for the content, but for the chance to spend time with other spiritually-minded people.

You should be very wary of any spiritual guru who insists you have to spend more than two hours per day in total on practices that are specifically spiritual or religious and that have no other purpose. For instance, while you’re engaging in single-point meditation, that’s all you’re doing. You’re giving it your full attention. Obviously, then, if you’re meditating for three hours, you’re not at the same time cleaning your house or cooking your meals or caring for your children or reading the newspaper. You’re making a choice about how to spend your time. And time is the one aspect of Creation you can’t barter with. The clock keeps ticking, even while you’re lost in the Elysian Fields of spiritual bliss. Meanwhile, those dirty dishes keep piling up.

Anything in the human experience can become addictive. Anything at all. Pick a random topic, and with a little research you’ll stumble on the case of somebody who’s totally addicted to that topic, who’s obsessive and waaaaay out of balance around a topic that’s become “the centre of the universe” for him or her. These are the people who can’t hold a steady job, who can’t focus on higher education, and who can’t sustain long-term monogamous relationships. They drive the people around them crazy. Some of them end up on reality TV shows. And some of them end up as religious or spiritual gurus.

I’m a practising mystic, which means I have a daily mystical practice. I spend about an hour in the morning and about an hour in the evening on the intensive “mystical” aspect of my life. In between, I do normal, everyday things. I eat normal, regular food. I spend time on personal appearance and hygiene. I think about the people in my life. I go to work. I read, research, and write. I do my own shopping, my own cleaning, my own baking. I wash and repair my own clothes. I look after my car. I spend time with friends and family. Then I get my minimum of 8 hours of sleep to help me stay healthy. (I insist on a good night’s rest.)

You know how much time this takes?

Yeah, you know. Because you’re a normal person, too, and you’re wondering how the heck you’re supposed to fit time-intensive spiritual practices into your daily life.

Your guardian angels know all this. Their goal is to help you find some balance in your life. They know it’s hard for you to maintain balance when there are so many competing demands on you. They know you won’t be able to find and maintain the balance point unless your intuition is on-line. Therefore, they know it’s in your best interests for your biological brain to be as healthy as possible.

Right now you’re probably thinking, “Oh, no! Now she’s going to give a big long list of rules I have to follow and foods I have to eat and supplements I have to take and exercises I have to do, and I just feel so overwhelmed I think I’m going to barf!”

Actually, though, I’m going to suggest a very simple daily practice for you that even a busy family person can incorporate into the daily routine.

There are only four basic things you need to do each day in order to get your feet fully onto the Spiral Path of spiritual growth, healing, and transformation. These four things are designed to help you heal your brain’s intuitive circuitry as fast as possible. Of course, it should go without saying that this 4-part practice is not meant to replace the treatments your medical doctor has prescribed for you. It’s meant to supplement any treatments you’re receiving. Over time — and I stress that considerable time is needed for all forms of healing, whether allopathic, alternative, or spiritual — you may notice an improvement in your physical health.

Here are the Four Basic Steps — the cornerstone, if you will, of the new foundation you’re building for your brain and soul.

Each day, eat three balanced meals.
Each day, repeat the promise you’ve written to yourself for yourself.
Each day, reflect on three things you’re grateful for.
Each day, learn one new thing (excluding sports scores and entertainment news).

Notice that you can accomplish much of this list simply by reading the newspaper while you’re eating a balanced breakfast that includes protein, fats, and carbs.

Of the four things on this list, the one you’re probably least familiar with is No. 2: “Repeat the promise you’ve written to yourself for yourself.” You’re probably wondering what promise I’m referring to. Well, this is the promise that’s going to help certain important regions of your brain figure out what their job is.

Believe it or not, your brain is not a single organ in the way your heart is a single organ. Your brain and central nervous system actually consist of several different semi-autonomous sectors, each with a specialized job. No one part of the brain is in charge of everything. Each part relies on other parts for feedback and instructions. Other writers have likened the operation of the brain to a symphony orchestra, and I think this analogy is a very good one. All the sections are there and ready to play, but in order to create music that’s filled with balance, harmony, order, and rhythm, they need two important elements: the sheet music (perhaps memorized) and the conductor. The sheet music gives each orchestral section its instructions. The conductor provides the emotional leadership.

In the orchestra that is your brain, the promise you make to yourself each day is the sheet music.

And you yourself are the conductor.

A lot of people understand that they’re the conductor of their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. But not many people realize how crucial the sheet music is to the balanced, holistic functioning of their own brains. Take away the sheet music — the overall set of instructions that coordinates all the sections —- and you get exactly what you’d expect: an overall lack of coordination.

This may sound very simple and very obvious, but you’d be astonished how few medical doctors, neurological researchers, or theologians understand this principle. Neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to change itself — works most efficiently when you give your own brain some sheet music to follow.

Having sheet music can be a good thing or a bad thing, of course. Neuroplasticity can work in “negative” directions as well as in “positive” directions. If you feed your brain a steady diet of grim, depressing, pessimistic, violent sheet music, the various sections of your brain will conclude that that’s their job, and that’s what they’ll play. They’ll play exactly what you’ve told them to play because that’s what they’re designed to do. Fortunately, these same regions of your brain will start to play a different tune if you give them a whole new folder of sheet music to focus on.

That’s where the promise to yourself comes in.

Your biological brain can and will make changes to its wiring patterns, but only if it’s sure you really, really want the changes. This apparent sluggishness on the part of your brain is intentionally wired into your DNA. After all, you wouldn’t want your entire brain to rewire itself every day on the basis of a whim or a passing fad. That would be counterproductive.

There’s a reason it takes about 6 weeks for a new neuron to grow inside your brain. You can’t speed up this process, but you can make sure your brain gets the message every day that it’s not a waste of precious biological resources to be building a bunch of new neural networks.

And make no mistake — you have to make sure there’s a steady supply of biological ingredients on hand if you want your body to divert resources into the energy-intensive task of building new neurons and glial cells. That’s why you need to eat three balanced meals each day.

This is also why I think voluntary fasting for more than two or three days is harmful to the brain. Put simply, you’re starving the brain of nutrients it needs in order to continually restructure interconnections between brain regions (or sections of the orchestra) for optimal “performance” (including optimal performance of your complex intuition circuitry).

I also find it most interesting that 6 weeks is 42 days — eerily similar to the 40 days of fasting and seclusion that pops up so often in the traditional mystical teachings of different religious movements. Forty days of fasting, prayer, and seclusion is just enough time to harness the power of neuroplasticity in negative ways that diminish the overall functioning of the brain.

Coincidence?

I doubt it.

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Posted in brain-soul connection, building your intuition, gratitude, healing, intent, meta-choice, My Spiral Path, mystic, Soul, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged brain-soul connection, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

20 Apr 2011

JR34: Chaining God to the Rock

A: I’d like to return to an idea that was endorsed in Karen Armstrong’s book (The Spiral Staircase), the idea that “when speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do (page 292). I find this idea self-serving and smug. I also find it very demeaning. In fact, I find most religious ideas about God to be self-serving, smug, and demeaning. Demeaning to human beings and demeaning to God. Since this is Holy Week, it seems like a good time to talk to you about your thoughts on the reality of God and what this reality can mean for our lives.

“Jesus said: If they ask you, ‘Where are you from?’ reply to them, ‘We have come from the place where light is produced from itself. It came and revealed itself in their image.’ If they ask you, ‘Are you it?’ reply to them, ‘We are his children. We are the first fruits of the living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the sign within you of your Father?’ reply to them, ‘It is movement. It is rest.’ (Gospel of Thomas 50 a-c).” Photo credit JAT 2021.

J: I see you’re still upset about the way people are talking about God.

