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archetypes
July 2009 
Spiritual Passion: The Magic of the Real
Posted on Aug 5th, 2008
by 
Julian
Julian
SPIRITUAL PASSION: THE MAGIC OF THE REAL
manjusri08
THE PREDICAMENT
This is not what I intended.
i am passionate about so much - about the body and the heart, the psyche and the mind, about reality and its genuine, discoverable magic. About initiation, energy, consciousness, the hard-won truths of practice, inquiry, healing and growth. Creativity, intuition and yes, the beautiful gift of reason.
Yet I have become a lone mouthpiece for reason, when reason is for me but the springboard into depth, or perhaps one (essential and often missing) side of an equation that to be balanced must perhaps integrate reason, intuition, emotion, and sensate experience.
But this is a written medium, and reason is oddly offensive to the popular spiritual temperament. ( Sword-of-discernment-wielding Buddhist archetype Manjusri, pictured above, notwithstanding...).
I have become the voice of - what i had imagined would be to many - the obvious. Alas, the obvious is anathema in a subculture that wants more than anything else to "believe." To believe in unreasonable things and call that belief a hallmark of "being spiritual," or "open-minded." A subculture in which the biggest taboo appears to be common sense, precisely because common sense is seen as closing the door on this "being spiritual" - when it rather demands that being spiritual get real - and perhaps that reality itself be penetrated more deeply to reveal it's spiritual core, even with its obvious limitations and imperfections - even though we all die at the end.
I remain unwilling to back down on what for me are the basic premises of a conversation about reality-based spirituality, a practice-based commitment to substance and depth, discernment and genuine compassion that stands in contrast to superstition, child-like defensiveness against death and suffering and the search for magic and mystery in some imaginary other world. This has to my surprised frustration, made those basic premises the centerpiece of a debate I find a little embarrassing.
Said basic premises are merely a kind of reason-sieve - a filtering mechanism that clarifies the difference between superstition and spiritual depth, narcissistic magical thinking and ego-surrendered expansion. Or they are just the designs on the curtain that hangs in front of the doorway into wonder. Real wonder. Grown-up awe.
A LEFT TURN (sort of)
So here goes:
threshold3
I am passionate about embodied experience: a direct awakening into energy at it's most primal, physiological and sophisticated psychological level. Through daily work in both my personal practice and professional role via yoga, touch, meditation, free-from dance, work with multiple breathing techniques, exploration of the discovered meaning inherent in both "stuck energy" and the ecstasy of coming unstuck and activating the body in ways that evoke Rumi, Whitman and Blake at their most ardent:
"Energy is eternal delight" - Blake.
"I sing the body electric,"
"I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
seeing, hearing and feeling are miracles
and every part and tag of me
is a miracle too.
Divine am I inside and out and I make holy whatever
I touch or am touched from,
the scent of these armpits is aroma fner than prayer,
this head more than churches or bibles or creeds,
if I worship anny particular thing
it shall be the sum of the spread of my body.." - Whtiman.
"The body is a screen that hides, but also reveals the light blazing inside your presence."
"Not Christian or Buddhist, Hindu or Zen...... first, last, outer and inner, I am just this breath-breathing human being." - Rumi
(Did I mention my love of poetry - the language of the soul?!)
radiance
ECSTATIC DANCE
Sunday morning, wood floors, high, high ceilings, world music, people of all ages, colors, shapes and sizes in comfortable clothing, respectful, playful, sexy, sacred. Dancing in free-form interplay, alive to the spontaneous Brownian motion as bodies weave around one-another, as the space between us effortlessly absorbs our moving shapes, our fluid gestures of curiosity and sensuality and generous embrace, our embodiment of shadow hostility, competitiveness, fear and insecurity, our shared opening into group-mind tribal ecstasy in which the dance is doing you and there is no separation and self-consciousness disappears in the radiant recognition of our shared humanity, our vulnerability our fierce magnificent mortality.
Fleeting, gorgeous, fragile, adamantine.
The music fades and we drip in the silence of ceiling fans and barefeet on floorboards, some standing still, some still moving to the internal rhythm, some in sweet embrace. Spontaneously, voices rise - half-harmonizing, wordless, dissonant, beautiful...
"We have fallen into the place where everything is music.." - Rumi
YOGA
Sweating profusely in the shared choreography of flow yoga, bending and twisting and balancing and breathing and reaching and moment-by-moment transforming, literally transforming, tissue and energy and consciousness as we ride the wave of inhale, exhale, endorphins, neurotransmitters, brain-states, mind-body revelations - ah! I hold my grief in that place in my neck, oh! my jaw is biting back the rage i feel, wow! when i let the self-criticism go energy swirls down my legs and my chest lifts another 1/2 inch...
And then everyone settling into the stillness after all of that movement, the rest after all of that hard work, the sweet nectar of cultivated (sacred, mysterious, quantifiable in bliss-ohms..) chemistry in brain and body as we invite meditative, aware relaxation..
And still we are part of the privileged few with the time and resources to engage in such activities, and still we might miss the here-and-now living tradition of initiatory possibilities if we get too caught up in the coolness of sanskrit, special teachers and traditions, social climbing and spiritual posturing.
BODYWORK
Both giving and receiving the true magic of intentional touch, the sensate dialog with muscle and bone (sacred architecture!) with nerve and fascia (electric webbing of life!), the intuitive dialog with layered meaning in the gristle and grit, the blood and guts, how the story of the life is written in the body and can be accessed, not through slavish reliance on some cookie-cutter correspondences, some paint-by-numbers reductionism, but through the surrendered allowing of an emergent process. A process that the ego is not controlling and that sounds it's truth like a great resonant, radiant, pulsing gong at the center of Being itself.
