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Sacred, Healing Heart

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A sin is a sin because it leaves a wound in the spirit of our victim. That extends not only to other people, but to God himself. In both Genesis and the history following entry into the Promised Land, Yahweh cries out against the agony of his association with the people of Israel.

The Law was intended to guide the Chosen People into a path of righteousness – a way of living that kept sin from entering into our relationships. The challenge, of course, was that Israel was surrounded by people that lacked that same discipline. The relationship with God was insufficient to protect them from the sins of others.

In the books after return from exile, a common exhortation among the prophets is that the Gentiles must be allowed into the covenant with God. This flew in the face of Hebrew tradition, which passed the heritage through mothers. But it was intended to entrain a process that would eventually manifest in the spread of righteousness across the face of the earth.

And then comes Jesus to bear the sins of the world.

In common theology, this is seen as an act of retribution. In Christ Alone expresses this with a beautiful gratitude:

Till on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

But this is to think with the heart of men, not with the heart of God. Jesus tells so many parables of evil-doing that is forgiven by the grace of God. In every case, those stories reveal that it is not retribution that God seeks, but reconciliation.

The truth is approached in the last two lines of the stanza, particularly when seen in the light of Jesus’s promise to those that suffer [Matt. 11:28-29]:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

When offered, this was almost certainly seen as a promise to the few that heard, but on the cross it became true for all willing to receive the healing grace of the father. Jesus opened his heart to all of the sin of humanity, each of us finding a place in the tissue of his compassion. The sun shone its light into its chambers, and brought healing there.

This surrender has its dark side: Jesus, bearer of a perfect, spotless heart, allowed sinners to take up residence in it. He embraced the world in his love, knowing that to love is to give power to others. While his will washed against the tide of sin, he knew that some would use that power to hurt others – turning his power against his own heart.  Thus his declaration of its humility: he knows that his heart cannot heal us without empowering us to create suffereing.

To complete the work, then, his heart will be broken: some among those he loves will have to be cast out into the darkness. As he says about the power of loving in the parable of the talents [Matt. 13:12]:

Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.

But for those that have, to “pick up your cross” is not to bear the burden of sin. It is something far more joyful and hopeful. It is to offer yourself as a tool for the healing of others. It is to allow the love that fills you  to pass through you to those that suffer with fear, filling them until they, too, fear no longer.

It may seem unfair, to be required to heal those that hurt us. Only keep in sight the outcome of his agony  carried for these millennia (again from In Christ Alone):

And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

Path of Least Resistance

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My friend Meng Chen, atheist and purveyor of Daoist philosophy, is the only person that I am aware of wrestling seriously with the writing out at everdeepening.org. After reading The Soul Comes First, he began working his way through the New Testament during his slack hours at work. He was pretty scandalized by it – all the blood and suffering. What elicited umbrage in him, however, was the obscurity of the parables. The Parable of the Unjust Servant [Luke 1:12] was particularly offensive. In this, an embezzler is called before his manager, and made aware that he will be fired the next day. To curry favor with prospective employers, the servant trades their indebtedness for a fraction of the amount owed. When apprised of this the next day, the manager praises the resourcefulness of the servant, although warning that the servant’s concern for things of this world will cost him eternal riches.

Now this seems to communicate a terrible precedent. But it is of a type with many of the parables. Jesus sets up a recognizable human situation (such as the decadent son), elaborates depraved behavior (the son squandering his inheritance), and then contradicts all of our expectations for human justice by an award of forgiveness (the father dressing the repentant son in his own robe). The brilliance of the method is to situate the hearer in dilemmas that they understand, dilemmas that they may confront every day. From there, he is led into the most despicable of choices – choices that are probably close to his own heart and mind, but that are easy to condemn. And then the paradox: condemnation is not delivered, but forgiveness and celebration. Obviously, the master and father are not people we would recognize. Rather, they are God, the God of Genesis that similarly forgave Cain.

The virtue of parables is that they resonate differently in the minds of the hearer depending upon his specific concerns. Jesus may have offered the Parable of the Unjust Servant to his disciples, and a meaningful message is to be found for them. But among those disciples would also have been the Temple spies, and in their ears this story would have had a different focus. For was not the priesthood God’s accounting firm? Did they not accept money for sin sacrifice in the temple? To them, Jesus was suggesting “Forgive the debts you have recorded. Doubly: cast aside the profits you gather in the settlement of sin. The Father will admire and reward your generosity.”

In this teaching, we hear the incredible mercy of Jesus reaching out even to those that he knows will destroy him. He recognizes their frailty in the face of the enormous burden they are required to carry, made more difficult in their age by the power of the state that allowed mere men to behave as though they were gods.