A: I’m upset about the fact that theologians and mystics are not being honest with themselves and with others. I’m upset about their “closed-shop” attitude. I’m upset about their tiny, closed, pessimistic view of God and Creation. I’m upset about their narcissistic refusal to open wide the doors of theological inquiry. I’m upset about the pettiness. I’m upset about the way religion teaches — or actually doesn’t teach — people to be in relationship with God. I’m especially upset about the religious rituals that get in the way of the relationships.

J: The crucial problem here is worship.

A: Worship?

J: People of faith all over the world are trying to be in relationship with God. Their souls long to know God, to feel the Presence of God in their daily lives. They long for the comfort, the solace of that love. But among those millions of people, how many of them do you think have actually felt that Presence?

A: Not many. You can tell by the look in a person’s eye when you put the words “trust” and “God” in the same sentence. People of faith are disillusioned and very, very hurt.

J: There are three great obstacles to the experience of relationship with God in the daily life of regular human beings. The first obstacle we’ve talked about a fair bit — the role of status addiction in creating suffering and abuse in the lives of humans and other creatures on Planet Earth. Status addiction is deeply imbedded in all major world religions, even the non-theistic ones. Status addiction in a religious setting becomes a self-reinforcing cycle that ruins lives.* The toxic effects of status addiction have not yet been recognized. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the Vatican could continue to uphold its teachings on sin, separation from God, sacraments, and salvation in the absence of status addiction. Status addiction is one of the three main glues that hold together the Vatican house of cards.

A: Being named Pope is quite the status symbol. Right now the History Channel is showing “The Borgias,” the mini-series about the corrupt family that owned the Papacy at the turn of the 16th century.

J: The second of the three glues holding orthodoxy together is a tenacious belief in the Law of Cause and Effect — the Materialist philosophy you and I have been discussing. What’s astonishing about this belief system is its arrogance. It’s completely oriented towards the supremacy of human beings. The term “anthropocentric” hardly begins to capture it. The Law of Cause and Effect, whatever its particular religious manifestation, teaches people that the Law is more important, more effective, and more divine than God. They say the Law is merely a manifestation of God’s wishes, but what they really mean is that God is utterly bound by all the provisions of the contract law — sort of like Prometheus chained to the rock. This is the source of human religious authority, the foundation on which they claim all their status, power, money, fame, and sexual gratification. This is also the source of human psychological authority — the need to assuage one’s own suffering by claiming there really isn’t a personal God who intervenes in people’s lives. The need for narcissists to obtain psychological authority has never been adequately examined or addressed in the church. The last thing a status-addicted narcissist wants to hear about is a personal God who isn’t chained at a safe distance and who can generate consequences for the narcissist’s smug self-idolization. Today.

A: Okay. What’s the third glue of orthodoxy?

J: The third is worship. I’m defining worship as any spiritual practice that centres around the goal of escape.

A: I’ve never heard that definition of worship before. I tend to think of “liturgy” and “worship” as being more or less the same thing. You go to “worship” on Sundays, and the exact form of this worship is the liturgy — the specific prayers and hymns and sermon content for that particular day.

J: There’s the source of the confusion right there. There’s nothing wrong with liturgy. There’s nothing wrong at all with the idea of people getting together once a week to say some prayers and sing some hymns and hear an uplifting, encouraging, inspiring sermon and maybe even sit together in safe, companionable silence. It’s a healthy practice, one I totally endorse. The idea of setting aside one day per week — the Sabbath — for mutual uplifting and compassionate spiritual reflection is crucial to the health of all human beings. There are lots of different ways to express your love and trust in God on the Sabbath. You can go to church or synagogue. You can visit someone who’s sick in hospital. You and a friend can go outside with a garbage bag and clean up your local parks and streets. You can have a family games afternoon — playing old fashioned board games like Monopoly or Scrabble. The single uniting factor in all these expressions of spirituality is relationship. You’re building positive relationships. You’re connecting to other people and to Nature. In creating these connections, you’re also creating a stronger connection with God the Mother and God the Father. You’re saying “yes” to life, love, service, and laughter. The last thing you’re trying to do is escape.

A: You’re trying to fully engage with life.

J: Yes. I taught engagement, not escape. This is why you see me in the Gospel of Mark as a man who doesn’t retreat into the wilderness, who rarely prays, who never worships in the Jerusalem Temple, and has no use for righteousness in the Law.

A: Yet Mark shows you living a life filled with faith, forgiveness, healing, and redemption. A life filled with relationships. Messy, complicated, frustrating relationships. But that’s what it means to be human, eh?

J: Worship and liturgy are two completely different things. Worship and faith are two completely different things. Worship is the “work” of pious people. Worship is the set of actions they undertake to achieve their long-term goal of escape. Orthodox Western Christians call this escape “salvation.” Buddhists call this escape “nirvana.” Atheists call this escape “saving lives.” At the core of these belief systems lies the intersection of status addiction, Materialism, and worship — the complete abandonment of God by human beings. I want to make it clear that I don’t mean God is doing the abandoning. I mean that human beings are doing the abandoning. I mean that every time a pious Christian devotes an hour or more each day to intercessory prayer, he or she is abandoning God. The more time a person spends in worshipful prayer each day, the farther he or she is getting from God. God doesn’t need your prayers or anyone else’s prayers in order to act. God is not bound by bizarre religious claims about Cause and Effect. God the Mother and God the Father have free will. They’re not chained to the rock. This means that you, as a human being, aren’t that important prayer-wise in the grand cosmological scheme of things. Contrary to the claims of many religious leaders, the sky will not fall down if the “chosen” nuns, monks, and mystics stop praying the Divine Office each day. (The theory here is that God needs to hear the recitation of the Mass and the Divine Office every day to help empower God in his great battle against the Devil to save human souls). Prayers of worship tell the God you’re trying to connect with that you don’t trust God. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot over and over again and then demanding to know why you’re lame.

A: Our prayers of worship may not be needed, but I know one thing for sure — our ability to love and forgive is sure needed.

J (nodding and smiling): God the Mother and God the Father don’t need or want our prayers of worship. AT ALL. On the other hand, they very much need our love. They want and need to be in relationship with us. We’re their children, and they’re just heartbroken, to be honest, when their own beloved children turn away from their divine family — their divine parents and their divine brothers and sisters. It’s very painful for God when human beings choose logic over love, mind over heart, and law over miracles and forgiveness. Some logic is needed, some mind is needed, and some law is needed. This should go without saying. But there has to be balance. And there has to be trust — trust in a loving, forgiving, amazingly brilliant but very humble God. This is what I was trying to teach.

A: It’s what I feel every day — a comforting sense of God’s loving presence, a comforting sense that I’m never alone. I get confused and upset about daily events like everyone else, but I know that at the end of each day God will be there to help me figure it out. I also know that when I screw up, God will help me recognize my mistakes, just as you’d expect mature, loving parents to do. They forgive me when I make a mistake, and they don’t hold any grudges. Their forgiveness helps me find the courage to learn from my mistakes, correct my mistakes, and move forward. Their forgiveness means I’m not caught in that horrible hamster wheel of shame, blame, regret, revenge, and self-loathing that I remember all too well from my earlier years. Their forgiveness has freed me to live.

J: Who needs escape on a future day when the miracle of forgiveness can free you today?

*For an introductory discussion of the role of status addiction in the orthodox Western Church see The Corruption of Free Will Through Addiction and Jesus: The Anti-Status Teacher.