The moment of unbridled catharsis, the moment of quiet revelatory release, the wide-grinning unmistakeable rapture, grace and ecstasy of the kundalini waveform, the timeless expanse of hypnagogic rest as electric nerves pulsate, luminous blood circulates, marvelous bones settle into their new places, and the mind is enveloped in dream-fueling music.
massage
And still a herniated disc might necessitate surgery.
LOVE-MAKING
In the throes of passionate sexual embrace, the moment of eye contact, the melting of boundaries, the delicate animal grace of carnal give-and-take, the velvet heat, the explosive, expanding waves of pleasure that say '"this is what you are, this is what you were made for, this is the most at home, alive and connected to another human being you have ever felt and it is fleeting yet foundational - celebrate it, let it blow you open into tears and laughter and unadulterated animal passion, run through with spiritual awe and tender compassionate gratitude. You are all men, you are all women, you are all life yearning and grunting and sighing and swooning and fucking the Kosmos itself into existence."
tantra sex
Knowing now what before was only imagined, discovering the new country of intimacy, non-verbal communication, the essential treasures revealed through the doorway of THIS pairing - the unique details of a universal activity.
And none of this makes death less real.
BREATHWORK
On the Holotropic Breathing mat: waves of powerful unwinding, the body regressing into infantile experience, archetypal imagery: death, birth, murder, innocence, love, powerful waves of an emotional intensity otherwise barely imagined. Longing, grief, ecstasy, timeless truths arrived at in real-time revelation. The Divine Mother pushing me smile-grimacing from her cavernous conch-shell womb, Jesus weeping, howling, powerless on the relentless cross of space-time, the Buddha's silence enveloping and transfixing me, the Phoenix of my almost-mortally wounded soul rising into the sky as the Dark Night draws to a close and the Morning Star announces a New Day.
matrix archetype
And none of this implies anything supernatural.
PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL INQUIRY
I am passionate about psychological depth: the moment in psychotherapy when layers of meaning reveal themselves, when intuitive connections and emotional associations bring forth core issues and their powerful meaning - right before the dam bursts and the heart breaks open into torrential grief or shouts it's anguished outrage. The moment in vipassana meditation when one crosses the threshold of profound internal opening - a world abuzz with sensation, color, feeling, holographic memories and archetypal meanings. The sense of bittersweet beauty, tragedy, grace and finally - acceptance.
And none of this abdicates critical thinking.
MYTHOLOGY
I am passionate about world mythology and what it reveals about the relationships between, self, society, geography and the perennial existential struggles of the human psyche. That humans both personally and collectively can dream-up elaborate, beautiful, multi-layered stories, creatures, cycles and dynamics of symbolic meaning that describe the universal stages of an internal journey is absolutely mind-blowing! Much more mind-blowing than the superficial need to concretize any of the details of these metaphorical masterpieces into literal other worlds and entities - and then evoke "faith" as a tool to facilitate "belief" in the fantasy being "real" in way that not only robs it of it's meaning but also of it's very raison de etre..
MEDITATION
I am passionate about contemplative experience: The moment of mystic revelation a la the Buddha's heart sutra, Najarjuna's verses from the center, Maharshi's witnessing self-inquiry - in which subject and object distinctions dissolve, spacious clarity arises and the pulsating, luminous present reveals itself as the only place I have ever been - utterly familiar, patently unknowable, entirely obvious, mind-blowingly mysterious. Self-evident, esoteric, unimportant, essential. The mythic "mask of god" falls away or indeed becomes "transparent to transcendence" and what happens next cannot even be spoken...
meditation050707
"Enough. These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath , this sitting here, this opening to life we have refused again and again, until now. Until now..." - David Whyte
And still there is madness, delusion, the trickery of politics, state-legislated torture, an unjust war, boy soldiers undergoing amputation, rape, social inequality, religious terrorism, spiritual charlatanism, and still the world goes on and I live nowhere else..
INTEGRATIVE SPIRITUALITY
I am passionate about the evolutionary impulse and how it expresses itself in personal, collective, exterior and interior development - about the urge toward freedom and love and truth, beauty and goodness and integration. That beautiful and good truths that matter are discoverable via multiple methodologies - and that in the words of Mohandas Ghandi "There is no God but truth..."
ghandi-blue
I am passionate about spirituality. Even though there has never been a miracle, a virgin birth, a messiah, a personal god who grants prayers to the lucky few, or a universal harness-able intentional force that helps you beat the other suckers out of parking spaces. Even though quantum physics does not imply anything along the lines of thought-created reality and brilliant postmodern insights do not mean that Hummer SUV's will not make roadkill of tribesman, scientist and mystic alike - regardless of their worldview, value system, metaphysics, co-enacted worldspace, or Kosmic address! Even though Integral Theory does not mean that patent pseudoscience quackery should be included in a genuinely holistic medicine - for their "partial truths," or that goofy paranoid fantasies about ancient Mayan prophecy and contemporary conspiracy theories should somehow not be debunked.
Because reason, discernment and critical thinking are the noble and valuable indispensable allies of intuition, creativity, ecstatic embodiment, emotional open-ness and spiritual practice.
Here's to integration.
In Love,
~Julian
Access: PublicTagged with: julian walker, ken wilber, integral, religion, new age, psychology, jung, archetypes, grof, yoga
This is beautiful…
Amen, bro.
thanks you two - hope you saw it after i added all the images - i am trying to evoke something here…
Passionate and beautifully written, brother J. Glad you felt inspired to break out of a particular box of identification in which you were perhaps feeling pinned…
Because reason, discernment and critical thinking are the noble and valuable indispensable allies of intuition, creativity, ecstatic embodiment, emotional open-ness and spiritual practice.
Here's to integration.
Indeed. Well said.