In terms recognized in the modern era, the nature of this danger was first made explicit to me when reading A General Theory of Love (Lewis, Amini and Landon). Written by three psychotherapists, the book begins with a survey of the nature of human psychological experience – our relationships, neurophysiology and neurochemistry. Then at the end of chapter three, the authors take the trolley off the tracks. They state (I paraphrase): “We will now describe the psychotherapeutic process. In therapy, the therapist enters into the experience of trauma with the patient, and as the moment is reached, suggests to them: ‘Not that way. Go this way instead.’ In this intimacy, the success of the treatment is entirely dependent upon the moral clarity and courage of the therapist. If either of them fails, the therapist becomes trapped in the patient’s trauma.”

Here at WordPress, I have encountered a number of therapists that decry the Diagnostic Standards Manual and its emphasis on pharmacology. They perceive that our society is failing its most sensitive members, those that empathize with suffering but lack the power to change the circumstances that cause it. Much of their behavior is an attempt to anaesthetize or redirect their suffering. But many therapists in training are not prepared to confront such psychic agony. They are trained to a mechanical model of mind, learning theory and practice in sterile lecture-hall settings, and so are unprepared to confront agony when they encounter it. Their response is to withdraw and write a prescription that suppresses the outward signs of trauma.

In effect, this is the same response taken by the temple priests: rather than dealing with the trauma of sin, they transferred the cost to other beings – innocent animals sacrificed in atonement. The goal was to keep the people pure. What Jesus came to point out was that this did not solve the problem of sin – it merely shifted it away temporarily, allowing it to gather to assault the sacred community again and again and again. The only way to solve the problem of sin was for the strong to shoulder the burden for the weak.

The Garden of Eden describes a community that obtained that strength through direct relation with God. When we chose to partake of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we lost that protection. Our religions and social sciences are institutions created in our search as a species for methods to organize resources sufficient to overcome the psychological trauma of the violent processes of Darwinian evolution. That strength was not inherent in us. It had to be created in us through our own effort.

Prior to the modern era, it was on the Rabbis and Priests and Gurus that responsibility was settled for delivering on all of God’s magnificent promises. We know them “Every tear will be wiped. Every fear will be banished.” How could we expect our religious leaders to possess such means, when if they did the era of paradise would be manifested in an instant? And so they broke – and continue to break – under the weight of their burden.

And so here I am to announce: that is not justice. It is no person’s place to stand in evidence of love in our hearts. No person can wash away the wounds of trauma, for they all seek refuge in God from their own trauma. Each person must find their healing in the open chambers of their own heart, with God.

The history of religious tolerance was marked by revolutions against the hypocrisy of religious authority. But that in itself is hypocrisy: no man stands between you and God, only your own fear that love is insufficient to deliver healing. Paradise enters the world when we stop shifting our burdens onto those we establish as idols, whether in temples or churches, and surrender ourselves to God’s ministry.

Jesus did not write a Gospel because no words can describe that feeling: the feeling of infinite compassion and mercy encountered in the heart that receives God. When it is felt, we cease to rail against our idols. Rather, we offer “Thank-you for your service. I am sorry that I placed my burdens on you. Let me give you rest and ease, as I have found rest and ease in Christ.”

And for those with ears to hear: This is how you will know him when he returns. Your hearts will shout with joy.

Magnificence

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She came to me this morning with a passionate, healing warmth. Our dreams tumbled through postures of intimacy, until it occurred to me that pleasure was nature’s trick on women, the bait used to tempt them into surrender to masculine wildness. It is time for that trick to be redeemed in trust, so as she rode on me I washed her with waves of healing energy, waves rising and falling as she rose and fell, until she was overcome and lay vibrating in my arms.

In that surrender she passed away from herself into an emptiness that forbade my entry. As I crept around its borders I discovered women, women arrayed in a shell, a shell annealed of the pride that resisted true sisterhood.

She returned to me enlarged, cocooning me in her soul as I imagined her in my arms. This certainty of security swept through me, and I found myself in contemplation of her.

The strong legs that carry her across the world, and the delicate toes that tenderly root in the biomes that attend her arrival. The hands and fingers that vibrate with awareness on all sides, gliding through water and air to signal caring and joy. The ovaries that offer new possibilities, and the womb in which they attain realization. The mouth that receives sustenance, the lungs and digestive system that process it, and the outward return of waste that enriches the soil and air for plants. The eyes, ears and nose that receive adoration, the voice that sings in praise. The hair that protects the vault of her mind by entangling contrary personalities. The skin that wards danger yet thrills to tenderness.