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Posted in "4 S's", "Escape", Buddhism, Cause & Effect, Church of today, forgiveness, free will, Gospel of Mark, Jesus Redux, Law (Nomos), life and death, Materialism, prayer, relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, trust and tagged ethical mysticism, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

13 Apr 2011

JR32: The Buddha Question

“His disciples asked him: Is circumcision useful or not? He said to them: If it were useful, children’s fathers would produce them already circumcised from their mothers. On the other hand, the true circumcision of spirit is entirely valuable” (Gospel of Thomas 53 a-b). Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

A: There’s been a trend in the past few decades to try to equate your teachings with the teachings of the Buddha, to try to show that Jesus and Buddha were teaching the same universal truths. This trend seems particularly true of those who are interested in placing you among the apophatic mystics of Christian history — mystics such as Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, the Cloud of Unknowing, and John of the Cross. Thomas Merton, a well-known Roman Catholic Trappist contemplative, was very interested in establishing a dialogue with Buddhist monks. What are your thoughts on the universality of faith and spiritual practice?

J (sighing): You’ve asked a very, very difficult question. There’s no easy answer, but I’ll try to express some of my thoughts. A book such as Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Berkley-Riverhead, 1995) is so beautiful and so kind and so sincere that I want to say I agree with everything he says. But I don’t. I can’t. I can’t agree with the underlying premises, the underlying doctrines of Buddhist belief. On the other hand — and this is where it gets very messy, very complicated — I agree with a lot of the spiritual practices that Thich Nhat Hanh describes. I agree very much with the path of mindfulness and compassion. I agree with the desire to create communities of peace. I agree with the decision to take action to create positive change. These are aspects of faith that are, indeed, universal. I don’t think anyone would disagree. No matter what religious tradition a person belongs to, the truest expression of faith — the truest expression of humanity — has always been a life lived with mindfulness, compassion, peace, and transformative change. This is true for Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other religions, as well. At any time and in any place there have been some Buddhists and some Jews and some Muslims and some Christians who’ve chosen, as individuals, to pursue the path of true faith. These are the people who’ve consciously tried to help heal communities, families, and individuals. They chose this path because they thought it was the right thing to do.

A: You’re placing the emphasis on individual choice rather than on formal religious beliefs or doctrines.

J: I’m drawing a very clear line here between religion and faith. Religion, as it’s practised in major world religions today, including various schools of Buddhism and various schools of Christiantiy, is one of the biggest obstacles to faith. Faith — by that I mean a relationship with God based on courage, trust, gratitude, and devotion — is supposed to be an everyday part of life. An everyday experience. An everyday sense of belonging. A sense of belonging to Creation, belonging to God’s family. It’s the opposite of abandonment or estrangement from God. Faith is quiet acceptance. It’s compassion. It’s empathy. It’s balance. It’s wholeness. It’s pure humbleness and contentment.

A: Religion doesn’t teach this.

J: No. Religion gets in the way of this. It doesn’t have to. In fact, the world would be a healthier place if people could meet each week on the Sabbath to express their faith and share their spiritual experiences together in a safe spiritual environment. This would be church at its best. Unfortunately, this isn’t what church has become in the Western world. Church has become a place to centralize the authority of narcissistic, fear-mongering men and women. Church has become a place to take people farther away from God, not closer.

A: If you were incarnated as a human being today, would you turn to Buddhism for answers to the questions that Pauline Christianity doesn’t answer very well?

J (sadly shaking his head): No. As I said earlier, Buddhism has some important things to say about spiritual practice — about living the teachings of compassion and mindfulness each day, rather than just speaking of them. There’s more insistence in Buddhism on outward actions matching inward intent. And this is important. It’s integrity, after all. Integrity is what you get when your inner choices match your outer actions. It’s the opposite of hypocrisy. Integrity is an important part of peaceful community. I respect this underlying impulse in Buddhist thought.

A: Yet, based on what you’ve already said, you believe this underlying impulse towards daily practice and integrity is not specifically Buddhist. It’s a universal part of true faith.

J: Yes. All human beings are born with this capacity. Unfortunately, like all aspects of human growth and learning, the capacity for mindful, compassionate practice can be lost. “Use it or lose it” — that’s how the human brain and central nervous system work. All human beings are born with the innate capacity to love and forgive, as well, but as experience shows, many individuals lose both. They lose both their ability to love and their ability to forgive. These are the bullies, the psychopaths, and the narcissists. The same people who’ve been in charge of formal religious instruction in most parts of the world.

A: I get that part. But why do you feel uncomfortable with the trend towards having your teachings conflated with Buddha’s teachings?

J: It’s the cosmology. It’s the core assumptions. I don’t agree with either. How could I? I mean, it would be ludicrous for an angel speaking from the Other Side in partnership with a human mystic to claim there is no God. Buddhism, after all, is a non-theistic religion. In Buddhism, there’s a belief in an ultimate reality, but this reality isn’t a person in the way that you and I talk about God the Mother and God the Father as actual identifiable people — unique, distinct, and both very, very big. Buddhism also rejects the idea of an immortal soul, a distinct consciousness that continues to exist after the death of the physical body. And this is before we get to Buddhist teachings about karma and the nature of suffering, impermanence, rebirth, and enlightenment.

A: What are your thoughts on karma?

J: It’s a form of Materialist philosophy — a profound reliance on the idea that universal laws of cause and effect exist, laws that must be followed and can’t be broken. I reject pure Materialism as a model for explaining and understanding the complex interactions of all life in Creation. It leaves no room for God’s free will. It leaves no room for the profound mysteries of forgiveness, redemption, and humbleness (as opposed to humility). It’s also incredibly depressing when you think about it.

A: The idea that the universe is holding you accountable for choices you can’t even remember from previous “lives” — or previous manifestations.

J: Yes. The idea of blaming the poor and the sick and the downtrodden for their own misfortunes when it’s usually a group’s own leaders who have made the sick sick and the downtrodden downtrodden.

A: How do you feel about the question of rebirth? A number of different religions teach a form of reincarnation. Is there any place for this concept in your understanding of God, soul, and faith?

J: Well, souls can and do incarnate into 3D bodies all the time. But not for the reasons that the Buddha taught. Souls don’t incarnate because they “have to.” Of course, as soon as I start talking about souls, it’s clear I’m talking “apples” and the Buddha is talking “oranges.” Souls do exist, and rebirth, when it happens, is not a form of karmic consequence to be escaped at all costs. Most souls who choose to incarnate as human beings on Planet Earth find that a single human lifetime is enough for their unique purposes of learning, growth, and change. However, a small percentage of human beings have already “been there, done that.” They come back a second time because they want to help guide others on a journey that’s often difficult.

A: Mahayana Buddhism teaches that certain enlightened beings choose to “postpone” their reward so they can help others achieve enlightenment. They call these beings “bodhisattvas.” I’ve met a few people in my lifetime who felt somehow more grounded, more connected to the simplicity of spiritual truth, and I’ve called these individuals bodhisattvas.

J: Not unreasonable.

A: I think I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here. I’m going to tell our readers something I’ve known about you for a long time — you were a bodhisattva. A second-time-arounder. A man who messed up big-time during your first lifetime as a human being, and volunteered to go back in as a spiritual teacher and healer. Not because you had to but because you wanted to. For you, second time round was the charm.

J: It’s not something you realize at the time. You can’t even remember anything from your first life as a human being. There’s just a deepening of the connection, I guess you could say. An ability to stay more grounded, more aware of the patterns. It’s not something you can put your finger on, exactly. The sensation is probably best captured by the old maxim, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” A person who has lived once before as a human being is harder to fool with propaganda, spin doctoring, and religious sleight of hand. That’s why they make good mentors.

A: Can you give another example of a well-known person who was a bodhisattva?

J: Glenn Gould, the Canadian musician, was a bodhisattva.

A: No wonder he played so beautifully.

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Posted in apophatic mysticism, Buddhism, Cause & Effect, Church of today, faith, free will, Jesus Redux, karma, Materialism, Mother and Father God, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices and tagged historical Jesus, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

09 Mar 2011

JR19: The Beatitudes of Luke

A: People are often confused about the meaning of your statements on wealth and poverty. There’s a long history of Christians deciding to “imitate you” by giving up all their possessions and taking vows of poverty (among other vows). How do you respond to this interpretation of your teachings?