Best wishes,
Balder
thanks bruce -
yea, missing the forest for the trees… until i appear to be a worshipper of only the oak - when “meanwhile, outside my window all day a maple has stepped from
her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping
the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip
of light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on
the floor, or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.”
- Jane Hirschfield
she starts by saying:
” Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and
starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.”
What a beautiful song, Julian.
Unweave that rainbow…riding its waves of beauty, simplicity and truth.
J…your radiance is pure brilliance…and i am in awe and in harmony with what you are so passionate about…awesome breaking out…lol
thanks tiger - i hear both whitman and dawkins in your comment!
thanks star!
I won't have time to read it all the way through until later, but I just wanted to say that I loved the images you picked. Where did you find those from?
dude. magnificent… poetic justice. keep turning it up.
it's good to see the flash of the sword of truth now and again…
you're not alone.
marmalade - just google searching and copying images i liked… :O)
thank reason for you adam!
“i hear both whitman and dawkins in your comment!”
You'd be hearing them in daily life too out here in Colorado! On Gaia, at least, I've posted Dawkins and Sagan excerpts on my profile, tossing in a sprinkle of art and poetry about.
Seriously, I think what you're singing here (well, it is a song of truth) is something I hope gathers momentum and increases in volume. Adam's correct: you're not alone :)
GOOD TO KNOW!
i love your passion, julian, and you make valid points about so many of the soft spots in contemporary new age spirituality.
that being said, as much as you value empirical evidence and hard science and dense, material facts, it seems you leave no room for unseen forces, which DO exist, to co-create our reality. and, take this for what it's worth, the fact that this topic has such a powerful charge for you suggests to me that might be a deeper issue at play. i could be projecting, but it came to me, so i thought i'd put it out there.
magic and critical thinking can and do co-exist. to dismiss either is reductive and simplistic. when reason becomes dogmatic, life tends to lose its sparkle. and, yes there is delight to be unearthed in dance and sex and asana and radiohead's “in rainbows”, but there actually are experiences to be had beyond the realm of the physical, the empirical, the logical and the reasonable.
my herniated disc might not actually need surgery. it might. but, it might not.
in my own personal experience, in my own personal body, i have eluded death and illness and injuries that, according to science and lab results and doctors, would surely destroy me; and i've done so with meditation and visualization and prayer and psychological/emotional inquiry and even stranger samplings of oogie-boogie: shamanic journeying, indigenous rituals, etc. - all techniques that you very well may deem “narcissistic” magical delusion. in fact, i have yet to experience a single physical challenge that hasn't had a deep and profound transformative lesson buried inside it. were i to leap to western medicine's science to “fix” the problems when they arose, i don't know that i would have ever been able to excavate those lessons, which have all served me and my continuing evolution fantastically well.
as well, just because one taps into higher realms and magical experience, does that necessarily mean that their experience, or their belief in their experience is narcissistic? we are all capable of punching through the veil and experiencing mystery. why, because one does, would we judge them as narcissistic?
all this being said, i love that you write your way through your beliefs and your ideas and that you share them so openly, and i love the grace with which you do it. really. a lot.
xoxo d
it's all in the integration dani.
do you understand the difference between regressive narcissism/magical thinking and authentic, mature, practice-based ego-transcendence i am pointing to here?
i doi hope the above passionate and poetic piece conveyed the value i ascribe to not only science and reason, but also serious spiritual practice, embodied experience, energy, mind-body meaning and the depths of the psyche.
peruse the rest of my archives here if you want more detail on what i am actually saying.
thanks for reading and responding!
oh actually not just all in the integration, but also all in the interpretation.
yes i hear you and i agree - many powerful psycho-spiritual insights and breakthroughs often accompany physical challenges and the limited western medical paradigm is woefully lacking in certain very important areas - clearly 90% of tthe above post and the last almost 20 years oif my life are testimony to my own conviction of this perspective.
but so too the new age paradigm goes very far out of balance in the other direction as a reactive, rebelllious and omnipotent response. integrating solid empirical science with powerul experiential process and well-reasoned philosophical thought is another way of describing the passion i am expressing above!
i think all manner of extraordinary experiences are valid and get that you are very well-versed in them yourself - namaste, fellow brave traveller! i also have had too many to count and have facilitated many other people in having them too, one-on-one and in groups….. mind, body, energy, consciousness, ritual space, breath, altered states, etc are quite profound and mysterious. i have played in this field as both my personal adventure and work with others now my entire adult life…
on the other side of the big experience and the underlying belief system, the serious question (for those interested ) then arises though as to the depth of interpretation of the experience - and then as to the integration of the experience in a way that continues growth, deepening, healing, groundedness etc…. and does not perpetuate pathology, splitting, dissociation, regression and delusion.
fascinating and tough questions - not asked often enough in my opinion!
for more on spiritual experience and interpretation:
this piece goes into that territory a little more.
with regard to the basic ideas around worldviews this one might perhaps express in more detail the distinctions i am getting at if you are interested.
your love and passion for the work shines beautifully in this piece. a pleasure to read!
a joy to see you so inspired and writing with such clarity.
the threshold image is wonderful… oh the courage it takes to take that step across.
deep bow from ohio.
thanks annie!
thank you for (so patiently) clarifying. i actually wasn't understanding:
“the difference between regressive narcissism/magical thinking and authentic, mature, practice-based ego-transcendence i am pointing to here”
but now i think i'm a bit closer to grasping the distinction.
i look forward to reading the pieces you mention, and appreciate you opening up the dialogue.
now, if you'll excuse me, there's a box of crayons and a sketchpad here awaiting my attention.
xoxo :)….d
Amazing bit of writing. I'll come back to this one again to remind myself of the truths you have discovered, revealed, and defended.
When compassion and reason are competing for expression, the best guide is the truth. Thanks for the reminder.