And myself, the humble tool of her self-creation, looking down the trail of time that stretched behind her, realizing that I had never been in control of this process. By all the common measures I have achieved and experienced nothing, but this was worth living for.

Flirting with Trust

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Since Friday I’ve been working on my relationship, sharing visualizations of inconceivably precious forms of intimacy. The organizing principles are healing and celebration, involving us in a powerful whirlpool of emotions, running the gamut from grief to dizzying passion. Underneath that runs a steady flow that guides us into deeper and broader connections. So we found ourselves kneeling on the floor, I catching her long hair from behind and stretching her will out into the world where it caught whales and trees and birds, and then her pushing me down on the bed and slowly dragging those long strands over my face so that understanding and love can bring order to life.

And then she stops and wonders what she is doing in the midst of this process, not conscious of the powers she possesses and so uncertain of her ability to manage the dangers she perceives. As I struggle to formulate an assurance, we spin apart. My last clear communication from her ended with her disappearance into a vortex of female faces, creating a cocoon in which she could incubate, but also from which others offered themselves as alternatives. I simply re-iterated my commitment to the self-discovery of my lady, and let her depart with the assurance that I would meet her on the other side to be certain that nothing had been lost.

In the pauses in this work, I’ve been re-reading Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets. Santayana, philosopher and Christian apologist, combines a deep knowledge of culture and beautiful literary style in the service of revealing the choices we face as we struggle to find meaning and purpose in life. Santayana offers the works of Goethe, Lucretius and Dante as a progression that illuminates the submission of our animal nature to moral discernment, unfortunately with the growing risk of detachment from the joys and perils of human experience. Due to this tension, Santayana finds no superior voice among the three, instead celebrating each as a trustworthy illuminator of the power found in choosing either to do (Goethe), to create (Lucretius) or to serve a higher purpose (Dante).

To do is exemplary because it protects us from nihilism, the conclusion that any single life is insignificant and useless. In exploring this path, Goethe’s anti-hero Faust learns to discard self-judgment for personal wrongs committed against others, and so becomes capable of ruling an entire nation, granting purpose to his people by immersing them in struggle. Upon his death at one hundred years, Faust vanquishes Mephistopheles, demonic grantor of mystical power, who predicted that Faust would eventually learn to surrender purpose and be content with any experience at all, even to lick the dust. Instead, having demonstrated that each individual can find purpose in creating struggle against the world, Faust’s soul is received by angels and carried up to heaven.

Against this idea that we are glorified by struggle, Lucretius celebrates the orderly structure of the world, filled with creative forces that reclaim resources liberated by death. The philosophy of materialism stretches even further, propelling scientific study that allows the rational mind creative opportunities that would never be revealed in nature, and so to engage in an orderly process of improving the human condition. Among the virtues of Lucretius’s program, Santayana heralds self-control, and the defeat of superstition – the latter often abused by religious illusionists to steal the power of an adherent’s natural urge to improve his lot. Chief among the defects is timidity that arises from an awareness of life’s fragility, timidity heightened by the view that we had best live as though this is the only life we have – timidity that would be scorned by Goethe.

Of course, most of history is the story of how those characterized by Goethe twist the power liberating by understanding to subdue ever larger populations. Dante, following Aristotle, celebrates adherence to moral codes that sustain social order. Even more, in an era of deep Christian faith, Dante heralded the possibility of human perfection, of a rising into another realm in which all struggle would cease, each individual recognizing the benefits of submission to the will of a God that loved them without reservation. Dante’s ambition is for every person to be freed from constraints, excepting only the constraint to submit to the dictates of being guided by God’s love for others. Notwithstanding Dante’s outraged prosecution of the authorities of his era, Santayana follows Lucretius in decrying the passivity consequent to subscription to any externally imposed morality.

After his comparative analysis of the three works, Santayana proposes that a fourth poet must be sought to resolve the contradictions between the three philosophies, a poet whose celebration of vitality yet proves that self-control and other-service lead us into our most powerful and satisfying experiences. Incongruously in the context of his analysis, my reaction was “That would have to be a woman.”

But as I sat and pondered my experiences since Friday, I couldn’t escape the feeling that there was a thread that tied all of this together. Santayana brings us the writing of three iconoclasts, men who felt a strong need to assert themselves against the society they inhabited, each with a dour view of the fairness of life. And in my relationship, we have this expansion into ever greater realms of experience that recoils against fear of personal insufficiency. In both cases, the problem is other-trust. Faust trusts only in himself; Lucretius trusts only in personal discernment; Dante trusts only in God; and my lady does not trust that others will support our relationship.