J: It’s an incorrect interpretation.

A: In what way?

J: Psychologically and spiritually, it’s an incorrect interpretation. There’s no truth to the widespread belief that asceticism is the correct path to knowing God. Asceticism, including the modified form of asceticism preached by the monastic founder Benedict, is an ancient spiritual practice, to be sure, but it’s a dangerous one. It’s dangerous to the human body and the human brain. Therefore it gets in the way of connection with God. I don’t recommend ascetism today. I didn’t recommend asceticism 2,000 years ago.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in the Kingdom within; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.” (Luke 6:22-26, translation from The New Oxford Annotated NRSV, 3rd Ed.) Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

A: The Beatitudes and Woes in Luke [Luke 6:20-26] seem to suggest otherwise. The footnotes in the New Oxford Annotated NRSV state that “the focus [in the beatitudes] is on economic and social conditions, not spiritual states” (p. 107 NT).

J: Commentators interpret the Lukan beatitudes this way because the commentators themselves have a dualistic understanding of humanity. There’s a common belief that economic and social conditions can be separated from spiritual states. But they can’t. They’ve always been intertwined. There’s no such thing as a spiritual state that’s separate and distinct from economic and social realities. It’s one of the great myths of religion — the idea that people can dissociate themselves from their own thoughts, needs, feelings, and relationships in order to get closer to God. It’s pure crap. Abusive, damaging crap.

A: Explain.

J: The only path to connecting with God while living as a human being is to become a Whole Brain Thinker. A Whole Brain Thinker is a person who makes balanced choices, holistic choices each day. A Whole Brain Thinker engages all parts of the brain God gave him. He uses his emotions in a balanced, compassionate way. He uses his logic and memory to balance his heart. He honours and respects the needs of his physical body, neither denying himself food nor overindulging at the expense of his physical health. He incorporates his spiritual life into his regular daily life, rather than setting aside just one or two hours per week to attend religious services. He struggles each day to find the balance among all these competing aspects of his true self, but he tries his best because that’s the only path open to a self-realized person. To a person who has found the Kingdom.

A: Are there any measurable benefits to such a path? Any positive outcomes? Any sources of spiritual hope?

J: There are many measurable benefits. Too many to count, in fact. I can’t give a precise list, because each person is different, each soul is different, so there’s variation from person to person. But there are some overall patterns that can be described. There are overall improvements to physical health, mental health, family relationships, and community relationships that develop automatically when individuals start to take control of their own choices, their own thoughts and feelings. Thousands of researchers in hundreds of different fields would back me up on this one.

A: I love it when scientific research backs up the Divine Truth!

J: One area that gets very little research attention is the role of brain health in facilitating the experience of trust. One of the first emotions to get “blocked” in the angry brain, in the addicted brain, is trust. Trust is a complex soul emotion. It’s interwoven with relationships in the soul and in the childhood brain. It’s also interwoven with the physical body through ongoing touch — respectful touch, appropriate touch, sentimental touch. There’s a reason that folk wisdom recommends daily hugs. Hugs are important. Respectful hugs — by that I mean non-sexualized hugs — are hugely important to people’s health. On the other hand, abusive contact, abusive touch has the opposite effect on people’s biology. It damages brain cells. Stress hormones released in the body damage the brain cells of both the abuser and the abusee. A survivor of childhood abuse is likely to grow up unable to trust. Without the emotion of trust, there’s no basis for mature relationship. There’s no basis for mature relationship with yourself or with anybody else. It means you have no foundation for a relationship with God.

A: Because you need to feel trust in order to feel faith. Genuine faith.

J (nodding): Genuine faith is founded on a person’s ability to trust that God actually knows what they’re doing! If you aren’t able to trust God, then you’re always going to be second-guessing God, getting angry with God. You’re always going to be judging God. People don’t like to admit that they’re judging God, but many Christians do it. Every single day they draw up lists of God’s “crimes” of omission and commission. You wouldn’t believe the number of angry prayers God gets every day.

A: So how does all this relate to the message of the Lukan beatitudes?

J: The issue here is the interconnection between trust and faith on the one hand, and anger and addiction on the other hand. The brain isn’t wired — nor should it be — to allow human beings to live a life of trust and faith AND anger and addiction. People have to make a choice. They have to make a choice between living a life of trust and faith — a life where they feel alive every day instead of dead inside, empty inside — OR living a life of anger and addiction. It’s an unfortunate fact that once people become addicted to status, physiologically addicted to the dopamine release of “status hits,” they tend to want to stick with their “drug of choice.” They won’t give it up until they decide their addiction is causing harm. They have to stop denying the harm created by the addiction. So let me ask you . . . how many people do you know who’ve voluntarily given up their status for the sake of inner life, inner freedom, inner joy?

A: I know several people who’ve lost their status involuntarily — not through choice, but through circumstance. Stock market losses. Divorce. Illness. Long-term disability. That sort of thing.

J: You know a number of people with money, status, privilege, possessions. How would you say they’re doing on the “inner joy” scale?

A: Many aren’t doing well. They’re getting clinically depressed. They’re developing chronic health problems — a lot of autoimmune stuff. Sleep disorders. Chronic pain. Unrelenting stress.

J: Right. These responses to stress and status addiction aren’t new. They’ve been around for as long as homo sapiens sapiens has been biologically suspectible to status addiction.

A: The Lukan Woes — Luke 6:24-26 — look different when read in the context you’ve just described. The “consolation” and the “hunger” and the “mourning and weeping” sound a lot like clinical depression.

J: Clinical depression has a genetic component, but it’s also intertwined with internal stresses and external stresses. Sometimes you can’t do anything about the external stresses — things like the Dow Jones average. But the internal stresses have an effect on clinical depression, too. People can really stress themselves out by making choices that harm themselves and harm others. There’s a reason that people with clinical depression respond best to a treatment course that involves both appropriate antidepressant medication AND certain kinds of effective psychotherapy. The medication helps your brain build new “wiring,” which is necessary to the healing process, while the psychotherapy can help you recognize your harmful choices and learn to make more loving choices.

A: Nothing new there as far as an empathetic psychiatrist is concerned.

J: Exactly. And Christianity should jump onto the same page with the empathetic psychiatrists. It’s not money that’s the root of all evil. Money builds schools, hospitals, roads, etc., etc., etc.

A: Whereas status addiction builds huge monuments, huge reputations, huge armies, and professional sports teams.

J: Jared Diamond thinks that civilizations collapse when they harm their own environment and starve themselves to death. But people who are using their brains in holistic, balanced ways have too much common sense to destroy their own environment. Only serious status addicts are stupid enough to destroy their own sustenance for the sake of building a bigger, better Temple.

A: The history of collapse in a nutshell.

J: God won’t back up status-addicted choices. God would rather bring people Home to heal them and release them from the pain of status addiction than leave them in a morass of profound abuse. And make no mistake — religion based on status addiction is profoundly abusive.

A: Including Pauline Christianity. Its doctrines, its teachings.

J: If the shoe fits . . .

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Posted in dualism, faith, healing, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, makarism, Matthew's and Luke's intent, religion and mental Illness, Son of Man, spiritual practices, status addiction, trust, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

25 Feb 2011

JR15: Parable of the Candlesticks

A: This morning I got up, and was talking to Jesus, as usual, and he said, “It feels like a parable day. Time to write a parable.” So here’s the parable he put together this morning. Once a parable writer, always a parable writer.

Parable of the Candlesticks

Candlesticks on Oak (c) JAT

Once upon a time there was a prayerful mother who had two little children, a boy and a girl. The mother owned two beautiful brass candlesticks that had belonged to her mother and to her grandmother and to her great-grandmother before that. The candlesticks were her pride and joy.