Beautiful and well-reasoned. Forgive me if I say your bodywork appears quite magical.
yes, sir…this is the piece i have been waiting for…the one that goes a step further than the mental and takes me into the experience of what you have been talking about for some time here on gaia…and knowing who you are and all you have to offer in the flesh, there is an energy in accordance with the work you do in your life that you have fully stepped up to in your writing…yum…well done.
thanks sarah - yes this is usally my writing vioce - i had modulated it into what has been an attempt to make clearly reasoned arguments and theoretical contributions - and that mostly just gets me accused of being a big meanie egg head - so i thought i'd let the cat out of the bag again…
haha - it is matt - it is - but in a very real way!
thanks aeryk - nice to see you in these parts..
ya, see if it's interesting dani k.
may or may not be something you resonate with - but i am going on the work of several folks i have studied, in addition to my own practice and thinking over the years.
if you are interested in more context you might also check out a few selections by joseph campbell, ken wilber, jack kornfield, john welwood, stan grof, pema chodron and stephen batchelor if you are unfamiliar with their work…
the main problems with the new age:
very little practice orientation or serious study
a lot of shadow avoidance and psychological denial
an almost complete dissociating of spirituality from critical thinking - in the name of either being “open” or “in your heart”
very bad pseudoscience enthusiastically embraced as if it “proves” magical thinking
these make it hard to differentiate regressive defenses and omnipotent narcissistic fantasy from authentic spiritual openings, growth and healing. in wilber's work this is known as the ”pre/trans fallacy,” welwood calls it ”spiritual bypassing,” stan grof the “flight toward the light,” - while pema chodron would advise embracing the ”wisdom of no escape,” stephen batchelor following a “buddhism without beliefs,” and jack kornfield would ask that we be sure we are on a “path with heart..”
these are all serious teachers and theorists with 30 - 40 years of ex[perience and multiple published works - they are scholars, long term meditators and trail-blazers in terms of integrating contemporary spirituality and psychology. i can't recommend their wisdom and compassion highly enough…
happy blogging and drawing - glad you are doing so much better!
Very interesting. Congratulations on doing so much work! Very impressive disciplining of the mind.
Yes, magical thinking does toss the contemporary mind into a spin, doesn't it.
The first time I ever encountered the term was from the most sophisticated Christian Ph.D. I have ever encountered. As in all products of science-Christian culture, any notion of 'God' can only be found in the human, the center of the conscious universe. Anything outside of the mind is just illusion of meaning.
And can you blame modern man? Everything must go through his rational filter to claim any kind of authority. The Christian heritage has left so little ability to penetrate actual spiritual reality, that we are left with only human-centered spirituality. And many get lost because their spiritual experiences have nothing greater to flesh them out. So science, Buddhism and Christianity combine to discount any spiritual reality outside of rationalism's game. We even have adapted powerful techniques to swell our feelings of the spiritual in the confines of our own flesh-box. It is quite invigorating, and has certainly paid dividends to you.
And what else can we do? We are all victims of Christian heritage that said there are only four spirits allowed, God, Jesus, souls and the devil. And the Christian reality dictates that reality is only God, humans and inert matter, the dust of Genesis. Science merely lops off God, but agrees with the rest of the Christian version of reality. And Buddhism fits right in to this paradigm that Western man is absorbed into at birth. Can't escape one's culture, right?
In many respects, Western Buddhist-like thinking represents Christians-in-denial, when, in fact, their belief system is very much like the dreaded dragon of the Church. There is not much difference between you and the top layer of liberal theologians like Bishop Spong and their ilk, who like the four rational virtues of peace, tolerance, respect and love, and haven't had any inkling of anything more, so rationally it doesn't exist, and psychology has sophisticated concepts to buttress the skepticism.
The New Age is much the same, in many respects, the LOA type of stuff. The mind in control for one to have a good life, like good middle class children getting their education as their culture demands.
In this type of artificial environment we are enculturated in, we all gravitate to what makes sense, since we have so little contact is allowed with life outside the rational brain. We are all products, in one form or another, of science-Christian culture. Rationalism is some people's Salvation. We have as many libraries devoted to complex concepts now, after 200 years of scientific rationalism, as the Christian stockpiled in 2000 years. It is a credit to the Protestant work ethic of everyone in the spiritual industry, whether they believe in 'magical thinking' or not, or have actually experienced it, like Copernicus looking through his telescope seeing reality, when the priests of his day said it was impossible, based on their rational concepts.
You're not alone… common sense, like they often say, isn't common. But it's picking up now honey. Be passionate; this is in my humble opinion, what this gosh darn world needs! [Expand your thinking to the expletive I really want to use here.]
Love ya lotsly. sherri
Bravo Julian. There is a tension that exists between the radical acceptance of everything and everyone as they are this moment and the need/passion to engage others in a dialogue of wisdom, compassion and truth. As you have experienced, carrying the torch of clear vision and sword of critical thinking into the camp of the new age mushies and laying waste to all who dare stand before you is a thankless task. I don't have the inclination unless asked in person to comment on the paths and choices of others. It's their business. That said I very much appreciate your writing about it. This piece really brings depth and heart to those earlier postings.
Keep working on that book. I want to get a signed copy.
Incidentally, “free from dance” near perfectly describes what happens when I move to music. You nailed it.
coyote
hello julian…
i so enjoy your writing and your passion. thank you for this thoughtful essay. i see you're going to be at esalen this september and i believe if there's still room in your workshop this piece has compelled me to sign up. i'd like to partake of you and hala khouri in the flesh!
once again i'm reminded that you are a voice not completely alone in our collective wilderness … are you familiar with the activist, author and poet paula gunn allen? she wrote an essay some years ago that reflects in kind your thinking. blessings,dave
here's a short excerpt:
“What can we do, rejoicing and honoring, to show our respect? We can heal. We can cherish our bodies and honor them, sing Heya-hey to our flesh. We can cherish our being – our petulances and rages, our anguishes and griefs, our disabilities and strengths, our desires and passions, our pleasures and delights. We can, willingly and recognizing the fullness of her abundance, which includes scarcity and muchness, enter inside ourselves to seek and find her, who is our own dear body, our own dear flesh. For the body is not the dwelling place of the spirit – it is the spirit. It is not a tomb, it is life itself. And even as it withers and dies, it is born; even as it is renewed and reborn, it dies.