What does it take, to lay mistrust to rest? We have the evidence of Good Friday services, in which multitudes gather to celebrate the worthiness of a man that was willing to die to redeem others of their faults, followed by Easter in which the resurrection proves the overwhelming power committed by God to the realization of that redemption. How can we not be discouraged by this standard of loving, a standard that cannot possibly be sustained in relationships between lesser beings?

Enough: it was done. The powers that stood behind Jesus did so because he arose in confrontation with sin, and in surrendering to its power became capable of diagnosing it. The era to come will be the era of healing in which those that suffer obtain the power to send sin on its way.

Lucretius, in elaborating the dynamic between creativity and destruction, chose the mythical figure of Venus to represent the surging of life, and the figure of Mars as the force of destruction. In the introduction to his unfinished work, Lucretius pleads with Mars to surrender to the pleasures of Venus’s bower, protecting the poet from interruption during his great task. This pairing is not unique to Greek mythology: in the Hindu pantheon, Parvati is responsible for cooling Shiva’s passions after he enters his dance of destruction. In celebrating struggle Goethe obviously sides with Mars, while Dante casts theology in the person of his beloved Beatrice.

The idea that women are responsible for tempering the wildness of men is buried deep in our cultural heritage. In women, that belief manifests as a cautious predisposition to believe that men will turn their passions against their lovers. My prayer is that women cast aside their ancient burden and organize their fertile energies around men of healing and constructive intelligence. Rather than catering to Mars, they should amplify the character of Apollo. Cast aside the terrorist to invest your energies in the healer, and discover reciprocity for your trust.

Ever Expanding

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On Sunday afternoon from 4 to 6, I’ve been attending Jeff Nash’s Awakening Process workshops at the Love Dome down in Venice. I had been going to the Friday evening sessions that included dance expression in the second hour, but as I’m down in Santa Monica on Sunday nights for the LA Full-Contact Improv Jam, I decided to save myself the stress of a second trip.

The Sunday afternoon sessions are intimate, with typically three or four participants. We normally begin with a brief discussion of theory, focusing on a particular life issue raised by one of the attendees. The foundations of the process are simple: we’re here to learn to relate to one another. Pain is best thought of as a signal that guides healing energy. When we relax into the flow of that energy, our bodies do a far better job of healing themselves than any conscious process can emulate.

Releasing the stress of the week, we typically begin to collapse to the floor after a half an hour, lying on mats and pillows. Jeff comes by with essential oils, asking what I’m feeling. He doesn’t guide, simply asking for clarification, and when the feeling is clearly defined, whether there is a memory attached to the feeling. When I express stress, Jeff reminds me to focus on my exhale, which allows me to release.

The evolution of the experience has been deeply beneficial. It began with some tension, as Jeff was raised 7th Day Adventist, and his assessment of Christianity reflected the dogmatism of that sect. Once we got that out of the way, he is really in tune with what I have going on inside of me, concluding his visits with the observation that I should be looking for a trigger for my emotions and sensations from a time “early in this life,” followed after a brief pause with, “or in a past life.”

The efficacy of his guidance became palpable two weeks ago. I have been struggling with tightness in my left obliques, and when I focused more deeply on the problem, traced it to something that seemed to be attached to the inside of my rib cage on the left side. Advised to let healing flow into the area, a distinct warmth came, and the tension dissolved.

Later in that same session, I became aware that my fingers were curled into my palms. I’ve had  this pointed out to me before, and as I focused on letting them open and extend, recognized that it came with a social predisposition to guard myself from casual intimacy. As I stood at staff meeting the next morning with my fingers spread and feeling myself rooted into the floor, one of my antagonists stared at me, sitting up to confront my presence before slumping in defeat.

That sense of rootedness carried over to my yoga practice. I realized that I was still bearing most of my weight on the right foot, and began methodically to balance weight identically on each foot. This has relieved me of the burden of fighting subtle weight imbalance, allowing me to relax into postures that once I strained to maintain.

Last Sunday this focus on balance carried on down to the mat. I opened my palms and forced the left side of my glutes to bear equal weight. I felt my arms lengthen, and my knuckles anchor deeply into the wood floor. I was filled with a great openness, and then a sudden urge to curl up into a ball. After relating to Jeff that “I need to fight that”, he offered that “You could let yourself curl up.” Instead, I relaxed more deeply, and felt myself expanding. For I moment I panicked, admitting that “There’s danger there,” but also a welcoming presence sending the thought “You’re not alone.” Jeff asked what I was feeling, and I could only offer “I’m in the world now.” Not quite satisfied, he asked “And what does that feel like?” Lacking meaningful words, I offered “Like a great circle closing.”