Every day the mother got out the jar of specially made brass cleaner and the specially woven cloth so she could polish the beautiful brass candlesticks. As she laboured over the candlesticks, she would quietly hum the prayers of devotion she’d been taught. Then she would place two pure white candles into the candlesticks and light them. The candles were made of the finest bleached beeswax. God had told her once in a dream to follow the light of the purest candles he had ever made. So each day she followed his instructions. She knew God would hear her prayers when she knelt before the table that held the beautiful brass candlesticks.

One day, as she was polishing and praying, her son came running into the room. “Mommy, mommy,” he called. “I’ve found the most wonderful treasures outside. Please come and see them with me.”

“What have you found, my son?” she asked as she picked up her buffing cloth to polish the brass base with all the devotion she could muster.

“There’s a half moon hanging in the sky and the robins are building a new nest near the roof of the front porch and blue and white flower buds are opening in the garden. It’s quite exciting. Won’t you come and see?”

“My child, I am polishing the candlesticks, and I’m sure you understand how important this task is for all our family. If I fail to polish the candlesticks perfectly, and if I fail to light the candles properly, then God will not be able to hear our prayers and answer them. It is more important that I ensure God’s blessing upon our family. Our family is so lucky to know the secret. We must honour the blessing God has given us. Otherwise he will take it away.”

The boy’s smile faded, and he nodded obediently. “Yes, mother. You are very kind and loving to look after us in this way. I am very grateful. Thank you for your prayers, Mother.”

“You’re most welcome, my son.”

A short while later, her daughter came running into the room. “Mommy, mommy,” she called. “I’ve found the most wonderful place in our neighbourhood. It’s filled with books. Beautiful, wonderful books. With pictures! Mommy, will you come and read me a story?”

“My child, you know how important it is that I finish work on the candlesticks so I may properly offer prayers on your behalf to God. You must be protected, child. I cannot ask God to protect you until the light shines perfectly from the mirror of the polished brass. See, my daughter? If you look into the polished brass, you can see your reflection there. Is it not wondrous?”

“Yes, mother. You are very wise. Perhaps one day, if you think I am worthy, you will teach me to light the candles as your mother taught you.”

“And her mother taught her before that.”

“We’re lucky, aren’t we, Mother, that our ancestors were so blessed by God?”

“Very lucky, my daughter,” said the mother, gazing with pride upon the candlesticks she polished every day with the purest devotion to God that anyone could imagine. “We’re the luckiest family there could ever be. Thanks be to God.”

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Posted in Jesus Redux, narcissism, parables, prayer, spiritual practices and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

21 Feb 2011

JR13: Jesus Speaking on Prayer

A: This morning I was tidying up some papers and I came across an insert from the worship bulletin of a small local church. This particular church is a “one of a kind” group that’s blending ideas from Unitarianism, the United Church of Canada, Gnosticism, and maybe some Eastern ideas filtered through a New Age lens. I notice that I circled the group prayer and wrote in the margin, “How Not to Pray.” I wondered if you could go through the prayer with me and explain — from your angelic perspective — why this kind of prayer isn’t helpful.

J: Sure. Can you type the prayer here for reference?

A: Typing fingers coming right up. Okay. It says on this insert that the prayer is called the “Prayer of Transfiguration,” adapted from the Prayer of Abandonment by Charles de Foucauld. Here’s the text:

I abandon myself to the Light; Let it transform my life. Whatever it does, I am open; I am present to all, I accept all. Let the Divine will be done in me. And in all creation — I wish no more than this. Into the hands of Life I commend my spirit; I offer it with all the love of my heart. For I am Light, And so need to give my self, To surrender my self into Life’s hands without reserve, And with boundless confidence and gratitude, For we are all called — to Live in the Light!

A: I think a lot of people would find this prayer quite lovely, quite meaningful. However, I happen to know from personal experience that you don’t encourage people to pray this kind of prayer. Can you explain your thoughts, your reasoning?

J: Prayer is a messy topic. People of faith have a tendency to claim that all prayer is good, all prayer is helpful. But it’s not. From the point of view of angels — the angels who are tasked with looking after the human beings who live on Planet Earth — all prayer is not created equal. There are what I might call genuine prayers — the ones spoken with the soul’s own loving intent. There are also pseudo-prayers — words strung together with unkind intent and directed at God. Pseudo-prayers predominate, unfortunately.

A: Let’s talk more about the pseudo-prayers. Can you be more specific about the “unkind intent” you’re referring to?

J: When people try to speak with God, communicate with God through prayer, the words they speak are of little interest to God or to God’s angels. There are meaningful prayers that consist of only one word or one sound. The actual words are not that important.

A: Mantras. When you speak of prayers that contain only one sound, you’re talking about mantras.

J: Mantras work for some people. Not for everyone. But for some people. Mantras should not be recommended for everyone on a spiritual path.

A: Why not?

J: Because everyone’s soul is different. Therefore everyone’s learning style is different. And everyone’s communication style is different. There is no single form of communication with God that can recommended for all people. Each person has to find his or her own best path.

A: I’m not a mantra person. I’m definitely a word person. I have to talk with God in words.

A utility shed made into a charming gift that lifts the soul and brings a smile to your day. A great way to pray is to simply say, “Thank you for lifting me up in this moment. I really needed that. Thank you for guiding me to this!” New Brunswick Botanical Gardens. Photo credit JAT 2022.

J: I’m also a word person. It works for me, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Here’s one area where people definitely shouldn’t try to do what Jesus does. They should try to find their own best form of communication with God. There are many nuanced forms of conversing with your Divine Parents. Some people need to go outside and sit quietly in the sun. Some need to be actively engaged in the outdoor world of nature — maybe through hiking, camping, sailing, canoeing. Gardening is another big one. Some people can’t hear God unless the music is on really, really loud. Some people can’t hear God unless the room is very, very quiet. There’s no one correct way. They’re all equally valid, equally beautiful ways as far as God is concerned. God always meets you where your soul longs to be. So if your soul is the kind of soul that hears God when it’s very, very quiet, that’s when God will be speaking with you. God respects who you are as a soul. Therefore, God won’t try to “force” you to listen at a time that’s not good for you. God is nothing if not respectful.

A: None of the spiritual practices you just mentioned sound like traditional religious prayer. Why not?

J: As I was mentioning, it’s not the words that God listens to. It’s the intent. God pays no attention to rote prayer, to be honest. It’s just a waste of everybody’s time. Rote prayer isn’t about communication or relationship. Rote prayer is just a habit — a habit like making your bed every day or putting the toilet paper roll on the same way every time. It’s something you do because it helps you cope with daily stress. Or maybe it’s something you do so you won’t be punished by an authority figure who expects you to pray. But it’s not relationship between you and God. You can’t expect to recite the Lord’s Prayer every day and have it mean anything or do anything. The Lord’s Prayer has no special power in Creation, despite what many orthodox Christians would like to believe.

A: Define what you mean by “unkind intent.” Can you give specific examples of that?

J: Sure. Prayer directed at getting somebody cursed by God. Prayer directed at getting special favours for yourself at the expense of those around you. Prayer directed at cursing yourself for your own unworthiness before God. Prayer directed at getting healing for somebody else. Prayer directed at getting somebody’s soul saved. Prayer directed at getting somebody’s loved ones released from purgatory or hell. Prayer directed at being chosen to be among God’s elect. Prayer directed to saints. Prayer directed to holy relics. Prayer directed at getting somebody blessed by God.

A: So . . . pretty much all the most popular orthodox Western Christian prayers.