Think: How many times each day do you habitually deny and deprive her in your flesh, in your physicality? How often do you willfully prevent her from moving or resting, from eating or drinking what she requests, from eliminating wastes or taking breath? How many times do you order your body to produce enzymes and hormones to further your social image, your “identity,” your emotional comfort, regardless of your actual situation and hers? How many of her gifts do you spurn; how much of her abundance do you deny? How often do you interpret disease as wrong, suffering as abnormal, physical imperatives as troublesome, cravings as failures, deprivation and denial of appetite as the right thing to do? In how many ways do you refuse to experience your vulnerability, your frailty, your mortality? How often do you refuse these expressions of the life force of the Mother in your lovers, your friends, your society? How often do you find yourself interpreting sickness, weakness, aging, fatness, physical differences as pitiful, contemptible, avoidable, a violation of social norm and spiritual accomplishment? How much of your life is devoted to avoiding any and/or all of these? How much of her life is devoted to avoiding any and all of these?
The mortal body is a tree; it is holy in whatever condition; it is truth and myth because it has so many potential conditions; because of its possibilities, it is sacred and profane; most of all, it is your most precious talisman, your own connection to her. Healing the self means honoring and recognizing the body, accepting rather than denying all the turmoil its existence brings, welcoming the woes and anguish flesh is subject to, cherishing its multitudinous forms and seasons, its unfailing ability to know and be, to grow and wither, to live and die, to mutate, to change. Healing the self means committing ourselves to a wholehearted willingness to be what and how we are – beings frail and fragile, strong and passionate, neurotic and balanced, diseased and whole, partial and complete, stingy and generous, safe and dangerous, twisted and straight, storm-tossed and quiescent, bound and free.”
The Woman I Love Is a Planet; the Planet I Love Is a Tree, by Paula Gunn Allen
awesome dave - thanks for introducing me to her - and i do hope you will join us at esalen!
sherri and sun warrior - nice to meet you. thanks!
coyote - thanks so much for your kind words! always happy to see you…
viz: opinions of other's paths -well that's a tough one because if one is going to write anything theoretical about life one is going to have to bring the subject up, no? methinks any psychological or spiritual , philosophical or ethical text will perforce have elements of critique regarding various modes of being, approaches to practice and belief systems…
one gets into the question as to whether truth/falsehood, health/pathology, sanity/insanity are merely relativist matters of choice and opinion or are discoverable distinctions.
even if we come to the hypothesis that maybe these are discoverable distinctions to some small extent we have a case for engaging in analysis and critique - as un -PC as this may seem..
personally i think true spirituality is by definition dedicated to truth, health and sanity - even though so much of contemporary spirituality and old world religion is in many ways an expression of “faith” in falsehood, pathology and insanity….. what can i say? for me this is the central territory of any meaningful conversation about the inner life and it's outer implications!
As always I can't get enough of your writing.
glad to hear it rich!
means a lot…
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I love to hear the way you describe things. Your words crystalize feelings within myself. I've been called a skeptical spiritual-it's always been hard for me to follow, let alone follow what cannot be proved and or seem way out there…well except for aliens. ; )
The thing that has always amazed me is that for centuries people have been clinging to believe in something, it is not just this subculture. Many need to find something to follow and usually it is so far from ourselves. Look for the “Secret” or the Guru to tell you how it is. I am all for gaining and possessing information- but Use Thy Own Instrument! (I have guided retreats to teach this.)
True or not, (cause honestly there are some things I have no answers for- true or untrue who knows…) I do find it frustrating that people get caught up in their mystical journeys- “channeling” or whatever magical power they have so much that they are not here in the physical form.
I sometimes want to kindly say “get off the mountain, come back from the other dimensions and be a person.” I feel no matter what you can or cannot do magically- You are a spiritual-being (or non-spiritual if you choose) in a body. Enjoy it! Live it! Breathe it! Explore, Be in it!
Julian,
Very well said
Ah, to try to change peoples beliefs is a bitter pill, eh?
When different levels of understanding contend, it only wears out the contenders. Light then becomes a distant shadow
Some say: “Speak to people according to their level of understanding”
That is if you wish to maintain decorum, and peace.
The true teacher gets a student to practice what the student already knows
We all have to learn to practice what we know, or to learn how to practice what we know [capacity] for the sake of knowledge, then we become what we know.
Proverb
What one man consumes, another regurgitates
yes, heather, yes!
thanks zak!
Beautiful writing, Julian.
I hope this doesn't mean you aren't going to give us those The Secret and Zeitgeist type deconstructions. Those are a very valuabe public service, I think, very valuable and illuminating (I'm sure it doesn't :) ).
David
very nice tone here julian……
i am wondering if anything i write here doesn't belong in the myth of the real:
the anima and animus….the ego and the shadow…..the subconscious impulses of the id….the tyranny of the super-ego…..the unconsciousness of deep sleep…..the dream state……..the faculties of reason and logic……all the lines of development that we experience thru cognition; moral, emotional,faith, musical,etc……..the 7 energy systems of the body traditionally known as chakras……………..non-ordinary states of consciousness like being high on alcohol or pot………non-rational states of consciousness like bliss and unity with all things……….have i missed any? surely………
this sounds like a mansion with many rooms in my opinion…….and although i would agree that a proper and healthy integration of the body-mind (the centaur, i believe)is essential, especially in preventing all kinds of spiritual fallacies, i would also posit that if all these things are real (most can't be proved by hard science), then that to me, leaves the question open as to if there is a source/cause to all these phenomenon……….
and by the way, that hard working lawyer with 10 years post-secondary education who runs 10 miles a day probably wouldn't believe in much of this stuff……………….or think about it, far too rational for that, he is………………….