Later that night, I slid up next to him. Rubbing his back tenderly, I leaned into his shoulder and whispered, “I remember you.”

He had praised my virtue when others would not.

Healing Time

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I’ve been working my way into the LA Full Contact Improv community since last November. The experience is markedly different from LA Ecstatic Dance, which is guided by facilitators and DJs. The Improv Jam is introduced by Jeffrey, the organizer, and occasionally accompanied by the astral strains of the resident guitarist, but the goal and tenor of the experience is open-ended. People glide, skip, spin and roll around the dance floor until they feel a connection. Between friends, that may advance immediately into an embrace, unfolding through a lift or tumble with bodies entwined. For those yet to be awarded that intimacy, there’s a slow inward spiraling that concludes with a gentle touch. For me, that induces a sudden stillness while muscles feel their poise, broken by a release into a caress or the playful exploration of flexibility and strength.

With another recent newcomer, I explained that the challenge I often face in managing this engagement is getting people to let it feel good. Rolling over one another can be like a mutual full-body massage. Having gotten into that space with another dancer, I stilled suddenly as I felt a tension release from deep within him, and I muttered into his ear, “There can be healing here.”

So when Jeffrey announced at last week’s closing circle that he would be offering a facilitated healing experience every Friday night at 8:30 and prior to the Jam on Sundays at 4, I was prepped to jump right in.

It turned out to be really rewarding.

For the last fifteen years, I’ve been interpreting my spiritual experience through a model of physics that leads me to the conclusion that we have three kinds of experience available to us:

  • an experience of “life” that binds spirit to body, allowing us to wrestle with selfishness,
  • existence in pure spirit that frees us from the constraints of space and time, but limits our capacity for growth, and
  • release into a realm of unconditional love that seeks only to facilitate and safe-guard our relation.

So imagine my reaction when Jeffrey explained last night that we live in a material reality in which we struggle with our “me”-ness, navigate slowly into an astral realm of pure knowledge, and finally surrender the pursuit of goals to experience godhead.

This wisdom, offered in what seemed to be a Vedantic framework, came with a set of practices. They are unusually constrained: rather than engaging the deeply rooted powers of the Chakras, we began by opening the meridian gateways at our fingers and toes. Jeff then asked the group to offer whatever insights arose. We listened in witness as we “time traveled” with the speaker, offering our shared energy as support. Jeff asked whether the speaker could see that the emotion of the experience was itself the gateway to healing.

A young man last night, struggling with his conditioning, led us into an analysis of self-actualization and karma. Jeff shared his past frustration in trying to create outcomes through his practice (which allowed us to time travel with him – that was nice!), before realizing that he was forcing his experience to conform to his ideas, rather than the other way around. Subtle wisdom, and it didn’t sink in immediately, so I offered:

The reason that we suffer with each other in this life is because we are missing parts. Trapped here in our bodies, we can’t reach the source, so we try to steal them from each other. When we surrender our self-concern and focus on healing another, we are able to serve as a conduit for missing parts. True power and freedom arrives as we become accepted as a trustworthy provider of parts.

My intimates all complain that my writing is too abstract. I complain that they won’t open their hearts to me. I think that I’ve finally found a method for bridging the gap.

And even better, I left with ears full of the testimony of others that have found comfort and strength there. Come one, come all!

Yoga Limits

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The constraints of my professional life have driven me to yoga twice. Both times, I was suffering from back pain that constrained my ability to sustain my focus while sitting at my desk. I recognized that the problem was tight hamstrings and a weak core, but I channeled my need for exercise into jogging, which didn’t address either condition.

The first practice was held in the meeting room of a spirituality bookstore. The instructor was an Indian lady, and I was the only man that showed up consistently. As I got stronger in the practice, I eventually found myself with thirteen women hitched to my wagon. At the time, I didn’t have the energy to manage the load, so I quit.

I was able to stay away for a few years, and then I discovered the Bikram yoga studio in Agoura Hills. I have to admit that it’s been a struggle for the owners as much as it has been for me. I am a tall string bean with a large chest.

The relative narrowness of my frame results in transmission of stress into the stabilizing muscles in the hips and lower back that are supported by bones that provide limited leverage. This means that muscle balance is absolutely essential not only to achieve postures, but to avoid overuse injuries. As I strive for that balance, I’ve been developing muscle groups that had always taken a free ride in the past, which means that I become exhausted doing postures that are often placed in the “warm up” or “recovery” category.

After four years I’m finally able reliably to stay in the 105 degree room for the full ninety minutes. While the owners were often frustrated by my bailing out in the middle of class, some of the instructors are impressed by my persistence. Several have observed that the practice is not designed for my body type.