J: Yup. God doesn’t curse people. God doesn’t favour you over your neighbour. God doesn’t accept your self-pity, because God knows your true potential. God heals with or without anybody’s prayers, but it’s up to God to decide the right time and the right place. God hasn’t lost any souls, so God doesn’t need to save any souls. There is no purgatory and there is no hell, so God doesn’t need help freeing anyone. God doesn’t have any chosen children and there is no group of elect souls. All souls are created equal, so there is no hierarchy of saints or angels to intervene on anybody’s behalf. Praying to holy relics is occult magic, and it hurts your brain, so don’t do it. All of God’s children are equally blessed.

A: You don’t give an inch to tradition, do you? Not one tiny inch.

J: No. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others didn’t go nearly far enough with their “protesting” reformation of Western Christianity. The work of reforming the church to reflect the core values of God the Mother and God the Father still remains to be done.

A: A make-work project for the church of the third millennium. Okay. I’d like to return to the original question about the “Prayer of Transfiguration” above. What about this prayer feels “out of synch” to you, if I can use that expression?

J: It feels out of synch with the values of the soul because of the underlying assumptions implicit in the prayer. To begin with, I take issue with the imagery of “light.”

A: Why? Haven’t spiritual seekers long equated good spiritual choices with “light”?

J: My point exactly. Nobody’s questioning the metaphor. People say, “Oh, the light, the light, we’re getting closer to the truth! Hurray! We’re making progress!” But if people are moving towards the light, what are they moving away from?

A: The darkness.

“Jesus said to them: If you fast you will bring sin to yourselves, and if you pray you will be condemned, and if you give to charity you will damage your spirits. When you go into a region and walk around in the rural areas, whenever people receive you, eat whatever they provide for you, and heal their sick. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but what comes out of your mouth can defile you” (Gospel of Thomas 14 a-c). In other words, if you want to have a strong faith relationship with God, you have to give up the idea that God enjoys your displays of power, rote piety, religious ritual, and subjugation of others. Use your skills instead to help others find their own courage, faith, and humbleness. Photo shows a scarab commemorating Kushite victory over inhabitants of the Negev desert, carved from steatite, 25th Dynasty, c. 710 BCE. (On display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.)

J: Exactly. It’s an immature, dualistic claim. Good versus evil. Light versus dark. It’s so ingrained in people’s minds that they don’t even question the metaphor any longer. But let me ask you — what’s so bad about the dark? Is the night sky to be feared? Is the darkness of the ocean bottom to be despised? Why is light good and darkness bad? Why does “white” mean pure in Western culture, and “black” mean corrupt or evil? God’s Creation isn’t about good versus evil and light versus dark. Creation isn’t dualistic. So why have people recite a prayer that reinforces sloppy dualistic thinking? The human brain — the biological 3D brain — is kind of stupid at times, and it needs good guidance. It needs to be constantly reminded not to fall into overly simplistic thinking, which leads to overly simplistic “solutions.” A solid prayer of the genuine kind is a prayer that challenges people to acknowledge and respect the complexity of God’s Creation. A solid prayer does not speak of abandonment and surrender without first acknowledging the difficulty of this spiritual task (and spiritual task it is!). A solid prayer reminds people that they have an important role to play in Creation, even if they don’t fully understand that role. A solid prayer speaks of balance — both the difficulty of finding it and the difficulty of maintaining it. A solid prayer never speaks of people as empty vessels to be filled by pure Divine will. To speak of empty vessels negates the integrity of the soul. A solid prayer helps people remain humble yet at the same time courageous. The prayer typed above is a prayer of humility, not a prayer of humbleness. And you know what I think of false humility!

A: Yessiree. Do I ever! Any final words of advice for readers who want to be able to communicate clearly with God?

J: Yes. Don’t ever put yourself down while you’re engaged in prayer. Don’t ever say you’re unworthy of God’s love and forgiveness. Be honest about mistakes you’ve made, but ask God to help you learn from your mistakes. Be brave. Don’t whine. Remember you’re a child of God. And I mean that in every possible way. You’re a child of God, and nobody can take that away from you. That’s a pretty good starting point for finding the courage to make gradual changes in your life.

A: And yes, folks! You’re not listening to anything I haven’t had to listen to a thousand times myself. And yes! Angels really do talk this way. (Don’t you feel sorry for me?) And yes! Sometimes you just want to scream because your angels are so tough and so determined to help you make positive changes, and they’re so annoyingly dedicated to helping you be your best self! And guess what? YOU CAN’T MAKE THEM GO AWAY NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY. They stick to you like Velcro. SO IF YOU CAN’T LICK ‘EM, YOU MAY AS WELL JOIN ‘EM. That’s my humble opinion, anyway.

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), Church of today, dualism, humbleness, humility, intent, Jesus Redux, Jesus' teachings, Kingdom teachings, prayer, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual practices and tagged spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

05 Jan 2011

TBM5: Keep It Simple, Keep It Sane

Over the years, I’ve observed that when I read a book about a particular religion or a New Age healing method, the first thing the authors want to explain to me is their cosmology. Each author seems to believe wholeheartedly that if I don’t understand the cosmology behind the religion, I won’t be able to benefit from the religion’s teachings. Hence I’m typically presented with a myth that reveals to poor unenlightened me the “truth” about the origins of the universe, the origins of God, and the origins of evil. I’m given names. Dates. Places. Lists of historical events. Lists of family descendants. Sometimes I’m given prophecies about future events. All this is revealed to me so I’ll better understand why I must follow all the steps required by the religion or the spiritual movement in my quest to connect more deeply with God.

These are all “top down” approaches to spirituality. The “top down” approach to religion, faith, and spirituality can also be described as the “fiction writer’s guide to the universe.” Any speculative fiction writer worth his or her salt can construct an elaborate Creation Myth. One of the best known speculative fiction writers of this ilk is J.R.R. Tolkien, whose lovingly crafted books about Middle Earth could easily be mistaken for religious revelation. The sheer scale of Tolkien’s cosmology is breathtaking, its impact, transformative. Yet it’s pure fiction.

So even though I’m a mystic, and even though I cut my writing teeth as a fiction writer (unpublished), I think it’s wrong for me to use a “top down” approach. It’s wrong for me to present you with a huge Creation Myth and expect you to believe it simply because I say so. That’s what religious leaders such as Christianity’s Apostle Paul once did. These religious leaders expect you to have blind faith.

Like many people today, I think blind faith is exactly what it sounds like — blind. Intentionally and wilfully blind. No different than putting on a blindfold and walking into a busy street in the arrogant belief that God will protect you from injury because of your faith. That’s not faith. That’s narcissistic pride.

I recommend a “bottom up” strategy of spiritual healing. This was the approach taken by the physician-scholar we know as Jesus of Nazareth. (Don’t worry, I’m not going biblical on you. There’s hardly anything in the Bible about Jesus’ actual teachings.)

Try to keep the table in your spiritual kitchen uncluttered. Take things one step at a time. Your brain has to change as you change, so don’t feed it too many new spiritual ideas at one time. Photo credit JAT 2020.

A “bottom up” strategy has many advantages. The first and most obvious advantage is that the “bottom up” strategy is equally available to all people regardless of gender, class, religion, socio-economic status, age, or physical health status. You don’t need special training or special credentials to access this strategy. Most of all, you don’t need pots full of money. (You’ll need some money, but that’s because everyone in the 21st century needs money to buy food, shelter, medicine, and other basic life necessities.) This is what I mean when I say you need to keep it simple.

A second advantage is that you don’t have to “check your brain at the door.” You don’t have to choose blind faith over reason. You don’t have to choose religion over science. On the contrary, you’ll need all the resources available to you inside your own brain and mind. You’ll be working your brain harder than you ever thought you could. This is what I mean when I say you need to keep it sane.

A third advantage is that you’re allowed to have a sense of humour and you’re allowed to make mistakes. (Maybe you take those two things for granted, but trust me when I say that fundamentalist religious leaders — teachers of the “top down” approach — have no tolerance for either humour or mistakes.)