I agree with David.
After all, the way I learned about Gaia to begin with was from doing a Google search on “critique of The Secret” and discovering your relative blog entries within the search results…
Definitely a valuable public service. Invaluable!!!
Just reading through the feed and I saw Heather's comments and I thought :”There's my perspective staring me in the eye!”
To some extent I am thankful that nobody has had a reason to label me because I am not in a community [physical] where people are ardently exploring spirituality as it seems to be occurring in the West. I've had a crash course in Anthropology in the last year or so since I came to GAIA.
So I was just doing my thing privately, trying to be my best, reading on inspiration, writing my journals etc. etc. I definitely didn't have a plan to ascend or transcend anything; I just wanted to find out what the heck is natural… period [The Truth!]. All around me the falseness resonated and it was just confusing and disturbing. [We in the Caribbean have been trying to follow the American lead and by old standards succeeding… but by emerging [human quality] standards failing… more on that at another time.]
Anyway when I hooked up with GAIA and I saw the tremendous amount of 'portals' via links available to 'teach' people how to transcend and whatever, I was shocked! I was like 'I'm missing something, I must be!” But my spirit had been clear in its communicating by then, sufficient to tell me, stay my course and not even try to complicate my path by attempting to integrate all the new age methodologies at all… indeed the greatest shocker to me, was how many of these approaches were telling you how to bring MONEY into your space. And I thought, 'That's just not right…' But they have their followings soooo…
I've sadly watched persons with tremendous potential for energy work, be so consumed with 'How am I going to explain this to my brothers?” because their family are all academics or about money or they love to debate [argue!] every little point, or more richly, that they have to await the aliens to communicate with them, that they never actually get around to using their gift to help anyone…!
Even if they didn't bother to help anyone that's no problem although it seemed ridiculous at the time because that's what zaadz/GAIA was set up for in the first place… [duh?], but they were fully unaware that 3rd Dimensional life is IT, until further notice! I could go on and on on this one, but I won't since it's not my blog :D
It phased me for some time like I said but eventually more practical folk have been peeking out AND getting vocal in harmonious ways, thank God. So I feel much more comfort in signing in and sharing my fairly boring existence - not an alien in sight, not a guru that I haven't read and graciously put in his place in the intellectual scheme of things, not a pose or posture that I haven't attempted and seen what works for me… as a simple human being just trying to make it from one end of the physical life to the other, hopefully at peace while I am doing it!
Again, as an outsider looking in, I encourage you to go with this present flow wholeheartedly… the spirit takes precedence over any human 'authority' and frankly, look at the mess these human authorities - THE CAPITALIST, RELIGIOUS, ACADEMIC, FAMILY LEADERS I MEAN - have been creating.
I'll say no more at this time. Blessings upon blessings to you as you stay the course and gosh darn LIVE!!!
sherri
beautifullly said sherri!
thanks….
thanks david - that's good of you to say!
good to hear from you andrew!
thanks…
well yea, but that straw man is not interested oin the inner life - he is not an exemplar of healthy rational, but of narrow, shut down, monologic rational… i am suggesting keeping healthy rational as an aspect of an intelligent grown-up relationship to one's magnificent and rich inner life!
that's a nice factoid tiger - thanks for letting me know!
i had no idea that the secret review would become my calling card, be reasd by almost 20 K people over ann 18 month period and get me interviewed by my idol…. it's a whacky world - i guess that's the power of intention - even when you're debunking magical thinking, huh?! hahahahahahahaha…. :O)
Even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you, G-d, are with me. —-Psalms 23
Really!!– The Zohar Vol. 2 pg. 57
In the world at large, if your boss sends you on a mission, he generally stays at the office, while you go off to accomplish the assigned task. But that's not the case when G-d sends you on a mission. G-d comes along.
This is the meaning of the verse in Psalm 127: “If G-d doesn't build your house, your labor is for nothing.”
Now you might think that if G-d is going to build your house, why do you have to labor at all? The Psalm is saying that you must labor nonetheless, but if you don't invite G-d into your work, your efforts will be worthless. You will not have the energy to achieve your task. You can choose to build a house; you can haul the bricks and the mortar, but, without G-d Who is the power source, your house will never get built in a meaningful way.
This is what's unusual about our mission from G-d. The One who sends us, joins us in our mission. But if we don't acknowledge His presence in our work and process, then we are powerless to truly succeed.
The daily focus of our life should be all about inviting G-d to join us in the performance of our mission.
A famous story tells about a man who dreamt that he saw his whole life's journey as footsteps in the sand. Sometimes there were two imprints – his and G-d's. But, during the parts of the trek that were most difficult he saw only one set of footprints. He complained to G-d, “G-d, you promised me that you would always accompany me in my journey. How is it that during the most difficult times in my life you disappeared?” G-d responded, “I have always been with you. The reason why you only see one set of footprints is because during your most difficult times I carried you. Those footprints our mine.”
It is especially helpful to remember this in the most challenging moments.
During times of pain in your life have you ever asked, “Why is G-d doing this to me? Why is G-d hurting me?”
There is no answer to that question because it is the wrong question.
This question is based on a perception that there is a G-d, an invisible Being, floating out there in outer space, and you are down here on earth, separate and removed from Him. However, Kabbalah says that there is no such G-d and there is no such you. The true you is the soul and the soul is none other than a part of G-d.