The attraction to me is a feature that many find intolerable – the dreary repetition of the practice. The Bikram formula is a series of twenty-six postures that the instructors describe with a rote dialog. Fortunately, the more difficult postures are progressive. This means that we aren’t expected to achieve full expression, and so I have the latitude to focus on trying to figure out how to get my muscles to work together. It’s a process that has caused my to look in the mirror on occasion and burst out in laughter in the middle of class.

This opportunity to focus on my physical self has been critical to my peace of mind over the last four years. While not typical, I have dreams in which people show up seeking help to keep societies and ecosystems glued together. There’s not much I can do except to offer them the sanctuary of my heart as a place of restoration. It’s frustrating and grievous to me.

So I should have intervened early today when the instructor continued reading his story during the srivasanas that punctuate the exercises of the floor series. Although I realized that it was interfering with my ability to focus on aerobic recovery, I was fascinated by the enthusiasm that filled the room, . The diversion provided some relief from the normal thoughts – people struggling with the urge to escape the room.

The story contrasted the experience of two caterpillars. The humble yellow caterpillar (which I’ll call ‘she’) encounters a grey caterpillar spinning a cocoon. While uncertain about the possibility of becoming a butterfly, the yellow caterpillar finally chooses to try, and discovers comfort in the realization that spinning a cocoon is a natural skill.

The second, striped caterpillar (which I’ll call ‘he’) has chosen to climb a pillar of caterpillars, symbolizing the struggle for social success. As he nears the top, stepping on those below, he is finally unable to penetrate the clinging mass, and becomes trapped. He looks out and sees a field littered with caterpillar pillars, and realizes that his struggle is meaningless – with so many pillars, attaining the pinnacle of one signifies nothing.

As he weighs his options, the yellow butterfly arrives to rescue him. She attempts to pull him out of the pillar, but he draws back, and sees this terrible sorrow in her eyes.

It was at that point that I walked out, the class laughing at my explanation. I laid down on the couch in the lobby, crying “Oh, God!”

I live this every day, and it’s not that simple. They don’t just refuse assistance.

They pull off your wings and drive nails through your hands and feet.

One of the students told me, as I was passing him after class on the way out the door, that “I had missed a good story.” Really? I don’t come to yoga for a spiritual fill-up, or for entertainment. That’s supposed to happen at church or the movies. I come to focus on keeping my body strong enough to bear the burdens that I carry. If I can’t focus on that, then I’m going to have to quit again.

God and Human

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One of the more frustrating problems faith is trying to make sense of pronouncements that characterize realities that we cannot understand. In Christianity, a great deal of dialog, derision and good-old-fashioned blood-letting revolves around the concept that Jesus was at once both God and man. It is related to the problem of the Holy Trinity that was the most controversial issue in the Council of Nicea, and continues to divide the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

To critical onlookers this probably appears to be ludicrous ado about nothing, merely an attempt to layer a veneer of respectability over a huckster’s mumbo-jumbo. But to those that take the program of Christianity seriously, the mystery is a real problem. Jesus clearly expected us to be more. That is hinted by his repeated pronouncement “Your faith has healed you.” It becomes more explicit when he tells the disciples “there is nothing I do that you cannot do yourselves” leading him to observe peevishly, when waken on a stormy sea, “Oh ye of little faith!” And of course, ultimately he avers to his students “Things even greater than these shall you do.”

Clearly, Jesus’s expectation was that he was only an existence proof, not a singular phenomenon.

So how do we become like him? What is this faith? What power does it allow to enter into us? And as Jesus demonstrated, how do we establish a permanent and continuous living with and through that power?

The key, I believe, is clear through Jesus’s teachings. He began with parables that characterize the unconditional and infinitely forgiving love of the Father. At the midpoint, he simplifies the Law as “Love your God, and love your neighbor as though he was yourself.” And finally, in the great struggle in Gethsemane, he conquers the fears of the flesh and surrenders himself fully to his love of the world. And in his resurrection, his glory testifies to the authority earned in his remaking of heaven and earth through the mechanism of his sacrifice.

So he is God and Human. But why God? Why the best, most powerful God? What is it about love that is so powerful?

To understand this, we have to turn to the realm of the Almighty, where the ethereal host evolves under different laws of physics. What we know is that angels do not have flesh. They are souls living in pure relation. What is common between their realm and ours is that some of those relationship are beneficial, and some harmful.

Two forms of relation are particularly potent. First is the relation of Death, which creates insuperable barriers between the angels, preventing them from entering in relation. Although there is a certain restfulness in death, by its very nature its grasp is difficult to escape. The second is Unconditional Love, which seeks restlessly to maximize the benefits of relation. It is a force that helps angels escape circumstances that suppress their expression, liberating them into mutually beneficial engagements that generate new and unexpected possibilities. As we are told, liberated spirits facilitate the spread of love by “singing” its praises.