A fourth advantage is that I don’t have to explain to you in gory detail each and every advantage of this strategy. You’ll figure it out for yourself as you go along. You’ll gradually figure it out at such a deep, unshakable, core level that the insights you achieve will be totally yours and nobody will be able to take them away from you. Ever.

Today’s thought is this: Spiritual leaders who insist on the “top down” approach are telling you that they believe in the “ladder of spiritual ascent.” They’re telling you they believe there’s a soul ladder where “bad” souls are at the bottom and “good” souls are at the top. They’re telling you this even if they don’t use the word “soul.” Listen carefully to the words these leaders use. Do they speak often in black-and-white symbols? Do they demand that you believe in black-and-white pairs of polar opposites such as good-versus-evil, male-versus-female, enlightened-versus-unenlightened, corrupt-body-versus-purified-mind? (You can probably think of many other examples.) Use your own experiences and your own common sense to challenge these claims.

Make a list of five pairs of polar opposites that you think might be impeding you personally on your own Spiral Path. Don’t make a list of 50 or 100 pairs, because that’s too much information for you to work with. You can start with a list that has more than 5 pairs on it, but take some time to reflect on your longer list, and whittle it down to 5 pairs (or as close to 5 pairs as you can get). This will be plenty for you to work on.

This is an example of keeping it simple. There’s no point sweating over a huge long list because your biological brain simply CANNOT deal with that much complexity and that much pain at one time. Don’t even try. Just pick 5 pairs (or thereabouts), and post them where you can see them every day. This will help your biological brain remember what your goals are.

Looking back on the beginning of my own spiritual journey, I would have picked these five pairs to work on:

Good souls versus evil souls (because I believed then what many spiritual writers were saying).
Worthy souls versus unworthy souls (because I’d fallen into the trap of believing I wasn’t worthy of God’s love and forgiveness, though I believed other people were worthy).
Humbleness versus humility (though I doubt I could have formulated a distinct definition for these two at the time).
Selflessness versus selfishness (at the time, I thought these two were polar opposites, and as a result, I allowed myself to become a co-dependent doormat in more than one relationship).
Perfectionism versus forgiveness (this pair kept me occupied for several years).

See why you should only pick 5 pairs? Just being honest with yourself about 5 pairs is enough to make anyone throw up.

Even one pair is pretty intimidating in the beginning. But you have to start somewhere on the Spiral Path of learning who you are as a soul, and this is as good a place as any.

As we shall see, this examination of your own polar opposites has a biological purpose, a definable, quantifiable biological purpose that will help you heal your biological brain. That’s what “bottom up” teaching is all about — it’s about starting with the tools you currently have (i.e. your biology) and maximizing the DNA you were born with so you can be the best person you’re capable of being. It’s about starting with the foundation God has given you (that’s the “bottom”) and strengthening that foundation through your own spiritual initiatives and your own hard work. Building outward rather than upward. Building outward changes and connections in your family, community, and workplace rather than building castles in the sky. Building outward with roads and schools and hospitals until you can touch the hand of your neighbour.

Maybe you think this sounds too simple, too sane, not very mysterious, and even kind of boring. All I can say to that is . . . the Spiral Path is anything but predictable.

(Chortle, chortle).

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, dualism, faith, healing, My Spiral Path, mystic, Soul, soul blueprint, spiritual ascent, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy and tagged spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

24 Nov 2010

TBM2: The Spiritual Kitchen

Widdicombe-in-the-Moor (c) JAT 1997

To embark on a spiritual journey is to make a major commitment to oneself and to God. It’s a decision to be made in full consciousness and in good faith because it’s a decision that will change your life. You may not want it to change your life, but it will. That’s why it’s best for you and your family if you take your time on this journey of change. No need to rush things. Be kind and patient with yourself. The Spiral Path unfolds in its own way and in its own time. This is the way it’s meant to be.

Each person’s journey is unique. Therefore, it’s difficult to say with any assurance how the Spiral Path “should” unfold. There’s no one correct way to proceed. I could lie to you (as many faith leaders have done) and tell you there’s a strict set of rules you can follow that will get you where you want to go. That would be easy. But it would not be truthful. And it would not be fair to you as a child of God.

Having said that, there are some general guidelines that can assist all people, whether male or female, old or young, fully able or disabled, in ill health or good. The guidelines I suggest here are not biblically based, so if you’re looking for a biblically-based approach to spiritual living, you’ll need to look elsewhere; this is not the site for you.

The guidelines I suggest here have been generated through the lens of my own experience. There’s a lot of “me” in what I say here because I can only be me. You may find what I say here to be helpful to you on your journey. Or you may not. Everyone’s different. This, too, is the way it’s meant to be.

If I were to describe what it feels like to step onto the Spiral Path with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your body, and all your soul, I would say this:

I would say that it feels as if you’re stepping into a kitchen for the first time and learning how to cook. When you first step into the kitchen, you don’t know anything at all. You don’t know how the stove works (though the stove is in perfect working order). You don’t know the purpose of all the gadgets, dishes, pots, and measuring cups. You open the pantry cupboard and see a wall of wonderful ingredients, but they’re meaningless to you. You look with horror at all the cookbooks and profess sincerely that you’ll never be able to read and understand all those books. Your first instinct is to flee.

With time, patience, practice, and a sense of humour, you fumble your way through your first few recipes. You make mistakes. (No biggy.) Your casseroles never look the way they look in the recipe book photographs. You keep confusing baking soda and baking powder. You discover the hard way that too much salt or too little salt can ruin a whole recipe. At first, you’re very self-conscious and aware of all your mistakes. After a while, though, you gain a little confidence. After a while, you start to feel comfortable in the kitchen. You’re no longer intimidated as soon as you walk into the room. You start to feel kind of cozy there.

After you’ve tried a number of different kinds of recipes, you begin to get a feel for the ones you like, the ones you enjoy making, the ones you want to try again. You find your niche in the kitchen — the recipes that are “you.” The recipes you’re not afraid to take to a potluck dinner. The recipes you’re proud of, in a humble sort of way.

But before you can get to that stage, you have to survive the hardest part: the beginning. The beginning is the hardest part because you don’t know a darned thing. You don’t know what anything does or what anything means. It’s just a big, frightening, overwhelming mess as far as you’re concerned. It makes you want to scream and run away before you even get started.

The goal of this blog, therefore, is to talk about the beginning of the journey. I want to talk to you about the basic tools that are in your “spiritual kitchen” so you’re not afraid to use them. I want to walk you through the basics so you can find the confidence to become your own “spiritual chef.” Once you have the basic tools and the confidence you need, you can slowly find your own unique recipes for living a spiritual life of joy and faith and courage and love.

Many of the things I say here will be things you won’t find elsewhere. Not yet, anyway. I’m not experimenting with you, though. Everything I recommend here is something I’ve done myself at the suggestion of my faithful guardian angels. Twelve years ago, I was that person standing in the doorway of my own spiritual kitchen with no idea where to begin. Yet my angels took me by the hand and patiently led me step by step through all the cupboards and all the recipe books to show me how they worked. I cannot begin to express my gratitude for my angels’ persistence and devotion.

Now it’s my turn to “pay it forward,” to share with you what my angels have shared with me.

Yes, I believe in angels (though not in demons!), and I’ll be speaking often of guardian angels and how you can begin to interpret their ongoing messages to you.

Don’t be afraid of peeking into your own spiritual kitchen. Just take it a day at a time. It’s the best any of us can do.

Blessings to you today and always!