Therefore the real question is, “Why is G-d doing this to an aspect of Himself?”
Now I admit that this question also has no answer, however, I think there is great comfort in knowing that you are not alone in your pain, that G-d is never out to get you, that whatever you are going through G-d completely shares. Remember, whatever G-d puts you through is also what He puts Himself through because you are a soul, an expression of Him.
If you embrace this consciousness then you will draw upon Divine strength and find great courage. You will rise to the occasion, overcome the challenge confronting you and experience the triumphant of the spirit.
We Are Not Alone
No tear ever shed in the history of humanity is without Divine participation. We are never alone, although we can choose to forget that truth by kicking G-d out of our awareness, out of our struggles and challenges.
When we pray to G-d, we are not simply saying, “G- d, remove all these problems and make everything easy. Snap your cosmic fingers make it all better.” When we pray to G-d, we're actually consciously inviting G-d into our struggle. In this way we empower ourselves to fulfill our mission in the world.
I think this is one of the most important ideas of Torah and Kabbalah – we're not alone in our struggle, in our challenges, in our pain. G-d is always with us. G-d is rooting for us all the time.
In Kabbalah the forces of evil are called sitra acher, “the other side.” One of the tricks of evil is to try and convince you that G-d is on the other side. You're on one side and G-d is on the other side. He's not on your side. He is against you.
This is a lie. G-d is always on your side. No matter how low you feel you have fallen, G-d is always on your side. To feel this, all you got to do is invite Him in.
A child once asked his father, where is G-d? His father responded, “Where ever you let Him in?”
The teachings of the Torah and Kabbalah focus on letting G-d into your process, inviting G-d into your challenge, and recognizing how much G-d wants to be involved and is involved in your life, because your true inner self is the soul, a ray of G-dliness.
We are incredibly important to G-d. And G-d is always with us. If we don't choose to believe that, then – although we are important to G-d and He is always with us just the same –we won't experience the joy of that truth.
G-d is never out to get you. G-d is not on another side. G-d is always on your side. G-d has a vested interest in you - because you are a soul, a aspect of Himself. You are not G-d but you are an expression of G-d. Although G-d is beyond you, an aspect of G- d is manifest within you.
G-d is not some magician who ludicrously snapped his finger and created us with no vested interest in what would happen to us. G-d is not some force transcendent of our process, removed from our pain and struggle, stoically looking down at us while we grapple with life in this world.
When you realize that G-d is part of your life as a loving a parent to a child, you will discover your holiness; you will discover your ultimate meaning and significance. When you serve the ultimate, then you'll feel part of the ultimate. And when you realize that you're part of the ultimate, then you will know G-d in every step of your journey.
J - LOL!!!
research
study
critical thinking
practice
action
+ intention
Fruits of the Magic of the Real
Now that's The Secret :)
dear yaffie…you have come to the 'fourth of july' picnic with your ball and bat…and although you may 'think' that you have hit a home run, you are not yet in the 'ballpark'…
we are playing frisbe…do you know how to play frisbe?
This is beautiful Julian. Loved it.
Let's get together soon…
good to see you paul!
i like your math tiger!
yaffie - i am not sure what to say.
Am feeling challenged by having to be both Wise and Insightful in using this box now!
Julian, I really enjoyed the 'cat out of the bag voice' and everything you shared here. It's MUCH easier a voice for me to hear. My guess is it's your fully embodied voice, rather than the other which leaves me feeling like I'm being talked at by a head on a stick sometimes.
I'm awed by the breadth and depth of your work - a lifetime's work already somehow - and I rarely feel brave enough to voice my comments once your voice is resonating round my cells… I tend to remain one of the shadow folk who up the volume of traffic leaving ghost traces only.
You get me right in my passion too though, with The Magic of the Real, enough in my passion to raise my voice here and share a couple of places where I felt a little 'snagged' from the smooth flow of what you're saying:
I have become a lone mouthpiece for reason
I appreciate you feel alone at times, especially when being a courageous and consistent voice, but a lone mouthpiece? not really lone, there are other voices out here, you kinda snagged me on a detail right there already (I'm touchy… sensate).
unwilling to back down
go on then.. get yer gloves on folks… put em up.. lets slug this out…..! who's up for a fight??
Now if I'm not up for a fight about any of this.. am I just in agreement? or too intellectually lazy? or do I just not enjoy discussion when the dynamics involve squaring off in polarising fashion?
Personally - all of the above!
Seriously though J, the drawback I see in fightin talk is the tendency for fights to break out. And fights tend to polarise things away from the optimal space for the kind of fruitful discussion which leads to expanded understanding, all round.
Of course, armed with my reason-seive, all was well and short of getting the metal bits sticking out of the seive caught in the curtains on the way in, I got to wander on in to some deeply grown-up awe….
and still we might miss the here-and-now living tradition of initiatory possibilities if we get too caught up in the coolness of sanskrit, special teachers and traditions, social climbing and spiritual posturing.
not through slavish reliance on some cookie-cutter correspondences,
Self-evident, esoteric, unimportant, essential.
Yes, yes,. Yes!! and more Yes!!!