In the Book of Revelation, John is brought into Heaven. While Heaven is not the Realm of the Almighty, but reflects its dynamic. Around a throne occupied by Unconditional Love, twenty-four principal angels are gathered wearing crowns. When the living creatures sing the praises of love, the angels are compelled to lay aside their crowns and bow in praise to the one on the throne.

Why is this so? If so powerful, why should love sit on a throne, isolated from us, guarded in fact by fearsome predators? That is not its desire, as revealed in the final Chapters, where no light and no temple is found in the city of God because love has been woven into its very fabric.

The problem is that when offered power, we think first of ourselves. Trapped here in this physical existence, full of pain and struggle, we use our strength to compel others to serve us. We violate the compact of unconditional love. We corrupt it with “sin.” To become as Jesus, we must surrender our self-concern. We must think only of others, and trust that they will concern themselves with us.

This was the compact that Adam and Eve sundered in the Garden of Eden. Given the task of tending God’s kingdom on earth, they thought of themselves. God tried for many generations to overcome that sin, but the gap was too great between his perfection and our fallen state. Jesus came down to experience that fallen state, to struggle with its frailty, to have his compassion sharpened on the point of our daily peril. It was only in the intimacy of the disease that healing could be given.

So this is how Jesus was both God and Human: he was a one-way street. Through him, only love came. Impervious to self-concern, no sin went back the other way. And through the humanity of his courage, love gave those he encountered the strength to turn aside from fear and accept the healing power of love.

And finally, in his encounter with death on the cross, love suffused that presence and turned it into the agent of peace. Death is no longer a final separation, but an agent that brings surcease when fear pushes us into violence. Having submitted death, the Prince of Peace is capable of cocooning us in love until we recall our better selves.

So this is the answer: in submitting to the teachings of Christ, we become gods in loving one another, and thus receive from each other the power to bring good into the world, and thus experience good to the limit of our capacity.

Welcoming the Light of Love

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Stephen Harrod Buhner closes The Lost Language of Plants just as I would have hoped. After recounting a healing session with a young lady, the book closes with four autobiographic sketches, each by a herbologist recounting immersion in biophilia. Left behind are the recriminations and the tone of moral superiority that marred the preceding chapters. Each of the writers focuses on the opportunity before us now – an opportunity to call into being relationships built around affirmations of love shared with the world around us.

As the book progressed, lunging between the yin and yang of natural and industrial chemistry, I found myself remembering my experiences of being stalked by predators. One was at a Webelos overnighter, of all things, at Camp Whitsett in the Southern Sierras. A Native American elder inducted a number of the senior scouts in a fire ceremony. As the ceremony progressed, I had a strong sense of the bear in the man, and felt the fire of predation building in the camp as the boys settled in to sleep. Rather than hiding from it, I let it enter into my heart, sent my will into the forest to demonstrate that no bears were present, and then breathed peace into the space I had cleared. The fear resided, and the camp settled into slumber. Several years later, I was driving home from work on Friday night, knowing that my youngest son had been sent to the Sierras on a camping trip, and felt the bear again in his presence. I sent the warning “Wake up, Gregory! Get Mr. Povah!” When he returned that Sunday, I learned that on Saturday morning, he had woken early, and heard a noise as Mr. Povah’s son Braden was dragged away from the camp by a black bear. The onrush of shouting campers scared the bear off, and Braden survived with only a bruised ankle.

Given his immersion in the natural world, I doubt that Buhner has not had similar experiences. But perhaps not – he has been chosen by the world of chlorophyll, the deep, patient source of renewal. That touches the animal realm through the herbivores, an intimate co-creative process that Buhner documents in loving detail. But the animal kingdom has another dimension as well: in Love Works, I enumerate the rites of blood – sex, maternity, the hunt and sacrifice. Each of these has its unique pathologies, and the fragility of animal existence means that those pressures are often driven into fear and rage.

In Dune, the great science-fiction author Frank Herbert advances the Bene Gesserit Litany against Fear:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

It was this discipline that I exercised in Camp Whitsett. It is the discipline of the rational mind, a discipline that safeguards our ability to perceive clearly and so to exercise our intelligence when facing circumstances that our natural talents could never hope to overcome. It is to perceive the forces in play with the aim of negotiating a win-win outcome when the predator’s zero-sum mentality holds sway.