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Posted in brain-soul connection, building your intuition, insight, Mother and Father God, My Spiral Path, mystic, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic and tagged spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

14 Jun 2010

CC20: Further Update on the Vatican’s "Sin Within"

Last Friday, on June 11, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI addressed 15,000 priests who were in St. Peter’s Square to mark the end of the Vatican’s Year of the Priest. In his homily, Benedict asked forgiveness from God and from affected people for the sins of the sexually abusive clerics in the Roman Catholic church. He also promised “to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again” (Nicole Winfield, “Pope Begs Forgiveness, Promises Action on Abuse,” The Globe and Mail, June 11, 2010).

While I’m quite certain that God the Mother and God the Father do, indeed, forgive Benedict for his own errors, and do, indeed, forgive the priests who’ve intentionally harmed the faithful in their care, I’m equally certain that hidden abuse will continue in the Roman Catholic church.

Many Christians want to make this a question of theodicy: how do we explain evil in the world while at the same time preserving our image of God as good and loving? If God allows abuse to continue in the church, does it mean that God is powerless and ineffectual? Impotent against the powers of the devil? Or does it mean that God is actually not a very nice person?

Many of the Christians I know would much rather blame the problem of evil on God and/or the devil than put the blame where it belongs: on the values and moral beliefs held by both individuals and by cultural groups.

The Roman Catholic church is a cultural group. It teaches particular cultural beliefs. (These comprise its theological doctrines). It has a consciously promoted schedule of active teaching. Its goal is to teach its people early on in life how they should conduct themselves in relationship to God, church hierarchy, and empire. Traditionally, it has punished members who question its teachings or its authority (the Inquisition). It has conferred upon itself the mantle of infallibility. It claims it is the one true church, the only legitimate path to salvation.

The Roman Catholic church has long held a vision of how society should be — how society should look, act, and “feel.” Its body of theological doctrines has been carefully cultivated so that only kind of garden can grow in its presence. The church has no one but itself to blame for this.

at the Vatican (c) J MacDonald 2011

The conditions in a garden dictate what kinds of plants will thrive there. A garden that has full sun, lots of water, and lots of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc.) will grow very different plants than a garden that has shady conditions or low nitrogen or a high pH. If you restrict certain nutrients, you restrict which plants will flower abundantly. If you water some plants and not others, you control which plants will flourish, and which plants will live a miserable life of bare subsistence before dying a premature death.

Throughout its history, the orthodox Western church has been heavily committed to the lessons learned from gardening. Hewing closely to the principle that the person who controls the conditions of a garden will control the ultimate harvest of said garden, the church has intentionally chosen a specific blend of nutrients for its religio-political garden. The nutrients in this case are its doctrines. The doctrines are what “feed” the hearts and minds of the faithful. If you precisely control the “mix” of doctrines available to your people, you precisely control the rate at which people’s hearts and minds can grow. If you balance this mix with the precision of a master botanist, you can ensure that the people in your congregations grow just enough to offer you the occasional flower without ever getting big enough to overshadow you.

It’s a new idea, this idea that the introduction of particular belief systems can alter the physical structure and biochemical functioning of a person’s central nervous system and brain. I suppose I should amend that to say it’s a new idea among neuroscientists — unfortunately, it’s not a new idea among history’s power mongers.

Long before the advent of brain scanning technologies, would-be tyrants had empirically observed that people’s behaviour could be altered through the careful repetition of certain ideas. These tyrants didn’t understand the changes at a biochemical or neurophysiological level, and they didn’t need to — all they needed to understand was the result, the harvest of their ideological campaigns. Early orthodox Church Fathers understood this principle well.

Early in the history of the church, orthodox Christian teachers made a conscious decision to take an axe to the teachings of Jesus as represented in the Gospel of Mark, and to overshadow Jesus’ sunny, open “vineyard” with the giant magic beanstalk of spiritual ascent (a beanstalk seen later in the children’s fairy tale of that name). They’ve been feeding this beanstalk of “elevation” for the “elect” with their repeated assertions that the devil exists, that Judgment Day is coming (soon, very soon! — or at least sometime, maybe, we’re pretty darned sure, because it says so in the apocalyptic books), that the soul is tainted by original sin, that Jesus is your only hope of salvation, that Holy Mother Church is the only portal through which you can gain access to the gold at the top of the beanstalk.

This set of teachings was well established by the mid-3rd century CE. It’s not new (and it certainly didn’t originate with Jesus himself!). The problem with the church’s teachings is that their doctrines damage your biological brain. When you fully embrace these teachings as “divine truth,” your brain stops working the way God intends. Your brain responds exactly like the plant that’s been crippled because the gardener has intentionally withheld the water, nutrients, and care you need. Your heart and mind don’t really grow. You spend all your life sitting in the shadow of the towering beanstalk and feeling like crap. You feel like crap because all the truth — all the spiritual nutrients — about the actual nature of your relationship with God have been artfully concealed from you. You wouldn’t recognize the plants that grow in a sunny, lush, well-watered garden if they came chasing after you.

Such as forgiveness. Would you be able to recognize forgiveness if it entered your life? Probably not. Most Christian’s can’t. That’s because the orthodox Church has never taught people about forgiveness (which is why I’m somewhat sceptical about the Pope’s current pleas for forgiveness).

Why hasn’t the Church taught people how to forgive when it’s obvious from reading the Gospel of Mark that Jesus insisted on the message of forgiveness? The Church doesn’t want to teach people how to forgive, because once people catch onto the feeling of forgiveness, they’ll be able to figure out for themselves that divine forgiveness is the antithesis of “salvation” and “grace.” They’ll realize the church has been lying to them for centuries about their souls. The garden of orthodoxy might start to look like a thorny patch of weeds and thistles instead of the prophesied paradise!

It’s no mystery why some church clerics have been sexually abusing vulnerable people in their care. You can’t expect a human being’s brain to produce a harvest of compassion, integrity, inclusiveness, and enlightenment when all you do every day is try to fill that person’s brain with a steady diet of dissociation, lack of forgiveness, hierarchical control, and suppression of learning.

If Pope Benedict really means it when he says he wants to do “everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again,” the only truly effective strategy will be for him to call a Council along the lines of Vatican II, and embark on the painful path of rescinding some of the church’s most cherished doctrinal beliefs.

Somehow I’m not holding my breath.

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Posted in "4 S's", Church of today, Concinnate Christianity, forgiveness, Gospel of Mark, occult themes, orthodox teachings about the soul, Paul vs Jesus, relationship with God, Soul, spiritual ascent, spiritual practices, theodicy and tagged religion + mental illness | Leave a Comment

The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the category “spiritual practices”

TBM41: Preparedness in the Spiritual Kitchen

TBM39: The Perverting of Gratitude

TBM38: Heroes, Derring-do, and Mothers

TBM37: Dreams – The Courage to Trust the Science of Sleep

TBM31: Miracles: Big Love in Small Places

TBM28: When You Are Forgiven, You Are Forgiven

TBM27: Prayers Your Angels Will Refuse to Answer

TBM26: A Practical Tip For Getting Along With Your Angels

TBM23: Beauty in the Home As a Spiritual Practice

TBM17: Learning to Understand Your Own Angels

TBM16: Angels Aren’t Wusses (Spirituality for Guys)

TBM15: The Necessity of Forgiveness on the Spiral Path

JR63: Jesus Redux: The Forward

TBM14: Parable of the Earring – A Journey on the Spiral Path

JR56: Forgiveness As a Present Reality

JR50: Fourth Step: Insist on Balance

JR38: The Peace Sequence

TBM12: Finding the Words of Your Own Promise

TBM11: Four Basic Practices To Get You Started on the Spiral Path

JR34: Chaining God to the Rock

JR32: The Buddha Question

JR19: The Beatitudes of Luke

JR15: Parable of the Candlesticks

JR13: Jesus Speaking on Prayer

TBM5: Keep It Simple, Keep It Sane

TBM2: The Spiritual Kitchen

CC20: Further Update on the Vatican’s "Sin Within"

CC4: The Blonde Mystic

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