Lovely. Thankyou x
thanks lynx - for speaking up.
thanks for all the yummy things you said!
and yea i am not a fan of the new comment button….. wise and insightful!? gimme a break..
i totally hear you - those are breaks in the flow - but for me they define a kind of character, a kind of boundary or drawing of the line - and i dont find that negative…
i remain unwilling to back down on certain premises that are basic to sane spirituality. they sound a little like fighting words, but might they also just be a statement of clear intent and unwavering commitment to certain perceptions?
i bet you have ones of your own - perhaps that you don'tlike fighting and under no circumstances will you fight - in fact you might just not back down on your belief that fighting is unproductive and uncivilized, no? :O)
well i am the same way about spiritual ideas that sound dissociated from reality and that insult the presence of real human suffering and limit the emergence of the genuine human depth they pretend to!
healthy spirituality helps us to grow, to be grounded, to heal and to develop tools for managing life on it's own terms - unhealthy spirituality perpetuates delusion, denial, dissociation, self-hatred, grandiose omnipotent narcissism and otherworldly escapist fantasy. Phew - yea all that! really…
as for being a lone mouthpiece for reason - well what i mean is that here on gaia, in the spiritual community around me at large and even in my friendships - i often feel like i am cast as the big meanie who insists on bringing reason into the conversation….. i said this half in winking caricature, half in over-dramatized self-pity! its intended as partially ironic and goes with the opening tone - this is not what i intended….i have become the lone mouthpiece for reason.
however there is still the ring of truth - most “spiritual” peoople are really conflicted about reason and think it is somehow the enemy of “being open” - and i get harangued for valuing and applying it, called arrogant, closed minded etc… all because this sort of thing strikes me as ridiculous and i might say so given the opportunity amongst folks who are otherwise quite bright but are somehow taken in by kistchy silliness…..or at least think it worthy of taking seriously to some extent.
ah well.
If one refuses to fight… who loses?
It's great to have a choice… and know it.
Loving it all!
Sherri
written at 1.44.. hmm…. magic being real i guess!
thanks, yes, am done with fighting and under no circumstances will I fight.. till I do!
I like your highlighting of reason being a supposed 'enemy' of spirituality. I am a reason-able person (daughter of a scottish engineer.. beam me up) .. my sense is that it has been a necessary part of the rapid process of moving from the intellect-override of recent human experience to a more sensate inclusive now.
I will still give some kitschy silliness the time of day.. if my senses tell me I may glean somthing from it … but then I'm happy with being ridiculous.. thankfully ;-D
I hope to pass through CA in some future now and have the pleasure of experiencing your work in person.
Julian, some more musings on this:
My first read this morning was Sherri's blog and I gotta say I just do not want to fight any more. Because I do not want there to be fighting any more.
Maybe there's also an active fight, gloves on (or off) etc.. and then the passive holding-the-other-end-of-a-rope kind … the latter is harder to quit from where I'm standing. At least it's easier for me to think of places where I would not find myself able to let go..and then there's Ghandi style.
Not sure if any of this makes much sense Julian.. musings…. premises to be examined.
Hi Julian! This is the first time I checked in with your blog in a several months–I vacated due to the ratio of critical:open getting too high. It's not that I don't value the critical–isn't that part of why most of us end up reading & commenting here in the first place? It was just getting way out there.
Anyway, like any system, imbalance perhaps is necessary in order to find the new balance. Thank you for this entry, which I'm glad is the one I popped back by for.
I read you as expressing that motion towards the turquoise, the integration of the teal AND the green, and all that also comes before it. I appreciate the mirror I see in you and the ultimate encouragement I feel to reconnect with my own practice (especially the body-based work, since as I've moved into my 30s, I've incorporated my creative life more into the physical realm, and left body-based practice somewhat behind–but know I need to at some point re-engage my right hand with my left, so to speak).
OK, enough about me. What I really feel I can add to this conversation is a study of language.
-Perhaps there is a difference between gnosis-integration and expression-integration.
-Perhaps articulation is its own practice, linked to but slightly separate from understanding. Haven't people in spritual traditions worked with various forms of “the vow of silence” for aeons? Here in blog-land we are trying to do something different–connect through the medium of words.
We don't have many models for an integral LANGUAGE. We're on common ground (I'll give some leeway and the benefit of the doubt here, and ask others to temporarily please do the same) with our intentions and ideas of moving towards integration; we are really quite babies in expressing those intentions. I would say we're better as a group at gnosis than at expression.
The task gets harder if we don't want to get all cryptical-koan-Zen-like or fat-happy-Taoist-like in our relationship to words (not that there's anything wrong with these modalities –it's just–what if we want to express integration in a more straightforward way? More rational? In concrete prose, versus poetry? Is the structure of a prose sentence inherently leading us away from the nature of communication we desire? The internet is so un-embodied, which makes our task even harder. See, i'm even using parentheses to work with the inherent duality in the English language–SOO unevolved. ;) )
I once studied writing with an amazing being, Martin Prechtel (shamanic tradition–definitely worth looking up) who taught, much more eloquently, I might add, the following outline:
1. Be in the world & write
2. Give that work to Spirit (he suggested reading aloud to Spirit)
3. Only after said work has been offered to Spirit is it ready to be offered to human community
That's one way to look at it.
Anyway, I'm thinking about types of expression a lot; after I finish up this comment here I am going to head over to my own blog and write something about what I've been learning in an African literature, cinema, and music course I'm taking in grad school, about Western v. African notions of “what is language”? I haven't of course written said blog yet, so I can't link to it, but click my icon if you are interested.
Julian, I'm happy to be your companion as we collectively work towards common goals. Thank you for your willingness to be seen & shift, be public with the tides of your process.
-Nora
Hi, Julian.
I just finished reading this post and all the comments and feel gratitude towards you for acknowledging your unintended predicament and your willingness to continue to be “the voice of…the obvious”, no matter how unpopular it might seem. I must admit that this is the first time I have read one of your blog posts in its entirety, including comments. With so many appetizers being served all over Gaia, it is sometimes difficult to commit to consuming an entire meal. I now realize there are many more courses to be served here, and I look forward to reading all that you have been gracious enough to share.
As someone who is preparing to enter his own “healing” process, I am also grateful that you have been willing to share a “snapshot” of your daily work, both personally and professionally. After having read this piece, I am beginning to visualize a framework for my own practice/process, grounded in the magic of the real. For me, I realize this is where the real “magic” of healing will take place.
Thank you,
Michael