As I finished the life sketches that close The Lost Language of Plants, I was filled with the desire to find these people and join forces with them. A great barrier arose, followed by a vision and memory. Buhner shares the plant kingdom’s experience of light, that great source of love that originates from the sun and desires to merge with us through them. But when discussing with my sister the ecological disasters that will confront our children, I told her,

This is how we heal the world: by teaching the plants not simply to receive passively the light, but to reach up to the sun and guide its power to rebuild the devastated forests and savannahs.

This may seem like a little thing, but to accomplish it we have to convince them to surrender the conventions of the chemistry that Buhner celebrates so tenderly. It is to recognize that it is not the plant that is important, but the spiritual transformation that gives courage to the fearful through its physical manifestations.

Buhner touches on this metaphorically in describing his healing work. He testifies that he meets people that are missing parts, and is guided by visions of plants that can fill those voids. It is in establishing those relationships that healing arrives, through an expansion of spirit that occurs when our hollowness is filled.

I spent the rest of the day struggling with the grief that filled me then.

It has two parts. The first is that the plant is only an intermediary – it is a reservoir in which love gathers, but it is not the source itself. It was the source that disciplined me, forcing me stand apart until people realize that all intermediaries are imperfect. Secondly: in that place apart we are beset by those that would ravage the gardens that Buhner and his peers create. We plant the seeds of knowledge, and watch as they are corrupted by the predators. We heal the wounded, and set them again into the world, hoping that each time the light of love reaches more deeply into them.

It is hard to be told that our path has led us into evil. I wish that Buhner could see that scientific reductionism is a means of removing the primitive triggers of predation from the world. Yes, it has gone too far, but it has also created the field in which he and his friends plant their garden.

Lest we wish to repeat the experience of Eden, we must leave recrimination behind. I take solace that in his closing Buhner celebrates the light of love that will ultimately unite us all.

Beyond Red and White

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Today I finished Sera Beak’s Red Hot and Holy. Up to the last 30 pages, this was the most constructive way that I could deal with it:

I could elucidate the undercurrents of misandry in Sera Beak’s Redvolutionary Theology, but what is essential of my critique of her book is not specific to her dialectic, but instead universal.

Sera has been seduced by spiritual power and comforting logic, but that seduction adheres to a process that has led many people – both men and women – into a similar trap. The trap is the rationalization of personal powerlessness through construction of a historical narrative that liberates the primitive mechanisms of survival. While Sera’s historiography is not overtly incendiary, in contrast to that of a man like Hitler, it carries the same traps: it focuses us on the past rather than liberating us into the realization of a future rooted in trust.

The fundamental cause of Sera’s error (shared by so many others) is to believe that the material circumstances of our existence, currently dominated by the manifestations of human will, are the cause of our suffering. It matters not whether one is Richard Dawkins looking back 7000 years to an era of superstition or Sera Beak looking back 9 million years to the origins of patriarchal dominance. Both critics of the “status quo” fail to recognize that the source of our trouble goes back much further than that, and so they fall into the same trap that many Christian theologians do: laying blame on humanity (or half of humanity) for originating sin.

The wisdom I have to offer is this: it matters not why we are in pain. It matters only whether we can find healing. My experience is that true healing will arise only from a conciliation that melts all dichotomies: man and woman, matter and spirit, science and religion, artifice and nature, animate and inanimate. Why? Because the reason we suffer pain, as Sera recounts, is that we are incomplete. The only way to fill the gaps that distort our personality is to welcome what we are not.

This is what loving is all about. It’s not about healing us individually, because that hope is misplaced. True love, offered unconditionally, heals divisions and creates harmony.

Sera, you need to tell Kali to stop being such a narcissist. It is not about her. It’s about everything.

So then I get to Chapter 20, and Sera turns around and pronounces everything that I’ve written to this point. Her historiography is indeed a projection of a spiritual infection in the Divine Feminine. She recounts accepting and facilitating the destructive suppression of feminine spirituality through a long sequence of lives, much as Saul did to Christians before encountering Christ on the road to Damascus.

The only insights I have to offer at this time, Sera, is this: you are capable of incarnating the Rouge Lady in this place because she sees in this place, at this specific time, the potential to heal her infection through you. Spirit cannot do work on itself, it needs matter to disentangle the twisted threads of personality. It is as Jesus said [NIV Matt. 16:19]:

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

I hope that you realize that it is not in spite of men that this work is possible. The Divine Masculine is also making his presence felt, and doing the best that he can to clean his house. It would be beneficial to compare notes. Solidifying the truth of Their manifestation may be possible only through the mutuality of a response to this, the last of the exhortations Jesus delivered with tender compassion to the rulers of his age, as he looked through the centuries of pain their weakness would cause them:

You! Say I am!